Safe and Secure

It is reported today that women will soon be able to buy oral contraceptive pills over the Internet.

Good!

They should take it further.

Suppose you are sixteen and you need to get hold of the pill.  But you know that your parents would go mad, if they thought you’d been to the GP.  In that case you should be allowed to get them on-line.  At present only repeat prescriptions will be allowed.

We must get family planning and sex education to young people, so that we cut the vast numbers of unwanted pregnancies.

The result in Iowa might be early in the US Presidential Elections, but has Hilary Clinton lost already?

I’ve always been sceptical that a woman could be the US President. 

If you look at successful woman presidents or prime ministers, they have generally been exceptional woman who were in tune with the mood of the country; Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Gro Harlem Brundtland and Sirimavo Bandaranaike.

Now, Hilary Clinton is a formidable woman, but I can’t see her going down well in a lot of places in the United States. 

I was once asked to give my impressions on a company in the Mid-West for someone who was thinking of taking it over.  Let’s say, that a woman like me, who for that job dressed in cord skirts, flat shoes and shirts, was treated very much as a resented outsider, where business was concerned.  The takeover didn’t proceed and the US company went bust.

So Hilary might go down well in New England and California, but I can’t see her taking enough of the middle of the US to win.

And that is just because she is a woman.

Good luck to Obama, as if he can impress in Iowa, he must be good. 

Over here we know nothing of him, except what has been written in serious papers.  We get to know your leaders best, when they appear personally over here.  Some make gaffs, some impress and some appear to be boring.  No prizes for who made the most gaffs.

It’s Huckabee though that I look forward to as a President.  But only as a European.

Being a Baptist preacher brings baggage that must cause problems for the US.  Unless he’s a better preacher than many of that sect I’ve met.

I’ve read his entry on Wikipedia.

I wouldn’t vote for him.

Why?

His policies on Iraq, the death penalty, abortion, creationism, homosexuality, AIDS and gun control for a start.  His Wikipedia entry has nothing on his views on global warming.

But if he gets elected, he’ll be good for Europe, as even more Americans will emigrate this way and enrich our commerce and innovation.

America is in danger of digging itself into a big hole with it’s policies, inability to face up to global warming, reliance on foreign oil and manufacturing, obesity and a massive balance of payments problem.

The latter is the most worrying.  If the US was a company, the banks would put it down immediately.

This seems to be a really good idea, in that cervical cancer is something that every woman doesn’t want to go through. The BBC has an article that describes the vaccine and the pros and cons well.

But there are those dinosaurs, who think it will encourage underage sex.

I doubt it will, but probably the only way to totally stop underage sex is to lock all young people away until they are sixteen and keep the sexes totally separate.

As with abortion though, you can reduce it significantly, by more and more sex education.

I gave one example of the too close control in Checking on Students.

I remember one girl on my course, who had been brought up in a very religious home, where shandies, mini-skirts, lacy underwear and make-up were the sins of the Devil. She was bright and clever, but as she settled in to University, she tried to break every record in the book, with respect to the number of sexual partners and the amount of alcohol she could consume.

She turned out fine in the end, although she did fall out with her family.

Children will push the envelope, so as parents you must help them to do it as safely as possible.

So give your daughters that vaccine.

Abortion is a tricky subject and the number has increased again in the UK according to the BBC. Last year there were 193,700.

To me, that number is far too high.

Not for any moral reason, as if I had needed one I would have had it, but because so many people these days do not realise how easy it is to get pregnant and don’t take the necessary precautions.

According to the BBC article some NHS health trusts spend as low as eighteen pence on contraception services for the women in their area.  That is not enough to provide the pills, condoms and devices needed to stop unwanted pregnancies and cut down sexually transmitted diseases.

The first thing I would do is take the route used in places like Holland, where sex education is extensive and compulsory.  There should be no opt-out for any grounds whatsoever.

I was very frank with my children and told them in no uncertain terms, how you get pregnant and how easy it was for me.  (With my daughter, my first husband stopped using condoms and she arrived nine and half months later.) But I also told them how good sex was and to thoroughly enjoy it.

I know my daughter has taken exactly the same route with her children.  She also had a row with their school about the lack of sex education.

We were in a poor part of Spain a few years ago and there was a condom machine outside the pharmacy.  Where are the machines outside Boots? You get them in some public toilets, but these are declining in number and many are in toilets that are not really accessible by teenagers.

Access should be quick and easy and totally confidential.

My mother would have had a fit, if she had known I was on the pill at fifteen.  (I wasn’t but you get the drift.) So there must be confidential services even for those for whom sex is illegal.

I checked and you can buy condoms on-line.  But do companies like British Condoms sell to those who are under age?  They should.

I also think that we don’t treat condoms as fun.

How many know how to put them on without spoiling the moment? Not many.

And how many have pockets in their underwear where they always carry one, so it’s readily available? Not many.

I shouldn’t really talk about him, but my lover who got me into trouble, was an expert with a condom.  He should have made a promotional video for Durex.

A last thought though.

We read all the time in the papers about the problems of getting pregnant and the heart-rending tales of those who have spent all their savings on IVF.

Does this constant stream of publicity give the message to young people that getting pregnant is very difficult?

It’s not in most cases.