You may be right but I thought Christians and Catholics who believed that contraceptive was wrong was based is Kant’s whole deal— a person being an end in themselves and how they can never be used as a means– i.e. a means to satisfy your sexual desire. I think Catholics or at least maybe JPII in his “theology of the body” talked about sex being a self-gift and contraception goes against that notion… not that I necessarily agree(I’m agnostic and thoroughly enjoy being as a means to a beautiful woman’s desire) that said… it is a beautiful thought.

I’m in the mood for self-gift… simply because I’m near you!

and I was mistaken, this was implemented in Indonesia not Nepal (although I think they are now working in Nepal)

Point taken. I couldn’t agree more. At the end of the day even with any possible bad reactions/abuse etc etc it is important that women have more choices. It’s easier for me to voice my opinion considering I am educated and aware and has access to healthcare but there are scores of women out there without these choices.

something that’s not often discussed is that because of Viagra, etc, there has been a huge jump in rates of STIs including HIV, among the elderly.

I don’t see people beating up makers of those products saying that it is being abused and should be used responsibly etc…is it perhaps because it is men who use these products? hmmmmm

food for thought.

it’s a common misconception (and a whole lot of propaganda) that if women are given choices like this they will abuse them. That’s what the oponents of BC said when the pill first hit the market. Margret Sanger could probably say a few things to that

The truth of the matter is that women are pretty intelligent creatures on the whole. Will there be idiots who abuse the system? sure, but that doesn’t mean that there will be a wholesale abuse of the system.

And this is not just limited to urban, educated women either.

A study done in Nepal showed that rural women given misoprostol (a REAL abortive agent, but one with other uses as well) to be taken just after delivery before birthing the placenta so as to prevent post partum hemmorhage (#1 cause of maternal death in developing countries) could both follow instructions AND not abuse the system. (I will find link to research soon)

let’s face it giving women access to more reproductive choices can only empower them…in sub-saharan africa where most first sexual encounters are coerced, or in south asia where child marriage thrives etc, or in America where women are too often raped, women need to have options, and these options need to be made as unrestrictive as possible. Especially when it comes to EC because it is SO time sensitive.

Study published in JAMA, January 5, 2005:

Young, urban women showed no reduction in their use of contraceptives, nor any other changes in their sexual behavior when provided with easier access to the so-called “morning after pill,” also known as emergency contraception (EC), according to UCSF researchers. Rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) were the same at the end of the six-month study regardless of whether women had increased access to EC.

and another in the BMJ [2005;331:271 (30 July)]:

Objective To examine the impact on contraceptive practice of making emergency hormonal contraception available over the counter. Design Analysis of data on contraceptive practice for women aged 16-49 years in the period 2000-2 from the Omnibus Survey, a multipurpose survey in which around 7600 adults living in private households are interviewed each year. Results After emergency hormonal contraception was made available over the counter, levels of use of different types of contraception by women aged 16-49 remained similar. No significant change occurred in the proportion of women using emergency hormonal contraception (8.4% in 2000, 7.9% in 2001, 7.2% in 2002) or having unprotected sex. A change did, however, occur in where women obtained emergency hormonal contraception; a smaller proportion of women obtained emergency hormonal contraception from physicians and a greater proportion bought it over the counter. No significant change occurred in the proportion of women using more reliable methods of contraception, such as the oral contraceptive pill, or in the proportion of women using emergency hormonal contraception more than once during a year. Conclusions Making emergency hormonal contraception available over the counter does not seem to have led to an increase in its use, to an increase in unprotected sex, or to a decrease in the use of more reliable methods of contraception.

But JoaT, how does this same philosophy not apply to Sudafed, Tylenol, Nicotine Gun or Insulin? These are all somewhat dangerous things that can be abused and every now and then result in an accident or death, but the benefits of having them available to people are considered—by scientists who have carefully weighed the relevant statistics, more so in this case even than the other examples–to far outweigh the risks. THe difference between this and other medications is the organ system targeted and the population needing it. And any special consideration of reproductive health and women versus liverhealth/brainhealth/pancreasehealth/cardiovascular health is political, not scientific or medical.

You can in fact have it be “over the counter” but still keep it behind the counter—necessitating a conversation with a professional who warns you of the dangers–like nicotine gum and insulin. This would prevent children from abusing it to a large extent but would still make it quickly available.

the roman catholic church has generally taken an anti-war and anti-death penalty stance.

the GLOBAL Roman Catholic church is quite admirably consistent in its stand against abortion, war, poverty, and the death penalty. I dislike their desire to impose their religious preferences about birth control ( as opposed to about abortion) on non-Catholics via the mechanism of the state, especially because such preferences are quite specifically grounded in Catholic theology and metaphysics and much less grounded in some kind of potentially universal moral philsophy. The rest of it makes sense to me, politically pro-choicethat I am. (And by the way plenty of Hindus are religiously/personally/politically pro-life, and it makes sense given notions of the soul and stories about interactions with unborn children–Abhimanyu, Prahlad, and the Maruts come to mind.) What does not make sense to me is how much of the hierarchy of the American Roman Catholic church has abandoned any interest in peace activism or anti-death penalty acitivism or anti-poverty activism, and singlemindedly goes for anti-abortion activism to simply follow in the wake of the Protestant evangelical churches. It seems like a wholesale abandomenent of both philosophy and culture for the sake of an alignment with the current power structure, and personally, I am watching it drive devout friends out of the Catholic Church.

the roman catholic church has generally taken an anti-war and anti-death penalty stance.