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Nancy
Goldstein
06/26/2008

Mandatory Ultrasound Laws are About Political Interference, Not Medical Information

By Nancy Goldstein, Reproductive Freedom Project at 11:14am

Christine Vestal had a story on Stateline.org yesterday about legislative efforts to require doctors to perform ultrasounds before an abortion. The green light really came on for anti-abortion activists this past April, when Oklahoma legislators easily passed a first-in-the-nation law that forces health care providers to perform an ultrasound before a woman has an abortion regardless of medical necessity or benefit, and requires the woman to listen to a description of the fetal image against her will.

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10/28/2008

Using the Human Rights Framework to Unravel Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs

By Nancy Goldstein, Reproductive Freedom Project at 4:59pm

(Originally posted on Feministing.)

The special fall issue of the journal Sexuality Research & Social Policy, titled Human Rights, Cultural, and Scientific Aspects of Abstinence-Only Policies and Programs, represents the latest research-backed critique of costly, misleading, and ineffective abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. It appears at a time when concerns about these programs, which require the exclusive teaching of abstinence until marriage and prohibit teaching about condoms or other contraceptives other than to discuss failure rates, are running high. That anxiety is driven by reality: despite having received over $1.3 billion in federal funding over the past decade, no viable evidence suggests that they actually work.

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06/24/2008

States turn down US abstinence-only-until-marriage grants

By Nancy Goldstein, Reproductive Freedom Project at 4:49pm
As this site has been reporting for some time, more and more states have been turning down US abstinence-until-marriage grants. By December of 2007, a mere seven months ago, around 15 states had turned down the money: In January Arizona became the 16th state, followed just two months later by Read More»
04/07/2008

"What Made It Nice Was It Was Free"

By Nancy Goldstein, Reproductive Freedom Project at 9:49am

That's Gina Castro being quoted in an article that appeared in this past Monday's San Antonio Express-News, in Texas. She's the administrator who oversees the school health advisory council for Harlandale. Of the 16 districts in Bexar County, where the teen birth rate is nearly double the national average, Harlandale is one of the poorest, with a majority of students coming from low-income homes.

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06/18/2008

NYCLU Tells It Like It Is (Great Letter to the Editor)

By Nancy Goldstein, Reproductive Freedom Project at 6:07pm
Check out this letter to the editor of the Little Falls Evening Times by Galen Sherwin, the Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Rights Project. Sherwin takes the paper to task for failing to tell its readers that a so-called "character education program" the local school b
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06/12/2008

Questions Surround Goverment Funded Abstinence Program (from ABC News)

By Nancy Goldstein, Reproductive Freedom Project at 5:47pm
Reporter Murray Waas' article asks "why an organization that promotes sexual abstinence for teens received a federal grant of over a million dollars, twice what it had requested, despite the skepticism Department of Justice staffers had about the group and the fact that it refused to participate in a congressionally mandated study?" The
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05/30/2008

Massachusetts program speaks to parents and youth alike

By Nancy Goldstein, Reproductive Freedom Project at 2:59pm
This week's Boston Globe reports on a successful instructional program developed by a local nurse at a private medical practice. The pilot Smart Sex Education Program seems to have "taken the edge off for many parents by pitching sex education to them as well as to youngsters." Offered free a
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05/23/2008

Great Editorial from Florida Mother

By Nancy Goldstein, Reproductive Freedom Project at 5:54pm
This past Tuesday, The Daytona Beach News-Journal Online featured a terrific editorial by local mom Lynn Koller. It's inspired by her son, a 7th grader in a school that teaches federally funded Pure Energy Abstinence Education Program. The article kicks off with hi
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04/22/2008

Congratulations to Angelina Momanyi, a Recipient of the 2008 ACLU Youth Activist Scholarship

By Nancy Goldstein, Reproductive Freedom Project at 5:49pm
"Being a civil liberties activist isn't about the big events for me anymore. It's about the harder conversations I have with someone who doesn't share my views or having the courage to put friendships on the line for my beliefs in what is right."
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