ProWomanProLife

To my happy surprise when I curiously googled “green birth control,” I found this blog entry.

One area that many overlook on their journey to go more green and natural is family planning. Few of us likely have the emotional and physical strength as well as the resources to go through life without trying to prevent pregnancy at least at some point in our lives.

So what is the greenest and most natural way to prevent pregnancy? This is one area where I gravitated to the more natural options even before my natural family living journey actually began. I had strong opinions about some of the more mainstream birth control methods. Let’s look at some of the options and I will tell you what I decided upon..

Chemical Contraceptives- When my future husband and I discussed birth control methods and family planning for the first time we found we were on the same page as far as family size was concerned. We were not on the same page about how we would prevent pregnancy though. The most common method it seems for young women, then and now, is oral contraceptives or other chemical-hormonal contraceptives like the IUD, various injections, the patch, and internal rings. My husband assumed I would not have a problem with these methods but he was very wrong.

I wasn’t trying to lead a natural or green life yet but I knew with 100% certainty that I would NOT take hormones or use chemical contraceptives. I wasn’t going to introduce these things into my system and mess with my body in that way.

These contraceptives have many side effects, they increase chances of serious diseases like cancer, and using them supports the corrupt and powerful pharmaceutical industry. All of this makes them a not-so green choice and for me an unacceptable choice.

The method she decided upon, without any political reason, just a desire to keep unnecessary hormones out of her body, was NFP.

Many women I know only use organic beauty products and eat mostly organic food but don’t question swallowing a chemical concoction every morning. Yet going green is everywhere around us, our coffee, our politicians, our lawn mowers. I didn’t agree with everything this woman wrote, but I was happy to see someone acknowledging the internal green (along with acknowledging that having children takes strength!) and brave enough to question the norm.

We try always to be fully informed, educated and aware of the decisions we make don’t we? I think for many people today, especially when it comes to what we do with and put in our bodies, we’re looking for second opinions and reading the labels. It’s important, with pharmaceutical and food processing companies pulling so many strings, that we as consumers actively seek out information.

I wouldn’t buy a box of cereal without reading the label, and I wouldn’t feed my children mystery foods. These labels are trustworthy, because they aren’t created by Nabisco or McDonald’s, they’re legislated by independent government agenices. Why? Because it wouldn’t make sense to let McDonald’s decide what did and didn’t go on the package. They would be biased, wouldn’t they? They’d want me to eat those fries without knowing how full of fat they were.

For the most part, I’d be applauded for this label reading by the rest of the world. And yet somehow, when it comes to abortion and contraception, people stop clapping when you want to read the label. I think Right to Know is working toward a noble and awareness raising cause, to provide council to women about abortion from someone other than the abortion providers themselves.

Many people assume that women considering abortion have access to independent information and advice. In fact there is no legal guarantee that they do. And where counselling is available, it is often provided by the very same private providers that carry out abortions.

More here:

There are currently more than 6,350 lawsuits filed in federal district courts throughout the United States that have been centralized before Judge David R. Herndon in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

All of the cases involve similar allegations that Bayer failed to adequately warn about the risk of serious and potentially life-threatening side effects of Yaz and Yasmin birth control, such as a stroke, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis or gallbladder disease.

[...]

Yaz and Yasmin are birth control pills that contain a newer type of progestin, known as drospirenone, which has been linked to an increased risk of blood clots and other injuries. The Yaz and Yasmin litigation also involves cases filed over a newer version of the birth control pills, sold as Beyaz, as well as generic equivalents, such as Ocella and Gianvi.

Although the first trials are approaching, the number of lawsuits is expected to continue to grow as Yaz and Yasmin lawyers review and file additional cases in the coming months and years for women who have experienced health problems from the birth control pills. Early estimates suggested that more than 25,000 women may eventually file a Yaz birth control suit.

From Melbourne,

EXCLUSIVE: HEALTH authorities have launched investigations after a seriously ill woman was rushed to Box Hill Hospital last week following complications during surgery at a Melbourne clinic that specialises in late term abortions.

The woman remains in hospital in intensive care following complications during a late term abortion at the Marie Stopes Maroondah clinic, formerly known as the Croydon Day Centre.

The Herald Sun understands the Medical Board of Australia held a special hearing yesterday to quiz medical staff involved in the procedure.

It is believed that one of the doctors involved has previously been criticised by the MBA.

Marie Stopes International Australia CEO Maria Deveson Crabbe said the company had launched its own investigation.

In May, another doctor from this clinic was charged with giving hepatitis C to 49 women. He was released on bail.

I guess I thought they were already supposed to be regulated like hospitals, silly me. From the Huffington Post:

The Virginia Department of Health will release proposed clinic regulations on Friday that target abortion providers and could potentially shut many of them down.

The new temporary regulations, which will be formally voted on Sept. 15 by the state Board of Health and should go into effect by Dec. 31, will classify clinics that provide five or more abortions per month as hospitals.

This news broadcast on teens going “under the knife” with parental consent made my head spin.

I’d like to think I’m not alone in my reaction to this video footage, and while we’re repulsed by young girls damaging their outsides to conform we should remind ourselves to be equally repulsed when they damage their insides to conform.

ProWomanProLife is taking a bit of a summer break. Your regularly scheduled blogging will return in September.

I have it on good authority (ok, so she told me herself) that our very own Véronique will be on Brian Lilley’s show tonight (starts at 9 pm). She is herself pregnant with twins, as readers of this blog will know, and will be discussing “selective reduction.”

Tune in!

Ain’t never been any logic I could see in the pro-choice world. And debates on the topic can get pretty annoying, pretty fast, for everyone. Pro-lifers expose the inconsistencies and pro-choicers  splutter some variation of “I’m entitled to my entitlements!” 

Anyhoo, great article here highlighting how people who are pro-choice should not be uncomfortable with “selective reduction.” It’s abortion, plain and simple, and if we’re AOK with that (and remember, we’re all supposed to be) then choosing which fetus of twins or triplets should live is really all the same.

This bifurcated mindset permeates pro-choice thinking. Embryos fertilized for procreation are embryos; embryos cloned for research are “activated eggs.” A fetus you want is a baby; a fetus you don’t want is a pregnancy. Under federal law, anyone who injures or kills a “child in utero” during a violent crime gets the same punishment as if he had injured or killed “the unborn child’s mother,” but no such penalty applies to “an abortion for which the consent of the pregnant woman . has been obtained.”

Reduction destroys this distinction. It combines, in a single pregnancy, a wanted and an unwanted fetus. In the case of identical twins, even their genomes are indistinguishable. You can’t pretend that one is precious and the other is just tissue. You’re killing the same creature to which you’re dedicating your life.

Poor women are delivered a message in this country, that rather than deliver their baby, their baby would be “better off” having never been born at all. A message we can see at work here.

Among poor women, the abortion rate increased 17.5 percent, rising from 44.4 to 52.2 per 1,000 women [...]

… when confronted with an unintended pregnancy, poor women who might have felt equipped to support a child, or another child, when not in the midst of a recession may have decided that they were unable to do so during a time of economic turmoil.

The message that if you don’t have a house with a white picket fence, then you might not be able to support your baby the way we, the nation, deem fit, is sinister enough. But now in South Africa, poor immigrant women, rather than getting the help they need, are actually facing a battle for custody because they had their children and aren’t able to meet the states criteria for “good parenting”.

Simon Zwane, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Development, confirms that women must have jobs and housing before they can recover their babies, to prove they are capable of caring for them.

“We have taken babies into places of safety until parents can prove they can look after their babies, they have fixed places of abode and they have partners or they have found employment and they will not be on the streets with babies,” he says.

Konjiwa, 26, spends her days remembering. Her 2-year-old son, Joe, is growing up fast without her in an institution far from the squalid building where she lives. She too carried her child across the Limpopo River.

“I can’t survive without my baby,” she croaks miserably. “I miss him more than anything.”

Zwane says some women use their babies to beg. But Konjiwa and Chibura say they cannot feed their children without begging, let along afford child care while they seek money.

As many as 2 million Zimbabweans have flooded into South Africa in recent years looking for work after fleeing their country’s economic collapse and political violence. They find they are not especially welcome, particularly in townships where xenophobic violence in 2008 saw machete-wielding mobs storm through, beating up Zimbabweans and other migrants, burning some to death.