Archives for August 2010

No no no, not the Mel Gibson movie (does anybody even remember that one?). I think that if someone were to ask me what I as a woman want, I think it would be simple (aside from ice cream, puppies, and a hot tub in my living room of course). I’d like “professional women” to stop telling me what I want. I don’t mean women who are professionals – I mean those who make a profession out of being a woman.

I suppose this article does try to tell us what we want, but I think it hits closer than anything else:

Many in the media and academy think working women are one way, and that stay-at-home wives and mothers are another way. This overlooks the fact that many women who work outside the home would like to work less or not at all. That is, they are working because they feel they have to, not because they want to.

. . .

Wilcox bases his analysis on the 2000 National Survey of Marriage and Family Life, which, he explains, “indicates that, among married mothers with children in the home under 18, only 18 percent of married mothers would prefer to work full-time; by contrast, 46 percent would prefer to work part-time, and 36 percent would prefer to stay at home.”

Which brings us to what women want:

Will this authentic view of womanhood usurp the old political archetypes of what women want? The conversation has begun to rise above self-identified feminists’ assertions as to women’s desires. May it continue and bear fruit. And, whoever wins or loses, this is a whole new playing field in politics, one that more accurately reflects who American women actually are and, yes, what they really want. The American woman wants to annihilate this idea that career is everything. She wants a life. She wants life. And she wants help in being adaptive, not pressure to be something she’s not.

I’m think even a hardcore professional career woman would have a tough time arguing with that.

Read the whole article here.

An article from The New York Times about women, their differences and how they vote, contrasting Sarah Palin with Emily’s List (a political action group that aims to get pro-abortion women into office). I like this part:

Women are divided but not by gender — the old saw that women must stick together doesn’t work anymore, if it ever did — nor necessarily split by party. They are polarized, like the nation, between the growing conservative-independent camp and the liberal-progressive bloc led by the political classes — or more simply, between insiders and outsiders. And this is the time for the outsiders.

I’m also keenly interested in the California election:

But it is the marquee race in California between Senator Barbara Boxer, a three-term Democrat and longtime feminist, and Carly Fiorina, the anti-abortion former Hewlett-Packard executive endorsed by Ms. Palin, that will most rigidly test who holds sway: Sarah Palin or Emily’s List.

In all this, it’s intriguing to me that a Sarah Palin endorsement still holds sway. Works for me, particularly when we are talking about life issues.

I’m having a hard time wondering whether this headline is deliberately facetious:

News Flash: Mandatory waiting periods for abortion are related to higher rates of unintended teen births.

Really.

From CBC News…

The Canada Revenue Agency has given up on any further action against abortion protester David Little.

Little, who has spent the last few years moving back and forth between P.E.I. and New Brunswick, has refused to file tax returns since 2000 in protest of government-funded abortions. He was due in court in Fredericton this week to face a charge of refusing a court order to file them.

Little was found guilty in 2007 on three counts of failing to file, and eventually was sentenced to 66 days in jail for refusing to pay the $3,000 fine. He believes it’s his religious right to refuse to pay taxes because he doesn’t want his money funding abortions.

Now, I realize my tax dollars fund many wonderful things, and I realize I’m not in the position to stop paying them. However, there are a few things I can do to fund the pro life cause in an attempt to level the playing field.

When raising funds for Chernobyl Lifeline in Ireland, we would offer businesses a certificate to hang on their entrance stating they were supporters of the organization. Shoppers, especially in small communities, were more willing to part with their hard earned money when they felt they were supporting a good cause. Recently, I came across an ad for Real Estate for Life online, which had me wondering what other pro life and pro woman companies were out there. (Steve Jobs made me a loyal customer when he took a stand against pornography in the App Store.)

With a little research, you can find your own local pro life businesses (on-line directories, church bulletins, billboards, yellow pages etc.). If you look for the pro life certificate hanging in the window, you’ll be surprised just how many are out there. So while you may not want to stop paying your taxes, you can support the cause by becoming an educated consumer.

Why do women still need a prescription for the birth-control pill?

When I was 21, I went to my local walk-in clinic to get birth control. The experience began just like any other doctor’s visit. The nurse, wearing a blue plastic ring looped onto a string around her neck, asked me a few basic questions to start the process. She asked me when my last exam had been, I told her I had never had one. She then requested I come back to the clinic in a few weeks to have one. I did not have a pelvic exam during this appointment.

I expected her to explain birth control pills to me, but as she pulled on the blue ring with her index finger she told (sold) me about a product called NuvaRing (new on the market at that time). I looked around and saw a NuvaRing calendar hanging on the wall, a NuvaRing clipboard she was jotting notes on, and a NuvaRing clock hanging in the waiting room as I left the building. I left the clinic, with a 1 year prescription for NuvaRing in hand, a NuvaRing CD case (my free gift with purchase) and two packets of PlanB that the nurse told me to use after intercourse if I had any within the first two months of using my new prescription “Just in case.” She did not explain to me what PlanB was or what it did, it was simply described as a back-up birth control.

Today, I feel very ignorant of having not known what I was putting in my body, but I still believe a health care employee has a duty to explain these things before writing a prescription. This is why I am against over the counter birth control access, because even with so-called educated medical staff at our side, we’re still very much in the dark when it comes to contraception. I don’t want the responsibility of education to be left to pharmaceutical companies, because they might take the job even less seriously.

But the prospect of women gaining unfettered access to the pill has some doctors and sexual health counsellors uneasy. Would women still see their doctor for Pap smears? Could they safely screen themselves for contraindications – conditions under which the pill should not be used? Would it unleash a marketing bonanza for drug-makers and a huge increase in users?

Nevertheless, a Canadian leader in reproductive medicine and editor of the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada says it seems wrong and paternalistic that, half a century after the pill’s debut in the U.S. and 41 years after coming to Canada, women still cannot get access to the most effective, self-administered birth control on the market without a doctor’s blessing.

Men aren’t required to have a testicular or prostate exam before using condoms, Dr. Tim Rowe has argued in the pages of his own journal.

Condoms, for better or for worse, aren’t chemical contraception. Men don’t gain weight, have mood swings or get blood clots from wearing a condom (regardless of what your boyfriend tells you). I wish the process of obtaining birth control, for myself, had been more in depth than it was.

It’s not like they don’t need to smile sometimes…

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqbkT3PnwkQ]

Epidural may be good for you.

It’s that time again, when university students filter back into the HRM and fill the streets with rucksack heavy bodies and iPod-laden heads. College is an important time in the lives of our young women, so Health News Digest is offering their advice for female students this year.

In particular, women need to understand the dangers involved in binge-drinking and the unique health risks that may be posed, including: date rape, unwanted pregnancies and unprotected sexual encounters. According to numerous studies, over 90% of date rapes on college campuses involve the use of alcohol.

“New freedom may mean that [students] end up engaging in behaviors that pose significant health risks,” says Diaz, “having sex, using drugs or alcohol, or maybe just getting too little sleep, eating too much junk food, or otherwise neglecting areas of [their] health [their] parents previously made sure [they] took care of. The consequences of these risky behaviors can potentially cause problems for the rest of [their] lives.”

Now, the phrasing isn’t perfect, but I like the general message. Think before you act.

Teen mother charged with newborn’s murder. What a difference a few days can make. If the baby had died 26 days before birth (heck, even 26 minutes before), there would be no charges. 26 days after birth, it’s a murder charge. Either way it’s a tragedy.

Recently, Nebraska failed to pass its legislation requiring higher standards of practice for abortion clinics, but where Nebraska has failed, Virginia has prevailed.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli issued a legal opinion yesterday that empowers the Virginia Board of Health to require women’s health clinics that offer abortion procedures to meet hospital-like standards.

The new regulations will cover medical investigating to rule out coerced abortion and statutory rape possibilities prior to an abortion. It is up to the Health Board now to enforce them.

The reason for the many inconsistencies in patient treatment at abortion clinics versus those in a hospital is down to the fact that abortion is considered an out-patient procedure. So, like getting Botox injections on your lunch break, it’s too simple and quick a procedure to require all the paperwork, patient screening and face time with medical staff. The difference is the effects of Botox wear off over a few months.

Clinics view these regulations as an attempt to close them down, but the arguments for them consider how these patients’ lives will be effected physically and mentally after the procedure. Hospitals are required to know their patients’ history, and they are held accountable for a failure to do so. There is no reason an abortion clinic shouldn’t be required to do the same.