Right. Fifty percent is an unacceptable failure rate for anything. So what are we to make of the fact that half of the pregnancies in the U.S.—about three million, according to the National Program to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy—are unintended?
It certainly is a signal that something is wrong with the way we deal with contraception, whether it’s a problem of access, poverty, psychology or comprehension. The first two could certainly start to be addressed with the help of the Mikulsi Amendment, which Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) submitted to ensure better preventive health care for women under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the health care bill) which passed last March.
“The insurance companies take being a woman as a pre-existing condition,” Senator Mikulski has said, and this longtime champion of our health and well-being included mammograms, pelvic exams, counseling and other preventive care at little or no cost. Contraception is not mentioned specifically but Senator Mikulski has said it was clearly intended as part of the amendment. A panel made up of members of the Institute of Medicine will advise the Department of Health and Human Services which will decide by August what exactly will get covered and whether contraception will be included.
Women certainly want it to be. NPR's Julie Rovner reports that “More than 70 percent of those polled earlier this summer said prescription birth control should be covered under preventive health care, including 77 percent of Catholic women, 72 percent of GOP women votes and 60 percent of male voters.” The polling was done by Hart Research for Planned Parenthood.
It certainly is a signal that something is wrong with the way we deal with contraception, whether it’s a problem of access, poverty, psychology or comprehension. The first two could certainly start to be addressed with the help of the Mikulsi Amendment, which Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) submitted to ensure better preventive health care for women under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the health care bill) which passed last March.
“The insurance companies take being a woman as a pre-existing condition,” Senator Mikulski has said, and this longtime champion of our health and well-being included mammograms, pelvic exams, counseling and other preventive care at little or no cost. Contraception is not mentioned specifically but Senator Mikulski has said it was clearly intended as part of the amendment. A panel made up of members of the Institute of Medicine will advise the Department of Health and Human Services which will decide by August what exactly will get covered and whether contraception will be included.
Women certainly want it to be. NPR's Julie Rovner reports that “More than 70 percent of those polled earlier this summer said prescription birth control should be covered under preventive health care, including 77 percent of Catholic women, 72 percent of GOP women votes and 60 percent of male voters.” The polling was done by Hart Research for Planned Parenthood.
I get ortho tri cyclen lo without co-pay!
I fully support this; free contraception will improve the lives of many people - female and male. Most of the stress of an unintended pregnancy is on the female half of the equation, but there is some for males as well. If someone is against it, then they shouldn't use it, and that's that!
Also, the bit about the bishops? Religion doesn't run the US government, so they can be religious and disapproving as long as they like. Some chaste old man isn't going to order my uterus around!