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A Plan B One-Step emergency contraceptive box is seen in New York, April 5, 2013. A federal judge on Friday ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make "morning-after" emergency contraception pills available without a prescription to all girls of reproductive age. The District of Columbia has delayed a vote on a bill mandating all businesses cover abortion in their insurance programs regardless of the business owner's moral objections. In a decision made on Tuesday afternoon, the Council of the District of Columbia pulled the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act of 2014 off the agenda. Months after the D.C.-based...

I am in the process of writing a book which argues that the Sexual Revolution has been a rich person’s hobby horse from the beginning. The rich and powerful like the idea of separating sex from child-bearing. While this idea is sometimes wrapped up in a disguise of helping woman and the poor, the fact remains that the rich and powerful pioneered and implemented these ideas, quite often at the expense of women and the poor. So I wondered, when I picked up a book, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution, celebrating...

The birth control pill distorts a woman’s view of a potential mate, according to a newly released study. Researchers found that women using hormonal contraceptives were more likely to find physically undesirable men attractive while on birth control, potentially leading to a rude awakening down the line when the hormones wear off and they realize they aren’t attracted to their husbands after all. The study, released Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, followed 48 couples for four years of marriage, and another 70 couples for one year. Researchers found that women who met their husbands-to-be while...

Just when you thought feminists couldn't get any more insular, myopic and just plain silly; pills and gripes are the new stars and stripes. On the eve of Veterans’ Day, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and senator’s wife Connie Schultz tweeted a “Flag of Reproductive Freedom” to her 11,000 followers. In place of the stars signifying the 50 states, the flag boasted 28 buttons representing a month of birth control pills. NARAL also tweeted the “art.”

FULL TITLE: Nurse who confessed to strangling EIGHT of her babies 'because she did not want to use contraception' to stand trial for murder in France A nursing assistant who strangled and buried eight of her newborn babies will be tried in France four years after she admitted the country's worst ever infanticide case. Dominique Cottrez, 50, is said to have killed the children and hid their bodies in bin liners between 1989 and 2000 because she did not want to use contraception. After her confession in 2010, she tried to escape the charges by claiming the crimes all took...

Why Did God Kill Onan? Luther, Calvin, Wesley, C.S. Lewis, & Others on Contraception Genesis 38:9-10: “But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother’s wife he spilled the semen on the ground, lest he should give offspring to his brother. 10 And what he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and he slew him also.” It is an historical fact that no Christian communion sanctioned contraception until the Anglican Lambeth Conference in 1930. Protestant historian Roland Bainton states casually that the Church “very early forbade contraception”...

Today, Pope Francis beatified Pope Paul VI, who served the Catholic Church as the bishop of Rome 1963-1978. (“Beatification” is one step below being canonized a saint.) Paul VI had a jam-packed papacy, including finishing the Second Vatican Council, traveling to all six inhabited continents (a first for popes), and historic ecumenical break-throughs. But today he’s probably most remembered for his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which confirmed the Catholic Church’s long-standing teaching against contraception, abortion, and sterilization. Outside of the Catholic Church (and, unfortunately, by a large number of people within the Church as well), the teaching of Humanae Vitae...

The Cult of Contraception doesn’t exactly enjoy an overabundance of brain power, but when it comes to truly insipid commentary, PolicyMic has always been in a league of its own. This weekend, Marcie Bianco wrote that the birth control market is—what else?—even more sexist than you think. Opening with a comedy video from Buzzfeed (now there’s a font of deep cultural analysis) that purports to illustrate that “society places the burden of birth control on women rather than men,” whose condoms just don’t come with the cost and “cultural stigmas” of female birth-control options. The justification process alone — to...

Full Title: The Synod Will Be a Farce - if the Kasper Legion's Attempt to Muzzle It Goes According To Plan Q: Was Pope Paul VI wrong not to listen to the majority of lay couples on the commission discussing contraception back in the 1960s? A: I [Kasper] have a high esteem for Paul VI, he was a prophetic pope in a very difficult situation of the church after 1968 and so on. He was concerned to remain in the truth and not give up something, but I think it’s also a question of the interpretation of this encyclical Humanae...

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has updated their policy guidelines (PDF) concerning contraceptives for children under 18, recommending that the first line of defense against pregnancy for adolescent girls should be implantable contraception such as an IUD or a sub-dermal hormonal implant. The AAP says that because young girls cannot be trusted to remain abstinent, reliably take a daily birth control pill, or use condoms, the best way to ensure they do not become pregnant is to fit them with a “long-acting reversible contraceptive” – a device that, once installed, will either provide a continuous dose of hormones designed...

Cardinal Walter Kasper, a close influence on Pope Francis, says it is up to parents to decide how many children to have ahead of global gathering of Roman Catholic bishops to discuss the family A leading reformist Cardinal close to Pope Francis has hinted at the possibility of a reinterpretation of the Roman Catholic Church’s blanket ban on artificial contraception. Cardinal Walter Kasper said it was “the responsibility of the parents” to decide how many children they should have. He also said that so-called natural family planning, which is promoted by the Church as an alternative to contraception, also...

Editor’s Note: The following address was delivered by Don Feder, communications director for the World Congress of Families, at the International Forum: Large Family and the Future of Humanity in Moscow September 10-12, 2014. If current trends continue, we won’t run out of energy or other natural resources in the foreseeable future. We will run out of people. This global catastrophe will be the result of rapidly declining fertility, known as Demographic Winter. In 1960, worldwide, the average woman had 5 children. Now, that number is 2.6 and falling – in other words, a decline of almost 50 percent in...

Painting the Catholic Church as "out of touch" is like shooting fish in a barrel, what with the funny hats and gilded churches. And nothing makes it easier than the Church's stance against contraception. Many people, (including our editor) are wondering why the Catholic Church doesn't just ditch this requirement. They note that most Catholics ignore it, and that most everyone else finds it divisive, or "out-dated." C'mon! It's the 21st century, they say! Don't they SEE that it's STUPID, they scream. Here's the thing, though: the Catholic Church is the world's biggest and oldest organization. It has buried all...

The events that have unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri, in recent weeks have revealed many tragedies, among them the fact that the death of so many youth of color in this country is still debatable in its status as a vaunted “feminist issue.” But it is, and the expansive definition of reproductive justice, which reaches into the universe of conditions necessary to create and sustain life, shows us how. As RH Reality Check Senior Legal Analyst Imani Gandy put it so well in a recent tweet: Imani ABL @AngryBlackLady I saw so many people on Twitter saying "I don't want to...

With a population of 177 million, Nigeria has long been a target of population controllers. It is listed in NSSM 200, the infamous Nixon/Kissinger document which launched the war on people, as a country of special concern. As such, it has gotten more than its share of the abortifacients, sterilizing agents, and contraceptives that the American government has poured into Africa over the past few decades. Still, it is not enough, at least according to the Obama administration, which wants to increase the current shipments.[1] Their excuse is that maternal mortality in Nigeria is still too high, and if they...

Apparently the phony “war on women” has made its way to the Supreme Court. Upset by the fact that a majority of the justices on the high court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby’s religious freedoms, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is now accusing them of being sexist.In a new interview with pro-abortion media icon Katie Couric, Ginsburg lashes out at her colleagues and claims they have a “blind spot” towards women because they decided that Hobby Lobby should not be forced to pay for drugs that cause abortions for their employees.Never mind that polls show a majority of women oppose the...

The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Hobby Lobby case was met with incandescent outrage from progressives. The overturning of a mandate never passed by Congress which had not existed prior to 2010 signaled, those who consider themselves members of a class of deliberative and reasoned thinkers said, evidence of a theocratic judiciary in the United States. Recognizing the indignation on their side of the aisle, the White House responded by reassuring their base supporters that this offense would not go unanswered. “Today’s decision jeopardizes the health of women who are employed by these companies,” White House Press Sec. Josh...

When is Contraception Abortifacient? Speak Precisely. Life Training Institute Blog lti-blog.blogspot.com/2014/01/be-careful-out-there-when-discussion.htmlBe Careful Out There (When Discussing Emergency Contraception) by Serge (Rich Poupard) | January 22, 2014From “6 Resources on Whether or Not Birth Control Pills Cause Abortions“ It is very important when discussing important and controversial issues to do everything in our power to find the truth and not overstate the evidence that we have supporting our conclusions.This can be challenging when dealing with an issue such as emergency contraception, where the data and evidence is frequently either missing, confusing, or difficult to understand.To this point, I believe that the...

Credit: Jess Hamilton (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Lincoln, Neb., Jul 21, 2014 / 12:07 pm (CNA).- In an upcoming issue of The Linacre Quarterly, the official journal of the Catholic Medical Association, an article entitled, “The Breast Cancer Epidemic: 10 Facts,” will explore the scientific evidence that connects artificial contraception to breast cancer. Father Christopher Kubat, executive director of Catholic Social Services of southern Nebraska and a medical physician, is one of the co-authors. He was asked to contribute a small portion of the article by two of the main authors, A. Patrick Schneider II, M.D., M.P.H., and Christine Zainer, M.D....

Recent reports announcing the era of remote-control contraception herald the very real but slightly horrifying prospects for the future for those who believe that man can literally transform himself into a machine. This phenomenon is known as the cult of transhumanism. One news report calls the remote dispensation of contraception “creepy.” Another explains how this may come to fruition: “A challenge from Bill Gates two years ago has put science on the cusp of a revolutionary, remote-controlled method of birth control.” Technology Review says the wireless implant, if approved for safety and efficacy, could make it possible for a woman to turn her birth control on and...