It may be news to many people that contraception as a matter of right and public health is no longer a given, but politicians and those in the public health profession know it well. "The linking of abortion and contraception is indicative of a larger agenda, which is putting sex back into the box, as something that happens only within marriage," [...] "Whether it's emergency contraception, sex education or abortion, anything that might be seen as facilitating sex outside a marital context is what they'd like to see obliterated," Smith says.McClellan was asked four times if the president supported contraception. "I think the president's views are very clear when it comes to building a culture of life," McClellan replied. Kinsolving said, "If they were clear, I wouldn't have asked." McClellan replied: "And if you want to ask those questions, that's fine. I'm just not going to dignify them with a response." In July, a group of Democrats in Congress sent the first of four letters to the president asking outright: "Mr. President, do you support the right to use contraception?" According to Representative Maloney's office, the White House has still not responded.
"I cannot imagine any development in human history, after the Fall, that has had a greater impact on human beings than the pill," Mohler continued. "It became almost an assured form of contraception, something humans had never encountered before in history. Prior to it, every time a couple had sex, there was a good chance of pregnancy. Once that is removed, the entire horizon of the sexual act changes. I think there could be no question that the pill gave incredible license to everything from adultery and affairs to premarital sex and within marriage to a separation of the sex act and procreation."
Incidentally, does anyone know where I can download a copy of Jack Chick's movie, The Light of the World? I'd like to see it, but I sure don't want to give that shithead any money.
With or without the pill, people will still have affairs, premarital sex and the like. They just have more suffering to deal with. Anti- pill people still believe we lived in a utopia before the pill. What they forget is that shame caused people to hide any indiscretions. Like the 1/2 aunt I never knew I had until a few years before she died, because she was a product of an illegitimate birth. Yeah, let's go back to the good old days.
Only weak, bad people have sex outside of marriage.
Only weak bad people have sex.
Haven't you heard? There's a Rupture coming. Or Rapture, I always get those two confused.
With or without the pill, people will still have affairs, premarital sex and the like. They just have more suffering to deal with.
They can't stop us from sinning, but if there's no contraception, at least we'll suffer for our sins. :p
Maybe that is the point. Of course, you know that the ones with money will always find a way to alleviate the suffering of their own.
Getting head and anal all the time instead doesnt sound too terrible to me haha
considering the side effects and problems that hormonal birth control has for so many women, it is pretty irksome to hear it trumpeted as the first birth control humanity has ever known that works most of the time. and considering that having multiple sex partners increases the average woman's risk of ladypart cancers and assorted sundry physical problems, in addition to the uptick in stuff like herpes for both genders, one is hard-pressed to see the benefits of being encouraged to have lots of sex partners before marriage. not being pregnant before age 25 is in some respects less healthy for women than being pregnant and having even one child before then.
It would be considerably safer and healthier for me (no motorcycle, no mcdonalds, no SARS) to be locked up in a padded cell. But we all know that it would be wrong for the government to do that.
You seem to be suffering a fundamental confusion about this thing we called "freedom." If the word freedom is to mean anything, then people must be allowed to make the wrong choices. It's really that simple - if you don't support freedom for the people who you think are living the wrong way, then you don't actually support freedom.
Besides, let's be serious here. The fundies don't want women barefoot and pregnant because there's some 3% decline in ovarian cancer if they're kept that way their whole lives. They want contol. And given half a chance they'd be tapping everyone's phone, killing people in other countries for no reason, and attempting to create a theocracy.
Hm, come to think of it, they seem to be doing pretty well...
i support cultural sanction of shame, which allows people legal freedom if they are willing to deal with the social penalties (which cannot be legislated, and therefore should make any libertarian delirious with joy).
and they aren't doing too well since fewer and fewer people are reproducing overall. which is fewer to control, etc, etc. fact is, the sex-without-consequences brigade is winning by far (nevermind that they pretty well just ignore the consequences of forcing promiscuity on all and trying to legislate social norms, a sin the secular humanists are as guilty of as the fundies).
but i think you didn't really read anything i said, which mainly revolved around the arrogance of presuming that the Pill in any form is the only true reliable birth control women have ever had. that's pretty false.
it's no advocacy of 'freedom' if it's ONLY the 'freedom' to make those wrong choices.
I must say, I kind of stopped reading when you said
because at that point I was laughing too hard...
You seem to forget that the conservatives think that being near something (in some cases, "near" meaning "on the same planet") means that it is being forced upon them.
there's plenty of schools encouraging teens to have sex whether they were planning to or not, and it's a bit nutty to pretend there isn't a huge pro-promiscuity bias in modern american media.
... and an even huger pro-promiscuity bias in European and Japanese societies, where STD infection rates are lower.
Mores in mass media, interestingly, don't correlate nearly as much as religion:
Name one specific example of a school in the US that encourages kids to have sex.
You, sir, are batshit fucking loco.
Particularly from someone with an LJ about stripping.
Right. Like being pregnant and giving birth is safe.
The reliable birth control that most people used prior to the 19th Century was lots of infant mortality.
But it wasn't safe birth control, as there was a lot of maternal mortality as well.
It was safe birth control for men, except for some emotional pain.
So would you be in favor of some sort of vaccination that allowed women to have multiple sex partners without increasing the risk of ladypart cancers? Because a lot of anti-contraception people seem to be against preventing cervical cancer.
i'm kind of torn about the vaccine, because on the one hand, you could just NOT HAVE SEX. but denying oneself instant gratification is apparently a bad bad thing or something, so if there's a drugs option, one supposes that should be made available for people who just have to have sex with lots of partners for whatever reasons.
i mean, the whole 'it's ok if you're 400 pounds, because you can take drugs for your diabetes and joint pain' and 'it's ok to be promiscuous because herpes is practically common now and of course easily treated with valtrex' way of looking at the world i find a bit problematic. it's just as bad as trying to drug up 5 year olds with ritalin or whathaveyou, to me. it seems to me if you can get the same result just delaying instant gratification (changing behavior), well, that is free and doesn't rely on a bunch of technical fixes to what are primarily social problems.
Wow! So many revolutionary ideas!
Wait... I'm getting some myself! The cure to heroin addiction: stop taking heroin! The cure to depression: just cheer up! The cure to anorexia: eat more food! Wow, who knew these problems had such simple, elegant solutions?
Are you kinda torn about seat belts? 'Cuz you could just not use a car.
Silly me! I thought it was part of a healthy life!
But then people who had sex wouldn't have the horrible, agonising deaths they so richly deserve.
I'm game, what is this 'reliable birth control' that has been around for millennia? And if it were so reliable, why didn't anyone else know about it, making the pill such a phenonmenon?
He/she/it is talking about "Natural Family Planning", AKA "Fertility Awareness", AKA the rhythm method. (Ie: he/she/it is a religious Catholic spouting church scare propaganda but is too chickenshit to come out and say it.)
(oops, reposted with fixed html, sorry)
Funny, my neighbor was just telling me how her husband's aunts and uncles all used the rhythm method, and they all have five or more kids each. The one that used other 'family planning' had two kids, as planned. Wonder which one has a better track record?
To be scrupulously fair, if you do it "right" (ie: test vaginal mucous viscosity and basal temperature every morning), modern versions of RM contraception have a reasonably good track record. (Approaching a 1% failure rate for the more comprehensive methods, which compares favorably with most barrier contraceptives.) But if you're not an obsessive-compulsive (or if you're an oversleeper), it's crap crap crap.
i'm talking about the numerous types of herbal birth control, not all of which worked by inducing miscarriage, and much of which information on was lost when people stopped listening to midwives and only started listening to university-trained doctors who considered women broken versions of men.
Yeah, I've read Clan of the Cave Bear too, where Ayla makes a tea every morning and doesn't get pregnant. But seriously, what herbal concoctions are you talking about? I mean, people took all kinds of herbal mixes. How in the world do we know what they did. Seriously, what herbs are we talking about that stop contraception? And how widely used were they?
McClellan hands out the dignity of responses with great care, it seems.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=site%3Awhitehouse.gov+mcclellan+dignify&btnG=Search
MR. McCLELLAN: Les, that's another one -- that's another one I'm just not going to get into dignifying.
MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, you had said that this was relating to a rumor that you heard, and I think there's a difference between rumor-mongering and journalism. And so I'm just not going to dignify those kind of rumors from this podium.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I said this was relating to some trashy rumors that are circulating out there, and I'm just not going to dignify them from this podium.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I'm not even going to dignify that with a response.
MR. McCLELLAN: I don't think I need to dignify some of the comments that President Chavez has made with a response.
MR. McCLELLAN: All right, next question. I'm not going to dignify that.
MR. McCLELLAN: I don't think I have to dignify every ridiculous comment out there.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, one, I've seen some of his comments and I'm just not going to dignify them with a response from this podium.
MR. McCLELLAN: And if you want to keep bringing up these questions, you're welcome to. But I'm not going to dignify them.
MR. McCLELLAN: -- and if you want to ask those questions, that's fine. I'm just not going to dignify them with a response.
MR. McCLELLAN: Ken, I'm not even going to dignify that with much of a response.
MR. McCLELLAN: Ken, I was there with him, and I'm just not going to -- I'm not going to dignify that with a response.
Well now that they hired the new guy from Fox News, I'm sure they've gotten rid of that pesky "dignity" issue.
I'm going to watch each and every WH press briefing on cspan.org. It's going to be classic.
Oh, he started today.
He already used the phrase "tar baby".
No, I don't, but as far as scary Jack Chick stuff, The Last Generation has long been my favorite.
Reincarnation is a LIE! (See Heb. 9:27)
Oh, but when you read scripture in context...
And, that's if we were consider the Bible to be literal proof of anything.
I met a non-denominational christian recently - an American girl as it happens - and she flabbergasted me when she said "but don't all Atheists hate christians!" That Jack Chick stuff gives some of the context. I'd say he's barking but I suspect some people believe his output. I suspect these "believers" like to scare themselves with his output so that they can confirm their "mission".
I don't hate, I just dislike the corruption and memetic mind control system they belong to
First:
Consider the following:
" New federal guidelines ask all males capable of ejaculation to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as active studs, regardless of whether they plan to impregnate a female or donate sperm in the near future.
Among other things, this means all men after their first ejaculation should refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight, keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control, avoid known mutagens such as caffeine, and keep their scrotum from extremes of temperature.
Ejaculating men are also urged to avoid participating in sports with fast moving projectiles or other objects which might injure their testicles and cause their sperm to mutate."
Versus:
"New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.
Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.
While most of these recommendations are well known to women who are pregnant or seeking to get pregnant, experts say it's important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed."
Can YOU guess which one is now a new CDC guideline?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051500875_pf.html
No, unfortunately, that's not an Onion headline.
Aside from the folic acid supplements, about which I admittedly know nothing, they all seem like good guidelines for general health for both genders rather than anything that has to do with pregnancy. At least the ones you quoted.
Yes! I have no quibble with the guidelines; it's the focus on "because you COULD get pregnant" rather than "because you COULD live to 120 so you better not screw up your [body part] now" that irritates me.
[disclaimer: I stole the post with the link to the article from another poster... but I did read the article myself]
Folic acid is good for pregnant AND non-pregnant people:
Folic acid is needed for DNA synthesis. DNA allows cells-including cells in the fetus when a woman is pregnant-to replicate normally. Adequate intake of folic acid early in pregnancy is important for preventing most neural tube birth defects and may also protect against some birth defects of the arms, legs, and heart [and possibly] cleft palate and cleft lip formation.
Folic acid is needed to make SAMe (S-adenosyl-L-methionine), which affects (and may improve) mood. Folic acid is also needed to keep homocysteine (an amino acid) levels in blood from rising. Excess homocysteine has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease in most studies and may also be linked to osteoporosis, strokes, and Alzheimer's disease.
Considering I did my degree in microbiology and specifically molecular genetics I should have known that.
Also while I agree with you and everything you're saying people are probably more worried about becoming pregnant unexpectedly and having it be bad for the baby... precisely the sort of "staying in a cat-like state of readiness for your inevitable pregnancy" that we both are opposed to.
It seems to me that the government is catering to their crazy nature rather than trying to convince them to act that way.
Besides, people will do all sorts of crap to be safe for parasitic growth when they can't be bothered to say, stay in decent shape, on their own.
Right on. [note cat-like icon]
Second:
"Prior to [the Pill], every time a couple had sex, there was a good chance of pregnancy."
This is absolutely untrue. The egg(s) [2 can be released per cycle] survive only 24 hours after ovulation, and the sperm survive only 5 days max, if there is good-quality cervical fluid. So, that makes 7 days of fertile time out of a 28 day cycle -- and many women's cycles are longer. Thus, only a 1/4 chance of pregnancy or less if intercourse is spread throughout the cycle.
See <lj user="fam"> for a community practicing the Fertility Awareness Method.
*shudder*
"At the purity ball, a father gives a 'purity ring' to his daughter - a symbol of the promise she makes to maintain her virginity for her future husband."
I hope she doesn't put it on 'cause the symbolism of that is all wrong.