Tag Archives: pregnancy

Abstinence Only? Screw that!

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Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped when she was fourteen and held for nine months. Now, she’s an activist and an ABC News contributor. I have a few issues with Elizabeth Smart, namely that she really capitalized on her trauma. Immediately there was an interview, a movie, and a book all with her help and participation. Pretty sure she’s the only trauma victim that did that in under a month. Also, the part of her story in which she said she was out with her captors, went up to someone and said, “I’m Elizabeth Smart” and when they just kind of shrugged, not recognizing her name she went back to her rapists.
However, I’ll give credit where credit is due and Smart is speaking on behalf of victims and “abstinence only” education. She was at Johns Hopkins discussing human trafficking and sexual violence and said:

“she “felt so dirty and so filthy” after she was raped by her captor, and she understands why someone wouldn’t run “because of that alone.”
Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.
“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

Psychologists and sexual abuse counselors have all said that a comprehensive sex education can help prevent sex crimes. I don’t understand why in 2013 we are still teaching “just say no” when it comes to sex. Teach kids to be responsible about their bodies. Give them the tools they need. Right now we’re sending them into the woods at night without a flashlight and saying, “don’t trip or get hurt!” GIVE THEM A GOD DAMN FLASHLIGHT!
It’s backwards thinking and it makes sex dirty and our bodies bad. It causes shame, body issues, secrets, and self-destructive behavior. I would for once like someone to do something that would actually benefit the education of our children. But no, they won’t. They’ll keep banning Anne Frank, Red Riding Hood, and teaching us how to multiply fractions (I have NEVER needed to know how to do that in my life and excuse me that’s what a calculator and Google is for) but they will not teach anything that has any type of practical use.



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LOVE Will Conquer ALL

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I’ve spoken about being pro-equal rights. I’m a huge advocate for same-sex marriage. I’m a huge advocate for equal rights for all people…and animals. I’ve been very upset and angered by the hate I hear being preached during this very important time. On the 26th and 27th of this month the Supreme Court is hearing arguments for same-sex marriage. There is only one argument that I feel is worthy, and that is: people have an inalienable right to marry the person they love no matter of the gender.

It’s been hard for me to have a positive attitude during this time because I am so angered by the blatent ignorance and hate. But then I read this article by the NY Daily News:

“Jenna Wolfe and Stephanie Gosk of NBC come out as couple; reveal engagement and baby on the way”

NBC newscaster Jenna Wolfe is The Today show’s Sunday anchor. Wolfe said she and partner Gosk, a foreign correspondent at NBC, have been together three years, plan to wed and will have a baby by December. Here are some choice quotes from Wolfe’s blog and her appearance with Gosk on the Today show Wednesday morning:

“My girlfriend, Stephanie Gosk, and I are expecting a baby girl the end of August,” Wolfe, 39, wrote in the debut post for her new pregnancy blog.

“We felt like we wanted to share our adventures with a wide-eyed, little person,” she blogged. “The more we talked about it, the better the idea seemed.”

“We were constantly on the road, juggling a thousand balls at once,” she told the mag. “It’s a miracle we got it all together.”

“This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to us,”

“But I don’t want to bring my daughter into a world where I’m not comfortable telling everyone who I am and who her mother is.”

“The beauty is that we live in a time where there’s no need for secrecy.

“For a long time I had feared I would never have a child”.

“This baby doesn’t care that I was in phenomenal shape before getting pregnant. She doesn’t care that I had a near perfect diet. She made the first four months brutal for me … B-R-U-T-A-L.”

“There were days when all I could eat were Saltine crackers, Apple Jacks dry cereal and plain pasta,”

“As a kid, I would have chosen raising my adrenaline over raising children any day of the week. But then a funny thing happened on my way to adulthood … I grew up. I ran smack into the old nursery rhyme: “First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes Jenna pushing a baby carriage”

I didn’t attribute names to the quotes because they could be the words of any couple. These two are in love, they want to make a lifetime commitment to each other and share that with the world, and they want to raise their child together. It’s beautiful.

As I said before I’ve been down and angry about what I’ve heard as a result of the same-sex marriage hearing. But then I heard this…and I was reminded the love is beautiful, family is what matters, and people can scream hate at the top of their lungs, they can twist the word of God to work for them, they can try as hard as they possibly can to stop it…but LOVE will win. LOVE always finds a way.

In the darkness it’s hard to see the light…but light will come. Hate is dark…love is light. I have faith that LOVE will win, maybe not today…maybe not even in my lifetime…but LOVE will continue to grow, you can try and stop it but you will never stop people from finding each other—from loving each other—from supporting each other…LOVE will win.



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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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Elizabeth Banks is Better Than You—Just Ask Her

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photo of elizabeth banks pictures, photos
Elizabeth Banks is a mother of two and a successful actress. Naturally, we want to know her thoughts on how regular women should look after having a baby because Banks is an expert on these things, of course. When asked about it she said:

“I think, a true disservice what’s going on right now with all these celebrity moms … [F]irst of all, I just want to remind people that celebrities generally are genetically superior human beings on a certain level anyway … they’re mostly thin, you know, they’ve got trainers, they work out, they’ve got money, they’ve got the ability, you know, and they are normally genetically predisposed to being thin people anyway, so like these women who are holding up, you know, certain people as their benchmark after they’ve had a child, like just go be with your kid for a minute … don’t get to the gym right away. It’s alright. This is not how it’s supposed to be, everybody. Calm down.”

Oh, so you’re genetically superior to me because someone pays you a lot of money to do ridiculous things? They also pay people to spend two to five hours making you look pretty, they pay people to write the things you say, and a person to tell you what to do, and all of that makes you genetically superior. Okay, you’re superior to me so please tell me about how I should fell about having a baby since you’ve had two…OH NO WAIT YOU DIDN’T!

That’s right, Elizabeth Banks is saying she’s better than you and you shouldn’t worry about getting back in shape because you’re not like her who is predisposed to being thin. Except Elizabeth Banks didn’t have to worry about getting in shape because she didn’t give birth to her children, she paid someone to do that for her, just like she pays people to make her pretty, and thin, and famous.

Shut up, Elizabeth Banks, nothing about you is superior except maybe your stupidity and lack of tact.



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