Birth Control

With apologies to the esteemed Diane Rehm of National Public Radio, please join us for Susan's Tuesday news roundup, during which a roundtable of her multiple personalities, each representing a different mood, will dissect the headlines. Doping scandals in the Tour de France. Gambling among NBA refs. Dog-fighting in the highest reaches of NFL stardom. And suspected steroid abuse by a home-run record-challenger. And nothing but yawns from the fans over what one sportswriter described as the "shocking nadir" of professional sports.

Robert E. Hunt, a former Roman Catholic priest who became known nationally in the 1960s for his public disagreement with Pope Paul VI's teaching on birth control, died Thursday at his Homeland residence of acute myeloid leukemia. He was 65.A North Baltimore resident since 1984, Mr. Hunt was born and raised in Newark, N.J. After graduating from Seton Hall University in 1954, he studied for the priesthood at the Vatican. He was ordained in 1957 and spent three years in Rome earning a doctoral degree in sacred theology.

On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will announce that the 6 billionth baby has been born in this world. As a pregnant American woman, I'm getting mixed messages about how I should feel about contributing another human being to this planet.Some would have me believe that how many children a woman should have is an issue only for women in developing countries, who are viewed as reproducing in unprecedented numbers. But I don't buy that. Americans, along with the other 1 billion wealthiest people on the planet, help consume 80 percent of the resources.

YOU'VE PROBABLY heard about the racist sterilization program that bribes addled drug addicts -- primarily black women -- to submit to birth control in exchange for a free fix.Well, not quite. Yet one might infer this from a story by the Associated Press that recently appeared in newspapers across the country.The story told of a privately funded California program "making its way across the country" (like the plague?) that "pays $200 to drug-addicted women to get their tubes tied," drawing "the wrath of critics who call it shortsighted, racist and a source of drug money for users."

WHEN WAL-MART announced earlier this month that it would not carry a new pregnancy prevention pill, it unwittingly did women a great service.The retailing giant spotlighted one of the best-kept secrets in reproductive health.For more than a generation, doctors knew what most women did not -- that two birth control pills, taken within three days of sex and then again 12 hours later, could prevent pregnancy.Not terminate pregnancy. Prevent it.Doctors would tell women patients who called in a panic, but they did not often volunteer it as part of routine contraceptive advice.

At 28 and yet to be married, I have always valued my right to choose whether or not to give birth to a baby conceived in my body.This week 25 years ago, the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade gave me that right.Though I was a toddler at the time, the significance of the decision was not lost on me as I grew older. In college, I traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate in an abortion rights march.I plastered "Keep Abortion Safe and Legal" stickers on my little blue Honda's bumper.But the truth is, I value and fight for something I am not sure I could ever do: have an abortion.

While contraceptives might seem readily available almost anywhere today, many health insurance plans actually do not include coverage of birth control, or neglect to give information about the coverage they provide.A new study says managed care organizations frequently offer no such coverage out of a misplaced concern about costs."It's undeniable that for an insurer to pay for pregnancy is many, many, many times more expensive than paying for contraception," said Rachel Gold, a researcher with the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a family planning research and advocacy organization that sponsored the study.

ATLANTA -- Now for a brief conversation about the pill. Yes, that one, the oral contraceptive that was dropped into midcentury American mores with such an impact that it was forever after known simply as the pill.These days we have discovered a new irony on the prescription pad: The only pill your insurance may not pay for is the one we call the pill.This is the crux of the new conversation about women's health and wealth. How did we get to a place where we treat birth control differently from all other health care?

ANGELINA COUNTY, Texas -- During the first half of my life, the way things were:1. If you didn't go to church, you were going to Hell.2. You didn't dare say anything against segregation.3. If you were liberal, they called you a commie.4. Abortion was against the law no ifs, ands or buts.5. Movies, radio and TV were totally controlled by censorship.6. America was a Christian, God-fearing nation.7. A single marijuana cigarette was enough to send you to prison.8. A baby born out of wedlock was a horrible sin for which there was no forgiveness.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Across the mahogany-paneled lobby, up the elevator to the 15th floor, the door opens into the world of Carl Djerassi, the renowned inventor of the birth control pill, who is now trying to make his mark as a novelist.As the owner of both the sumptuous apartments on the floor, Djerassi has taken command of the entryway and created a stunner: Walls and ceiling are cobalt blue, studded with symbols that pay tribute to his life and loves. Painted like a constellation is the chemical structure of the oral contraceptive.

A Baltimore City Council panel is set to take a key vote today on controversial legislation that would require pregnancy clinics that don't perform abortions or distribute birth control to post signs stating just that. The legislation would affect four clinics in Baltimore. It has drawn attention from people on both sides of the abortion debate who think the city council bill could become a model for legislation in other cities and towns across the county. City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake introduced the measure after meeting with abortion rights advocacy groups.

The legislation proposed by Baltimore City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake to require crisis pregnancy centers that do not provide abortion or birth control services (or referrals for those services) to post a sign saying so has turned into a tempest in a teapot. Those clinics, which are nonprofits, say they're being singled out by abortion rights groups. Advocates from NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland say they've sent undercover interns to centers like those - including one in Baltimore - and found they were given inaccurate information about abortion, such as the myths that it causes cancer and infertility.

The Pill earned its capital letters in my house when my mother found mine after my freshman year in college. The packet had been designed to resemble a woman's compact so that birth control could be discreet. But I was a flower child and we didn't wear makeup, so I hid mine between the mattress and the box springs of my bed. I think my mother was looking for trouble. "You know," she said hotly. "Your father and I never relied on artificial means. We relied on prayer." "Mom," I said, with just as much heat.

Shirley E. Handelsman, a long-time Planned Parenthood advocate and consumer affairs activist, died of respiratory failure June 18 at Roland Park Place. She was 91. Shirley Esther Silverberg, the daughter of a movie theater owner, was born in Greenville, Pa., near Pittsburgh, where she spent her early years. When she was a teenager, her family moved to Baltimore after her father took over ownership of the Park Theate in the 1100 block of N. Broadway. Growing up, Mrs. Handelsman and her sister and brother spent a lot of time watching movies.

It's a paradox worthy of the federal government: Abstinence-only education inhibits the effective promotion of abstinence. It is possible to keep teens abstinent, at least temporarily. More than a dozen programs have been shown, in peer-reviewed studies, to delay teen sex. For example, the Becoming a Responsible Teen program helped low-income African-American teenagers in Mississippi both to delay sex and to have safer sex, and its effects were visible one year later: Only 12 percent of sexually inexperienced participants became sexually active, compared with 31 percent in the comparison group.

DENVER -- At least once a day, a teenage girl walks into North High School's health clinic, wanting to find out if she's pregnant. Frequently, it turns out that she is. With the city's teen birth rate more than double the statewide rate of 24.3 births per 1,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 17, Denver school officials are considering a proposal to dispense contraceptives in six school-based health clinics that serve the district's most impoverished students....

While much of the nation debates a Maine school board's vote to let school-based clinics give young teens contraceptives without parental consent, Baltimore girls as young as 12 have had access to birth-control pills from such clinics for more than 20 years. Advocates say making contraceptives available has played a large role in the city's declining teen birth rate - especially in the past decade, when it has been cut in half for girls younger than 15. It's not just in Baltimore. A Maryland law that dates to the 1970s allows a minor confidential access to contraception, meaning any adolescent girl can ask her doctor for birth control - knowing that information will not be shared with her mother or father.

At National Right to Life's conference this year, Mitt Romney set out to convince anti-abortion leaders he was their candidate. At the podium, he rattled off his qualifications. To a layman's ears, it sounded pretty standard for abortion politics. He wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. He supports teaching only abstinence to teens. But for those trained to hear the subtleties, Mr. Romney was acknowledging something more. He implied an opposition to the birth control pill and a willingness to join in their efforts to scale back access to contraception.

With apologies to the esteemed Diane Rehm of National Public Radio, please join us for Susan's Tuesday news roundup, during which a roundtable of her multiple personalities, each representing a different mood, will dissect the headlines. Doping scandals in the Tour de France. Gambling among NBA refs. Dog-fighting in the highest reaches of NFL stardom. And suspected steroid abuse by a home-run record-challenger. And nothing but yawns from the fans over what one sportswriter described as the "shocking nadir" of professional sports.

WASHINGTON -- The government cleared the way yesterday for sales of the first birth control pill to eliminate monthly menstrual periods for as long as women use it. Women who go on Lybrel, as the new birth control is called, will take a pill every day, without any of the brief breaks that mark use of the other oral contraceptives now available. Some of those other birth control pills shorten bleeding or limit periods to as infrequently as every three months, but polls indicate that close to half of women surveyed would prefer to not menstruate at all. Dr. Michelle C. Fox, director of the Family Planning Program at the University of Maryland Medical Center, said it would be especially appealing to women who experience severe pain during their periods.