All conditions as the result of sexual intercourse. The pill also increases a woman's chance of a heart attack. A drug that enables a person to engage in sexual activity when they could not otherwise is not the same as contraception.
50% of new first-time users discontinue the birth control pill before the end of the first year because of the annoyance of side effects. That comes from medical professionals. Birth controls pills can cause
Amenorrhoea, blood clots and a pulmonary embolism. Not to mention nasty side effects as bleeding, headaches, nausea, weight gain, mood changes, etc. There are always pros and cons to any medication.
As Jane says, there are side effects, benefits and harms from most medications from person to person; which is to say, this is not an argument that makes contraception any less deserving to be offered up by health insurance than any other medication. This is a key point - Obama's action requires health insurance to cover contraceptives. You can either be for or against any sort of health insurance requirements, but to nitpick on one specific medication is just following a rightwing religious talking point. And I emphasize rightwing religious talking point, because according to USA Today[SUP]
1[/SUP] (bold added):
A majority of Americans support the use of contraceptives. The public is generally in favor of requiring birth control coverage for employees of religiously affiliated employers, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll Feb. 8-13. The survey found that 61 percent favor the mandate, while 31 percent oppose it. Even Catholics, whose church strongly opposed the recent government mandate, support the requirement at about the same rate as all Americans
If a person thinks they are mature enough to have sex, then they should be responsible enough to buy their own birth control. As a society people need to learn to take care of their responsibilites. So many people these days expect everyone else to take care of them and they don't know what hard work is. There are already places where men and women can get low priced birth control.
As this is about employee health insurance, these people are by definition are working (whether hard or not is, of course, by individual basis). This is not, as I feel the rhetoric is sometimes eluding to, 'free birth control for everyone!' I think this would be one of the best investments of public funds, by the way, as far as saving our country a vast sum of money in the long term and would help reduce many societal ills - but that's not my argument. My argument is that hormonal contraception is no less justified in being included in health insurance than any other medication.
This whole argument of violating religious expression is a convoluted load of crap anyway - a veiled attempt at continuing the long-standing misogynist tradition of trying to control women's sex lives. Did Obama's mandate say Catholics now have to use birth control? No. Did it say they can no longer worship or go to church or continue to perform any of their religious practices that otherwise conform to the law (an important distinction, as there are some fucked up things in the Bible)? No. The less exemptions churches get, the better - hell, let's start with paying taxes.
Why did this turn into a huge political/social argument? The fact of the matter is that it's poor form for a person in a position such as his to call a woman a slut. I don't see how it's any better than Imus calling black women "Nappy-Headed Hoes" and he got shitcanned for it if I remember correctly.
The context of Rush's comment is this debate; only natural for discussion to return to the root cause. While I also think it's poor form or simply stupid, I don't think anything should have to be done about it; I'd like to think that such comments would turn reasonable people and more importantly, sponsors as a natural consequence to such comments, but then I know there aren't that many reasonable people (even less so who're listening to him anyway).
