Last week, Texas Alliance for Life paused briefly in its crusade to enact increasingly onerous abortion restrictions and shifted its focus to the other end of the human lifespan. The group urged its supporters to lobby for passage of SB 303, state Senator Bob Deuell’s bill to reform end-of-life care…
In 2011, as we just cannot seem to stop mentioning, your state legislators cut $73 million from the state’s family planning budget, instituted a tiered funding system designed to give family planning clinics any federal dollars dead last, and launched a weird war on the Medicaid Women’s Health Program. All…
Public water systems in the United States have been adding fluoride to their water since the 1940s as a way to prevent tooth decay. The consensus among public health officials and scientists is that the practice has been incredibly effective. The only documented side effect is a rise in fluorosis,…
The website and Facebook pages for The Master’s Hand Medical Center in Grand Prairie, which later changed its name to the Master’s Hand Spa, have been taken down. The traces that are left on the Internet indicate it offered weight loss treatments, botox, lipo-laser, as well as massages and other…
Michelle Hickman, a Houston-area mother, became Internet famous in late 2011 when she was harassed by Target employees for publicly breastfeeding her infant. That happened despite Target’s breastfeeding-friendly corporate policy and a 18-year-old state law that gives women the right to nurse “in any location in which the mother is…
It was June, a few weeks after his long-shot run for Congress and his marriage both came to an end, and Jason Roberts couldn’t shake the nagging weariness that had dogged him through the campaign. He felt constantly as if he’d just racked himself on his bike frame. It was…
At the end of January, state Senator Carlos Uresti, a San Antonio Democrat, quietly filed a bill that would lift the legal age to smoke or possess cigarettes, or any other tobacco product, from 18 to 21. “If we are serious about stemming the epidemic of tobacco-related diseases and the…
Texas Freedom Network has a lot to be irritated about lately. TFN is a left-leaning advocacy group focusing on things like civil liberties, church-state separation and not wasting classroom hours teaching Texas schoolchildren that the Rapture is a rock-solid scientific inevitability. As you might imagine, TFN comes down on the…
DART’s policy, or lack thereof, for offering health coverage for employees’ gay and lesbian partners was thrust into the spotlight last summer when former police officer Andrew Moss launched a petition calling for change after his husband (at least under California law) was denied benefits. The agency’s board of directors…
In July, Governor Rick Perry sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explaining why the state of Texas would not be taking part in the federal government’s plans to expand Medicaid. Such an expansion would “enlarge a broken system that is already financially unsustainable” and “threaten…
If one person can be said to be responsible for the inexplicable requirement that professional football players don pink gloves and shoes, it’s Nancy Brinker. Through the Dallas-based Susan G. Komen Foundation, she’s managed, not quite single-handedly but almost, to turn the fight against breast cancer into a global cause…
Smoking rates in the U.S. are plummeting. According to the CDC, there were three million fewer smokers in 2010 than in 2005. The factors contributing to this decline are are fairly obvious: improved educational efforts; cessation programs; higher cigarette taxes; tighter state and local anti-smoking laws; and a growing stigma…
It’s no secret that Texans are fat and that they’re getting fatter. Right now, almost one in three qualify as obese, with that ratio expected to nearly double over the next two decades. The picture is almost as grim for kids. According to a 2011 study, one in five children…
In March 2011, after federal inspectors visited Keeneland Nursing and Rehab, a Weathorford nursing home, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a report detailing a laundry list of concerns. The report concluded that staff were medicating patients unnecessarily so they’d be easier to deal with. One nurse reportedly…
Last legislative session, Representative Bill Zedler, a Republican from Arlington, wanted to hear about abortions in Texas. All of them. In great detail. Zedler filed a piece of legislation that would have required a woman having an abortion to fill out and submit to the state a detailed questionnaire about…
In November 2011, a 28-year-old woman visited the Irving office of Dr. Hector Oscar Molina for an arm lift and breast implants. Molina, ignoring the fact that he had no formal plastic surgery training, that his patient was a dangerously heavy 300-plus pounds, that his office wasn’t technically sterile, and…
Perhaps you were hoping that the upcoming legislative session wouldn’t be yet another round of conservative lawmakers vying with one another to show just how deeply and sincerely anti-abortion they are. Or maybe that’s exactly what you look for in a lawmaker: an eagle eye and a vise grip on…
Seven months ago, the influential anti-abortion advocacy group Americans United for Life released its annual report, Defending Life 2012, featuring an enthusiastic blurb from Governor Rick Perry, who called the report “ammunition in a fight that is far from over.” In return, AUL was full of praise for Texas, saying…
The West Nile outbreak of 2012 isn’t officially over, at least not according to Dallas County health officials, but it may as well be. There hasn’t been a death reported in more than six weeks, the number of new cases is basically nil, and for most of us, the scenes…
Last legislative session, your lawmakers in the Texas Legislature cut $73.6 million from the state’s family planning budget, a move which, impressively, has somehow resulted in far fewer patients being served, for more money per patient. Don’t ask us how they managed that one. As Emily Ramshaw writes this morning…
Governor Rick Perry vows that the Medicaid expansion prescribed under Obamacare won’t come to Texas, the state with the highest rate of uninsured in the country. He fears it would render Lone Star State health care a mere “appendage” of the federal government. The feds, of course, would pick up…
In the last legislative session, Texas lawmakers cut the state’s family planning budget by two-thirds, a loss of around $73.6 million over the next two years. The reason behind this, naturally, was that “family planning” is clearly a secret code word for “abortion.” “Of course this is a war on…
