Politics and the President's Pill. Are They Healthy for Women?

By Mary Nicholas

Announcing that insurance companies would pay for contraceptives on Friday, President Obama added that doctors "put women on contraceptives as a way to prevent and reduce the risk of ovarian and other cancers." Days earlier, Nancy Pelosi said that peoples' complaints about the contraceptive mandate and religious freedom were not the issue and emphasized that "this is about women's health." There is an issue, though, regarding the mandate that lies beyond the grave religious and constitutional issues therein: do contraceptives harm women's health? "Reproductive justice," closely allied to "social justice," is a term coined by women at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. The term embraces reproductive rights, reproductive health, and of course reproductive justice. NOW, NARAL, Emily's List, Planned Parenthood, and others who subscribe to this ideology have applauded Obama's decision to make contraception available to all women "free of charge." So in the interest of women's "reproductive health," what should women know about contraception? Carl Djerassi, known as the "father of the pill,".... (Read Full Article)