contraception

from Talk to Action

As Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards got right with Jesus and the only "single-issue voters" that rate the Democratic Party's approval, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried talking the talk to enlist "pro-life" support for funding stem cell research.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has drawn guffaws from the pro-life community for comments saying that embryonic stem cell research, which involves the destruction of days-old human embryos, is a "gift from God." Her remarks came after the House approved a bill to force Americans to fund it.

"Science is a gift of God to all of us, and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure... And that is embryonic stem cell research," Pelosi said.

As Pelosi speaks of God’s gift of science, a Democratic Congress votes to spend $27 million more on abstinence-only programs and crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) than Bush had even asked for — thereby ensuring an increase in the rate of sexually transmitted infections and abortions among young people — while dumping millions of our tax dollars into the coffers of the same Religious Right abstinence-only industry working to criminalize safe abortion care, abolish stem cell research, and defeat the Prevention First program that Democrats claim to consider a high legislative priority.

While these politicians might fudge their positions on "a woman's right to choose," this action undeniably stamps them as just what the Religious Right accuses them of being: pro-abortion — because despite all their meaningless cant about "reducing the number of abortions," increasing the number of abortions is the only thing that abstinence-only programs guarantee to accomplish.

News out of Great Britain suggests that a male contraceptive pill is not too many years away from the market. The pill has been shown to not affect male hormone levels (thus not making them into girly girls), but it does prevent the manufacture of sperm.

In trials so far these have produced no worrying side effects - however scientists think men may still worry about whether introducing female hormones could harm their virility in some way.

The new approach would therefore avoid this problem. The common perception is that few women would actually believe a man who said he was on the Pill.

However a study published in the British Medical Journal in 2000 found that only two per cent of women said they would not trust their partner to take a male Pill.

I bet you can tell where this diary is going. Down.
If you are a woman, would you feel comfortable relying on your male partner to take care of contraception?

If you are a man, would you consider taking the pill in order to ensure not getting your partner pregnant? Would you worry about side effects? Would having your fertility affected make you feel less "manly"?