Pop Quiz: Match the country with its government’s birth control news: 1) In Country A, the president pledges to provide birth control to poor couples who want it. 2) In Country B, the legislature hedges on making any commitments to providing low-cost birth control to women who want it, in the face of loud opposition from Catholic Bishops. Ok, from the set-up of the question, you might already have guessed that Country B is the U.S. (come on, President Obama making pledges about birth control? Sounds like something Candidate Obama might have said…) The surprising part is that Country A is...
Continue reading...reproductive rights
Are all choices equal? Does it matter?
There’s a fascinating article in Elle from July, in which Bettina Paige recounts her decision to undergo a “selective reduction” when she found out she was carrying twins after going through fertility treatment. She already had a toddler, felt the family couldn’t afford to take care of two new babies, and her husband was strongly opposed to twins. So she chose to have one of the fetuses terminated, and then she chose to tell her story publicly– a brave choice, I think, considering the judgment she would inevitably encounter. On DoubleX yesterday, KJ Dell’Antonia described her own...
Continue reading...Ross Douthat Suuuuucks.
It will surprise no one to hear that Ross Douthat makes me mad. He makes me mad because his views are stupid, and because he doesn’t seem to believe in things like “data” or “facts,” and he also makes me real mad at the NYT Op-Ed page for hiring him in the first place. As Amanda Marcotte aptly points out in her takedown of Douthat’s column yesterday, his writing typically concludes with a take-home message “so factually incorrect that the newspaper ought to run the correction alongside it.” Marcotte and Rachael Larimore are currently hashing out the...
Continue reading...Truth in (Crazy Anti-Choice) Advertising
Late last year, Baltimore City Council passed an ordinance requiring “limited service pregnancy centers” that do not provide abortion or birth control services to post signs saying so. The bill was enacted in response to complaints from pro-choicers that these centers were providing inaccurate and misleading information. Like, claiming that abortions are connected to breast cancer, for instance. They also tend to set up shop right next to actual clinics with actual health professionals who offer real, nonjudgmental options counseling to women. And they typically lure patients in with offers of free pregnancy testing (which just happens...
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