After my post last week regarding the mixed data on the value of mammograms, I got a slew of mail the gist of most being, yes but what should I do? The only answer I can give is that you have to decide for yourself what makes the most sense, no easy thing when things aren’t clear cut combined with it being difficult to trust the information you get.  Our Bodies Our Selves has an excellent summary of the history of this issue which is informative and I hope useful.

For me, even though I’ve never had to face this disease myself, I find that I am extraordinarily fearful of it, and one of the things that I find empowering is to work on reclaiming the frame in which we talk about breast cancer by refocusing the discussion on cause rather than cure.  Clearly the current approach is less than satisfactory in terms of how patients are treated and what we are told about it.  Which leads me to highly recommending No Family History, which,

turns the debate about breast cancer upside down by proposing before solutions about prevention, rather searching only for a cure.

There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to breast cancer, and we need to ask some hard questions about what we ‘know’ so far and insist that cause be the starting point for treating this most difficult disease.

As usual, I find myself at the end of the week with a cornucopia of stories and not enough time to post them all, so I’m going to try something different this week and post a wrap–up with links, and if this works well, it may become a regular event.  It isn’t that each of these doesn’t deserve its own post, it’s just that no one has invented an 8th day of the week or hired a staff for FPN!  Without further ado:

The Global Fund for Women has a fabulous new blog, check it out here.

Stop Family Violence has the latest on the Stamford Marriott rape story.  Let’s keep the pressure on Marriott to go beyond apologizing and become an industry leader in ensuring the safety of their guests.

As this blog has reported too many times, the C-section rate in this country is much too high which both raises the costs of maternity care and endangers the lives of mothers and infants.  Our Bodies Our Blog points to evidence that if you take away the financial incentive for performing C-sections, the rate mysteriously goes down. Hmmm. And as they also point out, part of the health care reform process is figuring out how to pay for health care.  Reigning in unnecessary costs would be a brilliant start although I do have to say there is this nagging thought in the back of my mind that worries about starting with women’s health as the place to cut costs because it can go too far as it did with what became known as drive-by mastectomies where women are released from the hospital much too soon after such major surgery.

This piece by Masum Momaya takes an in-depth look at Google’s controversial advertising policy for abortion services in 15 countries asking if the policy violates women’s rights.

RAWA has this brilliant piece by Malalai Joya about the Afghan elections.

And check out this new DoJ resource for information on Domestic Violence, a lot of really useful stats.

And last, we have this horrific account of acid attacks in Zambia via WNN:

“I didn’t realize that the tongue skin was also peeling off. The young girl was pushing something in her mouth. I opened her mouth to see and found that almost the whole tongue had come off. I had to pull it out like you do with a cow and only a little red thing (tongue) remained.”

These excruciating words by a girl’s older sister describe the aftermath of the worse physical attack a 13 yr old could ever experience.

For all the times I get accused of being an angry feminst, I ask how stories like that could possibly evoke any other response.

Let me know what you think of having regular wrap-up posts.

As Congress begins to consider what actions it will take to re-structure the ailing U.S. healthcare system, one critical issue that must be addressed is the structural inequity in the  current system and the disproportionate impact that has on women’s lives and well-being.

As Judy Norsigian, Executive Director of Our Bodies Ourselves and Dr. Jennifer Potter, the director of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Director of Women’s Health at Fenway Health point out in an Op Ed  in the Boston Globe, the answer that makes the most sense for women is a single payer plan.

The only national plan for healthcare reform that explicitly includes women’s reproductive health services, including abortion, is one sponsored by Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat. Other sponsors of single-payer plans are also amenable to including women’s reproductive health services.

Coverage with a single-payer plan is independent from employment. Because women are more likely to be self-employed, to work part time, and to move in and out of employment outside the home, they are now more likely either to lack coverage through work or to lose insurance when changing jobs.

Medical debt is an enormous concern for many women, and single-payer plans effectively address the cost issues that send women into debt and even bankruptcy. A 2009 Commonwealth Fund study found that 45 percent of women accrued medical debt or reported problems with medical bills in 2007 compared with 36 percent of men.

Our Bodies Our Selves‘ endorsement of the Lee bill offers a number of reasons why this bill is the best  healthcare plan for women:

• Coverage is independent from employment.
• Coverage is independent from marriage.
• Single-payer system would encourage better care for chronic illnesses.
• Single-payer system would eliminate the need for Medicaid.
• Single-payer system would address the cost issues that send women into debt and bankruptcy.

For all these reasons, it is urgently important to support the Lee bill.  Write and call your Congressional Representatives, write to your local newspaper and raise a ruckus.  Our lives depend on it.