The IOM recommends that the HHS include contraception as no-cost preventive care. What does this mean for health care? Planned Parenthood lends us a representative to find out. Also: Summer’s Eve still is really awful to women.

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Links in this episode:

IOM recommends classifying birth control as preventive medicine

NPR coverage of the birth control recommendations

Summer’s Eve: both the product and the advertising are bad for women

Soccer is a “sport for girls”

On this episode of Reality Cast, a representative from Planned Parenthood will be on to explain the new IOM recommendations that contraception be covered as preventive care and made free to women under their insurance plans.  I’ll also be covering the story in some more depth myself.  Also, Summer’s Eve adds insult to injury with offensive advertising of their already-sexist products.

Well, much to my dismay, Women’s World Cup is over.  It all went by so fast!

• world cup *

It was a big disappointment for me, but if we had to lose, I’m glad it was to Japan.  They played well and their country needs some good news.  The good news is this World Cup was good for women in sports in general, as it was overall a better tournament than the men’s last year and drummed up a lot of enthusiasm for women’s soccer.

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This show is heavy on the bad news, so I’m delighted to note that there’s some movement towards a development that would be huge for American women. 

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This is something that has been long expected.  Under health care reform, services that are deemed preventive care are to be covered by your insurance fully with no co-pay.  The reasoning behind this is that it drives down costs.  One reason insurance companies won’t cover prevention fully is that other companies won’t do it, so there’s no incentive.  But because they don’t, a lot of people don’t get preventive care, and so they develop medical conditions that are expensive, driving costs up.  By forcing all insurance companies to cover prevention fully, you eliminate the co-pay arms race and costs will come down because more people will be getting prevention. 

What’s interesting about this is that common sense should tell you contraception should be first in line for being completely covered by insurance to drive down costs.  While many women who have unintended pregnancies have abortions, many women don’t, and the costs of their health care are incredibly expensive.  Women with unintended pregnancies who go forward with their pregnancies are more likely to have complications and are more likely to have problems with the baby’s health.  These are bad things in and of themselves, and they also drive up costs.  This should be a no-brainer.  But of course, they needed an independent study to confirm it, in no small part because of political reasons.

NPR covered the reasons why this is such a big deal, and why it’s a controversy.

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I flinch at suggesting that the anti-choicers are against this because of “abortion”.  That makes no logical sense.  Obviously, one of the biggest benefits if the HHS embraces the recommendation is that the abortion rate will go down.  It’s actually been climbing slightly recently, and a major possible reason is women are skipping on birth control to save money and then getting pregnant.  The point is that anti-choicers use the word “abortion” as a catch-all phrase to indicate women having sex for pleasure instead of procreation, and we in the reality-based community should oppose that.  The proper term isn’t “the politics of abortion”, which implies incorrectly that abortion has anything to do with anti-choice motivations here.  The proper phrase is “the politics of female sexuality and women’s rights”.  I realize this makes the anti-choicers seem like the bad guys.  But of course, that’s what they actually are.  They’re opposing a common sense regulation that would save the lives of women and children by making sure more women having babies are ready to have babies.  This is about punishing women for being sexual, full stop. 

The argument against this may involve yelling the word “abortion” a lot, but it’s going to come back to the same  old “we shouldn’t be paying for their slutty sex parties” nonsense.  That’s the line that the Family Research Council’s Jeanne Monahan was basically trotting out.

• iom 3 *

Which is a nice way of yelling “dirty sluts!”  The argument doesn’t make any sense.  Many religions have restraints on what kind of medical care you can get, but those people don’t get to impose their values on insurance companies.  Like if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness, you can’t and probably wouldn’t even think to force an insurance company to stop paying for other people’s blood transfusions.  Anyway, insurance companies already pay for contraception.  They just don’t pay for all of it.  So to claim this is a matter of principle is simply a lie.  FRC objects to eliminating the co-pay not out of principle, but because they don’t want more women using contraception.  And the reason is they’re trying to make sure that more women are punished for being sexual, and they especially want poor women to be constantly struggling with unintended pregnancy for having the nerve to think they have a right to have sex.

Next up, I’ll have the senior director of medical affairs for Planned Parenthood on to talk about what this report from the IOM means in more depth.

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insert interview

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If there’s any particular act that really shows us the limits of public education campaigns to promote healthy behavior in the face of advertising promoting unhealthy behavior, it’s douching.  For decades now, doctors, health officials and feminists have been trying like hell to educate American women on why they don’t need to douche, and in fact, should avoid douching because it’s bad for you.  When I googled “do women need to douche?” all but one of the links on the first page were reputable sites begging women not to douche.  The one link that wasn’t was someone asking why women date douchebags, which is the wrong question to ask because I suspect the guy asking it does not actually get dates.  Anyway, a quote from the Mayo Clinic’s website: “Repetitive douching disrupts the normal organisms that reside in the vagina and can actually increase your risk of vaginal infection.”  Women’s health dot gov says the vagina cleans itself and that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists strongly recommends against it.  Feminists have pointed out forever that douching is just full blown misogyny.  The colon is a lot dirtier than the vagina, but men aren’t expected to shoot Summer’s Eve up their ass.  Think about it. 

Despite all this public education, drugstores and grocery stores have huge amounts of shelf space dedicated to douches.  That’s not there for their health. They’re making money off that.  I’m guessing a lot of women who douche have probably heard that it’s bad for you, but misogynist advertising that teaches them they stink probably worries them so much they put their concerns aside and do it anyway.  And now Summer’s Eve is adding insult to injury by putting out advertisements that pretend douching is a cheeky, empowered thing to do. 

• douche 1 *

This clip shows, in order, a primitive-looking woman holding a baby and then Cleopatra greeting a crowd cheering her.  So basically, things get ugly right away.  To begin with, Cleopatra did not rule over Egypt because everyone thought her vagina was so awesome.  She did so because of a combination of inheriting the title and being willing to play court politics until she was at the top.  By the way, the reason she stuck out is also because women have historically not been able to hold that much power.  It’s insulting to reduce a woman and her power down to her vagina, and plain stupid to claim vaginas give women power when historically, women have actually had very little power.  But it gets worse!

• douche 2 *

Let’s see.  First of all they’re suggesting that the only value men can see in women is their vagina, so if a man does something to win your love, it’s actually just your vagina he wants.  Awesome.  But on top of that, the notion that most of history is about men valiantly trying to please women is just plain backwards.  In reality, women have been treated like dirt through most of history, not allowed any real rights and certainly not given much in the way of respect.  Yes, men have fought over women, but most of the time, they aren’t fighting for women.  The women are trophies that demonstrate their status and they’re fighting over that status.  The women might as well be pieces of gold or fancy insignias for how they were being treated.  Which makes more sense, since if this was just about the vagina, well, historically those have been on sale to men for usually insulting low prices.  And wives were required to have them up on offer whenever husbands wanted.  Vaginas aren’t hard to get in a patriarchy. 

• douche 3 *

Actually, vaginas are not only not the most powerful things on earth, but in fact historically speaking, the mere fact of having one usually has meant that its owner was deprived from birth forward of the right to vote, to own property, to decide when she had sex, and to decide when to have children.  But setting aside how horribly inaccurate this ad is, let’s also think about its arguments.  They’re claiming that the vagina is this historically marvelous thing that men and women have both been enraptured by for millennia.  And therefore you need some fancy modern product to somehow improve it?  Sounds like you can’t improve it.  You know, if it’s been the most amazing thing that ever was throughout all of history.  Hopefully that’s the message women will get from this, because really ladies, you shouldn’t douche.  If your vagina is healthy, it’s perfect just the way it is.  If it’s not healthy, you really should have a doctor looking at it.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, women’s soccer edition.  You know you couldn’t get through the entire Women’s World Cup without some right wing idiot taking potshots at both female athletes and at soccer, right?  Well, Mark Belling rose to the non-challenge.

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Actually, men’s soccer is by far the most popular sport in the world.  I wish that other countries thought of it as a “sport for girls”, aka women.  But many women’s teams in other countries really struggle for respect.  By the way, just because something is a sport for women doesn’t mean that it can’t also be a sport for men and vice versa.  We don’t bat the balls around with our genitals, you know.