Meeting Places and Romance

Among other responsibilities, the Task Force will monitor and evaluate all state and local legislation, regulations, and enforcement actions that threaten to: Infringe on federal legal protections relating to the provision or pursuit of reproductive care; Impair women’s ability to seek reproductive care in states where it is legal; Impair individuals’ ability to inform and counsel each other about the reproductive care that is available in other states; Ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy; or Impose criminal or civil liability on federal employees who provide reproductive health services in a manner authorized by federal law. more »

"As past stories covering the Vintage 2021 estimates have suggested, domestic migration during this time period is likely driving the change. These patterns indicate that although young working-age adults are leaving the central counties of these large metro areas, they are simply relocating to other counties in the country. This may be related to the COVID-19 pandemic that created conditions enabling many workers to work from home and may have given these younger working-age adults the flexibility to relocate from areas with high concentrations of job opportunities to places with a lower cost of living or other quality of life improvements."   more »

"Stars in the Junkyard is a collection of poems by Canadian writer, Sharon Berg. Her work reveals the kinds of loss, abuse, and betrayal that she, like many other women has suffered and yet, there is hope and sometimes an unexpected tenderness. The poems in Stars in the Junkyard have depth, intensity glimpses of brightness that encourage rereading. Many of them have been published in periodicals in Canada, the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, India and Australia." more »

VHA typically relies on four types of mental health professions to provide psychotherapy services: psychologists, social workers, and, since 2010, LPMHCs and MFTs. The Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act of 2019 included a provision for GAO to review staffing levels for mental health professionals in VA, in particular for LPMHCs and MFTs. Demand for VA mental health care is growing. The number of veterans provided mental health care services by VHA increased by 85 percent from 2006 through 2020. This growth poses challenges for VHA in maintaining an adequate mental health workforce that provides timely, high-quality services. It is compounded by the nationwide shortage of mental health professionals. more »