“So if abortion is unsafe and pregnancy is even less safe, what options do women in developing countries have? Is simply having functioning ovaries akin to continually playing Uterine Russian Roulette? Not necessarily.

To paraphrase a new Guttmacher report: “Birth Control. Duh.” To paraphrase it in a way that wouldn’t get a teenager with strict parents grounded: widespread use of advanced contraception in developing countries could prevent millions of unplanned pregnancies, millions of abortions. According to estimates, women worldwide will experience 80 million unplanned pregnancies this year due to contraceptive failure or contraceptive non-use. Forty million of those pregnancies will result in abortion, 30 million in live birth, and 10 million in miscarriage. Widespread availability of contraception to these women could theoretically prevent most — not all, but most — of these pregnancies in the first place.

Governments that operate under the false assumption that women either don’t have sex outside of marriage or always want children inside of marriage, and if they don’t meet those two criteria, then they deserve to be punished for their transgression with forced pregnancy and childbirth aren’t only deluded, they’re killing women with their delusions. And the world would be better for it if the men in charge agreed to legislate reality rather than an impossible ideal.”

Back to things that make me angry, okay, one, Justin Timberlake already brought sexy back so y’all are way late for that train.

BUT.  Can we please, please, please stop with the myth that condoms don’t work and that contraception is bullshit?  Can we please stop pointing to the rates of STIs and unplanned pregnancies and crowing that contraception doesn’t work and doesn’t prevent anything except Jesus-sanctioned sex?  Can we consider that perhaps rates like this are so high because we, as a nation, absolutely fucking refuse to explain to our children how sex works?

“Groups like 1flesh love to blabber on about how contraception success statistics are bullshit because people don’t know how to use condoms properly, but they always ignore the oft-proven fact that abstinence-only education — the idea that it’s oh-so-simple to wait until marriage —DOES NOT WORK AT ALL. And that’s why the movement is more than a laughable attempt to make antiquated notions of sexuality relevant. 1flesh should be held accountable for more than its lameness.”

Seriously.  Abstinence-only education doesn’t cover contraception.  37 states have sex ed curriculums on the books that require abstinence to be taught; 26 require it to be taught as the best/only method.  So those kids have sex anyway, they just don’t use contraception, because they don’t know how.  I wish people would just wake up to the fact that kids are going to have sex anyway.  You can tell them not to until you’re blue in the face, but they are going to.  Whether they are equipped with the tools and knowledge to do it safely and responsibly is up to y’all.

“It’s clear now that the Church’s response to the Affordable Care Act and other issues relating to contraception isn’t a reflection of the will of its members at all, but rather an attempt to force the government to be the muscle for a religious institution peddling a message that has failed to resonate with even its own parishioners.”

Oh, Wisconsin.  You are campaigning so hard to join Arizona, Texas and Florida in the Worst States in America Hall of Fame.

Today in “People Who Don’t Understand Contraception Talking About Contraception,” WI Senator Ron Johnson says there is “no conservative who’s trying to deny women health care or contraceptives,” and if you want birth control but you can’t afford it, you can just type “birth control” into Google.  ”Go online, type it in,” he says.  ”It’s easy to get.”

Bonus:  Use of “straw-dog argument” instead of “straw-man.”

(Source: jessicavalenti)

Have any friends insisting that contraception causes abortions?  Or that they don’t want their hard-earned tax dollars paying for women to have sex?  Or maybe that their religious rights are being infringed upon?  This page has all the facts, including:

1.  The controversy isn’t about protecting religious freedom; it’s about whose religious freedom we should protect.

2.  Once money is paid by an organization to an insurer, it becomes the insurer’s money, and the organization may not direct an insurance company how it spends its own money.

3.  The shifting positions of the bishops in response to Obama’s compromise reveals that it is not paying for contraceptive coverage that is objectionable; it is the knowledge that an employee might independently obtain a service without prior approval from their employer.

4.  Emergency contraception does not cause abortions.  Emergency contraception (Plan B) works by preventing ovulation or inhibiting pre-pregnancy processes.  Without a pregnancy, there cannot be an abortion.

And other good and useful things, with links to more information.  Share share share.

“That’s when it occurred to me that one of the things that’s feeding the outrage about the contraception thing is that it’s a big clusterfuck of mansplaining…. Women really hate men who know less about a subject sneering down their nose at us and telling us to shut up and listen to the man’s opinion on this. This has been a national bout of mansplaining in the worst possible way, and that’s just got emotional resonance.”

Additionally:  Why “so many women use birth control for non-sex reasons!” is not a good argument.