Anti-abortion = anti-contraception?

One of the first posts I wrote at this site was an in-depth look at a "pregnancy resource center" which, to my dismay excelled at spreading untruths about abortion and did its best to discourage the use of effective birth control. What a strange thing, I thought, to discourage methods that would prevent accidental pregnancy which would, in turn, lower the abortion rate. Maybe fighting effective birth control (i.e., methods that don't exclusive rely on just say no) would be good for repeat business at the "pregnancy resource center," but it is terrible for the unwitting clients of these highly dysfunction centers. Along comes this Alternet post by Christina Page, "Why the Anti-Choice Movement Is on the Verge of Civil War." This is a fascinating look at the anti-choice movement's big schism:

The question now is: 'are you pro-life and pro-contraception, therefore trying to reduce the need for abortions, or are you pro-life and against contraception and you hope that people's lives improve just by hoping it, wishing it so.'"
And consider this--I think that Page's logic is impeccable:

It may come as a shock to most pro-life Americans, but there's not one pro-life group in the United States that supports contraception. Rather, many lead campaigns against contraception. As [anti-abortion yet pro-contraception] Congressman [Tim] Ryan explained, "I think the pro-life groups are finding themselves further and further removed from the mainstream; they're on the fringe of this debate." Considering that the average woman spends 23 years of her life trying not to get pregnant, the anti-contraception approach depends on a scourge of sexless marriages or a lot of wishful thinking.

Where does this lead? If you aren't for preventing accidental pregnancies, you can't truly be anti-abortion. Yet that is the situation with all major anti-abortion groups. For example, none of them support Ryan's legislation that would increase funding to make birth control available, promote effective sex-ed and provide financial incentives for adoption. Yet no pro-life group supports his efforts. Many groups staunchly oppose the use of real birth control (e.g., this one). On the other hand, most pro-life individuals support his efforts. Not surprising, in that 80% of pro-life individuals (90% of Catholics!) support the availability of effective birth control. Page presents many other eye-popping stats in her article. The bottom line?

The greatest opportunity to reduce the need for abortion is to focus the 95% of unintended pregnancies that are highly preventable. The plan is simple: address the lack of and incorrect use of contraception.

This is a solution that virtually all individuals agree on. But all we get from "pro-life" groups is defiance. Therefore, pro-life groups (such as Democrats for Life) are wholly unaccountable to their constituents.

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Nature video shows that turtles are full fledged animals

I once saw this activity at the turtle exhibit at the local zoo, and it didn't take a biologist to tell me that I was not misinterpreting what I was seeing. These turtles seem incredibly almost-human, even though they didn't smoke cigarettes afterward. Captured here in living color close-up, I'm posting this video as an animals-in the-wild education video: Watching this reminded me of watching David Attenborough "Trials of Life" series with my then four-year old daughter. One of these exquisitely filmed Attenborough videos, which was on the topic of animal reproduction, included more explicit animal sex videos than I could ever had imagined, including elephant sex. At first I wondered whether I should be letting the video keep running. While I was contemplating my options, my daughter looked up and asked, "Daddy, what are those elephants doing?" I found myself saying, "Those are elephants having sex." I didn't offer any further explanation and my daughter didn't request one. We quietly watched the entire video and now, 7 years later, my daughter doesn't seem to be emotionally damaged from having seen the episode. Oh, and according to doctors polled by the U.K. Guardian, having sex before going to bed is the second-best way to have a good night's sleep. The winning solution was for couples to sleep in separate beds.

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Geoffrey Miller’s “Spent”: an evolutionary psychology romp through marketing and consumerism

I've repeatedly written about Geoffrey Miller based on the many provocative ideas presented in his earlier book, The Mating Mind. (e.g., see my earlier post, "Killer High Heels"). A gifted and entertaining writer, Miller is also an evolutionary psychologist. His forte is hauling his scientific theories out into the real world in order to persuade us that we didn't really understand some of the things that seemed most familiar to us. In his new book, Spent, Miller asks why we continuously buy all that stuff that we don't really need? Miller's answer is twofold. Yes, human animals have been physically and psychologically honed over the eons this to crave certain types of things over others to further their chances at survival and reproduction. That's only half the answer, however. We must also consider "marketing," which is

The most important invention of the past two millennia because it is the only revolution that has ever succeeded in bringing real economic power to the people. . . . it is the power to make our means of production transform the natural world into a playground for human passions.

Is the modern version of marketing a good thing or a bad thing? The answer is yes.

On the upside it promises a golden age in which social institutions and markets are systematically organized on the basis of strong purple research to maximize human happiness. What science did for perception, marketing promises to do for production: it tests intuition and insight against empirical fact area market research uses mostly the same empirical tools as experimental psychology, but with larger research budgets, better-defined questions, more representative samples of people, and more social impact.

Here is a July 2009 interview of Geoffrey Miller by Geraldyne Doogue of the Australian Broadcast Network: Most of us are quite familiar with the downside of marketing. It encourages us to buy things we don't really need. But marketing doesn't merely clutter up our houses and garages; it corrupts our souls:

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Actors complain: too much sex in porn videos

The NYT has published an article featuring actors featured in pornography videos. They are complaining that the industry is not making films that allow them to display their acting talents. Too much sex. Was it ever different? Apparently, yes:

Vivid, one of the most prominent pornography studios, makes 60 films a year. Three years ago, almost all of them were feature-length films with story lines. Today, more than half are a series of sex scenes, loosely connected by some thread — “vignettes” in the industry vernacular — that can be presented separately online. Other major studios are making similar shifts.

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Woody Allen on raising secular humanists

Woody Allen discusses raising his children as secular humanists:

We've raised them, not in any particular religion, but as what we call secular humanists – meaning we've taught them to be honest and kind, and to have respect for human dignity and the rights of other people. And, apart from that, we're trying to keep their minds as open as they can be. We're trying to educate them by giving them as much information as we can, so that when they grow up, they will be competent to make their own evaluations about what they believe.

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