Tag Archives: Contraceptive

Commentary

Should social conservatives vote for Barack Obama?

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Here’s an article from Life News. Let’s see how Obama feels about taking the lives of innocent unborn human persons.

Excerpt:

The following is a compilation of bill signings, speeches, appointments and other actions that President Barack Obama has engaged in that have promoted abortion before and during his presidency.

While Obama has promised to reduce abortions and some of his supporters believe that will happen, this long list proves his only agenda is promoting more abortions.

During the presidential election, Obama selected pro-abortion Sen. Joe Biden as his vice-presidential running mate.

Here are a few of the items listed. (There are over ONE HUNDRED pro-abortion actions listed)

November 5, 2008 – Obama selects pro-abortion Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his White House Chief of Staff. Emanuel has a 0% pro-life voting record according to National Right to Life.

November 24, 2008 – Obama appoints Ellen Moran, the former director of the pro-abortion group Emily’s List as his White House communications director. Emily’s List only supports candidates who favored taxpayer funded abortions and opposed a partial-birth abortion ban.

November 24, 2008 – Obama puts former Emily’s List board member Melody Barnes in place as his director of the Domestic Policy Council.

January 23, 2009 – Forces taxpayers to fund pro-abortion groups that either promote or perform abortions in other nations. Decision to overturn Mexico City Policy sends part of $457 million to pro-abortion organizations.

February 27, 2009 – Starts the process of overturning pro-life conscience protections President Bush put in place to make sure medical staff and centers are not forced to do abortions.

February 28, 2009 – Barack Obama nominates pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius to become Secretary of Health and Human Services.

April 14 – Obama administration releases document that claims pro-life people may engage in violence or extremism.

May 5 – Details emerge about a terrorism dictionary the administration of President Barack Obama put together in March. The Domestic Extremism Lexicon calls pro-life advocates violent and claims they employ racist overtones in engaging in criminal actions.

May 8 – President Obama’s budget eliminates all federal funding for abstinence-only education.

May 26 – Appoints appeals court judge Sonia Sonotmayoras a Supreme Court nominee. Sotomayor agrees that the courts should make policy, such as the Roe v. Wade case. Sotomayor is later opposed by pro-life groups and supported by pro-abortion groups and those who know her say she will support abortion on the high court.

July 14 – Obama science czar nominee John Holdren is revealed to have written before that he favors forced abortions.

August 4 – Information becomes public that Ezekiel Emanuel, an Obama advisor at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research, supports rationing health care for disabled Americans that could lead to euthanasia.

December 17 – Signed a bill that overturned the 13-year-long ban on funding abortions with tax dollars in the nation’s capital.

January 26, 2010 – Renominates radical pro-abortion activist Dawn Johnsen to a top Justice Department position.

February 8, 2010 – The Obama administration admitted it improperly conducted a threat assessmenton pro-life groups in Wisconsin who were preparing to rally against a new abortion center at a University of Wisconsin health clinic.

March 22, 2010 – Signs the pro-abortion health care bill into law that contains massive abortion funding, no conscience protections and rationing.

May 10, 2010 – Names pro-abortion activist Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court; she is strongly opposed by pro-life groups.

September 30, 2010 – Obama administration exposed as to how it partnered with leading pro-abortion organizations to host an FBI training seminar in August with the main focus of declaring as “violent” the free speech activities of pro-life Americans.

December 14, 2010 – Obama administration admits it is working to rescind conscience protections for medical professionals who don’t want to participate in abortions.

February 18, 2011 – President Obama weakens conscience protections for pro-life medical workers.

March 2, 2011 – Obama administration refuses to investigatevideos showing Planned Parenthood helping alleged sex traffickers get abortions for victimized underage girls.

Read the whole thing – the linked article contains links to all the news stories I mentioned, and the ones I left out. Barack Obama claims to be a Christian, and many many social conservatives believe him. But I think the list shows that Obama’s decisions and policies on abortion are at odds with the Bible, and the practices of the early Christian church. I also don’t think that Obama’s progressive fiscal policy or weak foreign policy are consistent with Christianity, but that’s another post for another day.

Here is my previous post on Obama’s pro-abortion record.

Commentary

The dark side of the birth control pill

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This story is from New York Magazine. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

The Pill changed the world. These days, women’s twenties are as free and fabulous as they can be, a time of boundless freedom and experimentation, of easily trying on and discarding identities, careers, partners. The Pill, which is the most popular form of contraception in the U.S., is still the symbol of that freedom. As a young woman, you feel chic throwing that light plastic pack of dainty pills into your handbag, its retro pastel-colored wheel design or neat snap-to-close box sandwiched between lipstick and cell phone, keys and compact. It’s easy to believe the assurances of the guests at the Pierre gala that the Pill holds the answers to empowerment and career success, to say nothing of sexual liberation—the ability to have sex in the same way that guys always have, without guilt, fear, or strings attached. The Pill is part of what makes one a modern woman, conferring adulthood and cool with the swipe of a doctor’s pen.

[…]The fact is that the Pill, while giving women control of their bodies for the first time in history, allowed them to forget about the biological realities of being female until it was, in some cases, too late. It changed the narrative of women’s lives, so that it was much easier to put off having children until all the fun had been had (or financial pressures lessened). Until the past couple of decades, even most die-hard feminists were still married at 25 and pregnant by 28, so they never had to deal with fertility problems, since a tiny percentage of women experience problems conceiving before the age of 28. Now many New York women have shifted their attempts at conception back about ten years. And the experience of trying to get pregnant at that age amounts to a new stage in women’s lives, a kind of second adolescence. For many, this passage into childbearing—a Gail Sheehy–esque one, with its own secrets and rituals—is as fraught a time as the one before was carefree.

Suddenly, one anxiety—Am I pregnant?—is replaced by another: Can I get pregnant? The days of gobbling down the Pill and running out to CVS at 3 a.m. for a pregnancy test recede in the distance, replaced by a new set of obsessions. The Pill didn’t create the field of infertility medicine, but it turned it into an enormous industry. Inadvertently, indirectly, infertility has become the Pill’s primary side effect.

I remember that this topic came up in Miriam Grossman’s first book, where she was explaining how women spend the best years of their lives pursue degrees and money, and they have no idea how their fertility declines with age! It’s really sad. Speaking as a man, I actually looked into how age would affect my ability to have children when I was in my late 20s.  It’s sad that older women in the feminists movement think nothing of foisting all of these lies on younger women – and sadder still that younger women mostly don’t understand how they are affected by these lies.

Articles like this really scratch where I itch as a person. Ever since I was a child, I always wanted to know how to live the next phase of my life – what would happen next, and how could I be ready. This is what’s behind some of the decisions I’ve made that have protected me from danger. I actually spend a lot of time fretting about fretting about inflation and old age and so on, making plans and carrying them out. Part of it is learning about what I should value as a man – what will fulfill me. So often we don’t pay attention to the traits conveyed by our distinct sex and think that we can undo our nature with drugs, and speculative blind-faith believing and so on – wishful thinking and hoping. But that’s just foolishness. The world is the way it is and we are the way we are. God has made us all with certain desires and needs, and some of them are fairly fixed based on our sex.

Commentary

Should birth control pills be dispensed over the counter?

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Andrea Mrozek in the Ottawa Citizen.

Excerpt:

Welcome to the world of Do It Yourself Doctoring. Recent reports indicate that the birth control pill may become available in the United States without a prescription. Proponents will claim this makes women’s lives healthier and easier. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The pill is not Tylenol or cough medication. Certainly it’s widely used. However, forever downplayed are the nasty and known side effects: There’s the risk of blood clots leading to stroke. There’s mood swings. There’s increased risk of cervical cancer, (alongside the highly touted effect of decreasing the risk of ovarian cancer). There’s a 44-per-cent increased risk of developing breast cancer for young women prior to having children, a finding published in the Mayo Clinic journal in 2006. Anecdotal evidence has some women feeling permanently nauseous, others get depressed. Still others say they lose, wait for the irony, the desire to have sex.

[…]Even some pro-choice women’s health advocates prefer to teach natural family planning (the symptothermal method) with the solid claim that it works with the same efficacy as oral contraceptives. The advantages are that it’s not a product you purchase and it works with a woman’s natural body rhythm. The disadvantages? It takes time to learn and teach, and pharmaceutical companies can’t make money on it.

These voices are hushed up in part because pharmaceutical companies have long tentacles, and in part because the pill remains the darling of old-school feminists. It is the great equalizer. On it, you can have sex anytime without ever getting pregnant, just like men do — or so we are told.

Read the rest, it’s very interesting.