Free Republic

CV NEWS FEED // The Biden administration on October 21 proposed making over-the-counter contraception free for everyone who has commercial health insurance. According to an article in Roll Call, President Joe Biden stated, “Today, my Administration is taking a major step to expand contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act. This new action would help ensure that millions of women with private health insurance can access the no-cost contraception they need.” The article explains that the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor and Treasury jointly proposed the rule, which would “require insurance plans to cover...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk criticized hormonal birth control and was met with stories from women about their personal experiences on the pill. "Hormonal birth control makes you fat, doubles risk of depression & triples risk of suicide. This is the clear scientific consensus, but very few people seem to know it," Musk wrote Friday on X, formerly Twitter, citing a 2017 news article from Time about studies on hormonal birth control. The Time article discussed how an American Journal of Psychiatry study indicated women who take hormonal contraceptives have a three times higher risk of suicide than those who never...

Kelsie Bryson says the excruciating migraines started around 2008, when she was 18 years old. They would come about once a month and cause what the now 28-year-old Bryson calls “really terrifying side effects.” “I would experience numbness in the right side of my body — including in my mouth, which would prevent me from talking for 15 or so minutes at a time — vomiting and confusion,” she told Global News. “I would be at work, and suddenly, it would be hard to read words or speak. I would bump into things and then my body would go numb....

"Our work shows that, for a frog, the suburbs are very similar to farms and sewage treatment plants," researcher Max Lambert said.NEW HAVEN, Conn., Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Male frogs seeking a mate might have better luck in suburban ponds -- that's if they don't mind the risk of turning into females themselves. Researchers at Yale University found suburban ponds, near shrubs, backyard gardens and manicured lawns, feature higher ratios of female green frogs than do ponds surrounded by forest. The new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests higher levels of estrogen in...

When the Obama administration pushed for over the counter sales of the Plan B drug, which may cause an abortion in some circumstances, pro-life advocates feared this kind of thing would happen. A local news station in Colorado has discovered that a children’s hospital with giving the Plan B drug to 12-year-old girls and all without parental consent. As Fox 21 reports: motherdaughter6bOne Colorado Springs clinic is offering kids as young as 12 access to the Plan B pill without any parental consent. That clinic is a division of Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora and offers services to 12 to...

The rate of teen pregnancy in the United States has fallen dramatically over the last two decades -- 52 percent -- though in the developed world, it still remains the highest. In 2008, the last year for which in-depth data are available, nearly 750,000 young women under 20 became pregnant, including some 236,000 teenage girls ages 15-17. The overwhelming majority of them were unmarried. The good news is that the numbers of teen pregnancies have declined so significantly for two reasons: First, fewer teens are having sex and second, more teens who are sexually active are using birth control. More...

Liberal marketing gurus here in Colorado are masters of Obamacare distraction. While customers struggle to apply through the still-broken health insurance exchange and consumers grapple with cancellation notices, these hipster ad designers are partying it up. Who cares about the insurance market meltdown? They've got keg stands and one-night stands! The "Got Insurance?" campaign is the lame brainchild of two "progressive" outfits with dubious nonprofit status: ProgressNow and the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative. Their previous claim to fame: a "Thanks, Obamacare" social media movement to propagandize praise and gratitude for the federal mandate. Modeled after the "Got Milk?" ads, the...

We all know that every day, people in Mexico come across the border in pursuit of something they can't find in their country. What you may not know is that every day, people in the United States go across the border to Mexico for the same reason. They aren't looking for jobs. They're looking for birth control pills. Why would that be? After all, Americans can get the pill without leaving their country. The reason is that in Mexico, they don't need a prescription. They don't have to see a doctor and present a scrip to a pharmacist. They can...

If anything as embarrassing as what follows occurred at a Republican presidential contender's website, including the follow-up ridicule by the opposition, the press would never be able to resist covering it. A mythical (I hope) ecard created at the Obama-Biden campaign site call purports to be from a daughter to her mother, and asks about the most ridiculous question you can imagine. I have no idea how the Obama campaign came up with $18,000. As I noted over six months ago in March, $9, 28-day supplies of birth control pills can be had at Target (which now appears to be...

The recent Health and Human Services mandate and the ensuing debate appear to have pitted religious-liberty claims against women’s health. But because religious leaders (rightly) focused on the need for a religious exemption, it may appear to some observers that they are unable to articulate a reasoned and weighty response to the administration’s claim that contraceptives are essential to women’s health and well-being.The Obama administration is wrong on this score as well, and the substantive case needs to be made: The contraceptive revolution has failed to be the unmitigated boon to women or to society that it was hyped...

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...

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....

LIVERPOOL, United Kingdom, August 12, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A recent study by the University of Liverpool found that the contraceptive pill may adversely affect a woman's natural ability to choose a genetically favorable mate. The ability to choose a genetically favorable mate is ascribed in part to pheromones, chemicals that can cause behavioral changes in the opposite sex. These chemicals also contain the genes involved in immunity response. When these genes interact with normal skin bacteria, they influence an individual's particular body odor. Research has indicated that women tend to be more attracted to the odors of men whose genes...

A really inconvenient truth. In 2002, thanks to soccer star David Beckham, the world was introduced to the “metrosexual.” Two years later, and with less mainstream-media attention, we got our first exposure to “Intersex.” Intersex is not some new perversion or a weird combination of science fiction and pornography. It is an unfortunate condition that is affecting freshwater fish all over the developed world. It occurs when fish of one sex also exhibit sexual characteristics of the other sex. In 2004, for example, researchers on the Potomac River, downstream from Washington, D.C., found large-mouth bass that in most respects were...

How can something be both immense and minute at the same time, something upon which all of human history depends, yet fragile and almost non-existent to the eye?  It is the union of an egg and sperm — an embryo.  Such is God's way.  He takes something smaller than a mustard seed and brings forth all of civilization.  After creating everything in the universe single-handedly, He created us in his own image and bestowed upon us the power to become co-creators with Him.  Working in union with us, when the sperm unites with the egg, not only has a new...

BRITAIN, September 13, 2007, (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new study conducted by individuals at the University of Aberdeen and recently published in the British Medical Journal claims to reassure women that taking oral contraceptives will, in fact, reduce their risk of getting cancer.  News services throughout the world are touting the 'medical breakthrough' that supposedly shows that "the cancer benefits of oral contraception outweigh the risks." In reality, the true facts of the study portray a very different result for the millions of women worldwide who use oral birth control.  According to the TimesOnline, the British study reportedly found that,...

NEW YORK, August 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A study of female military cadets has shown that the use of oral contraceptives is linked with loss of bone density in women. The study examined the effects of lifestyle, diet, and exercise on bone health in 107 white female cadets at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, and found that irregular menstruation and oral contraceptives had a negative impact on bone density.  The study bolsters earlier work showing that hormonal contraceptives negatively affect bone density. Estrogen plays an important role in the development and maintenance of bone...

DUBLIN, August 17, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An Irish woman has died of a blood clot after taking the birth control pill for several years. Her family and an investigating doctor have publicly attributed her death to the use of the contraceptive.On March 22 of last year, 31-year-old Julie Hennessy was found dead on the floor of her living room, Ireland Independent reports. Although she was a non-smoker of healthy weight, the woman had been taking the drug Mercilon for a number of years. This resulted in her developing deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a condition in which a blood clot...

 OTTAWA, August 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - During the Humanae Vitae Conference "A New Beginning" last year, noted endocrinologist Dr. Maria Kraw explained how many so-called contraceptives actually result in fertilization and end in the abortion of a new human person during its early development. Introducing her topic, the "Medical Consequences of Contraception," Dr. Kraw began by stating that she refrains from using the word "contraception." This is because it implies solely the "prevention of conception," whereas in reality many so-called contraceptives result in a myriad of other harms, including abortion. As a practicing endocrinologist (hormone doctor) at St. Michael's Hospital...

IN May the Food and Drug Administration approved a new birth control pill, Lybrel. It is as effective at preventing pregnancy as the other pills already out there (about 98 percent) but boasts one advantage: Women who take it will never get their periods. Lybrel is landing on pharmacy shelves this month. And now war has been declared on menstruation. Already the first few volleys in this battle have been exchanged. Gird yourselves, women, for a barrage of advertising and research highlighting the debilitating effects of periods and the joys of menstrual suppression. After all, periods and their mood swings...