Tag Archives: Topic: Contraception

Kirsten Powers writes at the Daily Beast: “Planned Parenthood says funding cuts will only increase America’s abortion rate. Kirsten Powers asks: So why have abortions multiplied while access to contraception has greatly improved?”

Postcrescent: “Gov. Scott Walker’s budget would repeal a state law requiring insurance companies cover prescription birth control.”

Wall Street Journal: “The New York City Council has passed a bill that would force pregnancy counseling centers to disclose whether they provide abortions, emergency contraception and prenatal care. The mayor is expected to sign the measure.”

IONA Institute: The Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland (PSI) has confirmed to The Irish Catholic that under their Code of Conduct, pharmacists must stock the MAP or “take reasonable action to ensure that these medicines or services are provided”.

NOW: “The collusion of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has led to an open declaration of war on the women of this country. The bishops have long sought to enshrine into law those policies of the Catholic Church that subordinate women. And they don’t care how badly women get hurt in the process.”

LifeSiteNews: “Girls of any age could obtain the Plan B morning after pill without a prescription, if a request filed by Teva Pharmaceuticals with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is approved.”

LifeNews: “Today, the administration rescinded part of the protections today with the Health and Human Services Department scrapping a portion of the rule, which it called “unclear and potentially overbroad in scope.” Obama officials put a new rule in place that leaves in place protections on abortion but offers no protection for medical workers who have moral or religious objections to dispensing or giving to women the Plan B drug or other emergency contraception that could act in some cases as an abortion drug.”

One News Now (includes photo of Matt): Matt Bowman, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, applauds lawmakers’ desire to see those laws enforced, not repealed. “It’s right for the members of the United States House to be concerned that the administration of the federal government would decide not to enforce those laws,” says Bowman, “especially in light of the fact that the Alliance Defense Fund has represented already three clients in…the last year who have faith violations of these federal conscience laws.”

Chicago Tribune: “Abortions would be banned in Iowa, including in cases of rape and incest, under a bill approved Monday by a House subcommittee. The measure defines life as beginning at conception.”

LifeSiteNews: “The government of Rwanda is planning to launch a sterilization campaign with the goal of rendering 700,000 men, or about one seventh of the male population, infertile within three years.”

Washington Post: Pelosi described the GOP push as the “most radical assault” on women’s reproductive rights “in our lifetimes.” And she was equally blunt in her assessment of right-wing assaults on family planning. “They are at a different philosophical place,” she said, characterizing their view as: “all engagement has to result in a child.”

NYT: “The Obama administration is examining whether the new health care law can be used to require insurance plans to offer contraceptives and other family planning services to women free of charge.”

WHEC: “The Monroe County Health Department says it’s seen a major spike in HIV cases among teens in the Rochester City School District. Now, it wants condoms to be handed out in high schools.”

LifeSiteNews: “Catholic leaders in the Philippines are cautiously optimistic after the country’s government appears to have backed off of its hard-line stance on the controversial ‘reproductive health’ bill.”

Politico: “As reproductive health advocates brace for a wave of state-level abortion restrictions, they also see a glimmer of hope in a little-noticed health reform provision: increased Medicaid access to family planning and contraceptives.”

Robert Verbruggen writing at National Review Online: “[T]he majority of abortions — far from all, but the majority — serve as nothing more than routine birth control: Most women who have abortions became pregnant by willingly engaging in high-risk sexual activity, and many resort to abortion more than once . . . pro-lifers and moderate pro-choicers . . . need to face the fact that while programs designed to talk women out of abortion are one useful tool in a pro-life strategy, they will not significantly lower the abortion rate by themselves. Those who are truly concerned about abortion should have two priorities: first, overturning Roe v. Wade so that states may ban abortion; and second, in the meantime, designing an anti-abortion program that will appeal to women who use the procedure as birth control.”

GMA News: “To come up with a win-win solution on the much-debated reproductive health (RH) bill, President Benigno Simeon Aquino III decided to have his own version and called it the ‘responsible parenthood’ (RP) bill.”

ChristianNewswire: “Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro-Carámbula, interim president of Human Life International (HLI), today blasted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for what he called their ‘flagrant disregard for women’s health, and for the constitution.’ He was referring to aJanuary 12 statement wherein the ACLU defended the inclusion of contraception in federally-mandated health coverage, and the ACLU criticized the US Catholic bishops for asking for contraception to be precluded from coverage.”

OneNewsNow: “The American pro-life community is looking to future challenges after a recent Guttmacher report on abortion . . . Jeanne Monahan of the Family Research Council tells OneNewsNow that RU-486, the abortion pill, played a role in the totals. ‘Interestingly, [chemical abortions are] more expensive than surgical abortions,’ she notes. ‘So I find that fascinating just in as much as they’re touted as being easier on women, which is absolutely not true.’”

New York Post: “Less than two weeks into her new gig, Schools Chancellor Cathie Black has riled parents and public officials by jokingly suggesting that ‘birth control’ was the solution to school overcrowding.”

ACLU Blog: “The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will soon be issuing guidelines on what constitutes preventive care for women. Groups like the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Family Research Council and Alliance Defense Fund are trying to stop HHS from including birth control on the list of covered preventive services.”

FRC Press Release: “At a meeting today in the nation’s capital of a federal advisory committee on the new health care law, Family Research Council (FRC) expressed its strong opposition to designating abortion as a means of pregnancy-prevention. The Institute of Medicine Committee on Preventive Services for Women is hearing comments about regulatory mandates for women’s preventive services under Obamacare.”

Robert W. Patterson writes at the Washington Examiner: “Just as LBJ’s Great Society never delivered as promised, Nixon’s social engineering effort — dispensing heavy doses of contraception to the low-income population on the theory that fertility is a cause of poverty — also backfired. Better known as Title X of the Public Health Services Act, the GOP-driven legislation fostered more disordering than ‘planning’ of families, rendering the underclass less capable of self-reliance while leaving America sitting on a demographic time bomb.”

LifeNews: “The number of abortions would decrease in the United States if only contraception and birth control were promoted to a higher degree, abortion advocates say, but the new abortion report issued today by the Guttmacher Institute puts that notion to rest.”

Boston.com (AP): “Officials at a New Hampshire high school say they will no longer allow a group to distribute safe-sex kits to students because the contents include flavored lubricant and candy as well as condoms.”

The Australian: “A contraceptive device fitted in women’s arms has misfired, with more than 400 Australian users becoming pregnant. And women in Britain have received thousands of pounds in compensation for unwanted pregnancies. Thousands of Australian and British women used the Implanon implant, which was designed to stop them getting pregnant for three years by releasing hormones into their blood from a tiny tube in their arm.”

Telegraph: “Pharmacists fear that many women are taking to ‘unnecessary risks’ with their health by using the morning after pill after losing control on nights out. A poll of 3,000 people by The Co-Operative Pharmacy found that 20 per cent of women aged 18 to 35 have taken the emergency pill in the last year.”

The Economist / Democracy in America: “I don’t think it’s true that the pro-life movement would gain any converts among liberals by dedicating itself to increasing adoptions (even more than it already has), even if adoptions weren’t already widely available. But I do think that the pro-life movement would gain itself a lot of political allies if it were to dedicate itself to dramatically increasing usage of contraceptives among American teenagers.”

Jill Stanek: “Any person with common sense could cue the researchers that the more casual sex one has, the greater likelihood there will be of pregnancy, contraception use notwithstanding. Contraceptive use only provides a false sense of security.”

CNSNews: “Specifically, Planned Parenthood’s Web site announced the group is preparing to launch a nationwide ‘social change initiative’ to end the ‘stigma and shame about sex’ in American culture.”

Is There a Right to Have Children? Substantive Due Process and Probation Conditions That Restrict Reproductive Rights
Joanna Nairn, 6 Stan. J. Civ. Rts. & Civ. Liberties 1 (2010)

“This Article focuses on women who have been sentenced, as part of their probation, either to use specific forms of birth control or simply to avoid procreating. It begins by exploring the prevalence of these conditions, hampered by the difficulty in gathering data about probation conditions that are not appealed to higher courts. Using a combination of appellate opinions and reported trial court decisions, it notes that appellate courts have begun to break with the unanimous rejection of such conditions that characterized the first few decades of their reported use. Moreover, it highlights a pattern of appellate decisions that focus not on the constitutionality of these conditions but rather on their reasonableness in the particular case–a trend that has created inconsistency across courts. It then goes on to survey the Court’s substantive due process jurisprudence, noting the specificity with which the Court has defined protected rights and describing the three methods by which it deems rights fundamental. This Article also argues that it is likely that strict scrutiny would apply to probation conditions that restrict reproductive rights. Finally, it makes the case for invalidating such conditions under a strict scrutiny framework, arguing that the right implicated is fundamental and that there are less restrictive alternatives available.”

Michael J. New writing at National Review Online: “This focus on the economy as the reason for the teen-birthrate decline is rather puzzling . . . The benefits of abstinence-only sex education and greater sexual restraint, as always, received scant coverage from nearly all mainstream media outlets.”

OneNewsNow: “The Washington Board of Pharmacy says it won’t provide conscience protections for pharmacies or pharmacists after all . . . Joseph Backholm of the Family Policy Institute of Washington tells OneNewsNow the board has stopped the rule-making process . . . ‘It was a lawsuit against the state on behalf of several pharmacists that will now likely move forward,’ Backholm explains. ‘It had been suspended once it looked like the Board of Pharmacy was going to provide a right of referral.’”

Seattle Times: “Washington’s Board of Pharmacy voted Thursday to not move forward with changing a rule that prohibits pharmacies from refusing to dispense all legal drugs, including the morning-after contraceptive ‘Plan B.’”

Arizona Republic: “As the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix and St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center continued to talk Wednesday about the church’s role in medical decisions, the national debate escalated over whether the local bishop’s threat to remove the hospital’s Catholic status was appropriate.”

“The Catholic bishop of Phoenix will strip St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center of its Catholic status on Friday if the hospital’s parent company, Catholic Healthcare West, does not meet his demands to guarantee compliance with church teachings.”

Dr. Jeff Mirus writing at CatholicCulture.org: “We must always remember that there is a great difference between a person afflicted with same-sex attraction who is sincerely seeking the best way to deal with it, and a movement which insists that same-sex attraction be recognized as good, and the resulting life-style wholeheartedly endorsed. Within such a movement, credibility depends first and foremost on agreement.”

LifeNews: “The Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group released a new report saying teen pregnancies will rise unless the government takes new actions to curb them. But, a leading pro-life group saying spending more money promoting contraception and birth control is a failed strategy that won’t reduce abortions.” | BBC

Janet E. Smith writing at Zenit: “The media are obsessed with the issue of the Catholic Church and condoms because they seem to believe that condoms are the solution to preventing the transmission of the HIV. Might it be time they began to think about other organizations, such as themselves, that might bear some responsibility? Who can deny that if people were living by the Church’s teaching on sexuality, if people were having only married heterosexual sex, there would be no problem with the HIV (and a host of other problems)?”

Daily Local: “Some parents say a health curriculum supplement under consideration by the Downingtown Area School District is inappropriate. District officials were poised to make a decision Friday regarding the sexual-education program Amnion that teaches abstinence-only education.”

Iona Institute: “In an editorial today, the paper endorsed controversial proposals made by the Law Reform Commission (LRC) last December which would allow minors aged 14 to 16 to be prescribed the Pill without parental consent.”

LifeNews: “State Representative David Sater, a Republican who owned a pharmacy in Barry County for 30 years says the measure he introduced would guarantee the rights of pharmacies to decline to sell drugs like the morning after pill and the Plan B or ella drug.”

LifeSiteNews: “The population control advocate said that under this scheme the world’s poor could sell their fertility rights and thereby profit from avoiding procreation, reports the Globe and Mail.”

Ken Blackwell writes at World: “What should be clear from the best studies of our most serious scholars of population is that it is not in anyone’s interest to promote population control. American taxpayers have been paying for population control at home and abroad for generations. The federal Title X program was begun through the Family Planning and Reproductive Health Act of 1970.”

Baptist Press: “A new federally approved emergency contraceptive described by pro-life advocates as an abortion drug is now for sale. New Jersey-based Watson Pharmaceuticals announced Dec. 1 that “ella” is available by prescription at most pharmacies and clinics in the United States, as well as through an online pharmacy.”

LifeNews: “This month the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) reviewed and reaffirmed the 2007 Ethics Committee Number 385, entitled The Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine . . . The ACOG Ethics Committee rule requires pro-life physicians to refer for abortions. Furthermore, it disparages the notion of conscience to nothing more than a subjective feeling.”

Ross Douthat writing in the New York Times / Evaluations: “The problem with the abortion debate in America isn’t that the anti-abortion side won’t ever consider making compromises or taking half a loaf. It’s that the structure of constitutional law is tilted so egregiously toward abortion-on-demand that any plausible compromise is a non-starter.”

Bangkok Post: “Abortion pills worth more than 30million baht have been seized from a Bangkok shophouse in a raid led by the Public Health Ministry. The operation in Bang Kae district yesterday, led by Public Health Minister Jurin Laksanavisit, was part of extended action following the discovery of 2,002 foetuses at Wat Phai Ngern Chotanaram in Bangkok last week.”

David Lindsay writing at The American Conservative / Post Right: “Certain people might consider applying some journalistic or scientific objectivity to the question of where in Africa the condom use relentlessly promoted by Western NGOs and compliant governments has ever arrested, never mind reversed, the rate of HIV infection. There is nowhere. However, such a reversal is under way in Uganda, where the government’s message is the same as the Catholic Church’s: ‘Change Your Behavior.””

Wall Street Journal: “The Vatican on Sunday rushed to clarify a recent interview by Pope Benedict XVI, in which the pontiff states for the first time that there may be some cases in which the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on condoms isn’t absolute . . . The pope then added: ‘There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants.’” Full text of the Pope’s comments is here.

Vatican Information Service: Note by Fr. Lombardi concerning a new book on the Pope

Jimmy Akin: The Pope Said WHAT about Condoms???

Janet E. Smith: What does the Holy Father really say about condoms in the new book?

KXAN: “The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project Tuesday called upon Walgreens to follow company policy and cease gender discrimination by refusing to sell emergency contraception to men.”

LifeSiteNews: “The Obama administration is helping to flood Peru with over 18,000,000 condoms through the USAID program, according to two of Peru’s most important Catholic bishops.”

Mercator Net: “[T]here are tell-tale signs that a particular type of pollutant, the endocrine disruptor, is wreaking havoc on our ecosystems. And as the world’s rivers are in a crisis of ominous proportions, we are witnessing the alarming effects wrought by estrogenic substances on aquatic life. Feminized male fish that lay eggs and/or have lost their reproductive abilities have been found near waste water effluent areas . . . why are environmental crusaders hounding plastic manufacturers and the canned foods industry while ignoring the most obvious culprit: pharmaceuticals in our water supply? Not just what is dumped by manufacturers or consumers, but more importantly, what is flushed down the toilet after human consumption.”

The Christian Institute: “The Welsh Assembly has announced that primary schools in Wales will not be forced to teach sex and relationship education (SRE) if they don’t want to. But the Welsh Assembly Government is set to inject yet more funding into its controversial sexual health programme.”

Center for Reproductive Rights: “Today, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a motion for contempt against the Food and Drug Administration for failing to follow a court order regarding access to emergency contraception for women of all ages. On March 23, 2009, Judge Edward Korman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York found that the FDA’s decision to limit over-the-counter access to the emergency contraceptive Plan B to women over 18 was based on politics rather than science. He ordered the agency to reconsider that decision.”

New York Post: “Planned Parenthood of New York City took issue with my post on why abortion should carry a stigma . . . If we agree that the goal is to reduce the need for abortion, and Planned Parenthood is interested in having women make the best decision available to them, why isn’t choosing not to abort one of the options listed here?”

Christian Science Monitor: “If the bill becomes law, it will give responsibility for family planning to the state. Part of that would include the distribution of free contraception for the poor, maternity care, and family planning. It would also break new ground for the relationship between the government and the Church . . . The Catholic Church, meanwhile, views the bill as an attack on life, Catholic values, and as a gateway to legalizing abortion.”

Medical News Today: “An Albuquerque, N.M., Public Schools committee voted in favor of a revised policy that will allow contraception to be dispensed at school-based clinics by clinic staff who are not APS employees, the Albuquerque Journal reports.”

Religion Clause: “According to the Tacoma (WA) News Tribune, yesterday the Board of Pharmacy took the next step, voting 3-2 to ask the Board staff for recommendations on drafting a rule allowing facilitated referrals to other pharmacies for ‘time sensitive’ medications that the pharmacy will not or cannot fill.”

Medical News Today: “The Washington state Board of Pharmacy voted 3-2 on Thursday to move forward with changes to a rule that prohibits pharmacies from refusing to dispense legal medications, including emergency contraception.”

GMA News: “Even as the Catholic Church prepares for a dialogue with government on reproductive health, a senior archbishop admitted Sunday it may be on a head-on collision with parties seeking the passage of the reproductive health bill.”

LifeSiteNews: “‘It is never too early to start talking to children about sexual matters,’ say guidelines issued by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Once highly respected for its independence and integrity, UNESCO now works in partnership with the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the US (SIECUS), an educational arm of the controversial Kinsey Institute.”

New York Magazine: “Soros Fund Management has amassed a 5.1 percent stake in the Female Health Co., manufacturer of the FC2 Female Condom.”

KUOW: “People on opposite sides of the abortion debate will be closely watching Thursday’s scheduled meeting of the Washington State Board of Pharmacy. The board is expected to decide whether it will change the rules about the controversial emergency contraception known as Plan B. KUOW’s Derek Wang has the story.”

Catholic San Francisco: “Bioethical issues are real for this generation of high school students. Some of them were conceived using in-vitro fertilization technology and others have had abortions before they leave high school, said Marin Catholic High School religion teacher Ryan Mayer . . . ‘Our technical expertise is surpassing our moral understanding,’ said Marin Catholic senior Virginia Yoham, 17.”

Patrick Reilly writing at LifeNews: “The regulations issued Friday effectively force many states to increase oversight of postsecondary education through state chartering or licensing, which is a necessary condition for colleges to participate in federal student aid programs. Most Catholic colleges accept low-cost federal student loans and grants. If forced to forego federal aid, these colleges would be at a disadvantage in recruiting students.”

Superior Telegram: “This week, Wisconsin expanded a Medicaid program aimed at preventing unintended pregnancy and disease.”

Times of Malta: “Teaching students about contraception encourages them to give in to the ‘culture of pleasure’ and is tantamount to abuse, according to Gozo Bishop Mario Grech.”

The Sun News: “[A Charleston County mother] said her daughter was taken to the clinic by someone who worked for Carolina Empowerment Group, a nonprofit community organization whose goal is to increase awareness of and prevent teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS and substance abuse. The group has an office at Burke High and access to students, but the school district doesn’t pay for its services.”

Daily Mail: “A morning-after pill that can be taken up to five days after intercourse is being sold online by a British company. Its website says the powerful drug can ‘help stop an accident from becoming something more life-changing’. The pill, called ellaOne, works for longer than the regular morning-after pill and is more effective.”

AFP: “A scheme launched on Monday to provide girls as young as 13 with access to the contraceptive pill without their parents’ knowledge has been defended by the NHS primary care trust running the service.”

The Christian Institute: “Girls as young as 13 on the Isle of Wight may be given a month’s supply of contraceptive pills without being referred to a doctor or informing their parents, under a divisive new scheme.”

OneNewsNow: “A major push is under way to have free contraception included under ObamaCare. A panel of experts advising the government meets in November to begin considering what kind of preventive care for women should be covered at no cost to the patient, as required under President Barack Obama’s overhaul.”

The Christian Institute: “The judgement of headmaster and school-governor groups has been cast into doubt after they took part in a sex education study sponsored by a condom company. The controversial decision, which comes amidst increasing concern about the content of sex education, has been slammed by family campaigners.”

OneNewsNow: “A coalition of pro-life groups has launched EllaCausesAbortions.com to emphasize the dangers of the new “morning-after” pill, ellaOne.”