Birth Control and Womens Health Issues

8/2/2019 Birth Control and Womens Health Issues

1/6

Birth Control and Women's Health Issues:Should this have been Obama's Priority?

The entire debacle over the birth control issue has taken valuable time away fromother, more important discussions, like the economy, people out of work, thepossibility of Iran having nuclear weapons, and the real issues affecting the health

of women. Frankly, I am shocked that anyone, including our President, but moreimportantly his own HHS secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, would think for one secondthat contraception is the issue that should receive this first priority, if any attentionwhatsoever.

The Mayo Clinic, a respected medical research, diagnostic and treatment hospital,has outlined the top seven health issues affecting women today [1].Contraceptives availability doesn't even make this short list. What does make theshort list are the things that are actually killing women today: 1) heart disease; 2)cancer; 3) stroke; 4) chronic lower respiratory issues; 5) Alzheimers; 6) accidents;and 7) diabetes.

For the record, this list came out in 2011 and was reported in the news by MSNBCso, I would assume the President and his appointees bothered to watch thesereports? Well maybe not. After all, we're too busy ensuring women have access tothe pill and other things, right?

But wait! Are contraceptives good for women? If they're so important that thisadministration feels contraceptives take precedence over coronary heart disease[2] then shouldn't these contraceptives be good for women?

If you listen to the ads for birth control pills and devices, the one thing you'll note is

that there's always a caveat emptor attached. Yes, all pharmaceutical companiesare now telling people the potential risks of medications, but the list of potentialside-effects seems toxic:

migraines increased blood pressure gall bladder disease decrease in bone density yeast overgrowth (candida) increasing risk of blood clots

heart attack stroke [3]

Usually people take medications when the benefits outweigh the risks. But we'renot talking about Digoxin for cardiac patients. We're talking about a drug which, inmost cases, is an elective medicine. It's not something taken to keep a personalive or substantially improve an acquired disease.

We're talking about something a woman ingests into her body, adding to her risk for


2/6

some of the various diseases which are killing women now more than ever, and forwhat? So she can safely have nookie?

While the nation focused on, the liberals touted, and the President consoled oneSandra Fluke (and it seems no fluke that she just so happened to chose a Universitywhere controversy would be created over this issue) over statements made by one

Rush Limbaugh, another woman wasn't able to testify about birth control pills andtheir availability and usefulness. That woman was Nicole McKeon.

In 2007, Nicole McKeon, age 31, got up for work as usual and suddenly lost totalcontrol of the left side of her body. She realized she was having a massive stroke. Ahealthy woman, McKeon was rushed to the hospital but the left side of her brainbegan to hemorrhage as well and she died from the massive stroke. The doctorshad tried valiantly to save her, to no avail. What was her risk factor for this stroke?According to the doctors her one and only risk factor was the use of a newgeneration birth control pill called Yasmin. [4]

If you watch television long enough, you'll see attorney's offering to representvictims of these birth control pills.

Citizens' watch groups, especially those monitoring contraception-relatedmedicines, have long been sounding the warning alarm. But not even the FDA islistening. In 2011 the FDA refused Sidney Wolfe, head of the watchdog group,PRIVATE CITIZEN, a seat at the table to review the dangers of new generation birthcontrol pills, including the medication YAZ. [5]

A migraine sufferers support organization has also called attention to dangerssurrounding the Johnson & Johnson patch birth control called Ortho-Evra because

of its direct link to migraine headaches. [6]

Ms. Fluke's testimony- one designed to evoke sympathy but not address the actualissue of women in general who use birth control, needs some examination as well.

First of all, Ms. Fluke wasn't the victim. An unnamed friend was. Secondly, thefriend allegedly was paying $100.00 out of pocket for her pills, which wereprescribed for POS or Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. One has to wonder why shewasn't getting her pills via Planned Parenthood or some other sympathetic providerof birth control.

In 2010, U.S. News did a story about the cost of birth control pills. The report, citingnone less than Planned Parenthood itself, stated:

According to Planned Parenthood, birth control pills cost between $15 to $50 amonth, depending on health insurance coverage and type of pill. On an annualbasis, that means the Pill costs between $160 to $600. [7]

Someone was either ripping Ms. Fluke's friend off, or someone was playing thehyperbole game. This same report also noted that abstinence, which is totally free,


3/6

was another birth control option. Gee, imagine!

According to the Mayo clinic website, POS is not uncommon and is not usually life-threatening to women. Complications come along later which can lead to some life-threatening diseases, but POS can be detected and treated early. It isn't the POSthat hurts the women, it's the affects of the POS, such as weight gain, which can

lead to obesity and eventually type 2 diabetes or heart disease. Ironically the sameproblems which show up in women who use the pill for birth control!

Let's look at some other elements of Ms. Fluke's testimony.

Ms. Fluke, after making it clear that she holds a specific angst towards religious-based colleges, states that it can cost over $3,000.00 during law school for awoman to pay for her contraception.

This sounds like a lot of money until one realizes that law school can last between5-7 years, and longer if you include the time before one goes to law school, or the

time during which one obtains the obligatory Bachelors' degree. All total? Elevenyears of education (give or take a year or two).

Let's take Planned Parenthood's own information. At $160.00 per year, over 11years, the grand total is $2,816.00. Close enough. But that's less than $14.00 permonth. College students spend more at Starbucks in one week than that! Andeven if the student is Ramen-noodle dirt poor, Planned Parenthood could easilyafford to cover the cost.

But wait! The student could find themselves in a bind even with Planned Parenthoodas well. You see, the poor student would have to cough up $155.00 to even be seen

before they could get their pills. Yes, that covers an exam and consultation. Butgee, guys! If the kid fork over $155.00 for a one-time meeting, couldn't they spenda little more and get their birth control for an entire year?

Something simply isn't adding up here.

Ms. Fluke did make an interesting observation:

...when you let university administrators or other employers, other than womenand their doctors, dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, awoman's health takes a backseat to bureaucracy focused on policing her body...

Isn't that what Obamacare is proposing to do to the rest of us, Ms. Fluke? Do youwant to force religious institutions to provide for your needs as if they were thefederal government medical system forced on the general population?

According to Ms. Fluke's story, the insurance company denied her friend withcontraception because it felt she really wanted it to prevent pregnancy and not forthe condition (this denial allegedly occurred in spite of evidence supporting adoctors' diagnosis).


4/6

She's gay, Ms. Fluke told the audience. So clearly, polycystic ovarian syndromewas a much more urgent concern than an accidental pregnancy for her.

How would the insurance company know she's a lesbian? That's not usuallysomething one needs to put on the insurance form.

This is starting to sound fictional.

The story concludes with the friend developing a cyst the size of a tennis ball.According to Ms. Fluke, her friend was sitting in a doctors office, trying to cope withthe consequences of it all, while Ms. Fluke was supposed to be giving her testimony.Ms. Fluke knew she wouldn't be testifying, why didn't she go sit with her friend?

And who was that masked lesbian? Why didn't she testify?

Anyway, on the medical end, there are potholes in the story.

To begin with, POCS is easily diagnosed and may even manifest itself shortly after agirl begins menses. But even if it develops later on, medical experts say the bestway to prevent the condition from becoming a problem is to have a regular pelvicexam. Since the friend likely had to get such an exam before she could be placedon the birth control pill, the odds are that a doctor would have noticed a cystgrowing to the size of a tennis ball. Unless she stopped getting her exams as well.

Secondly, there's no hard and fast rule about treatment. Birth control pills are notthe only resolution. In fact, birth control pills are only prescribed when the cyst isalready functional and quite large in size. The idea is to knock back some of the

male hormone and help prevent the growth of facial hair, onset acne, etc.

Only in 4-10% of women is there a possibility of a serious issue arising. Manywomen, both with and without a diagnosis of POCS have cysts. Usually theserupture and the only medication required may be for pain. Ms. Fluke makes itsound like her friend was at deaths' door at any moment. Now the lament is thather friend, who had one ovary removed, is going through early menopause.

Removal of an affected ovary is not a cause for early menopause. POCS, on theother hand, is. But her friends' POCS was cured by the surgery, wasn't it?

This medical catastrophe sounds more like a manufactured medical fairytale. Thismay sound heartless, but there's just something not quite right about this entirething. From Ms. Fluke decision to attend a religiously run university (when there areso many others in the D.C. area to chose from), all the way to the anonymouslesbian friend, there's just something rather odd about this vignette.

Ms. Fluke then went on to conclude the sad tale:

...if my body indeed does enter early menopause, no fertility specialist in the world


5/6

will be able to help me have my own children. I'll have no choice at giving mymother her desperately desired grandchildren...

Earlier Fluke stated that her friend was denied coverage of her birth control pillsbecause the insurance determined she was using them to avoid pregnancy. Tosupport her claim of unfairness, Fluke pointed out that her friend was gay and,

therefore, couldn't possibly be wanting the pills to avoid pregnancy.

Wouldn't being a lesbian also negate her having children anyway? Now she's allabout making babies?

The final part of the saga is her criticism of those who ask the sensible question:What did you expect when you enrolled in a Catholic university? I would suggestthat she knew, before she enrolled, that she wasn't going to get the pill. How can Isay that? Well, aside from Georgetown U. being a Jesuit facility, the premier healthcoverage plan is online. And guess what? It isn't only the sleep around gals whotake it in the shorts.

Not covered are: acupuncture; allergy related testing and treatments; biofeedback;adult circumcision; corn, bunion and callous removal; elective surgeries includingabortion; hearing exams (for other than children); liposuction; organ transplants(talk about a REAL need!) and the list goes on and on (in fact, I wondered what theyDID cover!)

But it clearly says on there that contraception is not covered. So, if she knew this,why did she opt to attend there? To challenge a religious-based institutions' right todetermine coverage according to their religious faith.

And there's the bottom line. In keeping with the left's usual methodology of tryingto tie-dye the fabric of American society, we see another manufactured medicalemergency for American womanhood.

Like the coat hanger tales and the using of Norma Corvey to push through Roe v.Wade, we now have the vanishing lesbian friend via her spokesperson, Ms. Fluke,testifying that without birth control given to them at the expense of murdering theEstablishment Clause, women would be dropping like flies.

If President Obama, Kathleen Sebelius, and even Ms. Fluke really care about thehealth of women, how about addressing the real issues instead of manufacturing

one in order to bully a religious institution? Maybe then, people like me mightbelieve you're genuine. Until then, people like me just see more of the same leftisthyperbole.

[1] http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/womens-health/WO00014[2] Maybe it's about an ageist attitude, but Sebelius is no spring chicken herself, and she should be concerned when thedata shows that 8 million American women have heart disease. Of that number, 435,000 have had a heart attack, 83,000of whom are under age 65. Under age 50, a woman having a heart attack is twice as likely to die than her malecounterpart. But lets worry about fertility, after all, we all know that pregnancy kills, right?[3] http://www.womensheart.org/content/heartdisease/heart_disease_facts.asp[4]http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/health&id=5303491Nicole wasn't the only woman to develop a life-threatening clot from using birth control pills. It's estimated that 15-30 out of every 100,000 women using oral
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/health&id=5303491http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/health&id=5303491http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/health&id=5303491


6/6

contraceptives will develop a dangerous clot. These numbers may seem low, unless it happens to you.[5]http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2011/12/fda_disqualifies_public_citize.html[6] http://migraine-headaches-information.com/blog/?p=20[7] http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/alpha-consumer/2010/08/27/the-real-cost-of-birth-control-
http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2011/12/fda_disqualifies_public_citize.htmlhttp://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2011/12/fda_disqualifies_public_citize.htmlhttp://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2011/12/fda_disqualifies_public_citize.html

Documents

Birth Control and Womens Health Issues