ProWomanProLife

You might nod your head in agreement with Charles Lewis at the National Post on this one:

We should be horrified about children frozen in lockers like pieces of meat. We should then ask why it bothers us and why what is invisible does not bother us at all.

But then stop and think about the true ramifications of this. Many pro-lifers take the Pill, for example. And so far as I am aware, there isn’t really a way to confirm that the Pill doesn’t work some of the time by causing a very early abortion. (Ie. it makes the lining of the uterus inhospitable for an already created embryo.) Then there’s in-vitro. Many people who would never have an abortion do that, but this tends to create multiple additional embryos that then “hang out” somewhere or are discarded.

This question of whether we should care about that which we cannot see is more troubling than you think on first glance.

I’m going to try and read Embryo soon to try and get a better handle on all this.

Russia is country where abortion is used as birth control. But Russia ain’t exactly the home of flourishing women’s rights. There’s no connection between access to abortion and strong and empowered women.

Moscow – Women of all ages used to fill gynaecologist Lyubov Yerofeyeva’s Soviet state clinic, lined up by the dozen for back-to-back abortions. “It was more common to take sick days for an abortion than for a cold in those days,” she said. Two decades after the Soviet Union’s collapse, wider availability of contraception and a resurgence of religion have reduced the numbers of abortions overall, but termination remains the top method of birth control in Russia. Its abortion rate – 1.3 million, or 73 per 100 births in 2009 – is the world’s highest.

…At a peach-and-teal toned private clinic, Irina, 27, was having her second operation in a little over a year. Unmarried, with a mortgage and parents in a faraway provincial city, she said she cannot afford a child. “Besides, my boyfriend doesn’t want it,” she said – but admitted that they do not use any regular form of contraception.

The birth control solution. That’s the headline on an article espousing the view that the planet truly does have too many people, by a dude who writes for the New York Times. Not too shabby, you think, he must have something important to say. “All the news that’s fit to print,” so we’re told. Or, in this case, all the propaganda that’s fit to regurgitate.

It’s amazing to me that the overpopulation myth refuses to die. But instead of my personal rant, I’ll quote at great length from Unnatural Selection, the recent book about sex selection abortion, which touches on overpopulation in more than one spot.  This particular quote is about Paul Ehrlich, the author of The Population Bomb, a widely discredited book about how the globe could not support so many people, debating one Ben Wattenberg, who called Ehrlich “a prophet of doom” on The Tonight Show back in 1970.

As The Tonight Show episode wore on, Wattenberg vainly tried to point out that Ehrlich’s predictions were off base. “Sooner or later,” he said, “you suffer a credibility gap.” But this did little to abate the audience enthusiasm. The crowd applauded wildly every time Ehrlich made a new point. To Wattenberg, meanwhile, audience members were cold, bordering on derisive. When the demographer suggested the U.S. could remain a nice place to live with 300 million people–a number we reached in 2006–they broke into peals of mocking laughter.

We should welcome the 8 billionth human whenever he/she comes.

(Also on this: “Contraceptives no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain.” I could write an entire op-ed from the perspective of a young woman living in North America to highlight why and how that is false. Kristof can’t be expected to understand the mindset of a young woman today, but it would be nice if he at least tried.)

I used to think I had a good idea of what went on inside the human body, and with the advent of Google, there was no symptom I couldn’t diagnose or home remedy I haven’t tried. Doctors, of course, were there to provide second options. But recently I’ve been reading about Natural Family Planning, and can I just say…there is A LOT I didn’t know.

You might think the goings on of the female body would be important information for women, but really there isn’t much emphasis placed on that kind of knowledge, not in our education systems, not in the media, and sadly not even by a woman’s doctor. So what is emphasized? Contraception, hygiene, and generally anything that conceals what a woman’s body does, naturally. Young girls then grow to be women who are left in the dark. They aren’t aware of what is normal and what is abnormal, even though detecting abnormality is exactly what leads to successful early diagnosis for things like cancer and infertility.

Dr. Diane Woodford, a fertility specialist at CRE, said that many women are often unaware they even have PCOS until they try to get pregnant and cannot.

“While PCOS is a leading cause of infertility, it is also associated with many other serious, long term health issues such as diabetes, heart disease and endometrial cancer,” [...]

“If over the last 12 months, a woman has had six or fewer periods, she should see a physician and be evaluated for PCOS,” Dr. Susan Trout of CRE said. “An earlier diagnosis means complications like diabetes, heart disease, infertility, and hypertension are more easily managed.”

With the contraceptive Seasonale, you’ll only have one. With newer pills like Lybrel, you may never have one again. Are there so many products designed to keep our bodily functions concealed (and sometimes altered altogether) that we’re out of touch with ourselves? Have women conceded to the expectation of physically manipulating ourselves, even if it puts us at higher risk for disease?

As it turns out, overpopulation makes about as much sense as flat earth theories. A good read.

Someone sent me this article and I thought it was refreshing. I think many young mothers might be relieved to know that small children under the age of five constitute “the darkest part of motherhood:”

She turned to me and cheerfully asked, “So, what are the ages of your children?” I answered a bit sheepishly, “4 ½, 2 ½, and 1 ½,” unsure of where the conversation was heading. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “you’re in the darkest part of motherhood! It’s going to get better!” Say what? I was totally surprised, and frankly, relieved.

The article goes on to highlight how decisions to sterilize are often made on emotional grounds, without enough information. I’m quite sure decisions to abort are made on emotional grounds, without enough information. So I certainly saw a parallel there. The moment of finding out that you are pregnant if you didn’t want to be is a very dark day indeed. Too bad there aren’t more older, experienced women to step out alongside and say something simple like “this too shall pass,” or “this is as bad as it’s going to get” before we go on and take drastic measures to “alleviate” the pain.

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.

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.

preventative - remedy that prevents or slows the course of an illness or disease; “the doctor recommended several preventatives”

Pregnancy, is not an illness. But the Obama administration has just classified what your body does naturally as something that needs prevention. More from The Associated Press,

WASHINGTON (AP) — A half-century after the advent of the pill, the Obama administration on Monday ushered in a change in women’s health care potentially as transformative: coverage of birth control as prevention, with no copays.

Services ranging from breast pumps for new mothers to counseling on domestic violence were also included in the broad expansion of women’s preventive care under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

Since birth control is the most common drug prescribed to women, health plans should make sure it’s readily available, said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “Not doing it would be like not covering flu shots,” she said.

Of course breast pumps and counseling are wonderful things, but comparing birth control with flu shots? When you get influenza, your body is a host for a virus. This is not what your body was made to do. When you get pregnant, your body hosts a baby. Something the female body has been doing since the beginning of humankind (our mammalian ancestors did it that way too).

I wrote the following for the March for Life this year, so I’ll say it again…

Does not reigning in and restricting the feminine functions of our bodies, namely the ability to become pregnant and carry a child, in order to succeed by some predetermined standard devalue the very thing that is “womanhood”?

Can we imagine, if in any other civil rights movement, that the group fighting for those rights would be told that in order to achieve the freedoms they desire, they must first put in check the very things that make them different from the ruling majority?

It’s unthinkable, and yet this is what women across the globe are being led to believe and reiterate day after day.

Pharmaceutical companies are first and foremost companies. It’s not in their best interest to make one-shot wonder drugs that get you sorted out for life, so they aren’t on the market. Contraceptives are no different. With over 50% of women in the US using “The Pill”, that is big business. Multiply that by their average length of usage, which from the women I’ve spoken to can be anywhere from 5 to 35 years, and you’ve got yourself a money making scheme with serious longevity. So will this new male contraceptive see the light of day?

After a more than 30-year struggle, an unassuming Indian engineer named Sujoy K. Guha is on the brink of what could well be the most revolutionary contraceptive technology since the pill — and this time it’s for men. [...]

So what you get is a one-time, hormone-free sperm blocker that you can turn off whenever you want. [...]

“We had no support from industry,” Guha said. “And basically neither I nor my colleagues were really knowledgeable and experienced with respect to new drug development.”

Part of the problem was the elegance of Guha’s design, which from a marketing perspective was, frankly, too effective.

“To men, an ideal method would be cheap and long-lasting. To company shareholders, an ideal method would be expensive and temporary,” Lissner explained by email.

“Pharmaceutical companies have no incentive to develop a cheap long-lasting method, and we can’t expect them to take the lead. Men will get one if, and only if, they demand it of their governments,” she said.

I’m not in favour of this drug, but this article exposes the problem with pharmaceutical companies not wanting to make anything “too effective”. What’s worse is that they tie themselves to social issues in a way that has sway on public opinion (throwing a few million to advertising for Marie Stopes is going to have big impact). They simply won’t manufacture a product or support an organization that won’t make them serious bank, social impact be damned. And this is a problem, because the consumer/patient ends up with a product that they’re told is in their best interest when it’s really in the best interest of the company. I’m not sure we can have it both ways.