The newest and likeliest reason we are all probably NOT pregnant today

Obama Eliminates Abstinence-Only Funding in Budget. From the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy via Huffington Post:

President Obama released his FY 2010 budget today and called for at least $164 million in funding for a new teen pregnancy prevention initiative. This includes competitive grants for evidence-based programs, research and evaluation, and an authorization for $50 million in new mandatory teen pregnancy prevention grants to states, tribes, and territories. The budget eliminates funding for Community-Based Abstinence Education and the mandatory Title V Abstinence Education program.

More on that here: http://yeswecanholdbabies.wordpress.com/

The Newest and Likeliest Reason We Are All Probably Pregnant Today

Our good friend the Abstinence-only Movement - already able to claim more pregnant teenagers than the Dayton Mall on a Tuesday afternoon - has secured Bristol Palin as its newest spokesperson. If the Palin family is good at anything it's reminding us that things could always be worse, or in this case, dumber. Sort of like when George W. Bush threw an 8-year-long frat party on our country's front lawn, and McCain decided the best person to help clean up the mess was the WORST PERSON TO HELP clean up the mess.

Sigh. Anyway, Bristol Palin, as the new Candies Foundation Ambassador to Teens, is now going to be flying all over the country talking about how hard it is to be a mom, and how she wishes - not so much that she had been more careful when it came to condoms and Levi but that she had never used a condom at all, because the safest sex is no sex, but then what about her son, is she saying she would rather he had never been born? So confusing.

Gail Collins ("Bristol Palin's New Gig"):

But surely, when it comes to combating teen pregnancy, the Palin family has done enough damage already. What worse message could you send to teenage girls than the one they delivered at the Republican convention: If your handsome but somewhat thuglike boyfriend gets you with child, he will clean up nicely, propose marriage, and show up at an important family event wearing a suit and holding your hand. At which point you will get a standing ovation.

Now a single mom on the outs with the father of her baby, Bristol wants a new kind of happy ending.

“I just want to go out there and promote abstinence and say this is the safest choice,” she said on “Good Morning America.”

“It’s not going to work,” said her ex-boyfriend, Levi Johnston, in a dueling early-morning interview.

If you have ever watched Levi Johnston on TV for two minutes you will appreciate how terrifying it is when he has the most reasonable analysis of a social issue.

There's an app for that...

In its continuing quest to convince its users that with a strong enough 3G signal they can control anything, Apple's iPhone now offers several applications that will track your menstrual cycle. Among them: iPeriod, FemCal Lite, Petals and iVag (okay, I made up that last one).

Users enter the first and last days of their periods, as well as optional "intercourse data" -- and we can only imagine what that encompasses. "Name of Partner. Um...Josh? James?"

Menstrual tracking apps are rising in popularity among the following groups: boyfriends who just want to avoid their girlfriends at "that time of the month," technologically inclined "rhythm method" Catholics, and twenty-something single women and their gay husbands (because it's sweet when someone cares).

IVF: "You don't know me!"

So I'm chatting with a co-worker the other day, and she's adorably preggers, and we're talking about Octomom, and I utter the familiar refrain: "Why did IVF doctors even implant eight eggs in that woman in the first place?!"

"Actually," she tells me, "I went through in vitro fertilization treatments to conceive my child, and the doctors always implant twice the number of eggs to ensure the woman gets pregnant. I only wanted one child, but I could have ended up with twins!"

Apparently, she goes on to tell me, if the woman is older or her uterus is otherwise inhospitable to pregnancy, this 2:1 ratio can get even higher. So, a woman trying to have one child could be implanted with three or even four eggs to try to increase her chances.

Furthermore, she continued, because IVF is expensive, and because usually only a certain number of IVF treatments are covered by a woman's insurance, sometimes women choose to be implanted with, say, six eggs, in hopes of having all three of their desired children with one pregnancy. So, it's not all about having as many babies as possible and getting welfare and your own talk show and musical and having people write about how you look just like Angelina Jolie you smug, insensitive, fertile 26-year-old...she said, to, um, paraphrase.

Thus, I was schooled. THE END.

Equality is OURS!

"Previous attempts to develop an effective and convenient male contraceptive have encountered problems over reliability and side effects, such as mood swings and a lowered sex drive."

Maybe men will get fat, too.