Celebrating Back Up Your Birth Control Day
Today the liberal feminist movement celebrates ingesting megadoses of environmentally toxic, cancer causing, pheromone altering, libido killing, chemically modified, female steroids, yeah!
Matthew Hennessey could be making the same observation about hormonal birth control pills and emergency contraceptives as abortion. Just add levonorgestrel drospirenone, ethinyl estradiol, norgestrel (ingredients in Plan B, Next Choice, and/or basic BC pill), and ulipristal acetate (EllaOne) to his list of synthetic compounds:
After all, abortion is not organic…. It is a lot of things. Natural, it is not.
Yet, somehow the politics of this have gotten all turned around. The greenies are in league with the pro-abortion people.
The same ones who promote all-natural living – organic fruits, locally-grown vegetables, hormone-free milk, free-range chickens, solar panels, wind turbines, etc. – are usually the same ones who want to make sure that women everywhere have unlimited access to synthetic compounds – gemeprost, methotrexate, mifepristone, misoprostol, etc. – that cause abortions.
Then there’s the pro-life “claim” – found on virtually ever manufacturing label – that BC and EC kill babies.
Oh, it may be true according to modern linguistic jujitsu that they do not “terminate a pregnancy,” but the fact remains BC and EC can kill 5/9-day-old young humans who are still floating in the uterus. Show me the fine print that doesn’t admit it.
That said, BC and EC miss blocking more than their share. In fact, studies repeatedly show widespread EC use actually raises pregnancy rates. Here’s the latest, quoting The Daily Mail, March 25:
Whatever anyone thought about its potential efficacy in the past, the idea that the morning after pill protects young girls from unwanted pregnancy now lies in tatters. The medical profession’s ‘gold standard’ Cochrane Review says there is no evidence it does. Worse, health economists from the University of Nottingham have found that emergency contraception provided free to teenagers led to a rise in unwanted teen pregnancy. And it has contributed to dramatically rising sexually transmitted infections amongst teenagers.
Yes, this is certainly a day to celebrate, isn’t it?
[All graphics via ecequalsbc.tumblr.com]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
It saddens me that women’s power has to be about killing our children. Such a warped, backwards world we live in. I’m just glad I’m on the side of Truth and Love; the side that values all life and believes in true womanhood. :)
So…it “can kill 5/9-day-old young humans who are still floating in the uterus”…but at the same time, “studies repeatedly show widespread EC use actually raises pregnancy rates”. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Because those two things aren’t absolutely contradictory statements at all.
I was just discussing this w/my fiancee last night. I find it just darkly hilarious that these women eschew everything ‘unnatural’ in their lives, scream about GMO foods, and demonize ‘big pharma’ freak out at even a hint, a whisper, a suggestion that their birth control pills might not be healthy for them. They clutch that package of birth control pills to their chest and cry mightily on how they “NEEEED” them. Oh it’s just too funny!
The same Daily Mail is running a story about how a teacher brought in a pro-life speaker who informed students of the health risks of abortion: psychological issues and a rise in likelihood of getting cancer. OH the comments! ‘It’s untrue! He lies!’ was the response. Any hint that this new birth control/abortion culture might not be as miraculous as touted is considered blasphemy.
xalisae, it’s simple. Both odds increase. The odds of either getting pregnant and sustaining the pregnancy OR getting pregnant and killing one’s child increase the more one has sex. It’s sexual Russian roulette.
The more one thinks one can have sex without consequences the more cavalier one behaves sexually. That’s simple logic, aside from multiple studies that have shown greater EC use results in more pregnancies. Plus, BC and EC are only as effective as their users make them.
Contraception math > More birth control makes women “do it” more often, therefor unintended pregnancy increases with availability of birth control
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/03/contraception_math.html
Before I say anything else I just have to say I love the picture of Wonder Woman and her pregnancy proof bracelets. I can’t stop laughing.
Contraception – the new version of the patriarchy’s mandated chastity belt.
BTW, thanks Jill for succintly explaining why birth control can both kill embryos (young humans) and cause an increase in the number of unplanned pregnancies.
Ok. Well, having gone through a relationship with someone who didn’t want to conceive but didn’t really care about whether or not contraception was used, and contraception had no impact on the frequency of sex, I have to say from my experience the real-world scenarios are a bit different than self-righteous hypothesizing.
And honestly, as far as I’m concerned, the hand-wringing about contraception is fretting over a moot point. In the Real World, people are going to have sex. They’re going to have sex with the same frequency they would anyway, regardless of contraceptives employed or not employed. What has to be changed isn’t eliminating contraceptives or using more. It’s the attitude surrounding sexual intercourse as a whole.
xalisae,
If I may say, it sounds like that guy should’ve been thrown to the curb and didn’t deserve to be intimate with you as he obviously didn’t respect your wishes and the life he could’ve (did?) father. Please try not to let this experience color your view of the dangers of contraceptives/abortifacients for the unborn and their Mothers.
The Real World is different for everyone. The Real World is dependent on the people you meet and who you associate with. The Real World also depends on one’s own actions. You can impact your Real World. (Sorry for sounding so preachy.) I agree that it is the attitude around sexual intercourse that needs to change – an excellent point.
He was thrown to the curb, Tyler, the divorce was final in December. It was the best $1,000 bucks I ever spent, even though he intentionally dragged it out as much as he could for a over a year. I spent almost 10 years trying to make it work with someone who didn’t deserve me, who abused me, and who doesn’t respect anything or anyone (even himself), but at least it wasn’t 15 or 20 years. I’m a much happier person now, believe me.
But, anyway, thank you for your positive statement. And, I’m glad we can at least agree on the gist of what I was trying to say.
I was explaining to a girl the other day at my little table in front of the PP in Santa Monica what birth control does to regulate a woman’s body.
This is how I’ve always felt, while I haven’t always lived the life of a good Catholic girl, I never used chemical birth control–I’m a real hippie. Hello, all natural is the way to go!!
The deal is, if you use chemicals to alter your body’s natural rhythm it messes with your entire reproductive system-instead of being in tune with nature and the elements of the earth, your cycle is chemically processed. Like any chemically processed food, it’s not all natural- kinda like, eating those overly processed McDonald’s Chicken nuggets instead of free-range raised filets-except it’s our bodies that being processed and not something were putting into them!! Chemical terilization is just a reeely bad idea.
In response to the GATES OF HELL entry, I am posting this here as well
Clenard Childres gave an amazing sermon at the Cathedral of the Angels this past January preceding the back2back Oakland & San Francisco March’s 4life. I was blessed to be able to get it on film though, I confess I didn’t ask for permission.
The topic: The GATES OF HELL–pretty funny now, I guess, but his powerful message was this: We are blessed. As pro-lifers and children of Christ, we, like Peter are given the prayer and wisdom to enter heaven, but the keys are behind another set of gates–the gates of hell. And we have to rescue the brothers and sisters behind those gates before we can get to the other gates. Like Peter, we are called to be missionaries.
Anyways, here’s the CHILDRESS sermon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqE9v3q3YCE
x – I luv ya, but I can’t go with you on this one – I do not discount your experience – but like everything, there are exceptions – all the statistics point to the fact that increased BC (and now EC) availability increases the rate of unintended pregnancy – true, that ios not the case n every single case, and your case is evidence of that fact also – but in general, the more people think they can have sex without consequences, the more likely they are to engage
I’ve always been of the opinion that the best method of birth control is marriage. If we’re talking about controlling the when and the best circumstances of it.
This of course also means that the marriage must be carefully considered first. It should be the embarkation of your lives together, not just a piece-of-paper afterthought.
I could be wrong. But judging on the society around us, I kind of doubt it.
It’s amazing what women will do to themselves to avoid a baby. Even if a baby isn’t in your plans at the moment, is it really so much worse than the possible side effects of BC? Blood clots, heart attack, stroke, seizure, and potential termination of a pregnancy, not to mention the havoc on your reproductive system and possible CANCER!!! Or, a baby. NOOOOO!
xalisae, it sounds like you have grown a lot over the last 10 years. That is excellent. Divorce can be a troubling and disconcerting event in a person’s life. It sounds like you tried to make your marriage work which is admirable, so many don’t even try anymore, so that speaks volume about your character and your concern for your children. It sounds like it was a tough decision for you to make but I am glad you are no longer abused and hopefully he has learned what he lost and that he should not abuse people.
BTW, a year to get a divorce is not long a time relatively speaking. Although in an abusive situation I am sure it felt like a life time.
To be fair, I’m not really sure how you can still get pregnant on the Pill if it kills the embryo. It doesn’t make sense in my mind–seems like if it didn’t allow implantation, it never would…
Contraception use increasing “unsafe” sexual behavior, thus increasing your chances of pregnancy does, though.
But I’m not too great with biology, just numbers (which is why the part about increased chances of pregnancy makes sense to me), so I’m sure I just don’t get it.
Kate, if a person does not miss taking the pill on schedule, has sex, and an egg is fertilized – implantation has an increased chance of occurring.
If that same person is negligent in taking the Pill, but continues or increases her sexual activity due to feeling more “safe” as result of her faulty contraceptive use she likely has a higher chance of an unplanned pregnancy than if she never took OC and respectfully organized her sexual activity around the times she was willing to get pregnant.
Thank you, Tyler.
Yes, he made it as difficult as possible. He cleaned out our bank account and jacked up all our bills before he left, so it took awhile to get the money for legal help, and then when I finally could, he had moved out of state and refused to tell anyone his address. It was a nightmare. He knows what he lost. I don’t know if he realizes why, or if he ever will, and if he does, whether or not he’ll even care. But he’s someone else’s problem now, thank goodness! XD
Correction:
Kate, if a person does not miss taking the pill on schedule, has sex, and an egg is fertilized – implantation has an increased chance of failing.
xalisae, will you be updating your blog soon? I am still waiting for the second part!!
in the old days, before the marxists convinced us that the idea of marriage-only sex is “oppression,” rather than a global, time-honored tradition, you knew if the guy was committed because he was willing to be with you even without having sex before marriage.
i would give advice to the single females out there to not have sex while dating and considering marriage – i know it is possible because i and millions of ppl have done this – as a way to make sure tha marriage is solid, but i don’t think people really want solid marriages anymore. so, suit yourself. and don’t make me pay for it.
To those confused how bc/ec can both kill babes *and* increase unwanted pregnancies, it’s pretty simple, it just doesn’t *work* all that well. Sometimes it stops ovulation, no ovulation, no chance at pregnancy. But sometimes (even with perfect use) it fails to do that, so ovulation occures. Sometimes it stops implantation, terminating a very early pregnancy, even if you are using it perfectly ovulation/conception can occur and, if it does, sometimes it stops implantation. But it doesn’t do that perfectly either, so sometimes implantation occures which means unintended pregnancy. If bc/ec worked flawlessly to stop ovulation, then there would be no harm to conceived babed and no risk of increased pregnancy. But they lie and promote the “lab perfect” failure rates of these products, not the real world failure rates(which depending upon when they are taken [ec becomes less effective further from intercourse] and the general socio-economic bracket, age group, and culture/race varries from about 90% all the way down to about 60% effectiveness). People don’t just ‘have sex’ regardless of their circumstances. In the real world people judge preceived risk verses preceived reward and act accordingly. Now if you feel like having sex, a temping but non-required activity, and think you have a 98% successful way to prevent pregnancy, well the preceived risk from engaging in sex is far, far lower if you think you have an 80% or 60% successful way to prevent pregnancy. Risk, reward. The reward of sex stays (relatively) unchanged, but the risk changes dramatically, so then, does the decision outcome. If people think they have little risk, they will engage in sex more frquently and thus have more chances for bc/ec to fail and result in a pregnancy. If they see it as high risk, they will engage less frequently leading to less chances of a resultant pregnancy or they will balance the equation by doing other actions (fertility awareness, condom + bd, condom + fertility awareness, etc, etc) that lower the risk, thus, less chance of an unintended pregnancy.
My mother once told me that my youngest brother was proof the pill doesn’t always work. She was ON b/c when she got pregnant with him. She asked her doctor how that was POSSIBLE..he said “Well…some babies are just MEANT to be born, I guess.”
That was back in 1969. My brother brought LOTS of laughs and lots of affection to our family. We lost him three months before his 40th birthday..three years after we lost mom.
I guess he was the epitome of the phrase ” a happy accident”.
Pamela,
“Serendipity” means a “happy accident”. I think some form of that might make a good middle name. :)
Sorry about your two too-close losses. Eventually, we will all suffer the same. :(
Thank you, Hans.
Actually, there were a lot more than just those two. In the span of about 5 years, I lost:
My 14 year-old dog- August 2005
My grandmother -Sept. 2005
My cousin Chris- May 2006
My uncle Ray- Sept. 2006
My mother- October 2006
My cousin Cari -May 2008
My brother Michael -July 2009
And between January 2006 and February 2011 – 6 babies.
Sorry to de-rail the thread, was just remembering my family tonight.
Oh Pamela, that’s an awful string. I remember with great chagrin sitting at the lunch table in elementary school, when one of the kids said they no longer had one or two of their grandparents. And what did I do? I chirped, “I still have all four!”
I wish I could go back in time and slap myself in the back of the head! :(
Watched a re-run (I didn’t see it the first time) of “19 kids and Counting”. the one where they lost little Jubilee. My heart broke right along with theirs. Guess that’s what got me thinking about family and loss.
“but the fact remains BC and EC can kill 5/9-day-old young humans who are still floating in the uterus. Show me the fine print that doesn’t admit it”
It all comes down to the FDA-approved labeling. For those of you who hold to true evidence-based medicine, then the FDA approved the “third mechanism” of hormonal contraception with at best, shoddy and confounding data. Normally, the FDA absolutely rejects claims about human applications based on animal studies, post-hoc analyses, and retrospective epidemiological analyses (data mining).
As a physician involved in clinical trials sometimes, I have worked with certain drugs that in my opinion unequivocally worked clinically, but the FDA unanimously voted down approval because the drug application used some of the analyses mentioned above. Purely prospective results showed modest efficacy, but responder analyses showed a large benefit. So, if one’s objective were to get hormonal contraception off the market, it would be easy to file a petition with the FDA against drug makers for “false claims” regarding implantation failure. The FDA knows it approved that label with horrible evidence. And you can bet your house if any “Personhood” measure passes, the contraception makers will simply file an amended drug application to have that mechanism removed from the label, and presto, no more problems for them with it being made illegal.
It’s funny how people can rail against Evolutionary theory when tens of thousands of studies provide solid evidence for it. They say “The data just isn’t there or does not support it”. However, when at most 5-7 reviews, meta-analyses, and animal studies merely suggest hormonal contraception can cause implantation failure, they cling to those data as if it were the secret to life.
I am so sorry Pamela.
I love you. ((hugs))
Dave please provide evidence for your claim that the FDA approved the implantation failure label with “at best, shoddy and confounding data,”
Your argument was full of accusations but short on references.
Dave you also failed to address the fact that hormonal contraceptives are a Class 1 carcinogen, increasing the risk of breast cancer among women. As a physician isn’t it your duty to provide complete information and not political propaganda,
Xalisae has a blog????
What is it?
I am sorry to hear about your loss Pamela.
I wish you could give you more support than these paltry words via the internet.
http://eastisallthatsleft.blogspot.com
Xalisae, I totally agree with you that the attitude about sex needs to change first.
Sex has somehow become all-important, and many simply have sex whether or not they are using protection. Birth control may be related to this trend, but I think on an individual level, it certainly has become a general mindset of consequence-free sex and people have sex simply to have sex. Because, hey, there’s always abortion, amirite? (sarcasm) It’s a sad but true fact about this culture.
This isn’t to say that BC doesn’t have serious side-effects and we shouldn’t tell people about it, but I think we’ll get farther by trying to turn around people’s view of the very act itself rather than methods that we use to avoid pregnancy.
okokokok, updating tonight. And, I appreciate the kind words about the divorce, but don’t be sorry about it. I’m not. I wasn’t the one misbehaving. :D
Never crossed our minds. (:
So this is what it’s like to write in Hebrew. Jacked up, indeed.
Ok, I feel very old (but I’m not that old)
but when I was in high school, we didn’t have PP in our town. Also, the only hint of the word abortion was a distant and forboding thing about which we only knew a terrible story about one female relative. Basically, if you were having a social outing and a boy wanted to get frisky, we knew that a) if we did anything, he’d brag to all his friends and b) if we got pregnant, we’d be stuck with him and his crazy family forever. Let me tell you, we were VERY cautious with our affections. The only bad thing, is that me and my gal friends discovered an unpleasant double standard (guys were encouraged to gain sexual experience while girls’ reputations were ruined by sexual experience) and the also unpleasant experience of saying no and having a guy tell all his buddies that you said yes.
I am confident that if abortion were illegal, people would be a little more careful about who they hooked up with and when on their fertile days. Sex is fun, the it’s not without physical and emotional consequences. This notion of backing up your bc with ec is a huge laughable FAIL if it weren’t for the fact that young women in our country are getting sick and some are dying because of these drugs.
“frisky” – methinks you are of my generation.
Nonetheless, very good points ninek.
I think “frisky” turned into “nasty” and then turned into?????
The idea that greater availability of contraception can increase pregnancies may seem counter-intuitive to some, but that is because they do not take into consideration how changed incentives alter behavior. To use an example from another area, there is evidence that driver-education programs increase the number of teenaged involved in accidents. It is not because driver education programs make teenagers worse drivers. It is because driver education programs encourage more teenagers to drive. If driver eduction cuts the number of accidents per mile by 25% but increases the number of miles driven by 35%, there will be more accidents. Providing free contraception may reduce the pregnancy-to-intercourse ratio, but that reduction may be offset by the increase in intercourse.
Tyler, it turned into plain old vulgarity that I am not allowed to say on this blog.
“Frisky” as in the mom and dad on “Happy Days” ;>)!!
For Tyler, this is an old but good review: http://triggered.stanford.clockss.org/ServeContent?url=http%3A%2F%2Farchfami.ama-assn.org%2Fcgi%2Freprint%2F9%2F2%2F126
Look at references 55-65 basically, which are generally ultrasound studies and measurements with quantification of implantation ratios of in vitro fertilization. Basically, the authors conclude that hormonal contraception reduces implantation in *in vitro* situations, however, the FDA under no circumstances accepts as label-worthy data from small prospective studies that use surrogate OR “paradigms” and types of modeling experiments.
This study and others linked to it in PubMed provide evidence that *real world* situation and practice, hormonal contraception does not show any evidence whatsoever that is causes implantation failure.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22018122
Dave, you are my hero.
Dave are you going to at least mention that hormonal contraceptives are a Class 1 carcinogen and advise individual women that they should talk to their doctors before choosing to go on the Pill?
From one of the articles cited by Dave:
“The primary mechanism of oral contraceptives is to inhibit ovulation, but this mechanism is not always operative. When breakthrough ovulation occurs, then secondarymechanisms operate to prevent clinically recognized pregnancy. These secondary mechanisms may occur either before or after fertilization. Postfertilization effects would be problematic for some patients, who may desire information about this possibility. This article evaluates the available evidence for the postfertilization effects of oral contraceptives and concludes that good evidence exists to support the hypothesis that the effectiveness of oral contraceptives depend to some degree on postfertilization effects. However, there are insufficient data to quantitate the relative contribution of postfertilization effects. Despite the lack of quantitative data, the principles of informed consent suggest that patients who may object to any postfertilization loss should be made aware of this information so that they can give fully informed consent for the use of oral contraceptives. ”
Arch Fam Med. 2000;9:126-133
Here is one word, borrowed from a friend, describing the success of your support for hormonal contraceptives: FAIL.
Dave, if the preponderance of the medical evidence/studies supported the fact that hormonal contraceptives did not cause failure of implantation then why do the manufacturers still warn about this “secondary” (not third) mechanism?
The second study makes no sense to me. How did they determine that the overall probability of pregnancy for the 148 women tested was 24.7? Of these 24 expected pregnancies why did they expect 16 pregnancies to occur if the EC was taken before ovulation and if the EC was taken after ovulation only 8 pregnancies were expected?
They simply took the overall expected number of pregnancies and divided them proportionally based on the number of women who took the EC before or after ovulation.
The test should’ve concerned itself with the number of pregnancies after ovulation. Testing EC on women before they ovulated is not the purposes of EC!!!
I hope this study does not represent the quality of other medical studies being done.
The fact the studies says there were 8 pregnancies does not prove that EC does not cause implantation to fail. We do not know how many of the 16 other women who used EC after ovulation experienced a failure of implantation.
Again this is a bogus study, and lacks rigor.
In fact if we take the overall expected pregnancy rate and multiplied it by the number of women who took EC after ovulation (24.7% x 45) we should expect 11 pregnancies. The fact that there were only 8 pregnancies could mean that at least 3 embryos failed to implant. That would mean that EC causes 27% (3 of 11) of children conceived to be aborted.
Dave if you are a physician why don’t you provide your full name and your credentials like Dr. Nadal does?
Also with respect to the second study one could intrepret those results to mean that ECs are 100% ineffective (8 pregnancies and 8 expected pregnancies)!! You should be advising women to save their money and not bother buying ECs.
With respect to the second study shouldn’t the expectation of pregnancy occurring before ovulation takes place be zero? How can a pregancy occur before ovulation? I realize that the study has to be trying to get at something else, some other idea, but I am not sure what – at some kind of hypothetical pregnancy I guess. Perhaps, you can explain this second study Dave?
Anyone heard of natural family planning? Why isn’t this talked about more? Learn when your fertile time is and abstain. Very simple. Oh that’s right I forgot. No one wants to sacrifice anymore.
If birth control works why do you need a back up plan?
Hey now, don’t condemn the greenies. I am definitely against big pharma, hormone contaminated milk, gmos, etc. BUT I am also very strongly against birth control and abortion. I know that bc pills contain tons of chemicals, it would be counterproductive to avoid chemicals in my food while taking birth control.