Is an over-the-counter birth control pill dangerous? Photograph by Barr Laboratories/Getty Images. With Mitt Romney’s flippant comment last week about defunding Planned Parenthood to cut the deficit ("Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that") and the reluctance of religious institutions and hospitals to cover the cost of contraceptive services, the time is ripe for women to make it as easy as possible to get oral contraceptives themselves. The obvious solution is to make the Pill available over the counter. But isn’t that dangerous? Not exactly. Second, the belief that all antibiotics render the Pill less effective is false. In many ways having the Pill available over the counter would make it more effective, not less. Making the Pill available over the counter could solve this problem, according to some groups and columns in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Bloomberg News. Australia has a new model that closes some of the gap called “medication continuance.”
Nostalgia For Everything December 21, 1992|By ANDREI CODRESCU This time of the year for some reason I get filled with nostalgia like a Jules Verne balloon. I'm like Marcel Proust who smelled a cookie and couldn't stop remembering. Wood fires are my cookie. I remember sitting on the step of the Santa Maria Maggiore cathedral in Rome in 1965 eating an apple while everything turned to nostalgic gold around me. I sat in a steamy cafe by the Spanish Steps later with a bitter hot espresso looking wistfully on the fashions of the year 1965, miniskirts and polka dots, and feeling so terribly young and alone. I remember the wind whistling with snowflakes in it down Woodward Avenue in Detroit as I looked for a warm place to sit and contemplate the future year 1967, for which I already felt nostalgic though it hadn't even happened. I remember the back porch of Gabriel's hilltop apartment in San Francisco in 1970 looking on a pastel blue and gold city and wondering where winter was. I remember late fall, early winter at the Mt.
Why women still can't enjoy sex Feminism "Men and women at a base level still aren’t viewed as being the same." Photo: Getty Three weeks ago, conservative US shock jock/hell demon Rush Limbaugh took to his radio show to launch a sustained three day attack on one Sandra Fluke, a 30 year old Georgetown University law student and reproductive rights activist. Fluke had recently given testimony at an unofficial Democratic Congressional hearing on whether or not employers with religious affiliations should be forced to provide health insurance covering birth control. It was an unremarkable enough topic, and would probably have gone unnoticed except were it not for a) the current war being waged on women’s reproductive rights in the US and b) the unleashing of ignorant, vitriolic bile that consumed Limbaugh’s daily radio show over the following week. Slut. Advertisement In the subconscious social view, Ladies are naturally disengaged from their sexuality in any kind of human way at all. Love.
Lacrimosa Chapter 1: Act One: Andante, a harry potter fanfic Lacrimosa Summary: semi-historical AU. Only enslaved Mudblood Hermione knows the famous composer Voldemort's darkest secret. TMR/HG/DM Author's Note: so, confession: I suck at fending off the plotbunnies. Disclaimer: the HP universe does not belong to me; I am just borrowing. Act One: Andante "Hurry up! Red in the face and admittedly a bit out of breath, Hermione jammed her feet into the plain black shoes that she wore every day that were much too small, and stumbled out of her quarters that she shared with all of the other maids. "Miss Pansy's going to have a fit when she sees your hair," warned another maid, Angelina, a bit crossly. It wasn't just that the Malfoys were coming that caused the entire household into a flurry of commotion—though that did tend to generate a bit of upheaval, as Pansy was trying to become betrothed to the younger Master Malfoy—but it was mainly because the Malfoys were bringing a guest. "Damn," Hermione muttered. "Damned Mudblood. "Not Dumbledore?" "You are now."
Could women really be discriminated against for taking birth control? If a crazy Arizona bill passes, yes Photograph by Keith Brofsky/Thinkstock Images. The Obama administration recently issued a mandate requiring all employers to cover prescription birth control under company health plans. Arizona legislators recently introduced a bill that would allow some employers to opt out. Commentators are understandably outraged. To understand why, let’s consider an analogy: pregnancy. And yet, not once, but twice in the mid-1970s, the Court held that policies that discriminate against pregnancy don’t discriminate against women because not all women are pregnant all the time. Only after Congress stepped in to pass the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, in 1978, did the courts come around. Discriminating against people who take birth control should be illegal for the same reason: Only women take it. The Obama administration’s birth control mandate is a step toward limiting the damage done by this ruling, but it doesn’t resolve the related problem that the Arizona bill brings into focus.
m.guardian.co.uk A palliative nurse has recorded the top five regrets of the dying. Photograph: Montgomery Martin/Alamy There was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'. Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware: 1. "This was the most common regret of all. 2. "This came from every male patient that I nursed. 3. "Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. 4. 5. "This is a surprisingly common one.
Norma Clarke on The Origins of Sex by Faramerz Dabhoiwala Norma Clarke Some Years Before 1963 The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution By Faramerz Dabhoiwala (Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 484pp £25) A woman born in 1600 grew up being told she was the most lustful of God's creatures. In this ambitious and wide-ranging book, Faramerz Dabhoiwala charts what he calls 'a history of the first sexual revolution'. Few would dispute the basic premise of this book - that the Enlightenment brought about transformations in social and sexual attitudes - and it is hardly surprising that religious toleration brought sexual toleration in its wake; or, conversely, that religion in the shape of Protestantism was the driving force behind sexual discipline in the West. Familiar material seems strange at times, in the best sense: the obsession of the eighteenth-century novel with the seduction plot here takes on new meanings. Public interest in sexuality didn't, of course, disappear.
Moon For Sale: A Confession When I was young, I thought that I would be able to breathe underwater. Water was, to me, just a thin film that covered an area of air, until I decided to fill my bathroom sink with water. In the end, I ended up inhaling water and figured out that water takes up space and is not just a thin film that sat above air. When I was a bit older living in California, I held on to the side of a swimming pool and took a lap around the pool until my hands slipped and I fell into the deep end and when I woke up, I was on the floor beside the pool coughing up water. I am scared of swimming. I am not afraid of eating alone. I have been in fights. Writing is a way for me to forget that I exist even if I write about myself. I know more about Chinese history than I do about Korean history. I love you. Tagged Atomic Bomb, Bolano, Breathing under water, China, Confessions, Death, Drowning, Fear, growing up, Hemingway, Life, loxe-sex, north korea, NYU, Poe, Uncategorized, Westchester
The abortion survivor myth “I am the person that she aborted. I lived instead of died.” It was 1996, and Gianna Jessen was telling Congress about how she had been born despite her mother having a saline abortion at 30 weeks. Rep. Henry Hyde, the Republican from Illinois who had co-sponsored the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, proclaimed her testimony to be “one of the high spots of my life. The “abortion survivor” has become a powerful symbol in right-wing politics. But though fetuses have been known, in very rare circumstances, to survive intended terminations, those are roughly the odds, so far as they can be determined from the medical literature. But for the antiabortion movement, the definition of an “abortion survivor” is so broad that these statistics are irrelevant. I was 12 years old when I found out my aunt had tried to abort my cousin, Sean, who is now 5 years old. Such stories have been a part of the political conversation since around the time when Jessen spoke to Congress, in the 1990s.
100 Healthy Study Snacks You Should Reach For Instead November 16th, 2010 Studying can be hard work, and you’ll need some serious brain fuel to get you through acing that exam and breezing through getting your degree. Yet the foods many students reach for when they’re deep in a study session are often not only unhealthy, but not exactly ideal choices for energy, concentration and boosting your brainpower. Instead of Potato Chips Those crispy taters are delicious, but these snacks are healthier and pack more of a nutritional punch. Popcorn. Instead of Unhealthy Dips and Spreads Just because you’re not loading stuff up with heaps of Cheese Whiz and ranch dressing doesn’t mean you have to go without. Salsa. Instead of Pre-Packaged, Processed Snacks These snacks may be convenient, but they’re often packed with sodium, sugar and a wide range of chemicals. Cheese. Instead of Candy If you’ve got a sweet tooth, there are healthier places to turn than an economy sized bag of gummy bears. Fruit Salad. Instead of Soda Water. Instead of Ice Cream
Why Does Rush Limbaugh Get Away With Calling a Young Woman a 'Slut'? - Conor Friedersdorf - Politics Many conservatives ignore or excuse in the talk-radio host behavior that they'd be horrified to engage in themselves. If the conservative movement's least charitable critic invented a talk-radio host to embody every stereotype of a contemptible right-wing blowhard, the result might well be a thrice-divorced 61-year-old man taking to the airwaves to call a young female law student a "prostitute" and a "slut." It would be too much -- too unrealistic -- if the same man was once detained after a guys weekend in the Dominican Republic with a bottle of Viagra, and if he went on to compare the female law student to a Nazi and suggest that she post a sex tape online. And yet, Rush Limbaugh labeled as a "slut" and "prostitute" this young woman: He really said that she should post a sex tape online. I wish I could show you a picture of her father and mother. It hardly matters whether you agree with Sandra Fluke, or if you think she is advocating on behalf of suboptimal policy, as I do.