Free Republic

The market for oral contraception is being turned upside-down as Perrigo has begun shipping Opill to thousands of retail stores nationwide, to be sold as the first over-the-counter birth control pill in the U.S. The FDA approved Opill July 2023 as an OTC birth control option. Perrigo did not publicly release sales projections for the product, and The Motley Fool reported last July that the company is “quite unlikely” to generate $110 million per quarter—the value needed to “make a significant dent” in overall company revenues. The current U.S. prescription birth control pill market is likely worth about $3 billion...

The Washington Post has been hemorrhaging subscribers and web traffic for years. Late last year, the paper conducted yet another round of layoffs, impacting hundreds of employees. Jeff Bezos purchased the paper for $250 million a decade ago, and last year alone, it managed to lose roughly $100 million. This is not a profitable venture, and in normal circumstances, businesses that lose this much money don’t stay around very long. But the Washington Post has stuck around. Jeff Bezos has kept it on life support to fulfill a specific mission, which is to harangue and censor independent voices on behalf...

Opill, the first oral contraceptive approved for over-the-counter use in the United States, will be available in stores and online this month, with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $19.99 for a one-month supply and $49.99 for a three-month supply, according to Perrigo, the company behind the product. Perrigo announced Monday that Opill has shipped to major retailers and pharmacies and will be available to pre-order from select retailers beginning this week. Once the product hits shelves, anyone can buy it without a prescription. It will also be available at Opill.com. Opill works as a “mini-pill,” using only the hormone...

A three-judge panel in New Orleans ruled that a Texas law requiring minors to obtain parental consent to obtain birth control does not conflict with the goals of the federally-funded Title X program, which has given teens birth control confidentially. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas law requiring parental consent to obtain contraception for minors. The decision from a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in New Orleans largely affirms a 2022 ruling from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, that ended one of the only avenues for Texas teens to confidentially obtain birth control,...

Immunity is modulated by sex hormones and thus has an important role in the sex bias commonly seen in autoimmunity. Hormonal contraceptives are widely used by women, different studies show an association between their use and an increased risk of developing several autoimmune diseases. The incidence and prevalence of autoimmune disorders are higher in women than in men. Approximately 78% of patients suffering from these pathological conditions are women. It is known that hormones modulate the immune system. As an example, cortisol controls the immune response via the circadian rhythm, regulating T cell-mediated inflammation. …Studies conducted in the past century...

Hillary Clinton is warning about the legality of birth control in the wake of a decision by the Alabama Supreme Court that found frozen embryos created through fertility treatments are children under state law. “They came for abortion first. Now it’s [in vitro fertilization], and next it’ll be birth control,” the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and secretary of State said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “The extreme right won’t stop trying to exert government control over our most sacred personal decisions until we codify reproductive freedom as a human right,” Clinton added.

When you think about the common procedure of getting a contraceptive implant, it’s not often associated with open-heart surgery, but for one young Victorian woman, this is an uncomfortable reality. Cloe Westerway, aged 22, underwent a standard routine procedure to have an Implanon inserted two years ago in a women’s health clinic, but in the following days, things started to take a turn. Cloe began experiencing heart palpitations, excessive sweating and heartburn symptoms and immediately knew something wasn’t quite right. When the doctors tried to remove the implant, there was one problem: they couldn’t find it, with subsequent scans revealing...

The Dominican Republic had already begun building a wall at its border with Haiti. Then it cracked down on immigration, deporting tens of thousands of Haitians back to their impoverished and gang-ravaged country.Now it’s closing the border entirely. President Luis Abinader announced the Dominican Republic will shut all of its land, air and sea frontiers with Haiti starting Friday morning, amid a festering dispute over Haiti’s plans to construct a canal off a river that separates the two countries. The announcement Thursday afternoon significantly escalates tensions between the two nations, which share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola and a long...

Do we know if estrogen in the water supply is a significant problem? What are its major sources? How does this relate to morality and politics? Some research:► The next abortion fight could be over wastewater regulation Abortion opponents plan to use environmental laws to curb access to pills used to terminate an early pregnancy. The new approach comes as the pills mifepristone and misoprostol, which people can take at home during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, have become the most common method of abortion in the U.S. and virtually the only option for millions of people in states...

For half a century, Gursaran Pran Talwar has been developing what he hopes will be the next big thing in birth control. A nonagenarian who was once the director of India’s National Institute of Immunology, Talwar envisions bringing to market a new form of contraception that could block pregnancy without the usual trade-offs—an intervention that’s long-acting but reversible; cheap, discreet, and easy to administer; less invasive than an intrauterine device and more convenient than a daily pill. It would skip messy, sometimes dangerous side effects, such as weight gain, mood swings, and rare but risky blood clots and strokes. It...

When the War of 1812 broke out, the Town of Billerica, Mass., was in the middle of an extraordinary baby boom. Twelve other families in the town had 13 children. Five had 14 offspring and one had 15. Twenty-six families each had 10 children, 20 families had 11 children and 24 families had 12 children. The largest family had 21 children by two wives. That meant 90 families accounted for 1,043 children. The average Billerica family had an average of 11.6 children per family. The town’s population grew almost exclusively because of its fecundity. In 1810, the population of the...

Ladies, if you’re striking out on bad dates your birth control could be to blame. A podcast host is claiming the pill can change to whom you’re attracted — so maybe you don’t have bad taste after all. In a viral TikTok, Elisha Covey from Dallas suggested that birth control mimics pregnancy in a woman’s body — and, to some degree, it does. The pill prevents ovulation from occurring and changes the cervical mucus, with some help from hormones, to make it harder to become pregnant. “If you are on the pill, obviously not pregnant, you’re attracted to different men...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., decided to reveal some "uncomfortable" personal information during a House Oversight Committee hearing about abortion, specifically regarding her personal method of birth control. Before going into a question about treatment of ectopic pregnancies, the New York Democrat noted that such circumstances can arise from the failure of an intrauterine device, or IUD. Ocasio-Cortez also decided to announce that she uses one herself, blaming Republicans for the nature of the abortion debate. "I, for example, since Republicans are forcing this conversation in uncomfortable ways, then I will meet them to it," Ocasio-Cortez said. "I have an IUD....

Dr. Hill told BuzzFeed that birth control pills can affect so much more than our ability to become pregnant: "The birth control pill changes women’s sex hormones, which means that its effects go far beyond contraception. There are hormone receptors on virtually all cells in the body – including all major structures in the brain. Because of this, hormonal birth control can have an impact on nearly every aspect of who a woman is." To date, research finds that hormonal birth control can influence all kinds of things, such as "a woman’s mate preferences" and even "her relationship satisfaction." She...

AS America grapples with a crackdown on abortion and a looming financial crisis, more young men are turning to vasectomies - and filming it for TikTok. Demand for vasectomies appears to have shot up dramatically in every corner of the US since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in July, which guaranteed a woman the right to an abortion. For most people, getting "the snip" is a decision you make in later life. It refers to male sterilisation and it cuts or seals the tubes that carry a man's sperm to permanently prevent pregnancy. Many men go for this...

Yuval Noah Harari, historian, futurist, and World Economic Forum (WEF) adviser declared that "we just don't need the vast majority of the population that is alive today. The modern technologies we have in the 21st century have rendered most of humanity redundant." Harari admitted that "solving this problem will be difficult. For most common people the most important thing in their lives is family. Yet, to get down to the maximum ideal population of around 500 million persons will require a 95% reduction of the current 7.75 billion who live on the planet. Better birth control may seem like the...

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Thousands of women around the country are being forced to face a terrifying new reality in which they actually have to use one of the dozens of cheap, readily available methods of birth control in post-Roe America. "For the first time, my habit of having unprotected sex with a different Tinder date every week to fill the empty hole in my soul may have consequences," said local concerned woman Sandra Tibbensburg. "I can't be bothered to stop at the gas station and pay three bucks for a pack of Trojans every time I go to a...

[Catholic Caucus] Official: Vatican Justifies (Artificial) ContraceptionIf "practical circumstances" make “the choice to generate irresponsible”, one may resort to contraceptive techniques, Prelate Gilfredo Marengo writes in Theological Ethics of Life, a book collecting talks giving at a conference organised by the Pontifical Academy "for Life" and published July 1 by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana, the Vatican's official publishing house.Lima's Pachamama-Archbishop Carlos Castillo writes in his contribution that “it is not healthy for mankind to always have 'swords of Damocles,' threatening damnation, whenever norms are neglected” referring to artificial methods of contraception, not to the Roman Rite which Francis tries to...

Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, the idea of not being able to send their lady friends off to the local abortion clinic seems to have prompted young men to take interest in a permanent form of contraception. According to the Washington Post, doctors across the country are seeing a huge spike in requests for vasectomies in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling one week ago, and men under the age of 30 feature prominently among those now seeking the procedure. A Florida urologist told the outlet that he's seen vasectomy requests jump from four or...

NEW YORK — Amazon is limiting how many emergency contraceptives consumers can buy, joining other retailers who put in place similar caps following the Supreme Court decision overruling Roe v. Wade. Amazon’s limit, which temporarily caps purchase of the contraceptives at three units per week, went into effect on Monday, a spokesperson for the e-commerce giant confirmed to The Associated Press. The company did not share further details on what emergency contraceptive products were limited for purchase, but a listing showed the cap applied to Plan B, the popular “morning after” pill.