Free Republic

Bobby Jindal wants you to be able to get your contraceptives over the counter, and that’s just the first step. “Democrats have wrongly accused Republicans of being against birth control and against allowing people to use it,” the Louisiana governor writes in the Wall Street Journal today. “That’s hogwash.”

August 1, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of Evangelical Protestantism in the United States, has published a spate of articles questioning the practice of contraception in recent months, accentuating a trend against birth control among Evangelicals that has been accelerating during the last half-decade. The publication’s latest installment on the topic is a review of “Adam and Eve and the Pill,” by Catholic writer Mary Eberstadt, which defends her thesis that contraception, and particularly the contraceptive pill, is the “Pandora’s box” of the sexual revolution. “As Eberstadt sees it, the contraceptive pill has launched us into a...

Scientists may be one step closer to a birth control pill for men. A drug dubbed JQ1 swiftly stunted sperm production in male mice, a new study found. And like the female birth control pill, its fertility-fighting effects on were completely reversible. "We have only observed full recovery of fertility in treated males," the researchers from Baylor College of Medicine wrote in their study, published today in the journal Cell. "We envision that our discoveries can be completely translated to men, providing a novel and efficacious strategy for a male contraceptive." …

Contraceptives and the Environment What the Pill Is Doing to Our Water Supply By Rebecca Oas, PhDWASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 16, 2012 (Zenit.org).- In 1960, the combined oral contraceptive pill was first approved for use in the United States.  Seven years later, “the Pill” was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, illustrating its enormous societal impact[1]. Roughly two generations later, statistics from the United Nations show that, within more developed nations worldwide, just under 16% of “partnered” women use contraceptive pills, a number which does not include usage among single women[2].However, even as the popularity of oral contraceptives remains high,...

A powerful quote from a source that might surprise some readers:Beneath the issue of contraception is a question about the role ideals and norms play in our communal lives. Yes, they restrict our behavior in ways that are sometimes inconvenient. Yet in doing so, they intrinsically call us and our communities toward a life that we might not otherwise choose on our own. What's more, they amplify the need for repentance and reconciliation, rather than watering down such a need through the "pragmatic" concession to the fallenness of the world. We may occasionally fail to meet them. But confronting our...

This is a polemic:  Access to birth control isn’t really about my “health.” It’s not principally about the management of ovarian cysts or the regulation of periods.Birth control isn’t about my health unless by health you mean, my capacity to get it on, to have a happy, joyous sex life that involves an actual male partner. The point of birth control is to have sex that’s recreational and non-procreative. It’s to permit women to exercise their desires without the sword of Damocles of unwanted pregnancy hanging gloomily over their heads.This proposition is radical only by default, because mainstream liberal voices...

Every October, sure as the leaves fall from the trees, pink ribbons and products blossom virtually everywhere you go. Breast Cancer Awareness Month has all the hallmarks of an effective public health campaign; people going about their regular routines can’t help but notice all the pink and — especially while shopping — be encouraged to contribute to the cause. During a friendly gathering last year, an acquaintance of mine wondered aloud why football players on the TV in the background were wearing pink on their uniforms. The answer soon came. Awareness had been raised. Everyone in the room voiced approval;...

Charlotte Porter KENT, UK, May 10, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The oral contraceptive pill Dianette claimed another victim in late March when 17-year-old Charlotte Porter died of a blood clot that was apparently caused by the medication. Porter was prescribed the drug as an acne treatment, a common use for a pill that is also touted as a convenient and effective method of contraception. The medication suppresses ovulation and alters the endometrium (uterine lining) to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. Two weeks after receiving the prescription, the seventeen-year-old succumbed to a pulmonary embolism caused by the formation of a blood...

Wednesday October 6, 2010 Harding U. Drops Komen over Planned Parenthood Funding By Kathleen GilbertSEARCY, Arkansas, October 6, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The campus bookstore at an Arkansas Christian university has stopped selling Susan G. Komen for the Cure items because of the organization's funding of several affiliates that fund Planned Parenthood.The Daily Citizen of Searcy and White County reported that, according to Harding spokesman David Crouch, university vice president Mel Sansom decided to pull the items because of the Planned Parenthood connection.Komen has come under fire from pro-life advocates for maintaining ties with about 21 affiliates that support Planned...

The number of pre-teenage girls on the Pill has increased fivefold in the past decade, shocking figures reveal. Last year doctors prescribed the oral contraceptive to more than 1,000 girls aged 11 and 12, usually without their parents' knowledge. Another 200 aged between 11 and 13 were given long-term implanted or injectable contraceptive devices on the NHS. Family campaigners said the figures showed how children were being sexualised at an ever younger age and raised disturbing questions about the prevalence of underage sex. Although the age of consent in Britain is 16, GPs are allowed to prescribe the Pill to...

After 50 years on the market, the Pill has radical feminists angry it did not turn them into men.  The Pill did not make women gender equal, it did not give women penises.   Women are still popping pills and hoisting boobs into bras every morning like enslaved women. 50 years of the Pill and women still have breasts!  Now that’s a true crime against humanity. Radicals are furious women are still getting pregnant (despite the fact radical feminists encourage schools to teach children how to use condoms and simulate sex); after 50 years of radical feminism, why aren’t women evolving into men?  The Pill did not...

Dr. Chris Kahlenborn is the lead author of the Mayo Clinic Proceeding’s article cited below. Kahlenborn testified before the FDA in June of 2000 regarding the link between oral contraceptives and breast cancer. May 2010 marked the 50th anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the birth control pill in the United States. Newspapers and magazines around the country ran stories on this, mostly extolling the social and medical benefits of the pill. This theme was bolstered by a recent communiqué from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) which noted: “The pill remains one of the...

A Prophecy Fulfilled Fr. Stanislas de Lestapis, a French Jesuit, died in 1999 at the age of 94. He had been a member of the Papal Commission on Birth Control and was one of the signatories of its so-called Minority Report. He had published a book on Birth Control, of which the third edition appeared in 1962, long before Humanae Vitae (1968). In Chapter 7, on The Contraceptive Civilization, he made the following bold prophecies: 'We do not hesitate to say that the acceptance of contraception will produce profound changes in our civilization. These changes are already taking place in...

WASHINGTON — Fifty years after the birth control pill went on the US market, millions of women around the world are still under orders from the Roman Catholic hierarchy to eschew its use. But all indications are that women stopped listening long ago. "Catholics use the pill the same way everyone else does... Priests don't even preach against it any more," said Jon O'Brien, president of Catholics for Choice. "There is no evidence that the teachings of the church influence Catholics in their decisions about the kind of contraception they actually use," said Frances Kissling. The lead author of a...

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. It is hard to believe that so many years have passed, more than a generation. How swiftly it has gone, and how changed is the face of our world. Let us not blame war or economic trouble or abortion for the current state of the world, for this would be to blame symptoms and ignore the source of the disease. It is, in fact, contraception that is destroying Western civilization. In many of the documents of Vatican II and in subsequent papal encyclicals, the...

Raquel Welch has blamed the Pill for the decline of the institution of marriage. The Hollywood actress said the widespread use of oral contraceptives had led to a breakdown in sexual morality and fuelled the growth of rampant promiscuity among the young. Miss Welch, 69, said the situation has grown so grave that 'these days nobody seems able to keep it in their pants or honour a commitment' While she argued that it carried some benefits, she said the enduring legacy of the Pill has been social anarchy. Miss Welch has been a sex symbol since she sprang to...

Judging by the laudatory articles on the birth control pill popping up all over the Web in recent days, one might conclude that the pill was in fact the greatest invention since sliced multigrain bread. One such article, written by professor and author Elaine Tyler May, appears in The Washington Post. May writes: Today, we celebrate both motherhood and the pill. It is Mother's Day, and it is the 50th anniversary of the day the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would approve the pill — though the dream of an oral contraceptive is much older. The birth control...

Isn't it interesting that as the United States of America approaches the 50th anniversary of this nation's most popular recreational drug, the birth control pill, special interest media is ginning up the presses — or in this case, the web sites — with all sorts of ideas for the next 50 years. A sampling of what America's birth control worshippers are saying may give one pause to rethink. For example, on May 3, the Los Angeles Biomedical Research institute (LA BioMed) announced "that it has received $1.5 million in grant funding to study a contraceptive for men that uses a...

One of the world's largest studies of the contraceptive pill has found that women who have taken it can expect longer lives and are less likely to die from any cause, including cancer and heart disease. British researchers said their study, which should reassure many millions of women across the world who have taken oral birth control pills, found no link between the drugs and an increased long-term risk of dying sooner. "The results of this study are enormously reassuring and suggest that in the longer term the health benefits of the contraceptive pill outweigh any risks," said Richard Anderson...

Bad news for women who have been using birth control pills, although you won't learn about it from the mainstream media. An International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Monographs Working Group has concluded that combined estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives and combined estrogen-progestogen menopausal therapy are carcinogenic to humans, after a thorough review of the published scientific evidence.[i] IARC is an arm of the World Health Organization with, as they say, "global reach." Involved in everything from basic research to publication of classification systems for various cancer types, the IARC classifications are the standard of care in the US and elsewhere....