Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Denogean: Kiona fights ignorance, apathy to preserve women's rights

Anne T. Denogean

Tucson Citizen

Tucsonan Kiona Brown, a 17-year-old armed with passion and an eloquence beyond her years, is one of the newest soldiers in the never-ending war over abortion and reproductive rights.

She couldn't be a more welcome addition to the fight.

Social conservatives across the country aren't, as has been reported, just "chipping away" at women's reproductive rights. No, they are blasting away at the hard-won right and access to abortion and birth control.

On a national level, the Supreme Court agreed this month to review a federal ban on a later term abortion procedure, a ban previously found unconstitutional.

The South Dakota Legislature - with the stated intent of creating a court challenge to Roe v. Wade - passed a law last week to prohibit all abortions, except to save the life of the mother.

In Arizona, the extremists who control the Legislature are pushing through a bill that would prevent teenagers from getting birth control or treatment for sexually transmitted diseases without parental consent and are blocking a bill to require health-care providers who treat rape victims to provide access to emergency contraception.

The picture is disturbing to anyone who believes a woman's right to control her life is intertwined with her right to control when and if she has children.

But what is also disturbing is a seeming lack of concern among the most important stakeholders in the fight - young women, the teens and twentysomethings.

You look at this generation, which seems more concerned with what's on its iPod than with what's on the political forefront, and you want to shake it.

Where's the outrage? Where's the passion?

Then you come across someone like Kiona.

Kiona, a junior at Tucson High Magnet School, is a peer health adviser at Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona.

She is worried about many current issues, including the lack of comprehensive sex education in the school system.

"We have health classes that are required, and students still aren't getting the information they need to make informed choices. That is unacceptable," she said.

In the health class she took, the teacher showed "slide shows of infected people, horrific photos of untreated sexually transmitted infections gone way out of control."

There was little discussion of birth control methods, symptoms of sexually transmitted disease or where to go for advice on either.

"It was basically a fear tactic to scare kids out of having sex," Kiona said.

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