Home Improvement Wins Maggie Award

>>NEW YORK, Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- A situation comedy and a serious documentary are two of the 1996 winners of the annual Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) Maggie Awards for media excellence.

The ABC comedy "Home Improvement" (starring Tim Allen) won the Maggie for using humor to address the topic of shared responsibility for birth control. The winning episode, "The Vasectomy One," features Tim and Jill, the main characters of the show, engaged in family planning decisions. The HBO documentary, "The Dying Rooms," won a Maggie for its expose on the effects of China's one-child policy -- the widespread abandonment of girls and their unspeakable living conditions in state orphanages.

The PPFA Maggie Awards, named for Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, will be handed out at the Gala Awards Banquet, November 16, during the organization's 80th Anniversary National Conference at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. The purpose of the PPFA Maggie Awards is to recognize the year's outstanding media coverage of reproductive health issues in both the news and entertainment media.

The 1996 Maggie winners in the print media are The Nation (for Katha Pollitt's insightful columns on the abortion issue); Self (for Charles Mann's article, "What's New in Birth Control?," a comprehensive review of methods available today and those still in development); and The Chicago Tribune (for its seven-part series, "Gambling with Life: Why Parents Defy Odds and Circumstance to Have More Babies," which examined the complicated personal and cultural circumstances that lead to the births of children that families cannot support).

Also awarded Maggies were the HBO documentary, "Sandra's Web: A Mother's Diary" (the story of a woman dying of AIDS), and NBC News (for its "Dateline NBC" story, "The Toughest Choice" in which Coreen and Jim Costello shared their difficult decision regarding late abortion).

Planned Parenthood(R) Federation of America, the world's oldest and largest voluntary reproductive health care organization, is dedicated to the principle that every individual has a fundamental right to choose when or whether to have a child. Planned Parenthood's not-for-profit affiliates operate 900 health centers in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Planned Parenthood centers provide medical and educational services for more than five million Americans each year, regardless of race, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or economic circumstances. Through its international program, Family Planning International Assistance(R), Planned Parenthood helps meet the family planning needs of women and men in the developing world.

SOURCE Planned Parenthood Federation of America

CO: Planned Parenthood Federation of America

ST: District of Columbia, New York, Tennessee

IN: HEA

SU:

11/11/96 20:30 EST http://www.prnewswire.com

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