Archive for the 'Contraception' Category

Federal District Court Judge Edward Korman ruled this morning that the morning-after pill (or, so-called “emergency contraception”; hereafter, “EC”) must be made available over-the-counter with no age restrictions.

This means that 16 year old girls (and boys) can now get the morning-after pill without a prescription.

So can 15 year olds, and 14 year olds, and 13 year olds, and 12 year olds, etc., despite the fact that the age of consent in every state is between 16 and 18.

To understand how outrageous Judge Korman’s decision is, consider that in December 2011, strongly “pro-choice” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius actually overruled a recommendation from the FDA to make the morning-after pill available OTC with no restrictions.

This decision was truly extraordinary, as it was the first time ever that an HHS secretary had publicly overruled an FDA recommendation.

It would be an understatement to say that we’re no fans of Kathleen Sebelius. She’s usually wrong, but this time, she actually got it right, and my boss, Pro-Life Action League Executive Director Eric Scheidler, said as much.

Pro-aborts were livid. (more…)

In light of the Obama Administration’s HHS Mandate on providing birth control, the question has been posed to me of why the Catholic Church regards birth control as gravely sinful. Using Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae (or Of Human Life in English!), it behooves me to make several points on the Church’s teaching on contraception and responsible parenthood.

Humanae Vitae, 10 begins with the teaching on responsible parenthood, which each married couple is called to. This ‘responsible parenthood’ refers to the knowledge and respect for the biological functions and laws which are part of humanity. This includes dominion of the reason and will over the tendencies of instinct or passion.
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For many years, pro-abortion advocates in the Western world have tried, and failed, to get the Philippines to pass the so-called Reproductive Health (RH) bill.

If passed, the RH bill would, among other things, massively expand the presence of contraception and force medical professionals and businesses to provide them in spite of any conscientious objections. In this largely Catholic country, that hasn’t gone over well, and that’s why Filipinos continue to overwhelmingly oppose it.

But the pro-RH forces aren’t done trying to get the bill passed, and with seemingly endless streams of cash continuing to come into the country, the bill is closer to being passed than ever before, despite the fact that one pro-RH congresswoman has actually admitted that it is intended to be a population control measure, and the recent confirmation via Wikileaks that the U.S. government — which, in what should come as a surprise to no one, officially supports the RH bill — has been funding population control measures in the Philippines for the past 40 years. (more…)

In response to my post last week — Relationship Advice from Planned Parenthood: “Stop Thinking of Her As a Person” — a commenter named Sophi wrote the following:

if you actually read the nyt piece you’d know that the author is quoting a friend and acknowledges the poor choice of wording.

and if you knew anything about feminism you’d know they’re more concerned with the actual message and not just the choice of words.

and even with the poor choice of words the message his friend was trying to get across is clearly that “humans are animals and that sex is natural.” and taken in the context of the whole article it becomes part of a nice story of coming to terms with the sexual hangups he got from his traditional/strict religious upbringing.

and beyond that, even the congressman who claimed 98% of what pp does is abortion came out and said it wasn’t a factual statement. so repeating that lie only hurts your credibility.

I wondered if someone might try to argue that I was taking the “Stop thinking of her as a person” advice out of context (more…)

Supporters of Planned Parenthood are quick to point out that abortions aren’t all that PP does.

And although abortions do make up 98% of the “services” PP offers to pregnant women, it is true that they’re not the only thing they do.

Among other things, they also link approvingly from their Facebook page to essays in newspapers like the New York Times that recommend that guys get over their natural inhibitions about having premarital sex by thinking about women not as people, but as animals.

No. Really.

Last week in the NYT, college student Andrew Limbong wrote about how he wanted to have sex with his girlfriend, but the influence of his mother and his Christian upbringing was holding him back. Rather than listen to his conscience, he sought the advice of a friend: (more…)

On Wednesday, March 30, the National Institute of Reproductive Health’s Back Up Your Birth Control Campaign is sponsoring a Day of Action aimed at high school and college students.

By spreading the word about so-called emergency contraception (EC), apparently the campaign’s purpose is to try to prevent unintended pregnancies. But I have to wonder if the folks at NIRH somehow missed the memo that EC has proven to be not all it’s cracked up to be.

“More Effective Than Nothing”: The Best That Can Be Said of EC?

Three years ago, Dr. James Trussell conducted a web seminar (accessible here) in which he made some very candid admissions about the failure of EC to reduce the rate of unintended pregnancy. (more…)

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America will cut ties with its San Francisco affiliate office, Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, as of September 3, apparently due to serious financial mismanagement, as its most recent documents filed with the IRS showed a loss of $2.8 million!

Planned Parenthood Golden Gate is probably best known for its infamous 2005 video “A Superhero for Choice,” featuring Dianysis, a “superhero” modeled on PPGG’s CEO Dian Harrison. The video — which PPGG pulled from its website soon after posting it — features, among other things, Dianysis drowning an abstinence educator in a garbage can and blowing up pro-life demonstrators: (more…)

Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard either this argument or a similar one: “The promotion and use of contraception would reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies, and subsequently the number of abortions.”

While I can see the perceived train of thinking behind this proposal, the argument is flawed.

Contraception use does not decrease the number of abortions. If it did, why would Planned Parenthood so readily provide contraceptives to anyone and everyone they can? No form of birth control is, or pretends to be, 100% effective. In fact, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, over half of women who have abortions were using some form of contraception during the month they become pregnant.
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There is an interesting article on LifeSiteNews this week about Belmont Abbey, a North Carolina Catholic college that’s been accused of sexual discrimination by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) because it refuses to provide insurance coverage for contraception for its employees.

In other words, a Catholic college is being accused of discrimination for applying the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Whatever happened to the separation of church and state?

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I’ve said before that it’s fairly common for us to get hate mail at Pro-Life Action League/Generations for Life. We’ve especially gotten a lot the past several months during the ongoing fight against Aurora Planned Parenthood.

Many of these messages criticize us for fighting Planned Parenthood because, you know, abortion isn’t the only thing Planned Parenthood does.

One guy who wrote us last month plainly said — and these are his exact words — “Yes, it is wrong to kill babies but you can’t say that all Planned Parenthood does is kill babies.” (more…)

As you do your Christmas shopping, do yourself a favor and don’t buy anything from Abercrombie & Fitch.

This morning we got an an e-mail telling us about some of their new T-shirts.

One has the message, “Make love not babies”, and another has the message, “Awkward mornings beat boring nights”.

This isn’t the first time they’ve gotten themselves in trouble, and it probably won’t be the last.

In my last post, I wrote about Planned Parenthood’s condescending attitude toward pro-life teenagers.

Last week, I wrote about Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area’s connection with the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health (ICAH), a group that has featured pornographers and strippers at their annual fundraiser the past two years.

In that post, I mentioned that PP/CA and ICAH have formed a a coalition whose goal is to strip all funding of abstinence education for Illinois schools and require them to use so-called comprehensive sex education programs instead.

Yet Planned Parenthood calls itself a “trusted health care provider”, and says it “has always made the health and safety of teens one of its top priorities” by, for example, providing contraception to teens and sponsoring and promoting “comprehensive” sex education programs.

Trusted health care provider, health and safety of teens, top priorities…

So they say.

On Wednesday, October 17th, I’ll be giving a talk on the physical, emotional, and spiritual dangers of “comprehensive” sex education programs. The title of my talk is, simply: Don’t Trust Planned Parenthood.

It will be held at St. Peter’s Church in Geneva, IL, 1891 Kaneville Road (see map here) at 7:00pm.

My talk is open to high school age students.

At the same time, and at the same church, Patricia Bainbridge, the Respect Life Office Director for the Rockford Diocese, will be giving a talk on Planned Parenthood to adults.

A flyer with more information on the talks is available here [PDF].

Come if you can!

The rally in Aurora Saturday was huge.

The Chicago Tribune estimated a crowd of 1,000. The Aurora Beacon estimated 1,200.

The actual number may have even been higher.

Watch the local FOX News station’s coverage of the rally here.

Note Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area president Steve Trombley’s comments during the news segment:

We want people to understand that 90% of what we do is about providing contraception and basic health care, both of which prevent the need for abortions. We believe that health center will do more in one day to prevent abortions than those protesters will do in a lifetime.

Ah, yes, because everybody knows that making contraception more widely available is the answer to preventing abortion, right? (more…)

FOX and CBS have refused to run a new ad for Trojan condoms that features…

…women at a bar surrounded by pigs. When one pig goes to the restroom and returns with a condom purchased at a vending machine, he is transformed into an attractive man. The end of the commercial carries the message: “Evolve: Use a condom every time.” [source]

Dr. Vanessa Cullins, Planned Parenthood’s vice president of medical affairs, isn’t happy about the FOX/CBS decision to reject the ads:

As the nation’s leading reproductive health care advocate and provider, Planned Parenthood knows that for sexually active people, condoms are the best way to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections [emphasis added].

“The best way?” (more…)

Currently, a group called SisterSong is holding a “reproductive justice” conference in Chicago.

On the website for the conference — which has the amazingly unoriginal title “Let’s Talk About Sex!” — the group says:

Since the right to have sex is a topic rarely discussed when addressing reproductive health and rights issues, SisterSong believes that sexual prohibitions are not only promoted by moral conservatives in this country, but also by reproductive rights advocates who fail to promote a sex-positive culture.

Apparently, SisterSong doesn’t believe it’s good enough to simply be pro-choice; in their view, it’s also necessary to oppose “sexual prohibitions”. What exactly these prohibitions are, they don’t say, but if, as they claim, having sex merely for pleasure “is a human right”, then, hey, anything goes! (more…)