Read more from the Guttmacher Institute
It’s Time to Stop Pretending Abortion and Birth Control Aren’t Economic Issues
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. The War on Women, as the GOP line goes, is a myth drummed by the liberal media to distract from important economic issues. Issues like jobs, the economy, and building a giant fucking oil pipe across the middle of the country. A real President would focus on things that matter to realAmericans rather than spending the entire campaign playing in the Barbie aisle with the ladies and their special interest concerns. But since when did reproductive choices decouple from economic consequences?
As long as pregnancy and childbirth cost money, and time that could be used to make more money if it wasn’t being spent on kid-wrangling, a woman’s ability to control the size of her family is the most important economic issue of all. So why is anyone getting away with pretending it’s not?
This. This. In every way, THIS
(via choosechoice)
Elizabeth Banks: I Thank Birth Control Pills for My Son
Just over a year ago, my son Felix was born via gestational surrogacy. He came out of me nine months early and because of my broken belly, his babycake was baked in a wonderful angel’s oven and now — I can’t believe it — he’s a year old and walking. He has expanded my capacity for joy a thousand-fold.
His life would have been much harder to come by if not for the birth control pill. How’s that, you ask? Well, it’s a simple fact: The pill is used for many situations that have nothing to do with the prevention of pregnancy. The pill was prescribed to me when hormonally induced migraines kept me locked up in dark rooms for days at a time. It was prescribed to me to regulate insanely painful cramps every month — cramps so painful that I often vomited.
And here’s a little secret I am happy to blow the lid off of: The pill is often prescribed during the IVF (in vitro fertilization) process to help MAKE BABIES! That’s right, women dealing with infertility are often put on the pill to help regulate a cycle so that they might have a more successful IVF. The pill is used to manage ovarian cysts, endometriosis and other conditions too. Not to mention, it helps couples plan for wanted children.
Obviously, I’m not a doctor. I’m just a woman grateful for my necessary and very helpful medication. And I’m sure glad I don’t have to discuss any of these conditions, including infertility, with my employer.
A girlfriend and I recently wondered what would be more mortifying: having to tell her male employer she needed birth control to mitigate a heavy flow or just bleeding all over herself in the office?
So with that image in mind, I encourage all women — and the men in their lives — to protect access to birth control, and encourage our politicians to take women’s health issues out of the political process.
For more information, please visit the most comprehensive and willing advocates for women’s health in America: www.plannedparenthood.org.
(Source: judygrimes, via bigfatfeminist)
Abstinence isn't working - Love and Sex - Salon.com
Earlier this week, when the CDC announced a record low in the teen birth rate, it listed two possible causes: “The impact of strong pregnancy prevention messages” and “increased use of contraception.” The Guttmacher Institute came out with an even stronger message: “The most recent decline in teen births can be linked almost exclusively to improvements in teens’ contraceptive use,” the organization said in a press release, which pointed to another CDC study for evidence.
But that hasn’t stopped conservatives from claiming that the drop is a result of, you guessed it, abstinence education and, paradoxically, an increase in abortions.
Now, it’s true that teens — specifically 15- and 16-year-olds — are delaying sexual activity, but the change in contraceptive use over the years has been much more profound, and there has been no significant change in sexual activity among 18- and 19-year-olds. What’s more, there was no change in sexual activity among teens, period, from 2008 on, says Laura Lindberg, senior research associate at Guttmacher, so the recent decline in teens births certainly can’t be attributed to abstinence. Also, it should be noted that abstinence can be the result of any number of social influences, not necessarily abstinence-only education. (Consider research showing that teens who receive sex education are much more likely to delay sex.)
(Source: goodreasonnews)
Warning: Please Do not go to MorningAfterPill.Org
If you are looking through google for information on the wonderful invention known as Plan B, Emergency contraception or the Morning After Pill-
avoid Morningafterpill.org, which comes up on page 1 of ‘morning after pill’ searchesIt is a actually a Anti-Abortion, Anti-Contraception site meant to shame women into thinking they are ending human life by using any method of emergency birth control. It is run by Catholics and gives an EXCESSIVE amount of misinformation about Plan B, going as far as to inform women they are Killing their child and this is simply not true.
Need a reputable site for Emergency Contraception info?
My Favorites currently are:
- Emergency Contraception - Princeton University Site
- Planned Parenthood - The Morning After Pill
- Emergency Contraception - Women’s Health
Please feel free to add your favorites!
(Source: holisticsexualhealth)
“You can get it. Go online, type it in. It’s easy to get.”
— That’s U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) explaining how people who cannot afford contraceptives can magically get them by typing “I can’t afford birth control” into Google. As one will find if they do that, it’s “easy” to get if you have $200 and a subsidized/Title X clinic nearby and enough time to wait. Senator Johnson apparently thinks that Google is an acceptable substitute for the much maligned Affordable Care Act and the mandate for preventative healthcare, including contraceptives, to provided to the insured without co-pay.
You’re just wrong, Ron. Just stand there in your wrongness being wrong, because you’re wrong. And while you’re standing there, STFU.
If abortion and birth control become illegal
What will happen:
sex
What won’t happen:
safe sex
What will happen:
abortion
What won’t happen:
safe abortions
The FACTS about the cost of birth control
Religious mandates against birth control are:
- A violation of equal rights for males and females (treating pregnancy like a special condition is treating females unequally, as the vast majority of females have a reproductive system for pregnancy)
- A violation of the mandates disallowing the government to endorse any particular religion (anti-birth control attitudes are religious)
- Terribly burdensome and viciously punishing to those who have done nothing but have ovaries and uteruses
- Oral contraceptives, or “the pill,” can cost $1,210 per year without health insurance.
- Women of reproductive age spend 68 percent more on out-of-pocket health care costs than do men, in part because of contraceptive costs.
- Surveys show that nearly one in four women with household incomes of less than $75,000 have put off a doctor’s visit for birth control to save money in the past year.
- Twenty-nine percent of women report that they have tried to save money by using their method inconsistently.
- More than half of young adult women say they have not used their method as directed because it was cost-prohibitive.
- Nearly half of women ages 18–34 with household incomes less than $75,000 report they need to delay or limit their childbearing because of economic hardships they’ve experienced in recent years.
(Source: americanprogress.org, via propaganda-for-life)
“If we had 51% women in Congress, do you think we’d be debating access to contraception?”
— Sen. Kristen Gillibrand.
(Source: think-progress, via gynocraticgrrl)
“I don’t think Mr. Issa has ever taken birth control. Where they are totally missing the boat is that women in America don’t see birth control as a social issue. It’s a health care issue. The average American woman spends five years getting pregnant and having kids and then she spends an average of 30 years trying not to get pregnant.”
— Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.
(via captainfailboat)
“If I’m left without contraception, how can I plan my pregnancies? If I can’t plan my pregnancies, how can I plan my life? If I can’t plan my life, how can I own my life? If I don’t own my life, who does? Riddle me that one…Newt, Rick, Mitt.”
— The (Not) New War on Birth Control - we’re talking about it today.
(Source: feroniaproject.org, via keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)
“Men, in return, thrived. The ego candy they feasted on by virtue of automatically outranking half the world’s population was only the start of it. They got full economic and social control over our bodies, our labor, our affections, and our futures. They got to make the rules, name the gods we would worship, and dictate the terms we would live under. In most cultures, they had the right to sex on demand within the marriage, and also to break their marriage vows with impunity — a luxury that would get women banished or killed. As long as pregnancy remained the defining fact of our lives, they got to run the whole show. The world was their party, and they had a fabulous time.”
(Source: janedoe225, via thespacesamidlove)
How much does birth control ACTUALLY cost? It’s not as affordable as you think. Via.
(Source: stephherold, via rabbleprochoice)
