From the beginning, Orr was controversial, with her strongest credentials seemingly being her support for failed abstinence-only policies. Lawmakers immediately wrote to HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt and urged him to reconsider the appointment. Before joining HHS, Orr served as senior director for marriage and family care at the conservative Family Research Council (FRC) and was an adjunct professor at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. A look at her past record:

– In a 2001, Orr embraced a Bush administration proposal to “stop requiring all health insurance plans for federal employees” to cover a broad range of birth control. “We’re quite pleased, because fertility is not a disease,” said Orr.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/21/orr-resign/

Seraph, I am a real person who is trying to make a serious point.

So you say, but then, a troll would. That’s why I’m asking the regular posters to identify you one way or another.

You see, you claim to be making a serious point, but when you brush off potentially deadly side effects like Alara’s suicidal depression or my wife’s dangerously high blood pressure with a casual

Yes, I get it: hormonal birth control involves hormones, and thus might mess with you.

…you are not being serious. You are arguing in bad faith. You are not engaging with people offering valid criticisms of your argument, nor are you addressing the very real and serious drawbacks to your plan in any substantial way. You are simply repeating it over and over in the hopes that we’ll see it your way if you just say it right. Sorry, “see, I done proved it” never worked here.

The Pill is not a single drug. There are many different formulations, and they’re all very powerful, meant to be taken every day for years at a time. The wrong formulation can kill a woman, and the right formulation can change as a woman’s body and circumstances change.

The Pill is practically a textbook example for why prescriptions and professional medical supervision exist in the first place.

What’s more, as has been pointed out to you repeatedly, making the Pill OTC wouldn’t necessarily improve availability and certainly wouldn’t improve cost.

And yet you ignore all of this, simply to repeat your argument yet again. This means you are either:

1) A troll trying to make a backdoor argument against the availability of Plan B OTC, or trying to get some nice “Just Use Condoms” quotes from the Pro-aborts

2) So utterly blinded by the magnificence of your idea that you honestly can’t see its flaws even when they’re pointed out to you, and so believe that everyone would agree with you if they really understood…so if they don’t agree, they must not understand…

or

3) Very stupid.

Which is it?

Seraph, I am a real person who is trying to make a serious point.

So you say, but then, a troll would. That’s why I’m asking the regular posters to identify you one way or another.

You see, you claim to be making a serious point, but when you brush off potentially deadly side effects like Alara’s suicidal depression or my wife’s dangerously high blood pressure with a casual

Yes, I get it: hormonal birth control involves hormones, and thus might mess with you.

…you are not being serious. You are arguing in bad faith. You are not engaging with people offering valid criticisms of your argument, nor are you addressing the very real and serious drawbacks to your plan in any substantial way. You are simply repeating it over and over in the hopes that we’ll see it your way if you just say it right. Sorry, “see, I done proved it” never worked here.

The Pill is not a single drug. There are many different formulations, and they’re all very powerful, meant to be taken every day for years at a time. The wrong formulation can kill a woman, and the right formulation can change as a woman’s body and circumstances change.

The Pill is practically a textbook example for why prescriptions and professional medical supervision exist in the first place.

What’s more, as has been pointed out to you repeatedly, making the Pill OTC wouldn’t necessarily improve availability and certainly wouldn’t improve cost.

And yet you ignore all of this, simply to repeat your argument yet again. This means you are either:

1) A troll trying to make a backdoor argument against the availability of Plan B OTC, or trying to get some nice “Just Use Condoms” quotes from the Pro-aborts

2) So utterly blinded by the magnificence of your idea that you honestly can’t see its flaws even when they’re pointed out to you, and so believe that everyone would agree with you if they really understood…so if they don’t agree, they must not understand…

or

3) Very stupid.

Which is it?

If you have health insurance, you will be able to go to your doctor and get a prescription for any kind of hormonal birth control your little heart desires. You don’t really need the pill to be available over the counter. In fact if your only cost is a $10 copay, you’d spend more on the OTC pill, because $10 is barely enough to buy aspirin these days.

If you don’t have health insurance, you have to pay full price, which means bearing the full cost of an annual well-woman exam and paying full price for the pills each month. This is a lot of money, but there’s no reason to think the price would go down if the pills were available over the counter — in fact, based on how the morning after pill went, the price would probably be jacked up to prevent 12 year olds from spending their allowance on it (don’t even get me STARTED…). At best they would ignore the cost of a doctor’s visit and “only” charge $50-60 per pack of pills.

Women who do not have access to hormonal birth control due to the prohibitive cost of getting it without health insurance would not be any more likely to afford it over the counter. They would still be stuck using condoms, because condoms are a lot cheaper than full-price birth control pills.

I should also say that, if we were living in a different universe where the pill were safe enough to be OTC, I would love to see it available that way. But I’d rather stick to condoms (which frankly bore me, too) than watch the fallout from something like that.

everytime drug prices come up i feel compelled to post about these programs. so apologies to everyone who knew this info already. being unisurable due to chronic health and mental health issues these generic drug programs are a lifesaver. for my 3 prescriptions i pay $21 a month

but on the subject of the post itself, the little tagline “not just recently. always. never wavering.” sounds like a walmart ad. this guy is such a weenie.

and you can count me in the list of women who dont like condoms.

And Opoponax, my insurance charges just $10 for prescriptions, so condoms would cost more. But I paid $0 for my vasectomy, so the whole thing is moot for me. My ex could have had her tubes tied for $0 as well, which shows how willing insurance companies are to not pay for pregnancy. Who’s making all that money on the pill?

The only real obstacle to using condoms as your main method of contraception is the fact that a lot of douchey guys cop an attitude about it.

My husband has never copped an attitude about using a condom. No complaints because he doesn’t want to be a dad.

I, OTOH, am bloody sick of the damn things. I don’t have health insurance, and frankly, I do resent the whole “carrot stick” approach to the pill. Yeah, condoms are easily available, but for someone in a long term, monogamous relationship, they suck. Eons ago, when I was in college, I was on the pill and it was great. Convenient. Spontaneous. And frankly, it leveled out my hormones and made me a bit saner.

I’d love the pill to be available OTC.

Just pointing out that support for the pill OTC isn’t just from lazy, “douchey” men with attitudes.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2008/05/court_strikes_down_virginia_ab.html?hpid=topnews

Court Strikes Down Virginia Abortion Ban

A federal appeals court has ruled that Virginia’s ban on late-term abortions, approved by the General Assembly in 2003 over objections from then governor Mark R. Warner (D), is unconstitutional.

In a ruling issued this afternoon, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said the procedures covered under Virginia’s ban “imposes an undue burden on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion.”

The ruling will likely reignite the abortion debate in Virginia.

Supporters of Virginia’s ban say it would stop the practice of killing infants moments after they are prematurely delivered. But the 2003 Virginia law did not include a health exception. Warner vetoed the law, and the legislature overrode his veto.

When I was on the pill, I was paying about $50 a month for the privilege. A box of Trojans is $22.29 at drugstore.com, for 36 condoms — if you have sex daily that’s about half what someone without insurance or with shitty insurance will pay for the pill.

“And the good ones are expensive.”

A huge box of Trojans is quite likely cheaper than my $50 per month copay for my birth control pills. And I’m insured.