Happy Earth Day!

I think Earth Day may be my favorite holiday! Not that we should stuff all of our love for nature and Mother Earth into one day (maybe we can all start thinking like Earth Day every day...), but what better thing to celebrate than this magnificent planet we inhabit!?

I often think about how women's health in particular is affected by what we're doing to our environment; our soil, our air, our water- all the stuff we take into our bodies every day that that have an impact on us. As providers of life, just like the Earth itself, we need to stay healthy for our sake and for the sake of our families. And we need to protect the planet on which we live so that it can continue to provide all the various forms of life on which we greatly depend.

Join Us for The Michigan Policy Summit

It's that time of year... coming up on May 16th, 2009 is the 3rd Annual Michigan Policy Summit. This year's theme is Investing in Michigan. Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Michigan rocked years 1 and 2...and we're about to do it again! We want to show a strong Pro-Choice presence, so we hope you can join us. We'll also be presenting a workshop on Pro-Choice Organizing and will have a table at the Organizational Showcase.

This year, for the first time, the MPS will be in Detroit, at the Cobo Hall downtown. It's a great excuse to go to Detroit for a beautiful spring day! The Summit is great for networking and for learning about what policy initiatives the progressive community in Michigan is fighting for and how these initiatives are good for job creation and the economy. Here's the website to get all the details and to register: http://www.mipolicysummit.org/

Hope to see you there!

Day of Silence

The National Day of Silence brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Each year the event has grown, now with hundreds of thousands of students coming together to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior.

In an effort to bring attention to the National Day of Silence - please consider participaing by: being silent, wearing red, talking, wearing the rainbow, wear any color, tweet your experience, facebook your friends your expereince, blog the silence, or silence your blog. For more info please visit http://www.dayofsilence.org/index.cfm.

Update on HHS Regulation

Just before leaving office, the Bush administration implemented a rule that would allow individual health care providers to deny patients vital health care information and services based on their own personal biases, without the patient even knowing. More than 200,000 people — including more than 90,000 Planned Parenthood supporters like you — and 150 members of Congress called on the Bush administration to withdraw this damaging rule.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America fought back by filing a lawsuit with Planned Parenthood of Connecticut in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, asking the court to invalidate the administrative regulation finalized in December by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In March 2009, President Barack Obama began the process of overturning the midnight regulation when the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a new rule to rescind it. In the proposed rule, the department expressed the importance of ensuring that any regulation in this area is consistent with Obama administration policy, and sought to address a number of concerns that had been raised about the midnight regulation. HHS gave the public 30 days to comment on the proposed rescission and specifically asked for comments on these concerns.

The comment period has now closed, and the Obama administration will review comments received on its proposal to rescind the damaging HHS regulation. In response to another overwhelming call to reverse this regulation from more than 68,133 Planned Parenthood activists, members of Congress, and state elected officials (including 17 attorneys general), we hope that the Obama administration will fully rescind this dangerous regulation soon.

Get Yourself Tested!!

Planned Parenthood is joining with The Kaiser Foundation and MTV for the Get Yourself Tested campaign in an effort to raise awareness about STIs, safe sex, and getting yourself tested.

For more information, and to find a local clinic where you can get tested, go here:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/issues-action/other/get-yourself-tested-24078.htm

Pedro

Tonight at 8 pm MTV is airing Pedro, a docudrama about Perdro Zamora, the first openly gay, HIV positive star on the Real World.

This film is not only significant because it honors the life of a stellar activist, who died too young, but is also important because it will help spread the word about the importance of HIV protection to a new generation. As an organization that is dedicated to healthy sexuality, we are so excited to see this film debuting tonight!

Here's a link to MTV's site on Pedro: http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/359622/keep-filming.jhtml#id=1607899