May 2013
6 posts
7 tags
LGBTQ Legislation in Arizona →
I’m certain everyone read yesterday’s post on the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (that’s today) and thought, “I’m so glad I live in Arizona, where the state legislature and judiciary would never further oppress an already marginalized group of people!”
Right?
Right?
Of course, the reality is that even recent Arizona lawmakers have established a trend of creating...
10 tags
International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia →
IDAHO.
That’s tomorrow — May 17.
The International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.
Homophobia and transphobia — or rather, anti-gay and anti-trans thoughts, words, and actions — are deeply rooted in many cultures, including inside the United States. In reality, they need far more than one day of discussion and recognition. One day is not enough.
When I started thinking about this...
12 tags
The History of the Birth Control Pill, Part 5:... →
Welcome to the fifth installment of our series chronicling the history of the birth control pill. In the previous installment, Margaret Sanger and Katharine McCormick envisioned and bankrolled the development of the birth control pill. Now it had to be tested in large-scale trials.
John Rock, Gregory Pincus, and Min-Chueh Chang had collaborated in the Pill’s development; now it was time to...
11 tags
Motherhood: A Prenatal Guide →
Becoming a mother is a wondrous event. It is also a lifelong commitment to another special human being, your child. To provide your new baby with the best start in life, taking care of yourself in your childbearing years is essential. When you think that half of all pregnancies in the United States each year are unintended, it’s very important to follow a healthy lifestyle every day to ensure a...
Teen medical ban could threaten gay youth, say... →
invisiblelad:
foryoursexualinformation:
RALEIGH, N.C. — A bill restricting teenagers’ access to medical and mental health care will be voted on in the North Carolina House of Representatives on Wednesday.
OH MY. THEY ARE NOT LYING. Here is the bill! It is literally requiring all medical services, especially in the sexual health AND mental health sides, to be first approved by parents!
This...
9 tags
Let’s Talk Contraception: Do Birth Control Pills... →
Alarming ads urge you to call a lawyer if you’ve been “injured” taking certain birth control products, such as Yaz, Yasmin, or NuvaRing. These injuries include venous thromboembolisms (VTEs), heart attacks, and strokes. It’s frightening to wonder if you are endangering your health by taking a pill to prevent pregnancy or treat dysmenorrhea (painful cramps).
Should you stop taking your pills?...
April 2013
8 posts
15 tags
STD Awareness: "Can STDs Lead to Infertility?" →
Being diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) can be upsetting. Some take it as evidence that they’ve been cheated on; others wonder if they can ever have sex again. Some people who have long dreamed of having children might worry about what impact, if any, their STD could have on future fertility. The bad news is that certain STDs can make it difficult or impossible to have...
13 tags
AIDS Denialism: Conspiracy Theories Can Kill →
We’ve all heard various conspiracy theories; we may or may not find them credible, and we might chalk up opposing viewpoints to simple differences in opinion. Sometimes, however, conspiratorial narratives are woven around matters of life and death — and in such cases, the spread of such ideas can influence dangerous changes in behavior and even government policy.
AIDS denialism is based on the...
10 tags
Can Herpes Be Cured Naturally? →
Many of us are infected with herpes simplex virus, which can be transmitted sexually to cause genital herpes. Although herpes is incurable, there are antivirals that can help reduce symptoms. But, because not everyone wants to take pharmaceuticals, a lot of us might seek alternatives in an attempt to treat or even cure our herpes infections.
For centuries, we have treated herpes in many ways —...
STD Awareness: An Update on Antibiotic-Resistant... →
10 tags
The History of the Birth Control Pill: Margaret... →
Welcome to the fourth installment of our series chronicling the history of the birth control pill. In the previous installment, progesterone, the birth control pill’s active ingredient, could only be administered intravenously. Scientists working in Mexico figured out how to alter its chemical structure so that progesterone would be active when taken orally.
Katharine McCormick was born into a...
12 tags
Does Waxing Get Rid of Crabs? →
Ever since I started writing this blog’s monthly STD Awareness column, I’ve kept my eye out for news related to sexually transmitted diseases. And, while some might find my enthusiasm for STD-related items to be slightly odd, I have been intrigued by what has been splashed across headlines so far this year.
First, in January, the claim surfaced that pubic lice (colloquially known as crabs) are...
8 tags
When It Happens to a Friend →
You probably know someone who’s been a victim of sexual assault.
It’s an unsettling thought, yes, but the statistics bear it out. Somewhere between 17 and 28 percent of women* have been victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault. According to those same sources, the numbers range from 3 to 17 percent for men.* They increase further for members of particular populations or communities,...
11 tags
Can Oral Herpes Be Spread to Genitals? →
Herpes simplex virus is mystifying, fascinating, and sneaky. Mystifying because we have yet to unravel all of its secrets; fascinating because when we do uncover one of its mysteries, we are amazed by the capabilities of such a tiny, microscopic object; and sneaky because it enters our bodies by stealth and conceals itself in our cells, taking us by surprise when it comes out of hiding and...
March 2013
10 posts
5 tags
Mary Peace Douglas: “A Tender Heart and a Real... →
The struggle for reproductive rights in Arizona has a history that stretches back to Margaret Sanger’s involvement with Clinica Para Las Madres, Planned Parenthood’s 1930s precursor in Tucson. Sanger and the other founders of Tucson’s first family planning clinic were brave activists with fierce convictions, and over the decades, the movement saw an influx of fighters whose work was defined by...
8 tags
Endometriosis Treatment →
It’s still March, so it’s still Endometriosis Awareness Month! Today we’ll be looking at endometriosis treatment questions and answers. If you missed the first two posts in this series, you can click to read more about an overview of endometriosis as well as info about diagnosing endometriosis.
Why are there so many treatment options? Which one is best?
There are so many options because there...
8 tags
Unmarried? Use Birth Control? It's the 41st... →
Recent controversy over the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate has served as a reminder of how shaky our rights to contraception can be. Although 99 percent of women have used contraception at some point in their lives, access to contraception is still subject to challenges. Section 2713 of the Affordable Care Act mandated that employers’ health plans include coverage for contraceptives...
8 tags
STD Awareness: Oral Herpes →
One of the most common sexually transmitted diseases is herpes, which most people associate with “outbreaks” in the genitals. In actuality, most cases have no symptoms, and the majority of people with genital herpes don’t know they have it. Herpes simplex virus, which causes genital herpes, can also infect facial nerves around the mouth, and its “outbreaks” include blisters called cold sores.
A...
8 tags
Diagnosing Endometriosis →
If you missed it, you can read the previous post explaining the basics of endometriosis here. In this post, we’ll look a little more at how endometriosis is diagnosed as well as some current barriers to diagnosis.
Wait. So you’re telling me that killer cramps of doom aren’t normal? If I did suspect I had endo, how would I go about getting diagnosed?
Endometriosis diagnosis is a tricky thing in...
8 tags
The History of the Birth Control Pill, Part 3:... →
Welcome to the third installment of our series chronicling the history of the birth control pill. In the previous installment, we learned about the iconoclastic chemist Russell Marker, who figured out how to synthesize large quantities of progesterone — the birth control pill’s active ingredient — from a yam called barbasco that grew wild in Mexico.
In 1949, Russell Marker dropped out of...
6 tags
The Feminine Mystique in Retrospect: An Interview... →
Last month we featured Part 1 of our interview with historian Stephanie Coontz about her book A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (Basic Books, 2012). A Strange Stirring looks at the history of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which has been widely regarded as one of the most influential books of the last century.
Published 50 years ago in...
8 tags
March Is Endometriosis Awareness Month →
As my ever-creative title suggests, March is Endometriosis Awareness Month. I have endometriosis (“endo” for short), and I like this month because I know plenty of people in my life who could definitely use some more awareness as to what endometriosis is and how it impacts the lives of those who have it.
So what is endometriosis, anyway?
Endometriosis is a condition where the endometrium, the...
11 tags
STD Awareness: 10 Myths About Sexually Transmitted... →
The Internet is brimming with contradictory claims about sexual health, and you don’t know what to believe. Your friends give you advice, but you’re not sure if it sounds right. To make things worse, you might not have had evidence-based, medically accurate sex education in your school. In this edition of our STD Awareness series, we’ll take on a few myths about sexually transmitted diseases to...
February 2013
8 posts
11 tags
The Family Revolution and the Egalitarian... →
In the interview with Stephanie Coontz featured earlier this month, we discussed the many changes in American households that have occurred in the 50 years since Betty Friedan published her landmark book, The Feminine Mystique. Friedan’s book was a literary catalyst that helped usher in a family revolution, in which the norm of one-earner households was replaced by the norm of the two-earner...
10 tags
The Feminine Mystique in Retrospect: An Interview... →
Award-winning author Stephanie Coontz has published a long list of books and articles about the history of family and marriage. She has written about the evolution of those two institutions from prehistory to today, in works that have been widely praised for their intelligence, wit, and insight. In her most recent book, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of...
10 tags
A Conversation With Faye Wattleton: Part 4,... →
In 1970, just a few years after receiving her master’s degree, Faye Wattleton left the Dayton Health Department and the Visiting Nurses Association to serve as executive director for Planned Parenthood of Miami Valley in Ohio. While she was there, the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down, and when a local reporter asked for a comment, Ms. Wattleton realized that her affiliate had no prepared...
12 tags
The History of the Birth Control Pill, Part 2:... →
Welcome to the second installment of our series chronicling the history of the birth control pill. Previously, we learned about the role a sex hormone called progesterone plays in inhibiting ovulation. Scientists had no easy way to isolate significant amounts of this chemical and wanted to find a quick and inexpensive method for synthesizing large quantities of progesterone.
Russell Marker was...
8 tags
A Conversation With Faye Wattleton: Part 3, Family... →
Faye Wattleton is clear that women’s autonomy is at the core of the reproductive rights debate. Her philosophy regarding the struggle for reproductive rights, as she said during our interview, “gradually evolved to the conclusion that this is still really about the fundamental right and values that women are held to. That our reproduction is still a proxy for the larger question of our full...
8 tags
A Conversation With Faye Wattleton: Part 2, Belief... →
Faye Wattleton was president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1978 to 1992. She was generous enough to speak to me on January 7, 2013, and throughout the month of February we’ll be sharing her experiences and perspectives in observance of Black History Month. In this second installment, we discuss her religious beliefs and their influence on her work, which came up often in our...
7 tags
Let’s Talk Contraception: Depo-Provera Injections,... →
Progestin-only birth control pills (POPs), also called the mini-pill, are good options for those who cannot take estrogen. But for those who have lots of trouble remembering to take a pill every day at the same time, Depo-Provera shots may be the way to go. Depo-Provera is medroxyprogesterone, a hormone similar to progesterone. It is given as a shot in a doctor’s office or a health center such...
6 tags
A Conversation with Faye Wattleton: Part 1,... →
Faye Wattleton was president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1978 to 1992. At 34 years old, she was not only the youngest and the first African American to head PPFA, but was also the first woman since Margaret Sanger to hold that position. She had already been executive director of the affiliate in Dayton, Ohio, for seven years, and is still PPFA’s longest-serving president.
...
January 2013
9 posts
9 tags
15 Years Since the Birmingham Clinic Bombing →
After earning her nursing degree from the University of Alabama in 1977, Emily Lyons developed a suite of skills in a variety of health care settings, from in-home care to emergency services. She passed on much of her knowledge to future nurses when she taught at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, and by 1998, she had taken the helm as director of nursing at the New Woman All Women Health...
10 tags
STD Awareness: An Update on Antibiotic-Resistant... →
Last year, we shared the fascinating and frightening story of the emergence of increasingly antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, an STD caused by the gonococci bacteria. The sexually transmitted scourge, which we only so recently reined in with the development of antibiotics, has been performing some genetic gymnastics to defeat almost every drug we’ve thrown at it. We douse it with certain drugs,...
9 tags
Roe v. Wade: An Overview →
The name of the case Roe v. Wade is familiar to many people in the United States. So is its main impact, to establish a constitutional right to abortion — which it did exactly 40 years ago today.
That said, many fewer people know the details, both of the factual case and of the case’s finding. Do you?
What did abortion law look like at the time?
At the time the facts immediately behind the...
7 tags
Roe v. Wade at 40: Lost Ground and the Moment to... →
As 2012 came to a close, one of the last attacks on reproductive freedom in Arizona was in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where the state of Arizona fought to defund Planned Parenthood. The state was appealing an injunction against HB2800, a new measure that would strip funding for family planning services from any health care facility that provides abortions.
Following a year that...
8 tags
Are Pap Tests Accurate? →
If you follow health news, you might have noticed some controversy over certain cancer-screening methods: Does the evidence support mammograms as a tool to reduce breast cancer deaths? Are PSA tests effective in saving lives from prostate cancer? These are questions that we are beginning to answer as more and more evidence comes in. But don’t let these questions dissuade you from all cancer...
10 tags
The History of the Birth Control Pill, Part 1:... →
Welcome to the first installment of our series chronicling the history of the birth control pill, from our discovery of how hormones work, to the synthesis of these hormones from an inedible wild Mexican yam, to the creation of a pill that changed the world.
Underneath the surface of a large swath of Southern Mexico’s jungles lay the enormous roots of a wild yam, Dioscorea composita, known...
8 tags
6 Myths About HPV →
When I was a high school student in the 1990s, human papillomavirus (HPV) didn’t get a lot of screen time in our sex education classes. They slapped a few scary pictures of genital warts on the overhead projector and called it a day, neither mentioning that other strains of HPV could cause cancer, nor elucidating the connection between the virus and Pap testing.
Since the introduction of the...
December 2012
9 posts
11 tags
Over 90 Percent of What Planned Parenthood Does,... →
Welcome to the latest installment of “Over 90 Percent of What Planned Parenthood Does,” a series on Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona’s blog that highlights Planned Parenthood’s diverse array of services — the ones Jon Kyl doesn’t know about.
When talking about Pap tests — particularly when discussing abnormal Pap results — one procedure that comes up a lot is the colposcopy.
It can...
7 tags
What the Holidays Mean for Your Sexual Health →
The holidays bring a lot of joy, a lot of yummy treats, and, apparently, a lot of sex.
Rumor has it that during the holidays, we are all increasingly likely to have sex. Perhaps it’s the merry spirit of the holidays or maybe it’s the abundance of holiday parties. It’s tough to discern exactly what it is that accounts for this increase in sex, but the “why” is not nearly as important as the...
10 tags
Over 90 Percent of What Planned Parenthood Does,... →
Welcome to the latest installment of “Over 90 Percent of What Planned Parenthood Does,” a series on Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona’s blog that highlights Planned Parenthood’s diverse array of services — the ones Jon Kyl doesn’t know about.
Planned Parenthood Arizona treats epididymitis.This statement might raise a few questions:
Q: What’s epididymitis? A: Epididymitis is the...
Cancer Study (HPV) →
ironstarked:
If you happen to be age 18-26 or 45-70 then it would be great if you could spare 5 minutes to take this survey.
All you have to do is answer a few questions about what you know about the HPV virus and cervical cancer. The information will be used to inform future targets for public health education.
All information given is completely confidential and anonymous, and very much...
10 tags
How Does HIV Cause AIDS? →
Last week, we gave a general background of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS by destroying the immune system. But how is HIV able to disable our immune systems so effectively, anyway? The answer lies in its structure.
HIV, just like any other virus, is made up of a tiny capsule with a small piece of genetic code inside. While most viruses we’re familiar with store...
10 tags
Interpreting Abnormal Pap Tests →
Because a Pap test screens for abnormal cervical cells and because those cell changes can be associated with cervical cancer, being on the receiving end of an abnormal Pap test result can be frightening, intimidating, and confusing.
On the “frightening” aspect: Some people assume that an abnormal Pap means that cervical cancer is imminent. On the contrary, the National Cancer Institute not only...
9 tags
Book Club: Outlaw Marriages →
Sally Ride, the famous astronaut who passed away in July from pancreatic cancer, left an unexpected gift to America’s youth. In her obituary, it was revealed that Ride, the first American woman to travel into outer space, had been in a committed, same-sex relationship for 27 years with her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy. Having quietly come out, she now serves as an important, high-profile role model...
10 tags
STD Awareness: HIV and AIDS →
Our immune systems are beautiful things, refined through millions of years of evolution. The immune system’s complexity is testament to the “arms race” that has been taking place between our species and the harmful pathogens that surround us. Last century, a virus called human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) emerged, and it found a weak spot in our immune system’s armor. HIV has been exploiting...
