yoest c DHS

<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[[  </font>=</div><div>
</div><div><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">GOP evang grifter BS boosts unwanted [teen]  pregnancy, then they outlaw abortion, then go for birth control?!</b></div><div><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</b></div><div><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">extort trump GOTV --> scotus supermajority LEO</b></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx many</font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div><b>Trump’s Pro-Abstinence HHS Appointee Fits an <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Unnerving ‘Pattern’</span></b></div><div>Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy·Contributing Writer</div><div><b>June 7, 2017</b></div><div>
</div><div>On Tuesday, the Trump administration quietly appointed Valerie J. Huber as chief of staff for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Huber most recently served as president and CEO of Ascend, an organization focused on promoting abstinence-only education in schools. She was previously the abstinence-education coordinator for the state of Ohio, where she oversaw abstinence programs for more than 100,000 students per year.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Valerie J. Huber </div><div>In a memo to HHS staffers by <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Acting Health Secretary Doug Wright, he called Ascend “a Washington DC-based professional association that champions youth to make healthy life and relationship decisions.”</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">But abstinence-only education — or what many on the far right call “sexual risk avoidance” — is seen by many health advocates as ineffective, and frequently leave out certain demographics of young people that are especially vulnerable, including LGBTQ teens and pregnant and parenting teens.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Why Experts Are Concerned</div><div>
</div><div>Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, the director of public policy for Advocates for Youth, says there is a <b>pattern not only of Trump appointees being named to offices whose very mission they seem to oppose</b>, but also<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> one emerging among HHS appointees specifically who are united in their opposition to contraception.</span></div><div>
</div><div>“There is definitely in HHS and the Trump administration a focus on rolling back birth control coverage and access to contraception in general,” Thu-Thao Rhodes says. “And yet another pattern of this administration is that they don’t see contraception as a preventative service and integral to women’s health. There’s a pattern here of people being appointed to key positions by the administration who think this way.”</div><div>
</div><div>Echoes Leslie Kantor, PhD, MPH, and the <b>Vice President of Education at Planned Parenthood</b> Federation of America, “At Planned Parenthood, we are very concerned about an increasing number of anti-women’s health, anti-sex education, anti-science appointments in the Trump administration.”</div><div>.</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last month, Teresa Manning was tapped as deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at HHS, the role that oversees the administration of Title X, the national family planning program. In a 2003 interview, Manning stated on the record that she believes that contraception doesn’t work.</span> Manning has also criticized the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for recommending that prescribers offer advance prescriptions of the morning-after pill and has <b>called emergency contraception “medically irresponsible” and “anti-family.”</b></div><div>
</div><div><b>Charmaine Yoest, Trump’s appointee to serve as assistant secretary of public affairs for HHS, is opposed to intrauterine devices (IUDs) as a form of birth control and has falsely said that they have “life-ending properties.</b>” As noted in a memo circulated to Senate Democrats from the staff of the minority members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee earlier this week, “IUDs do not work after implantation and therefore cannot end pregnancies. Additionally, recent data from the Guttmacher Institute found that unplanned pregnancies are at a 30-year low, largely a result of an increase in the use of long-acting reversible contraceptives like IUDs. The [Affordable Care Act] has been critical in increasing access to IUDs by removing cost barriers for women seeking contraceptive services.”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b>HHS Secretary Tom Price </b>has also spoken on the record about his opposition to the contraception mandate of the ACA</span>, telling a reporter in 2012 that “there’s not one woman” who does not have access to birth control — and thus does not need it guaranteed as part of her insurance coverage at no cost. Price is also vehemently outspoken on his opposition to federal funding for Planned Parenthood and his support of seeing the organization dropped as not just a Medicaid provider, but also a Title X provider. Planned Parenthood serves more than 40 percent of Title X patients, including teens, despite making up just 13 percent of all Title X health centers.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">And <b>Dr. Scott Gottlieb,</b> Trump’s appointee to head the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has repeatedly insisted in his own words that the contraception mandate of the ACA harms women’s health.</span></div><div>
</div><div>“These appointments have an enormous impact on the lives and future success of young people in our nation,” Ginny Ehrlich, CEO of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, tells Yahoo Beauty in a statement. “<b>We hope these officials will exercise their responsibilities in a way that builds on past successes in reducing teen and unplanned pregnancy, rather than going backwards.”</b></div><div>
</div><div>Bipartisan Support for Comprehensive Sex Ed</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">According to the Guttmacher Institute, research “suggests that strategies that promote abstinence-only outside of marriage while withholding information about contraceptives do not stop or even delay sex. Moreover, abstinence-only programs can actually place young people at increased risk of pregnancy and STIs.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>“The point of sex education is that you want to get to young people before they become sexually active. You don’t want them to get critical information after the fact,” Kantor says. “Good sex ed lays the groundwork throughout childhood and the teen years so that when you’re in the situation when you’re in a relationship and navigating and negotiating having sex for the first time, you are well prepared and have all the information you need to protect yourself.”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Adds Kantor, “There was a very, very important change in the country in<b> 2010</b> when for the first time, rather than pouring money into abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, money started to be appropriated for evidence-based approaches — approaches found to help young people change their behavior either by delaying sex or by using condoms and contraception when having sex. We don’t want to see things roll backwards to the bad old days of abstinence-only-until-marriage education.</span>”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">January 2017 polling by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that 85 percent of American adults — including 89 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of Republicans — favor maintaining federal funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program and the Personal Responsibility Education Program, both of which utilize evidence-based, comprehensive sex education curricula.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Furthermore, the National Campaign’s polling found that 79 percent of Americans — including 81 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of Republicans — believe that teens should receive more information about abstinence and birth control and sexually transmitted infection protection.</div><div>
</div><div>Read more in Yahoo Beauty + Style:</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump’s ‘Religious Liberty’ Order Threatens Women’s Health, Experts Say</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">6 Threats to Women’s Health Baked Into Trump’s New Budget</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Better Birth Control Access Could Drop Abortion Rate by 67%, Save $12 Billion</span></div><div>
</div><div>Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty.</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div><div><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"></span><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">]]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">beast</font></div><div><article class="Body hpCCr" style="position: relative; color: rgb(2, 20, 31); font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;"><div class="Body__content _2o_vt"><div class="Mobiledoc"><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);">early this month, the <a aria-label="" class="TrackingLink LinkWrapper" href="http://thedailybeast.com/keyword/trump-administration" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">Trump administration</a> appointed Valerie Huber, a well-known advocate for <a aria-label="" class="TrackingLink LinkWrapper" href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/will-betsy-devos-kill-sex-ed-in-public-schools" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">abstinence-only sex education</a>, to serve as chief of staff at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health at the Department of Health and Human Services. <b>With Huber’s pick, and a proposed 2018 budget committing <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/budget/fy2018/budget.pdf" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">$277 million to abstinence-only education</a></b>, the White House seemed to signal to its conservative base the scientifically dubious “Just Say No” brand of sex education was back, and now one of its staunchest believers would be helping to man the helm.</p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);">Huber’s boss hasn’t been appointed yet, but <b>HHS’ acting assistant secretary for health, Don Wright,</b> announced Huber’s hiring in an internal memo <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/336620-abstinence-education-advocate-named-to-hhs-post" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">published by The Hill</a>. In the email, Wright wrote that Huber’s “wealth of professional experience in the field of public policy will serve her well in this position.”</p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);">That experience is both limited, and includes internal scandal, The Daily Beast has learned.</p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);">Huber came to Washington by way of <a aria-label="" class="TrackingLink LinkWrapper" href="http://thedailybeast.com/keyword/ohio" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">Ohio</a>, having served as the abstinence education coordinator for her home state’s Department of Health from 2004 to 2007, before forming Ascend, an organization dedicated to abstinence education on a national level.  </p><div><div class="Storylines" id="storylines-target-middle" style="padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);" /></div><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);">Huber became interested in public policy by way of being a mom, after her son came home reporting what he had learned in health class: Don’t have sex, but if you do, use a condom. To combat this shocking message, Huber founded a nonprofit organization, called REACH. “My vision was to make a difference in the life of one child—my son—b<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">ut God had a much bigger vision</span>,” she <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060117174631/http://cenational.org/Publications/publicationsArticle.asp?IDNum=63" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">told an interviewer at CE National,</a> an organization that describes their mission as helping churches be more effective on a national level.</p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2004, she left REACH to become the state abstinence coordinator at Ohio’s Department of Health where she oversaw the abstinence-only sex education programs for some 144,000 students.</span></p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);"><b>During her time at Ohio’s DHS, Huber was criticized by AIDS-awareness groups</b> in the state for holding conferences that excluded gays and lesbians with a “wait until marriage” message that refused to mention condoms, as well as <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="http://spot.colorado.edu/_{tooley/HenryWaxman.pdf}" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">using federal funding to purchase materials that contained</a> “false, misleading, or distorted information” about contraception, abortion, and blurred the lines between religion and science—an assessment that Huber at the time called “an out of context and gross mischaracterization.”</p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Despite its uncertain effectiveness, Huber continued to oversee the abstinence program, and its some $23 million in state and federal funds. Then, in January 2006, she became the focus of an internal investigation and subsequent inquiry by the Ohio Ethics Commission, according to human resources documents retrieved by The Daily Beast. Internal auditors found that <b>Huber had awarded a contract to a marketing company to develop a pro-abstinence media campaign for which she served as the statutory agent</b>.</span></p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Internally, Huber was found guilty of “neglect of duty” and was ordered to serve a one-day working suspension. In <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3878217-Valerie-Huber-Disciplinary-Letter.html" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">a disciplinary letter</a>, Ohio’s then-director of health, Dr. Nick Baird wrote that Huber’s actions “created an appearance of impropriety and a possible lack of confidence.”</span></p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);"><a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3878216-Valerie-Huber-Investigation-Report.html" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">Investigation documents</a> recommended actions against Huber for violation of ethic laws be taken up by the Ohio Ethics Commission. Those inquiry records are not public.</p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Huber <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3878211-Valerie-Huber-Resignation-Letter.html" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">officially resigned</a> from Ohio’s Department of Health in January of 2007, and quickly formed the National Abstinence Educators Association—a lobbying arm of the abstinence education industry, later known as Ascend, and <b><a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="http://www.salon.com/2017/06/12/abstinence-only-rebranded-failed-right-wing-sex-ed-policy-returns-as-sexual-risk-avoidance/" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">rebranded abstinence education</a> as “sexual risk avoidance.”</b></span></p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ohio’s <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="http://www.odh.ohio.gov/healthstats/disparities/pregnancy.aspx" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">teen pregnancy rate</a> remained steady during her state tenure—from 33.2 per 1,000 women ages 10-19 in 2004 to 34.9 per 1,000 in 2007. A <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/opinion/28sat1.html" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">national study</a> ordered by Congress released shortly after Huber’s Ohio departure found students who were exposed to abstinence programs like Huber’s were just as likely to have sex as those who were not. <b>More recent studies have found the same, with <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">some concluding</a> that abstinence education is actually positively correlated with teenage pregnancy and birth rates.</b></span></p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2012, when New York City schools began handing out the morning after pill to students in an aggressive push against teen pregnancy Huber <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nyc-schools-dispensing-morning-after-pill-to-girls/article/2509043" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">called the effort</a> “a terrible case once again of bigotry of low expectations.”</span></p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);">As president and CEO of Ascend, Huber <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865670424/Whats-the-right-approach-to-sex-ed-curriculum.html" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">told the AP in 2017</a> that <b>sexual education programs which include information about contraceptives push teens toward sex, </b>teaching in effect, “there’s really no red light as long as you do it right.”</p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);">“We don’t like the term ‘comprehensive sex education’ because it (projects) that it provides an even-handed approach that gives young people all the information to make healthy choices, when it fact it normalizes teen sex, and puts the emphasis on reducing the risk, rather than eliminating it,” Huber said. “You can’t blend the two (approaches) when you have underlying differences in foundation and the measure for success.”</p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Huber isn’t the first controversial figure to be posted at the Department of Health and Human Services. In April, Trump appointed </span><a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/04/28/president-donald-j-trump-announces-key-additions-his-administration" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Dr. </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Charmaine Yoest</b></a><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">, </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">an anti-abortion activist who acted as a surrogate during his campaign, as the assistant secretary of public affairs, a position that doesn’t require Senate confirmation.</span> Yoest, a former president of Americans United for Life, an organization largely responsible for the state legislation that has restricted access to abortion in recent years, also kept a blog coauthored by her husband, titled “<b>Reasoned Audacity,” <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="http://www.metroweekly.com/2017/04/trump-appoints-hhs-assistant-spokeswoman-history-anti-trans-rhetoric/" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">where they espoused</a> anti-LGBT views</b>, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">including that transgender people were “crazy,” and referred to sexual reassignment surgery as “a joke.” Yoest <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="http://thememoryhole2.org/blog/yoest-deletions" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">scrubbed her blog</a> of its anti-LGBT posts immediately following her appointment.</span></p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);">Research and credentials aside, Huber’s appointment has her poised to steer the national health agenda back toward abstinence education, and in her new position will affect oversight for <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.hhs.gov/ash/about-ash/organizational-chart/index.html" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">12 public health offices</a>—including Women’s Health, Minority Health, HIV/AIDS and Infectious Disease Policy, and Adolescent Health.</p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-size: 19px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); color: rgb(40, 55, 65);">The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health confirmed Huber’s appointment, but declined to comment on her record. A representative said Huber was on a family vacation.</p></div></div></article></div></div>