Ok let's get down to brass tacks. We know the Republicans are mostly just playing politics with women's health. If we stop them from bashing birth control they'll find something else. But now that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled the California ban on gay marriage unconstitutional, it...

By Thursday we all learned a lot about Komen, and Planned Parenthood and breast cancer. We might have started to learn what it will take to mobilize the outcry it will take to really stop the attacks on women's health.

We heard about Komen flacking for unsafe drugs...

The Hyde amendment banned spending federal funds on abortion and I didn't speak out because I didn't use Medicaid.

They restricted access to abortion for residents of D.C., but I didn't speak out because I didn't live in D.C.

The House voted to take away Title X...

Many women are angry that our health is being used as a political football, in attempts to divert attention away from the troubled economy. We need the government to fix the economy and to fund vital basic health services, and to quit interfering with our private decisions about our reproductive...

Women are the last remaining voting majority who are treated like a splinter group. It will stay that way until we stand up for ourselves, together, and demand power.

The Democrats drove us away from the polls in 2010, and they're getting ready to do it again. It's okay, though....

Here is what we are up against:

28 Republican Senators have written to protest that the HHS decision to cover contraception as a preventive health care service interferes with the constitutional right of your religious employer to dictate whether or not you use birth control. (Technically, whether...

You mean you haven't heard about the new 21st century trade agreement being negotiated this week in Chicago? Might be because the federal U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) didn't even announce the 2-week meeting on its website. Or anywhere else.

Trade agreements are increasingly vehicles for...

Today the Institute of Medicine reported what most breathing humans know more or less reflexively: That contraception is a preventive health care service. Why is this even a question? And why must we answer it now?

Birth control is a safe and legal service that is both cost...

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) includes a brilliant solution for controlling health care costs while protecting Medicare. The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is just what we need: It cannot restrict health care benefits, it cannot raise premiums, it cannot cut who is covered. It can...

Both major parties state that they will not risk a default, and their friends on Wall Street clearly don't want one.

Speaker of the House John Boehner is facing the reality that he cannot rely on the fringe ideologues in the Republican party to take any action. The Democratic base...

We've had our children, or not. But we remember.

Worried when we were "late." Escaped to New York or California or Mexico where it was legal, if we could, or found lay caregivers through Jane. Mourned our friends, or relatives, or patients, who were not so lucky. The girls who...

Half of all pregnancies are unplanned. At least a third of U.S. women have abortions. Polls show that the majority of Americans -- over 60% by any measure -- are pro-choice. A similar majority are content to prevent federal funding for abortion.

Can it be true...

We've learned a lot this past year.

We learned it is not enough to appoint and elect smart, progressive women and pro-choice men to government. They and we need to mobilize visibly and vocally to advocate for reproductive rights and justice.

As we celebrate the anniversary of Roe v,...

Today is the deadline for comments on interim regulations by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on what constitutes a preventive health care service. This is relevant because under the new health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, preventive health care services are supposed to be provided...

Last week the National Association of Insurance Commissioners issued proposed rules for measuring the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR), a key instrument for controlling health insurance premiums. The MLR is the 80-85% of premiums that the new health care reform law requires insurance companies to spend on medical care, or improvements...

Don't look away. The still-fragile Affordable Care Act (ACA) gives the public a fighting chance at reining in health insurance premiums. But we're going to have to wrestle with the insurance industry every step of the way -- and occasionally also the drug, hospital, medical supply industry, and yes, doctors....

The Department of Health and Human Services' recent announcement would create a new sphere of abortion restrictions, undermining women's reproductive autonomy. It states that abortion coverage may only be obtained in the new high risk pool plans in cases of rape or incest, or where the life of the woman...

Why is it so easy to pass bad Big Ideas, and so hard to enact the good ones? Is it because no one's talking about them?

We need to control the banks, the oil, the environment... So hard to get consensus! But we hear very little about one law that...

Yay! We passed the bill! No question about it, seeing the House pass the health reform bills, and watching the President sign one of them, felt like a moment of triumph. Despite our many many reservations, so many of us have worked so hard over the last year to achieve...

It's not just all about money. It's about fairness, and equality, and how profoundly our political culture is infused with the imperatives to keep us divided on the most fundamental bases. Our economic and legal systems have been engines of great progress, and also of divisions by class, race, gender,...