An article from Huffington Post:

Studies show that newer birth control pills containing drospirenone, a synthetic version of the female hormone, progesterone, present a higher risk of blood clots than previous forms. According to an FDA report from Oct. 27, 2011, 10 in 10,000 women on the newer drugs will form a blood clot; with the older drugs, the risk is 7 in 10,000.

Newer versions, older versions, the Pill has dangerous side effects. There are other options, effective, safe and empowering, which I would recommend to anyone who asks. Or doesn’t ask, as the case with this blog may be.

The Guttmacher is the research arm of Planned Parenthood. Since Planned Parenthood acts as a cheerleader for abortion in our culture, I am not a fan of either of these groups. But when I got today’s Guttmacher release about publicly-funded birth control (government overreach if I ever saw it!) the only thought to come to my mind was that we are planning ourselves out of existence. Our fertility rates are desperately low in this culture–below the level required to merely replace our population.

This may seem like a theoretical proposition (fertility rates, replacement rates… yawn) but it isn’t. It means Canada and the USA (and Europe, while we are on the topic) are dying. Civilizations wax and wane: BIRT ours is waning.

Aren’t you glad I’m back from my extended weekend away–angel of optimism that I am?

You can think they are great; you can think they are terrible (yes, even the top-notch American made ones) for women’s health. But whatever they are to you, birth control pills are but very rarely medicine. Which is how this author consistently refers to them. She is ranting because she can’t get her birth control pill brand in Iran. Which, I’m going to go out on a limb, is probably not the main concern of those living under that dictatorship.

If women like the one writing this article practiced something like Billings or Creighton (which are, for the millionth time, not “the rhythm method”), she’d have birth control with her everywhere she went.

(On a different note, there are ads in the bathroom stalls at Carleton University for a particular birth control pill right now. They are advertising them by saying “You shouldn’t have to pay more for your choice.” At least they understand it’s a choice. “You shouldn’t have to pay more for your medicine!” isn’t how the ads go…)

1. Ottawa: I live in a really beautiful city (and a really beautiful country). Yup, it’s just like the Canadian pavilion at Epcot describes.

2. My health. There it is. I’m truly old enough to say this. I’m inspired to be all the more grateful when my ancient hip cries out.

3. My friends. I have many of them, none of whom I pay. Unless you count my swim club, but that isn’t directly into their pockets.

4. My parents. They raised me right. Just like the disclaimer on a book jacket: Anything good, they deserve the credit. Any mistakes? I take the blame.

5. My sister. I’ve never known a day without her. I am a stronger person in this world because of my sister. Thanks to her I can also recite more of Nacho Libre than I care to admit. Ees for fun. Just like stretchy pants.

6. My nieces. Best kids in the world. Don’t contest it. That’s what they are to me, and that’s what matters for this particular list.

6. Water. No really. As I wash dishes, sometimes I am amazed that it continues to come out of the tap. And it’s clean. Also, I can kayak, canoe and swim around here, pretty much at will.

7. Freedom. I have a hard time assessing to what extent this is being chiselled away, but I think self-censorship is the biggest problem Canadians face. The government does not tell us what to think in the manner that people endured behind the Iron Curtain, for example.

8. “A thousand points of light.” Small glimmers of hope where it should be dead. As this poor translation of a Czech proverb says, “Hope dies the last!” (8a. Thank goodness for Czech proverbs, poorly translated.)

9. Faith. It’s a gift. It is my only consolation on bad days.

10. Life. Breathing. On any given day, and thus far, every day, I wake up. The basics matter.

I’m heading out for a couple of days off around this weekend, so blogging will be lighter than usual. Have a good one.

That’s me, not taking it for granted that no one is forcing me to wear my life jacket

A federal judge strikes down a law that went through in North Dakota that would have outlawed abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be found at six weeks.

Conley noted that the law went from proposal to enactment in 43 days and had no medical purpose to support it.

Hey–neither does abortion–it serves no medical purpose. Just saying.

As you all know, I am proudly anti-choice with regards to the choice of killing your child in utero or otherwise. However, in things childbirth and child-rearing related, I am decidedly more pro-parental choice.

This is why the very public attention on the royal birth makes me uncomfortable. I understand Kate and William are royalty and this is what they live with, but honestly, I can think of nothing worse than the paparazzi taking pictures approximately four minutes after you give birth.

California is very, very proud of their comprehensive sex education that has apparently lowered the birth rate:

Several factors contributed to the falling birth rates, the department said in a press release. One factor was the state’s school sex education program, which law requires to be comprehensive and medically accurate. The report also credits community-based education programs that provide sexual health information to teens and their parents.

“We do believe that our programs are behind these numbers,” Karen Ramstrom, the chief of the program standards branch at the California Department of Public Health’s maternal child and adolescent health division, told the Los Angeles Times.

“California’s innovative strategies and community partnerships aimed at lowering teen pregnancy are helping young women and men make responsible choices,” Dr. Ron Chapman, director of the CDPH, said in a press release. “We must not be complacent; we must continue to promote teen pregnancy prevention programs and strategies in all communities.”

Innovative! Responsible choices! and a pregnancy rate that hasn’t gone down at all. Witness the correction at the bottom:

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article said that the state’s teen pregnancy rates had dropped. It is the teen birth rates that have dropped.

So what that may mean is that teens are simply having more abortions. If the birth rate drops, but the pregnancy rate doesn’t, I can’t think of what else that would mean. This is why good stats are important.

A tragedy: An 11-year-old is raped in Chile. She says she wants to keep the baby. Pro-choice folks are upset by this:

At that age the girl doesn’t have a capacity of discernment, not even at age 14 would she have the mental and emotional capacity to discern this,” said Giorgio Agostini, a forensic psychologist who has worked on dozens of child sex abuse cases.

Another blogger rightly points out that is she choice abortion, they would say that is her right:

If abortion was legal in Chile and the girl had chosen to abort, the pro-aborts would have argued that it’s her right regardless of her age. In other words, abortion should be legal at any age but choosing life is beyond the maturity of an 11-year-old. Somebody please explain this asymmetry to me.

It does seem like some are saying she’s mature enough to choose abortion, but not mature enough to choose life.

I say it’s a tragedy all around, and abortion isn’t a solution. An 11-year-old who is raped is going to need a lot of support, care, help, love regardless of what happens with this baby–who I hope would be born and adopted by some loving family. I resent the fact that pro-choice folks think of abortion as the magic undo button for trauma.

I also pause to reflect on the evil in the world and in each one of us, that someone would rape a small child. Causes all kinds of anger and philosophical discussions in my heart and mind. I understand God to be all-powerful, all-loving and all-knowing but cases like this are tests, to be sure. I still believe it though. Because in the face of great evil, there must be an ever greater good.

Look! Someone else in West Virginia is Pro-woman, Pro-life.

Good to see. I do not know this person. However, it is really reasonable to have blogs like this come up, since being pro-life in defence of women is a reasonable position to take.

________________________________

Faye adds: Miss Faye’s Google Alerts are about to become much more numerous…

Strong words from an Irish senator. He describes what abortion is in some detail. Warning: It’s gory. This is what abortion at 20 weeks is. (You decide whether you support it.)

Your patient will have been feeling her baby kick for the last two months of more. But now she’s asleep on an operating room table, and you are there to help her with her problem pregnancy. The first task is to remove the laminaria that had earlier been placed in the cervix to dilate sufficiently to allow the procedure you are about to perform.

The first instrument you reach for is a French suction catheter. Picture yourself introducing this catheter through the cervix and instructing the circulating nurse to turn on the suction machine. What you will see is a pale yellow fluid that looks like urine coming through the catheter into a glass bottle on the suction machine. This is amniotic fluid that surrounded the baby to protect her.

With suction complete, look for your sopher clamp. This instrument is for grasping and crushing tissue. When it gets hold of something, it does not let go. A second-trimester D&E abortion is a blind procedure. The baby cannot be seen in any orientation inside the uterus. Picture yourself reaching in with the sopher clamp and grasping anything you can.

Once you’ve grasped something inside, squeeze on the clamp to set the jaws and pull hard. Really hard. You feel something let go, and out pops a fully formed leg about six inches long. Reach in again, set the jaw and pull really hard once again, and out pops an arm about the same length. Reach in again, and again with that clamp and tear out the spine, intestines, heart, and lungs.

The toughest part of a D&E operation is extracting the baby’s head. You can be pretty sure that you’ve got hold of it if the sopher clamp is spread about as far as your fingers will allow. You will know you have it right when you crush down on the clamp and see white gelatinous material coming through the cervix. That was the baby’s brains. You can then extract the skull’s pieces. Many times a little face will come out and stare back at you.

Congratulations, you’ve just affirmed her right to choose.