Ozymandias just totally rocks. Here's her 99.9-percent-of-the-time take on what the "libertarian" Koch Brother's shrieking assholes in Congress want to take away from all of us.

My period is a week late. I have officially "missed my period."

If it doesn't happen by this weekend (fingers crossed), Morgan and I are going to get a pregnancy test from the CVS. It's more likely to be malnutrition or simple irregularity than pregnancy, given that Morgan and I are perfect about condom use ... I consider the chance of pregnancy here very low.

But I don't want you to worry. [W]hat I want you to do now is think about how not-big a deal this is, because of Planned Parenthood. Morgan and I use condoms that Planned Parenthood gave us. I have a pack of birth control pills (not used, because I am supposed to start it during my first period) prescribed for me by a Planned Parenthood employee, who also gave me my first Pap smear. If the stars misalign and I'm pregnant, I can get a safe low-cost abortion, thanks to Planned Parenthood. If I was a different person without a crippling phobia of pregnancy, then I could get prenatal care at Planned Parenthood.

Source: Ozymandias's Crushing and Venting Engine of Doom

That's just beautifully simple.

I shall refrain from pulling posting my fundamentalist-derived fulminations on the sin and apostasy of those who think it sport to fuck around with her health, and the health of millions of women like her, either out of "sincere" conviction or... perhaps worse... as a ploy for extorting further tax and pollution indulgences for their cronies.

I gave $100 to Planned Parenthood today.

Even though in general when I give to reproductive-health organizations I give to smaller, local ones that have neither the visibility, the clout, or the fundraising capabilities Planned Parenthood does.

But today, these days, now, that visibility, clout, and capability is precisely what's painted the right wing target "surveyor's symbol" on Planned Parenthood's back.

To paraphrase the silly Grateful Dead bumper sticker from the 1970s, Planned Parenthood may not always be the best at what they do, but in a lot of places they're the only ones doing it.

If I had $10,000 I'd have given them that instead.

If you've got something to give this year might be a good time to do that.

• If you wish you can donate to their political action fund here.
• Or you may choose to donate to their (tax free if that's important to you) operating fund here.

Speaking of emergency contraception, and the tendency to blame women for using it, and the tendency to blame women, for that matter, for just about any choice they make regarding their reproductive choices and/or opportunities, and especially for anti-choicers to blame them for all of the above because they're convinced that hormonal contraception is really a closet abortion conspiracy, Jenna of My Sex Professor brings a little potentially welcome news

Many men are disappointed with their lack of contraception options: between the barrier method and vasectomy lie few other choices. A new method (RISUG) is being tested, which entail a one-time reversible injection that prevents sperm from penetrating the egg. The procedure would take five minutes and be effective for at least ten years

Source: My Sex Professor

While for years we've heard stories about how male contraceptives are just around the corner, and are thus justified in feeling a little wary, it's worth pointing out that at least the stories are coming closer and closer together.  And this one actually sounds fairly promising!

It's great news, obviously, for at least the following reasons

1) There really aren't a lot of contraception options available for men.  Worse, of the three available -- condoms, vasectomy, and withdrawal, the most recently developed, vasectomies, were introduced nearly 200 years ago! Since then?  Nothing.  And say what you will about condoms (I say they're pretty good at preventing disease and pregnancy if they don't break and if you use them correctly) they're kind of hard to use correctly until you've really gotten the hand of it, by which point... but I digress.  What I was going to say is this sounds promising because it would be really, really nice to have something intermediate to the permanence of vasectomies and the uncertainties of condoms

2) The introduction of reliable, realistic, reversible and hard to screw up contraception for men will change the blame-women-first-and-always dynamic.  Because once solutions become available for men there won't be that sort of shoulder-shrugging "what can ya do, man" resignation men who fuck up are able to rely on from their peers.  Because, in part, the obvious answer to "what can ya do, man" would then be "what you can do, asshole, is get a shot once every ten years.  You're not getting any sympathy from us."  So that's a big deal.

3) When it comes to the situations where emergency contraception is most likely used (condom breaking, or not using a condom for first-time sex after a long drought, or when functionally incapacitated by drugs or alcohol) the odds of neither party being on some form of contraception can be way lower.

4) Taking items 1-3, above, into account, the focus of responsibility for contraception can shift away from 100% women to more like 50/50 men and women.  (If the product Jenna mentions is as effective and non-intrusive as promised responsibility could shift further onto men.  Although, obviously, an easily used saliva- or semen-based test to quickly confirm effectiveness would be welcome as well.)

But then there's

5) The beauty of the proposed method is that by robbing sperm of the ability to merge with eggs it'll make "conception" impossible! Which ought to shut the ugly pie holes of the "contraception is really abortion" covens.

And, if I can put on my speculative psychopathology-of-the-anti-choice crowd had for a moment, it could even be that...

6) If contraception happens inside men's bodies the anti-choice crowd won't actually care.  Or at least if they do they'll have to start basically from scratch.  And while yes, as a matter of fact it would be better if the anti-choicers were really anti-choice and not just anti-women-as-autonomous-agents, as most evidence suggests. But even then...

7) If the anti-choicers did turn on men and start running the same ill-willed intrusions at least it would put men squarely on the front lines  with women, as opposed to the status quo where most men have basically been confined at best to the sidelines.

Terminology note: I’m going to compress the distinct phases of pregnancy, labor and delivery, and post-natal recovery into the shorthand term “maternity.”

Longer follow up on that earlier post about “birth rape” and the more-recent post about the way environmentalism tends to have credibility and to get more respect* than do feminist maternity activists.

Seems kind of startling given that genuinely essential but temporary changes during those roughly 10-13 months — from somewhere in the first trimester to the end of the (little discussed) post-partum “fourth trimester” — is one of the most common “natural” justifications for building entire civilizations (including most of ours) around the notion that at all times women should only be 2nd-class citizens at best… and no more than livestock at worst.

But issues of the process of pregnancy get short shrift. Why? I dunno. Could be denial maybe? Ideology? Speculation? Avoidance? Blunt lack of experience until one’s in the thick of it? Maybe. Or maybe its women in maternity’s near-total invisibility, especially right before and after birth?

Or could it perhaps be because for most women involved in the conversation, and their partners, there really isn’t enough time spent in maternity to develop and promulgate critical consciousness, let alone activism? Because before you get into maternity you’ve got other fish to fry. Then when you’re in it you’ve got other fish to fry. And then when you’re far enough through the process for your partner(s) to shoulder half or more of the load and you can start thinking about trying to return to the workforce you’ve… once again got other fish to fry.

Consequently in contemporary culture the majority of feminism-oriented people who are in it, and who tend to stay in it long enough to start developing theories and policy founded in the reality of pregnancy/childbirth/return, tend to trend far enough towards, I dunno, “hippie-ness,” “woo-woo,” or feminine-gender essentialism to be comfortable around — or even having — multiple births. And those same qualities tend to create a mutual alienation between them and their more professional, academic, or “mainstream” counterparts.**

I’d add that thanks to that mutual alienation between mainstream and maternity-oriented feminists the people maternity-rights feminists instead butt heads with most often area) the medical/obstetrics profession, b) religious conservatives and other “quiverful” style activists. In that context of opposition from mainly socially conservative forces and absent engaged support from progressives it might seem perfectly logical for maternity activists to equate the atrocious, violating treatment too many women receive as tantamount to “birth rape.”

I happen to think “birth rape” is still a terrible term for that treatment. Largely because broader society’s reluctance to recognize and deal with permutations of the real thing. But it’s also because I still think the term misstates rather than overstates the sort of violations, great and small, medical and merely social***, that are inflicted on women in maternity. And finally because, as FiveofNine and I and others have noted, the generally rotten, disrespectful, and abusive treatment… and some-time medical violations, assaults, and batteries laboring women receive at the hands of some maternal medical professionals is materially similar to what’s received by women (not to mention men) who are merely elderly, juvenile, developmentally or mentally disadvantaged, incarcerated, suspected of substance abuse, or simply suspected of “malingering.”

* With the result that a birth-rights activist catches more quite a bit shit for invoking the metaphor of “birth rape” than the average environmentalist gets for invoking the same metaphor as in, for instance, “raping the planet.”

*** For instance nearly everyone knows better than to put their hands on a woman’s ass, breasts, or even hair without being invited to. Even the ones who do it know better. Yet hardly anyone recognizes how rude it is to put their hands on a pregnant woman’s abdomen without permission.