Pipe Dream: Pro-Life Pro-Choice Alliance

As pro-choice activists gather to defend Planned Parenthood funding under Title X the same exhausted fight over abortion rages on, one fraught with violence, anger and divisive rhetoric. You are either for women or against them, support babies or want to kill them. We scream our positions until we become deaf to anything but our own messages.

One pro-life person on Twitter said this:

can hear the #nyc4women rally from my window. Those words are loud and empty…. #prolife

We must ask ourselves how a woman could find a rallying cry for women’s rights empty. What in that message is missing?

Emergency Contraception is Not an Abortion

The FDA recently approved (found via washingtonpost.com) a new Emergency Contraception called “Ella” and for some reason its prescription-only availability is being labeled as “controversial.” The only controversy I see are special interest parties using scare-tactics and misleading statements to compare this drug to RU-486 (mifepristone), an abortificant.

Let’s be clear:

No Pleasure in the Ghetto

Social injustice is a hard wall to break (pic via yoostin.com)

This morning I woke up to a local housing project’s message about canceling a workshop on safer sex. The reason? No funding for outside presenters.

Welcome to the most frustrating injustice in sex education: information access and restricted conversations.

Men: Too Stupid to Take Daily Birth Control?

Statue in Oslo's Vigeland Park. Photo by Mark Wilkinson.

In case you haven’t heard, Israel developed a male birth control pill. The drug, which works by stripping protein from sperm that is necessary for conception, is about to go into clinical trials. Aside from being the first male oral contraceptive, this is also the first non-hormonal oral contraceptive. Awesome.

But the awesomeness is dampened by blatant sexism from men’s female partners. A snip from the Telegraph article:

A big drawback against men being in control of fertility is the fear they would forget to take a pill.

Polls have repeatedly shown wives and partners do not trust their men to remember to pop a pill every day.

But now that problem has been solved. The new pill can be taken either once a month or once every three months.

Professor Breitbart said: “I think most women would trust their man to remember once a month or once a quarter.”

So, women never forget to take their birth control pills since we are paragons of domestic and sexual responsibility? Spare me.

I posted the article on my Facebook page and my friends jumped on the debate wagon. Here are the highlight points and why they’re wrong:

Fear of Teen Sex

I woke up this morning with wicked stuffed sinuses and headed to the gym to try and run from the sickness. My mode today is sloth and I stepped on the treadmill just in time for midday trash TV. Nestled in between CNN and Martha Stewart was Maury Povich and his headline scare topic of the day was teen sex parties. Sorry, make that, TEEN SEX PARTIES: AN ALARMING NEW TREND.

This is not new and endemic to the current generation.

Better Sex with Condoms

The most common complaint whispered to me at parties (especially by guys) is that condoms suck. They feel weird, they decrease sensation, they smell/taste funny. I love how none of them want to fix the problem, only bitch to me. Guess what: you can make sex with condoms feel better.

Male Birth Control

Birth control responsibility tends to fall on women but there is a testosterone-based contraception shot for men in the works. Out of 1,000 men in the study receiving the shots, only 1 percent fathered a child in a two year period. Pretty good batting average.

Personally, I am wary of hormonal birth control. The pill, though an important factor in women’s liberation, directly caused deaths and other major health issues when first introduced. While I’m sure that pharmaceutical companies have learned from that lesson I still feel wary. Injecting/ingesting chemicals of any type into your body on a consistent basis will have side effects, often negative.

On the other hand, I am curious to see how this will change the sexual landscape. How many men will take advantage of this? Considering that men often avoid preventative health care I’m going with “not many”.

I could be wrong. However, I’m willing to bet that in a generation or two men will take better care of themselves and feel comfortable going into a doctor’s office or clinic to obtain hormonal birth control.

Viruses!

Viruses are FASCINATING. They’re in between living and non-living, and thus require host organisms to replicate.
Viruses exist in 2 cycle phases: lysogenic and lysis. Lysogenic is when a virus is just chillin’ inside of a cell. Lysis is when it explodes from and kills the host cell, much like a creepy sci-fi alien bursting out of a chest cavity.

The best defense against viruses?

Pill Poppin’ Sex

When the pill first came out in 1960 it was officially prescribed as a medication to treat menstrual disorders. Women all over America developed menstrual conditions overnight: most people knew the hidden use.