So just when you think you've heard it all -- meet Bob McDonnell, Republican candidate for governor in the state of Virginia. Turns out that Mr. McDonnell isn't your garden-variety anti-choice politician. He's a true believer -- railing against legalized birth control, public schools, childcare and, believe it, working women!...

So yesterday an article by Dan Gilgoff appeared in the U.S. News World Report titled "Bishops Demand Universal Healthcare Without Abortion." Does anyone else see the irony in the U.S. bishops wanting to define universal health care as covering everything except for what they don't support? Under this theory,...

It was only a matter of time before the right-wing campaign against health care reform began to focus on abortion, and last week the Family Research Council pulled out all the stops. The FRC is up with an "Harry and Louise" lookalike ad in key Senate states alleging that...

Lately, there have been many convenings to discuss the special arena of "women's health care." At a meeting at the White House a couple of weeks ago, a participant said she would love to...

It seems like not that long ago we were chronicling the dismal first 100 days of the Bush administration, predicting an unpleasant future for women's health and rights ... little did we know just how bad it could get.

So imagine the champagne corks popping today, as we mark the...

What a difference an election makes. In just over two months in office, President Obama is making good on his promise to change the failed reproductive health care policies of the Bush administration: overturning the global gag rule; helping ensure access to affordable contraception for millions of women, and taking...

Yesterday, President Obama made the audacious statement that we would reform the health care system in America this year. At what the president rightfully called the "hottest ticket in town," a truly remarkable group of what Washington likes to call stakeholders came together at the White House Health Care...

With the stroke of a pen, President Obama today has lifted the stranglehold on women's health across the globe. His repeal of the Mexico City Policy (the global gag rule) ends eight long years of policies that have blocked access to basic health care for women worldwide. No longer...

Today's Washington Post features yet another article about the failure of abstinence-only sex education programs, which have been one of the best-funded far right programs under the Bush administration. At last count, the US government has spent more than $1.5 billion on programs that promote "abstinence only until...

Very little about the Bush administration could surprise me anymore, but I was completely disheartened when -- despite the written opposition from more than 200,000 Americans, 150 members of Congress, a bipartisan coalition of governors and attorneys general, the American Medical Association, and women's health organizations like Planned Parenthood --...

Late on election night, I received an email from a Planned Parenthood staff person, Njeri Wahome, in Nairobi, Kenya. Njeri wrote to me to verify what she was seeing on television -- that Senator Obama had won. "Can it be true? We are over the moon ... at the making...

Ever since my mom got beat by George Bush Jr. we've congregated for Thanksgiving down at Padre Island, near Harlingen, Texas. We liked to think of this gathering at the beach as the Hyannis Port of the South - just like the Kennedys we had an extended family, touch football...

With all the post-election polling analysis, there are many interesting outcomes that merit some soul-searching -- and not just within the political parties.

Exit polls reveal that 54 percent of Catholic voters supported President-elect Barack Obama, despite entreaties from Catholic leadership to vote against Senator Obama because of his support...

It is hard to overstate the landslide victory for women last night. The election of President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden spells the end of eight long years of an administration that used every legislative, judicial, and administrative weapon in its arsenal to attack women's health and rights....

We all know John McCain and Sarah Palin are out of touch on women's health; between McCain's infamous air-quoting of the word "health" and Palin's countless contradictions on reproductive health care, we know that we would be in bad shape if they were to make it...

I about fell out of my chair when I heard John McCain say this during the presidential debate last night:

"Just again, the example of the eloquence of Sen. Obama. He's health for the mother. You know, that's been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean...

Over the last several weeks, it has become apparent that Sarah Palin is out of touch on a whole host of issues, ranging from the bailout and the economy to foreign policy to the Supreme Court. After this week's interview with Katie Couric, we can now add women's health to...

Picture this. While everyone's attention is focused on the upcoming presidential election, President Bush tries to slip in a new regulation that undermines women's access to health care. And before you know it, millions of women can't get the basic health care they need.

Unfortunately, the New York...

It's our time to put a president in the White House who cares about women's health, take back our country, and move once again with progress and commitment to the future. That's what Hillary Clinton said when she suspended her presidential campaign and that's what my mother Ann Richards would...

A tried and true tactic of the far right is to inject abortion into the presidential campaign as a divisive tactic. Their goal is twofold: to obscure the broader issue of reproductive and preventive health care and to politicize private, personal decisions made by women and families.

Both Senator...