"Why are we suddenly having an explosion in guys asking for vasectomies?" This is a question Dr. Steven Jones' staff asks him a lot lately, the Cleveland Urologist told CNN. Dr. Marc Goldstein, a New York-based urologist in practice for over thirty years, told the network, "I have never seen anything like this. When things started to go south in the stock market, then the vasectomy consults went north." The folks over at vasectomy.com no doubt were pleased for snagging that most awesome domain name. Little did they know a bad economy would provide their payday; the number of appointment requests through their site spiked 30 percent in January.

It's not just men who are suddenly concerned about their family's future. Consumers are spending more money on all types of contraceptives, according to the Nielson Company. Indeed, the embrace of family planning appears to be a critical step in financial planning. Nielson said sales of over-the-counter contraceptives jumped a dazzling 10.2 percent in the first two months of the year. The company reports that, while other retail sales slip, condom sales jumped up 5% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 6% in January, compared with the same time periods last year. Sales of Essure, a non-invasive, irreversible birth control method for women were up also, 28% over last year's sales.

Planned Parenthood clinics, the leading provider of contraception in the country, also report increased traffic over the past several months, according to Tait Sye, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "There's no question we're seeing increased traffic at most clinics, and many clinics report an increase in new patients as well," Sye said. A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa told the local TV news the number of women in the state asking for access to birth control is up nearly 40 percent.

So much for contraception being a non-sequitur in discussions about the economy. Just a couple of month ago, Congressional Republicans, fresh from their first meeting with Obama, stood snickering before the press about the inclusion of a family planning provision in the president's emergency economic plan. What does birth control have to do with the economy? they chided, suggesting Obama might be trying to sneak a liberal social program by them. Minority Leader Representative John Boehner protested, "Regardless of where anyone stands on taxpayer funding for contraceptives and the abortion industry, there is no doubt that this once little-known provision in the congressional Democrats' spending plan has NOTHING (emphasis his) to do with fixing the economy and creating more American jobs. " It was lost on the Republicans, many of whom oppose contraception for ‘moral’ reasons, that rational people facing hazardous economic times need to control the number of children they have to support. And, by the way, that kind of responsible behavior is good for the economy which can hardly afford the social programs to support families who can't make it on their own. (Republicans are supposedly for responsibility except...when they're not.)

Boehner might want to check in with that Joe the Plumber demographic who, if recent trends are any indicator, not only considers contraception a great form of protection against uncertain times but is opting for the permanent form at that. (And for any Joe without insurance that vasectomy will cost between $500-$1000, probably twice as much as his tax cut. The contraception provision in the stimulus package would have extended coverage for this kind of contraceptive and others to those earning 200% above the federal poverty level. So Joe, when you lay out that stack of cash don't forget to thank Boehner who thinks your decision to prevent an unaffordable pregnancy is too silly to cover.)

The Salt Lake Tribune recently interviewed a local couple in their twenties who see pregnancy prevention as key to their family's survival. They have two kids, 2 years old and 3 months, and were attending a state insurance fair to sign up for health insurance. He works two part-time jobs and she stays at home caring for the kids. Money is a constant worry-- he foregoes medications to pay for diapers and the electric bill. She explained that they are being "way more careful" about preventing pregnancy. The couple is hoping to qualify for government insurance in order to get birth control. "I just worry if the economy is going to get worse. I would starve myself before my kids [go hungry]. What if it gets so bad I don't have food for them?" Cut to eye-rolling Congressional Republicans.

Family planning is nothing less than a foundation on which many Americans build sturdy, responsible lives. Regardless of political affiliation, that's exactly what many are struggling to do right now. Those who have lost their jobs and health insurance are in great need of family planning. They're also, alarmingly, the ones with the least access to it. Meanwhile Republicans openly mock attempts to include family planning as a part of the economic recovery, actively work to defund Planned Parenthood, promote policies that encourage health care workers to deny patients access to contraception, and defend programs that withhold basic information about contraception to sexually active teens. (Then they're baffled to find the number of teen parents spiked during the Bush years.)

Family planning is an American family value and, as national data indicate, something we rely on in our greatest times of need. Attacks on our right to plan our families shred the social safety net. The Republicans are welcome to titter and heckle the next time a proposal to support family planning crosses their desks. Doing so will only reveal how astoundingly out of touch they are from American's real lives and needs.

It's poetic that the most effective solution to the world's greatest problems is giving people more control of their lives. It's also, amazingly, the least expensive choice. Check out this great new 3for1 campaign launched this week by EngenderHealth.

It's been a busy few weeks for the Vatican. First, it staked out a new frontier of creepiness by picking on a nine-year old for having an abortion after being raped and impregnated by her step-father. The Vatican supported the excommunication of her doctors and mother by her local bishop. According to the Telegraph UK, the girl's pregnancy and abuse were revealed "when the girl complained of stomach pains and told officials she had been abused since the age of six."

It must have been a familiar reflex for the Vatican, reprising its rich history of protecting pedophiles while heeping ignominy on the victim, in this case a little girl. While the Vatican sanctions the ex-communications of mothers of rape victims and the doctors who care for them, it's telling whom it spares. Pope Benedict recently lifted the ex-communication of Richard Williamson, a British bishop who has used his high station in the Church to broadcast denials of the holocaust. He claimed historical evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed." According to the Jerusalem Post, "Williamson has said that only 200,000-300,000 Jews died during World War II and that gas chambers were a fiction."

Early this week, the Vatican, once again, planted its flag in the nation of Crazy. Pope Benedict took advantage of his trip to Africa, home to the world's highest HIV/AIDS rates, to discourage condom use and suggest that condoms help spread HIV. For several years now, Bishops in Africa have pleaded with the Vatican to reconsider its inexplicable opposition to condom use, even for married couples, to protect against the disease. The Pope finally put all hopes to rest, becoming the first pope in thirty years to speak out publicly against the use of condoms to prevent HIV infection. Sixty percent of the world's population living with HIV/AIDS is in Africa. Pope Benedict explained the spread of HIV/AIDS "cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems," mystifying scientists, medical professionals, HIV/AIDS experts, as well as all people with common sense.

This week, the California Orange County Board of Supervisors moved to suspend it’s contract with Planned Parenthood, totaling $300,000 dollars, because the organization offers comprehensive reproductive health services, including abortion. The contract was for Planned Parenthood to provide education to thousands of teenagers on contraception, abstinence and STDs. The total suspension of county money was approved despite the fact that abortion comprises only 3% of the services that Planned Parenthood offers and that none of the public funding was used to support the abortion care it provides. The Orange County Board move is just the latest in a national effort by anti-contraception forces to malign Planned Parenthood. The goal of anti-contraception operatives is to block it from receiving public grants thereby eliminating access to contraception and education for hundreds of thousands of Americans. Just yesterday, anti-contraception forces suffered a setback when Congress rejected family planning foe Senator David Vitter’s amendment to the appropriations bill that would have defunded Planned Parenthood of all federal money.

The public outrage that erupted after the release of the Bush administration's "refuse to care" regulation was thunderous. Opponents of contraception championed the regulation which would allow healthcare workers to deny patients care to any health care service the worker objected to, including contraception, regardless of patient need. Yesterday, in the Federal Register, the Obama administration announced the regulation will be rescinded and called for public comment. It's important that our support for the reversal of the regulation be expressed just as clearly as our opposition to the regulation was. Doing that is super simple. You can go to this page on Regulations.gov and submit your opinion online (choose the yellow speech bubble icon), via email, or land mail. All comments are due by April 9.

Senator DeMint’s groundbreaking idea to make birth control 900% more expensive for the demographic most at risk of unplanned pregnancy and abortion was rejected yesterday by Congress. The Affordable Birth Control Act was included in the appropriations bill as fix for the problem of skyrocketing contraceptive prices on college campuses. The sudden spike in birth control costs stemmed from Bush’s Federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 that removed college health centers from discount drug programs. Immediately after the removal, birth control prices spiked. In some cases women who previously paid $5 a month soon after Bush’s move were paying $50 a month for the same medication. DeMint’s proposal that Congress rejected yesterday would have removed the pricing fix and kept the costs inflated and contraception comfortably out of reach for those most in need of it.

Anti-contraception Senator Jim DeMint moved this week to increase birth control prices as much as 900% for college women. You'd think the Senator, who professes to be against abortion, would want to make contraception as accessible as possible for women in college since they're the demographic with the highest rate of unintended pregnancy and the highest rate of abortion. College women typically don't have much income and are also disproportionately likely to be uninsured; it's not the pool of people you want to force to "splurge" if they want to use protection. "We do know that high fees act as a barrier to obtaining care. That is classically understood in campus health services," explained Claudia Covello, director at the University of California-Berkeley's health center, to Time magazine.

The DeMint move is just the latest, and we're talking by minutes, in a month of repeated attacks against access to contraception. Obama wants common ground, but the current Republican cabal wants to stomp its feet on the fringe. So routine now are the attacks on contraception that the anti-contraception crew will use any excuse, like the aunt who dolls up the house for every minor holiday. The anti-contraception team dresses up their attacks on birth control in whatever polemic is being celebrated that day even if, like that "Kiss Me I'm Irish" shirt worn by your aunt's chihuahua, the claim is not true at all.

When Prevention First legislation was introduced in the Senate it consisted of proposals that would improve access to contraception. And yet it was referred to by contraception opponents as an "abortion bailout." When the stimulus package included a simple budget-neutral provision to streamline state billing procedures for contraceptive services, the Family Research Council called it a "political payoff". Now, DeMint through an amendment hopes to remove the Affordable Birth Control Act, which requires no expenditure but simply reinstates college health centers and other safety net clinics back into the discounted drug pricing program. The polemic decoration DeMint uses is that lowering the cost of birth control for college age women is an "earmark" for Planned Parenthood.

The problem with birth control prices on college started where all modern problems begin, with the Bush administration. In 2005, Bush used the Federal Deficit Reduction Act to exclude college health centers and some safety net health clinics, including about a quarter of Planned Parenthoods, from discounted drug programs. And wouldn't you know it, the most common drug each of these health centers provide is contraceptives. When birth control prices starting soaring after the change, in some instances going from $5 to $50 for a month's supply, anti-contraception operatives played dumb. The Bush team claimed they did not intended for the law to remove college health centers and private birth control clinics from the list of those eligible for discount drug pricing.

Over that last few years when simple solutions were offered to remedy this "unintentional" act, like asking HHS to work out a simple correction and introducing legislation to reinstate the health centers into the discount drug program, it was more than a little suspicious that those pleading innocence were unwilling to back a remedy. In fact, the amount of effort the anti-contraception team has put into protecting this "unintentional" scale back in contraceptive access is telling. It appears some mistakes are really worth fighting for. In the most recent attempt to stop the "unintentional" act from being corrected, DeMint is now claiming that by reestablishing the prices discount for birth control these health centers will keep the cost-savings for themselves and charge women the same inflated prices. Maybe he is confusing college health centers with our banking system. The health centers are not known for predatory business practices. And if profit were a motive for the not-for profit Planned Parenthood someone might want to point out to its financial team that determining the price they charge for birth control based on a woman's ability to pay, as the organization does, is not the fastest route to the top of the capitalist pyramid.

The appropriations bill is being voted on today. Call your Senators today and tell them to vote against DeMint's Amendment 649

Are you a "fake" Catholic? Don't worry, the majority of Catholics are. That's at least according to the religious right which has taken to doling out titles like "alleged Catholic." The most recent Catholic to earn the epithet is Kathleen Sebelius --current Governor of Kansas and Obama's choice for Secretary of HHS. Her nomination has drawn fire from right wing Catholic groups including the Catholic League and the American Life League, which refers to her as an "alleged Catholic." After the pro-life group Catholics United came to her defense, Life News, an "anti-abortion" online news site, labeled it "fake Catholic."

According to these extremists, to be a "real" Catholic one must agree with the U.S. Bishops, and through them, the Vatican, on every issue, but especially on abortion. Kathleen Sebelius is pro-choice, as are the majority of U.S. Catholics. But Bishops who don't live in the real world where people juggle complicated lives, are free to be moral scolds. For these doctrinal purists, you're either with us or against us. And lately the Bishops enemy's list grows: John Kerry and recently Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, among the high value targets. And so they oppose Sebelius who the archbishop of Kansas City said should refrain from receiving communion.

The sad irony is that the Bishops end up in cahoots with pro-life extremists who shun even those fighting to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies. Sebelius, for instance, while pro-choice, has achieved many of the goals the pro-life community supposedly endorses. While Governor she has focused on preventing unwanted pregnancy, resulting in a dramatic 10% decline in abortion rates during her time in office. (Genuine pro-lifers, those who actually seek to lower abortion rates, will find much in her record to commend.)

But results matter little for the religious right, and so they wage war on her nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services (and on any group that supports her). No matter that she expanded access to adoption and provided pregnancy support for low-income women. No matter that Sebelius has a nuanced view of abortion, one that differentiates between personal morality and public necessity. Sebelius says, "Personally I believe abortion is wrong. However, I disagree with the suggestion that criminalizing women and their doctors is an effective means of achieving the goal of reducing the number of abortions in our nation." Sebelius may well be an interesting figure for the times. She appears to understand both sides of this fierce struggle, and, better than most, might be able to push ahead a common ground approach. This is among the qualities that makes her a particularly important candidate for this important job.

It should come as no surprise that the locked-in-a-time-capsule groups attacking Sebelius are the very same resisting every effort to reach common ground. They appear too invested in their struggle to actually embrace solutions. But their very resistance may have advanced the common ground case, which has been swept in with President Obama. The attacks on Sebelius has prompted the nascent common ground movement to take a step together. Both sides have come together to defend her. The pro-choice side welcomes Sebelius. Leading Christian leaders "dedicated to common ground solutions to reduce the number of abortions in America" spoke out today via press release stating,

"[Sebelius] is a Democratic Governor who has been elected by wide margins in a state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats two to one. Her nomination has already won not only the support of Democrats, but also praise from Republican pro-life senators such as Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts and governors such as Sonny Perdue of Georgia. Her record and her relationships with leaders in both parties are proof that pro-choice and pro-life leaders can work together to advance a pro-family agenda."

And yet, in a relentless, ad hominen attack, the religious right dwells on circumstantial connections, hoping to imply dark motives. Kathleen Sebelius once stood in a room with an abortion provider who won, in a fundraising auction, a chance to meet her. Seems guilt by acquaintance is the right's new cudgel, so be careful who you Facebook friend.

For Sebelius' upcoming Senate confirmation hearing, the religious right has chosen Senator Tom Coburn as its hatchet man. Coburn is the redmeat "pro-lifer," the kind with a decidedly pro-death streak: he's called for abortion providers to get the death penalty, leads campaigns against the condom (in doing so he also held up legislation that helped uninsured women dying of cancer pay for treatment) and opposes the cancer-preventing HPV vaccine among other career highlights. (Even though he's a Baptist, on these points, Coburn qualifies as a "real" Catholic.)

If falling in line with the US Bishops is a requirement for being a "real" Catholic, that's bad news for Catholics, as well as for the Church which, on this issue, seems to ever more devoutly move to the fringe of American life. According to a poll of Catholic voters taken by Catholics for a Free Choice in the 2008 election, 73% say Catholic politicians should be under no religious obligation to vote on issues the way the bishops recommend. And like Sebelius, the majority of Catholics are pro-choice (58%). They vehemently disagree with the Church on birth control - the church opposes every form but the as-ineffective-as-it-is-unpopular natural family planning. In fact, three-quarters of Catholics want health insurance plans to cover contraception. Nearly 80% of Catholics oppose pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions. A comfortable majority, 64%, oppose abstinence-only education, another favorite of the moralizing bishops, and their activist enablers. Based on these numbers, the Church might want to reconsider its campaign to deny pro-choice Catholic public officials the eucharist. The Church may refer to pro-choice politicians as extremists but the majority of Catholic congregants agree with pro-choice politicians like Sebelius on every one of these issues.

Sebelius thus represents the mainstream view of Catholic believers. And so the Catholic clergy and its political arm, the so-called 'anti-abortion" movement, misleads and incites. It creates a caricature. This may be effective with some, but they are fewer and fewer. Indeed, deriding moderate politicians like Sebelius marks the Church as out of step with the majority of Catholics. The Church has been reduced to focusing on issues that most Catholics, and most Americans, no longer consider most important, if they ever did.

In the last election, abortion didn't even make it in the top ten on the list of Catholic voters' priorities. Instead, the most important issues for Catholic Americans were, in order of importance: improving the nation's economy; protecting the US from terrorism; resolving the war in Iraq; making health care more affordable; and protecting social security. The Church has been noticeably absent in the public discourse on these issues making its rabid attacks on even moderate pro-choice officials seems all the more extraneous. (Those who would argue that Catholic hospitals help make healthcare more affordable by offering charity care should know that a study showed that non-sectarian hospitals were three times more likely to provide charity care than religious hospitals--the bulk of which are Catholic.)

Meanwhile, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops returns to the same well. As Time magazine exposed last week, it has been staging a massive campaign against a non-existent abortion bill--a costly and useless campaign intended to foment anger among the trusting faithful. Campaigning against a fictional bill instead of focusing on the real-life struggles of ever-more-pressured Americans. (And, while fiddling with the sex lives of Americans, the Bishops have failed to tend to their own business. A survey by researchers at Villanova University found 85 percent of Roman Catholic dioceses responding had recently discovered embezzlement of church money. One in Delray Beach, Fla., involved two priests who spent $8.6 million on trips to Las Vegas, dental work, property taxes and other expenses over four decades.)

With campaigns like the one against Sebelius, the Catholic right wing is succeeding at making the Church less and less relevant to the majority of the faithful. But then perhaps the church realizes the deep danger to the religious right posed by the rise of Catholic moderates like Sebelius.