I think everyone but the 27 percenters can agree this is a good thing:
The proportion of privately insured U.S. women who paid $0 out of pocket for oral contraceptive pills increased sharply, from 15% to 40%, after the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) contraceptive coverage guarantee went into wide effect, according to a new Guttmacher study in the journal Contraception. A similar increase, from 23% to 52%, was seen among vaginal ring users with private insurance.
This is a big deal, but instead of noting how much better this makes the lives of the vast majority of young couples, our media and politics must instead focus on how this offends the 19th-century sensibilities of a bunch of dried up old men whose sexual experience, if any, consists of either fucking children, or covering up the fucking of children.
Brian R.
dried up old men whose sexual experience consists of either fucking children, or covering up the fucking of children.
Or in the case of noted sex tourist and slut shamer Rush Limbaugh, both.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@Brian R.: I guess I was thinking of the Catholic Bishops but that will work.
Poopyman
Don’t forget the chickens.
aimai
Well said.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
I noticed people were looking sluttier. I just thought it was the result of general permissive liberalness after 5 years of Marxist stealth Islam.
Catherine D.
I just actually discovered this for myself – I needed hormones to treat a problem and walked out of the pharmacy with a $0 copay. Happy, happy!
Smiling Mortician
@Poopyman: And the diapers and the wetsuits.
geg6
Those damn sluts, out slutting around and doing slutty things like having unapproved slut sex!
The Red Pen
So another 25% of American women are having so much sex that they can’t afford their birth control? If only there was some media figure who could interpret these things for me.
piratedan
I, for one, welcome our new slut overlords…. hmmm, that didn’t come out exactly right….
Linda Featheringill
Yeah. That’s about it.
I realize the Catholics have gotten a lot of bad press because of pedophilia, and they deserve every bit of it. BUT . . it would be a mistake to think that this isn’t a problem for Protestants as well.
I suspect it is a problem everywhere authority is revered. Regardless of religious affiliation.
Roger Moore
ITYM 9th century, not 19th.
mai naem
The Pope is Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. I love it. Not much pleases me more than poking a stick at the Palins of the world.
mai naem
@Linda Featheringill: Around the time the Catholic Priest child diddling story was big, there was a story I saw about the Mormons having a similar scandal but I never saw anything more on it.
Elizabelle
Pope Francis has been named Time’s Man of the Year.
I think paid contraception is way, way down the list of issues that concern him.
I’m sure he’d like to see poor Americans get better healthcare, and have stronger, healthier families.
He sees “culture of life” a little differently than the red beanie brigade and professional God-botherers and Christianists (lot of overlap in those categories.)
WaPost:
Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul 2 were previously Time Man of the year.
I am horrified Ted Cruz was even under consideration. Why not Adam Lanza from last year? Why not Wayne LaPierre?
Mike in NC
I can’t wait for the War on Christmas to be over so they can ramp up on the War on Sluts.
cmorenc
One key reason the insurance companies were so agreeable to including contraceptives into the required coverage elements under the ACA was that in the overall big picture, it reduces the incidence of other substantially more expensive types of claims events. Throwing in contraceptive coverage for free is actually a net cost saving to the insurance companies.
Of course, a significant chunk of that savings is in reduction of unplanned pregnancies, i.e. allowing people more freedom to indulge the pleasures of recreational sex, which to prudishly perverted sensibilities, is a moral outrage. No one is *required* to use birth control under the ACA, and including conctraceptive coverage does *not* increase anyone’s premium, so they’re not even being “required” to pay for it whatsoever. Instead, it’s an excuse to impose their fucked-up moral hangups on everyone else. I’d like to tell them to go fuck themselves, but they wouldn’t do that anyway, cause that’s not part of God’s plan for people to have sex only for making babies.
Hal
I just saw a Facebook post from a conservative friend asking why the federal government can force employers to provide contraceptive coverage since the us isn’t a socialist dictatorship. I was going to reply but my eyes almost rolled out of my head and I couldn’t see straight for awhile.
Botsplainer
Good on the payment, bad on one of the products. The ring carries some dangers, such as the serious risk of pulmonary clotting (according to a recent Vanity Fair article). Also, I can say from personal knowledge, it can turn an ordinarily pleasant woman into a hypercritical, demanding, hormonal-to-the-point-of-seeming-bipolar, hateful witch after a few months’ use. After a week or two off the thing, she’ll swing back to normal. If she starts using it again, it takes a couple of months to swing back into hateful land.
geg6
@Elizabelle:
If that was the top five list, the only person truly worthy of the title is Pope Frank (I love Edith Windsor, but she’s not really a household name and it was the work of many other people in addition to herself that got Edith that SC win). The other three are disgusting: a disloyal criminal, a war criminal and a megalomaniac (this would be Cruz but could also be Assad, I realize).
Not much of a list there, TIME.
srv
@Botsplainer: See, all that immoral sex life comes with consequences.
jrg
If conservatives were sane, they would rejoice because this likely means fewer free and reduced lunches, SNAP and public education expenses, etc. But they are not, so they are not.
Knight of Nothing
@Roger Moore: My reaction as well.
Elizabelle
@geg6:
Yeah, screw Time for their lousy finalists, although they chose right out of that crew.
Did Timothy McVeigh make his year?
scav
@Hal: Well, there is also the logically similar point that the feds forcing us all to pay more taxes to carry along the free-riding tax-subsidized moocher churches proves the US is a theocracy. What a complex little dictatorship we suffer under!
Hawes
That last line was the Chuck Norris of Last Lines. It traveled around the world and kicked itself in the back of the head.
scav
Greenwald’s in a snit already, any bit of limelight being his and his alone. How dare there be news and not about him and his minions! His Precious!
Elizabelle
Thank God for wikipedia, because it’s hard to find a list of Person of the Year on Time’s site.
Adolph Hitler was POY in 1938; Stalin in 1939 and 1942.
Lotta US Presidents were 2-time POYs: FDR, Truman, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Bill Clinton, Obama.
Kenneth Starr (!) shared POY with Bill Clinton in 1998.
And here’s some charming copy from Time’s site, under its picture of finalist “Ted Cruz – Barn Burner.”
He’s a vision of the future if we have to rely on our piece of shit news media.
Roger Moore
@Botsplainer:
My impression is that the dangers you’ve mentioned with the ring are common to all forms of hormonal contraception; I’ve certainly seen discussion of blood clots with The Pill. And I thought you were supposed to use The Ring for only 3 consecutive weeks and then cycle off for a week anyway.
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle: At least some people are keeping perspective, though. My Google News feed has a headline “Pope gets nod over Miley Cyrus for Person of the Year.” It’s apparently attributed to USA Today. I did not click through.
cmorenc
@Botsplainer:
That article is a monument to ignorant, misleading use of statistics about the incidence of blood clots and various devices, and the use of anecdotal incidents that is every bit as egregious as those cited by the anti-HPV vaccine crowd. The statistical increase in blood clots of the ring over the pill is relatively modest (maybe in the neighborhood of 30% more) but still very low in absolute terms e.g. per 10,000 women, and is due to analogous side effects of hormonal release from the device as is caused by oral contraceptives. BY CONTRAST, the event which increases the risk of blood clots several-fold over BOTH oral contraceptives and pills is…ka-ching! pregnancy itself!
So, while the increased risk of developing dangerous clots from use of the ring is real, several-fold over no use of the ring or oral contraceptives at all, nevertheless it’s wildly misleading to portray the ring in the same category as e.g. General Motors’ efforts to downplay the risks of the Corvair or Ford and the vulnerable gas tank in the Pinto.
mai naem
@Elizabelle: Time’s POY in my understanding is the person who made the most impact not positive impact. I don’t know about Ted Cruz being the person of the year – there’s a bunch of teabaggers in congress, hardly just him. I think Snowden should have made the top 3. He comes across as a douche but the NSA leaks story has caused some major problems for the US.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
So my new favorite blog is Love Joy Feminism over at Patheos, where Libby Anne discusses how she went from being raised Quiverfull/homeschooled fundamentalist to being a feminist atheist. She did a couple of great posts about how she stopped being “pro-life”:
How I Lost Faith in the “Pro-Life” Movement
A Response to Objections on My Pro-Life Movement Post
And, yes, she discovered that a lot of religious people still have very strange ideas about the kind of women who use birth control:
divF
@Gin & Tonic:
I’m still waiting for the headline “Pope to declare Elvis a Saint”. USA Today, National Enquirer, the Onion – any of them will do.
Chris
@Linda Featheringill:
It’s a problem with every authority that people are so attached to that their knee-jerk reaction when that authority is caught doing wrong is to go “that’s not true! That’s impossible!” and blame the hippie journalist scum who brought it to their attention because they clearly made it up, or they’re blowing it out of context, and in any case they must have an ulterior motive, our precious Authority would never do a thing like that…
It’s why, while I admit that I’m a contrarian asshole in the first place, I also find it logical to be suspicious of institutions that society tells me to trust (like the churches); that assumption of benevolence gives them a lot more leeway to commit and get away with crimes than, say, the welfare recipients being made to jump through hoops to prove that they’re really poor, being drug-tested to prove they’re not buying drugs, and otherwise being assumed right out the door to be guilty until proven innocent.
Gene108
Person of the Year is a politically correct cop-out.
It should still be Man of the Year!
And that person should be Nelson Mandela for having the decency to die! One less commie terrorist is a good thing.
If only he could’ve taken Obama with him to hell.
(Am I right-wing FP material or just a lowly, but popular, commentator)
sparrow
@Elizabelle: I thought the man of the year could be someone terrible, if they were influential enough, no?
Chris
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Thanks, fantastic read. I can identify with the background – thinking abortion is murder and then slowly realizing that the pro-life movement is, in fact, about regulating sex and not banning abortion, and then that being a gateway to pro-choice.
scav
@sparrow: People forgetting that aspect annually helps drive the hoopla that accompanies the announcement. How many of ever even bother reading Time any more, let alone really care what its editors / board members / advertising panel thinks?
Citizen_X
@Elizabelle:
Ted Cruz? Yeah, a vision of the future all right: a moron, kicking himself in the face, forever.
boatboy_srq
@Linda Featheringill: To be sure, there’s a lot of luggage being lifted all around. The trouble with the traditional Protestants is that they’re much less energized over people having Teh Secks, and the FundiEvangelicals are generally not only having their luggage lifted but doing so in the absence of their spouses – and said spouses are either far more tolerant of Teh Sin or in on the
griftsituation.schrodinger's cat
@Gene108: You could give Ramesh Ponnuru a run for his money.
Good job!
kc
@Botsplainer:
That’s probably just a side effect of proximity to you.
Interrobang
@kc: I think that’s got less to do with the delivery mode (ring) as opposed to the particular cocktail of hormones in it.
Hormonal birth control is a tricky thing to get right — when I first went on the Pill, I had to try something like five of them before I found one that didn’t have horrible side effects, including one that caused really extreme mood swings from euphoria to suicidal/homicidal thoughts. Now I use the Patch and it works great for me. It has a slightly higher risk of certain cardiovascular complications than some forms, but I’m active and don’t smoke, and all my numbers are good, and it keeps me from being in bed for three or four days a month, so there’s that whole cost-benefit thing.
artem1s
@mai naem:
shortly before the Catholic scandals hit the media big, the Episcopal Church had a problem of their own, which they dealt with in the courts. No coverup.
that’s the big sticking point and difference IMO. like the Sandusky scandal, it was systematically covered up and the perp guarded by politically influential parties so not to tarnish the image of the sacred institution.
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: Well, MY anecdata says that you would never know who’s on the ring because a calm, sweet, good-humored friend of mine has been on it for years because she kept getting pregnant on the Pill.
Variable humans vary. Film at 11.
psst, d’y’know some people committed suicide on Prozac?!? Trufax.
Another Holocene Human
@Linda Featheringill: It’s not the religion (so much, anyway), it’s the authoritarianism. Jehovah’s Witlesses reportedly have a real bad problem with child rape. It has not gotten the press the Catholic scandal has because–ironically–lay people in the RCC in secular countries have more power than JWs do. (The RCC was great at terrorizing people in lands they controlled and they still troll and intimidate people in Italy despite nationhood and alleged secularization, which included building a lovely synagogue with public money and raising a statue to Bruno as an eyepoke to the Vatican, not to mention giving EVIII a more lovely monument than any on the RCC’s side of the Tiber. The Church is a bit flummoxed when they can’t control the government. But JW’s have perfected mind control of their hapless followers over more than a century in the United States.)
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@cmorenc: Pointing out that Botsplainer is wrong is like pointing out that the sun rises in the east, but thanks for making the effort.
Gus
Holy shit, the front pagers are on fire today.