For the report, the health department compared a 2005 survey of teens in grades 9 through 12 conducted by health and education officials in New York City with a similar CDC survey. According to the report, 8% of sexually active teens reported that they or their partners used birth control pills, compared with 18% nationwide. About one in five sexually active girls in New York City said they did not use any form of birth control the most recent time they had sex, compared with one in seven nationwide.

Girls in New York City’s low-income, predominately Hispanic South Bronx neighborhood were almost twice as likely to have unprotected sex as girls nationwide. Black girls in the city were about as likely to use birth control as girls nationwide (AP/Long Island Newsday, 8/29).

Discount Pharmacy - Buy Pharmacy at discount prices including free shipping.Discount Pharmacy provides confortable and easy way to order discount pharmacy online.

The report also found that 69% of teens in the city use condoms, compared with 63% nationwide. About 19% of New York City teens said they did not used condoms or any form of birth control. About 16% of sexually active teens in the city said they or their partners had become pregnant, and the pregnancy rate was higher among teens who had sex before they were age 13, the New York Post reports (Haberman, New York Post, 8/30).

The report recommended that health care workers obtain sexual histories of teen patients and offer teens reproductive and sexual health services. It also recommended that parents encourage teens to delay sexual activity and highlight the importance of using birth control and condoms if they are sexually active (New York City health department release, 8/29).

The Sun-Times, worrying that the cost of birth control available to students in colleges is going to rise, imagines a law reducing Federal spending is somehow forcing students to have unprotected sex. “Birth-control costs soaring at colleges — Pregnancies could rise now that law limits drugmaker incentives”, they proclaim. This calamity is all being blamed on the “Deficit Reduction Act signed by President Bush last year” according to the Sun-Times.

Women and Minorities Hardest Hit

The Sun-Times focuses on a poor, poor student of a “low-income home” because she has somehow, or the other, gotten herself pregnant. Amazingly, after going off birth control, Elizabeth Harris, a pre-med student at the University of Chicago (UIC), “found she was pregnant,” the Sun-times laments.

Imagine, a pre-med student not realizing she could become pregnant as a result of unprotected sex? Shocking, eh?

Naturally, the Sun-Times wants to make it seem that “low-income” students are hit hardest so they subtly imply that with a paragraph header that says “Low-income students hit hard.” They claim that our Miss. Harris is in a bind because she just cannot afford birth control. She is so poor that the $35 a month for her prescription was just too much for her. Why, she even had to cancel her trip to Costa Rica last Spring because of this whole pregnancy thingie.

Last spring, 20-year-old pre-med student Elizabeth Harris had only Costa Rica on her mind. She was hoping to wine and dine there while taking a few biology courses.

Pharmacy - Buy Pharmacy at discount prices including free shipping.Discount Pharmacy provides confortable and easy way to order discount pharmacy online.

But the Waukegan native and University of Illinois at Chicago junior had to skip her trip.

Having gone off birth control, Harris found she was pregnant. She said she quit when the cost of her prescription at the UIC clinic more than doubled.

Imagine being so poor that your trip to Costa Rica has to be cancelled?

I wish I was that poor.

So, why is the cost of birth control at colleges going up. It’s that mean ‘ol Bush, of course!

The price increase in hormonal birth control can be traced to the Deficit Reduction Act signed by President Bush last year, aimed at reducing federal spending by $39 billion. The legislation made it more costly for drug makers to offer low-cost birth control to college clinics. Then the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued regulations that dropped college clinics from a list of agencies to which drug companies could sell discounted drugs.

So, there you have it. Bush is causing well meaning, yet curiously stupid pre-med students to get pregnant because he is allowing less Federal money to unconstitutionally go to fund birth control drugs in our colleges and universities than was previously unconstitutionally going to fund birth control drugs in our colleges and universities.

It’s a dastardly plot, I tell you.

The Sun-Times is, of course, absolutely sure that our university students are just too darn stupid to stay out of such trouble. Heck, we can’t expect students to think of their future, finish school, get their degree and begin their lives in a planned and sensible way, can we? We MUST have that nanny state government out there to hold their hands… or hold their contraception… for them.

The abortion debate is also often clouded when people discuss decreasing the “need” for abortions. The term “need” prejudges the case of those who believe abortion should be outlawed. We can hardly criminalize things that are “needed.” Many years ago, a leader of a prominent group that supported legal abortion helped set up a conference at which leaders of groups advocating criminalization were asked to come together with their opponents to discuss ways to stem unplanned pregnancies. The agreement was that abortion itself would not be mentioned at the gathering. However, in the letter requesting the appearance of various activists, the original writer talked about “decreasing the need for abortion.” Nellie Gray, President of March for Life, shot back, “There is not and never has been a ‘need’ for killing innocent pre-born babies.”

There is most certainly and indisputably a demand for abortion. There was one before it was legal and probably will be one if it is again criminalized. However, to talk about a demand says nothing about whether or not something is legal as there is a demand for all sorts of drugs, a demand for stolen goods, and a demand for the services of hired killers.

Clarity is important, especially when an issue is emotionally charged. Replacing the term “birth control” with “contraception” and discussing a “demand” rather than a “need” for abortion are important steps to clarity on this issue.

The pill is a concentrated dose of the same drugs found in typical birth control pills. Some morning-after pills contain only one hormone, progestin (Plan B) and others contain two, progestin and estrogen. Progestin prevents the sperm from reaching the egg and prevents the fertilised egg from implanting itself to wall of the uterus (implantation). Estrogen stops the ovaries from releasing eggs (ovulation) to be fertilised by sperm.

Timing

To be effective, the pill has to be taken within 72 hours of having unprotected vaginal intercourse, since human conception rarely occurs immediately after intercourse. A second dose should be taken 12 hours later. If your partner’s condom broke around 4.00 a.m. on Saturday, the pill must be taken within 72 hours from the time the condom broke. The earlier the pill is taken, the more effective it is in preventing pregnancy.

Statistically, it has been shown that a woman can lower her risk of pregnancy by 75 to 80 per cent after a single act of unprotected sex. However, if the woman is already pregnant, the morning-after pill has no guarantee in terminating the pregnancy and it could put mother and baby at risk.

The morning-after pill is easy to purchase without prescription and may be purchased by females 18 years and older and who must furnish proof of age. The Food and Dug Administration (FDA) in the United States took the decision to reduce the restriction on the sale of the pill with a view to reducing by half the nation’s annual unplanned pregnancies. In Jamaica, the pill was removed from the prescribed drug list in May andis sold over the counter. However, opponents believe that easy access to the pill would increase promiscuity among young people.

Young girls

Drugs Online - Buy Drugs Online at reasanoble prices.DrugOnline.cc provides confortable and easy way to order drugs online including drugs free shipping.

According to The Jamica-Gleaner.com, there is the concern among local pharmacists that the morning-after pill, Postinor 2, is being abused. There is in increase in use, especially among schoolchildren who purchase it as they would purchase ’sweets’. The recommended usage of the morning-after pill is no more than two times per month but some young people are taking the pill up to five times per month. This frequency will lead to side effects like internal bleeding. It is feared that older men who have sexual intercourse with minor girls could force them to use the pills to prevent them for getting pregnant.

Another concern of local pharmacists is that there may be a casual linkage between the increased use of Postinor 2 and the declining sales of condoms, especially against the background of increases in HIV/AIDS cases in the region. The morning-after pill is designed to prevent pregnancy while condoms prevent pregnancy in addition to offering protection against sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.

Chemical abortion

The emergency contraceptive works in one of three ways - it may inhibit ovulation (no egg is released); it ma the normal menstrual cycle delaying ovulation, or it may irritate the lining of the uterus so that if the first and second actions fail and the woman becomes pregnant, the human being created will die before he or she can actually attach to the lining of the uterus. The woman’s body rejects the living embryo and the child dies. This third action is referred to as chemical abortion.

How safe is the morning-after pill? Taking the morning-after pill is an unpleasant experience. High doses of birth control medication should not be taken without consulting your doctor. Some of the side effects include nausea, described by some as being similar to having bad stomach flu. It is advised that an anti-nausea drug be taken before taking the pills.

Other side effects are vomiting, diarrhoea, headache, tenderness of the breasts, changes in menstrual cycle, ectopic pregnancy, blood clot formation and infertility. Women who become pregnant after taking the morning-after pill is at risk of harming the foetus, and doctors usually recommend a therapeutic abortion.

Storing morning-after pills is not recommended as the product is manufactured for emergency contraception, to be used within 72 hours after engaging in unprotected vaginal sex or birth control device failure for maximum effectiveness.

The IUD is the most common form of reversible birth control used by women. While IUDs offer a high level of long-term contraceptive efficacy, they have been associated with health risks, including pelvic inflammatory disease and upper genital tract infections.

As part of the study, Catherine A. Matthews and colleagues conducted a medical chart review of approximately 200 women who had IUDs inserted between 2000 and 2005 and compared the efficacy and complication rates of the Paragard IUD and Mirena intrauterine system (IUS).

Both are T-shaped devices are placed in the uterus to prevent pregnancy, however, the Mirena IUS releases a hormone.

A third of women who received an IUD had a history of STD prior to insertion. Additionally, 32 percent of women had a history of other gynaecological infections such as bacterial vaginosis, and almost half were unmarried.

Discount Pharmacy - Buy Pharmacy at discount prices including free shipping.Discount Pharmacy provides confortable and easy way to order discount pharmacy online.

The study found that IUDs were acceptable and not associated with a significant increase in occurrence of gynaecologic infections in women who were at high risk for both sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy.

“From our study, we now know that IUDs are safe to use in all women who don’t have an acute infection of the cervix. Therefore, young, unmarried, sexually active women can now be considered good candidates for this contraceptive option, which doesn’t require taking a pill, patch, or injection,” Matthews said.

“We once thought that IUDs could only be used in married, monogamous women because of a perceived increase in the risk of pelvic infections,” she added.

The findings of the study were published in the August issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

China’s 28-year-old family planning policy limits most urban couples to just one child and allows some families in the countryside to have a second child if their first is a girl.

Critics say that has led to forced abortions and sterilizations and a dangerously imbalanced sex ratio due to the traditional preference for male heirs, which has prompted countless families to abort female fetuses in hopes of getting boys.

The policy continues to engender anger and resentment, especially among farmers in the countryside, because of the sometimes brutal methods used to enforce it, such as heavy fines and the seizure of property. Local authorities themselves face demotions, criticism or the loss of jobs if they fail to hit population targets.

The National Population and Family Planning Commission said it was striking insensitive slogans promoting the policy in order to dispel the impression the government was “simply forcing people to give up having more babies, causing misunderstanding (of) the policy and even tarnishing the image of the government,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Xinhua said uncouth slogans also threatened to undermine China’s efforts to keep the population under control. It paraphrased the family planning commission as saying such “low-quality slogans” could lead to “public complaint and resentment.”

Discount Pharmacy - Buy Pharmacy at discount prices including free shipping.Discount Pharmacy provides confortable and easy way to order discount pharmacy online.

Among the slogans that were forbidden were “One more baby means one more tomb” and “Houses toppled, cows confiscated, if abortion demand rejected.” Such slogans are often found painted on roadside buildings in rural areas.

The planning commission issued a list of 190 acceptable slogans, such as “Mother earth is too tired to sustain more children” and “Both boys and girls are parents’ hearts.”

The government contends the one-child policy has helped prevent at least 300 million births - about the size of the U.S. population - and aided China’s rapid economic development.

But it has also been the cause of recent protests.

In May, thousands of farmers in southern Guangxi province rioted to protest fines they said were imposed “arbitrarily and brutally” against people who had more children than allowed under the policy, state media reported. Authorities detained 28 people after the incident.

Media reports said all public servants in the province’s Bobai county had been ordered to collect fines from people who violated the policy. If violators failed to pay within three days, their homes would be demolished and their belongings seized.

For years, drug companies sold birth-control pills and other contraceptives to university health services at a big discount. This has served as an entree to young consumers for the drug companies, and a profit center for the schools, which sell them to students at a moderate markup. Students pay perhaps $15 a month for contraceptives that otherwise can retail for $50 or more.

But colleges and universities say the drug companies have stopped offering the discounts, and are now charging the schools much more. The change has an unlikely origin: the Deficit Reduction Act signed by President Bush last year. The legislation aimed to pare $39 billion in spending on federal programs, from subsidized student loans to Medicaid. And among the changes was one that, through an arcane set of circumstances, created a disincentive for drug makers to offer school discounts.

The contraceptive prices offered to schools are now included in a complex calculation that determines certain Medicaid-related rebates that drug makers must pay to states. In this calculation, deep discount prices would have the effect of increasing drug makers’ payments.

Colleges and universities say the change is having a significant impact on their health centers and the students they serve. Prices have begun skyrocketing for many popular brands of birth control. Health centers are having to reconfigure their offerings and write new prescriptions. And college students are making some tough choices, such as switching to cheaper generic brands or forgoing their privacy in order to claim their pills on their parents’ insurance.

The changes actually took effect earlier this year, but when it became clear to college health providers that the economics were going to change, many of them stocked up on several months’ worth of supply. Only lately has that cheaper supply begun petering out. Some students started seeing the steeper prices last spring and some are dealing with it now during summer sessions, while others won’t see it until they return for the fall semester.
PRICIER PILLS

The loss of birth-control discounts is having an impact:
• Students are switching to cheaper generic brands, which may come with a new set of side effects; turning to parents for insurance coverage; using other forms of birth control, such as condoms.
• Schools face a loss of income from reselling contraceptives; some are subsidizing prescriptions and adjusting their offerings.

In recent months, at Michigan State University, East Lansing, the price of Ortho Evra, a birth-control skin patch by Johnson & Johnson, more than doubled to $50 for a month’s prescription from $20 last year. At the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo, a low-estrogen pill also by J&J, rose to $52 recently — from $16 last year. The University of Texas at Austin now charges more than $50 for Organon Inc.’s popular NuvaRing, a monthly vaginal device, from $12.

To save money, at the University of Iowa, about three-fourths of students on Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo — a pill that has no generic form — have switched to a less-expensive option.

Such changes concern health professionals, who fear that switching is going to lead to unintended pregnancies by women who are less likely to consistently take a daily pill. “One of the seminal concepts in contraceptive medicine is when a woman is using a method correctly and successfully, the last thing you want to do is change her from that,” says Lee Shulman, board chairman of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals. “You don’t want to change her unless there is an absolute medical necessity to do so.”

He says even switching from one type of daily pill to another can pose new risks for side effects and discomfort, potentially leading women to stop taking it.

Susan Maly, a 22-year-old student at the University of Iowa, says she struggled with switching pills recently. When she went to her college health center to get a refill on her Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo prescription a few months ago, she was distressed to find out that it had gone up to $54 from about $18. Starting this month, she has switched to a cheaper generic pill that has higher levels of estrogen than the Lo brand.

Discount Pharmacy - Buy Pharmacy at discount prices including free shipping.Discount Pharmacy provides confortable and easy way to order discount pharmacy online.

“That was an issue for me,” says Ms. Maly, but she says she will see how things work out for a couple of months. Initially, she says she felt some heartburn side effects from the new pill, but that has since gone away. She finds the dramatic price increase “unfair” to women who have come to rely on birth control, and feel comfortable with the brand they are on.

“This is the one thing that many females on campus are getting from student health,” says Ms. Maly. “It felt like we were a target.”

At drug maker Organon, Nick Hart, executive director for contraception, says, “On the one hand, it’s a tremendous disservice to our customers, our young women.” But he says that providing low-cost access to young consumers has to be balanced with “our fiduciary responsibility. It puts us in an untenable position.”

A Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman said, “As a result of this new legislation,” only institutions that qualify as “safety net” providers under the law will get the company’s discounted prices. Safety-net providers include certain facilities that serve low-income families. She added, “We are one of the lowest-cost providers of contraceptives to public health services.”

Health professionals say it’s particularly critical for college women to have access to cheap contraception. Two-thirds of college students reported having at least one sexual partner in the prior 12 months, according to a fall 2006 survey of more than 23,000 students by the American College Health Association. Condoms have been available free on many campuses, and are considered the best form of contraception for preventing sexually transmitted infections.

“Maybe, if more people switch from hormonal methods to condoms, we may see a positive outcome of fewer STI’s,” says Mary Hoban, a project director for the American College Health Association. “But from a contraceptive standpoint, we may see more unintended pregnancy. It’s a double-edged sword.”

About 40% of sexually active college women reported relying on pills and other prescription forms of birth control, according to the ACHA data.

“College women are at the highest risk for unintended pregnancy because they’re sexually active, they’re very fertile, and they are away from home,” says Dr. Shulman, adding that students count on their health service for a host of reasons, from counseling to testing for sexually transmitted diseases, to birth-control prescriptions.

Many young women turn to their college health centers for these services because of the privacy it affords as much as the convenience and pricing. Theresa Spalding, medical director at UT Austin’s University Health Services, says that “now, at the higher price, they are faced with having to decide, ‘Do I involve my parents?’” in order to get insurance coverage.

College health centers also say the change threatens to lessen the quality of service they can provide, since the price increases have eaten into the profits that they make. Pamela Houle, administrative director for the health center at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., says the health center now subsidizes each NuvaRing by about $4. “Previously, we were making $17 a ring.” That may mean fewer educational resources and materials down the line, she says.

At Wittenberg University’s health clinic, students used to get birth control free thanks to oodles of samples provided by drug companies.
Extras
Latest headlines

* Fired intern says Strickland made him a scapegoat
* Mechanicsburg firefighter dies after accident at fire house (sign guestbook)
* Looking for love on a miniature golf course (watch video)
* Clark County Fair: These marriages are golden
* Fair schedule

RSS feedsGet latest headlines via RSS feeds

At Miami University in Oxford, students paid as little as $10 for generics and $12 for the NuvaRing.

But since January, drug companies began notifying college health clinics they would no longer reap the significant discounts they received for years.

The average price for name-brand birth control pills has increased to at least $35 and as high as $50. Most students are now opting for generics costing about $20 a month.

“The question now is what are they going to have to give up if they want to buy birth control?” said Wendy McGonigal, WSU’s director of student health services.

Drug companies in the past provided college health clinics with prescription contraceptives at a nominal price as part of a Medicaid rebate practice that put cheap prescription drugs into the hands of low-income populations.

But Congress, concerned that drug companies were abusing the rebates to provide low-cost drugs to commercial customers as a marketing tool, embedded changes to those reimbursement rules in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.

The law, which went effect in January, has had unintentional consequences on college health clinics, according to the American College Health Association, which represents 900 college health clinics and their 17 million student patients nationwide.

Drugs Online - Buy Drugs Online at reasanoble prices.DrugOnline.cc provides confortable and easy way to order drugs online including drugs free shipping.

The group wrote to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services in February asking it to exempt them from the new pricing regulations.

“It was a big stink,” McGonigal said.

But the agency denied their request last week.

The resulting price hikes could be a problem for students who depended on their college health clinics for birth control services, college health officials said this week.

At Wittenberg, more than half of its daily clinic visits — about nine students — are for “women’s services,” according to registered nurse Eryn Smith.

“That’s mainly what we see here.”

Students prefer name-brand drugs, bringing in magazine advertisements and coupons for heavily marketed brands, she said. But their high costs put clinicians like McGonigal and Smith in the position of writing prescriptions based on what students can afford.

“It’s part of the screening process now. We ask ‘Can you afford $40 a month?’ and they always say no,” Smith said. “We have to give them what they can afford, otherwise they’ll go back to using nothing.”

Students with no health-insurance are the most affected, because they pay out-of-pocket for their healthcare.

Students on their parents’ insurance are also affected, either because insurers typically don’t cover prescription birth control, or because students choose to pay out of their pockets to keep parents in the dark.

“Just about everyone who comes in says ‘I don’t want my mom and dad to know I’m on birth control’ and then want it as cheap as possible,” Smith said. At WSU, McGonigal estimated she writes an average 40 birth control prescriptions a month and thinks about their costs every day.

After New Jersey-based Organon Inc. terminated WSU’s discount contract, the university “dug around and finally found two generics for $17. I pray every day it stays at that price,” McGonigal said. “But they could raise it any time.

Discount Pharmacy - Buy Pharmacy at discount prices including free shipping.Discount Pharmacy provides confortable and easy way to order discount pharmacy online.
Research by James Higham, of Roehampton University, and colleagues has found that the plum is a source of progestogen, and that eating it stops the female olive baboons’ reproductive cycles. It also prevented the red swelling that female baboons produce when they are receptive to males.

Dr Higham, who published the study in Hormones and Behaviour, said that it was difficult to know if the behaviour was deliberate

According to the report, the birth rate among girls ages 15 to 17 declined from 39 births per 1,000 girls in 1991 to 21 births per 1,000 girls in 2005 (Kerr, AP/USA Today, 7/13). In 2005, the birth rate per 1,000 girls in this age group was 12 for non-Hispanic whites, 35 for non-Hispanic blacks, and 48 for Hispanics (Federal Interagency Forum release, 7/13).

Drugs Online - Buy Drugs Online at reasanoble prices.DrugOnline.cc provides confortable and easy way to order drugs online including drugs free shipping.

According to the report, 47% of high school students, or 6.7 million, reported having had sexual intercourse in 2005, compared with 54% in 1991. The rate of high school students reporting having sex has remained unchanged since 2003, according to the AP/USA Today. Sixty-three percent of those who reported having sex during a three-month period in 2005 said they used condoms, compared with 46% in 1991, the report showed (AP/USA Today, 7/13). The report also found that the percentage of girls who said they used birth control remained stable. In addition, births among unmarried women in their 20s increased significantly, and the birth rate for unmarried women increased, the Post reports (Washington Post, 7/13).

Reaction
“The implications for the population are quite positive in terms of their health and their well-being,” Edward Sondik, director of CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, said, adding, “The lower figure on teens having sex means the risk of sexually transmitted diseases is lower.” James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, said, “I think the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the efforts in the ’80s and ’90s had a lot to do with” reducing teen sex and adolescent births and increasing condom use. He added, “We need to encourage young teens to delay sexual initiation, and we need to make sure they get all the information they need about condoms and birth control” (AP/USA Today, 7/13).