Dreamer Easy

If you can't legally stop women from having abortions, all you can do is harass and intimidate them. Oklahoma's new law is an example. It requires physicians to collect extensive personal details from women seeking abortions - details which will be posted on the Web, making it possible for individual women to be identified. The law has been put on hold by a judge and is being challenged by the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The Senator behind the law says the info is needed to help prevent unwanted pregnancies. I can save him the quarter mill: quit with the useless abstinence-only education, and make sex education mandatory in Oklahoma schools, including education about contraception.

Advice on having Safe Sex At Dragon*Con, or indeed, having sex at all. Educates while it entertains. But the reason I mention it here is that it suggests anal intercourse as a means of avoiding pregnancy, which notoriously doesn't work, and I can't leave a comment or find a contact email so I can wave my arms about and point them to countless urls on the subject.

In unrelated news, I can't help reading the * in Dragon*Con as a tiny raspberry. Dragon plpbt Con.

For young women, here are some snappy retorts to use if you're pressured for sex. "BOY: Everyone else is doing it. GIRL: Well, you'd better go and have sex with everybody else then." (Where would we be without Kaz Cooke? 'A Modern Girl's Guide to Safe Sex is one of the best books I've ever owned.)

From the ever-useful snopes.com, the debunking of a chain email warning against the HPV vaccine Gardasil. (While I'm on the subject, condoms do reduce the risk of HPV transmission.)

Australian sexual assault victims will be given free legal help to stop their attackers using their medical and counselling records against them in court.

Cardinal Pell continues to insist that condoms increase HIV transmission, describing them as "a significant cause of the problem".

Specifically, he states that:

"Condoms give users an exaggerated sense of safety, so that they sometimes engage in 'risk compensation'. In one Ugandan study, gains in condom use seem to have been offset by increases in the number of sex partners."

I think he's referring to this:

Is sexual risk taking behaviour changing in rural south-west Uganda? Behaviour trends in a rural population cohort 1993–2006

This report from the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections states: "In some cases, trends in condom use were the opposite of trends in casual partners. For example, among those aged 35+ years, casual partners rose between 2000 and 2005, indicating more risky behaviour, but condom use also rose, indicating less risky behaviour." The report says nothing about "risk compensation" or about condoms encouraging promiscuity, nor anything about condom use being "offset" by an increase in partners - in fact, the authors state: "The data reported in the paper presented here do not link reported sexual risk factors and incident HIV infection." Assuming I have the correct study, it's irrelevant.

Pell further comments:

"Earlier this year, the British Medical Journal reported: "In numerous large studies, concerted efforts to promote use of condoms has consistently failed to control rates of sexually transmitted infection", even in Canada, Sweden and Switzerland."

This statement is part of a debate between scientists about sexually transmitted infections other than HIV. Far from linking condoms to increased promiscuity, the writer Pell is quoting complains that: "Only a minority of people engaging in risky sexual behaviour use condoms consistently."

The scientists Pell doesn't quote have this to say:

"One theoretical concern is that condom promotion could lead to risk compensation—men who use condoms may feel safer and consequently engage in more frequent sex or sex with more partners, thus increasing the risk of transmission. The most recent review of 174 condom related prevention approaches, however, concluded that sexual risk reduction interventions do not increase unsafe sexual behaviour. In addition, a recent systematic review showed adding condom promotion to interventions focusing on abstinence does not undermine the abstinence message." (My emphasis)

Clearly, Pell has yet to provide any evidence whatsoever that promoting condom use increases HIV transmission. (You can read the above references in their entirety by registering for free. Pell should.)

An important mistake Pell makes is to suggest that those promoting condom use are not also promoting other risk reduction strategies. (All of the scientists in the BMJ debate agree that condoms are only part of the picture.) He refers to Uganda's unusual success in reducing the transmission of HIV, but attributes this solely to a reduction in casual sex, when in fact it's due to multiple strategies, including promoting condom use. In Thailand, HIV rates dropped sharply because men's visits to sex workers dropped by half, but also because of the government's policy of 100% condom use for sex workers. Clearly, there's no incompatibilty between Pell's "traditional Christian moral teaching", promoting abstinence and faithfulness, and promoting safe sex - all of these strategies are part of successfully reducing AIDS.

ETA: Further reading for his Eminence: Condoms and HIV prevention: Position statement by UNAIDS, UNFPA and WHO

ETA: More on Uganda from livescience.com.

The Lancet wants a retraction of the Pope's false claim that condoms exacerbate the problem of HIV and AIDS.

Rick Warren's Africa Problem: "Warren's defense against charges of intolerance ultimately depends upon his ace card: his heavily publicized crusade against AIDS in Africa. [...] But since the Warren inauguration controversy erupted, the nature of work against AIDS in Africa has gone unexamined. [...] an investigation into Warren's involvement in Africa reveals a web of alliances with right-wing clergymen who have sidelined science-based approaches to combating AIDS in favor of abstinence-only education."

Bystander training - teaching onlookers how to intervene - can help combat bullying and sexual assault.

Gender pay gap hurting fertility: study "The number of women working and the hours they work have been on the rise during the past decade, in contrast to the static rate for men... Despite this, women continue to earn, on average, eight per cent less than men, a gap slightly wider than a decade ago. The research shows women also take on the majority of family responsibilities, which is affecting decisions to have children."

The number of Australians with HIV has hit a record high

Australia couples trial a male hormonal contraceptive

Report sharply criticizes sex education in Texas schools. Abstinence-only education, plus a parental consent requirement for minors to obtain contraceptives, would certainly help to explain why Texas has a teen pregnancy rate 50% higher than the national average.

Pope denounces condom use in Africa - in fact, he says condoms "aggravate" the problem of AIDS. I'm sorry to say it, Your Holiness, but you're lying and you know it. Please stop.

While I'm on the subject of inflammatory quotes, former Iranian prez Mohammad Khamati is scheduled to visit Australia, prompting protest:

Mr Searle told the Age that although Mr Khatami, president of Iran from 1997 to 2005, was regarded as a reformist, he was a sponsor of terrorism, a Holocaust denier and leader of a country that had often threatened to "wipe Israel off the map".

"Only last year, this supposed champion of dialogue called Israel 'an old, incurable wound on the body of Islam, a wound that really possesses demonic, stinking, contagious blood'."

What a revolting comment. Did Khatami actually make it? Googling only brings up other people saying that he said it, and searching various relevant sites, such as the ADL and the Central Council of Jews, brings up nothing. Since Khatami is on record as saying the Holocaust is "an absolute fact, a historical fact", that brings into question the rest of the claim.

Obviously (but this is the Intersplat, so I'd better spell it out) this is not to say that Khatami is a saint who has never made any ugly remarks: I'm only questioning whether that particular quote is accurate. Although I do also question the whole "beyond the pale" thing, the whole "we're not talking to him/her" thing, on the grounds that it is better to jaw-jaw etc.

Virginity pledgers have just as much sex as anyone else, but are less likely to use condoms and/or other contraception. You can read the abstract of the study at the Pediatrics Web site.

Meanwhile in Australia, a fifth of teens are not getting the birds and the bees talk from their parents, and a quarter of parents didn't know whether their kids were sexually active.

Off to the sleep lab tomorrow yay, so here's a last squirt of feminist stuff to keep you going until I emerge from the pit of bewilderment.

Ta to thegameiam for Where Palin Really Stands on Sex Education: turns out she clarified (somewhat) her stance an interview, describing herself as "pro-contraception". So that's one less thing to worry about.

OTOH, McCain voted against Biden Law Requiring Free Rape Exams. (Ta browneyedgirl65.)

From the New York Times, Repairing the Damage, Before Roe: a gynaecologist in his eighties gives a horrifying glimpse of the days before abortion was legal.

In Australia, Wife-beaters face tougher treatment: the skinny is that some of the group therapy, er, groups, lack professional facilitators, and there are no program standards, so the NSW guvmint hopes to rectify this.

Missed a spot:

Victoria's abortion reform bill passed the lower house, but may have more trouble in the upper house.

Federally, MPs will be allowed a conscience vote on removing Medicare funding for late term abortions.

Looks like Mr Howard has found his election issue; since no-one trusts him any more about refugees or the war, it's time to turn to banning gay marriage in order to distract and divide the community with a non-existent crisis.

Voters don't believe PM on Iraq abuse
Iraqi POW evidence overboard Govt duck and cover
Who says 'I do' should not be left to MPs (check out Leno's painfully funny gag at the end)
Howard blames his underlings - again
Defence not alone in Iraq jail inaction

In other news, US sex education prohibits teachers from explaining contraception. In other words, the government would rather teenagers died than had sex: they know perfectly well that abstinence-only education is a flop, so this is simply punitive. It's also the most transparent hypocrisy. According to this article there are as many as 900,000 teenage pregnancies in the US each year, half of them resulting from a failure to use contraception; about a third will end in abortion, so the pro-life US government is also - knowingly - boosting the annual number of abortions by something like 200,000.