The Side THE BOSS Is On

Suggest you hum "Everybody's got a hungry heart" to yourself as you read these stories. 

• March 2008, Purdue  Police investigating man dressed as woman taking photographs in female bathroom. 
• October 4, 2010  Cross-dressing man enters women's locker room at UC Cal/ /Berkeley 
• July 2011 Oregon City. Registered sex offender poses as woman to enter women's locker room.
• March 2012, Everett Washington, man dressed as woman arrested for voyeurism in woman's bathroom. Admits he's the suspect in other cases. 
• May 2013

Man, Jason Pomare,  arrested filming women in their bathrooms, claiming (falsely) to be transgender. 

• June 2013, San Bernadino 

Rodney Kenneth Peterson dresses as a woman to photograph women in a female dorm.  Also the suspect of same crime in several other locations.

• February 28, 2014: Gregory Schwartz, a man dressed as woman tries to assault woman in San Diego bathroom. 

• March, 2014, Christopher Hambrook, a man who falsely claimed to be transgender to assault women in two Toronto women's shelters was declared a dangerous sexual predator. Had already served a prison sentence for sexually assaulting a 5 -year-old girl. 
• Transgender woman raped in a unisex bathroom at the Stonewall Inn (yes, that one). 

[Update: Collecting more links: 

• Peeping Tom filming girls in MO Target
• Cross-dressing man filming women in VA (Potomac Mills Mall) bathroom

Please note: none of the above are cases of trans people hurting anyone. These are cases of sexual predators using trans-friendly laws to hurt women and children -- including a trans woman! 

But who the hell cares? It's only women. 

I Predict the Sudden Rediscovery of the Male Chaperone

This 16-year-old German girl's video asking the perfectly reasonable question, "Why do we have to live in such fear" about the growing phenomenon of girls being raped by Muslim refugees has gone viral.

Front Page magazine has more on the story, as well as links to the kinds of incidents Bibi Wilhailm is referring to. Such as the assault of hundreds of women in Cologne on New Year's Eve by gangs of "North African-looking men."

Sweden now has the #2 rape rate in the world, thanks to a wide open door policy for migration from the Middle East and North Africa.

I could link much more, but google it yourself.

It will be interesting to see whether any European government actually values its liberty and its women enough to put a stop to this. And whether the U.S. will continue on its follow-Europe path and import that madness here.

Meanwhile, I predict a sudden surge in male chaperoning among private citizens who care about one another. Not looking so patriarchal and condescending at the moment, is it?

Update: See? Soldiers of Odin protect women in Finland. Not necessarily a great development, however: where law fails, vigilantes spring up.

Essure Don't Care About Women

The FDA fast-tracked a contraceptive device called "Essure." Predictably, it doesn't actually seem to be safe. Possibly because it works like this:

The device is a small metal and polyester coil placed into a woman’s fallopian tubes in order to make her permanently sterile. 

We all understand the fallopian tubes are delicate, right? Gee, who could have foreseen these problems? 

Since then, the agency has received more than 4,000 reports of serious complications related to the device, including severe back and pelvic pain, heavy prolonged menstrual periods, and coils that pierced the fallopian tubes and lodged  in other organs.

Actually, there was no need to foresee these difficulties, since they emerged in the clinical trials. 

In a safety trial that enrolled 269 women ages 23 to 45, the device was successfully inserted into 200 patients. In nine of them, a coil perforated the fallopian tube, was expelled or lodged elsewhere in the body, according to a 2003 report in the journal Human Reproduction.
Trial participants were asked to keep diaries, and nearly one in 10 participants recorded painful intercourse, while one in eight had painful menstrual periods during the first three months.In a subsequent trial of 518 women, only 449  were able to rely on the device. On 21 occasions, the implant perforated the fallopian tubes, was expelled, or ended up in the wrong place in the body. At least eight women had surgery to be sterilized or to remove a misplaced coil.

Participants again reported back pain, abdominal pain and pain with intercourse.

A citizens' petition to the FDA to w/draw the device has more than 16,000 complainants. There's a FB with 17,000 members. 

The National Center for Health Research, a nonprofit group, has begun analyzing adverse event reports related to Essure, looking for patterns of complications.
“The fact that 16,000 women with children and a lot of things to do are willing to take the time to talk about this is very, very unusual,” said Diana Zuckerman, president of the group, referring to Mrs. Firmalino’s Facebook page. “I can’t think of another device like this.”

A study on the long term effects of the device was just published last week... and 30% of the trial participants are missing in the data. 

Dr. Aileen Gariepy, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Yale School of Medicine, has calculated that nearly one in 10 women with Essure would get pregnant over a 10-year period, a much higher rate than that among women who undergo tubal ligation.
She finds it troubling that the long-term study published last week did not include data on 30 percent of the trial participants.
In clinical trials, she said, “the most common reason patients are lost like this is because they had a problem.”

Not to worry, my pretties. 

F.D.A. officials said they were concerned about the coils moving outside the fallopian tubes, but did not believe the device was flawed.
“The agency believes the benefits outweigh the risks in appropriately selected patients who are adequately informed,” said Dr. William Maisel, deputy director for science and chief scientist in the F.D.A.’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

Not to pull the feminist card, but does anyone believe that a comparable device to sterilize men would last for one week after the second man reported severe pelvic pain, flu-like symptoms, and a migration of the device from his vas deferens to other internal organs? 

But who the hell cares? It's only women. 

Some Like It Hot

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA, obviously, on both counts) introduced a House resolution claiming that climate change will force women to become prostitutes.

“Women will disproportionately face harmful impacts from climate change,” Lee’s resolution reads. It continues claiming, “Food insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health.”
Lee’s document goes on to urge Congress to agree on the “disparate impacts of climate change on women,” and goes on to demand that Congress use “gender-sensitive frameworks in developing policies to address climate change.”

I am now confused as to "weather" sex work is fempowering or not.

"Germaine Greer Does Not Represent Feminism."

Progressives continue to eat their own. Now Germaine Greer is boycotted.

The only thing this and the suppression of the Vagina Monologues teaches me is that once we unhinge ourselves from Nature, everything really does fall into chaos.

In this instance, however, who the hell cares? It's only womyn.

Hoist By Their Own Petard

It's only January but we may have the feel-good headline of the year:

Vagina Monologues cancelled because it Excludes Women Without Vaginas.

It seems trans-gender persons feel excluded, so no more of this talk will be tolerated.

In a school-wide email from Mount Holyoke's student-theater board, relayed by Campus Reform, student Erin Murphy explained that "at its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman ... Gender is a wide and varied experience, one that cannot simply be reduced to biological or anatomical distinctions, and many of us who have participated in the show have grown increasingly uncomfortable presenting material that is inherently reductionist and exclusive." 

Elizabeth Scalia says all that need be said on the topic, quite humorously, if you can bear to read the word "vagina" that many times.

And you know what? For once I am the one who just doesn't give a damn.

It's only womyn.

French Feminists Miss Real Reason to be Offended

Shamelessly pinched from the story linked below.

Feminists want to remove a statue based on Alfred Eisenstaedt's iconic photo of an end-of-war kiss from a display in Normandy:

Osez Le Féminisme maintains that the statue is clearly nothing more than the disgusting depiction of a sexual assault in progress.
“The sailor could have laughed with these women, hugged them, asked them if he could kiss them with joy,” the group told The Times of London.
“No, he chose to grab them with a firm hand to kiss them,” they continued. “It was an assault.”

I too find the display ignorant. But only because: what's it doing in Normandy? The kiss was on V-J Day, not D-Day. 

The REAL War on Women

...the biggest problem might be the lack of pockets in the first place: women's slacks, dresses, and blazers often have no pockets, or worse, “fake” pockets that serve no utilitarian purpose besides sartorially leading the wearer on to believe they have a handy wardrobe aide, until it’s too late.

OMG, Yes! 25 years ago when I was working as a pro-life lobbyist I used to tell a colleague that if the feminists really wanted to advance the status of women they'd fight for some freaking pockets in our power suits. Fake pockets are the scourge of woman-kind.

"Math Class Is Tough"

Cosmo's going political. Not sure how that's a change. I haven't looked at a fashion mag except in the grocery line in decades, but last I looked they all promoted Planned Parenthood and fashionable liberal causes and fawned over Progressive candidates. Maybe they think we're so dumb we didn't understand they wanted us to vote for the people they lionized?

At any rate, "Amy Odell, Cosmopolitan.com’s editor, said she’s going to make sure the election is not “boring and difficult to understand.”

A blogger at the Independent Women's Forum observes this is insulting: 

Rather than addressing political issues with the seriousness they deserve, it looks like Cosmo is going to mislead women with biased, one-sided reporting and – oh yeah – a cool party approach. 

All I can think of is that talking Barbie withdrawn for insulting girls: "Math class is TOUGH!"

Not that it matters: it's only women. 

Remote Control Women

Bill Gates is funding development of a remote control birth control microchip. You put two decades' worth of hormones in the woman's body and time release it in increments remotely.

That's what I like, giving Planned Parenthood and third world governments a chance to manage women's fertility as they DVR their favorite shows.

What could possibly go wrong?

(And who the hell cares? It's only women.)

UN Attacks The Catholic Church

God bless the UN's Committee on the Rights of the Child for its malicious attack on the Vatican in the name of protecting children. It may be false, hypocritical, unfair, ideological, cowardly and vile all at the same time, but at least it has the merit of clarifying for everyone -- perhaps even the most obtuse churchman?--  that UN committees are no friend of anyone decent. 

Claudia Rosett, a reporter's reporter on U.N. malfeasance, takes Turtle Bay's recent report on the Vatican apart blow by blow.

The report calls for transparency on child abuse allegations. Well, we're all for that but first, the Vatican, under Pope Benedict, HAS addressed clerical malfeasance openly. But secondly, as we've chronicled here (and here and here) over the years, it's pretty rich hearing about transparency from the UN, which routinely covers over sex trafficking and rape perpetrated by its "peacekeeping forces."

Exposing abusers and holding them to account is a great idea. The Vatican has spent years addressing the scandal of its own past handling of such cases. But the U.N. hardly engages in the transparency it is now promoting.
The U.N. releases only generic statistics on violations committed by personnel working under its flag. The U.N. doesn't share with the public such basic information as the names of the accused or the details of what they did to people the U.N. dispatched them to protect. Blue berets accused of sex crimes are simply sent back to their home countries, where in the majority of cases they drop off the radar.

Though the U.N. has been recording a drop in sex-abuse cases since it began releasing numbers in 2007, the number of alleged instances of rape and exploitation each year still runs into the dozens. (This may understate the realities, given the hurdles to victims coming forward, often in societies in tumult or at war.) From 2007-13, the U.N. reported more than 600 allegations of rape or sexual exploitation, with 354 substantiated—many of them involving minors. The numbers do not convey how ugly some of these cases get. Details can occasionally be gleaned when an incident seeps past the U.N. wall of omerta and makes it into the news, as with the peacekeeper gang rape in 2011 of a Haitian teenager, whose agony was caught on video.

The report calls for the Vatican to drop its opposition to abortion, birth control and homosexuality and drop its reservations on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child -- which is pretty rich from a committee made up of members from Syria, Saudia Arabia, Bahrain, Tunisia and Egypt among others. Indeed, Rosett shows that not only is the report specious (is Egypt seriously giving the Vatican lectures on human treatment of homosexuals?), but it's cowardly: 

A stark example of selective reporting can be found in the committee's most recent observations on Saudi Arabia—issued eight years ago. That report mentioned the case of a 2002 fire at a girls school in Mecca, a disaster in which 15 girls died and dozens more were injured. Expressing "grave concern" that "the school building did not meet adequate safety standards for children," the committee recommended that school buildings be made safer and that staff be trained for such emergencies.
What the committee did not mention was that when the schoolgirls tried to escape the fire, Saudi Islamic-morality police drove the students back into the burning building because they were not covered head-to-toe in the scarves and abayas required in public. Saudi journalists had the courage to report on this monstrous element of the tragedy. The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child left it out.

Burn girls to death rather than allow them out without abayas? Ok! But don't dare deny them the birth control and abortion we need for our Blue Hats and others to mask their abuse of girls. (But who the hell cares? It's only women.)

Or take North Korea, where state policy has led to famines that resulted in the stunting and mass starvation of children, and where disloyalty to the supreme leader can be punished by sending three generations of a family, including children, to prison-labor camps. In assessing North Korea, the U.N. committee in its most recent report released in 2009 expressed concern about"severe ill-treatment" of children and noted with "deep concern" that "the overall standard of living of children remains very low." But there was none of the fervor with which the committee has denounced the Vatican for failing to explicitly forbid corporal punishment. On that the committee was more than merely concerned, scolding the Holy See to ensure that "all forms of violence against children, however light, are unacceptable."

It's obvious the report is the animus-laden product of progressives who haven't the courage or the power to stand up for children against the world's most vicious regimes. The Holy See issued a diplomatic and measured -- but by its terms scathing-- response to the report.

Doctors Not Needed to Perform Abortions in California

"Safe, legal and rare?" I guess after Gosnell anything goes.

I seem to recall one of the arguments that abortion HAD to be legalized was that desperate women would no longer have "back alley abortions" delivered by non-medical personnel.

Why do feminists always end up demanding the very thing they once railed against?

Not that it matters. It's only women.

An Assualt Weapon Liberals Wouldn't Ban!

I was sure this had to be from the Onion, but no. Simcha Fisher writes: Super Caring Medical Student Designs Super Caring Uterine Assault Rifle, for the Ladies.

The post (filled with documentary links) explains how this IUD inserter works:

Because when your heart is just full of pain for the plight of women, the first thing you do is design a medical assault rifle that fires a copper barb through her cervix producing a continual low grade infection which will cause her uterus to expel any fertilized eggs, on the off-chance that sperm survived and an egg was released. Your goal is to make it so easy to use that you don’t even have to be a doctor.

Except the woman will probably end up at the doctor with heavy bleeding, uterine cramps, anemia, or a device that's traveled to other internal organs -- you know, all the typical side effects of the IUD.

But who the hell cares? It's only women.

(RTWT -- and P.S. from the comments, Simcha adds: "I like how the hand model is wearing a jacket and dress shirt, like he's the James Bond of IUDs. Poor Pussy Galore, she never saw it coming.")

Make Them Cover The Gosnell Story

The media are curiously uninterested in the trial of Kermit Gosnell. To his credit, Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic is an exception. Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Should Be A Front Page Story.

As he reports:

The grand jury report in the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I've read. "This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy - and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors," it states. "The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels - and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths."

Dr. Gosnell is now on trial for 7 counts of murder, but his actual body count is in the hundreds. For years, in filthy conditions, he outright killed live babies -- and when he couldn't, he paid non-medical staff to do so in his stead.

From the Grand Jury report:

When you perform late-term "abortions" by inducing labor, you get babies. Live, breathing, squirming babies. By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care. But that was not what the Women's Medical Society was about. Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn't call it that. He called it "ensuring fetal demise." The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby's neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that "snipping."

Over the years, there were hundreds of "snippings." Sometimes, if Gosnell was unavailable, the "snipping" was done by one of his fake doctors, or even by one of the administrative staff.

But all the employees of the Women's Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn't murder at all. Most of these acts cannot be prosecuted, because Gosnell destroyed the files. Among the relatively few cases that could be specifically documented, one was Baby Boy A. His 17-year-old mother was almost 30 weeks pregnant - seven and a half months - when labor was induced. An employee estimated his birth weight as approaching six pounds. He was breathing and moving when Dr. Gosnell severed his spine and put the body in a plastic shoebox for disposal. The doctor joked that this baby was so big he could "walk me to the bus stop." Another, Baby Boy B, whose body was found at the clinic frozen in a one-gallon spring-water bottle, was at least 28 weeks of gestational age when he was killed. Baby C was moving and breathing for 20 minutes before an assistant came in and cut the spinal cord, just the way she had seen Gosnell do it so many times. And these were not even the worst cases.

As Friedersdorf notes in his subtitle, there are SO many angles to this story about a filthy unregulated abortion clinic in the inner city of Philadelphia:

Dead babies. The exploited women. The racism. The numerous governmental failings. It just is insanely newsworthy.

And yet here is a picture of the space reserved for media at the trial.

 Shamelessly pinched from here

I pinched the picture from a go-get-'em post at Get Religion at which blogger Mollie asked some reporters why they aren't covering the story the same way they would any OTHER story featuring a mass murderer preying on minority women and children. 

Particularly excellent is the Washington Post's reporter's claim that she's a policy person and doesn't cover local crime. Riggghht. Like the Post hasn't covered local shootings in Aurora and Newtown. Or OJ Simpson's local stabbing of his wife. 

Rightly does Mark Steyn refer to the conditions at this clinic as the Government's Back Alley -- because everyone knows that Dr. Gosnell's clinic is not a one-off, but will force us to take a hard look at what "safe" means in the expression that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." 

For that matter, what does "choice" mean when no one wants to shine a light on this aspect of Gosnell's behavior: 

FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD Robyn Reid didn't want an abortion. But when her grandmother forcibly took her to an abortion clinic one wintry day in 1998, Reid figured she'd just tell the doctor her wishes and then sneak away.
Instead, Kermit Gosnell barked: "I don't have time for this!" He then ripped off her clothes, spanked her, wrestled her onto a dirty surgical stretcher, tied her flailing arms and legs down and pumped sedatives into her until she quit screaming and lost consciousness, she told the Daily News yesterday.
Nicole Gaither got an abortion from Gosnell in 2001. After four days, she said, the pain was so bad she could barely walk. She returned to the clinic, where, she said Gosnell blithely told her he'd left fetal remains in her.

"Stand up! It don't hurt that bad!" he yelled at her, she said, before suctioning - without any medication - her insides.
In 2001, Davida Johnson changed her mind about aborting her 6-month fetus after seeing Gosnell's dazed, bloodied patients in his recovery room, she said. But in the treatment room, Gosnell's staffers ignored her protests, smacked her, tied her arms down and sedated her into unconsciousness, she said. She awoke no longer pregnant.
Weeks later, she said, she was diagnosed with a venereal disease that she believes she contracted from unsterilized equipment Gosnell used. Now, she can't carry a baby to term and said she has miscarried four times since her abortion.

Dr. Gosnell, with his sadism and penchant for keeping the feet of the babies he killed in jars. is a particularly disgusting abortionist, but his is by no means the only unregulated, unclean clinic running a cash/volume business while preying on blacks and latinos in the inner city. And most women who go in for abortions report being pressured into it by boyfriends or parents. 

• Planned Parenthood clinics won't report sex trafficking, they'll help pimps exploit young girls brought here from other countries. Here's undercover video to prove it.
• Dr. Leo Carhart killed a woman in his Montgomery County, MD clinic last February.
• Delaware abortion clinic botches 5 abortions in as many weeks. A former employee testifies:

  Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich, former employee said, "It was just unsafe. I couldn't tell you how ridiculously unsafe it was." Werbrich alleges conditions inside the facility were unsanitary. "He didn't wear gloves," said Werbrich.

• In New Jersey in February, a botched abortion that nearly killed a girl led a trail to an abortion clinic where health officials reported these conditions: 

the botched abortion caused so many medical complications that Newark Beth Israel Medical Center filed a complaint with state officials. The Department of Health and Senior Services investigated the abortion facility and found dirty forceps, rusty crochet hooks used to remove IUDs, and a quarter-inch of dirt and debris under an examining table.

Why is this so hard? Why do we hear no "choice" advocates condemning Gosnell and distancing themselves from him?

There is no "choice," there is no "safe," at 1.5 million per year and a multi-million dollar industry, there is no "rare."

There is "legal," though. Shouldn't we ask ourselves why? (Hint: forget about honest disagreement over when a human life deserves legal protections. Follow the money.)

But who the hell cares? It's only women.

 **********
Update:  Today was a "tweetfest" in which participants were to use the hashtag #Gosnell to shame the media into covering the story. And, lo, slowly, it is working -- tho' so far only among journalists we already knew were rational.

• Terry Moran of ABC News tweeted earlier today that "Kermit Gosnell is probably the most successful serial killer in the history of the world." 

• Jake Tapper covered the story on his show at 4:00 pm.

• Megan McCardle: Why I didn't write about Gosnell's Trial  -- and why I should have:

I knew about the Gosnell case, and I wish I had followed it more closely, even though I'd rather not.  In fact, those of us who are pro-choice should be especially interested.  The whole point of legal abortion is to prevent what happened in Philadelphia: to make it safer and more humane.  Somehow that ideal went terribly, horribly awry.  We should demand to know why.

What happened in Philadelphia should never happen again, and all of us--not just the Philadelphia police--should be asking how we make sure it doesn't.  I don't know the answer to that yet, because I still don't understand what happened in Pennsylvania.  But I'll be working to figure it out.

But WaPo still can't be bothered to mention it -- except offhandedly in paragraph 20 of a story about a clinic regulation bill in VA. 

Courtesy As Pathology

Charles Murray finds -- and fisks-- an article in a feminist quarterly about "benevolent sexism," by which is meant what normal people call good manners. The feminists document that:

benevolent sexism was indirectly associated with life satisfaction for both women and men

but still think it must be crushed because...well, I'm not really clear why. What makes women happier is not permitted?

Murray asks:

When social scientists discover something that increases life satisfaction for both sexes, shouldn’t they at least consider the possibility that they have come across something that is positive? Healthy? Something that might even conceivably be grounded in the nature of Homo sapiens?

Speaking of the absence of good manners, here is my old fuddy-duddy shocked rant of the hour. There's a certain raw word for "bum" that is in use everywhere now. It's a mild word, but it nonetheless rings coarse in my ears and I can't help thinking less of people who use it casually, instead of saving it for an occasion when it is the only right word. I blame the physical trainers. We used to work our "glutes," and go for "buns of steel," but now we have to work our bu---s off, and it takes all the sting out of a good swift kick in the, you know?

What's even worse and I encounter all the time now --strangely, from otherwise genteel, sweet ladies-- is people who are constantly saying things are so funny they almost became incontinent. Why, oh why, would you say such a thing? Blech.

Come, Lord Jesus!

Rats! Your Surgery's Cancelled

Rat infestation in the surgery caused the cancellation of operations at a hospital in Britain. I think the story rather buries the lede, however. Later on we find:

Separately at the beginning of October, it emerged almost 80 breast cancer patients were being recalled by King's Mill Hospital after being given inaccurate test results.
About 120 women were given false negative results which meant some of them would have benefited from treatment different to what they were given.

False negatives? So 120 women may die of breast cancer --or at least have a much bigger fight on their hands-- thanks to incompetence at this hospital?

By all means, tell us first about the rat! Who the hell cares? It's only women. 

Well, that's not fair. I suppose the breast cancer story is old and they reported it back in October. Besides, false breast cancer negatives from the NHS are common, as we learn from this 2010 story.

Christine Hullock from Penrith was told she did not have cancer in April. Months later she had two operations including a mastectomy.
In total 16 women have been treated for breast cancer after being called back for further assessment at North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust.
The trust's breast screening programme was suspended in July.
Three radiologists have been told they should not return to work until they have had more training.

Awesome! Not one ill-trained radiologist who through some fluke got through the system, but three! How many radiologists do we suppose were on staff? If the program was suspended, that suggests the entire radiology staff was incompetent, no?

I bet all those women dying of cancer are grateful for their free birth control,  and think it's a benefit well worth cutting back on radiology training. So I am back to: who the hell cares, it's only women!

Curtsy: Powerline, which comments:

With President Obama’s re-election, it is generally assumed that Obamacare is here to stay. Which means that pretty soon, your health care will be run incompetently, like the postal service, and with an agenda, like the EPA and the Department of Energy.

Who Remembers The Dalkon Shield?

I may be forced to become a vaccine hater just because of this story convincing me once and for all that most medical reporting isn't worth a warm bucket of hamster spit.

Women overestimate effectiveness of Pill, condoms, Reuters tells us.

Researchers found that of more than 4,100 women who were seeking birth control, about 45 percent overestimated the effectiveness of the Pill and condoms.
They also had too much faith in hormonal birth control patches, vaginal rings and injections, according to findings reported in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Gee, I wonder why --possibly because the entire media-planned-parenthood juggernaut has "labored" (you should excuse the term) for 40 years to tell us that condoms and the Pill would prevent pregnancy?

Whenever backwards, anti-Science Christians and pro-lifers point out that thanks to contraceptive failure, it's completely obvious that wherever you promote the Pill and condoms you're going to get more out-of-wedlock pregnancy, more abortion and more STDs, they've been laughed out of town.

But now --when a different agenda is afoot-- lo and behold it is suddenly no longer anathema to admit:

With the Pill, the pregnancy rate with "typical use" is about nine percent per year. With condoms, it's between 18 and 21 percent. ...."We need to do a better job of educating the public -- women and men -- on the failure rates with typical use," said Eisenberg, of Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine.

And what is this agenda? The Return of the IUD.

People also need to know, he said, that IUDs and the contraceptive implant are the most effective type of reversible birth control. (Surgical sterilization is also close to 100 percent effective, but it's permanent.)
But it's not only the public that needs more knowledge on contraception, Eisenberg said. Doctors, too, may not be fully informed, or may not be comfortable with inserting an IUD or implant.
A recent survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 30 percent of health providers doubted the safety of IUDs for women who'd never given birth.

Brilliant. Anyone remember America's last foray into agressive IUD marketing?  Well now it's back after some tinkering with that little design flaw.

The IUD sometimes works by preventing fertilization; it often works by preventing implantation of embryo, causing spontaneous abortion.

And here are the side-effects (admittedly rarer now that the pesky design flaw is corrected for, but just note how dangerous):

1. Pregnancy:

If intrauterine pregnancy occurs with ParaGard® in place and the string is visible, ParaGard® should be removed because of the risk of spontaneous abortion, premature delivery, sepsis, septic shock, and, rarely, death. Removal may be followed by pregnancy loss.

If the string is not visible, and the woman decides to continue her pregnancy, check if the ParaGard® is in her uterus (for example, by ultrasound). If ParaGard® is in her uterus, warn her that there is an increased risk of spontaneous abortion and sepsis, septic shock, and rarely, death.

2. Ectopic pregnancy (which is life-threatening for the mother)

3. Pelvic infection

Although pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) in women using IUDs is uncommon, IUDs may be associated with an increased relative risk of PID compared to other forms of contraception and to no contraception. The highest incidence of PID occurs within 20 days following insertion. Therefore, the visit following the first post-insertion menstrual period is an opportunity to assess the patient for infection, as well as to check that the IUD is in place. (See INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE, Continuing Care.) Since pelvic infection is most frequently associated with sexually transmitted organisms, IUDs are not recommended for women at high risk for sexual infection. Prophylactic antibiotics at the time of insertion do not appear to lower the incidence of PID.4

PID can have serious consequences, such as tubal damage (leading to ectopic pregnancy or infertility), hysterectomy, sepsis, and, rarely, death. It is therefore important to promptly assess and treat any woman who develops signs or symptoms of PID.

4. Immunocompromise
5. Perforation

Partial or total perforation of the uterine wall or cervix may occur rarely during placement, although it may not be detected until later. Spontaneous migration has also been reported. If perforation does occur, remove ParaGard ® promptly, since the copper can lead to intraperitoneal adhesions. Intestinal penetration, intestinal obstruction, and/or damage to adjacent organs may result if an IUD is left in the peritoneal cavity. Pre-operative imaging followed by laparoscopy or laparotomy is often required to remove an IUD from the peritoneal cavity.

6 . Expulsion (of the IUD)
7 . Copper poisoning.

So there's going to be a big push now to have every menstruating woman fitted with an IUD at a "cost savings" to the tax-paying public. We'll save so much on child-birth we'll have plenty to spend on emergency rooms for women bleeding out from their uteruses being punctured by their contraception -- which, as it will probably lead to emergency sterilization, will be a further savings to the tax-payers!

Well, enough sarcasm. Coincidentally, the feminist website XOJane just ran this beg-to-differ account of how not-wonderful the other brand (the one whose side-effects I'm not bothering to look up here) of IUD is. Read  My IUD Nearly Ruined My Life.

Not too long ago, a co-worker asked me to lunch. She was curious why I had missed three months of work the previous year followed by two months of work early in this year. I told her my story and explained about the IUD. She looked back at me in awe.

"The same thing happened to me," she said. Well, she didn't go bat shit crazy and spend a month in a New Mexico rehab, but she became severely depressed and had suicidal ideation. Then she had the IUD removed and she immediately returned to her pre-IUD happy, productive self.

Convince women to wear a poisonous, hormone-altering, sharp, migratory, abortion-inducing, possibly germ-wicking piece of plastic in their most intimate place for 5-10 years at a time? What could possibly go wrong?

Who the hell cares? It's only women.

P.S. How many women who wear these devices eat organic and wouldn't dream of drinking from a plastic cup, does one suppose?

Curtsy: Bring Sexy Back!

Update: Doesn't this sound better? A blog friend of mine suggested months ago that all those Catholic hospitals suing the government over the HHS mandate should offer to teach Creighton and NaProTechnology to anyone free. I would pay for Sandra Fluke to learn.

Watch This Ad Before They Pull It

I was sure this would turn out to be a PAC ad, but no, it's an official Obama campaign ad. Wanna know why the gender gap suddenly closed? Ads like this. Hard to tell whether this is more demeaning to women, democracy or sex. A threefer!

   

Update: Upon reflection I think this ad is brilliant, though not in the way intended. (It reminds me of that "love has no gender" poster comparing marriage to electricity I commented on several months ago. It tells us all we need to know.)

Here we have a guy telling a woman anything she wants to hear to get what he wants from her -- and she falls for it, poor, dumb, weak thing. "He cares about my birth control! He really, really loves me!"(Yes, Dear, but can you think of any other reason?)

The President of the United States has just told us we're a cheap lay and he intends to screw us. No Republican could have come up with a more apt analogy.

Upper-date: Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt Newsletter rounds-up the reactions. Some choice ones (the newsletter provides links):

• Amanda Carpenter: "This ad, suggesting women should want to sleep with Obama, is disgusting." 

• Adrian Gray: "That Lena Dunham ad was a very risky move for any campaign. And even more surprising it was approved by the father of two girls." 

• Liz Mair: "So voting for Obama is like losing your virginity? A dude cooked that one up, right? Because for us girls, that means you're saying it's painful." 

• Stacy Washington: "The #MyFirstTime ad is the height of vulgarity. Tell me #Democrat Moms: Is this how you want the president talking to your daughters?" 

• Moe Lane: "I know I'm supposed to be shocked by Obama's new NSFW ad, but instead I'm embarrassed. It's like walking in on my parents having sex. I mean, you know that your parents — or your President — is aware of sex. You just don't need to VISUALIZE it." 

• Jimmie Bise: "Unintended consequence of the new Obama campaign ad? Guys everywhere now hesitant to vote early."

Geraghty also points out the idea for the ad seems to have come from Putin, though Putin's was less explicit. (Oh, whoops! Brett McS told us that in comments, too.)

Update: Actually, Putin stole it from the Aussie Greens.  Birds of a feather.....

1st Female Combat Pilot Talks War on Women

Martha McSally is the GOP candidate running for Gabby Giffords' seat. She's also the first woman to fly a fighter pilot in combat.

When Activists Are Funny

The utter BS that Planned Parenthood does mammograms won't die. So tomorrow is national Call Planned Parenthood and try to schedule a mammogram day.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2012: Schedule your imaginary mammogram at Planned Parenthood! We all know Planned Parenthood DOES NOT PERFORM MAMMOGRAMS. However, President Obama, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, celebrities in Hollywood and countless Planned Parenthood supporters claim over and over that they do. They absolutely refuse to admit that the largest abortion organization in the country does NOT PERFORM MAMMOGRAMS. We'll prove it.

Call 1-800-230-PLAN to get your local Planned Parenthood center.

Likely conversation?

PP: "Thank you for calling Planned Parenthood, how can I help you?"
Caller: "I'd like to come in to your clinic for a mammogram."
PP: "We do perform clinical breast exams, and we refer out for mammograms, but we don't perform them in the clinic."
Caller: "What? But Barack Obama said you guys provide mammograms!"
PP: "We don't. We refer out for them."

Some folks have gotten started early. Read their accounts on the page.

TRUTH BOMB: Planned Parenthood is a level-one breast service provider. This means they are not only unequipped to perform mammography... it is ILLEGAL for them to do so. The extent of their breast health services are manual breast exams. They refer out for mammograms, but they DO NOT PROVIDE THEM.

 Let's just make stuff up about women's health. Who the hell cares? It's only women. 

Update: FDA letter 6/4/12 documents how many PP clinics are licensed to perform mammography. (Hint: 0).  Anyone who tells you women rely on PP for mammograms is lying or ignorant.