Referencing a study comparing continued use of the pill between women who could buy it over the counter in Mexico vs. matched women who received it through standard U.S. insurance or health-clinic plant, blogger Emmma of The Well-Timed Period says

Researches wanted to test the hypothesis that making access to the Pill more convenient — by 1)removing the prescription requirement, and 2) providing users with more Pill packs — could increase Pill use and continuation.

They recruited 1046 current Pill users living in El Paso, TX, a setting where low-income women can obtain the Pill without a prescription by crossing the border into Mexico and buying the Pill OTC from a Ciudad Juarez pharmacy. [532 women received Pill packs with a prescription from an El Paso clinic and 514 women purchased the Pill OTC from a Ciudad Juarez pharmacy.]

The study found that discontinuation was significantly lower for women who used the pharmacy to buy the Pill than for clinic users. When the number of Pill packs was taken into account, discontinuation rates were higher…for clinic users who received one to five pill packs. Only clinic users receiving 6+ pill packs had continuation close to pharmacy users.

Read the quote in context here.

If you’re talking about medications with short-term use like antibiotics or
pain killers there might be an excellent case for distributing only limited supplies. For most women who take the pill it’s a long-term proposition. And while many women discontinue use because they have side effects they don’t enjoy, studies like this one (see also) suggest inconvenience is a big factor as well.

I mean, it would be bad enough if you could only by a month’s worth of toothpaste or floss at a time… and then you could only get new supplies at the store you bought it the first time.

Bwahaha, listen to me talking about it as though it was a hypothetical instead of how it works basically everywhere in the U.S.

Sheesh!

Scott Lemieux of TAPPED is logically correct but, I think, tactically mistaken for dismissing pro-choice efforts to look for “common ground” with anti-abortion conservatives.

To follow up on Monica’s post about Dana Goldstein’s terrific article about the coming battle over contraception, it’s also important to emphasize what Republican opposition to contraception reveals about cultural conservatism.

...

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it ignores the broader set of assumptions about women and sexuality on which actual opposition to abortion is based. Consider anti-choice Republicans, who consistently opposed expanding contraceptive use: Given the choice between reducing abortion rates and controlling female sexuality, they will always choose the latter. Thus the idea that contraception can be a means of achieving a ceasefire in the culture wars has always been a fantasy. Liberals and conservatives aren’t just divided by abortion but by broader questions of female equality and sexual freedom.

He said it here.

I agree strongly that there’s a hard core of social conservatives who just flat-out hate the idea of women having sex (or possibly instead hate the idea of men having sex with women) and “getting away with it.”

And for those people abortion is virtually a red herring, relevant only to the extent that abortion, like contraception, amounts to a get out of jail card on the “wages of sin.”

Fine. You’ll never reach compromise with those people.

The trick, though, is that the hard core hides behind a heck of a lot of people who are squishy on abortion, sometimes really squishy, but 100% fine with contraception.

Those people you can find common ground with. And for logical and tactical reasons it’s extremely important to do so.

The point of engaging in “common ground” rhetoric isn’t about getting to compromise with the acid right. It’s to flush them out, to drive a wedge, to starkly separate them from their nominal allies in the squishy middle.

Maybe 20 years ago someone from Operation Rescue very bluntly said it was their policy to oppose initiatives that only reduced abortions because, in his opinion, unless abortions continued in big, big numbers the majority of opponents would lose interest in the issue.

“Common ground” solutions like contraception availability amounts to calling their bluff.

Would it be great if the majority of people were willing to back abortion rights 100%? Oh yeah, definitely. But the bad guys wish the majority were as enthusiastic about letting women die of preventable pregnancy-related complications. Since neither side seems likely to get such support, it becomes a question of who can provide intermediate solutions that are most appealing to the majority in the middle.

I happen to think the most appealing intermediate, a.k.a. “middle ground” solution is pressing hard on contraception. First of all because all but the fanatics are comfortable with it, and second because while nearly all the squishy middle are squishy about the boogeyman of “abortion on demand” they’re actually extraordinarily tolerant of abortion as a backup when contraception fails. That’s exactly Terry Randall and the American Bishop’s worst nightmare and… I just can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t give it to them.

So. Bottom line: you can’t compromise with fanatics, but by appearing reasonable (heck, by being reasonable!) you can peel off millions and millions of their nominal supporters.

I say go for it.

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon has another one of those silly moments where she forgets that anti-feminists know so much more about feminism and what it really means.

[Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online] is the first to line up to explain to all the stupid feminists why we’re so stupid thinking we actually enjoy contraception, sex, and having choices. 

In an otherwise largely celebratory forum on the pill at CNN’s website, Republican strategist and book publisher Mary Matalin cleverly and jarringly wrote: “Packages of portable liberation ushered in a generation of women determined to break free from their inferior patriarchal oppressors. And how did they manifest their superiority? Their freedom? Thanks to The Pill, by casual, drive-by sex. Whoa. That really showed those stupid boys.”

They can keep telling us that feminism is about hating men, and therefore we’re breaking our own rules by having good relationships with them and (if we’re straight) enjoying sex with them, but it’s not sticking.  Perhaps they’re wrong about what feminism is?  I don’t know; I’m just an actual feminist.  So when I say that feminism is about women’s equality and creating a non-patriarchal world where men and women are freed get along as equals, I don’t know what I’m talking about.  The only people who get to define feminism are people who oppose it.

She said it here.

Say what you like about Sigmund Freud but I think the world is a better place for his articulation of projection — the tendency to see in others the evils one perpetrates, or at best most wishes to perpetuate, oneself.

I mention this because for all that anti-feminists claim they’re standing up for the definition of men as… well… by-definition superior to women, they’ve got some seriously, seriously man-hating tendencies.

I mean yeah, Lopez is dumping on women for having Teh Sex with men but… but… some times you just gotta ask yourself why she’d think that would be a problem. And the answer, I’m pretty sure, boils down to one of three possibilities:

1) she thinks men are disgusting creatures who’s penises by their very existence sully women. Or

2) she thinks men are lazy animals who can’t be persuaded to do anything at all, let alone anything productive, couth, or genteel, unless they’re positively starved for sex. Which starvation will never take place if women succumb to their own “animal” instincts and “give it up” for free. Or

3) both #1 and #2.

Lopez, who hates men, projects this hatred onto feminism. Which she also hates. Furthermore, she then hates feminism worse for “contradictions” she perceives between how feminists behave and how she thinks feminists ought to behave.

The problem being that Lopez confuses “patriarchy,” which feminists rightly oppose, with “men,” who feminists can get a little impatient with but with only the occasional exception feminists don’t hate at all.

Clue time? Patriarchy is not limited to men. Patriarchy is a coed enterprise. Lopez isn’t a dupe or a thrall of patriarchy, nor a collaborator with it, nor is she a “useful idiot” of patriarchy (though, sorry, she is an idiot!) Instead she’s a fully-invested, active agent of it, a would-be architect of it. And as part of the patriarchy she hates men even worse than she hates women who have sex with them.

Now as to the substance of Lopez’s claim I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if you go on the pill just so you can let men have “casual” sex with you then… then I think it’s a good idea to maybe rethink both your relationship to men and your relationship to sex and who your sexuality it’s really for. And about. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to rethink your relationship to the pill, as Lopez would have you do. The main thing the pill does, or any other contraception does, is help couples, of whatever duration, avoid pregnancy. Who one has relationships with, and why, is an issue contraception really isn’t going to help, except possibly to the extent it helps avoid obstacles that make exiting an unfortunate relationship very much more difficult.

Oh and can I just add one more thing about Lopez and the pill in particular but contraception in general? Who does she thinks uses contraception here? It’s at least as common among married and/or partnered women as it is among “casual” sex-having single women. And if you take into account the married women who are currently actively seeking planned, wanted pregnancies I’m… pretty sure married women who aren’t trying to get pregnant are even more likely to use contraception. So WTF with her implication that the pill primarily enables casual sex? As opposed to sex inside established and even long-term committed relationships.

When you see patriarchal framing you probably want to call it. Lopez is a patriarch. Framing contraception in terms of “casual” sex and “letting” boys have sex with you? That’s patriarchal framing.

In a news roundup Katy of Jezebel passes along news about contraception in the U.S.

Out of married U.S. women, only 16% are currently on the pill, compared to 29% in the UK and more than 40% in the Netherlands and France. Surprisingly, sterilization is a much more popular option in America.

1 in 4 married ladies here have had their tubes tied, while most other countries that reported figures have sterilization rates below 10%. These patterns also appear to apply to all women – not just the ones who have tied the knot.

She said it here.

Statistics for contraceptive use by men is surprisingly sketchy — since virtually all the focus around contraception and pregnancy is on women, including focus on statistics-gathering, virtually all information about men and contraception has to be extrapolated from assumptions that women who use contraceptives tend to have male partners. Oh, and I say “surprisingly” because men still have direct access over three kinds of contraception: condoms, withdrawal, and vasectomies, with the most recently invented (vasectomies) still being nearly 200 years old! So how long would that questionnaire be anyway? But I digress…

The best… or at least most frequently-cited estimate for male sterilization in the U.S. is one in six men over age 35 or, I think, a little more than 15%.