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Were you recently “friendzoned”? Then I really recommend reading this.
Know someone who says...
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Gurl, own your body
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My Birthday Wish
So my birthday is coming up on July 8th. My birthday wish this year is that everyone donates money or time to their local LGBTQP...
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The Virgin Suicides (by LittleThunder)
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“The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all...”
About half of pregnant women incorrectly believe that hormonal contraception is more dangerous than pregnancy, according to new research presented today at the Annual Clinical Meeting of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Studies show that approximately 30% of women with an undesired pregnancy do not use contraception. Data on the number of women who do not use contraceptives due to safety concerns have varied.
Brandy J. Becker, MD, and Sarah J. Betstadt, MD, MPH, at the University of Rochester, in Rochester, NY, sought to evaluate patients’ knowledge of medical risks from hormonal contraception compared with risks from pregnancy. They offered an anonymous survey to women receiving pregnancy counseling at the university’s family planning clinic.
“Almost half of the women in our study were unaware that pregnancy is more dangerous than contraception,” Dr. Becker said. The overall risk of death for young healthy nonsmokers using oral contraceptives (OC) is 240 times lower than the risk of death from pregnancy-related complications, according to the researchers. The risk of developing potentially deadly blood clots in pregnancy is five times greater than the risk of blood clots from OCs. A woman’s highest risk of blood clots is during the immediate postpartum period.
Read the rest from the ACOG here.
What follows is my interview with Dr. Jerilynn C. Prior, Society for Menstrual Cycle Research board member, professor of endocrinology at the University of British Columbia, and scientific director of the Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research (CeMCOR) Section 1 explains how Depo-Provera works and what causes its side effects. Section 2 explains the symptoms women are experiencing after stopping the drug.
Lately we’ve been having some trouble at school. Our grades are fine. We’re not vandalizing the campus. We’re not part of a cheating scandal. But our crime has made national news. You might have heard about it.
We’re giving out condoms.
And we’re giving out information about how to use condoms to protect against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unintended pregnancy.
At Boston College (BC), a Catholic university.
For this, we’ve been told by the dean that we’ll be disciplined if we don’t stop.
Imagine being denied emergency contraception after a sexual assault; to not even be informed about the steps you can take to prevent an unwanted pregnancy; and to later find yourself pregnant as a result of the rape.
For thousands of Native American women this is reality.
That is why the ACLU and NACB have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with Indian Health Services (IHS) seeking information on policies governing access to over-the-counter emergency contraception (sometimes known as “Plan B”) at IHS facilities and demanding to know what steps the government is taking to solve this problem.
Did you know 34.1 percent or more then 1 in 3 Native American women will be raped in their lifetime? Native American women experience sexual assault at a higher rate than all other U.S. populations, which is one reason why it is essential that they have access to Plan B.
According to FDA guidelines, Plan B is available to women 17 and older OTC. If used within 120 hours, EC can safely prevent pregnancy after contraceptive failure, unprotected sex, or sexual assault. But EC is most effective the sooner it is taken, with effectiveness decreasing every 12 hours.
Although Plan B has been available without a prescription to adult women since 2006, 90 percent of Indian Health Service (IHS) facilities do not provide Plan B OTC to the Native American women they serve. Given the rural locations of many reservation communities, if EC is unavailable at the IHS facility the next closest commercial pharmacy may be hundreds of miles away and transportation costs may be insurmountable, making timely access to EC difficult, if not impossible for too many women.
Read the rest here.
You can’t tell a woman’s method of birth control by looking at her, but you’ll know if she’s using an IUD, or intrauterine device, because she won’t be able to shut up about it. My friends who have IUDs, not known to recommend so much as a hairdresser, extol the virtues of the device with the unsolicited but contagious conviction of the Avon lady. The difference is they’re not making a commission.
I mentioned this phenomenon to an acquaintance, Lisa, who said she, too, was getting it from all sides. Two out of three of her closest friends have IUDs, which once turned a dinner conversation into a two-on-two conversion mission. Meanwhile, a cousin tipped her off to a Planned Parenthood program that offers free IUDs to qualified women. Lisa wasn’t looking for a new form of birth control. But, like a line on a room in a rent-stabilized apartment or a too-good-to-be-true sample sale, the benefits of the IUD appear to be too great to keep to one’s self. “Women who have IUDs seem eager to defend them and argue in favor of switching to them,” she said.
They begin by explaining that the T-shaped device (“Smaller than a penny!”) is inserted by a doctor or nurse (“You’re in and out in fifteen minutes”) and remains in the uterus (“I’m part bionic”), preventing pregnancy for up to ten years with minimal side effects — other than the quasi-religious fervor.
Myunscientific survey suggests that a vocal IUD enthusiast can convert(and will brag about converting) two women each year. Call it IUD evangelism; the voluntary mandate among users to spread the good news appears to be working. In 2002, IUDs made up 2 percent of Americans’ contraceptive use. Now combined use of the ParaGard copper IUD and Mirena hormonal IUD accounts for more than 10 percent, and the rate is expected to continue rising, thanks to inclusion in the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate and the strange blend of word-of-mouth marketing and feminist consciousness-raising they inspire.
Read the rest at New York Magazine here.
“None of my friends want an implant because they’re scared of getting it cut out,” says Estelle, 18. “I don’t use the pill because a friend of mine did and it messed up her periods. The injection? Just … noooooo! My friend had it, and it was horrible – I hate needles. The coil? That’s just weird.”
Estelle relies on condoms for contraception. Although good for lowering the risk of contracting an STI (sexually transmitted infection), condoms are one of the least reliable contraceptive methods available. She’s been having sex for less than a year – has she ever had a conversations with a health professionals about how to avoid getting pregnant?
“I mainly just talk to my friends about it,” she says. Has she ever thought she might be pregnant? “Yes.”
So does she think condoms are safe? “Yes, because I’ve used them and I haven’t got pregnant” is the response.
Because she’s using condoms, Estelle believes she’s taking care and being responsible. She is, as far as she has the information to be. But health professionals say that young people are routinely let down by the education system, their teachers and wider society when it comes to easy access to good-quality contraceptive advice. It means that myths abound, and teenagers fall back on the limited and highly subjective experience of their peer group.
There are numerous problems facing teenagers when they find themselves needing contraceptive advice, not the least of which, says Hollie Kluczewski, national co-ordinator for Sexpression, is that nobody talks about young people having sex in a positive way.
“It’s all very mechanical. ‘Please pee in a pot for a chlamydia test and here’s a condom,’” she says. “If you always talk about sex as a frightening thing – ‘sex kills’ for instance – then you feel bad about having it, and then you’re not going to access services.”
Sexpression is a nationwide organisation of mostly medical students, supported by consultants in sexual health to offer peer support to young people on any sexual health or relationship-related topic. The students volunteer in schools, community centres and youth groups. Kluczewski says that creating an atmosphere where having sex is seen as normal, healthy and positive does not mean “plugging sex”, but being open and honest about the questions that arise.
Read the rest of this great piece at The Guardian here.
From the ACOG: Unintended pregnancy remains a major public health problem in the United States. Access and cost issues are common reasons why women either do not use contraception or have gaps in use. A potential way to improve contraceptive access and use, and possibly decrease unintended pregnancy rates, is to allow over-the-counter access to oral contraceptives (OCs). Screening for cervical cancer or sexually transmitted infections is not medically required to provide hormonal contraception. Concerns include payment for pharmacist services, payment for over-the-counter OCs by insurers, and the possibility of pharmacists inappropriately refusing to provide OCs. Weighing the risks versus the benefits based on currently available data, OCs should be available over-the-counter. Women should self-screen for most contraindications to OCs using checklists.
How do you make an extreme anti-choice advocate angry? Suggest that not being forced to have one child after another after another after another might be a positive goal toward which to work.
Human Life International is aghast at the idea that global groups might think it would be beneficial to both women and their families that they have some control over when they get pregnant, spacing children far enough apart to be able to recover physically between births and actually care for the children that they give birth to. In fact, the idea is so upsetting, they are up at arms with the assumption that their tax dollars might somehow go to fund this — despite the fact that it would save money in additional medical costs.
Via LifesiteNews:
Declaring birth control a right means “everyone else must pay for…the new right” Clowes told LifeSiteNews, “even if those forced to pay for it may object to it on moral grounds. This violates the more basic human right of freedom of conscience, which has for some time now been dispensed with by UN ‘human rights’ champions.”
The UNFPA estimates “222 million women have an unmet need for contraception” and that providing this “need” will cost $4.1 billion.
Providing such funds, the report states, “would save approximately $5.7 billion in maternal and newborn health services” – an argument similar to that made by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in the United States.
The article claims that IUDs and hormonal contraception both work to keep fertilized eggs from implanting, causing “abortions.” But even more interesting is the comments, where even barrier methods of contraception is considered “murder” of children. As one commenter stated, condom use is “murder in potential as much as a conceiveved [sic] fetus is human life in potential.”
The answer to avoiding all murder is still the same: sex only in marriage, and while using natural family planning. Anything else is “rape.”
Yes, you heard me, they are redefining rape again.
Read the rest from Robin Marty at RH Reality Check here.
