Bang for the Buck

A few days ago, there was this story about fetus fetishists being "upset" over funding of morning-after pills under the Maternal Health Initiative. (Note to editors: the word "stupid" is only one character more than "upset" and way more accurate.)

Anti-abortion activists say the federal government has broken its pledge to leave abortion out of its maternal health initiative, just as Prime Minister Stephen Harper wrapped up an international summit Friday with a fresh commitment of $3.5 billion to improve maternal health around the world.

The issue is the morning-after pill, a.k.a. emergency contraception. The morans are still claiming that it is an "abortifacient." It is not. There is no scientific controversy about this.

The morans are simply lying. Again.

But buried in the same article was this bit of info.

International Planned Parenthood notes that of $2.28 billion spent as of March 2014, only 0.55 per cent went to family planning, despite the fact that 222 million women around the world lack access to “a range of modern methods of contraception.”

Back in 2010, when Motherhood Steve was rolling out his plans for the Women of the World, there was a MASSIVE brouhaha over whether any family planning would be funded atall atall. Leave aside abortion. Motherhood Steve wouldn't touch condoms, b.c. pills, diaphragms, implants, etc. etc.

That idiocy blew up real good on him and Canada seemed to relent.

Now we find out that a measly 0.55% is being spent on family planning.

Let's consult the Steve's good buddies at the Gates Foundation, shall we?

However, more than 220 million women in developing countries who don’t want to get pregnant lack access to contraceptives and voluntary family planning information and services. Less than 20 percent of women in Sub-Saharan Africa and barely one-third of women in South Asia use modern contraceptives. In 2012, an estimated 80 million women in developing countries had an unintended pregnancy; of those women, at least one in four resorted to an unsafe abortion.

So, as always, we come back to square one of Abortion Reduction Bingo. Hate abortion? Support contraception. Support all kinds of contraception. Support as much contraception as possible.

And you don't have to hate abortion to support contraception.

Again, from the Gates Foundation, the benefits are huge.

Voluntary family planning is one of the most cost-effective investments a country can make in its future. Every dollar spent on family planning can save governments up to 6 dollars that can be spent on improving health, housing, water, sanitation, and other public services.

If my math (and calculator) are correct, 0.55% of $2.28 billion is just about $12.5 million (or about six junkets to the Middle East for Motherhood Steve and his pals and lackeys).

But multiply that by 6 and we get $75 million to spend on other health needs, water, sanitation etc.

OK, stick with me here. What if we spent a whopping 1% on family planning? Or, hey, let's go crazy and spend 2% on family planning!

That would be amount to $300 million in savings to be put toward other health needs in desperately strapped countries.

That strikes me -- admittedly NOT a trained economist -- as pretty damned good bang for the buck.

Butbutbut, the base would be "upset."

So, screw you, poor women. Who the hell do you think you are, wanting to decide when and how many pregnancies you want or can handle?

Canadian fetus fetishists will decide that for you.

Liars Gotta Lie

When the morning-after pill was approved, the actual mechanisms weren't well understood. It was thought that one way it worked was to prevent implantation, and since most definitions of pregnancy use implantation as the starting point, Plan B didn't cause an abortion.

But the lying liars insist that a whole complete 'person' is formed at the collision of egg and sperm, and so if implantation of the zygote is disrupted -- ABORTION!

From a report today:

Since then, the science has developed a much clearer picture of the drug's effects. Study after study has conclusively shown that emergency contraception (or EC) actually prevents egg release—and without eggs, naturally, fertilization can't happen, let alone implantation. Other studies have in fact shown that the drug is ineffective when taken after a woman has already ovulated. By this year, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics issued a statement that the three emergency contraception drugs on the market conclusively "do not inhibit implantation."

Will this shut the liars up about 'abortifacient' drugs?

Fat fucking chance.

SHRIEEEEKING from across the pond

While Merkin fundies are SHRIEEEKING over the FDA's sensible decision to stop playing politics comply with a court order to make emergency contraception available to 17-year-olds, Brit fundies are SHRIEEEEKING about this.

Furious parents called up radio phone-in shows in their hundreds to complain about the first television ad for the morning-after pill, which broke last night.

AEEIIII! An ad! On telly!



It's kinda odd, isn't it? The cartoon woman's surprise/shock/distress countered by the bouncy music. Not to mention the Pink.

So, the usual lying liars trot out their usual lies.

The ProLife Alliance has also condemned the ad claiming: "It is advertised inaccurately as emergency contraception when in fact its major function is to cause the abortion of an embryo that has already been conceived, not as suggested by the name to prevent conception."

Um. No. That's bullshit.

Anyway, good on ya, Britain. May we see such sense here.

Oh Noes! Fundy Politics at the FDA?

Judge orders FDA to let 17-year-olds use pill

The Food and Drug Administration let politics cloud its judgment when it denied teenage girls over-the-counter access to the Plan B morning-after pill, a federal judge said Monday as he ordered the FDA to let 17-year-olds obtain the medication.

U.S. District Judge Edward Korman blasted the FDA's handling of the issue during the Bush administration, saying it had "repeatedly and unreasonably" delayed issuing a decision on the medication, marketed by Montvale, N.J.-based Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc. as Plan B.

Korman's ruling said the FDA in several instances had delayed issuing a ruling for suspect reasons and on two occasions took action only to facilitate the confirmation of acting FDA commissioners whose confirmations had been held up by the repeated delays.

"These political considerations, delays, and implausible justifications for decision-making are not the only evidence of a lack of good faith and reasoned decision-making," Korman said. "Indeed, the record is clear that the FDA's course of conduct regarding Plan B departed in significant ways from the agency's normal procedures regarding similar applications to switch a drug product from prescription to non-prescription use."

Is sanity returning?

Benny Ratzo Pontificates Again

From the folks who brought you the Inquisition, more illuminating fundamentalist religious dogma served up as concern for the environment and of course, male breeding capacity.

In December, the Vatican opposed the use of the soon-to-be-available in Italy RU486 pill aka the morning-after contraception.

Faithful to its tradition of selective equivocation and/or denial of scientific data, the Vatican is claiming via its mouthpiece:

Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations said in a report in the Vatican newspaper, l'Osservatore Romano, that not only do“[they] have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill,” but that the pill “has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature” via female urine.

The Vatican's claim has been challenged by experts.

Here in Canada, scientists have demonstrated after decades of research on the Great Lakes, regarding the effect of contamination by PCBs:

... like many other chlorinated chemicals, PCBs are soluble in fat, so they tend to accumulate in living things and to enter the food webs, where they concentrate. The higher you are on a food chain, the greater the concentration of PCBs. Large fish and creatures that eat large fish, tend to accumulate in their flesh thousands, even millions of times the background levels of PCBs. Furthermore, by a cruel twist of fate, large birds and marine mammals (seals, sea lions, whales, and some dolphins) lack enzyme systems to efficiently detoxify PCBs. As a result, PCBs build up in the bodies of these predators and are passed to their offspring through eggs (in the case of fish and birds) and milk (in the case of mammals). PCBs mimic hormones and are a powerful disrupter of the endocrine system that governs reproduction. Marine mammals are already having trouble reproducing. It is entirely possible that, as more PCBs reach the oceans, all large mammals will disappear.

The Vatican is once again, attempting to spin stories to suit its ideological agenda.

Update: Antonia Z blogs about it here - Mellow Yellow. And more merriment, via Creekside's wise-beyond-her-days Emma Embryo.

Vatican: 'Morning-After Pill Does NOT Cause Abortions'

The Vatican has just released a big honking document on all sorts of panty-sniffing life and death matters.

Amid all the usual 'thou shalt nots', there's this stunning admission:

As a result, the Vatican said it opposed the morning-after pill, even if it doesn‘t cause an abortion, because an abortion was "intended."

Using terms like 'interception' and 'contragestion', the Vatican document does NOT call the morning-after pill an abortifacient.

You can read the whole thing at LifeShite, which is kinda ironic since nearly every reference to the morning-after pill there is prefaced by the phrase 'abortion-causing'.

Sheesh. When the Vatican won't toe the line on your lying lies propaganda, what's a fetus fetishist to do?