All posts tagged "Birth Control Pill"

Pfizer announced a recall of approximately 1 million birth control pill packs in the United States and warned users of the recalled pills to start using back-up methods immediately to prevent pregnancy.

Look, folks: there isn't going to be a male birth control pill.  Some version of this article comes out every six months, and people swear up and down there's interest and the drug companies are going to clue into that any day now, and then it dies down and we're never going to get any closer to it.  I used to be one of those people who, with naive stars in my eyes, somehow believed that I knew better than the consumer research folks at drug companies who crunch the numbers and say there's no way on earth that a male contraceptive would make enough money to justify the R&D spending.  Now I've seen 8 million variations of this story and have been unable to delude myself any longer.  The evidence that men will use the pill in large enough numbers to justify spending money on it just isn't there.  But the evidence that they won't use it is pretty damning. 

As many of you know, the birth control pill turned 50 this year, which means that we're all in for a lot of editorials chewing that favorite conservative theme, which I'd describe as, "Women only think they like sex." Via Roy, I have to say that this screed from Kathryn Jean Lopez is in the running for my favorite. Lopez, who I have to point out for reasons that will soon become clear is (as far as I know) childless and unmarried, is the first to line up to explain to all the stupid feminists why we're so stupid thinking we actually enjoy contraception, sex, and having choices.

I don't mean to keep hammering at Bitch Blogs for this, but it's just irresponsible at this point. Earlier today, I criticized an interview with anti-pill activist Laura Eldrige for engaging in unscientific fear-mongering. Well, there's a part two up. In the first part, there was the pretense that this is about "asking questions" and "broadening the discussion", a cover story that skeptics like to call "JAQing off".

[rebelmouse-image 24748787 original_size="366x358" expand=1]Jesse touched on Ross Douthat's latest excretion yesterday (summary: yes, killing doctors rape victims dying women blah blah, but did you know YOUNG WOMEN ARE FUCKING AND GETTING AWAY WITH IT?), and it was so exhausting to read Douthat's lies and innuendo that I was really happy that other bloggers were all over it, because I really didn't have the energy to push back against his blatant lying about the focus of anti-choice activism two days after one of their semi-annual protests to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut and get the birth control pill banned. Since Douthat mainstreams other wacky ideas you could only get from deep involvement in the anti-choice community---like Planned Parenthood makes most of its money from abortion or Dr. Tiller was lying about the medical indicators for late term abortion, totally untrue and obviously believed by Douthat---he has to know about the movement to ban the birth control pill and is deliberately lying about it to seem more moderate.

[rebelmouse-image 24748311 original_size="374x53" expand=1]A friend sent me this story about further Baptist shenanigans, this time from the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. What I like it is that it's a clear cut example of how godbags don't believe their own bullshit.