Why New York City’s Effort To Shame Teens Is The Wrong Way To Promote Sexual Health

So far, New York City’s campaign to prevent unintended teen pregnancy has been extremely successful. The public schools in the city have instituted a mandatory comprehensive sex ed curriculum, as well as a program to help expand teen’s access to contraception — both of which have directly contributed to the fact that the teen pregnancy rate in New York City has plummeted by 27 percent over the past decade.

The city’s Human Resources Administration is now expanding those efforts to a broader marketing campaign, rolling out a series of advertisements that intend to communicate the “real cost of teen pregnancy.” The ads, which will appear on subways and bus shelters across the city, are an attempt to frighten teens out of having a child at a young age:

This strategy may not be totally without precedent. Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff points out that a similar type of advertising campaign in Milwaukee helped contribute to a drop in teen pregnancies. But the huge drop that New York City has already seen over the past 10 years belies a simple fact: edgy advertising isn’t nearly as important as actually equipping young people with the resources they need to understand their bodies and mitigate their sexual risk.

In fact, a recent study demonstrates that providing young adults with the support they need can be a more effective method of preventing unwanted pregnancies than shaming teens about their sexuality. Throughout the course of the study, the teens that participated in a program tailored to help young people make good sexual choices — including providing providing personal case management, youth leadership opportunities, and specialized counseling — were much more likely to make safe sexual choices, like using condoms, than the teens who weren’t in that program. And the healthy sexual behavior extended beyond simply using protection. The teens who received support and counseling were also more likely to be able to recognize unwanted sexual attention, and refute those type of advances — in other words, they became better aware of their physical boundaries and their ability to withhold consent.

Ultimately, the United States needs a huge overhaul when it comes to society’s approach to teen sexuality. Too often, teens aren’t given accurate information about their bodies, aren’t empowered to make their own decisions, don’t know what “consent” is and how to navigate it, and are ultimately too ashamed to ask for the resources they need. Young adults need to be trusted with information about sexuality — and those who are at a higher risk for unintended pregnancy need to be supported, not stigmatized for the “failures” that result from their sexual behavior.

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The Effort To Replace The Sequester In One Table

Senate Democrats have officially rolled out their plan to replace the so-called “sequester,” the set of spending cuts scheduled for March that were set in motion by the deal that raised the debt ceiling in 2011. House Republicans have yet to roll out a new plan of their own to replace the sequester, instead pointing to a sequester replacement bill that they passed in the last Congress (that they have no plans to vote on again). The Congressional Progressive Caucus has also proposed a replacement for the sequester.

Here’s a comparison of the three plans::

Congressional Progressive Caucus PlanReplaces the sequester with $110 billion in deficit reduction, equally split between spending cuts and revenue.Replaces the sequester with $960 billion in new revenue, $278 billion in defense cuts, and invests in new job creation measures.Includes no new revenue. Denies the Child Tax Credit to parents who are undocumented immigrants.Includes $55 billion in revenue, split between: a 30 percent minimum tax on millionaires (the Buffett rule), repealing subsidies for oil companies, and eliminating the ability of corporations to deduct the cost of moving jobs overseas.Reinstates the Making Work Pay tax credit. Ends the carried interest loophole that benefits wealthy money managers, closes tax loopholes that encourage corporations to send profits to offshore tax havens, cuts oil subsidies, closes loopholes that benefit buyers of private jets and yachts, and closes loopholes in the estate tax.Includes $27.5 billion in cuts to defense spending.Includes $278 billion in cuts to defense spending.Cuts domestic spending via: cutting food stamps, Medicaid, and the social services block grant (which, among other things, funds Meals on Wheels). Cuts domestic spending via ending direct agriculture subsidies, “which are currently provided regardless of yields, prices, or farm income.”Invests $160 billion in infrastructure.

House Democrats have also released a plan largely in line with the Senate Democrats’ version. The sequester itself, meanwhile, would devastate several important programs that have already been hurt by budget cuts.

Already, the deficit reduction achieved since 2010 (which is hampering economic growth and hurting job creation) has been primarily achieved through spending cuts. In fact, just one-quarter of it has come through new revenue. Even adopting the Senate Democrats plan would mean that overall deficit reduction is tilted heavily towards spending cuts. Only the CPC’s plan would result in deficit reduction having been achieved through equal parts spending cuts and new revenue. The CPC plan is also the only one acknowledging that job creation, not the deficit, is the country’s most pressing problem.

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Health Workers Gunned Down In Nigeria, Threatening Global Effort To Combat Polio

Child receives polio vaccine in Nigeria

Several health workers administering vaccines were shot dead in Nigeria today, part of a spread in violence threatening the tantalizingly close eradication of polio.

While the exact number of those dead is unclear — estimates on the ground vary from as many as twelve to as few as nine — there is a consensus growing about the identity of the group behind the attack:

No one claimed responsibility but the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which has condemned the use of western medicine, has been blamed for a spate of assaults on security forces in the city in recent weeks.

[...]

“Gunmen opened fire on a health centre in the Hotoro district, killing seven, while an attack on the Zaria Road area of the city claimed two lives,” said a police spokesman, Magaji Musa. “[The health workers] were working for the state government giving out polio vaccinations at the time of the attack.”

Boko Haram — which has referred to itself as the “Nigerian Taliban” — has been a thorn in the side of the Nigerian government for over a year now, launching attacks against government facilities and bombing multiple churches. Should they be behind today’s murders, it would be the first instance of their targeting health workers.

The attacks seem close in nature to a rash of killings that swept through Pakistan last month, killing over a dozen. Much as in that case, current reports indicate all of those killed in Nigeria on Friday were women. Unlike in Pakistan, however, there’s no CIA program to blame the workers for colluding with. Instead, the militants have blamed the vaccines for being a Western plot to sterilize young girls and causing AIDS, neither of which is remotely true.

Nigeria is one of the last remaining holdouts of polio on Earth, with only Pakistan and Afghanistan joining it in having regular significant outbreaks. In 2012, Nigeria had at least 121 cases of polio, by far the most in the world. Facilitating a drop in those numbers will require a near universal vaccination rate, one that is unlikely to occur with the threat of violence.

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Republicans’ Effort To Rig Electoral College Gets National Backing

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R), who was the chief elections officer when the state experienced massive voting problems in 2004, is planning to lead a national effort to rig the electoral college in favor of the 2016 Republican presidential candidate.

Republicans who hold power in states that have voted Democratic in the last few presidential contests, including Virginia and Pennsylvania, are considering a change to their apportionment of electoral votes. Instead of a winner-take-all system for the state, electoral votes would be doled out by congressional district, using highly-gerrymandered maps. The result is that a state like Pennsylvania, which voted for President Obama by more than 5 percent in 2012, would have given most of its electoral votes to Mitt Romney.

That plan is now receiving national backing, thanks to Blackwell and GOP operative Jordan Gehrke. The two men detailed their effort in an interview with the Atlantic and conceded that the effort could make it easier for Republicans to win the White House:

ATLANTIC: You are a Republican operative, though. And it’s Republican legislators who are pushing this in all the states where it’s come up so far. You can claim this is about policy, but doesn’t it really make it easier for Republicans to win presidential elections?

BLACKWELL & GEHRKE: That could be a byproduct, depending on who drew the lines last and who’s running – a lot of different things. What it’s really about is making sure that more people in more congressional districts get attention.

Though Blackwell and Gehrke argued that allocating electoral votes by congressional district is more representative, that doesn’t mean they support the much simpler, fairer system of a national popular vote. “Abolishing the electoral college is very difficult to do,” they claimed.

What’s both true and sad, though, is that rigging the system to ensure the Republican candidate wins, no matter how Americans actually vote, is far easier to accomplish in Republican-controlled states.

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