BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

In June 2007 I wrote an article called PRISONERS OF THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. Over that summer I was lucky enough to attend a number of conferences on Domestic Violence Advocacy, an area where awareness & advocacy is still desperately lacking. Aside from my speaking out about the lack of or insufficient responses from law enforcement, a lot of talk circled around faith-based abuse counseling. It seems priests, pastors, rabbis and so on are still trying to keep families together when there is clearly a cunning and remorseless abuser or exploiter in the home. Many don't get verbal, emotional or psychological abuse at all! And worst of all, they have little to no knowledge of what their "forgive & forget" speeches and minimization of the abuse's effects do to children. I made the following honest comments to one group: I grew up in a home where I was insidiously abused. To this day I deal with a profound lack of ego & self-esteem and seem to be a magnet f...

The Anti- Family Planning Movement by Cristina Page Like lawn ornaments in summer, protesters outside the local abortion clinic are fixtures in many places in the United States today. Their presence and message have long been so predictable that, without looking or listening, people believe they understand the point. And so you might not notice that the protest taking place outside your local clinic today has fundamentally changed. It is no longer about abortion. June 7 is the anniversary of Griswold v Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that granted married people the right to use contraception. To mark the day, anti-abortion groups are taking to their normal posts outside clinic entrances not to convince Americans to oppose abortion but rather to stop using contraception. The national campaign is called "Protest the Pill Day 08' " and it is organized by several leading anti-choice groups including the American Life League and Pharmacists for Life. The groups...

Fade to Center We women in America deserve BETTER than this!! Birth Control Pills are often prescribed for reasons OTHER than contraceptive. Why do we keep revisiting this and the Roe v. Wade issue? As a sufferer of PCOS for 41 years, often doctors attempt to ameliorate symptoms with Birth Control Pills. If you can't dispense as prescribed? Don't be a pharmacist!! While the religious right broadens its campaign to undermine reproductive freedom, what's left of the left prefers to repeat history. By Kathryn Joyce Commercial: Cameras open on a young father (Caucasian or light-skinned Latino; attractive but not handsome: an Average Guy) sitting in the driver’s seat of a well-kept car parked in the lot of a suburban pharmacy. The father wears a work shirt (the Honest Working Poor) and seems tired but affable as he turns to smile at his baby, strapped in a car seat in the back. The father checks his watch, then turns to look at the pharmacy doors. Cut to inside the store, where...