Congress has been busy lately, and there are currently a number of pieces of reproductive and sexual health-related legislation moving through both the House and Senate. A roundup of what I've been following after the jump.

First, health care reform legislation:

In the House 19 anti-choice Democrats are trying to explicitly exclude abortion coverage from health care reform. Over in the other chamber Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD and quickly becoming a personal hero of mine) introduced the Women's Health Amendment to the Senate version of health care reform legislation. The amendment, which passed out of committee, would increase access to primary preventative care and include essential community providers. This basically means it would support clinics that are often the primary or only source of health care for low-income women. Because Planned Parenthood health centers are essential community providers Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is leading an attack against the amendment, claiming it would mandate abortion coverage. This is not true, but the simultaneous abortion-related attacks on health care reform in both the House and Senate suggest an attempt to either use abortion to derail the legislation or make sure reproductive health care is zeroed out. (Here is an Action Alert from Planned Parenthood directed at Senator Hatch.)

Now on to the appropriations process, which sets the federal budget for FY 2010:

As I reported previously, House Democrats are working to lift the ban on using locally raised funds for abortion in Washington, D.C.

President Obama lifted the global gag rule as one of his first acts in office. As happy as I was I couldn't help feel this was just the latest volley in the tennis match presidents have been playing with the reproductive health and rights of women outside the U.S. since President Reagan first introduced the rule. It's been hard not to think the ban would be reimposed if the U.S. elected an anti-choice president again. This is why it's such a huge relief that Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) attached an amendment to foreign aid appropriations that would permanently end the global gag rule. This amendment, which passed out of committee, would finally take foreign NGOs out of the impossible situation of having to decide whether to accept U.S. foreign aid funds and lose their ability to provide abortion care.

During the campaign President Obama pledged to support needle exchange programs, so it was an immense disappointment when he reversed this position and delivered a budget that would continue the ban on these programs (check out the kick ass activist response in the previous link). White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said of the reversal in position:

We have not removed the ban in our budget proposal because we want to work with Congress and the American public to build support for this change.

We have heard this same line of thinking from the administration on a number of issues, and it's hard not to notice how many of them are connected to LGBT health and rights (Don't Ask Don't Tell has probably been the most high profile example). My thinking is that the president would rather have Congress expend the political capital to reverse homophobic legislation, regardless of the impact on queer people's lives while we wait for the slow wheels of bureaucracy to turn. Thankfully House Democrats stepped up to the plate and removed the language banning needle exchange programs.

Republicans are gearing up for a fight over needle exchange. In fact, you can expect all of these important issues to become divisive points as health care reform and the FY 2010 budget continue moving through the legislative process. I will be following this legislation and will continue sharing updates as the process moves forward.