What would happen without public funding for family planning?

How important is it to publicly fund family planning? Consider the following information from a mass emailing I just received from Guttmacher Institute:

Publicly funded family planning services play a crucial role in improving maternal and child health, helping women and couples achieve their fundamental childbearing goals and achieve economic security for themselves and their children. These efforts save almost $4 for every $1 invested and help avert almost two million unintended pregnancies per year, which would otherwise have resulted in 860,000 unintended births and 810,000 abortions. Without these services, the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions occurring in the United States would be nearly two-thirds higher among women overall and among teens; the number of unintended pregnancies among poor women would nearly double.
The email included this link for additional information on this topic of public funding. Consider the information provided by Guttmacher under the heading: "WHO NEEDS CONTRACEPTIVE SERVICES?" • The typical American woman, who wants two children, spends about five years pregnant, postpartum or trying to become pregnant, and three decades—more than three-quarters of her reproductive life—trying to avoid pregnancy. • About half of all pregnancies in the United States each year—more than three million—are unintended. By age 45, more than half of all American women will have experienced an unintended pregnancy, and three in 10 will have had an abortion. • There were 66 million U.S. women of reproductive age (13–44) in 2008. • More than half of these women (36 million) were in need of contraceptive services and supplies; that is, they were sexually active and able to become pregnant, but were not pregnant and did not wish to become pregnant. The number of women in need of contraceptive services and supplies increased 6% between 2000 and 2008. And consider the following, under the topic, "Who Needs Publicly Funded Service: • Among the 17.4 million women in need of publicly funded contraceptive care, 71% (12.4 million) were poor or low-income adults, and 29% (5 million) were younger than 20. Four in 10 poor women of reproductive age have no insurance coverage whatsoever. Guttmacher offers a wealth of statistics here.

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Big shake

It was the middle of the afternoon and my family and I (my wife and I have two teenaged daughters) were in the car headed for home. We agreed that this would be a junk food moment, something we don't do often. The two items most mentioned in the car were french fries and a chocolate shake. "Hey, there's a White Castle up ahead," I mentioned. I pulled up and ordered the "large chocolate shake" and some fries. None of us drink soft drinks, though we had all heard that there were some large serving sizes out there. What emerged from the window nonetheless startled all of us: A 44-ounce chocolate shake. We hauled it home and split it among the four of us. By the time we all gave up on it, there was still a bit left. Which inspired me to check the White Castle nutrition website. This 44-ounce drink is 1030 calories including 210 calories of fat (White Castle's large strawberry shake is as much as 1,300 calories in many regions). I'm not writing this to single out White Castle--many fast food joints offer similar fare. It was a worthwhile anthropological adventure, though, to see what (I assume) some people drink all on their own. PS. We all enjoyed the shake.

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Goldman Sachs resignation

At the New York Times, Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs employee explains his recent resignation:

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all. It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.
Fair enough,  but it seems as though Greg Smith hung around, participating in this system he portrays as unethical, long enough to accrue a substantial nest egg.  It would certainly seem that he could have made a financial killing in ten years at Goldman Sachs.   Nonetheless, I applaud his article because he could have simply left Goldman without writing the article, which would deny us the benefit of his observations. Then again, the article does seem like cheap talk for one who might be seeking to "repair" his career before moving to whatever comes next.    You could just imagine people looking at Smith suspiciously when he admits that he once worked for Goldman Sachs, at which point he would pull out this NYT article, turning an opportunist into a hero with a bit of deft writing.   I want to believe that the author is gallant, but my gut won't allow me to do so.   Nonetheless, I appreciate his insights.

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Pope perfume

I don't quite know what to say here, so I'll just report the facts. I've recently learned that the current Pope (who does not take a vow of poverty, unlike Catholic nuns) has paid to have a special cologne created for him:

Italian celebrity perfume-maker Silvana Casoli, has created her most heavenly scent yet for a very special client, Pope Benedict XVI. Known for creating a number of perfumes that can be used by both men and women with names like Chocolat Bambola (Chocolate doll) and Vanilla Bourbon, Casoli has designed unique fragrances for famous personalities like Madonna and Sting.

Stranger than fiction, right? Wouldn't you think that there are better things to spend money on? And it's just for the Pope:

Unlike other perfumes, the scent won't be sold to the public and is to only be worn by the Pope, explains Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.

I'm not the only one to find the story about Pope-cologne puzzling. Michael Morris, author of a website titled Funmentionables, has written an article he titled, "The Old Pope Smell," in which he pulls out quite a few Bible verses that mention perfume.

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