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Archive for the ‘HHS Contraception Mandate’ Category

Did you know? The Pill increases stroke risks as much as smoking.

July 9th, 2014 Comments off

The Sexual Revolutionaries are in an uproar over the Hobby Lobby decision. The idea that anyone anywhere objects to paying for someone else’s contraception for any reason whatsoever is all it takes to be labeled “anti-woman.”

Let’s take a sober-minded look at a serious question: Are contraceptive drugs really pro-woman?

Birth control empowers women the way smoking empowers the Marlboro Man.

Birth control empowers women the way smoking empowers the Marlboro Man.

A 2012 study[1] of 1.6 million Danish women shows that women who used oral contraceptives at intermediate doses, had a risk of strokes that was 1.3 to 2.3 times as high as the risk among non-users of contraceptives.  Meanwhile, the lowest dose oral contraceptives had risks that were .9 to 1.7 times as great. That is to say, the lower doses are safer, but still not risk-free.[2]

Should we be worried? Listen to the chipper reports on this study. An article in Web MD,  was entitled, “Heart, Stroke Risk Low

With Birth Control Pills: No-Estrogen and Lowest-Estrogen Contraceptives Safest, Study Finds.”

 “Risk today is significantly lower than it was decades ago in the era of high-dose pills,” says University of Copenhagen professor Ojvind Lidegaard, MD, who led the research….In an editorial published with the study, Arizona State University researcher Diana B. Petitti, MD, MPH, writes that the Danish study should reassure women and their doctors about the safety of oral contraceptives.”

Well, perhaps, the risks are lower than they used to be.  But still, the risks of strokes are nearly doubled compared with women who did not use oral contraceptives at all. Isn’t that risk worth taking a bit more seriously? Isn’t that reason enough to explore some non-hormonal family planning alternatives?

The Boston Globe continues with the cheerful reporting.  The title of its article on this study, was, I’m not making this up, “Birth Read more…

Hobby Lobby and The War Among Women

July 3rd, 2014 Comments off

This article was also published at Christianpost.com here.

You have no doubt heard that the men of the US Supreme Court are making war on the interests of American women.  You may, however, have some doubt as to which interests of which women. I maintain that there has been a War Among Women for the past

Everywoman: embedded within the family Elite Woman: alone at the top

Everywoman: embedded within the family
Elite Woman: alone at the top

50 years or so. And most of the time, the Elite Women prevail over Everywoman.  But not this time.

Let me tell you about a friend of mine named Katie.  She is a brilliant attorney, who works part-time for a non-profit public interest legal organization. Katie has nine children, whom she homeschools. She lives out in the country in coastal California.  By any reasonable reckoning, Katie, is “having it all:” big family, country living in one of the most beautiful places on earth, and meaningful, intellectually challenging work.

However, it is safe to say that Katie is highly unlikely to ever be appointed to the Supreme Court.  She has other concerns. She does not have the single-minded focus on her legal career that would allow her to be a serious contender.

I too, have had a wonderful advantaged life: meaningful work, good family life. But I never chaired an economics department. I

never sat on any prestigious commissions. I wasn’t given any political appointment as my childless or male peers have done.

Which brings me back to the subject at hand: whose interests do the women on the Supreme Court actually represent?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg came of age in the short window of time when women could still get married, have kids, go to law school, and have a career after child-bearing.  Her two children were born when she was 22 and 32. Thanks to radical feminism, highly educated women have a much more difficult time doing these things. They can go to law school and have a career alright. But getting married and having children sometime before menopause, not so much.

Justice Ginsburg had the lifelong support of her husband in her career aspirations. Thanks to no-fault divorce, women today cannot count on a lifetime of mutual support with their husbands. Justice Ginsburg has been safely insulated from the negative fallout of the Sexual Revolution which she and her radical feminist colleagues did so much to champion.

The other two women on the Supreme Court, Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, are childless. It is highly unlikely that the two of them understand and respect the lives and aspirations of women like my friend Katie and me. And for less educated women, family is everything and “career” is a job to put food on the table. Elite women know nothing of Everywoman, the people who have endured the Sexual Revolution, and who do not have high status jobs as compensation.

Mennonite Hahn family: Are the men of the Supreme Court making war on these women?

Mennonite Hahn family: Are the men of the Supreme Court making war on these women?

Do you think for one moment my friend Katie feels “oppressed” by the Hobby Lobby decision, or that she wishes the Women of the Court had prevailed? Did I mention that she works for a pro-life pro-bono public interest law firm?

As a rule, the Elite Woman prevails over Everywoman, who wants her children and family more than she wants status, money or career. The Sexual Revolution has been an imposition by the Elites upon the masses, from the beginning. From the beginning, it is the people of modest means who have suffered from no-fault divorce, and hook-ups and instability and relationship churning and non-marital childbearing.  A recent study from Johns Hopkins University demographers shows that 87% of women without a high school diploma had at least one child outside of marriage, compared with only 32% of women with college degrees. (Table 1A).

Women like Katie and I are willing to let ourselves see the harm that the Sexual Revolution had done to the poor. Our lives do not depend on defending the Sexual Revolution.  By contrast, for many Elite Women, the Sexual Revolution has made possible their lives as they know them. They literally cannot imagine what their lives would be like without contraception, with abortion as a back-up plan.

As I say, Katie and I will never occupy the seats of power that are available to childless women. We have many achievements to our credit, but Elite Women will run the show.  We have good lives: I do not regret for one moment, the choices I have made. But there is no getting around it: childless women have an advantage over mothers in the competition for power and influence.

All I can say is: thank God for the men on the Supreme Court. At least someone is sticking up for Everywoman against the Elite Women.

Jennifer Roback Morse is Founder and President of the Ruth Institute, which inspires the Survivors of the Sexual Revolution to recover from their negative experiences and share their stories with the young.  Join us here.

 

Hobby Lobby and Church/State ‘Separation’–the True Meaning

July 2nd, 2014 Comments off

By Jennifer Roback Morse

This article was first published at clashdaily.com on July 1, 2014.

I am relieved that the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision is not the train-wreck I feared. Some closely-held family businesses will be able to obtain religious exemptions from covering abortifacients in their government-mandated health care plans. But before we get too excited (and I must confess, I am somewhat excited!) let’s review what the separation of Church and State is coming to mean in our country. Read more…

Did You Know? The Pill Doubles the Risk of Glaucoma  

July 1st, 2014 Comments off

The long-term use of oral contraception doubles a woman’s risk of glaucoma and other eye diseases. You never heard this before? Listen to this press release from the American Academy of Ophthalmology:

NEW ORLEANS – Nov. 18, 2013 – Research presented today, at the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology in New Orleans, has found that women who have taken oral contraceptives for three or more years are twice as likely to suffer from glaucoma, one of the leading causes of blindness which affects nearly 60 million worldwide. The researchers caution gynecologists and ophthalmologists to be aware of the fact that oral

Check your eyes or flush your pills?

Check your eyes or
flush your pills?

contraceptives might play a role in glaucomatous diseases, and inform patients to have their eyes screened for glaucoma if they also have other risk factors.  (Emphasis added.)

“Inform patients to have their eyes screened.”  Notice they do not caution women to reconsider their decision to take oral contraception in the first place.  I wonder why? The press release goes on: Read more…

Did You Know?  British women hoping to sue Big Pharma over contraception

June 30th, 2014 Comments off

The Sexual Revolutionaries are predictably upset by the recent Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby.  So this is a good time to consider the question of whether contraception really is health care in any meaningful sense.  Hormonal contraception interrupts a perfectly natural process in perfectly healthy women. Pregnancy is not an illness or injury or disease. Preventing pregnancy can be accomplished in a number of ways.  Over the next few days, I am going to talk about some of the health risks associated with hormonal contraception.

Let’s start with a few cases from the United Kingdom.

Charlotte Porter died from a blood clot when she was 16.

Trudi Banning, in better days, before the Pill

Trudi Banning, in better days, before the Pill

Trudi Banning, a 22 year old “super-fit” female soldier, was stricken with a stroke that created gangrene in her digestive system, and ultimately left her infertile.

What do these British women have in common? They were taking the so-called “third generation” of birth control pills, such as Femodene and Dianette.  These women are hoping to sue American manufacturers of these “Third Generation” hormonal contraceptives.

The bitter irony for Trudi is that she was an 18 year old virgin when she entered the army and was put on contraception.  She says, ‘The Army didn’t want girls getting pregnant, and Read more…

Against religious liberty (arguments)      

June 28th, 2014 Comments off

I like religious liberty just fine, thank you very much. But I must say, I am tired of hearing the pro-family movement making religious liberty their primary argument against the Sexual Revolution. Too many of us have done this with the HHS Mandate (which amounts to creating a Contraceptive State) and Gay Marriage (which amounts to creating Genderless Marriage.)

I realize that we are poised for the US Supreme Court’s decision on the Hobby Lobby case on Monday. Still, I want to share my

I want YOU to take your FREE contraceptive pills!

I want YOU to take your FREE contraceptive pills!

objections to this rhetorical strategy:

First, religious liberty arguments do not address the underlying issue we are fighting about. We can make good rational, natural law arguments for our position, arguments that should be comprehensible to intelligent people of good will.

If we do not make such arguments, we sound as if we are dodging that issue. Some people on our side would rather talk about bakers and wedding photographers, than the real issue of why
marriage is the social institution that links the generations to each other, and that children have genuine rights that adult society ought to strive to respect.  Some people frame the HHS Mandate issue in terms of the harm to Christian employers and institutions, when the real question is HOW THE HECK DID THE STATE EVER GET IN THE CONTRACEPTION BUSINESS IN THE FIRST PLACE??!?!?!?!

Second, religious liberty is a losing argument. The Sandra Flukes and Dan Savages of the Read more…

SCOTUS DECISION EXPECTED THIS WEEK OR EARLY NEXT

June 24th, 2014 Comments off

from Helen Alvare

The Supreme Court is expected to release their decision in the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods cases THIS WEEK or EARLY NEXT! SO here are some instructions and requests for this week. Read more…

Preparing for the Hobby Lobby decision

June 17th, 2014 Comments off

from Kristina Arriaga, Executive Director, The Becket Fund for Religious Freedom

We are expecting the Hobby Lobby decision any day now. . . I think it is inherently unjust that the government has forced the Green family, the devout owners of Hobby Lobby, to face a two-year battle in court.

As you know, the Greens grew their family business out of their garage. They now own stores in 41 states employing more than 16,000 full time employees. They have always operated their business according to their faith. In fact, the Greens pay salaries that start at twice the minimum wage and offer excellent benefits, as well as a healthcare package which includes almost all of the contraceptives now mandated by the Affordable Care Act. Their only objection is to 4 drugs and devices which, the government itself concedes, can terminate an embryo. Read more…

As we prepare for the SCOTUS decision…

June 6th, 2014 Comments off

by Helen Alvare

We expect the Supreme Court to rule upon the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood cases in a few weeks. You already know how important the ruling is for the future of the law of religious freedom under the First Amendment of our Constitution. Read more…

Hundreds of Catholic employers win exemption from HHS mandate

June 6th, 2014 Comments off

.- A federal court has ruled that the Catholic Benefits Association and its hundreds of employer members are exempt from a federal mandate requiring coverage of contraceptives and abortifacient drugs. Read more…