weepier tones

“Government may not burden a person’s or religious organization’s religious liberty. The right to act or refuse to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely held religious belief may not be burdened unless the government proves it has a compelling governmental interest in infringing the specific act or refusal to act and has used the least restrictive means to further that interest. A burden includes indirect burdens such as withholding benefits, assessing penalties, or an exclusion from programs or access to facilities.”

This amendment, put on the June 12, 2012 ballot by the North Dakota Catholic Conference (NDCC) and the North Dakota Family Alliance (local affiliate of Focus on the Family), will further support people and organizations in violating the human rights of others based on their religious beliefs. North Dakota activist Don Morrison said, “It will legitimize hurtful acts towards people in North Dakota who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender, and people who are not the  ’correct’ kind of Christian. The people promoting this are people who use fear of others as a tactic to move their agenda, and if this measure passes, it will give some powerful institutions, like hospitals and churches, more power to say it is okay to ostracize people they don’t like.”

It could allow people to break nearly any kind of law, provided their actions are motivated by “a sincerely held religious belief.” This means hiring discrimination, denial of insurance coverage, and discriminatory firing (say, firing an unmarried pregnant person). This means denial of emergency health care, or denial to fill a birth control or emergency contraception prescription.

“North Dakota,” [Steven R.] Morrison noted, “is a large, sparsely populated rural state, and many people may have access to only one pharmacy or one hospital…. The amendment will protect religious practice, but its negative externalities may severely curtail others’ enjoyment of their own constitutional rights.”

Measure 3 will be on the ballot in June, and we’re likely to see similar propositions in other states as well. The religious right and anti-choicers will attack from any angle to bend the country to their will. North Dakotans, please get out there and fight. You can learn more at North Dakotans Against Measure Three, by contacting Sarah Shanks of Feminist Campus at sshanks@feminist.org, or by contacting Emily Krueger, Legislative Assistant of Americans United for Separation of Church and State at action@au.org.

Things that will help lower abortion rates: 

• Comprehensive sex education in schools. 
• Cheaper/easier access to birth control, condoms, and other preventative methods. 
• Openness and communication between parents and sexually active children.
• Openness within the community regarding Planned Parenthood centers and health departments that provide cheap/free sexual health services. 
• Implementation of sexual and reproductive health services geared toward trans* individuals and their sexual/reproductive health. 
• Networks of support implemented to counsel and assist pregnant persons who will have a hard time paying for prenatal care, hospital delivery bills, and after birth care. 
• Systems set up within schools that help pregnant teens stay in school while also being able to take care of and raise their child(ren.)

Things that will not lower abortion rates: 

• Banning abortion and implementing laws that make it harder to get abortions. 
• Limiting birth control access, making birth control harder for teens to get, making birth control more expensive, ect. 
• Promoting abstinence only sex education. 
• No communication between parents and sexually active teens. 
• Schools that expel pregnant students. 
• Incomplete/inaccurate sexual and reproductive health services for trans* individuals. 

thisgingersnapsback:

abaldwin360:

A bill that allows pharmacists and doctors to deny women access to contraception has been signed into law by Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. This new law is just one of many bills that the Republican governor has signed since he came into office. He has recently signed legislation that pressures…

Being shamed and degraded is bad enough over this sort of thing (trust me, buying Plan B was a terrible experience) but this is a whole new kind of fucked up.

Now on my list of places to never live, and to avoid in all road trips.

If I were going to describe the perfect contraceptive, it would go something like this: no babies, no latex, no daily pill to remember, no hormones to interfere with mood or sex drive, no negative health effects whatsoever, and 100 percent effectiveness. The funny thing is, something like that currently exists.

The procedure called RISUG in India (reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance) takes about 15 minutes with a doctor, is effective after about three days, and lasts for 10 or more years. A doctor applies some local

anesthetic, makes a small pinhole in the base of the scrotum, reaches in with a pair of very thin forceps, and pulls out the small white vas deferens tube. Then, the doctor injects the polymer gel (called Vasalgel here in the US), pushes the vas deferens back inside, repeats the process for the other vas deferens, puts a Band-Aid over the small hole, and the man is on his way. If this all sounds incredibly simple and inexpensive, that’s because it is. The chemicals themselves cost less than the syringe used to administer them. But the science of what happens next is the really fascinating part.

The two common chemicals — styrene maleic anhydride and dimethyl sulfoxide — form a polymer that thickens over the next 72 hours, much like a pliable epoxy, but the purpose of these chemicals isn’t to harden and block the vas deferens. Instead, the polymer lines the wall of the vas deferens and allows sperm to flow freely down the middle (this prevents any pressure buildup),  and because of the polymer’s pattern of negative/positive polarization, the sperm are torn apart through the polyelectrolytic effect. On a molecular level, it’s what supervillains envision will happen when they stick the good guy between two huge magnets and flip the switch.

With one little injection, this non-toxic jelly will sit there for 10+ years without you having to do anything else to not have babies. Set it and forget it. Oh, and when you do decide you want those babies, it only takes one other injection of water and baking soda to flush out the gel, and within two to three months, you’ve got all your healthy sperm again.

The trouble is, most people don’t even know this exists. And if men only need one super-cheap shot every 10 years or more, that’s not something that gets big pharmaceutical companies all fired up, because they’ll make zero money on it (even if it might have the side benefit of, you know, destroying HIV).

PLEASE: If this sounds awesome for you or your loved one, get the word out. Share this article. Or this link. Or this one. Or this one. Sign this petition. Do something! A revolutionary contraceptive like this needs all the support it can get.
UPDATE: A lot of people are asking to be kept in the loop. So here’s the clinical trial/mailing list sign-up from the Parsemus Foundation to get further information about this procedure’s development. And again, please fill out the short non-spam petition to get the procedure funded and keep buzz going.

So, I see a lot of arguments talking about how “but birth control isn’t JUST to prevent pregnancy, it’s health care X, Y, and Z!” 

And I’m just sitting here like “is the prevention of unwanted pregnancy suddenly NOT legitimate healthcare?” 

When people give reasons as to why birth control in its various forms should be provided cheap and affordable, prevention of pregnancy is always listed last, as an afterthought, or is presented as “well yeah, SOME people use it so they don’t get pregnant, but MORE people use it for ~medical reasons.~”

So, my wanting to have control over when I become a mother isn’t “medical” enough for you? My wanting to have safe sex while not having to compromise the goals that I have laid out before I enter motherhood isn’t a ~legitimate~ reason as to why I shouldn’t have to struggle to pay for BC, or go to the Health Department because I have no insurance where the people don’t or can’t give me proper reproductive services other than “use condoms” and send me on my merry way without having the decency to help with the constant bleeding after sex/unusual pains/ect? 

What I’m trying to get at, is, why isn’t safe sex and pregnancy prevention not considered a legitimate reason for people to have birth control? Is it because it doesn’t fit into the GOP’s “traditional family,” where everyone is magically virginal until marriage, and then the sole goal after he “puts a ring on it” is to reproduce at the rate of rabbits, and any kind of hindrance on “God’s Plan” shall surely send us into the pits of hell? 

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that people don’t want to acknowledge that we weren’t put on the planet to be incubators for future generations. 

Or maybe it’s because people don’t want to realize that those of us capable of getting pregnant like to have sex (and sometimes a lot of it) without the hassle of also being pregnant. Perhaps they realize we don’t give a fuck about their shitty standards of how we “should” act, and that pisses them off because they can’t have total control over us. 

Whatever the reason is (and all of these reasons and then some probably fall as a reason) my decision to prevent pregnancy IS legitimate health care, and I am honestly sick and tired of hearing people place the qualifier “but people use BC for health and medical reasons, not just prevention of pregnancy” as if preventing pregnancy ISN’T a medical decision, or like I should be ashamed because a big reason that I’m on birth control is because I fuck, and I like it, and I DON’T want to be a mother.