Contraceptives

Congressional Republicans held a hearing about birth control and religion last Thursday, and the take-away image from the gathering is a shot of the key witnesses: five middle-aged men representing various religious organizations. Fairly or not, the spin coming out of the hearing was not about how religious institutions might be threatened by a federal requirement that employees be provided insurance coverage for contraceptives, which is what the committee chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa of California, intended.

Re "Birth control cases head to Supreme Court," Nov. 27 Individuals incorporate their businesses, in part, to be afforded certain shields against individual liability. Those corporations are by definition separate from the individual owners. In taking advantage of a corporate shield and its benefits, as Hobby Lobby has, it seems that the individuals relinquish the right to assert that the corporation is an extension of their personal beliefs while using that same corporation as a shield against personal liability.

MANILA - Philippines President Benigno Aquino III has signed legislation that will provide modern contraceptives to the nation's poorest people and mandate sex education in public schools, a spokeswoman announced Saturday. Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines immediately vowed to challenge the new law in the nation's Supreme Court and rally demonstrations in the streets, alluding to the bishops' role in inspiring the “People Power” revolution in 1986 that helped topple former President Ferdinand Marcos.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to jump into a growing legal dispute between the Obama administration and businesses run by conservative Christians over whether a company must pay for birth control drugs that conflict with its owner's religious beliefs. The decision to hear the cases, which could affect millions of women with employer-provided health plans, means that for a second time, the justices will decide the fate of a key part of President Obama's healthcare law. Last year, the court in a 5-4 decision upheld the requirement that individuals obtain basic health insurance or pay a tax penalty.

With the new school year comes a new furor in New York City over a program that makes emergency contraceptives , or so-called morning-after pills, available to girls as young as 14. The pilot program, which has been operating since January 2011, is part of the Connecting Adolescents to Comprehensive Healthcare program, or CATCH. It began with five schools in 2011, expanded to 14 and is now available at 13 schools, according to city officials. “In New York City over 7,000 young women become pregnant by age 17 - 90% of which are unplanned.

Even before the Supreme Court has ruled on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - a.k.a. "Obamacare" - 43 Roman Catholic organizations have filed lawsuits challenging a related regulation that requires employers or their health insurers to offer birth control coverage to workers. The plaintiffs say that complying with the regulation would violate their religious freedom. If this litigation does reach the high court, it could force the justices to choose between two lines of cases - one holding that religious groups must abide by generally applicable laws, and another recognizing religiously based exceptions in some circumstances.

Contraceptives such as IUDs and implants are finally being embraced by U.S. women after many years of doubts and controversy. In a new study, researchers at the Guttmacher Institute looked at data from the National Survey of Family Growth from 2006 and 2008 and found many more women are using IUDs such as the Copper T or the levonorgestrel intrauterine system (known as Mirena). Similarly, implants inserted under the skin in the arm, such as Implanon, are becoming more popular. The ratio of women using these long-lasting, reversible methods increased from 2.4 percent in 2002 to 5.6 percent in 2006 to 2008.

Doctors should give underage teenagers prescriptions for emergency contraceptives like Plan B before they start having sex instead of waiting until a young patient's "plan A" goes awry, the American Academy of Pediatrics says in a new policy statement. It says doctors should also counsel teens on the various options for emergency birth control as part of an overall strategy to reduce teen pregnancy. The academy is issuing the new position paper, published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics, as physicians and other health experts struggle to reduce the nation's high birthrate among adolescents.

MANILA - Ignoring the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines' warning that "contraception corrupts the soul," the Philippine Congress on Monday passed a sweeping bill that would provide birth control to millions of poor women. The historic votes, with bishops and nuns sitting glumly in the gallery, came after the Catholic hierarchy and its political supporters had thwarted the legislation's passage for more than 14 years. The measure, which President Benigno Aquino III has pledged to sign, would override the de facto ban on contraceptives in Manila's public health clinics, make sex education mandatory in public schools and require hospitals to provide postabortion care, even though abortions will remain illegal.

An estimated 62 million U.S. women are in their childbearing years. Of those, 62% use some kind of contraception. Among those who don't, 31% are pregnant, trying to get pregnant, postpartum, sterile or not sexually active. The other 7% take their chances. Among those using contraceptives, here's what they use: The pill 28% Sterilization 27.1% Condom 16.1% Vasectomy 9.9% IUD 5.5% Withdrawal 5.2% Injectable Depo-Provera 3.2% Vaginal ring 2.4 Rhythm 0.9 Other: 0.6 Statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Guttmacher Institute.

WASHINGTON - When the Supreme Court confronted the case of Native Americans who were fired for smoking an illegal drug during a religious ceremony, Justice Antonin Scalia called a halt to granting religious exemptions under the Constitution's protection for the "free exercise" of religion. It "would be courting anarchy" to permit "religious objectors" to ignore the law, he said. But Democrats in Congress rose up to overturn his decision and to bolster religious freedom. Backed by a broad coalition, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Christian Legal Society, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act became law 20 years ago this month.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court term that opens Monday gives the court's conservative bloc a clear opportunity to shift the law to the right on touchstone social issues such as abortion, contraception and religion, as well as the political controversy over campaign funding. If the justices on the right agree among themselves, they could free wealthy donors to give far more to candidates and parties and clear the way for exclusively Christian prayers at local government events. In other cases due to be heard this fall, the justices are likely to uphold state bans on college affirmative action and block most housing bias claims that allege an unfair impact on blacks and Latinos.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration set the stage Thursday for another Supreme Court showdown on the president's healthcare law, this time to decide whether for-profit companies can be forced to provide full contraceptive coverage for their employees despite religious objections from their owners. The administration's lawyers asked the justices to take up the issue this fall to decide whether these corporations can claim a religious exemption to this part of the healthcare law. U.S. Solicitor Gen. Donald Verrilli Jr. called the issue one of "exceptional importance" that needs to be resolved soon.

ROME - In an extraordinary, wide-ranging interview, Pope Francis expressed frustration that the Roman Catholic Church is "obsessed" with issues such as abortion, homosexuality and contraception, and called instead for a focus on healing and mercy. "The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules," Francis said in the interview published Thursday by an Italian Jesuit magazine. "The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.

The Obama administration, trying to defuse one of the most contentious issues in its healthcare law, proposed Friday a new way to shield religiously affiliated organizations, such as hospitals and universities, from having to provide contraceptive coverage directly to their employees. Instead, the employees would obtain coverage through a separate, private insurance policy at no cost. The proposed rule also reaffirms that churches and other houses of worship themselves are exempt from the contraceptive mandate in Obama's healthcare overhaul, and makes it easier for institutions to show that they qualify for the exemption.

Disney's ABC Family has coproduced a three-part Web series promoting contraceptive use among sexually active young adults, which it plans to make available online after it airs a forthcoming episode of its comedy series "Baby Daddy. " The July 31 installment, titled "Text Anxiety," deals with a pregnancy scare involving a girl (played by guest star Lacy Chabert) who takes a pregnancy test -- then struggles to keep it a secret from her boyfriend, Danny, played by Derek Theler. A day after the show airs, the webisodes will appear on the show's website . The minute-long segments feature the show's characters talking about contraceptives in an approachable, humorous way (one features a poker game in which condoms are used as table stakes)

President Obama once fretted about the prospect that girls as young as 10 or 11 could walk into a drugstore and buy emergency contraception pills as easily as "bubble gum or batteries. " With his blessing, the Department of Health and Human Services set aside the advice of medical experts and blocked efforts to allow girls younger than 17 to get the so-called morning-after pill without a prescription. That age limit is poised to disappear now that a federal judge has cleared the way Friday for girls - and boys - of any age to purchase the medication without having to notify their parents or a doctor.

Birth control pills using a 24-day regimen -- 24 days of active pills and four days of inactive pills -- are becoming more popular. A new study suggests that the shorter drug-free interval combined with pills containing drospirenone, a specific type of progestin that tends to remain in the body longer, are better at preventing pregnancy. German researchers examined a database of 52,218 U.S. women using oral contraceptives to look at what types of pills the women were using and the failure rates, meaning that an unintended pregnancy occurred.

The advice to the United Nations is unambiguous: Don't repeat the previous mistake of ignoring poor women's access to contraception in setting goals to reduce maternal and child deaths. “Women continue to die unnecessarily in childbirth,” wrote a 27-member panel of mostly political leaders who cited World Health Organization estimates that a woman succumbs to complications of pregnancy or childbirth every 90 seconds. The panel called for providing more well-equipped health facilities, skilled birth attendants and effective contraceptives to help women plan their families.  “Universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights is an essential component of a healthy society,” wrote the panel that included British Prime Minister David Cameron.

When the Supreme Court struck down a section of the Defense of Marriage Act, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said it was a "tragic day for marriage and our nation. " But the bishops go further, arguing that when the state legalizes same-sex civil marriage, "conflict results on a massive scale between the law and religious institutions and families.... Religious liberty is then threatened. " The bishops are equally alarmist about what they see as the threat to religious freedom posed by the Obama administration's requirement that employee health plans - including those at religious colleges and hospitals - include contraception services.