Posts Tagged ‘birth control’
CVS Free the Condoms Rally Tomorrow
Tomorrow, Cure CVS Now and a coalition of public health advocates will gather outside the Dupont Circle CVS store in an attempt to pressure the pharmacy chain to rethink its locked condom policies. The ultimate goal of the “rally and press conference” is to convince “CVS to adopt a corporate policy to keep all condoms unlocked at all times.” A letter to CVS CEO Tom Ryan will be unveiled!
Unlock CVS Condoms: The Petition
Via Feministe: Advocates for Youth, in conjunction with Cure CVS Now, has created a petition to tell CVS to unlock the condom cases in its stores:
Call on CVS to unlock condom cases in all its stores. Locked condoms create a barrier to condom access, and could be a threat to public health. CVS’s practice of locking condom cases in minority neighborhoods is unacceptable, and we urge CVS to change its store policy. Walgreens and Rite-Aid prohibit condom lock-up: it’s time CVS did the same.
CVS claims to have unlocked all of the condoms in its Washington, D.C. stores. Last month, I wrote a story about how, despite the lip service, condom access in our CVS stores remains a pain in the ass. Unlocking the condoms and then placing them into click-boxes which are often broken—and sometimes actually locked!—isn’t good enough. Perhaps the petition should read: Unlock the condoms. For real this time, guys.
Photo by Darrow Montgomery
CVS Employees With Sex On The Brain
Last week, I wrote about how CVS Pharmacies in Washington, D.C. are continuing to limit access to condoms by locking up some stores and declining to work with public health activist groups. The main problem with condom lock-up is that it forces customers to interact with several employees, wait around in front of the condom box, and verbally request the product. In short, it’s embarrassing.
Sometimes, the employees make it more so. I stopped by a CVS in Los Angeles last week to pick up some personal items—not condoms, though. I approached the cashier with a box of tampons, some Midol, and a pack of gum. I was with a boy.
The cashier rung up my merchandise, requested my CVS card, and delivered my change. Then, she said this to us:
“You kids have fun this weekend, whatever you do or don’t do!”
Whatever we “do” or “don’t do”? You got us good, CVS. I thought your employees could only make me uncomfortable about doing it when I bought something actually related to sex. Now I know you can make me uncomfortable about doing it (or not doing it!) when I buy anything at all!
Photo by Editor B
Today Is National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy
Today is the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, and right smack in the middle of National Offend a Feminist Week. I’m both offended and not teen pregnant. Coincidence?
I’ve always said that the best way to prevent teen pregnancy is to turn 20, am I right? But for those still stuck in their 13-to-19s, the campaign’s Web site offers a quick quiz to help you determine how likely you are to get teen pregnant.
If, like me, your teen years are mercifully behind you, take the quiz anyway. I used it to determine whether or not I can boast more emotional maturity than a 16-year-old.
And . . . I cannot! I took the quiz and scored as “Sort of a Sexpert.” (Sort of a Sexpert? Do you people have any idea who I am?) According to the campaign, that score means that “Most of the time [I] know what the right choice is, but [I] don’t always make it when it comes to sex.” Yeah, that actually sounds about right.
But hey, maybe I’m just too fucking old to know how to prevent teen pregnancy. There is, after all, a “sexting” question:
Laura and Amy are bored* one Saturday afternoon so they start taking goofy pictures of each other with Laura’s camera phone. At first its just funny faces and model poses, but then Amy lifts up her shirt and Laura snaps a picture of her. “I’m so sending this to Mike,” says Laura.
A. “Ha! Do it! He’s so hot. Maybe he’ll return the favor and send me a picture of his naked butt.”
B. “No, don’t! I don’t want him to get the wrong idea. I like him, but I’m not ready to hook up yet.”
C. “You have to delete that picture immediately. That was really dumb of me. I don’t want that pic to get
forwarded to everyone at school. Don’t you watch Gossip Girl?”D. “Go ahead. Now he’ll see what he’s missing.”
I actually got that one right. But only because I watch Gossip Girl.
* oh, boredom.
The Male Pill Will Rise Again
Please, Lord, say it’s so: a new study on the use of testosterone as a male contraceptive says the shit would work:
For thirty months, the men were injected with 500mg of testosterone undecanoate in tea seed oil once a month. The treatment was 99 percent effective at preventing pregnancy, and after the study ended all but two of the men had their fertility levels return to normal.
According to Jezebel, “Scientists have been trying to develop a male Pill for almost two decades, but progress has been slow. . . . large pharmaceutical companies have been reluctant to perform large trials and many people believe that women wouldn’t trust men to take the pill.”
Oh noes, shifting of responsibilities? Yeah, you know what, I think I could handle it.
Fairfax Teen Suspended For Popping Birth Control Pill
Last month, Fairfax’s Oakton High School suspended—and has threatened to expel—a teenage girl who was caught swallowing a prescription birth control pill at lunch. According to the Washington Post:
When a Fairfax County mother got an urgent call from school last month reporting that her teenage daughter was caught popping a pill at lunchtime, she did not panic. “It was probably her birth-control pill,” she thought. She was right.
Her heart dropped that afternoon in the assistant principal’s office at Oakton High School when she and her daughter heard the mandatory punishment: A two-week suspension and recommendation for expulsion.
This story has less to do with reproductive rights than it does the thorough fucked-up-edness of the high school’s zero-tolerance drug policy.
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Birth Control Thrives During Recession
These guys, however, are probably hurting.
Cristina Page for Reproductive Health Reality Check wrote yesterday on one sector of the economy that hasn’t hurt from the economic downturn: Birth control sales. Page’s evidence of a contraceptive spike:
- Vasectomy.com has fielded a 30 percent increase in appointment requests since January
Are Condoms As Important to Straights as They are to Gays?
Zack Rosen over at The New Gay wrote an excellent column the other day about the importance of condom use within the gay community. The post covers a lot of ground—personal responsibility, modes of transmission, casual anal bleeding:
A couple years ago when one of the cutest boys I’d ever seen begged me to fuck him without a condom. Actually, beg is the wrong word. He pleaded. He whined. He implored me not to use one as if it was simply some seasoning our our sexual entree that he found disagreeable.
Read More “Are Condoms As Important to Straights as They are to Gays?” »
Morning After Pill Now Available to 17-Year-Olds
A judge has ordered the Food and Drug Administration to allow the sale of emergency contraception—also known as “Plan B” or “The Morning After Pill”—to 17-year-olds. Previously, the emergency pill was offered over-the-counter only to customers aged 18 and older, and only to pharmacies that enforced the age rule by checking IDs.
U.S. District Judge Edward Korman had some harsh words for the Bush-run FDA in laying down his judgment, the Associated Press reports:
Read More “Morning After Pill Now Available to 17-Year-Olds” »
The Morning After: English Pill Edition
* Feministe reports on England’s nonprescription birth control pilot program, which would allow Londoners to obtain contraception without a doctor’s prescription. The program, however, would place more power over women’s health decisions in the hands of the pharmacist:
Under the program, women seeking nonprescription oral contraception will undergo an interview with a qualified pharmacist. Strategic health authorities—which manage local health services under NHS—will be required to provide pharmacists with sets of instructions known as patient group directions, including special directions for girls younger than age 16.
* Via Daily Intel—deb balls, Arianna Huffington’s daughter, thrive during a recession.
* Scarleteen will debate you against the “abortion debate.” “Abortion: for or against it? Who came up with this question, Eagle Forum? Perhaps the Heritage Foundation? Sarah Palin? It’s a terrible way to frame the issue of abortion.”
* As Slate’s XX Factor debates the Herman Rosenblat manufactured Holocaust memoir flare-up, Noreen Malone asks, what about his wife’s role in the lie?
* Elsewhere in Slate, Abby Collard informs would-be politicos how to avoid future embarrassment on Facebook. “Clearly, the safest way to protect yourself is not to have a Facebook account in the first place—or, alternatively, not to do stupid things. But neither of these pieces of advice is very practical. The whole point of being young, after all, is to do stupid things, and the whole point of Facebook is to record these acts for posterity.”
Photo via trialsanderrors.
