Sometimes the blogs just write themselves...

Well, who knew that sex education actually DELAYED sexual activity in teens..............!?!? You mean if you teach children and teens age appropriate information about sexuality they will have the tools to know how to wait to have sex????? What a shocker (note the sarcasm). Ya know this on top of the studies that have been coming out on increases on teen pregnancies (see Jamie Lynn Spears) and STD's, maybe the administration and anti-choicers will finally but a stop to abstinence only funding. Oh if only we were so lucky. Please Santa!!!!!

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Teenagers who have had formal sex education are far more likely to put off having sex, contradicting earlier studies on the effectiveness of such programs, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

They found teenage boys who had sex education in school were 71 percent less likely to have intercourse before age 15, and teen girls who had sex education were 59 percent less likely to have sex before age 15.

Sex education also increased the likelihood that teen boys would use contraceptives the first time they had sex, according to the study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"Sex education seems to be working," Trisha Mueller, an epidemiologist with the CDC who led the study, said in a statement. "It seems to be especially effective for populations that are usually at high risk."

Mueller's team looked at a 2002 national survey of 2,019 teens aged 15 to 19.

They found teen boys who had sex education in school were nearly three times more likely to use birth control the first time they had intercourse. But sex education appeared to have no effect on whether teen girls used birth control, the researchers found.

Black teenage girls who had sex education in school were 91 percent less likely to have sex before age 15.

The researchers did not evaluate the content of sex education programs, including whether students were taught about contraception or about abstinence only.

Earlier studies, which relied on data from the 1970s through the 1990s, suggested sex education did little to persuade teens to delay sex.

The researchers said they think the difference may be that sex education in the United States is now more widespread and is being taught at earlier ages.

"Unlike many previous studies, our results suggest that sex education before first sex protects youth from engaging in sexual intercourse at an early age," they wrote.

Holidays of Choice

This is the season that really reminds me how many choices we have in life. Choices concerning everything, from decisions about the not so important (cherry red, fire engine red, cranberry, crimson, or GA Bulldog red wrapping paper ?), to the moderately important (the $5 earrings or the $15 earrings for Cousin Sue?), to the legitimately paramount (How can I show my family and my community that I care? How can I live my life in the generous and loving spirit of the holiday season all year?)

All the decisions we expressly make during the holiday season can make us feel busy and stressed out. We are reminded both that we live in a world with tremendous abundance and in a world where our caring and generosity are needed as much as ever. To me, the true spirit of the holiday season lies in understanding both, and in making the myriad of decisions I have to make according to my values.

And like many of life's trials and life's lessons, these thoughts bring me back to how I view the Women's Rights movement in our country. In regards to the independence and treatment of women, we have so much to be thankful for and have come immensely far, yet we have plenty of work to do and battles to wage in 2008 that seem like they should have been settled decades ago. We live in abundance, but our energy and dedication to women's health are needed as much as ever.

Choice, as we know it in the movement, is not so different from the choices of paramount importance that we all make every day, particularly the ones that come to the forefront of our minds in the reflective time of the holiday season as another year ends. We move forward with our values and beliefs guiding us, to let our families and our communities know we care, and live our lives in the spirit of generosity and love.

Contraception Shouldn't be a Luxury: The Fight for Affordable Birth Control

It’s hard to ignore. Listen to the news or go into to a clinic for your monthly birth control pills: An increasing number of laws and regulations have made it harder for Americans (especially low-income Americans) to access birth control. The most recent of these unfortunate regulations, passed through the Federal Deficit Reduction Act in late 2006, prevents universities and nonprofit health care organizations, like Planned Parenthood, from purchasing and providing low-cost contraceptives to patients. Strangely enough, this outcome was a mistake- an unintended consequence of some loop-hole closing on the part of congress. As a result, since January, when the law went into effect, birth control prices have skyrocketed for over 3 million college students and roughly 750,000 low-income women. For nearly twenty years, pharmaceutical companies have been permitted to provide birth control pills at very low cost to particular providers who work with clients especially in need. The error eliminating this possibility has been hard to fix because certain members of the House and Senate are so out of touch with the average American, they’d like to see birth control harder to access. Someone should remind them that 98% of women in this country have used birth control!
And the sad part is, according to the Guttmacher Institute, rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion are on the rise among low-income women. It seems obvious that we need to help women and couples prevent unintended pregnancy by increasing the availability of affordable birth control- the opposite of what’s happened this year. On college campuses, birth control has gone from $5 or $10 dollars to $40 or $50 dollars a month. Some college health centers have stopped providing birth control at all. For many students and low-income women, birth control is now out of reach. To a college student or a low income woman, $50 is two weeks of groceries, or a fifth of a moth’s rent. No one should have to make a decision between these things and their monthly birth control.

This Congress has had over 9 months to fix this mistake, but has yet to do so.
To fix the problem and make birth control affordable again, Congress only needs to make a small change to the law, permitting pharmaceutical companies to once again offer these low-cost drugs to university health centers and safety net providers. This simple fix will not cost Congress or the American people a dime. But failing to do so will be devastating for students and low-income women.
We’re all up in arms about gas hitting $3 a gallon and housing costs rising upwards of 15%. The cost of birth control has skyrocketed- a whopping 900% in some cases! Degradation of women’s health is certainly worthy of public outcry as well. We must let congress know: SAVE BIRTH CONTROL NOW!

Funny.....Romney agrees with Planned Parenthood....sky falls in

Last week, Presidential candidate and pre-campaign "BFF" of Planned Parenthood, Mitt Romney, had a little event outside an adoption agency in Greenville, S.C. where he said that he felt that all family planning providers should provide information on adoption as well.

Funny, Mr. Romney, but Planned Parenthood agrees with you for once since you flipped on your support of them.

See, Planned Parenthood believes in "all options counseling". What this means is that when a woman comes into any of our clinics, having to make the difficult choices that come with an unintended pregnancy, she is counseled on all the available choices to her, including keeping the pregnancy and subsequent child as well as adoption and abortion. Planned Parenthood is about CHOICES, whatever that choice may be when it comes to facing a difficult decision. If the right choice for you is adoption, then we'll do what we can to help you move forward with that decision. See, we know its not up to us to decide.

So, with November as National Adoption Month, I want to give a big thanks to the big faker, Mr. Mitt Romney for agreeing with Planned Parenthood on the belief of giving all options to women in difficult life decisions. I wonder if he could still say he believes in "all options" with abortion as one of those options. I mean, he used to before and he is all about providing all options to women.......right?

Dispense medication, not judgement

On Monday, Pope Benedict gave a speech at the Vatican, telling Catholic pharmacists to refuse to dispense medications with "clearly immoral goals". Read between the lines, he means medications used for pregnancy prevention and euthanasia.

Now, I know, you are probably saying "the Pope is against birth control, blow me over with a feather". True, the Vatican makes no secret of the fact that they are opposed to any "artificial" birth control methods. What is scary is the context and what else he said. He said it was a "recognized right" to object to things you find morally objectionable. That means that if you are a pharmacist, or any person for that matter, who has the control over what someone else needs, you can put your moral judgment above theirs. He also says that the pharmacist has a right to tell someone of the moral implications that their decisions have. So, the Pope is also OK'ing prostylitizing to other people. (Also, it would be great if he could talked about things based on medical facts, like how medications like Plan B prevent conception, so that you end up preventing many abortions from even taking place.)

I understand that the Catholic Church and the Pope have their beliefs. I also understand that it is a Papal Doctrine and the Catholic laws themselves have no restrictions to determining life or use of birth control. As someone who comes from a Catholic background, I have no problem with Catholics following what their beliefs tell them. Many family members and I disagree on many issues, but we are glad we have a right to disagree and that we can both live freely with that. What I have a major problem with is when they, or anyone else for that matter, start infringing on my right to my own beliefs. Here in the US, we may not think much about this, thanks to Right to Privacy and what groups like Planned Parenthood have done to maintain separation of church and state in medicine, but in strongly Catholic countries, this is a huge interferrence to what women should have available if they want/need it.

If Pharmacists start following the guidelines that the Pope gives, where does it end? So, you oppose birth controls, Plan B, etc... but what about when someone comes in to get medications for HIV/AIDS? I mean, if you are opposing birth control because you believe that people should wait until marriage (even though an overwhelming number doesn't), then if someone contracts an STD, can you oppose giving them the life saving medications they need? The Vatican has stated that there needs to be support for people living with HIV/AIDS, so would that mean that its OK to treat them once they have it, but after you shake your finger at them? Is that what the world needs?

Times are changing. Like it or not, these life saving medications are available. People are able to go on to lead healthy and successful lives so that later on if they make the choice to have children, those children are going to be brought into a much healthier situation that they will certainly thrive in better. There is widespread poverty and illness in the world, something that the Vatican has always said is their main goal to eradicate. So, I hope they work on that and I hope they do a great job, I just wish that the church would stay out of my pharmacy. I heard once that one of the CEO's of a major national chain pharmacy said "your job is to dispense medication, not judgment. If you can't do that, maybe this isn't the job for you". I agree wholeheartedly.

Anti Union Ballot Initiative Bad for Women's Health

Word on the street is that there's going to be what's called a "Right to Work" initiative on the ballot in November 2008 here in Michigan. This title, like so many in politics, is totally deceiving. If passed, "Right to Work" would make it illegal for unions to require payment or membership as a condition of employment within unionized sectors of the workforce. Without the commitment of all employees, joint action to better wages and benefits, or to fight for safe working conditions, is impossible. Since all employees in a unionized shop benefit from the action of union efforts, all employees must be invested in the process, so that the betterment provided by their victories are fairly distributed.

Simply put, so-called "Right to Work," initiatives destroy and illegalize the very concept that makes Unions work. As the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr said, "Right-to-work...provides no 'rights' and no 'work' ... Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining." History shows us, whether it be in the battle for labor rights, the civil rights movement, or the reproductive justice movement, working together collectively, across class, race, and gender lines, is what has made our life-changing and life-saving successes possible.

As a state with a strong Union history, we have seen gains far beyond those states that are "Right to Work." For example, Michigan workers have higher average pay than workers in these states- $7,600 higher a year, in fact. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of workplace deaths is significantly higher in non-union states (41%), as is poverty (3.8% compared with Michigan) and infant mortality (16%). Why would we want to go down that path?

Since so many Americans, and Michiganders for that matter, already have trouble accessing affordable reproductive health care because they don't make enough money and don't have health insurance, taking away the right to collectively bargain for benefits and pay for many of Michigan's workers doesn't make sense. Currently, over 580,000 Michigan women need publicly funded contraceptives because they have incomes below 250% of the federal poverty level. 15% of Michigan women between 15 and 44 are without health insurance at all, including Medicaid coverage (13% of Women have Medicaid, meaning 28% are low income.)

In Michigan, 239 publicly funded family planning clinics provide contraceptive care to over 233,800 women and family planning clinics in Michigan serve only 40% of all women in need of publicly supported contraceptive services. We already cannot meet the need of all the women and couples who need reproductive health and family planning services. We should not create a situation where more Michigan residents will be living with low incomes and no insurance.

The War on Birth Control, Part 1

In this day and age, it seems like hyperbole to say there is a war being waged against birth control, but there have been so many recent attacks that it is pretty easy to make the case. This is the first of a series of posts I’ll be making about blatant attacks on contraception.

Earlier this week, the Bush administration announced the appointment of Susan Orr as the agency’s acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs. Unfortunately, that “acting” designation means she is not subject to Senate confirmation. The position makes her responsible for the oversight of Title X, the federal family planning program that serves more than 5 million low-income Americans annually. Title X helps low-income women get birth control. In a bit of irony that only the Bush administration could generate, Orr represents the second appointment this year of an anti-birth control crusader to a position that is responsible for providing low-income women with birth control.

In Orr’s former position as senior director for marriage and family care at the Family Research Council, a political organization that opposes family planning, she cheered the Bush administration’s proposed elimination of the contraceptive coverage requirement from federal employees’ health insurance. Said Orr of the proposal, “We’re quite pleased because fertility is not a disease. It’s not a medical necessity that you have [contraception].”

She said that requiring insurance companies to cover contraception was “making everyone collaborators with the culture of death.” That is a strong statement considering 98% of us are using birth control at some point in our lives.

Earlier this year, Bush appointed Eric Keroack, another anti-birth control extremist, for the same post. Keroack served as head of an organization called “A Woman’s Concern,” which boasted an anti-contraception policy on its website that declared birth control is “demeaning to women.” Keroack stepped down earlier this year amid Medicaid fraud allegations.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D–CA) said it best: “This appointment is absurd.”

You can take action against this outrageous appointment at
http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/oppose_orr

I moved to Michigan a little over a year ago, and I think it’s a wonderful place! In fact, I’m surprised how much I like it and how quickly I felt at home here. The beautiful scenery, the culture, and the people all make Michigan a place I want to stay. But this budget crisis we’re in is worrying me. I can’t even fathom 1.7 billion dollars! What I do know though is that our legislators have one job that they legally have to complete--and that’s to introduce and ratify a balanced budget. And I know that this is tough, but unlike last year, I don’t want a band-aid. I want to see lasting changes made that will help Michigan grow and prosper, so that I can stay here and raise a family with a good quality of life. I think we’ve cut more services than we can afford to and am glad our elected officials have finally realized it’s time to enhance revenues (yes, that means implement or raise taxes) so that we can function effectively without throwing social programs and those that depend on them out the window. Investing in the future of Michigan and Michiganders by raising taxes a little is a small price to pay for security and prosperity in the long run. I don’t want to see Michigan “race to the bottom,” allowing short-term fixes that benefit a few right now rather than the majority of folks over time. I want to get through this budget stuff and start functioning as a respectable state again. I’m skeptical of those that want to cut all non-essential services to save money, because I think some of these are quite essential! Investing now does save money in the long run. For example, every dollar spent on Family Planning saves three dollars later in Medicaid costs. Helping people with disabilities find work saves millions later in disability benefits, welfare costs, and emergency room visits. To me the bottom line is that Michigan has a responsibility to take care of its people and to provide opportunities for them to prosper. It’s unfair that the hard-headed anti-taxers want to ruin the chance for this to happen.