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    Change or Just Correction?

    Posted Thursday, March 12, 2009 12:29 PM | By Nayeli Rodriguez
    Like Hanna, I, too, am finding it hard to muster enthusiasm for the White House Council on Women and Girls. Obama's heart is certainly in the right place, but this council seems amorphous and somewhat random. What I can get onboard with is all the funding increases for sexual and reproductive health programs coming out of the omnibus bill the Senate passed last night. Providing more money for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and 14 million less for abstinence-only programs seems like a much more concrete, results-oriented way to keep improving women's lives. I was also encouraged by the bill's inclusion of the Affordable Birth Control Act, which restores access to birth control to low-income college-age women whose contraceptive resources were restricted under the Deficit Reduction Act in 2005.

    No less important, of course, was the restoration of U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund, providing a total of $545 million for family planning and reproductive health programs worldwide.

    With all of these councils being created, bills being signed, and funds being allotted to various women's interests, it is easy to forget that much of the recent progress has been a mere correction of Bush administration policies like the global gag rule. The White House Council on Women and Girls is the first truly nonreactionary measure Obama has taken with respect to women, so it will be interesting to see how the council, as it hopefully takes a clearer direction, defines Obama's own vision for American women and girls.
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