An Aspirin Squeezed Between Our Knees Is NOT Birth Control
Posted by Michelle Moquin on March 7th, 2012
Good morning!
Don’t you love that Limbach and probably many other men, many republican men, (see today’s write below) just want us to squeeze an aspirin between our knees as a form of birth control, yet men do everything in their power to get in between those same knees.
Not enough can be said over women’s health when the GOP simply does not care to take it seriously.
The GOP Rush to Deny Coverage of Birth Control
Carolyn Maloney
U.S. Representative from New York
The Republican crusade to limit access to birth control for women across the country took an ugly turn last week. As our Republican colleagues continued their effort to extend the reach of the government into the bedroom, most of them stood silently by while one of their favorite radio personalities launched a despicable, sexually charged attack on a respectable young woman. If this is what passes for family values in Republican circles these days, things in the Grand Ol’ Party have indeed come to a sorry pass.
It is a certainty that their efforts, if successful, will have a damaging effect on women’s health. Make no mistake — though the headlines have been about birth control, the issue here is women’s health.
Birth control is directly and undeniably related to women’s health. Birth control protects women from the risk of bearing children before they are ready. Birth control helps to ensure that women do not bear too many children or bear children too soon after their last pregnancy. Birth control is used to relieve symptoms of endometriosis, regulate a cycle, reduce acne, relieve symptoms of depression, reduce migraines, treat polycystic ovary condition, alleviate anemia, and even reduce the risk of some cancers.
And despite misleading Republican talking points about not wanting to subsidize birth control, studies have shown that it may be less expensive in the long run for employers to provide employees with no co-pay coverage of birth control than to deny such coverage altogether. This is in large part due to the fact that no-cost coverage improves a woman’s access to birth control, which means fewer unwanted and/or potentially harmful pregnancies. And that can significantly reduce the huge long-term costs of care related to problem pregnancies and pre-mature births.
According to a 2010 Policy Review by the highly regarded Guttmacher Institute, there is a strong, long-standing body of evidence that contraceptive services are a vital and effective component of preventative and public health care with substantial positive consequences for infants, women, families and society.
And stripping a young woman of her employer provided insurance coverage can produce a serious economic barrier to her ability to access such services. Oral contraceptives alone can cost an uninsured woman as much $1,210 dollars a year.
So, denying birth control coverage to women can result in significant negative consequences for infants, women, families and society.
Of course, the biggest impact will be on women. Because 100 percent of those who can have their health damaged by an unplanned pregnancy are women.
100 percent of those who die from complications related to pregnancy are women.
100 percent of those who give birth — are women.
So, I would like to suggest to our Republican friends that they drop the pretense that the subject is religious freedom. It is not. Changes to the health care reform act already made by the Obama administration mean that churches and religious organizations do not have to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives.
No one at these organizations with religious or moral objections to birth control has to use contraceptives, approve of contraceptives, prescribe contraceptives, or dispense contraceptives. Some religiously affiliated organizations, however, will not be allowed to impose their religious views on those who do not share them. In this collision of rights, the right of women to access health care must prevail.
Some sincere members of the religious community have tried to make the case that they do not wish to have any of their tax dollars go towards supporting access to birth control in any way whatsoever. But one of the accommodations we all must make for the privilege of living in a free and pluralistic society is that sometimes our tax dollars will help to pay for activities we may not approve of, or support.
For instance, I share with many religious leaders a deep-seated opposition to the death penalty. And yet our tax dollars will comingle with the funds from those in the majority who approve of capital punishment. When executions occur some small portion of my tax dollars will go toward paying for an executioner’s salary. And I do not approve. But that is part of the price we all pay for living in a democracy. Yes, it may seem problematic at times. But, in all the world, there is no better system of government.
I also know that there are good folks on the other side of the aisle who argue that access to birth control is simply not an issue. And those are nice words. But actions of the far right speak much louder than words — and taken together they form a clear and disturbing pattern.
· On the state level, Republicans in at least 18 states are pushing bills or ballot initiatives that would define “personhood” in such a way as to render illegal many forms of commonly used birth control.
· Republicans in seven states have filed lawsuits to attacking the provisions in the health care reform act that give women access to contraceptives.
· On the national level, Republicans have introduced legislation in both the House and Senate that would outlaw many forms of commonly used contraceptives.
· Republicans in the House have already voted to strip Planned Parenthood of any federal funding, which would make it much harder for poor women to obtain reproductive health care and contraceptives.
· Republicans in the Senate brought legislation to the floor to allow any employer, including for-profit private sector companies, to deny insurance coverage for contraceptives if doing so is contrary to their religious beliefs or “moral convictions.” Democrats voted it down. But Republicans vow to keep trying.
Taken all together, these legislative initiatives show a widespread effort by the far right wing to impose their own religious views on those who may not share their beliefs and to limit a woman’s access to reproductive health care and contraception. And if they succeed, it would have a negative impact on us all.
That is why, at that now infamous Republican hearing on birth control, I asked: “Where are the women?” Women must have a say on policy issues related to their own health. And you know what? I never did get a good answer from them. So I would like to hear from you. Send me your own personal stories of the health consequences of access denied. Send me your own pictures of decision-making bodies, without a single woman on the panel. Send them to me — at: info@carolynmaloney.com — and I will send them a message for us all.
And I think I am going to just keep on asking: “Where are the women?” Because I think all of us deserve an answer. Women deserve a place at that table.
*N*O*G*O*P*
Howie: Learning about ourselves is a continual eye opener, if we just stay open to it. It’s hard to change when our old patterns flare up in the familiar proverbial knee-jerk reactions. Your apology is accepted by me as well.
Anonymous: I like what you wrote. Very nicely said, and in my opinion, true in so many ways.
Robbi: I give a resounding “Yes!”
AB: I would be too if I were you.
BK: You’re obviously one of those that Ed speaks of.
Frances: That is one talking point that I am so sick of hearing from the mouths of the republicans. The “fiscally responsible” republicans who are the ones that increase the deficit, only for the Dems to reduce it…only for the next republicans to increase it…Need I say more?
Dems: Right on. I’m with you.
Ym: I have no personal revelations to offer you. Perhaps she is just overwhelmed with life and wishes she too could be with you. I wish that for both of you.
Zen Lill: Nice quote. I like this one. Appropriate since we are in an election year:
I think it’s about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we’ve been voting for boobs long enough. ~Clarie Sargent, Arizona senatorial candidate
Readers: I just woke up and read the rest of the comments that came in this morning. As you can see for yourselves, they reside on both sides of the line. I’m not surprised at all that men would rush to the side with republican Rush, but why any woman would join and support that party and stand by their bad behavior toward women is beyond me. If you’re one of those, I HOPE you read the article I posted today, and be a girl’s girl. Otherwise… let me throw out a quote by Madaline K. Albight:
“There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.”
If you don’t get it, you never will.
Blog me.
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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March 7th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
HI Mischa,
Men usually mean ‘put an aspirin between those knees for everyone but me’ and meanwhile I will make an attempt to part the knees of others including yours bc ‘boys will be boys’ and Rush only spoke for those type of A-holes, judging by some comments here he does have some company, oh yikes…
I love that quote by Madaleine Albright.
The only reason rethug women support their man’s bs is bc they feel they have to or it’ll cause them domestic problems they don’t want. Lame but true…bc as this above article illustrates oh-so-well is that yep, some of my tax dollars go to things I want nothing to do with and yet they go there anyway.
Real men want women to be equal and to be able to exercise their options in life.
Luv, Zen Lill
March 7th, 2012 at 8:23 pm
LEAVE YOUR MEMORY AT THE DOOR
How many times has something like this happened to you? While brushing your teeth, you remember an important phone call that you need to make as soon as you’re done.
But by the time you have finished brushing, you walk out of the bathroom, grab your coat and car keys and head out the door… totally forgetting all about that call that you really needed to make.
We all do this—quite often, in fact—and it’s not because we’re getting old and addle-brained. It’s actually something that our brains are hard-wired to do!
New research from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, published in August 2011 in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, demonstrates what I think is an astonishing—but, as you will see, quite logical—connection between forgetfulness and walking through doorways.
DOORWAYS DRAIN MEMORY
This new study confirms in a “real world” environment what previous research identified in a virtual environment—a phenomenon dubbed the “location-updating effect,” showing that the simple act of passing through a doorway as you move from one room to another raises the likelihood that you’ll forget what you were just thinking about.
Why? Gabriel Radvansky, PhD, a professor of psychology at Notre Dame and a coauthor of this study, who has been researching how memory works for most of his career, told me about one of the experiments that his team recently set up that has “opened the door” to understanding how and why this happens.
The experiment: A set of volunteers (28 women and 32 men) were split into groups. Group A walked through a series of three rooms.
In the first room, they were asked to place six objects (each a different shape and color) into a box and then cover it up and bring it to the next room.
In the second room, after they had gone through a doorway, they were given a computer quiz, asking which objects they had put into the box just a few minutes earlier.
Group B did the same thing, except they didn’t walk through a series of rooms, they walked to different spots within the same room—in other words, they didn’t encounter any doorways.
The results? Group A—the one that walked through doorways—made 5% more errors on the memory test than Group B.
BOOST YOUR MEMORY
Now, what does this act of walking through doorways mean to our brains? What it is—literally, not metaphorically—is what Dr. Radzansky called an “event boundary” that signals to your brain that your situation has changed.
To understand this, think of your mind as being like a filing cabinet. When something changes—whether in time or setting—
your brain acknowledges the shift by creating an “event file” as a way of keeping track of your life (without which it would be a mess!).
Walking through a doorway is a signal to your brain to put what you were just thinking about into its own file… which makes information from before the location change not quite as readily available to you as it was earlier.
Unfortunately, another experiment that was part of the same study done by Dr. Radvansky showed that walking back into the original room that you were in doesn’t trigger recall.
According to Dr. Radvansky, we should think of this location-updating effect as being beneficial.
“By creating event boundaries when entering a new space, our minds are getting refreshed, so we’re able to focus on the new environment,” he explained.
I have to admit, from that perspective it makes sense. For instance, when my doctor walks through the door to see me, I like knowing that she is no longer thinking about the patient that she just saw!
How can we use this information to improve our memory? One idea is to plan around it by leaving sticky notepads in every room—that way, if an idea comes to you, you can write it down immediately so you don’t forget it.
Another idea is to always have your smartphone handy so that you can leave yourself a voicemail or send yourself an e-mail or text.
And the next time you walk purposefully into a room and instantly forget what brought you there, don’t fret. It’s probably nothing more than your brain’s overly efficient reset button trying to get you ready for what’s coming next.
Source:
Gabriel Radvansky, PhD, professor, department of psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana.
March 7th, 2012 at 8:27 pm
Zen Lill
That was beautiful. I didn’t need convincing but if I was on the fence, you would have gotten me off it.
David
March 7th, 2012 at 10:00 pm
Arriving on a solar flare? Just like you to make a grand entrance.
March 7th, 2012 at 10:56 pm
All of the aliens in craft have left the earth’s orbit because of the presence of the being suspected to be one with the power of Howie’s Carr.
He landed with a thud and it is suspected that the next 3 to 4 months will be filled with extraordinary events.
Until he leaves.
March 7th, 2012 at 11:20 pm
So Rev. Williams says gottdamn america and he gets ostracized Rush calls a young woman a slut and asks to her to make a sex tape for him and his disgusting men cohorts to see.
He gets a bust.
White Just-Us justice.
March 8th, 2012 at 7:13 am
Thank you, David.
Happy International Women’s Day!
Luv, Zen Lill
March 8th, 2012 at 7:57 am
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