by Abbey Marr, Amplify front page blogger

There has been a lot of coverage this past week about the Guttmacher Institute's new report "Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress", which shows contraceptive use up and abortion laws becoming more liberal worldwide, and, correspondingly, abortion rates down worldwide. This is great news and shows what family planning advocates have been arguing for years; if you want to lower abortion rates, if you want to lower the rates of women dying and being injured from unsafe abortion, then you need to make contraceptives readily available and abortion legal.

The report also confirms another argument commonly used by abortion rights advocates; abortion rates do not correspond to abortion's legal status- making abortion illegal does not make abortion rates go down, it just puts women at risk.

By Emily Bridges, Director of Public Information Services

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) examined reporting of “adverse events” associated with Gardasil, the virus that protects against four types of HPV that cause the majority of cervical cancer. 

Gardasil is approved by the FDA and recommended by the CDC for young women ages 11-26.  But it has faced opposition from the far right, first as a shot that would contribute to “immoral behavior” by lessening the risk of unprotected sex.  Now that the vaccine has been approved, its opponents have turned to scare tactics, including circulating the unproven and false claim that Gardasil comes with the risk of serious illness and death.

JAMA’s study found that while adverse events had been reported by patients who received Gardasil, they were consistent with reports for other vaccines; that is, Gardasil was not more or less likely to cause illness than other vaccines.  The study did find that Gardasil was more likely to cause dizziness shortly after it is administered to the patient than some vaccines, and recommended that doctors monitor the patient for 15 minutes after they get the vaccine.

By Emily Bridges, Director of Public Information Services

Does Withdrawal Deserve Another Look?

Researcher Rachel K. Jones, in a study published in the journal Contraception, found that withdrawal is only slightly less effective than the male condom at preventing pregnancy. 

To Jones’s surprise, her article was met with skepticism and even anger from public health and activism communities concerned about the promotion of withdrawal.

Advocates for Youth believes young people deserve the facts about withdrawal’s benefits and disadvantages.  Among typical heterosexual couples who initiate use of withdrawal, about 18 percent of women will experience an accidental pregnancy in the first year, compared to 85 percent of couples who use no method. Withdrawal does not offer protection against sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. Withdrawal is most effective when used with another method, such as a condom.

By Emily Bridges, Director, Public Information Services