Stopped Clock, Philippines Edition

Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines Donald Trump is due to be sworn in in a few days.

Today, he told the Catholic Church to STFU about birth control:

The Philippines' tough-guy president-elect is turning his bare-knuckles campaign tactics on a potent adversary: the Roman Catholic Church and its opposition to artificial birth control.

Rodrigo Duterte, who takes office Thursday, is known for never mincing words or shying from a fight. He has threatened, presumably in jest, to chop off the penises of men who resist his proposals for wide-scale vasectomies, according to a report by the Associated Press on Monday. And he is on record as cursing the pope after a papal visit to the Philippines caused massive traffic jams in Manila.

But despite his famously vulgar utterances, Duterte appears to be dead serious about his crusade to lower the birthrate in his impoverished and fast-growing country of 102 million, where the majority-Catholic population has increased by 10 million in six years. The Philippines' birthrate of 2.9 children per family is much lower than in many African countries, where some average more than six children per family, but it is much higher than in Europe and in other Asian countries, including Japan and South Korea, which average 1.4 and 1.2 average births per family, respectively.

"I will reinstall the program of family planning. Three is enough," Duterte said Monday in a speech in Davao City, where he has governed as mayor or vice mayor for 22 years and where he instituted an ambitious policy of birth control and sterilization.

On Sunday, speaking on his weekly TV show from Davao, Duterte accused the church of keeping the public "in total ignorance" about birth control and frightening Catholics into submission. “You tell the children that they will go to hell. You always use that to scare them. But that is not true. Hell is here,” he told the audience, according to the website Politiko. Roman Catholic officials in the Philippines have opposed artificial birth control and advocate only natural family-planning methods.

This guy does appear to be a bit of a nut job, but he's right on this issue.

I Need to Stop Calling Him Governor Rat F%$#*

He just jammed up the useless Baltimore Executive to force him to install air-conditioning before the start of the next school year instead of waiting for at least 3 years, and now he going to sign into a law a bill that provides free birth control to Marylanders:

Advocates say a new Maryland law will place the state at the forefront of efforts to require insurance plans to offer birth control at no out-of-pocket cost, expanding access to women and men who want to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

The law goes further than President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, which already reduced costs for women seeking birth control in many cases.

Under the Contraceptive Equity Act, Maryland will be the first state to require insurance companies to cover over-the-counter emergency contraceptives, such so called morning-after pills, at no cost. Maryland also will be the first state prohibiting out-of-pocket costs for men who have vasectomies.

Advocates who pushed the bill through the General Assembly say Maryland is the first state to pass such a comprehensive approach.

"Maryland is on the forefront across the board with this act," said Karen Nelson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Maryland.

Other provisions prohibit co-payments for any type of contraceptive and also ban preauthorization requirements for long-acting contraceptives such as IUDs. The law allows women to receive six months' worth of birth control pills at one time.

Did I mention that he's a Republican?

While I am not a fan of of the governor or many of his policies, he is not the kind of batsh%$ insane Australopithecine of many other (Scott Walker, Rick Scott, Paul LePage, Bruce Rauner, Sam Brownback, Matt Bevin, Rick Snyder, Pat McCrory,Greg Abbott, etc.) Republican governors.

Credit where credit is due.  He did the right thing. 

^*Full disclosure, when we had problems with health insurance exchange, we called our state senator, and we ended getting a call from Hogan's office, where a staffer fixed the problem.

Their Goal Is to Punish Women. Mission Accomplished

One of the not so tightly kept secrets of the abortion criminalization movement is that they want to ban birth control as well.

The reason for this is because they want to punish women for their sexuality, and now a study shows that when they get what they want, they succeed in punishing women:

In the US, there are many laws limiting when and how women can receive abortions. But there is almost no research on what happens to women who seek out abortions and are denied them. Now a team of health researchers at the University of California, San Francisco has completed a longitudinal study of a group they call "Turnaways," women who tried and failed to get abortions due to local laws. The researchers found that women who received abortions were over six times as likely to have and achieve positive life plans than Turnaways.

The Turnaway study

To gather their unusual Turnaway data set, the researchers spent two years interviewing 956 women who sought abortions at 30 different abortion clinics around the US. 182 of them were turned away. All the women were interviewed a week after being turned away or receiving an abortion and then again a year later to assess the longer-term outcomes of their experiences. The team has also just completed interviews with the women that will reveal where they are five years after being turned away or not.

In its first analysis of turnaway data published two years ago, the team found that women seek out abortions for complicated reasons, with the most common being a feeling of financial unpreparedness. This earlier analysis also showed that 86 percent of turnaways chose to keep their children, and 67 percent of them would up below the poverty line a year later. By comparison, 56 percent of women granted abortions in the study were below the poverty line a year later. This finding lent credibility to many turnaways' concerns that being financially unprepared would cause problems down the line.

………

Only 53 percent of the goals were aspirational among turnaways. Women who received abortions had roughly 85 percent aspirational plans. Women who had children but did not parent them had 80 percent aspirational plans. The upshot was that turnaways who kept their children had far fewer positive goals for the future than their counterparts who received abortions.

Of all the goals measured, 47 percent were achieved. There was little difference between turnaways and women who had abortions when it came to achieving their goals. However, as the researchers write in their paper, women who received abortions "were significantly more likely to have both an aspirational plan and to have achieved it" than turnaways who kept their children. Upadhyay was quick to point out that overall, most of the women's goals were aspirational. "They all had high hopes," she said. But Turnaways "were much more likely to have negative goals."

What this latest phase in the Turnaway study reveals is that not having access to abortion can negatively impact women's lives. As Upadhyay and her colleagues put it in their paper, "Whether or not a person has aspirational plans is indicative of her hope for the future. Without such plans or hopes, she misses out on opportunities to achieve milestones in life."

Put bluntly, the Turnaways had fewer hopes, so they had fewer reasons to push themselves toward what they defined as better lives.

Destroying these women's lives is one of the goals of the anti-abortion movement.

You won't ever hear them say it, but it is clear from what they do.

And Some Good News in the Justice Front

The Federal Court just cut the antichoice liars at the so called pregnancy crisis centers a new one:

Two federal judges in California delivered a one-two punch to anti-choice activists at crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) last week by declining to block the state’s new reproductive disclosure law.

The law, set to go into effect January 1, requires a public notice about access to abortion and birth control at pregnancy-related clinics statewide. CPCs have sought to block the California Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency (FACT) Act, arguing in a flurry of lawsuits that it violates their constitutional rights to 
freedom of speech, assembly, and free exercise of religion.

But federal judges at courts in the Northern and Eastern Districts of California rejected requests for a preliminary injunction on the law in separate decisions handed down Friday.

Judge Jeffrey S. White in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California held that the three CPCs behind one of the suits fell short of the “high standard” required for a temporary injunction, and “failed to demonstrate that they would face irreparable injury.”

The licensed clinics—the Livingwell Medical Clinic, the Pregnancy Care Center of the North Coast, and the Confidence Pregnancy Center—offer free pregnancy services like pregnancy testing and ultrasounds, espouse Christian beliefs, and oppose abortion rights, according to court documents. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the CPCs by the American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based anti-choice legal organization.

Judge Kimberly Mueller of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California also rejected a request for a temporary injunction brought by the Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute, which represented three other CPCs. The 59-page decision held that “enjoining the act would interfere with the public interest regarding the health of state residents.”

A recent California undercover investigation found that CPCs, generally staffed by anti-choice activists, discourage patients from having abortions by routinely lying to women about their options. Other investigations found that CPCs convince women to remain pregnant with false promises of financial aid and housing.

The CPCs that brought the Northern District lawsuit contend they will not comply with the law, a fact that White noted in his decision: “Indeed, Plaintiffs maintain that their speech will not in fact be chilled.”

Operators of CPCs have said they’d rather close than comply with the state disclosure law.

Hopefully, we will see some arrests for fraud (they take money under false pretenses) and contempt of court in addition to their offices being terminated with extreme prejudice.

Sharia Law in Murfreesboro, Tennessee

It looks like the religious nut-jobs in the Murfreesboro district attorney's office have turned a personal tragedy into an The Handmaiden's Tale by charging a woman who attempted to abort her fetus with first degree murder:

A woman who attempted to perform an abortion with a coat hanger six months into her pregnancy has been indicted on a first-degree attempted murder charge, Murfreesboro Police reported.

Anna Yocca, 31, of 1939 Swindon Circle, was arrested Wednesday at Juvenile Court by Detective Tommy Roberts after the December session of the Rutherford County grand jury issued an indictment on the charge, according to the report. An employee at the Amazon fulfillment center in Lebanon, she was booked into jail on a $200,000 bond.

Roberts began investigating the case in September when evidence showed Yocca went to her upstairs bathroom, filled the tub with water, got in and tried to "self-abort" her pregnancy using a coat hanger, the report shows.

She became "alarmed and concerned for her safety" when she saw a great deal of blood in the tub, and her boyfriend took her to St. Thomas Rutherford Hospital emergency room. From there, she was transported to St. Thomas Mid-Town in Nashville where staff members saved "Baby Yocca," the report shows.

This is the world that anti-abortion forces want.

We've already seen a woman jailed to compel her to carry her fetus to term, a woman charged with murder for taking an abortion drug, prosecuting a mother for helping her daughter obtain an abortion, and passing laws making some miscarriages murder, among other cases in the past few years.

These folks won't be satisfied until every woman in America is back in chains.

(on edit)

The irony here is that a few years back, Murfreesboro was trying to prevent a mosque from being built in the area.

Taliban, Talibaptist, there is no difference.

Because the Anti-Abortion Movement is Al About Punishing Women for Having Sex, Not the Sanctity of Life

Fertility Clinics Destroy Embryos All the Time. Why Aren't Conservatives after Them?

This has been other episode of simple answers to simple questions.

This is a Night for Weird History

I just discovered that Prescott Bush, George H.W.'s dad, and George W's and Jeb's grand dad, was one of the founders of Planned Parenthood:

Can you name any historical figures who helped Planned Parenthood kick off its first fundraising campaign back in 1947? If you first guessed some progressive liberal icon, you’d be wrong.

The die-hard public pro-life bona fides of George W. Bush and his brother and current GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush are undeniable. Jeb has repeatedly said that he would defund Planned Parenthood if he’s elected, and it’s been a promise he’s been making long before the Center for Medical Progress launched their viral undercover video campaign attacking the non-profit, claiming the organization was “selling baby parts.”

But a little known fact — first resurfacing in a 2005 article in SFGate — reveals that the grandfather and father of the last two Bush presidents, Prescott Bush, was the treasurer of the organization in its early years.

But even then, supporting a woman’s right to control over her own reproductive system was politically dangerous.

The political repercussions hit hard. Prescott Bush was knocked out of an expected victory for a Senate seat in Connecticut in 1950 after syndicated columnist Drew Pearson declared that it “has been made known” that Bush was a leader in the “Birth Control Society” (The old name of Planned Parenthood had been the Birth Control Federation of America.) Recall that contraceptives were controversial in those days — and remember that a constitutional right to use them wasn’t established until 1965, when the Supreme Court affirmed an implied right to privacy in Griswold vs. Connecticut.

Prescott Bush won a Senate seat two years later, and his son George and daughter-in-law Barbara continued to support Planned Parenthood even after George’s election to Congress from Texas. In fact, he was such an advocate for family planning that some House colleagues gave him the nickname “Rubbers.”

If I believed that there was an ounce of integrity in the Bush Crime Family, my head would hurt, but Poppy Bush made it patently clear that this was not the case when he turn his back on both his father's legacy and own his lifelong support of reproductive rights to become Vice-President.  (And let us not forget that Prescott Bush's investment firm was shut down for acting as an agent of Nazi Germany in 1942.)

I don't think that this family would walk a straight line if their lives depended on it.

More of This

Hillary Clinton just compared the Talibaptist wing of the Republican to the Taliban, and she used the T-Word (Terrorist), and the whiny bitches in the Republican Party are having a sad:

Hillary Rodham Clinton likened Republican presidential candidates to fundamentalist terrorists with brutal or repressive views about women on Thursday, a significant escalation of her rhetoric about GOP positions on abortion that her campaign sees as a major vulnerability in the general election.

"Extreme views about women? We expect that from some of the terrorist groups. We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world," Clinton said. "But it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States."

Clinton did not say which terrorist or militant groups she meant as a comparison. Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria have held women as sex slaves and chattel, while the Taliban in Afghanistan refused to allow girls to attend school.

"They espouse out of date and out of touch policies," Clinton said of the current Republican field. "They are dead wrong for 21st Century America. We’re going forward. We’re not going back."

Republicans have spent the past 50 years describing Democrats as fellow travelers of Communists, terrorists, feminists, etc., who are determined to destroy America.

Now that a major Democratic Party justifiably observes that Republicans want to turn the United States into Saudi Arabia on social issues, they are lamenting the loss of civility in politics.

They need to go Cheney themselves.

Least Surprising News of the Day

There has been a study of the now infamous Planned Parenthood vids cobbled together by right wing activists, and has determined that the videos were deliberately deceptively edited:

Planned Parenthood on Thursday gave congressional leaders and a committee that is investigating allegations of criminality at its clinics an analysis it commissioned concluding that “manipulation” of undercover videos by abortion opponents make those recordings unreliable for any official inquiry.


“A thorough review of these videos in consultation with qualified experts found that they do not present a complete or accurate record of the events they purport to depict,” the analysis of a private research company said.

………

Planned Parenthood denies the charges and says that the videos were deceptively and misleadingly edited.

The analysis was by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research and corporate intelligence company, and its co-founder Glenn Simpson, a former investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

………

A transcription service was hired to transcribe the videos, without being told that Planned Parenthood was the client, to compare with transcripts publicized by the anti-abortion group. That comparison, the analysis said, showed “substantive omissions” in the group’s version. Mr. Simpson was assisted in the analysis by several others, including a video forensics expert, Grant Fredericks, and a television producer, Scott Goldie.

According to the investigation, the reviewers could not determine “the extent to which C.M.P.’s undisclosed edits and cuts distort the meaning of the encounters the videos purport to document.”

But, it said, “the manipulation of the videos does mean they have no evidentiary value in a legal context and cannot be relied upon for any official inquiries” unless C.M.P. provides investigators with its original material, and that material is independently authenticated as unaltered.

This is exactly the same thing that happened with James O'Keefe and Acorn.

The 'Phants are threatening to shut down the government to defund Planned Parenthood.

The response to this threat should be 3 words, "Bring it on."

Never stop your enemy from stepping on their own dick:  Planned Parenthood is one of the most popular organizations in America, and the shutdown crap has never worked.

Worst ……… Abstinence ……… Advocate ……… Ever

Bristol Palin, who I must congratulate both on her upcoming out-of-wedlock bundle of joy, and her addition to the most distinguished order of They Who Must Not Be Named.

I'm kind of surprised that I had not already added her to the list, but absent some sort of political activity, such as endorsements, running for office (PLEASE GOD NO!!), or their attempting to assassinate someone, she will not be mentioned here again.

Some People Use The Handmaiden's Tale as a Manual

And they seem to be overwhelmingly Republicans:

Late Thursday night, the House of Representatives voted in favor of “H.J.Res. 43: Disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act of 2014.” If enacted, the legislation would make using employer-based health insurance for in vitro fertilization or birth control pills a fireable offense in Washington, D.C.

Planned Parenthood has been mobilizing its network against the bill. “Your boss shouldn’t be able to fire you for using birth control,” the organization states.

………

Also on the floor last night, Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) dubbed H.J.Res. 43 “Hobby Lobby on steroids,” Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) called for D.C. statehood from the house floor, and numerous Republicans defended “religious freedom.”

………

With support from 225 Republicans and 3 Democrats, the U.S. Congress moved to overturn a democratically enacted law in the District of Columbia for the first time in more than 20 years.

As an FYI, the Democrats voting for this are:

• Dan Lipinski (IL-3)
• Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
• Colin Peterson (MN-7)

The distinguished gentleman from Minnesota is one of the founders of the Blue Dogs, Cuellar was Rick Perry's and George W. Bush's "Democrat" BFF, and Dan Lipinski is a right wing nut-job who got his job by nepotism when the Illinois Democratic party cleared the primary for him.

These are folks that the Democrats would be better off without, even if these seats were taken by Republicans.

They all need aggressive primary challenges, because there needs to be a certain level of party discipline, even in the Democratic party.

Welcome to the Handmaiden's Tale

A judge in Minnesota just gave a free pass to employers who don't want to cover contraceptives. I'm wondering when a Jehovah's Witness gets to deny coverage for blood transfusions:

A federal judge in Minneapolis ruled Monday that the owner of Hastings Ford and Hastings Chrysler Center does not have to pay for health insurance coverage for certain contraceptives such as Plan B, ella emergency contraceptive and certain kinds of IUDs.

Douglas Erickson said in a lawsuit that contraceptives that prevent a fertilized egg from being implanted in a woman’s uterus violate his belief that life begins at conception. Erickson’s businesses have 63 full-time employees and about 15 part-timers.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson is the latest in a string of decisions involving family-owned businesses that have sued to become exempt from a portion of the federal Affordable Care Act because of their religious beliefs.

………

Planned Parenthood of Minnesota and North and South Dakota issued a statement Tuesday after the ruling became public.

“It’s unbelievable that we are still fighting for access to birth control in 2014, with some politicians who want to get rid of the birth control benefit completely,” the statement said. “We know firsthand that access to birth control is both a health care and economic concern for women.”

Here's a hearty f%$# you to the Supreme Court over the Hobby Lobby decision.

The Handmaiden''s Tale is Alive and Well in Tennessee

That's where Lacey Weld got 6 additional years in prison for being pregnant:

Does being pregnant when you commit a crime make you guiltier than someone who is not pregnant? Vice reports that a group of reproductive rights organizations, led by the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, wrote to the Department of Justice recently to protest the sentence of Lacey Weld of Dandridge, Tennessee. Weld was picked up in an undercover sting at a methamphetamine manufacturing plant. As Kristen Gwynne of Vice writes, “despite her cooperation in the case and testimony against co-defendants, Weld (who pleaded guilty) was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison and five years of supervised release for her involvement in meth manufacturing.” Because of “enhanced sentencing” guidelines, six of those years were tacked on simply because Weld was pregnant at the time.

As the NAPW's letter states, giving a person an extra-long sentence because of her pregnancy status constitutes “separate and unequal treatment of pregnant women.” The justification offered by the judge in Weld's case is that Weld is extra guilty because she put her “unborn” child at a “a substantial risk of harm.” But Weld was not convicted of smoking meth. “According to the press release, the DOJ justifies the enhanced penalty in part because Ms. Weld apparently used methamphetamine while pregnant,” writes NAPW in its letter. “Drug use (rather than possession), however, is not a crime under either Tennessee or federal law—and as the press release admits, Ms. Weld was convicted of manufacturing, not possession of, methamphetamine.” Tennessee law allows enhanced sentencing if the victim is especially vulnerable, but Weld was not convicted of victimizing her son. Those six extra years were for a crime that isn't a crime in Tennessee at all.

This is contemptible.

6 Democrats to Punish

They voted for the Republican bill outlawing abortion after 20 weeks:

Six Democrats and six Republicans broke with their respective parties late Tuesday on House GOP legislation to ban nearly all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, written by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), creates narrow exemptions to protect the life of the mother, and in cases of rape and incest as long as the crimes have been reported. It passed 228-196 but won’t become law because Democrats control the Senate and White House.

The six Democrats who voted for the act were Reps. Nick Rahall (WV), Collin Peterson (MN), Jim Matheson (UT), Mike McIntyre (NC), Dan Lipinski (IL) and Henry Cuellar (TX).

I would particularly note that Lipinski's vote is particularly egregious, because he is in a solidly Democratic district.

6 Republicans also voted against the bill, but some of them did because they thought that the exceptions for rape and incest meant that the bill did not go far enough, and in any case, I'm not going to endorse a 'Phant.

I Guess the Obama Administration Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue

In the middle of a rather busy past few days for news, the Obama administration has quietly dropped restricting women's access to birth control:

The Obama administration has decided to stop trying to block over-the-counter availability of the best-known morning-after contraceptive pill for all women and girls, a move fraught with political repercussions for President Obama.

The government’s decision means that any woman or girl will soon be able to walk into a drugstore and buy the pill, Plan B One-Step, without a prescription.

The Justice Department had been fighting to prevent that outcome, but said late Monday afternoon that it would accept its losses in recent court rulings and begin putting into effect a judge’s order to have the Food and Drug Administration certify the drug for nonprescription use. In a letter to Judge Edward R. Korman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the administration said it would comply with his demands.

The Justice Department appears to have concluded that it might lose its case with the appeals court and would have to decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court. That would drastically elevate the debate over the politically delicate issue for Mr. Obama.

Women’s reproductive rights groups, who had sued the government to clear the way for broader distribution of the drug, cautiously hailed the decision as a significant moment in the battle over reproductive rights but said they remained skeptical until they saw details about how the change will be put into practice.

They should worry about how it is put in practice.  Barack Obama has a long history of tepid (at best) support for reproductive rights, and his comment that he supported the blatantly political and craven restriction, because, "as the father of two daughters, the government should apply some common sense," shows that he does not get women as independent people in control of their bodies.

Thankfully though, he does realize that further appeals will be a political loser, so he's throwing in the towel.

What PZ Myers Said

He suggests that the buying spree of hospitals by the Catholic church is a stealth assault on reproductive rights and needs to be stopped:

Imagine if you lived in a town where the only hospital was owned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and you were in a car accident — you’ve got a ruptured spleen, you’re bleeding internally, and your life is at risk. The surgeon is going to go in and stitch up and cauterize everything, but you’re warned that they don’t keep any kind of blood supply in the hospital, and they refuse to do blood transfusions — they have an in-house professional ethicist (who is a Jehovah’s Witness, of course) who rejects the morality of exchanging sacred blood, and the administrators have signed an agreement with the church to never, under any circumstances, carry out blood transfusions.

If you need a blood transfusion, they say, don’t worry, the ambulance will take you to a different hospital…50 miles away. You, unfortunately, are in shock, you’ve got a gusher pouring blood into your body cavity, and this is not an option. You get to die.

………

So why are Catholics allowed to buy up and impose Catholic dogma on hospitals? Is it because their ignorant dogma does the greatest harm to women (especially those slutty ones who have sex) and bizarre rules about reproduction don’t directly harm men?

But Catholics are buying up hospitals all over the country. They’ve got declining attendance, they’re closing churches, they’re having trouble recruiting priests, but they’ve still got buckets of money, and they’re using that money to impose control in another way — by taking over your health care.

His conclusion is 100% spot on:

Don’t let Catholics control your hospitals. Keep the church out of your health care decisions. Make Catholic Ethical and Religious Directives (ERDs) illegal — individuals may follow them at their personal discretion, but no health care facility gets to impose them on their patients, especially when they defy the law.

Your religious freedom does not include the right to impose your views on me.

Words Cannot Express My Disgust

Israel has been administering the Depo-Provera contraceptive to Ethiopian Women without their knowledge:

It isn’t an apology or an acceptance of responsibility. But for the first time, an Israeli government official has admitted what thousands of Ethiopian Jewish women have allegedly known for years – doctors in Israel have been injecting Ethiopian women with long-acting birth control medication known as Depo-Provera without the informed consent of the women. The effect of the shots lasts for months and the practice effectively sterilizes women for that period of time. Many Ethiopian women have reportedly received these shots for years with little or no say in the decision to receive them.

This is bigoted, and this is contemptible.

Whoever was behind this needs to be drummed out of the medical profession.

At least they have put an end to the practice:

Health Ministry Director General Prof. Ron Gamzu has instructed the four health maintenance organizations to stop the practice as a matter of course.

The ministry and other state agencies had previously denied knowledge or responsibility for the practice, which was first reported five years ago.

Gamzu’s letter instructs all gynecologists in the HMOs "not to renew prescriptions for Depo-Provera for women of Ethiopian origin if for any reason there is concern that they might not understand the ramifications of the treatment.

This is quite literally the least they could once this came to light.

In addition to being racist, it's bad medicine. Depo-Provera has a lot of nasty side effects.

Worst Marketing Decsion Ever

Worst Marketing Decision Ever: Drycleaner Puts "Pro-life" Message on Their Hangers



Yes, this is real.