My New Name For A Blog

What Athenae Said. Why can't we just give the mothers the Pottery Barn (Goddess, forgive us) crib, and the Ralph Lauren baby blankets?

What's really amazing to me is how "absent" one half of the equation is. No responsibility; no one really expects anything out of you; no problem. Go find yourself.

It's a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack.

PIcture found here.

Abstinence As Birth Control: Fail! U R Doing It Wrong!

During the campaign, I was pretty adamant about not going after Sarah Palin for her parenting choices, nor after her pregnant, teen-age daughter, Bristol. I've been a pregnant teen-ager and a teen-age mom, and, under the best of circumstances, it's no bed of roses in this culture. But Bristol's decided to make the rounds of various talk shows; at least, I assume she, not her parents, made that decision. So I do intend to comment on one point. A few weeks ago, Bristol was interviewed and said, that telling young people to be abstinent is "not realistic at all."

That may not have gone over too well with someone, because, earlier this week, Bristol was back on the talk show circuit and this time, she kept repeating, bot-like, that "abstinence is the only way that you can effectively, 100%, foolproof way, to prevent pregnancy." The talking head in the first video says, "It is."

In the final video, the talking head interviewing the father of Bristol's child, says to him that Bristol now says that abstinence is the only "surefire way to prevent teen pregnancy. Which is true."

No, it's not.

Abstinence, as a method of birth control, has an horrific fail rate. Bristol Palin herself was using abstinence and got pregnant. There are thousands of people who were practicing abstinence until that method of birth control failed. So it is absolutely not a way to "effectively, 100%, foolproof, surefire prevent pregnancy." My guess is that the failure rate is so high that, if it were being sold at drugstores, rather than through propaganda and the press, it wouldn't be able to call itself an effective method of birth control.

And if there's a population for whom abstinence is more likely to fail than for any other population, my guess is that it's teenagers and very young adults. This is a population charged with hormones, as well as a population that still hasn't gotten (and yes, these are generalizations) the notion that "it" can happen to them, whether "it" is losing control of a car after a few beers or getting pregnant after a few "abstinence failures." And, because they're practicing abstinence, which they've been told is 100% effective and foolproof, they're less likely to have a condom or some other method of birth control around "just in case."

It's one thing for Bristol Palin, who, as far as I can tell, never really got much education beyond junior high school and who has been raised in an extreme fundie church, to go around spreading misinformation about the effectiveness of abstinence as a method of birth control. But it's another thing for adult interviewers on television to agree with her. Kali on a cracker, how difficult would it be to say, "You say it's 100% effective. It's not. You used it and you got pregnant. You said a few weeks ago that it's not a realistic method of birth control for young people. Why have you changed your message?"

Picture found here.

Hat tip: watertiger.

My New Name For A Blog

What She Said.

And, it might be a good idea for feminists and progressives and, hell, anyone sane in America, to call or write the WH and thank Mr. Obama for taking this v important step. You know he's going to hear lots of whining and bitching from the christianists.

Also, What watertiger said.

Cartoon found here.

Women, In General, Are The Lani Guinier Of The Obama Administration

Well, that didn't take long.

You know, I wouldn't like it, but I could understand it, if Obama sold women down the river in some back-room deal where he got something in exchange for it. You know, "OK, Republicans, we won't give women access to family planning, and, in exchange, you'll vote for increased unemployment benefits," or funds for light rail, or money for solar panels, or, hell, SOMETHING.

But, no. Obama sold us down the river and got ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from the Republicans. Not a promise of future cooperation, not an agreement to quit sniping, nothing. Nice work.

So when the Obama administration does find itself backed into a corner and forced to do something good for women, it happens as late as possible on a Friday afternoon and with as little fanfare as possible. When it fucks over women, it does so publicly and for no reason at all. Not off to an especially auspicious start, are we Barack? But, then, women are, after all, likeable enough.

Imagine That!

From the "And Water Is Believed To Quench Thirst" File:
Comprehensive sex education may help reduce teen pregnancies without increasing levels of sexual intercourse or sexually transmitted diseases.

So find U.S. researchers who reviewed data from a 2002 national survey of more than 1,700 heterosexual teens, ages 15 to 19. Whoda thunk?

Of course, the article then goes on to play the "some say" game: There is ongoing debate about whether abstinence-only education or comprehensive sex education (including instruction in birth control) is best for students. Let's be clear. There's never been ANY such debate among health educators or serious scientists. What there's been is a lot of propaganda (financed, thanks to the Bush junta with our tax dollars, because it's "faith-based") thrown around by people who hate sex, hate women, and want to create their own little version of Gilead. The sorrow and the pity is that these godbotherers have been allowed to ruin lives with their faith-based bullshit when data-based research, not to mention common fucking sense, clearly indicate that teaching teens how to prevent pregnancy will -- surprise! -- prevent teen pregnancy. (Which, one imagines, likely prevents -- surprise, again! -- abortion. Something to consider when the xianists try to convince you that they really do want to prevent abortions. When what people do and what they say don't match, I find it's best to rely upon what they do. Just saying.)

Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that teens who received comprehensive sex education were 60 percent less likely to get pregnant or to get someone pregnant than those who received no sex education.

Other results -- not statistically significant, however -- suggested that comprehensive sex education, but not abstinence-based sex education, slightly reduced the likelihood of teens having vaginal intercourse. Neither approach seemed to reduce the likelihood of reported cases of sexually transmitted diseases.

The findings, published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, support comprehensive sex education, Kohler concluded.

"There was no evidence to suggest that abstinence-only education decreased the likelihood of ever having sex or getting pregnant," she said in a prepared statement.

This study offers "further compelling evidence" about the value of comprehensive sex education and the "ineffectiveness" of the abstinence-only approach, said Don Operario, a sex education expert and professor at Oxford University in England.

Not that anything will ever convince the fundie whackjobs, but could the rest of us please not grant these slobbering fools any more control over our education system?

Which Is Exactly Why The Fundies Hate It

Discussing increasing reliance on RU-486 by American women, WaPo interviews a nurse who opted to end a pregnancy by taking the drug:

"It was something I could do at home and be with my husband," Gilbert said of taking the pill. "It was a decision we made together alone, and we were able to take care of it this way alone. It was just a much more private affair."

She added: "I wouldn't say it was easy -- it's never easy to terminate a pregnancy. But in the grand scheme of things, it was much more pleasant than a surgical procedure."

Another bit of good news:

The pill, often called "miffy" after its chemical name mifepristone and brand name Mifeprex, also has helped slow the decline in abortion providers, as more physicians who previously did not perform the procedure discreetly start to prescribe the pill. For example, Ruth Lesnewski, a family physician in New York, did not perform abortions until mifepristone was approved.

"It allows abortion to happen in a more private, secure setting -- a doctor's office and a woman's home, rather than an easily targeted clinic," she said. "It's been a surprisingly smooth and rewarding experience for such a fraught area of life. My patients really tremendously appreciate being able to end an unwanted pregnancy privately and quickly."