NY Times piece on the War on Contraception

yeah, i found the article alarming but not surprising. i just really hope this is the political non-starter it should be ad we don't have to spend the next 30 years fighting all over again about decent access to contraception.

It's like yeah they're always on about this, but they've gotten to the point where a lot more misery is visited on folks(both here & in Africa, etc) due to their fucked-up ideology. Doesn't matter that the shit doesn't work, or more folks are gunna be hurting due to these policies, they'll stick to 'em anyway. Hell, misery is the point, innit? you had the nasty unapproved sex, so you have to take "personal responsibility" now and take the punishment. enjoy a lifetime of poverty.

xpost yup, that's entirely it.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=22620

http://womens-health.jwatch.org/cgi/content/full/2003/108/1

In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters. "Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV," says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.

"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex," Maher claims, though it is arguable how many young women have even heard of the virus.

the two relevant links, containing both the above quote and the medical info:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/mg18624954.500

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3964263.stm

Also, this assumes that enough people actually will wake up about this shit, and that ain't always the case; e.g. you can't shake or weaken an irrational framework thru rational means. It's like there's enough people who already dismiss the evidence of their senses for faith in their narrative.

Yeah, that number's only about 32% of the population now, but those 32% are in positions to fuck over the rest of us.

xpost Tombot OTM, but the Dems are gonna be totally nutless all year this year & in '08, too, just watch

Many Youths Disregard Their Virginity Pledges, Harvard Study Says
According to interviews, more than half have sex within a year. But one pro-abstinence group disputes the findings.

By Elizabeth Mehren, Times Staff Writer
May 7, 2006

BOSTON — Virginity pledges, in which young people vow to abstain from sex until marriage, have little staying power among those who take them, a Harvard study has found.

But hey, who needs statistics?!

The findings have raised the ire of Concerned Women for America, a prominent conservative organization that advocates adolescent sexual abstinence.

"The Harvard report is wrong," said Janice Crouse, a fellow at a Concerned Women for America think tank.

"This study is in direct contradiction with trends we have been seeing in recent years," Crouse said. "Those who make virginity pledges have shown greater resolve to save sex for marriage."

Religious folk interested in creating a culture of life need to create that culture apart from modern politics, so they need another domain besides the US government to do their work. That domain is the church, which should be a counterculture of life that calls into the question the legitimacy of the prevailing culture of death, but does not entangle itself in the culture of death. LIberal politics should be resorted to only when it is an urgent necessity, such as in the immediate defense of living human beings.

I wish this were true, Tombot, but somehow I'm just not convinced. We have high gas prices and Iraq to thank for the current levels of discontent, and that's about it.

I EMBRACE YOU, CULTURE OF DEATH

Russell Banks' neighbo[u]r's bumper sticker: GOD SAID IT, I BELIEVE IT, AND THAT SETTLES IT.

then we have this bit with an upcoming CDC panel on STD's:

The controversy involves the 2006 National STD Prevention Conference in Jacksonville, Fla., which began yesterday.

An aide to Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.), sent an e-mail April 26 to the Department of Health and Human Services raising questions about a panel titled "Are Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs a Threat to Public Health?"

"Just the title alone was enough to cause us concern," said Martin Green, Souder's spokesman. But the congressman also was alarmed because one of the speakers was focusing on a report produced by the office of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) that was critical of abstinence programs, and because no one would be speaking in support of such programs.

"We wanted to see some balance on this panel," Green said.

In response, the CDC last week changed the name of the panel to "Public Health Strategies of Abstinence Programs for Youth," removed the panelist discussing the Waxman report and added two proponents of abstinence, Eric Walsh of Loma Linda University in California and Patricia Sulak of Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Texas, founder of an abstinence-promotion program called Worth the Wait.

"Upon further review of the composition of the panel, CDC did decide the symposium was not balanced and needed to be expanded to include a broader perspective on abstinence education," said CDC spokeswoman Terry Butler. Butler said there was not enough time to put the new presentations through the peer-review process.

"What was basically a propaganda panel has had its politicized nature removed and appears now to be a more accurate reflection of the scientific opinion," Green said...

they surprisingly don't like the CDC, either:

Groups ranging from Planned Parenthood to the CDC advocate that teens use a cut-up condom as a dental dam. These groups even make the claim that condoms, cut up and used as dental dams, reduce the risk of STD infection.

The Physicians Consortium has complained about the promotion of condoms as dental dams to the FDA. The FDA acknowledges that no scientific evidence exists to support the claim that dental dams reduce the risk of STDs. The FDA also states that any claim of protectiveness of an altered condom is not permitted. Yet, the FDA refuses to challenge false claims by Planned Parenthood and other groups. The CDC also continues to make the claim that condoms used as dental dams protect against the spread of STDs, despite the lack of scientific evidence.

Ooo! Ooo! and they have .pdfs you can download!

xpost

So, to them, the fact that millions of folks are suffering and going thru shit due to their fucked-up policies is not seen as a problem, but rather evidence that they'll working correctly. That's why i go on about this, even if it is getting the poitn of ranting at the choir; the corrective measures to fix a problem will never be taken by these people b/c its not seen as a problem, and plenty of other people starve, get cervical cancer & die, ruin their lives, etc b/c of it.

it's part of the reason why the u.s. has the 2nd worst infant mortality rate in the modern world.

but again: the Harvard study suggests that I'm right - people're just gonna keep on a-fuckin', I almost wish these psycho-heads would outlaw premarital sex so they could learn just how powerless they really are

i disagree on this point; if anything, these folks are WAY too powerful.

these folks are responsible for outright toxic bullshit being taught to yer kids at school, for the lack of federal investment in both stem cell technology and proper family planning worldwide, for stuff like blocking Plan B being available over the counter, etc.

Hell, in Cristina Page's book, she goes into detail about one little four-man rightwing group in N.Virginia that got millions in U.S. funding to massively critical UN world health programs completely frozen(the vast majority of said programs having shit to do w/ family planning); our friends in the U.K., France, Germany, & elsewhere were so pissed off they poured cash into the program to (i believe) more than make up for the american contribution.

Thing is, i don't think their goal is to outlaw the sex so much as using the law to make increase the amount of punishment you get for committing it. I think they alrady agree that folks won't stop fuckin'(human beings being sinful and Fallen and whatnot); they just want you to hurt b/c of it. Punishment is paramount.

It's why they may find it lamentable that your kid gets cervical cancer from catching HPV, but without firm rules, society would collapse, etc, so there'll be no vaccinations.

that's why they won't stop you from humpin'; you've got all teh Free Will to go violate God's Law(TM) that you want. They just want to make sure that you "take personal responsiblity" for it and have to have that kid, get that disease, etc. These are folks who believe that God forces you to get pregnant upon humpin', and anything you do to prevent that is immoral and "avoiding responsiblity", etc.

It's like what blount was talking about on the so-dak thread; using medical technology is now seen as irresponsibility.

Thing is, i don't think their goal is to outlaw the sex so much as using the law to make increase the amount of punishment you get for committing it. I think they alrady agree that folks won't stop fuckin'(human beings being sinful and Fallen and whatnot); they just want you to hurt b/c of it. Punishment is paramount. Why else would you allow HPV to result from intercourse? Isn't there an old line about "cervical cancer being the curse of the faithful wife"? i.e. she never screwed around and so she never thought to get checked against anything she might have caught from her husband.

They won't stop you from humpin', even tho they don't like it; you've got all teh Free Will to go violate God's Law(TM) that you want. They just want to make sure that you "take personal responsiblity" for it and have to have that kid, get that disease, etc. These are folks who believe that God forces you to get pregnant upon humpin', and anything you do to prevent that is immoral and "avoiding responsiblity", etc.

It's like what blount was talking about on the so-dak thread; using medical technology is now seen as irresponsibility.

The other fucked up thing about their position is that it actually shows a LACK of faith. If it's all going to be up to God's judgement these f0rnicat0rz don't need to punished on earth right? But either there's a huge element of sadism and first-to-throw-stone-ianism to their position, or they don't actually believe that said judgement is coming. Maybe a little of both, nu?

So you had God make men stronger than women, so God must favor men and women should defer to them, etc. Success is a result of you working hard and showing your worthiness to God, and Disease is a result of God's unhappiness with you b/c you slept with that whore or had hemophilia. Or something.

Note that I don't attack these folks out of religion, since I was born, raised, & still consider myself (loosely) Protestant. It's more that they have they have ascetic, authoritarian, & insecure neurosis that they clothe in religion. Jimmy Carter said it best in his latest book, that it is ultimately fundamentalism is the problem(in religion & in politics). There have always been folks like this, true, but we in america live in a time where their three decades of planning have put them in control of all aspects, and allowed fundamentalist-types to take power in other parts of the world as a response.

Of course, there is the _other response_ that's worth noting; the election of more left-leaning gov'ts as a response to American conservative political fundamentalism(e.g. Spain, Italy, several S.American countries, etc). Lord only knows what's gunna happen when Blair/Harper/Howard leave(get booted out of) office.

Since the Admin won't release Plan B as an OTC drug, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is now urging women to get pre-emptive Rx for it, just in case something happens.

The new "Ask me" campaign takes the discussion back to doctors' offices. ACOG is providing its 49,000 members with waiting-room posters to urge women of childbearing age to ask about a prescription they could keep on hand in case they need emergency contraception in the future.

"Accidents happen," the posters say

Also, these being modern times, the fired teacher put up a website about it, including baby pics of the resulting twins, scans of printed-out emails, etc

Yeah, that got struck down, but what if your idiot elected representative was there long enough to stack the courts with his own similarly fucked-up nominees?

So don't discount the power of these folks just due to how fucking insane they are.

The new lies about women's health
By Brian Alexander
Political groups tell them, the government buys them—and worst of all, your doctor may pass them on to you. Alarmed? You should be.

For the past 15 years, Ruth Shaber, M.D., has been an ob-gyn in San Francisco for Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation's largest health maintenance organizations. She sees all types of women—union members, executives, waitresses. Most of them, Dr. Shaber says, have questions for her, including how to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases, how to preserve their fertility, how to prevent breast and cervical cancer and whether the latest Internet health scare they've heard is really true.

Dr. Shaber tries hard to separate fact from fiction because, she says, "rumor and hearsay can start to seem real." In the past, she'd sometimes refer patients to government websites and printed fact sheets, or rely on those outlets to help create her own materials. Not anymore. "As a physician, I can no longer trust government sources," says Dr. Shaber. She is not a political activist or a conspiracy theorist; in addition to her own practice, she's Kaiser Permanente's director of women's health services for northern California and head of the HMO's Women's Health Research Institute. Yet this decidedly mainstream doctor and administrator says, "I no longer trust FDA decisions or materials generated [by the government]. Ten years ago, I would not have had to scrutinize government information. Now I don't feel comfortable giving it to my patients."

Such doctor mistrust represents a major change. For the past 100 years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been the world's premier government agency ensuring drug safety. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have similarly stellar track records. But recently, Dr. Shaber charges, the government has lost its most precious asset: credibility.

How did it happen? Many prominent figures in science and public health think they know the answer. "People believe that religiously based social conservatives have direct lines to the powers that be within the U.S. government, the administration, Congress, and are influencing public-health policy, practice and research in ways that are unprecedented and very dangerous," says Judith Auerbach, Ph.D., a former NIH official who is now a vice president at the nonprofit American Foundation for AIDS Research. In fact, Glamour, has found that on issues ranging from STDs to birth control, some radical conservative activists have used fudged and sometimes flatly false data to persuade the government to promote their agenda of abstinence until marriage. The fallout: Young women now read false data on government websites, learn bogus information in federally funded sex-education programs and struggle to get safe, legal contraceptives—all of which, critics argue, may put them at greater risk for unplanned pregnancies and STDs. (article continues at link)

That last article is sad. Things are getting so shitty that I can only hope the inevitable backlash comes sooner than later.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/08/AR2006060800865.html

the reporter makes a mention of the fundie reasoning against this

Inda Blatch-Geib, an Akron, Ohio mother of four, said she'd consider vaccinating her daughters, ages 9 and 16. Blatch-Geib, 41, said doing so wouldn't be tantamount to giving her girls a green light to have sex.

but it's never really been addressed as to why this would be a concern.

Also, the earlier bit in the article has a little twist on the FotF bit, where the group supports the distribution of the stuff, which is new.

Rape victim denied morning-after pill

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

BY TOM BOWMAN AND DIANA FISHLOCK Of The Patriot-News

LEBANON - A Good Samaritan Hospital emergency room doctor refused to give a rape victim a morning-after pill because he said it was against his Mennonite religion.

Rebuffed by the doctor, the woman called her gynecologist, who wrote the prescription. Her local pharmacy told her it was out of the drug and referred her to a sister store in Reading.

The former medical director of the hospital said he sees nothing strange about asking a woman from eastern Lebanon County to drive to Reading for a drug.

"People drive to Reading to buy jeans. Even if that were the case, that you had to drive to Reading to get this [prescription], to me that does not rise to a compulsion that you have to pass laws that [doctors] have to do something," Dr. Joe Kearns said.

Emergency contraception, often called the morning-after pill, gives a high dosage of birth-control medicine that can prevent pregnancy.

It's a pill that Dr. Martin Gish, the physician who treated the rape victim, said he has prescribed.

"This is an issue I've struggled with for years," Gish said. "My current feeling is life begins at conception, and I feel that anything that interferes with that" causes an abortion.

"The dilemma I have is the whole rape issue: Which side are you more concerned with? Are you more concerned about the mother or the life that was possibly created? That's my dilemma," he said. "I personally don't have this thing worked out. I'm not sure how my faith can line up with my practice at times of what I'm asked to do."

The state backs up his refusal.

Hospitals are not required to prescribe emergency contraception pills, and the state does not keep statistics on how many do, said Richard McGarvey, spokesman for the state Health Department.

"There is a law that says if a hospital chooses not to provide a treatment for religious reasons, they can do that," McGarvey said.

Kearns said a doctor has rights, too.

"The question is, if you are a physician, do you have to provide services to patients that you think are heinous? And the answer is in this country [is] no, you don't," Kearns said.

Jenny Murphy-Shifflet, executive director of the Sexual Assault Resource and Counseling Center of Lebanon County, has her focus on the victims.

She said she has been trying for a year to get Good Samaritan Hospital to require its doctors to write prescriptions for emergency contraceptives.

"No victim should have to run around town after an assault looking for emergency contraceptives," she said.

Most midstate hospitals provide emergency contraception to rape victims, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.

"We don't treat it any different than any other legal prescription medication," said Dr. John Repke, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.

But Kearns said Good Samaritan will not formulate a policy for or against prescribing morning-after pills for the same reason it won't perform abortions.

"I'll tell you why we don't do abortions. Because there'd be such a hullabaloo and disruption in this very-Mennonite and very-fundamentalist community that there would be so much downside to this in terms of people not wanting to come to this hospital, even though it's their local hospital," Kearns said. "It's just not worth doing it."

A spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape said that if an attending physician is not comfortable dispensing the medication, he or she could call in someone else.

"Obviously, in incidents like this, we want all victims to have access to comprehensive health care after an emergency," Danielle Sunday said.

A bill proposed in the state House and Senate, known as the Compassionate Assistance for Rape Emergencies Act, would ensure comprehensive medical care, including emergency contraception, for all rape victims, PCAR said.

The woman who reported the rape was emotionally unable to speak to a reporter yesterday, her father said.

Richland police Chief Dennis Morgan said he is investigating her rape, the first in the borough in 27 years.

The woman's father said she was lying on the grass in her front yard in Richland about 2 a.m. when a man stopped to ask directions. She told her father that the man punched her, knocking her unconscious, then raped her while wearing a condom.

The victim waited until later that day to tell her mother about the rape. The mother and daughter drove to Good Samaritan Hospital for treatment but did not ask Gish for the morning-after drug until Saturday, after talking with family members.

©2006 The Patriot-News©
2006 PennLive.com All Rights Reserved.

And of course there are those who would outlaw abortion except for cases of rape and incest, which is perhaps the position that interests me most, as it's the most transparent -- it makes clear that outlawing abortion isn't about fetal life, but rather about making pregnancy a punishment for women. So if you didn't "do anything" to get yourself pregnant, then you have an out. But if, God forbid, you had sex because you wanted to, then you certainly deserve to deal with the consequences...