it's not even quite 10 am, and i'm already pissed off. i can feel my blood boiling, so i'm just going to have to rant it off.

after a morning full of minor irritations, all related to karl and almost all being noticed after he'd left, so i couldn't bring them up with him, i see two articles in the washington post that nearly sent me over the edge.

first, there's this one, about how cuts in state funding for contraceptives, gynocological services, and sex education are leading to increases in unintended pregnancy, especially in teenagers and poor women. though both sides of the abortion debate should agree that cutting rates of unintended pregnancy is a good thing, at least half the US states are moving away from easy access to birth control and sex ed. the article notes that the federal government instituted a plan in 2000 to cut the rate of unintended pregnancy, and will chip in $.90 for every $.10 a state contributes to fund programs for that purpose. also, every dollar spent on pregnancy prevention saves $3 in pregnancy-related medical costs. unsurprisingly, california and new york are at the top of the list of states helping low-income women have access to reproductive health care and contraceptives, and nebraska and utah are at the bottom. surprisingly, south carolina and alabama are right up there with CA and NY.

to really get some muscle behind that punch in the gut, there's this editorial by susan wood, the former assistant commissioner for women's health at the FDA. she resigned from the FDA because of the delay in approving PlanB, the emergency contraceptive pill, as over-the-counter medicine. in her editorial, she writes that she still does not know why the FDA administration is stalling on this.
is it because of the controversial issue of young teens' having access? no, because the pill would only be available OTC to women aged 17 and older.
is it because PlanB causes abortions? no, PlanB is just a higher dose of the regular birth control pill, and will not interfere with an existing pregnancy. it will only *prevent* pregnancy.

as wood points out, the american public trusts (or wants to trust) the FDA, and the governement in general, to make decisions based on the best evidence available. we trust the FDA to tell us which medicines are safe. when you think about it, we place an enormous amount of trust in the FDA every time we put a new pill in our mouths. in this case, the best evidence shows PlanB to be a safe, effective form of contraception.

we don't help teens and low-income women prevent pregnancy with contraception, appropriate health care, or sex ed. we make women who may have just been raped jump through hoops to get time-sensitive emergency contraception that will prevent a pregnancy from adding to her trauma. increasingly, we don't let women who become unintendedly pregnant have an abortion (South Dakota, remember?)

susan wood says she doesn't know why PlanB isn't getting approved. i do--it's because the leaders of this country (and the fundamentalist christians they pander to) don't want women to have sex for pleasure at all. they think it's immoral for unmarried women to have sex, which explains the teenager thing (and for that matter, the restriction on adult women who aren't married). married women should only be having sex for procreative purposes. if the only sex that's being had is for procreative purposes, then clearly there's no need for contraception and sex ed. and if you take away access to those things, perhaps you can force women to forego sex, because it's not worth the risk. fundamentalist christian morality by fiat.