Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) is one of my foremost sheroes for her courageous vote against the Iraq war and so much more, among them her opinions about reproductive and sexual health, as Nickie Imanguli reports,
“During her speech (at the recent international conference on AIDS), Rep. Lee talked about how Congress removed the travel restriction for people with living with HIV; however, the Department of Health and Human Services has yet to lift its restriction. Hopefully, the ban will be lifted completely before the end of President Bush’s term. When I posed a question during the session as to what we, young people, should demand of our next president, Congresswoman Lee, without any hesitation, came up with a very comprehensive list of demands that included: the repeal of the global gag rule, integration of family planning services and comprehensive sexual education into PEPFAR, removal of the prostitution pledge, and finding an effective way to address gender violence. She also did not forget the domestic policy reforms that included defunding abstinence-only programs, authorization of the REAL Act, support for clean needle exchange programs, and the creation of a domestic PEPFAR. In other words, she listed everything I, as an advocate for the sexual and reproductive health of young people, have been working towards for almost three years now.”
It is truly a crime that the intelligent, thoughtful voices like Lee’s get marginalized in Congress. Imagine if this is what leadership looked like!
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