by Leah Reis-Dennis, Amplify Front Page Blogger

I am a freshman at Harvard University, where, despite the presence of enormous individual student ambition and drive, it’s pretty much impossible to incite enthusiasm from any large-ish group about anything besides upcoming exams.  It's hard to imagine mobilizing students to spend time and energy making their voices and anger heard over the recent Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the House healthcare bill (or even provoking their anger in the first place). 

So, you can imagine my surprise when, after receiving an email message from Gina Glantz and Kim Gandy (two fellows at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics and experienced political and advocacy aficionados), I showed up to a “Stop Stupak Emergency Planning Meeting” to find a room packed with students: law students, humanities graduate students, graduate government school students, college students, and, notably, a large contingent of freshmen. 

 “Yes!” I thought. “Students care about reproductive health care, women’s right to choose, and the knowledge that women’s health care is health care. We understand that no one plans an unplanned pregnancy, something that both private and public insurance plans will be forced to cast aside if the Stupak amendment makes it into the final version of the healthcare bill. “

Each month young people around the world contribute their stories, successes, and challenges in activism in their countries to our International Youth Activist Newsletter.  This month, Ephram, the leader of the Talent Youth Association (TaYa) in Ethiopia, discusses how he became an activist:

Over ten years ago, I lost my father due to an AIDS-related illness.... Having seen the prevailing stigma and discrimination associated with HIV/AIDS, I have had a hard time accepting the fact that this could affect me and my family. I’ve witnessed how painful the illness is. .....My father’s life gave me the courage to do something and devote my life to reducing new HIV infections in my community and among my peers.

And Alphonso, the leader of a youth development organization in Liberia, describes International Youth Day in that country and youth dialogue with policy makers around their health. 

...A coherent approach to youth issues should be a priority, because they are the ones who feel alienated, frustrated and most vulnerable.

by Emily Bridges, Director of Public Information Services

Through YOUR efforts, including lobby visits and hundreds of emails and phone calls to Congressional offices, the HIV travel ban has been lifted!

The travel ban on people living with HIV and AIDS was a discriminatory policy maintained by the United States government that automatically denied entry into the United States to non-U.S. citizens otherwise eligible for entry on the basis of their HIV-positive status. If a non-citizen was found traveling into the U.S. with HIV medication, they were arrested and placed on a flight home. 

The US’s travel ban was controversial because there is no scientific or public health rationale from barring those with HIV from entering the country, since the virus is not spread by casual contact. The ban also meant that the important biennial International AIDS Conference could not be held in the United States.  The U.S. was one of only about a dozen countries with these regulations.

by Abbey Marr, Amplify front page blogger

There has been a lot of coverage this past week about the Guttmacher Institute's new report "Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress", which shows contraceptive use up and abortion laws becoming more liberal worldwide, and, correspondingly, abortion rates down worldwide. This is great news and shows what family planning advocates have been arguing for years; if you want to lower abortion rates, if you want to lower the rates of women dying and being injured from unsafe abortion, then you need to make contraceptives readily available and abortion legal.

The report also confirms another argument commonly used by abortion rights advocates; abortion rates do not correspond to abortion's legal status- making abortion illegal does not make abortion rates go down, it just puts women at risk.

By Kate Stewart

The annual trip to the doctor’s office for their yearly physicals with my daughters is a time I look back and take a few moments to think about how they have grown. You receive the instant reminders as the nurse tells you their weight and height. You look around the waiting room and see the anxious parents holding newborns and think how that seemed like just yesterday – and then you smile at the couple and think to yourself  thank god my daughters sleep through the night (mostly) and diapers are a thing of the past.

Well this year my oldest turned nine and we went to her annual visit thinking about the normal things – how much she had grown, did she need any shots, how long will we have to wait to see the doctor, will we get the nice nurse who likes to chat or the one that scares everyone – including parents.  The visit started off just like all the others over the years. The doctor asked the usual questions – How much milk do you drink? Do you eat your vegetables? What time do you go to bed at night? And, then it came time for the shots. “Let’s see,” the doctor started to say as he looked at her chart. “We need to do a tetanus booster and oh yes it is time for her to get the HPV vaccine.”