Men, skip this post. A new study revives a very old method of birth control, and it's not happy news for you. Withdrawal, says the Guttmacher Institute, is not a bad way to go. Many studies, and couples, don't really consider it a "method" so they don't talk about it or study it. But turns out it's almost as good as condoms (for pregnancy prevention, not for preventing transmission of diseases). For a couple that uses withdrawal every time they have sex, the woman has a four percent chance of getting pregnant, or a "realistic" chance of 18 percent. With condoms, it's a two percent and 18 percent.

Among the responsible class, withdrawal is having a revival as the more natural method. "You can still keep going, you can still have sex, it doesn't smell bad, [and] it doesn't have chemicals in it," one woman told the researchers.

Withdrawal will never have the glory of condoms. Going to the pharmacy to buy condoms is a teenage rite of passage, featured in every movie from Porky's to Dazed and Confused. Men can brag to their friends about using the condom. Not so much about withdrawal. Still, it's starting to have a kind of slacker appeal.

"I like pulling out in some ways-I see the yield," said one male participant. "At least it's some half-assed effort."

Tags: birth control, withdrawal method

Men, skip this post. A new study revives a very old method of birth control, and it's not happy news for you. Withdrawal, says the Guttmacher Institute, is not a bad way to go. Many studies, and couples, don't really consider it a "method" so they don't talk about it or study it. But turns out it's almost as good as condoms (for pregnancy prevention, not for preventing transmission of diseases). For a couple that uses withdrawal every time they have sex, the woman has a four percent chance of getting pregnant, or a "realistic" chance of 18 percent. With condoms, it's a two percent and 18 percent.

Among the responsible class, withdrawal is having a revival as the more natural method. "You can still keep going, you can still have sex, it doesn't smell bad, [and] it doesn't have chemicals in it," one woman told the researchers.

Withdrawal will never have the glory of condoms. Going to the pharmacy to buy condoms is a teenage rite of passage, featured in every movie from Porky's to Dazed and Confused. Men can brag to their friends about using the condom. Not so much about withdrawal. Still, it's starting to have a kind of slacker appeal.

"I like pulling out in some ways-I see the yield," said one male participant. "At least it's some half-assed effort."

Tags: birth control, withdrawal method

The Wall Street Journal today has a fascinating story about the Chinese phenomenon of runaway brides. These are young women who marry desperate bachelors, pocket the "bride price", then flee. The reason these bachelors are so desperate is that they are the result of China's one-child policy. Since families traditionally favor boys, a whole generation of girls has been aborted or abandoned. People are funny creatures who have a hard time imagining that their present moment won't continue indefinitely. Because of the decisions of millions of couples not to have girls, the Journal notes that a 2005 census found that China had an excess of 32 million males under the age of twenty. Apparently the families never considered if everyone had a boy, it would be hard to have grandchildren, since millions of boys would have no girl to marry. Now that this misogynistic future has come to pass, could it be that girls will become treasured?

Tags: china, desperate bachelors, one-child policy, runaway brides

In today's utterly-unsurprising-but-still-necessary news, the Guttmacher Institute has released a report detailing how women living in households making less than $75,000 a year are responding to the recession by losing the desire to have a baby anytime in the near future. (PDF of the report here.) To be specific, 44 percent of the women surveyed indicated that they wanted to reduce or delay their childbearing in response to the recession. Unfortunately, the lowered desire to get pregnant doesn't necessarily translate to better contraception use for women. In many cases, in fact, economic hard times make it all the much easier to get pregnant on accident.

The report also found, for instance, that 8 percent of the surveyed women were skimping on contraception in order to save money, and 18 percent of pill users were taking pills inconsistently to save money, usually by skipping a month or delaying refilling their pills. And as Lauren Sandler wrote in The Big Money back in May, the recession can negatively impact contraception use in other ways. This recession has created more upheaval in people's lives—more job changes, more moving around for work, more stress in general—and all that makes it much harder to remember to take your pill on a regular basis, or to keep a box of condoms on hand. I suppose it's easy to tell yourself you can just lay off sex until you can afford you have more money for contraception, but that kind of planning rarely works out the way we hope it will. Let's face it: In hard times, staying in and having sex to entertain yourself becomes even more alluring, because it's relatively cheap.

You'd think that more people would make contraception a priority, since most of us know that abortion costs a lot of money, and babies exponentially more so, but it's long been observed in the sexpert world that most people feel guilty about spending real money on sex. People who will spend $100 a month on cable won't spend $100 on a sex toy they'll use all the time and will last forever.

Unfortunately, this short-changing can be tragic when it comes to contraception. Back in July, I interviewed Heather Busby of the National Network of Abortion Funds, and she confirmed that they've received an explosion in requests for abortion funding from desperate women since the economic crash last fall. All of which should confirm the pressing need for national health care reform that would make sure more women have the insurance coverage they need to afford regular access to contraception.

Tags: abortion, contraception, recession

Of course abortion and birth control have a large role in bringing down our fertility rate in America, as they have elsewhere. (I have spent much of the past decade-and-a-half writing about both.) But there is no need to be reductive; this is not an either/or issue. There are many factors contributing to the decline in fertility, including both the ability to control when and whether to become mothers and the policies that affect mothers’ quality of life.

I don’t think the issue is just affording a child. It’s also, as I already reported, about not feeling professionally ready, i.e., not wanting to sacrifice hard-earned successes at work. Of course, many people just don’t want children (and, by the way, I have zero interest in coaxing anyone to do it). But for some women—again, we don’t know how many—the decision to have a child is more complicated than simply wanting to or not. Given the lack of part-time and flexible work options, as well as paid maternity leave and sick leave, and affordable childcare, women know that having a child can and often does derail women’s careers. For many, that knowledge is part of the calculus.

Since we’re offering personal stories, here’s mine: I waited quite a while to have children. For a long time, I didn’t feel ready. By the time I did, I encountered age-related fertility issues. I managed to have children anyway, but if I hadn’t, I think I would have felt sad about it.

As for whether the decline in women’s happiness is statistically valid, you can argue it either way—it’s small, but it’s there. What you cant quibble away is the fact that, without the support for working women that largely exists in other countries, life can be particularly difficult for working mothers in the United States. And that’s sad.

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Tags: abortion, birth control, happiness study, parenting

If the blood clots and stroke risks don’t scare you off the pill, maybe this will: Women taking oral contraceptives are less attractive to the opposite sex and less likely to pick a good mate, according to a roundup of studies on the pill, published in this month's Trends in Ecology and Evolution, that Sarah Kliff at Newsweek reported on today.

When a woman is ovulating, her hormonal fluctuations affect her “facial appearance, her vocal pitch, even body odor,” Kliff writes. “And during ovulation, those changes increase a woman's attractiveness because they indicate fertility.” Hardly as dramatic as the potential side effect that terrified many of my friends when we started going on the pill: rapid weight gain. But apparently men—who, so the legend goes, don’t even notice a new outfit or restyled hair (or is that just my dad?)—pick up on these shifts, as shown in a study in the roundup that found that lap dancers make higher tips when they’re ovulating.

The pill’s influence on scent goes both ways: Women on the pill react differently to men’s scents, too—in a way that might be leading us toward the wrong guys. One study in this month’s report found that women on the pill are more likely to be attracted the smell of genetically similar guys. (More impressive than the study’s findings, perhaps, is that the researchers “collected body odor from volunteers and put it in jars for the ladies to smell.” Sucks to be that research assistant.) That means that pill-popping women may be selecting partners counter to the credo that the species is stronger if we mate with people who are genetically dissimilar (put in simpler terms, “opposites attract”).

I imagine that the more tangible threats of weight gain, loss of libido, and mood swings will remain the only pill side effects that actually keep people away. Still, these studies are going to stick with me for a while, if only for the imagery of menstruating lap dancers and smells in jars.

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Tags: birth control, health, Science

Samantha, any time I see yet another story about the potential evils of the pill, both my eyebrows shoot straight for the ceilling. Science stories, like any other stories, get promoted because they have a hook, be it a counterintuitive one or a confirmation of people's ugliest impulses. Scare stories about contraception and STD protection—the latter reaching a fever pitch with the scare stories about the HPV vaccination—gain attention because the technological and cultural shift towards a world where women can enjoy sex without dreading the consequences makes many Americans uneasy.

Sometimes these studies on how the pill influences women's choices and attractiveness seem based on very thin evidence. Jezebel linked what may be one of the most comical science!-scare!-pill!-unnatural! stories I've seen in a long time. MSNBC reported that the pill might influence your mate choice toward more domestic kinds of fellas. The theory is that women that near ovulation are more likely to pick "bad boys" who will love 'em and leave 'em, but during the rest of the cycle, women are drawn to men who would make good fathers. But because the pill works essentially by keeping your body at even keel, hormone levels to prevent ovulation, women on it don't go for the bad boys, right?

The evidence MSNBC reports seems like a stretch. Researchers based these bad boy/nice guy conclusions on the fact that women who were close to ovulation chose pictures of men who looked more "masculine" and women on the pill or in different points in their cycle chose pictures of men who looked more "feminine." Their conclusions only make sense if you think that a strong jaw in a man makes him a cad who loves neither women nor children. The casting tropes from John Hughes movies do not, in my opinion, make a very good base of evidence to build scientific hypotheses about human biology. I'm also sure lesbians in the audience will be amused to hear their hormones direct them to this man or that, depending on their cycle.

It's really too bad that this study doesn't seem to amount to much, because part of me enjoyed imagining the anti-choice right getting befuddled because the hated birth control pill might incline women towards monogamy. Of course, knowing right-wing pundits, they'd probably bend this to argue that the pill encourages men to be effeminate; already the Vatican has released unscientific articles insinuating that the pill robs men of their masculine virility. Because even though the pill has been with us for two generations now, it still symbolizes female sexual independence, and that creates a demand on the right for a continual supply of half-baked evidence with which to denounce the pill.

Tags: birth control pill, evolutionary psychology, health, Science

Andrew Sullivan careens very close to revelation about the anti-choice movement today, asking, "What are the odds that the Christianists are prepared to do the one thing that would actually reduce abortions dramatically: guarantee free contraception as part of a public option." Answer: somewhere between zilch and nada. The Christianist movement that brought you abstinence-only education doesn't feel much better about contraception than they do abortion.

Dan Savage is right; the organized anti-choice movement is motivated by the desire to punish what they consider deviant sexuality much more than they are motivated by any love of fetal life. It's been well-observed by pro-choice activists for a long time that anti-choice activists, given the choice between punishing sex and reducing the abortion rate, will choose the former every time. The anti-choice movement's hostility towards contraception is an open secret; most people on both sides of the debate know about it, but anti-choice activists also know better than to flaunt their hatred of contraception when trying to woo people on the issue of abortion. As I discovered when an anti-choice handbook fell into my hands, activists are instructed to dodge questions about their hostility to contraception early in conversations, and put a great deal of work into softening targets up before hitting them with appeals against not just abortion, but contraception.

But for anyone who cares to know, the anti-choice movement's larger anti-birth control agenda isn't that hard to figure out. Some groups take a "moderate" stance of refusing to take an official stance on contraception, while quietly promoting misinformation about it. Some groups openly flaunt their desire to ban contraception; the American Life League holds annual protests against legal contraception on the anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that legalized contraception for married couples. Abstinence-only programs instigated by the religious right are rife with flagrant misinformation about contraception straight out of anti-choice mythology. If there's any angle prominent anti-choice activists can use to take potshots at contraception, they will. Knowing as we do that access to contraception reduces the abortion rate (duh), the only honest conclusion is that the "pro-life" movement doesn't care about the abortion rate so much as they care that women can get abortions without fear of punishment.

Incidentally, this is one reason I prefer the term "anti-choice" to "pro-life". In the public at large, "pro-life" is a feel-good term adopted by people who have no knowledge of the radical anti-sex bent of the anti-choice movement. In fact, many people who self-identify as "pro-life" oppose banning abortion, and many have abortions themselves. Calling yourself "pro-life" has as much weight in the real world as going on the record as believing that divorce is sad; you may want to be on the record as pro-marriage, but you'd get a divorce if you needed one. We need to distinguish between those attracted to the feel-good "pro-life" term, and activists out to ban abortion and severely restrict contraception access.

Tags: abortion, christian right

Here’s something I’m keeping an eye on. Abby Johnson resigned as the director of the Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas, after viewing an ultrasound of an abortion. The impact of ultrasound on abortion is interesting—Slate’s Will Saletan has written about it before—but what has me intrigued is that Johnson says she became conflicted because “she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions,” and that the organization was “changing it's business model from one that pushed prevention, to one that focused on abortion.”

If Johnson is right, that would be troubling but not surprising. While the number of abortions performed in the United States has been steadily declining, the number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood has been increasing. As a pro-lifer, I am conflicted about Planned Parenthood myself. The clinics offer lower-cost birth control to women who might not otherwise be able to afford it, which is a good thing for all of us who are interested in reducing abortions, not punishing people for having sex. But it’s also the nation’s largest abortion provider. If Planned Parenthood IS emphasizing abortion over birth control to help its financial situation, expect the right to be up in arms, and expect cries for the group to lose its federal funding to grow louder. (Rep. Mike Pence has introduced a bill in the House to do just that.)

What’s mysterious to me about this whole story, though, is that Planned Parenthood got restraining orders against Johnson and the pro-life group with which she is now working. The order says that “Planned Parenthood would be irreparably harmed by the disclosure of certain information, but does not bar Johnson or Coalition For Life volunteers from the premises.” Is Planned Parenthood going to such lengths to keep Johnson from discussing its “business model”? I don't want to jump to conclusions. But I will be watching.

Tags: Abby Johnson, abortion, birth control, planned parenthood

The Nelson Amendement—the Senate's answer to Stupak, which would limit coverage for abortion—was voted down yesterday. On the surface, this seems like a victory for pro-choice forces in the Senate, but Sen. Harry Reid intimates that the fight is not over, and Sen. Ben Nelson is threatening to fillibuster unless the language on abortion restrictions is tightened. According to the Washington Post:

Reid told reporters earlier Tuesday afternoon he would consider other language to allay Nelson's concerns. "If in fact he doesn't succeed here, we'll try something else," Reid said.

This is not the only disappointing news for women's health. As Sharon Lerner noted here on DoubleX and also at the Nation.com:

None of the bills emerging from the House and Senate require insurers to cover all the elements of a standard gynecological "well visit," leaving essential care such as pelvic exams, domestic violence screening, counseling about sexually transmitted diseases, and, perhaps most startlingly, the provision of birth control off the list of basic benefits all insurers must cover.

If essential care isn't part of health insurance reform, getting the bill passed is a pyrrhic victory for women at best.

Tags: abortion, birth control, nelson amendment, sharon lerner, stupak amendment