This article is a bit long, so you don’t need to read the whole thing. But what I’ve clipped below speaks to a problem I’ve seen around me. It is my experience that doctors are way too quick to prescribe anti-depressants. Friends who were unhappy for very good reason due to a sad/traumatic event in their lives have gone to counselors only to be referred to a doctor for a prescription. Once on these drugs, it can be hard to get off. It’s just another area to be wary of… unhappiness is allowed, or should be, is part of the human condition and can be overcome without drugs very often. I think anti-depressants should be reserved for unique and severe cases, not for people who are grieving, or otherwise sad or unhappy, when a good friend and some care and compassion might do the trick.

Psychiatric diagnosis—more overblown, all-inclusive, and shallow in the DSM-5 than ever before—has almost driven the word “unhappy” from the English lexicon. This is hardly surprising: according to the DSM, depression can be diagnosed after only two weeks. Among the thousands of patients who consulted me over a period of 15 years, only three whom I can recall ever used the word “unhappy” (and one was a prisoner, who told me, “I’m not happy in this prison, Doctor”). By contrast, thousands said that they were “depressed.”

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Faye adds: That was my experience too. In undergrad, someone very close to me got into a serious car accident and it looked like there would be brain damage of some kind. For days, I was a wreck and couldn’t stop crying. I went to the student health centre in the goal of seeing an M.D. to get a referral to one of the psychologists on staff to talk the thing through.

I got sent home with a sample pack of anti-depressants. And all I wanted to do was to talk to someone. I ended up wrestling through it on my own.

The dangers of artificial birth control aren’t often discussed. I think it’s important info to get out for women. Actually, it is getting out, but only slowly.

Brenner interviews Hunter Shkolnik, a lawyer bringing lawsuits against Merck. Shkolnik tells Brenner that Organon (the Dutch pharmaceutical company that created the device) launched into NuvaRing’s marketing with a scientist’s research study that had examined only 16 women using NuvaRing. That study, No. 34218, on the release of hormones in different birth-control delivery systems, was so outrageous, Shkolnik tells Brenner, that he felt it justified focusing his entire legal career on drug cases. Shkolnik tells Brenner that the summary prepared by Organon for the F.D.A. was attached to thousands of pages of backup, in which were buried the risks associated with blood clots. “This is a standard subterfuge used by Pharma,” he says. “You bury your bad news in one of 500 studies you have done on ease of use or lipid disorder. Then when the F.D.A. comes back to the drug company, the drug company can say, ‘You had it in your documents.’ If it isn’t in the 30-page summary, the F.D.A. is so understaffed it will never be noticed.”

Don’t ask how I stumbled across this quote from Joan of Arc, but I like it:

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.

I’m aware that the women of PWPL have been slamming feminists just a little, teeny tiny bit of late. As in, where are they when women die from complications of the morning after pill, etc. etc. A moratorium, ladies! For we have guests who are feminist and reasonable. By that I mean they are feminist and pro-life. Behold.

I have (happily) received an email from someone reaching out from Feminists Choosing Life in New York State. She wondered where “ya’ll” are located, which made me think perhaps she is from the deep south. We don’t really use that phrasing round these parts. However, New York State it is, our neighbours (not neighbors) to the immediate south.

(In reply, I’d say we are located from sea to shining sea in BC, AB, ON, QC and Nova Scotia.)

Being pro-life really is the only reasonable pro-woman perspective so I’m happy to find this, yet another feminists for life type group.

Here are some of their smiling crew. Keep up the good work, Feminists Choosing Life of New York State!

I appreciate knowing my ABCs. Hooked on phonics, that’s me! However, this is not a post about reading.

One of the most provocative things you can mention in the realm of physical side effects after abortion is that there might be a link to breast cancer. [Ed note: Hence why this is not a post about reading, but rather ABC for Abortion Breast Cancer link.] I personally think there is one but have not been brave enough to highlight it publicly to date.

That said, two reasons compel me to post this. One is that the book Complications is out (buy one! Fun Christmas time reading for the whole family!) and it has a pretty solid chapter dedicated to this. And secondly, this article links to a study that once again finds a link to breast cancer:

The research was conducted by Yubei Huang et al. from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Tianjin Medical University Cancer Hospital.The researchers say they were initially puzzled by their findings, stating that Chinese women “historically” have had lower rates of breast cancer compared to women from western countries such as the US.

They found, however, that incidences of breast cancer in China increased at an “alarming rate” over the past two decades, corresponding with the rise of the Chinese Communist Party’s one-child policy.

I believe those who fail to study this are behind the times. A little bit like tobacco companies proclaiming their product is not addictive. Finding out what causes cancer is all so confusing and irrelevant and unscientific… until it’s not.

That is the title of the Barbara Seaman’s book about the Pill. (The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women). When testing it, women died but no matter! They carried on. How these deaths translated into female empowerment continues to evade me.

If this letter writer is correct, something similar happened with RU-486. But legalize away, Canada! What’s a couple of dead women?

I think it was Natalie who was asking earlier where are the feminists when you need them? Indeed.

Porn is poison. Liked this post.

I won’t yell at a guy who fights a porn addiction anymore than I’d yell at a guy who fights a crack addiction. But at least the crack addict likely won’t encounter very many people (besides his dealer) who will tell him that it’s actually healthy to smoke crack. If he ventures outside of the abandoned shack where he scores his dope, he probably won’t find any respectable people who will say, “hey, crack isn’t a big deal — it’s totally natural to smoke crack, man!” In that way, the crack smoker has a leg up on the porn addict. The porn addict, by contrast, has to fight both the compulsion itself and the myriad of creeps who will try to convince him that it’s all just a bit of innocent fun.

I think this is, in many circumstances, part of the reason why people have a hard time kicking terrible habits. They are burdened by it, they hate that they do it, but too many people come along and say it’s not a problem.

He’s holding a press conference tomorrow because he

will table another Motion to focus on legal recognition of the equal worth and dignity of every human being.

Information for those in Ottawa who might like to attend is below. As I type that I realize it might be wise to figure out first whether it is open to the public.

DATE:             Thursday, November 21, 2013

TIME:              1:15 PM (EST)

PLACE:           National Press Theatre, 150 Wellington Street

Interesting article in many major papers today (Globe, Post and Toronto Star) about how Canada came to have a void on abortion laws. Needless to say, Barbara McDougall doesn’t represent the views of the many women of the ProWomanProLife persuasion:

However, the judges also said a woman’s right to an abortion, especially in the later stage of pregnancy, can be subject to reasonable limits imposed to protect the unborn or the woman’s life or health, and it sent the issue on to Parliament to resolve.

The bombshell ruling elated pro-choice advocates and devastated anti-abortionists. It also created a legal gap that the newly released documents show left the Conservative cabinet bewildered. …

Health Minister Jake Epp, a devout Mennonite Christian from Steinbach, Man., persistently pleaded that an infant’s life starts at the moment of conception. Barbara McDougall, of Toronto, was the minister for the status of women and she urged more free choice for women.

Epp’s lengthy speeches predominate in the minutes, but at one point, Mulroney pointed out McDougall was the only woman sitting on cabinet’s powerful 20-member priorities and planning committee. Mulroney noted the imbalance did not represent the general population, and he warned committee members McDougall’s views on abortion “were therefore not to be taken lightly.

Abortion is neither compassionate nor liberating. Last I checked I am also a woman, therefore we can all stop with the notion so ubiquitous in politics that abortion serves women well.

In the USA there have been many state restrictions placed on abortion, because that is what voters, aka people, want. Some of these restrictions get overturned by state courts, and then they are appealed to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court recently refused to hear one of those appeals from Oklahoma.

What this means in a nutshell is that the new pro-life laws (for example, banning abortions after 20 weeks or requiring counselling prior to abortion) are not allowed to stand because the state courts believe these laws contradict Roe v Wade. (My non-lawyerly understanding.)

It amounts to the people at the state level choosing and their state courts overturning, which then goes to the Supreme Court, where, thus far, they have declined to take the cases coming from the states. Clear as mud?

However, as reported in USA Today on November 13 (sorry I can’t find the link):

A steady stream of abortion cases are heading toward the Supreme Court, making it only a matter of time before the justices are likely to consider a new wave of state restrictions…

Whatever cases the justices do agree to hear, they will offer the court a chance to clarify its 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld abortion rights but gave states broader authority to impose restrictions such as 24-hour waiting periods and parental consent.

Stay tuned.