pregnancy

NEWS: FDA’s Emergency Contraception Plan for Plan B Contradicts Court Ruling

The wonderful victory for all females in the United States to have access to emergency contraception without a prescription has been foiled by the evil charlatans at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Justice Department.

The Center for Reproductive Rights’ (CRR) had filed a lawsuit against the FDA to require emergency birth control pills be available without restriction, an effort to remove the obstacle and perhaps shame of getting a prescription from a doctor. On April 5, 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman ruled that the FDA must make emergency contraception, a.k.a. the morning after pill, available over the counter without an age-limit restriction within 30 days of the ruling.

Instead of complying with this basic right all women should have — and do have thanks to this ruling, the FDA announced it would make Plan B and Next Choice-type emergency contraception available over the counter to females aged 15 and up, in direct violation of the court’s ruling. (The FDA says its decision was in no way affected by Korman’s ruling.) The FDA has thrown in a requirement for the female buying the emergency contraception to provide proof of age for the purchase. As the CRR and other activists have noted, this may prove problematic since some states do not allow teenagers to get a driver’s license until the age of 16, so 15 year old girls might have a difficult time proving their age.

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch sent an appeal of Korman’s ruling to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to suspend the ruling until further notice. The Obama administration subsequently announced it will appeal the Justice Department’s appeal, if need be. So for now, the FDA’s asinine proclamation of limiting Plan B et al will stand, complete with photo I.D. and age-requirement intact.

Time will tell if the original court ruling will win the day and allow all females to have access to emergency birth control without politics interfering with our individual right to body autonomy.

trish

For other NEWS Articles check out these posts on my other blog:

May 7, 2013 | Categories: #WarOnWomen, activism, birth control, Health, medical system, misogyny, NEWS, patriarchal religion, planned parenthood, politics, pregnancy, pro-choice, reproductive rights, sex education, sexual health, women's rights, women's sexuality | Tags: doctor, emergency contraception, FDA, feminism, judge, morning after pill, pharmacy, Plan B, prescription, reproductive rights, women's rights | Leave A Comment »

MyTweets & Comments 08-16-12: Hippy, Free Love & Stretch Marks

After a morning spent enlightening the GOP teabaggers on how ridiculous they are (nicely, of course), I once again had the yearning to run away from all this election craziness — this time coupled with an insane desire to join a nudist colony… just to be free of all the status symbols society deems important or even crucial to life.

I commiserated that I haven’t lost enough weight to be naked in front of others in public and was promptly reminded that we women cannot self-sabotage ourselves by heeding the KoolAid of media and culture’s negativity.

So onward I go, through this catharsis that has me by my she-balls.

trish

(Click image to enlarge.)

August 17, 2012 | Categories: #WarOnWomen, #WhereAreTheWomen, 2012 elections, activism, body image, breast feeding, comments, communication, matriarchal, mind noise, MyTweets, politics, pregnancy, reclaiming sexuality, stress, women's circles, women's rights, women's sexuality | Leave A Comment »

DailyOJ 11-19-11: PC Muscles, Periods, and Belly Dancing

November 19, 2011

(* In response to a man who said young women should “exercise their PC muscles even if they are still relatively young there are so many benefits,” to which I disagreed and was asked by another man to provide “some instructive reasons” to support my feelings. *)

I’m a hu(wo)manist, and activist, and a temperamental Irish redhead, so any statement that includes “most women should” just naturally gets my hackles up. Nothing personal.

I think younger women are usually more physically fit and tend to be more sexually active than women who have the pressures and time constraints of work and kids, with added weight post-partum (leading to body image issues, lack of sex drive due to hormonal changes, and just being tired all the damn time). Therefore, younger women would not need to exercise their PC muscles because the muscle tissue is already firm and toned, through athletics, going out dancing, being more open to sexual adventures, et al.

It is the women in their 30′s and 40′s who have had physiological changes to their vaginal area, the widening and contracting of the hip joints and ligaments, and changes to the pelvic floor from carrying a child in utero and then giving birth that changes and possibly stretches the PC muscles to feeling weak. As we get older, the body parts shift, and sitting at a desk all day, in front of the TV at night, with such bad posture, certainly doesn’t help. This lack of general exercise women get once they are on the career path and have had kids tends to be quite sedentary compared to the long-ago traditions of walking for purposes of migration, foraging, and finding water.

Also, most PC muscle exercises (a.k.a. Kegel exercises) focus on squeezing UP. This is because the Kegels were designed to help women who were experiencing urinary incontinence — to encourage the sphincter qualities of the muscles and control “urine” leakage, especially during sex. (Those of us who subscribe to the veracity of Female Ejaculation as a legitimate sexual phenomenon wonder just how many of these women were actually ejaculators but forced into shame by an ignorant male medical system.)

For female ejaculation, the emphasis is pushing OUT, therefore Kegels are NOT the answer to better orgasms, but rather the death of the female orgasm. Squeezing UP cuts off sensation and compresses the tissues restricting blood flow and nerve endings. (NOTE: This purposeful “squeezing UP” is NOT to be confused with the natural reaction of the PC muscles to squeeze IN / vice-grip on their own, called the “clitoral cuff,” toward the entrance of the vagina as the vagina expands at the top during arousal and near orgasm.)

Women have lost our wymyn circles. In wymyn circles, we used to share these kinds of stories and experiences amongst each other. For instance, belly dancing, now a highly sexualized form of stripper / hooker / tease, is actually based in teaching teenage girls how to move their bodies during childbirth (and such movements’ obvious use in sexual / sensual settings with a partner). Hence the reason it’s CALLED Belly Dancing — you have to HAVE a belly to do it properly!

It annoys me to no end to hear women say they “can’t do belly dancing” because they don’t have a 6-pack. I quickly and, in no uncertain terms, explain that no woman with a 6-pack is geared for belly dancing because she doesn’t HAVE a belly. It is the breast-obsessed American perspective that has shifted the emphasis of belly dancing to breast-shaking. Belly dancing is an ART. And that “belly” isn’t just curvy flesh — there is extremely toned muscle underneath that has been trained to operate and shimmy in minute precision.

The “belly” comes from body fat as well as carrying a child. (NOTE to all: Women are SUPPOSED to have body fat!) The hip rolls, arches, hip drops, and other hip isolations are to stretch through the hip joints in preparation for the spreading of the hip joints beginning in the third trimester, as well as exercising the lower abs no one ever talks about. The rib isolations are NOT just to have the breasts go up and down for men’s ogling pleasure — they are to learn how to move your upper torso so you can still breathe when the kid inside is pushing your thoracic diaphragm up into your lung space. Abdominal and back rolls also help the body get used to involuntary movements during childbirth contractions.

If more women had a connection to our traditional women’s circles and sacred women knowledge, we wouldn’t need sex toys OR books. We would have elders to teach us and show us, passing the knowledge from one generation to the other. But until we officially shake off the mortal coil of western patriarchy and institutionalized religion that has made the female body sinful and sex evil, we have to get the knowledge somewhere and learn how to access these innate feelings somehow. So I am grateful for toys, books, CD’s, men who try so hard to understand us, and the women who are on the path of experimenting and experiencing what we are truly capable of sexually.

Aroused and journaling,
trish

For more of my personal orgasm journey, read Trish’s Daily O.J.
Visit the AW site: Aroused Woman

March 27, 2012 | Categories: activism, belly dancing, breasts, DailyOJ, female ejaculation, medical system, PC muscles, period, posture, pregnancy, sexual health, vagina, women's circles | Leave A Comment »

NEWS: Susan G. Komen Finally Shows Its True Colors – And It’s NOT Pink!

Anyone who was within tweet-shot of a social media gizmo last week could not escape the public’s coverage of Susan G. Komen’s latest turn against women and the pursuit of a cure for cancer… (of course, the cure for cancer already exists, but that would mean growing certain herbs the FDA deems illegal and that Big Pharma couldn’t make billions of dollars from our ability to heal ourselves by going back to earth… but I digress…)

Why people were outraged at Susan G. Komen foundation pulling current and future funding from Planned Parenthood is a mystery to me. In 2010, the Komen branding nazis began suing smaller charities that were using the phrase “for the cure” in their mottoes. Smaller local or regional groups that raise money to support breast cancer research and women in their local areas suddenly had to give up use of the words “for the cure” or spend their hard-raised funds on lawyers to stand up for their rights to maintain their mottoes. Clearly, Komen had become too big for its britches… or just filled with neo-con bitches?

A few days in the hot-seat, and Komen finally came around to pretending to make amends. Komen issued a statement:

While Komen and right-wingers were trying to sneak money away from Planned Parenthood under the pretense of not giving money to organizations under “investigation,” no one was speaking up for Planned Parenthood and why it is being attacked by Congress and their “investigation” in the first place.

Komen’s press release consisted of a banal “apology” and “explanation”:

“The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

… We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics – anyone’s politics.”

Yeah, right.

Susan G. Komen’s public image is officially tarnished. But better than that, women around the United States spoke out and spoke UP for women’s access to healthcare, women’s access to choice about their bodies, and women’s refusal to be a pawn in the political machine of Republican conservatives who will try to rip away the last of our basic freedoms should they win the Presidency and/or control of Congress in 2012.

Last week was a beautiful week for democracy, activism, and showing the world the vagina revolution didn’t end in the 1970′s!