#Contraception

[reasonsforhope]

"In short: Nine million Canadian women of reproductive age will have the full cost of their contraception covered as part of a major health care reform, the government says.

The reform includes the most widely used contraceptive methods, such as IUDs, contraceptive pills, hormonal implants and the day after pill.

What's next? The government must still win the approval of Canada's provinces, which administer health care."

"Canada will cover the full cost of contraception for women, the government says as it highlights the first part of a major health care reform.

The government will pay for the most widely used contraceptive methods, such as IUDs, contraceptive pills, hormonal implants or the day after pill, for the nine million Canadian women of reproductive age, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Sunday at a press conference in a pharmacy in Toronto.

"Women should be free to choose the contraceptives they need without cost getting in the way. So, we're making contraceptives free," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on X, formerly Twitter.

The announcement fleshes out the first part of a bill unveiled in February that, once completed, would mark the biggest expansion of Canada's publicly funded health care system in decades.

This new regime will also cover the cost of diabetes medication for some 3.7 million Canadians.

The cost of the new system and timing of the launch have not been announced...

The government must now win the approval of Canada's provinces, which actually administer health care, for this new system. Alberta and Quebec have already said they would opt out.

The pharmacare plan — as it is called locally — follows protracted negotiations between Mr Trudeau's Liberal minority government and a small leftist faction in parliament.

The New Democratic Party agreed to prop up the Liberals until the fall of 2025, on the condition that the government immediately launch the drug program."

-via ABC News Australia, March 31, 2024

[figtreeandvine]

None of us should have to know what the Comstock Act is. But if you live in the US and don't know what it is, go look it up.

[tomorrowusa]

Republicans won't stop at abortion. They want to be overseers of all reproduction. They won't be happy unless they are able to monitor every bedroom and doctor's office in the US.

We recently saw how the Republican Alabama Supreme Court ruled against IVF. That ruling was peppered with copious references to Christian fundamentalist beliefs.

Now Republicans are turning attention to birth control. The unhinged MAGA crank Charlie Kirk ranted about this recently.

Charlie Kirk, the head of the MAGA propaganda behemoth Turning Point USA, recently unveiled a novel theory as to why young women tend to vote for Democrats. Unwilling to admit that women can think for themselves, Kirk floated the theory that birth control pills cause brain damage. "Birth control like really screws up female brains," he falsely claimed before a crowd at a recent church event streamed on the far-right site Rumble. Claiming the pill "increases depression, anxiety [and] suicidal ideation," he then blamed women's voting patterns on hormonal contraception. "It creates very angry and bitter young ladies and young women," Kirk argued.

I would argue that Trump and his followers are the ones with screwed up brains. There is a strong tendency of misogynistic patriarchy in the GOP. They feel a need to control women – possibly because of their own feelings of sexual inadequacy.

But of course, Kirk is not sincerely mistaken and he certainly isn't concerned about the wellbeing of women, which all reputable research shows is dramatically improved by having control over their fertility. Kirk's doctor cosplay is part of a much larger and semi-coordinated strategy among right-wing leaders to demonize birth control and train the GOP base into believing that restricting, or even banning, contraception is justified.  As the Washington Post reported last month, right-wing activists have been flooding social media with the same lies that Kirk was echoing in this video. It's a well-financed disinformation campaign, getting a major boost from MAGA billionaire Peter Thiel, who has aggressively financed teams of messengers to falsely claim that hormonal birth control "tricked our bodies into dysfunction and pain." Doctors report that the tidal wave of misinformation about birth control is creating a health care crisis, including women who "come in for abortions after believing what they see on social media about the dangers of hormonal birth control." 

Female empowerment is anathema to many on the far right. And the right to control one's body is part of that empowerment.

At heart, Republicans are anti-freedom.

Of course, the real reason MAGA leaders don't like birth control is they oppose the freedom and opportunities that it has afforded women. Kirk barely bothers to hide that this is his real agenda. In the very same talk, he also tries to threaten women who hold out for Mr. Right instead of settling for Mr. Incel: "In their early 30's they get really upset because they say the boys don't want to date me anymore because they're not at their prime," he claims, echoing the unevidenced revenge fantasy that dominates misogynist message boards. 

Roe v. Wade had been the law of the land for over 49 years until the Trump-Bush Supreme Court rescinded it in 2022.

Birth control medications have been around since 1960. Despite that 64 year precedent, don't think that Republicans won't try to find some way to ban them if given a chance.

[fem-lit]

Vital lies are resilient. Contraception, for example, is defined by the medical profession, depending on the social mood, as making women ill or “beautiful”: Victorian doctors claimed that any contraception caused “galloping cancer, sterility and nymphomania in women; … the practise was likely to produce mania leading to suicide.” Until the 1920s, it was considered “distinctly dangerous to health,” sterility and “mental degeneration in subsequent offspring” being among its supposed effects. But when society needed sexually available women, although questions about safety and side effects arose at once, women’s magazines nonetheless ran enthusiastic stories suggesting that the Pill would keep women young, and make them more “sexy.”

— Naomi Wolf (1990) The Beauty Myth

[lolochaponnay]

[porterdavis]

Fair is fair. It shouldn't be entirely on women to shoulder the responsibility for preventing unwanted pregnancies.

(Anyone who thinks condoms are a solution has never been in the back seat of their parents' car fumbling around in the dark in the throes of passion).

[maklodes]

Kind of a cheese strat, but if you're a Catholic you only sin once in getting a vasectomy/tubal ligation I think. Then you confess your sins, do the penance, etc. You don't have to sin continuously by wearing condoms / taking birth control pills / etc.

Catholicism doesn't require reversing that stuff once it's already done, so from then on you can be like "IDK what to say Father. I creampie my wife when she's ovulating every month, but she never gets pregnant. That sinful vasectomy I got a decade ago is just the only thing keeping my intercourse from fulfilling both its unitive and procreative telos! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

(This might also work with IUDs, but as I was searching, it seems like there's a problem with Catholic hospitals refusing to remove IUDs. Like, "we don't have anything to do with contraception here, including taking it out." Seems sort of counterproductive.)

[planetofsnarfs]

Horrifying undercover footage (see below) shows Texas Republican officials supporting the death penalty for women who get an abortion or IVF treatments. And this includes rape and incest victims, as well as minors.

During a meeting in Hood County, many elected officials — including Constable Scott London, Hood County GOP Chair Steve Biggers, and Hood County GOP Chair candidate Greg Harrell — discussed the importance of punishing women who get IVF the same way you'd punish a woman who seeks abortion: women from both camps should be charged with murder. And executing these women would be proper punishment.

"Other forms of abortion…would include IVF, when a fertilized egg is created and is often times destroyed. Those that do [IVF] are terminating or destroying a human life," said Paul Brown, director of Abolish Abortion Texas (AATX), the Republican group that gave the presentation and that, according to Meidas Touch Network, is also trying to get contraception outlawed. 

"Their lives [women] don't matter any more than the babies they are killing," he said. 

(See footage below, posted by Adrienne Quinn Martin, who chairs Hood County Democrats and who secretly shot the video.)

[moontyger]

IUD placement can be painful. These women used their phones to record it.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) acknowledged in an opinion eight years ago that IUD insertion “is painful for many women.” In January, the organization reaffirmed the 2016 opinion, which notes that research has not demonstrated “an effective strategy to mitigate this discomfort.”

Research also shows that physicians and other providers underestimate women’s pain during IUD insertions. In a study of 200 women, most of whom had given birth, the women reported an average maximum pain score of nearly 65 on a scale of 0 to 100.

The providers, however, rated the women’s pain at about 35.

Local anesthetics, sedation and other options are available for IUD placement, but many clinicians do not readily offer them. Physicians said that determining the best pain control can be difficult because women’s preferences and experiences vary, and there are not enough effective options or guidelines on when to use them.

[hellyeahscarleteen]

Women are getting off birth control amid misinformation explosion

[scientificinquirer-blog]

At Stake in Mifepristone Case: Abortion, FDA’s Authority, and Return to 1873 Obscenity Law

Lawyers from the conservative Christian group that won the case to overturn Roe v. Wade are returning to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday in pursuit of an urgent priority: shutting down access to abortion pills for women across the country. The case challenges the FDA’s regulation of mifepristone, a prescription-only drug approved in 2000 with a stellar safety record that is used in 63% of all…

[meret118]

Both parties are NOT the same!