Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco suggest that ensuring access to nutritious food — particularly through increased levels of participation in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a government assistance program that provides low-income Americans with food aid — should be a priority in the fight against the HIV epidemic. A new UCSF study reports that the majority of HIV-positive patients experience food insecurity that leads to increased hospitalization and emergency room visits.

After studying HIV-positive patients in California, scientists concluded that adequate food is an important factor in HIV treatment, even though it hasn’t traditionally been linked to medical strategies to treat the virus. However, according to the UCSF study, HIV-positive individuals who lack secure access to nutritious food are more likely to struggle with illnesses that land them in the hospital:

The food-insecure patients were roughly twice as likely to have visited the ER or been hospitalized over a given three-month period, compared with patients who had enough to eat, the researchers found. Food insecurity was more likely than homelessness, drug abuse or depression — or just about any measurable problem associated with poverty — to lead to trips to the hospital.

Earlier studies, both in the United States and abroad, have found that food insecurity also is associated with missed doctors’ appointments, less suppression of the HIV virus and greater risk of death.

It’s not shocking that inaccessibility to food would be tied to poorer health, said Dr. Sheri Weiser, a study author. But she was surprised at how strong the correlation was between not having enough to eat and needing to use health care resources like hospitals and emergency rooms.

The researchers noted that only a fifth of the participants in their study had participated in SNAP over the past year, although a total of 72 percent had received some food aid from sources like churches, clinics, or food banks. The authors of the study believe there’s “probably room for improvement” in federal assistance programs like SNAP, either by better educating eligible Americans about the benefits available to them or by lowering the eligibility requirements so more struggling Americans can qualify.

Republican legislators may not have considered the potential implications for HIV-positive individuals when they endorsed the House GOP budget, which slashes $133 billion from the food stamp program, but a failure to ensure that low-income Americans have access to food could also be a failure to effectively combat the nation’s HIV epidemic.

As part of her effort to frame herself as a moderate, Hawaii’s Republican candidate for senate, former Gov. Linda Lingle, ran as far as possible from Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) “legitimate rape” comments this weekend, calling his assertion that women can’t get pregnant from rape “deplorable.”

But Lingle’s own record is not dissimilar from Akin’s when it comes to helping rape victims prevent pregnancy. When she was Governor of Hawaii, Lingle vetoed a bill that would have required hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims who wanted it, citing hospitals with religious objections. She even boasts about the veto on her website.

At the time, there was only one Catholic hospital system in the state, St. Francis Medical Center, which would probably not have received any rape victims anyway, since it did not host an OB-GYN program. And since Lingle vetoed the bill, Catholic Bishops have come out in favor of supplying emergency contraception to rape victims. Lingle, on the other hand, has not shifted positions.

When Lingle vetoed the bill, many of the arguments against her decision echo those now being used against Akin. “Rape is a crime of violence,” the CEO of Planned Parenthood Hawaii wrote to the Honolulu Advertiser, “These women did not ask to have sex, they were forced to – and for the governor to force them to become pregnant by withholding emergency contraceptives is callous and appalling.”

Although Republican lawmakers are attempting to distance themselves from Todd Akin’s (R-MO) false assertion that “legitimate rape” doesn’t lead to pregnancy, the uncomfortable truth is that Akin’s extreme views are very much in line with the mainstream Republican party’s.

Just as the official Republican Party platform corroborates Akin’s belief that abortion should be illegal even the case of rape or incest, top Republican lawmakers have aligned themselves with Akin on countless pieces of legislation that seek to restrict women’s access to abortion and contraception. In fact, over the past decade in Congress, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has co-sponsored 32 abortion-related bills that Akin has also sponsored or co-sponsored. Here are a few anti-choice bills that both Akin and Cantor supported:

• HR 3: The 2011 No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, first introduced in 2011, included language about “forcible rape” in its early versions that set a dangerous precedent for Republican attempts to narrow the definition of “legitimate” forms of sexual assault.
• HR 5276: The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act of 2010 would require doctors to describe “the pain experienced by the unborn child” to women seeking an abortion.
• HR 649: The 2009 Ultrasound Informed Consent Act sought to force women to look at an ultrasound of their fetus before being allowed to continue with their decision to have an abortion.
• HR 2752: Akin was the primary sponsor of the Parents Right to Know Act of 2009, which sought to strip funding for health clinics like Planned Parenthood that provide FDA-approved contraceptives to minors without first obtaining parental consent.

Akin’s anti-abortions views are not, in fact, too radical for the top Republican in the House. Akin’s fellow Republicans want to claim they disagree with his offensive views behind the GOP’s stance toward women’s health, but their voting records say differently.

Back in March, the federal government cut Texas’ Medicaid funding for the state’s Women’s Health Program (WHP) after Texas officials barred any “abortion affiliates” from the health program for low-income women. Because WHP is a joint federal-state program, states cannot to block any specific provider. By trying to force Planned Parenthood out of the system, Texas forfeited its right to receive such funding. And the state even has gone so far as to stop doctors from talking about abortion.

In response, Planned Parenthood sued the state of Texas, saying that Texas’s decision violated the first and 14th amendments, and a Texas judge issued an injunction to stop the law from taking affect.

But last night, the Fifth Circuit appeals court lifted the injunction, siding with the state of Texas and ensuring that Texas will receive no federal funds for its WHP, which services low-income women who cannot afford care. Though the state’s Gov. Rick Perry (R) has vowed to keep the program going, his math on how to do that is fuzzy at best.

Here are some of the ways Texans will suffer from the decision defund anyone associated with abortion:

– Doctors won’t be able to tell patients all of their options. Because of the wording of Texas’s directive, doctors who receive Texas’s WHP funding are banned from “promoting” abortion, which could include even bringing up the option of termination in conversation with a patient — even if it’s the patient herself who brings it up.

– About 52,000 women who rely on Planned Parenthood will lose service. Tens of thousands of Texas women rely on public funding to get regular preventative checkups, cancer screenings, and gynecological care, and 52,000 of those rely on Planned Parenthood specifically. Following the court’s decision, those women will lose their care providers.

– Remaining providers will have to take five times the number of patients. To keep up with the increased demand of women who will lose their providers, clinics that are still eligible for WHP funding will have to take about five times the number of low-income patients.

– Planned Parenthood isn’t the only clinic that’s feeling the effects. Fifty other unaffiliated women’s health clinics have been forced to shutter because of a lack of state funding. Other clinics have managed to stay open but, with limited funding available, are confining their services, covering smaller swaths of the state and providing care to fewer women.

Planned Parenthood may appeal the fifth circuit’s decision, but have not yet moved to do so publicly. In a press release, the organization’s president Cecile Richards said, “We are evaluating every possible option to protect women’s health in Texas.”

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) opposed an exception to a so-called “partial birth abortion” ban when the procedure was necessary to save the mother’s life, according to a 2000 floor speech on the issue. Claiming the women’s health exception included in the bill was “wide enough to drive a mack truck through,” Ryan argued uncompromisingly for it to be removed:

This is not a political issue, this is a human issue. And let me just say this — to all of my colleagues who are about to vote on this issue, on the motion to recommit — the health exception is a loophole wide enough to drive a mack truck through it. The health exception would render this ban virtually meaningless. [...] [H]undreds of OB/GYNs have told us that this is not medically necessary.

Watch it:

Contra Ryan’s claim that the procedure (also known as “intact dilatation and extraction,” or D&E) could never be medically necessary, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists held that D&E reduced the risk of “catastrophic hemorrhage and life-threatening infection” and that “[t]hese safety advantages are widely recognized by experts in the field of women’s health, authoritative medical texts, peer-reviewed studies, and the nation’s leading medical schools.” As such, the American Medical Association, which believes D&E would be employed for health reasons in only a very small number of cases, said that “the physician must…retain the discretion” to use D&E if a particular woman’s health needs demand it.

Ryan’s position, by contrast, was most recently defended by former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), who called a provision designed to protect women from catastrophic hemorrhaging and infections “a phony exception which would make the ban ineffective.” This is all of a piece with Ryan’s long history of anti-choice zealotry, as he has cosponsored bills redefining rape and defining fetuses as persons with Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO). An absolutist position on abortion more broadly is enshrined in the GOP’s 2012 platform. Governor Romney has committed to exceptions for rape and incest, and Ryan defers to him in setting policy for the ticket.

Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan continue to attack President Obama for “stealing” $716 billion from Medicare. The GOP presidential candidate says he will restore the cuts, despite the fact that Ryan included the savings in his FY 2013 budget.

But if Romney did stick to his plan to undo the billions cut from Medicare reimbursements to hospitals and insurers, it would make Medicare insolvent eight years sooner, from 2024 to 2016, and increase premiums for the program’s beneficiaries. And according to the New York Times, that goes against Romney’s promise that current beneficiaries or Americans within 10 years of eligibility would be affected by his plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system:

For those reasons, Henry J. Aaron, an economist and a longtime health policy analyst at the Brookings Institution and the Institute of Medicine, called Mr. Romney’s vow to repeal the savings “both puzzling and bogus at the same time.”

Marilyn Moon, vice president and director of the health program at the American Institutes for Research, calculated that restoring the $716 billion in Medicare savings would increase premiums and co-payments for beneficiaries by $342 a year on average over the next decade; in 2022, the average increase would be $577. [...]

“One can only wonder what’s going on inside their headquarters in Boston and among their policy people,” said John McDonough, the director of the Center for Public Health Leadership at Harvard. “But there are only two explanations: Either they don’t understand how the program works, which is hard to imagine, or there is some deliberate misrepresentation here because they know how politically potent this charge is.”

The Romney campaign disputes these facts, though. “The idea that restoring funding to Medicare could somehow hasten its bankruptcy is on its face absurd,” said Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, according to the New York Times. And Romney has been particularly critical of cuts to Medicare Advantage, a private-policy alternative to Medicare that has consistently cost more. He claimed that Obama’s plan is “four million people losing Medicare Advantage” within the $716 billion of cuts.

But since Obamacare became law, Medicare Advantage enrollment has increased. Under his plan, Medicare would go back to paying for higher payments to hospitals and insurers. Romney claims that Obama “robbed” Medicare, but his plan would do more to harm seniors who depend on it for health care.

Students in a Fresno County, California, school district are taught that HIV can be spread through kissing, and the right way to prevent STDs is by going out in groups with friends, getting plenty of rest, and practicing abstinence. Their “Lifetime Health” textbook, which Clovis Unified School District uses for its high school sex education curriculum, makes no mention of condoms or contraception.

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the school district on behalf of two students’ parents who say the school is violating state law by failing to provide students with comprehensive sex education. One of the parents, Mica Ghimenti, joined the lawsuit after noticing medically inaccurate information in her daughter’s ninth grade health class:

The lawsuit against Clovis Unified, which serves 39,000 students in Fresno County, alleges that the abstinence-only curriculum is risking young people’s health by denying them accurate information about how to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies.

“I want there to be medically accurate, scientifically based education for all youth in Clovis Unified,” said Ghimenti, a health education instructor. “If we don’t give them the information, they won’t be able to make good, healthy decisions.”

Kelly Avants, Clovis Unified spokeswoman, said the district fully complies with state education law that promotes abstinence as “the only 100% surefire way to prevent pregnancy” and STDs. Asked about allegations that the district omits information about condoms and contraception, Avants declined to comment.

The lawsuit alleges that, in contrast to Avant’s assertion, a 2003 law requires California’s public schools to provide students with medically accurate, comprehensive information about HIV prevention, STD contraction, and FDA-approved methods for preventing pregnancy.

Just last week, the California State Department of Health released a report noting that the state has seen a jump in the rates of sexually transmitted diseases. Syphilis cases in California increased by 18 percent between 2010 to 2011, and there was also a 5 percent rise in chlamydia cases and 1.5 percent rise in gonorrhea cases during the same time period.