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On November 8, Mississippians will vote on Initiative 26, an amendment to their state's constitution declares that life begins at the moment of conception. If enacted, the measure will effectively outlaw all abortion, IVF, embryonic stem cell research, and many forms of birth control. The driving force behind this and other such initiatives is an extreme fringe ideology known as the "Personhood USA" movement, and one of the loudest voices in that movement is Rebecca Kiessling. Here's hoping your rage levels have been kept at a manageable "middling" today; they're about to skyrocket. More »
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Berlin-based designer Ronen Kadushin has come up with an open-source concept for a cheaper kind of IUD that incorporates a copper 1c coin. This IUD is not ready for market — IUDs must be collapsible, so they can pass through an un-dilated cervix during insertion, and Kadushin's is not — and there are obvious safety and usability issues with any attempt to redesign a medical device. But given so many women feel that current contraception options have room for improvement, and given that the pharmaceutical companies that control the IUD market in the U.S. charge hundreds of dollars for these tiny pieces of plastic and copper (Kadushin's prototype costs just €1.25), it's cool to see the IUD getting some attention in the design world. More »
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A new medical study indicates that it's safe for a woman to have an IUD inserted immediately after an abortion or miscarriage. Researchers say it could prevent more than 70,000 unintended pregnancies annually, but there's a non-medical reason that isn't happening: The Hyde Amendment. More »
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A study shows doctors recommend IUDs less frequently to poor white women than to wealthier white women, or poor black or Latina women. One author says doctors must consider "how their patients' characteristics may influence the care they provide." More »
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My period came today. The cramps are...bad. In fact, they're worse than they were even just last month, because a few weeks ago, I made a choice that increasing numbers of young, childless American women share: I got an IUD. More »
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• Five men have been arrested in the gang rape and robbery of a 15-year-old teen outside her school's homecoming. Police say they now think 10 people took part in the assault as 20 watched and, possibly, took pictures. • More »
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It is way-back week on Crappy Hour, when my first Crappy Love, Moe Tkacik, agrees to relive our original blogospheric passion for a full five days! Today's edition — for which we decided to stay up late, get drunk, and parse the headlines rather than get up early and hungover — includes my embarrassing encounter with David Gregory, the origins of human life, the First Dude, rumors, Karl Rove, Sarah Palin, David Broder, laughable Safire-ian stupidity, teabagging and the comparison between Governor Palin's leaky vagina and my own. Yeah, this is what sort of happens when Moe and I drink together. More »
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As we're all well aware, one of the many prongs in the fundie battle for control of our uteri is to call the contents often found within a person. Well, in a slight glimmer of hope for those of us who don't think that this one cell can be called a person or a life, they've failed in Montana. State Representative Rick Jore was spearheading the fight to get Constitutional Initiative 100 onto the ballot in November, which would've defined fertilized eggs as people and conferred all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship onto them. Jore needed 44,000 signatures by yesterday and got less than half. Even the Catholic bishops in the state think there are better ways to make abortion illegal, while others pointed out that it would also have made IUDs illegal, opened women who have miscarriages up to criminal investigation and potentially forced women undergoing in vitro fertilization to carry all the eggs fertilized in the procedure to term. But, hey, the zygotes would've been Montanans. [The Missoulian] More »
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Despite having an IUD, I was unaccountably thankful when my first post-break-up period arrived recently. I celebrated by getting relentlessly drunk. Before I went to bed, I went to change my tampon, and found no string. Since I'd put it in when drunk, I figured it was just up in there somewhere. Before too long, I was lying on my bathroom floor and rather forcefully reacquainting myself with my IUD (or, at least the couple millimeters of twine that stick out of my cervix to allow the doctor to remove it in a clinical setting). I realized relatively quickly for a drunk that I was about to yank my own IUD out searching for a non-existent tampon, thanked my lucky stars that my favorite little medical device/far-preferred method of birth control was still in place and that I didn't have to go back to the dreaded Pill, and went to bed. More »
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