‘reproductive rights’

Giving Thanks for Sex…With a Bit of Melancholy

It’s Thanksgiving, so let’s give thanks for sex. Not just the huffing and puffing, the in-ing and out-ing, the sloshing around and drying off. Let’s give thanks for all the sexual rights we enjoy here in the U.S.—which billions of people in Russia, the Arab world, and many parts of Asia and Africa will never enjoy in their lifetimes. Most of these rights have to do with privacy and autonomy. These always look dangerous to repressive or religiously-driven regimes. Science and technology look pretty frightening to such regimes when they can be applied for sexual purposes—which they inevitably are, throughout…

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Abortion & Birth Control: How Humans Actually Behave

There’s belief and there’s science. When it comes to sexuality, American public policy is terribly prejudiced toward the first, while too often ignoring the second. Election season invariably exaggerates this unfortunate tendency. And so, for example, people actually fear that gay soldiers will be humping while being shot at. Or that they’ll seduce straight soldiers in the shower—who will be powerless to just say no. Love that close-order drill! New data about pregnancy, contraception, and abortion were just released. While I don’t expect this to influence too many decision-makers, when considered together these facts are intriguing: * Reducing the cost…

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IVF, The Nobel Prize, & Sexuality

Robert Edwards has won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his development of in vitro fertilization. The procedure takes one or more eggs from a woman, mates them with sperm in a petri dish outside the body, and then inserts the fertilized egg(s) back into a woman—either the donor or a surrogate—for gestation. The procedure has been a boon for couples who wish to conceive together but can’t. Its techniques have also led to scientific advances such as cloning and the creation of human embryonic stem cells. As human achievements go, IVF is pretty impressive, up there with the…

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Is There Such A Thing As Kinky Sex?

Last week I keynoted the annual conference of CARAS (Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities). I presented “Clinical, cultural, and personal narratives about alternative sexualities.” My goal was to examine the common ways people think about “alternative” (or “kinky”) sexuality—and how that affects everyone, no matter what kind of sex they’re into. The general attitude about kinky sex and its practitioners among the media, civic organizations, and medical-psychological professions is pretty negative. They accept or even promote horrible misinformation (“Perverts want to recruit teens into their lifestyle”). They use glamorous but bizarre cases to condemn ordinary choices (“S/M scene…

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Innovative Pharmaceutical Abortions in Iowa—And Hypocritical Resistance

If you want to deprive women and men of their right to an abortion, at least be honest about it. In Iowa, Planned Parenthood offers an innovative service to facilitate private pharmaceutical abortion. Since most Iowans live far from the state’s very few abortion providers, Planned Parenthood is offering telemedicine service. The patient goes to a nurse or other non-provider in her home town, who connects with the physician-provider in a Planned Parenthood office, perhaps 100 or more miles away. The doc asks the usual medical questions, the patient answers, and if she qualifies, the doc OKs the nurse to…

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Sexual Intelligence Awards 2010

Each year, Sexual Intelligence Awards™ honor individuals and organizations which challenge the sexual fear, unrealistic expectations, and government hypocrisy that undermine love, sex, and relationships—and political freedom—today. Last year’s winners were Vermont Law School; Dr. Doug Kirby; Reliable Consultants; and the National Center for Reason & Justice. This year’s winners are: 4000 Years For Choice 4000 Years for Choice is a campaign created by artist Heather Ault. It dispels the common idea that abortion and contraceptive rights began with 20th-century feminism. Using beautifully designed postcards featuring facts about historic forms of contraception and abortion, the campaign is both supporting women’s…

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