by Stacey

Working women who miss work for infertility treatments are now one step closer to having legal protection from job loss under laws that guard against pregnancy bias in the workplace. According to this article in the Wall Street Journal, a federal appeals court has sided in favor of a woman’s right to sue if she loses her job for missing work due to in vitro fertilization.

In the first decision of its kind at the federal appeals-court level, a three-judge panel in Chicago found women who need time off work for infertility treatment may invoke the Pregnancy Discrimination Act as potential protection against adverse action. The ruling came in a case involving Cheryl Hall, a secretary who was laid off after taking time off for in vitro fertilization, then asking for more. Without ruling on the merits of her case, the court last month set a precedent by giving Ms. Hall a green light to sue her former employer for pregnancy-related bias.

I didn’t know this before I read the article, but the erratic nature of IVF can wreak havoc on the schedule of a working woman.

Some procedures require women to report to a clinic several days each month for blood tests or sonograms. Retrieving eggs from a woman’s uterus is usually done with a general anesthetic, requiring recovery time. Some doctors order bed rest after embryos are transferred to the uterus. Women who have long commutes to work or a clinic, as Ms. Hall did, may need extended time off.

The article says Ms. Hall’s physician ordered her to stay in bed for several days after an embryo transfer in 2003; she took about 20 days off, court papers show. The procedure failed and she was approved for a second leave to try again; “my boss knew everything that was going on with me,” Ms. Hall says in an interview. But her supervisors singled her out for layoff before the second leave, citing absenteeism for infertility treatments, court papers show.

Courts in other cases have held that because both men and women experience infertility, sex-bias protections don’t apply. In this case, the court held that because only women undergo time-consuming in vitro fertilization, they may be protected by sex-bias law. Treatment for men usually takes less time.

The ruling suggests women will have to worry less about the “repercussions of taking time off for IVF,” says Eugene Hollander, Ms. Hall’s attorney. While the decision applies only in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, it could influence other courts or, if a conflict arises, trigger a Supreme Court petition, the article says.

The ruling expands a trend toward recognizing infertility as a medical problem; 13 states have laws mandating insurance plans to pay for in vitro fertilization, says the Pacific Research Institute, a think tank. Also, more employees are seeking time off for treatment under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act; this law, which entitles covered workers to up to 12 weeks’ unpaid time off, may apply in some cases if a doctor certifies the treatment is for a serious health condition.

I wonder whether this would have implications for health insurance coverage of these procedures. Does health insurance typically cover this now? I seem to remember about five years ago there was push back from the insurance companies over whether or not infertility was a medical condition.

by Stacey

I’m not sure I totally buy this, but according to this article from Science Daily, mothers who eat high-energy foods, that is lots of calories, at the time of conception are more likely to have boys than girls.

New research by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford provides the first evidence that a child’s sex is associated with the mother’s diet. The study shows a clear link between higher energy intake around the time of conception and the birth of sons.

The study focused on 740 first-time pregnant mothers in the UK, who did not know the sex of their fetus, the article says. They were asked to provide records of their eating habits before and during the early stages of pregnancy. They were then split into three groups according to the number of calories consumed per day around the time they conceived: 56% of the women in the group with the highest energy intake at conception had sons, compared with 45% in the lowest group.

As well as consuming more calories, women who had sons were more likely to have eaten a higher quantity and wider range of nutrients, including potassium, calcium and vitamins C, E and B12. There was also a strong correlation between women eating breakfast cereals and producing sons.

So if you want to have a girl, stay away from the Raisin Bran? Doesn’t this seem silly? The article says that over the last 40 years there has been “a small but consistent decline, of about one per 1000 births annually, in the proportion of boys being born in industrialized countries, including the UK, the USA and Canada.” In addition, “previous research has also shown a reduction in the average energy intake in the developed world.” In fact, in the USA, the proportion of adults eating breakfast fell from 86% to 75% between 1965 and 1991, the article says.

Dr Fiona Mathews of the University of Exeter, lead author on the paper, said: “This research may help to explain why in developed countries, where many young women choose to have low calorie diets, the proportion of boys born is falling. Our findings are particularly interesting given the recent debates within the Human Fertilization and Embryology Committee about whether to regulate ‘gender’ clinics that allow parents to select offspring sex, by manipulating sperm, for non-medical reasons. Here we have evidence of a ‘natural’ mechanism that means that women appear to be already controlling the sex of their offspring by their diet.”

I’m still not convinced. And not because I have two boys and one could surmise that I ate five bowls of cereal every morning while I was trying to get pregnant. Which I did not, by the way. Three at the most.

Scientists already know that in many animals, more sons are produced when a mother has plentiful resources or is high ranking. The phenomenon has been most extensively studied in invertebrates, but is also seen in horses, cows and some species of deer. The explanation is thought to lie with the evolutionary drive to produce descendants.

Dr Fiona Mathews said: “Potentially, males of most species can father more offspring than females, but this can be strongly influenced by the size or social status of the male, with poor quality males failing to breed at all. Females, on the other hand, reproduce more consistently. If a mother has plentiful resources then it can make sense to invest in producing a son because he is likely to produce more grandchildren than would a daughter. However, in leaner times having a daughter is a safer bet.”

Although sex is genetically determined by fathers, mothers therefore appear able to favour the development of one sex of infant rather than another. The mechanism is not yet understood in mammals, but it is known from IVF research that high levels of glucose encourage the growth and development of male embryos while inhibiting female embryos. In humans, skipping breakfast depresses glucose levels and so may be interpreted by the body as indicating poor environmental conditions and low food availability.

Okay, that’s actually a little interesting.

What do you think? If you were aiming for a boy or a girl, would you alter diet based on this information?

by Stacey

A few weeks ago I wrote about talking to my four-year old son Sage about sex. According to this recent article in the Washington Post, parents should plan on having “the talk” early and often.

Today, experts urge parents to welcome questions on sexuality by the time their kids can ask why the sky is blue. Recent research has shown that regular discussions of sexuality may improve parent-child relationships and even delay the onset of sexual activity by children. For some parents, that latter effect is taking on new importance in light of a recent study showing that at least one in four teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease.

“You could do a real disservice with this assumption that you wait until the child asks,” says Baltimore-based sex educator Deborah Roffman, the author of Sex and Sensibility: The Thinking Parent’s Guide to Talking Sense About Sex. “The truth is that we’ve left our children in a vacuum around these topics, and popular culture has just waltzed into this vacuum.”

How do you give your kids the tools they need to safeguard their physical and emotional health? And how much should you tell kids to reassure them about their own sexuality but not encourage risk-taking?

Steve Martino is a behavioral scientist with the Rand Corp. in Pittsburgh, he was the lead author of a study in the February issue of Pediatrics showing that the more frequently parents talked to their adolescents about sex, the closer the teens felt to their parents and the less likely they were to engage in risky behavior, the article says.

Researchers who surveyed 312 teens and their parents in Southern California four times over a year found that parents who took a one-shot “checklist” approach to talking about sex had less influence than those who introduced new topics gradually, returning to them over time. “Parents might think that they can talk about a particular topic once and be done with that topic,” Martino said, “but as your child ages and develops and has new experiences, the topics take on new meaning.”

Often, by the time children are teens, they want to talk to parents not so much about how sex works but about how to negotiate relationships, how to listen, how to say no. That’s what came out of a recent teen focus group at Children’s Hospital about the spread of AIDS, says Maureen Lyon, a clinical psychologist at Children’s National Medical Center.

Don’t worry. Talking won’t put ideas into children’s heads, says Michelle S. Barratt, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Adolescence. “There’s this myth that if you talk about something it will be on your child’s mind when it wasn’t before. Most young children could care less,” she said.

Parents can use talk about sex to instill their values, ethics and family beliefs, she said, as well as help children understand their own bodies. In talking about sex, experts say it’s important that parents cover a range of topics, including emotions and acts of physical intimacy, such as oral sex and anal intercourse.

By ignoring the emotional aspects of sexual behavior, parents put their children at risk, says sex educator Roffman, though many parents think they’ve done their duty once they’ve explained the mechanics of intercourse. “That sets [kids] on the road of thinking about sex in purely mechanical and depersonalized ways,” she said.

Choosing not to talk about sex with children also backfires, she said. By third grade, many children from families where such talk isn’t encouraged have concluded that their parents aren’t the ones to ask about sex, so they ask on the playground.

I haven’t broached the subject with Sage since that first time when he claimed it was “quite a story” I had told him about how babies are made. I know there’s a lot left to cover, but for now I’m glad he knows the basics. This article is a good reminder that the basics are only the beginning.

Cross-posted at MotherTalkers

by Stacey

About a week ago I went to hear a lecture on talking to kids about sex by Amy Lang, a parent educator in Seattle. I really was just tagging along with a friend and hadn’t given much thought to the topic since my kids are only four and one-year old.

Well, I got an earful. Here’s some of what she said:

We’re told we should wait until they ask us. That’s not true. It’s not their job to know when they’re ready. We need to be the ones to initiate the conversation. It’s really important to have early, regular, consistent conversations with your kids about sex throughout childhood and adolescence.

How early? Earlier than you might think.

By age five they should know. Up to age five, they’re a blank slate. They come to the conversation with curiosity. It’s really easy to talk to them about it. It’s science, it’s biology.

After that, she says they go to school and hear about it from other kids who may or may not have their facts straight.

You tell them that sex is for older people. Sex is for when you are in love. You get to give them facts and information and a big dose of your family values. Hopefully you’re in their head by the time they start dealing with this.

I sat there thinking about my older son Sage who still talks to his imaginary friends and wonders aloud if he can go surfing soon without realizing he needs to learn how to swim first. And then I thought about how she said this is a matter of health and safety. She said kids who know about their private body parts and understand that sex is something that grown-ups do, may be able to protect themselves better if they are ever faced with a creepy adult. That was reason enough for me.

So I took her advice and bought a book to get the conversation going. The book I got is called “What’s the Big Secret? Talking About Sex with Girls and Boys.” I decided to read it to him this weekend.

The first time we sat down with the book was Saturday afternoon. It starts out talking about the differences between boys and girls.

Actually, the only sure way to tell boys and girls apart is by their bodies. If you’re a boy, you have a penis, scrotum, and testicles.

If you’re a girl, you have a vulva, clitoris, and vagina.

These male and female body parts that show on the outside are called your genitals. Boys genitals are easier to see than girls’, but both are equally important.

Hurray! He was riveted.

Then we moved on to issues of privacy and touching and I noticed that his breathing was getting steady and his body wasn’t wiggling as much. By the time we got to intercourse, he had fallen asleep.

Later that night he wanted me to read the book to him again. He managed to stay awake this time and mostly seemed interested in the explanation of genitals, but he was starting to catch on that there was more to this conversation. It seemed as though it had never occurred to him before to wonder where babies come from. He was intrigued.

The next morning he asked me to read the book to him again and we spent more time on the part about how babies are made. Later on when we were in the kitchen getting breakfast ready, he asked me, “But how does it make the baby?” I knew what he meant. He didn’t understand how all of it translated into an actual person. And honestly, neither do I.

I agreed with him that it’s mysterious and then tried to explain it once more. I talked about how the daddy and mommy love each other and some of the mechanics involved, including the part about the sperm swimming fast to meet the egg. When I was done he said, “That was quite a story mom.” Indeed.

Well, at least I got the conversation started. What do you think? Is four too young to have this conversation? Or is this the right to time get the facts in before he’s too embarrassed to talk to me about it?

Cross-posted at MotherTalkers

by Stacey

Here’s some crazy crap for you: According to a new documentary film making its way through politically conservative circles, there’s an ominous decline in childbirth rates around the world such that if we all don’t start procreating fast, armageddon is surely afoot. The movie is called “Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family.” This is from the promo web site:

Almost all of the developed countries of the world are now experiencing fertility rates far below replacement levels. Birthrates have fallen so low that even immigration cannot replace declining populations, and this migration is sapping strength from developing countries, the fertility rates for many of which are now falling at a faster pace than did those of the developed countries.

According to the film makers, this decline in human reproduction will lead to failed economies and social mayhem.

Huh? Whatever, I’m not in least bit concerned about this. But I write about it here because of a discussion it raised on this post on Reason Magazine which I got to from this post on The American Prospect. Whew. Thanks AADC for the tip.

The Reason writer wonders if the reason people aren’t having more kids is because parenting ain’t all that much fun.

Demographic Winter asserts that “every aspect of modernity works against family life and in favor of singleness and small families or voluntary childlessness.” And surely they are right. Modern societies offer people many other satisfactions and choices outside of the family. In particular women find that their time becomes more highly valued in occupations outside the home.

In light of this children have become “consumption items to be enjoyed for their own sakes, more akin to sculptures, paintings, or theatre,” he says. “But that’s just the problem—according to happiness researchers, people don’t really enjoy rearing children.”

“Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people’s overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact,” reports Harvard psychologist and happiness researcher Daniel Gilbert. In addition, the more children a person has the less happy they are. According to Gilbert, researchers have found that people derive more satisfaction from eating, exercising, shopping, napping, or watching television than taking care of their kids. “Indeed, looking after the kids appears to be only slightly more pleasant than doing housework,” asserts Gilbert in his bestselling, Stumbling on Happiness (2006).

I think we’re comparing apples and oranges here. Shopping? Napping? Watching television? These are not activities that compare with raising children. Raising kids is work. Those other things are leisure.

And anyway, not everyone agrees that raising kids breeds misery. The author notes that in a 2007 Pew Research Center survey people insisted that their relationships with their kids are of the greatest importance to their personal happiness and fulfillment.

Am I happy every minute of the day? Nope. But at the end of the day, when the kids are asleep and I’ve gotten a chance to watch some TV and veg out, I always turn to my husband and start telling him about all the funny, amazing, ridiculous things our children did that day. And in those moments, I’m pretty damn happy.

What do you think? Are you happy being a parent?

by Stacey

A new rule will soon go into effect in schools across one of DC’s prominent Maryland suburbs that will require school officials to notify parents if they learn that a female student is pregnant. According to this article in last Sunday’s Washington Post, it’s a move health experts say violates a young woman’s right to privacy and jeopardizes health care.

Under Howard [County]’s regulations, approved last month by the Board of Education, any school employee who learns that a student is or might be pregnant is to notify the school counselor or nurse. If the pregnancy is confirmed and the parents don’t know, the counselor or nurse helps the student tell them. Although the rules do not specify a time frame, Frank Aquino, chairman of the Board of Education, said it probably would occur “in a matter of a few days.”

That doesn’t seem like very much time to me. If a pregnant teen has chosen not to turn to her parents for help, perhaps there is a reason. Health officials say the new policy could isolate these young women even more. “There’s no question this will have a chilling effect on kids coming forward,” said County Health Officer Peter Beilenson.

The policy “really pushes the issue of informing the parents, when state law says minors have the right to make decisions independent of the parents,” said Deborah Chilcoat, an education and training specialist for Planned Parenthood of Maryland and co-chair of a county coalition on adolescent sexuality and reproductive health.

According to the article, Maryland’s minor consent law, which applies to those younger than 18, says teenagers do not have to inform parents to receive health services, including pregnancy testing, contraceptives and treatment for sexually transmitted infections.

State law does require that a parent or guardian to be notified before a minor has an abortion. However, it also allows circumstances in which parents need not be informed. They include when the physician has determined that the minor is capable of giving informed consent or when the minor is threatened with abuse, the article says.

Andrew Gavelek, the eight-member board’s student representative and a senior at Reservoir High, cast the lone no vote. He talked to 40 female students and said they unanimously opposed the policy. “If they were going to tell their parents, they would want to do it themselves,” he said.

Does anyone care what these young women think about this? Apparently not. But they should.

Tina L. Cheng, chief of general pediatrics and adolescent medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said research has shown that significant numbers of sexually active adolescents said they would stop using health-care services if confronted with mandatory parental notification. “It may not be in the best interests in some circumstances for the parents to know up front,” Cheng said.

Recently I participated in a very interesting discussion about a similar topic over on MotherTalkers. The post was written by a mother whose middle school age daughter had phoned her from school in tears because she just learned that one of her 13-year old friends was pregnant. At the time, the girl’s parents didn’t know about the pregnancy. We discussed what was the writer’s responsibility vis-a-vis the girl? That is, if she’s the only adult who knows about this, what should she do? One answer was to tell the school counselor.

But if the girl went to a school in Howard County Maryland, which she doesn’t, that wouldn’t be an option if the girl clearly did not want her parents to know about her condition.

What do you think? Would you feel comfortable knowing your child attended a school that had strict parental notification rules? Or would you rather rely on the strength of your relationship with your child to ensure you’re the one they turn to in their time of need?

by Stacey

Here we go. According to this article in the NY Times, a study published today in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology says that too much caffeine during pregnancy may increase the risk of miscarriage, prompting the study authors to suggest that pregnant women consider reducing or eliminating their caffeine intake altogether.

The new study finds that pregnant women who consume 200 milligrams or more of caffeine a day — the amount in 10 ounces of coffee or 25 ounces of tea — may double their risk of miscarriage.

The lead author of the study, Dr. De-Kun Li, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, California, says pregnant women should try to give up caffeine for at least the first three or four months. “If, for whatever reason, they really can’t do it, think of cutting to one cup or switching to decaf,” Dr. Li said. “Stopping caffeine really doesn’t have any downside.”

Except if you’re me and giving up caffeine is tantamount to giving up half my brain and almost all of my cheery disposition.

Before pregnant women everywhere start abandoning their beloved morning pick-me-up, the article says that professional groups like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine have not taken official positions on caffeine.

Dr. Li’s study included 1,063 pregnant women who were interviewed once about their caffeine intake. At the time of the interview, their median length of pregnancy was 71 days. But 102 had already miscarried — not surprising, because most miscarriages occur very early in pregnancy. Later, 70 more women miscarried, for a miscarriage rate of 16 percent for the group — a typical rate.

Of 264 women who said they had used no caffeine, 12.5 percent had miscarriages. But the miscarriage rate was 24.5 percent in the 164 women who consumed 200 milligrams or more per day. The increased risk was associated with caffeine itself and not with other known risk factors like the mother’s age or smoking habits, the researchers said.

However, not all experts are convinced. Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and epidemiology, at Columbia University Medical Center, had reservations about the study, noting that miscarriage is difficult to study or explain, the article says. Dr. Westhoff said most miscarriages resulted from chromosomal abnormalities, and there was no evidence that caffeine could cause those problems.

“Just interviewing women, over half of whom had already had their miscarriage, does not strike me as the best way to get at the real scientific question here,” she said. “But it is an excellent way to scare women.” She said that smoking, chlamidial infections and increasing maternal age were stronger risk factors for miscarriage, and ones that women could do something about.

“Moderation in all things is still an excellent rule,” Dr. Westhoff said. “I think we tend to go overboard on saying expose your body to zero anything when pregnant. The human race wouldn’t have succeeded if the early pregnancy was so vulnerable to a little bit of anything. We’re more robust than that.”

I’m in her camp. What do you think? Are you a zero-tolerance kind of person or do you think a little bit can’t hurt?

by Stacey

A new twist has emerged in the outsourcing of labor from the United States and other developed countries. According this AP story, more and more women in India are earning money by carrying babies for couples around the world who are experiencing fertility problems. At one clinic in the city of Anand, surrogate mothers live together over the course of their pregnancy, receive prenatal care as well as assistance with childbirth, and are given counseling after the baby is handed over. (Thanks to my friend Helen for the tip.)

More than 50 women in this city are now pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Taiwan, Britain and beyond. The women earn more than many would make in 15 years. But the program raises a host of uncomfortable questions that touch on morals and modern science, exploitation and globalization, and that most natural of desires: to have a family.

The surrogate mothers are considered pioneers in the “growing field of outsourced pregnancies,” the article says. They have already given birth to roughly 40 babies.

Experts say commercial surrogacy — or what has been called “wombs for rent” — is growing in India. While no reliable numbers track such pregnancies nationwide, doctors work with surrogates in virtually every major city. The women are impregnated in-vitro with the egg and sperm of couples unable to conceive on their own.

The practice of commercial surrogacy has been legal in India since 2002, the article says. It is also legal in other countries including the United States. But India is the leader in making it a viable industry.

Critics argue that the practice exploits poor women by hiring them at cut-rate cost to undergo the hardship, pain, and risks of labor. But according to the article, young women are flocking to the clinic to sign up.

Suman Dodia, 26, said she will buy a house with the $4,500 she receives from the British couple whose child she’s carrying. It would have taken her 15 years to earn that on her $25 monthly salary as a maid.

The surrogate mothers and the parents sign a contract that promises the couple will cover all medical expenses in addition to the woman’s payment, and the surrogate mother will hand over the baby after birth, the article says. Most couples end up paying the clinic less than $10,000 for the entire procedure, including fertilization, the fee to the mother and medical expenses.

This is a tough one. I don’t have a problem with surrogate mothering, although I could see how it could be emotionally difficult for the woman carrying the baby. Dr. Nayna Patel, who runs the clinic, says she counsels the women to think of the pregnancy as “someone’s child [who] comes to stay at your place for nine months.” I suppose that’s a mindset that could get you through it.

For me, the ethical dilemma comes down to cost. There is a significant difference in price if you hire a surrogate mother here in the U.S. versus one in India. The article talks about a couple who had a baby through the Indian clinic. They would have spent $80,000 on a U.S. surrogate mother. Instead they spent $20,000 (more than the usual cost because it took a few tries before the woman conceived).

It really is an outsourcing of labor. What do you think? Does this give you the creeps or do you think it’s a fair trade?

by Stacey

If you haven’t heard already, a new book by researchers at Harvard University called “The Fertility Diet” claims to offer a way to improve fertility through eating. The book made the cover of Newsweek last week and is likely to be a buzz topic at holiday cocktail parties where people love to talk about their fertility problems. Thanks to MotherTalkers for the tip.

In general terms, the diet suggests eating heart-healthy foods with more fruit and vegetables, less meat and carbs, and more healthy fats and few or no trans fats. It also suggests that eating ice cream and cutting back on meat may help increase the chances of getting pregnant.

But according to this NY Times “Well” blog post, the evidence may be over-hyped.

The notion that something as simple as better eating might improve fertility is certain to raise the hopes of tens of thousands of couples. But unfortunately, the findings in this book don’t apply to a vast majority of people with infertility problems. Instead, they are based on women with ovulatory infertility, a condition caused by irregular ovulation that affects fewer than a third of infertile women.

And while it’s never a bad idea to improve your nutrition, there is no definitive evidence that many of the diet changes outlined in the book will increase a woman’s odds of getting pregnant.

The findings come from the Nurses’ Health Study in which more than 18,000 women were trying to get pregnant over an eight-year period. But only 400 of the women were diagnosed with infertility related to irregular ovulation, so actually the sample size is relatively small.

Two recommendations for women with irregular ovulation are backed by solid science, says the NY Times piece.

For a woman with irregular ovulation, attaining a healthy weight and taking a multivitamin with folic acid can improve her odds of getting pregnant. Being overweight or underweight has been shown to suppress ovulation, because both conditions throw off a woman’s natural hormone levels.

This is helpful. Also, the recommendations to eat heart-healthy food come from the role of insulin in a woman’s fertility. Insulin levels can affect sex-hormone-binding globulin, which can affect the amount of free androgen in a woman’s body. Too much can suppress ovulation, the piece says.

The weakest recommendation in “The Fertility Diet” is the notion that ice cream and whole-fat dairy products will increase fertility. Even the study authors note in the book that it would be an “overstatement” to say there are even “a handful” of studies on the subject.

And yet, you know everyone’s going to be saying women who want to get pregnant should eat ice cream.

Dr. Jorge E. Chavarro, the lead author, said it had been a challenge to balance the limitations of scientific research with the commercial demands of book publishing, the article says. “This is not a cure for infertility,” he says. “We have been very careful in explaining what we think these dietary changes can do and what they cannot do.” Now that it’s in the hands of book publishers, I doubt they’ll be so careful. Cha-ching!

by Stacey

The Bush Administration has appointed an anti-birth control advocate to head family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services. According to this article in the Washington Post, Susan Orr, who once worked at the conservative Family Research Council, was named acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs earlier this week. She has been critical of contraception in the past.

She will oversee $283 million in annual grants to provide low-income families and others with contraceptive services, counseling and preventive screenings.

Peachy.

“In a 2001 article in The Washington Post, Orr applauded a Bush proposal to stop requiring all health insurance plans for federal employees to cover a broad range of birth control,” the article says. “‘We’re quite pleased, because fertility is not a disease,’ said Orr, then an official with the Family Research Council.”

That’s some twisted thinking there. You have to go to a doctor to get many forms of birth control. These products are made by the pharmaceutical industry. Last time I checked, this is the stuff that health insurance covers. And besides, insurance paid for a mighty chunk of the medical bills I incurred giving birth to my babies. No, it wasn’t a disease, but it did take place in the hospital.

Having a political ideologue heading the office of family planning is nothing new for this administration, the article says. “Critics panned the appointment last year of Eric Keroack, a physician who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that opposed the use of birth control. He resigned in March.”

Sigh.

Oh well, less than 500 days of this craziness to go.