That's a real job title in El Salvador, where the vagina of a woman who's suspected of having had an abortion is legally classified as a crime scene, and where police routinely obtain search warrants to examine women internally for evidence to be used against them in court.

From AAR via AlterNet: Rachel Maddow interviews Jack Hitt, whose cover story on women and abortion in El Salvador appears in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

by Diana Philip

No one wants to see a teenager be trapped by poverty, abuse, or neglect. Yet, laws concerning the rights of pregnant minors to access certain medical care do just that.

Since the late 1970s, state legislatures have been passing state "parental involvement" laws, which mandate that a parent or legal guardian be notified of or give consent for a pregnant minor's decision to seek an abortion. Texas has one of the most recent laws, now five years old, and as of June 5, 2005, its law changed from requiring notification to mandating consent. Congress is now in the process of creating a nationwide parental notification law through the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA). CIANA also would make it illegal for anyone to help a teen obtain an abortion in another state without satisfying her home state's law. Supporters of this bill generally think such a law will protect children. However, before the Senate votes on CIANA or similar legislation, lawmakers should carefully consider the damage parental involvement laws have done to pregnant youth in Texas.

By Jennifer Baumgardner

Twenty-three years ago, I helped my teenage sister get an abortion, without telling our parents. Today her story is still proof to me that parental consent laws don't work.

I grew up the second of three daughters in a pro-choice household in Fargo, N.D. Our family talked about politics, read Our Bodies, Ourselves and voted Democrat, but when it came to actually discussing sex, my parents' mantra was "high school is too young."

In 1985, the summer after my freshman year in high school, my 16-year-old sister told me she was pregnant. Andrea, a National Merit Scholar, knew two things: She wanted an abortion and she didn't want to tell mom and dad.

"I'll help you," I said, honored that she'd turned to me.

i have no words. just click the link: Lone Star Shelter

(thanks bayprairie for sending me this)

Media girl has the latest news on reproductive rights in Wisconsin posted next door at her site.

Wisconsin has just passed a new bill intended to impose government controls on what healthcare providers can and cannot tell patients.

When one person breathes, one person eats, one person shits, then there's (duh!) one person.

A woman is one person. A pregnant woman is one person.

When a baby is born, that is the beginning of the baby's life.

And before anyone scoffs at that notion, consider that life-beginning-at-birth is how we as a people, in our own culture, treat the entire issue. Consider:

When a baby is born, there is a birth certificate. The birth certificate is used to confer rights. When you can vote, when you can drive, when you can drink, when you can marry, when you join catechism, when you have a bar/bat mitzvah, when you qualify for Social Security, when you go to kindergarten, when you can sign legal contracts by yourself, when you are eligible to be drafted, when you qualify for Medicare, when you can get a discount at the movies, and every other way we as a society determine age-contingent matters. We say, "Since the day I was born," to indicate our entire lives. Our tombstones show the year of death following the year of birth.

More....