Yeah, this is truly just a question. Imagine that progressives succeed in their vision of every woman who doesn’t intentionally want to get pregnant using a form of contraception that’s 99.9999% effective. Or of that promised easily-reversible, painless vasectomy becoming available. Presto! No more unplanned children. Every child a wanted child. etc. What about infertile couples? Read more
1) Is contraception “(medically-necessary) health care” or a wholly separate consumer-product category of drugs and devices, some of which are FDA-regulated because of their potential side-effects? The discussion over the last several days has been to emphasize that other Title X providers, such as community health clinics, actually provide a full range of healthcare services, which, much as PP claims otherwise, isn’t the case there. Here, for instance, is the text of Monday’s (now pulled) Senate bill: (1) State and county... Read more
Just looked at the comments on my prior post on unplanned parenthood, and I ought to respond — (For the record: “sorry, but The Atlantic did treat the pro-life ‘unplanned parenthood’ stories as somehow not tragic enough; in any case, there was a recent study of women who wanted abortions but sought them out too late, and who, in the end, loved their kids after all, demonstrating that an unwanted pregnancy is not the same as an unloved child”; “there... Read more
Which came first: the chicken or the egg? (Apparently, the egg, insofar as we’ve learned that dinosaurs laid eggs which, bit-by-bit, became chickens. But that’s beside the point.) Which came first: attitudes about unplanned pregnancy, or opinions on abortion? There’s been a Twitter hashtag that the pro-life community has been trying to promote: #UnplannedParenthood — trying to push back on the idea that an unexpected pregnancy is a disaster for any woman in that situation. The Atlantic isn’t pleased; they’ve... Read more
(See disclaimer, below.) Title X is, of course, the program that funds contraception, as provided by Planned Parenthood and others, for low-income women. Planned Parenthood is certainly not the only beneficiary of the program; as described by the HHS website, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs (OPA) oversees the Title X program. OPA funds a network of nearly 4,200 family planning centers which serve about 4.5 million clients a year. Services are provided through... Read more
(taken with my husband’s iPhone, and still trying to get the hang of importing pictures — the people look like they’re in a fun house mirror!) Read more
Subtitled, “Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women” There’s a lot in this book; 650+ pages, incredibly detailed. I’ll just make a few observations: 1) The unspeakable cruelty of mass murder was not simply a matter of an extreme end result of racism on the part of Germans. (Remember Hitler’s Willing Executioners, which claimed that the German people, as a whole, were by their very nature murderously antisemitic?) In Treblinka and Sobibor and Chelmo, not to... Read more
Yes, I know, and odd juxtaposition, but bear with me. From the Walgreens annual report, p. 5: The Company’s drugstores are engaged in the retail sale of prescription and non-prescription drugs and general merchandise. General merchandise includes, among other things, convenience and fresh foods, household items, personal care, beauty care, photofinishing and candy. Prescription drugs represent the Company’s largest product class, followed by general merchandise and non-prescription drugs. In fiscal 2014, 2013 and 2012, prescription drugs represented 64%, 63% and 63% of total sales,... Read more
This week’s “from the library” book: Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto by Steve Almond. I was originally going to pair this with Why Football Matters, by Mark Edmundson, but I got tired of the latter book; at any rate, I thought this would be a full-throated defense of football but it seems to be more ambivalent. Here are Almond’s criticisms of football: 1) Football causes brain injury to those who play the game with the rigor demanded at the... Read more
You’d think so. According to various sources — e.g., Fox News and Buzzfeed, where I first saw it last night (via a facebook link), the Boy Scout’s executive committee has OK’d a new policy that allows each local unit to define for themselves the term “morally straight” and set qualifications for leaders based on policies of the chartering organization. This now goes to the executive board on July 27th, and is expected to be rubber stamped by them. This regularizes the... Read more
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