Tag Archives: birth-control

Surprise! Expanded Access To Birth-Control Causes NYC Teen Pregnancy Rate To Plummet

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When your city’s teen pregnancy rate drops by a few percentage points, that’s fairly normal. Just like announcing: “I’ve lost two pounds!” does not really mean anything because your body’s weight fluctuates by a couple of pounds every day.

In the past ten years, the NYC teen pregnancy rate has dropped by twenty-seven percent. That is not happenstance. That is is the result of an effective program. Specifically, an effective program of working to give New York City teens access to birth-control, including Plan B. Giving access like this reinforces the idea in teens that pregnancy is a genuine risk while making birth-control convenient to acquire, increasing the chances that teenagers can be prepared for whenever they do have sex.

This should be a program that is available for everyone, everywhere, but especially to teenagers. Everywhere. It will be a while before that happens (possibly to the point at which new birth-control methods have made current ones antiquated), because a lot of people are ridiculous and because one of the worst parts of living in a democracy is that everyone gets a say.

Now, NYC’s program is not flawless. Latino and black teen girls are still much more likely than their white counterparts to become pregnant as a teenager. That, of course, is not directly a result of race, but a result of poverty (which still has large racial correlations, unfortunately). That is something that needs to be addressed.

But while New York City’s teen pregnancy rate is still higher than the national average, the degree to which it has plummeted during the past decade makes me very hopeful that other cities (and, dare I suggest, even non-cities?) will begin implementing similar programs. Remember all of that nonsense funding that states received during the Bush years to teach abstinence-only programs instead of comprehensive sex education? That’s what I had to put up with in high school. How wonderful would it be if that amount of funding could go to states and individual school districts to give all of their students easy access to birth-control with accompanying education?



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Blocked Birth Control

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photo of birth control pill pictures
It happened, “a federal judge temporarily prevented the Obama administration from forcing a Christian publishing company to provide its employees with certain contraceptives under the new health-care law.” Tyndale House Publishers wants to be able to dictate what contraceptives they will and will not cover. Tyndale says it provides its 260 employees with coverage for some contraceptives.
Tyndale got the injunction because they do not want to provide employees with contraceptives that they feel equates with abortion. The contraceptives at the center of this controversy are: Plan B and intrauterine devices.

The problem with saying that these devices are equal to abortion is…well it’s bullshit. An abortion is ending a pregnancy, neither Plan B or IUDs can do this. If a woman is already pregnant Plan B does nothing. Not one single thing. What it does do is prevent ovulation or fertilization of an egg. Sorry, Christian right and “pro-lifers” but the medical definition is still: “pregnancy does not begin until a fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the uterus”.

Plan B can prevent fertilized eggs from attaching to the uterus…so it prevents pregnancy it does not abort a pregnancy. IUDs work by block sperm like a diaphragm, but to Tyndale this is abortion.

Matthew S. Bowman, a lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, which brought the suit on behalf of Tyndale, said in an e-mail that Bible publishers “should be free to do business according to the book that they publish. The Obama administration is not entitled to disregard religious freedom.” To that end Tyndale is not entitled to disregard women’s rights and freedom of choice.



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New Study Finds Birth Control Prevents Pregnancy, I Find I’m Surprised

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photo of birth control pictures
During this election there has been a lot of talk about women’s rights and women’s health and very little talk about common sense. According to “The Contraceptive Choice Project”, a new study outlined in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, if women have access to birth control they won’t have an unwanted pregnancy. Shocking, I know—but if a woman doesn’t have an unwanted pregnancy that means she doesn’t have an abortion and it also means that the teen mom rate goes down (sorry MTV).

This study tracked over “9,000 women in St. Louis and gave a range of free birth control options to poor and uninsured women (those at the greatest risk for an unplanned pregnancy) between 2007 and 2011”. These options included implanted forms of birth control and lead to lower abortion rates 4.4 compared to 7.5 abortions per 1,000 women in the study. The Obstetrics & Gynecology study also predicted “that one abortion could be prevented for every 79 to 137 women being given free contraception.”

I also get free birth control because I don’t currently have health insurance. For the first time in my life I don’t have health insurance and I’ve found a doctor (read as saint) that looks out for my needs. I need birth control for medical reasons not just sexual protection reasons…yet another issue that the Republican’s overlook. If you take away my right to my birth control, in order to keep me from appearing whorish (cause only whores need contraceptive, since we live in 1922), I will very likely lose my job and my relationship. I have such crippling pain and severe mood swings without this medication that I can’t get out of bed. If I do get out of bed it’s very probably I will be a raving lunatic and no one will be able to stand me. Trust me this has happened, I’ve lost friends because of my period, where were you on that one, Judy Blume?

The point is now there is medical proof that birth control is not sanctioned by the devil, it does not mean you’re a classless two bit hussy, it means you are a grown woman and you are taking your life in your own hands. This shouldn’t be a government issue – this is a health issue that should be discussed between someone with a vagina and someone with a medical degree. Before all the “Planned Parenthood is a government-funded programmers” come at me, no it’s not. It’s partly funded by the government, but it’s mostly funded by donations. It does not spend most of its time doing abortions, either – it spends most of it’s time preventing them and screening women for disease and cancer … yes, please hurry and shut that practice down! What a waste of money preventative care is! Save us from healthcare that will help our women, keep them safe, and keep unwanted pregnancies from happening!

See how silly that last sentence is? See how ridiculous it is to think that anyone has a right to control anyone else’s health? Let’s try something new. Let’s try and make decisions on facts and science not religion, morals, and heresy shall we?



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Paul Ryan: A Legitimate Danger to Women’s Rights

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Photo of Paul Ryan
I have to admit, I was pretty shocked when Mitt Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate.  I’d been almost positive his veep candidate would be female, in large part because Romney’s ratings among women are pretty abysmal.

Playing that card failed miserably for John McCain four years ago, but believe it or not, Sarah Palin almost seems sort-of-kind-of-at-least-a-little-bit acceptable when you take a closer look at Paul Ryan.

I knew relatively little about Paul Ryan when the news broke, other than that he’s a Congressman from Wisconsin and something of a golden boy in the Tea Party.

I received a forwarded e-mail from my mother today, however, that concerned me.  Deeply concerned me.

Now, the subject line was “5 Facts About Paul Ryan and Women”, and since I know what side of the political spectrum my mother hails from, I wasn’t surprised by its existence.  I get mass e-mails from all directions of politics (someone–I’m pretty sure it was my brother despite his denials–signed me up for Rick Santorum’s mailing list), and it’s always interesting to see rhetoric at work, to observe two completely different spins on the same issues, the same numbers.

In other words, I read all political mailings with a grain of salt.

Usually.

The e-mail I received today, though, a forward from Ultra Violet, was a bit different. It had the usual hard-swinging, attention-catching lines, but it also included footnotes … in other words, the wild accusations against Paul Ryan’s political stances on women’s issues are well-documented.

1. He voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Think women deserve to earn the same pay as men for the same work? Paul Ryan doesn’t. And the pay gap costs women and their families close to $431,000 over their lifetimes.

In a nutshell, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is, as its name suggests, legislation intended to ensure that women have the same compensation opportunities as their male colleagues. It is, to be fair, very complex and not as clear-cut as Ultra Violet would have you believe.

That being said, The National Review admits that “many conservatives question the existence of a wage gap in the first place” and that “instead of helping workers, the Paycheck Fairness Act could actually make their jobs harder by increasing costs to the businesses that hire them.”

2. He opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest. It’s not just that Paul Ryan has voted 59 times against a woman’s right to choose—which he has. He would even rather let a woman die than allow her to have an abortion. He’s supported a bill to allow hospitals to refuse to provide abortion care to a woman, even if she could die without it.

Yes, this is also true. Frightening as hell, but true. In fact, Paul is not averse to women being prosecuted for having abortions. Prosecuted.

From The Daily Beast:

This disregard for the exigencies of women’s lives—the dismissal of their choices as amoral exercises of “arbitrary will”—was thrown into high relief during his 1998 run for congress against Democrat Lydia Spottswood. Both candidates backed a ban on so-called partial-birth abortion, but Spottswood believed there should be exceptions in cases where a woman’s life or health is endangered. “Ryan said he opposes abortion, period,” reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “He said any exceptions to a ‘partial-birth’ abortion….

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