The Pill and women’s wages

An Ortho Tri-Cyclen dial pack



FORBES 3/30/2012
Meghan Casserly, Forbes Staff

The short-term and far-reaching economic effects of your $50 a month Ortho Tri Cyclen

A new working paper from the University of Michigan draws another heavy underline on the importance of access to birth control for women’s long-term earning potential. After cross-examining wage and education data for women born between 1943 and 1954, economist Martha Bailey estimates that one third of women’s wage gains since the 1960s were made possible by the Pill.

Economists, sociologists, and just plain women have long understood the correlation between contraception and career, but it’s been difficult to put numbers to. “The difficulty of parsing the Pill’s effect on women’s careers relates to the timing of its appearance,” said Bailey, the chief researcher of the working paper in a statement. “By cause or coincidence, the pill’s diffusion coincided with important changes in norms and ideas about women’s work and the end of the baby boom.”

But it’s clear that as the Pill provided younger women with more control over childbearing, the number of women seeking higher education and traditionally male-dominated careers spiked. The group most affected were women with access to contraceptives at the age of 18, whose college plans were not derailed by motherhood. These women invested in their education and careers and were rewarded with what Bailey calls “remarkable wage gains over their lifetimes.”

Researchers married data on women’s wages and education from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women, with 21 interviews of more than 5,000 women, focusing on those born between 1943 and 1954. For these women, early access to the pill varied. After the Enovid birth control pill was approved in 1960, not all states prescribed the contraceptive to unmarried women without parental permission. As a result, some women had early access to the Pill at 18 while others waited until 21. Early access laws doubled contraceptive pill use among women between the ages of 18 and 20. Pill use by age 18 was 140% higher, and by age 20 was 43% higher than the national average.

Bailey and her colleagues tracked the wages of women born in this critical period to measure the impact of early access on lifetime earnings. The results, which will be published in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper in the July issue of American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, show that women in states where the pill was accessible at 18 were making 8% more each year by the 1980s than their counterparts who hadn’t had access until later.

Economist Nancy Folbre, a professor at Amherst college with an eye on the intersection between family planning and the economy says she finds Bailey’s new research encouraging, particularly because it looks at early access laws and their far-reaching effects. “It exploits differences in state policies to show the impact of public policy,” she says, a particularly salient point given the ongoing and often arduous debate over women’s health being waged this election year.

Of the 30% increase in women’s wages the study attributes to early access to the Pill, two-thirds of that came from these women having greater workplace experience. The rest came from women’s access to education and their resulting choices to enter high-earning, male-dominated fields.

While encouraging, particularly in light of the ongoing and arduous contraception debate raging this election year, this most recent research only supports the position of economists and sociologists who’ve long asserted the “Power of the Pill” on the economics of womanhood, most famously economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz. This isn’t Bailey’s first time at the rodeo either. She is widely published on the issue; her 2006 paper “More Power To The Pill: The Impact of Contraceptive Freedom on Women’s Life Cycle Labor Supply famously highlighted the impact of family planning on women’s access to education, higher paying jobs and a lifetime of better pay

But the Pill’s economic powers are further reaching than the paychecks of the women who now number 50% of the workforce. According to Folbre, long-term benefits of contraception include the reduction of both unplanned births and abortions. In a 2009 op-ed for the Times, she pointed readers to 2007 research by Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine that estimated the cost-savings from each averted birth at $6,800. At roughly 1.2 million abortions performed each year, that’s more than $8 billion.

“Access to birth control is a health issue, and it’s also a pocketbook issue,” says Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, who I’ll leave with the last word. “This study confirms what millions of women already know: our opportunities and options are expanded when we have access to birth control. That’s why recent attacks on access to birth control are far outside the mainstream and will backfire politically.”

OTC oral contraceptives in the U.S?

Combined birth control pills dial pack

Reproductive Health Advocates Urge FDA To Allow Nonprescription Access to Birth Control Pills

March 23, 2012 — Women's health advocates at an FDA hearing on Friday will ask agency officials to include oral contraceptives among the medications they are considering for nonprescription access, Bloomberg reports.

The two-day public hearing, which began Thursday, aims to assess whether certain prescription medications can be safely moved to nonprescription status. The changes are intended to reduce costs and increase access to the drugs.

In a statement released last month, FDA focused on four types of drugs related to chronic conditions: asthma, blood pressure, cholesterol and migraine treatments. According to Bloomberg, FDA has not taken a public position on nonprescription access to birth control pills.

Eleanor Schwarz, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, said that although contraception "has been a politically charged topic," when the issue is considered "within the purely health-and-science realm, we understand it saves people's lives." She added, "All available contraceptives are much safer for women's health than an undesired pregnancy." Schwarz led a research team that tested computerized kiosks to help a woman determine whether she should take birth control pills by assessing factors that might make the pills inadvisable, such as smoking or severe migraines. "This program identifies women who can safely use hormonal contraception as well, or better than, most doctors," Schwarz said (Edney, Bloomberg, 3/23).

Personal comment: I understand wanting to make access easier for women who need and can safely use hormonal birth control. However given the number of law suits against pharmaceutical companies by women who claim to have had serious reactions from using hormonal contraceptives I think it would be a terrible idea to allow sale of oral contraceptives over the counter and go to self-screening rather than screening of patients that is supposed to be performed by a doctor to find medical conditions that would make hormonal contraceptives a bad choice before writing her an Rx for them.

Spring and latex diaphragms

A Vernal Equinox celebration at Stonehenge

The vernal equinox: On Tuesday March 20, 2012 at 5:14 UT the sun was directly over the Earth’s equator and the day/night were of equal length. It was also the first day of Spring in the northern hemisphere. The ancient Saxons in Northern Europe worshiped the Goddess Oestre (from which the name Eostre a.k.a. Eastre or Easter is derived) at the time of the Spring Equinox. The Goddess Easter represents the sunrise, springtime and fertility, the renewal of life. Anglo-Saxons made offerings of colored eggs to her at the Vernal Equinox and placed them at graves especially, probably as a charm of rebirth. Only later did the Christians appropriate the name for themselves and graft their religion onto the pagan celebration.

No Valentines Day party pregnancies: Speaking of fertility, returning readers will remember in my entry for February 17th - about Adolph’s Valentines Day party - there were three St Lucy’s girls who were fertile when they were acting as Subs for the evening; in pointes, vaginal hooks and eternity collars for the delight of his male guests. Even though they all have GyneFix IUDs inserted there was still the possibility, however slight, that one or more could find herself preggers. Not that that would have been something that couldn’t have been easily taken care of, but with multiple partners the girl wouldn’t have immediately known who the father was and there would have been the time and expense of the termination and replacing her GyneFix. I’m pleased to say that the three got their periods although they were all a few days late. We think the reason was because the excitement and stress of the party delayed ovulation four or five days and consequently their periods.

Spring Break and the contraceptive sponge: Some woefully unprepared women college students are here on Spring Break. One who lives here in Vegas is home and trying to connect with older college men in town for a good time. We saw her this past week, as a clinic walk-in, who wanted EC when her Today sponge disintegrated while still inside her after a weekend of heavy use. It was bad timing on her part as she had come off her pills because she forgot to go for the exam before she could get an Rx for another years worth of her contraceptive and she was fertile. I got all the pieces of foam out of her and a Gyn wrote her a new Rx for her pills and also had her take ella which usually prevents conception from unprotected sex and is effective for up to 5 days after the first encounter of concern.

Diaphragms and latex fetishists: Since the first of this year we have seen a fourfold increase in the request for the fitting of diaphragms as the up-market escort trade has discovered older rich client’s fetish for vaginal latex. As the economy worsened with the financial and real estate collapses of 2008 wealthy male clients seemed to want to relive times from their youth in the early 60s, before birth control pills were widely accepted and AIDS was unknown. A time when the use of contraceptive diaphragms was the most popular reversible method of birth control for sexually active women. Now male fetishists are actively seeking the very few young escorts who use diaphragms for contraception or who will insert them for vaginal latex encounters, which is far more likely.

Until 2009 the use of latex diaphragms as part of women latex fetishists wardrobes or as a requirement to meet their male partners tactile experience needs was virtually unknown, at least in the western U.S. And, as the demand for latex diaphragms began to increase in this niche market the major U.S. maker, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen, switched from latex to silicone for their most popular style, the All-Flex, and discontinued entirely their coil spring style leaving the British Lamberts Reflexions flat spring as the only latex diaphragm generally available.

While silicone diaphragms have several advantages, a much longer service life, are less likely to contribute to infections and can be used safely by couples with latex allergies, the drawbacks are considerable for latex fetishists because the silicone domes are less stretchy and don’t conduct heat nearly as well as latex so the tactile experience for vaginal latex fetishists is not nearly as pleasurable. To make the shortage of latex diaphragms worse the latex Reflexions flat spring diaphragm is not generally suitable as a fetish fantasy device because the rim is very stiff and folds in a single plane making it nearly impossible and extremely painful to under-thrust thus leaving no latex diaphragm suitable (except perhaps for a few masochists) for misuse by mischievous latex fetishists with breeding fantasies.

To fill the void for a contraceptive fantasy device acceptable to latex fetishists Gepetto has again teamed up with Labia Labs to produce a line of latex diaphragms with coil spring rims in standard sizes from 55mm to 90mm in 5mm increments. He decided against producing an All-Flex arcing spring rim device because there were patent licensing costs and an arcing spring rim is needed primarily for women with lax muscle tone which is of no concern to Gepettos target market, escorts with fetish specialties and some of the tightest and strongest vaginal grips in the world. The devices will be custom made and half sizes (2.5mm) can be provided by special request. The Labia Labs Latex (known as 3L) line of diaphragms is sold exclusively through our women’s clinic and only to escorts working for the casino and the Towel Girls at Splash, the services which Pirate operates for us. Exclusivity of the 3L coil spring diaphragm gives our girls a significant advantage over other escorts serving the hard core latex fetish community as coil spring rim latex diaphragms are otherwise difficult to obtain since they have to be special ordered a costly and time consuming process.

The face of the Republican Party

Old, fat, white, misogynist Republican leader

Rush Limbaugh: Rush, a man, who has considerable influence on conservative Republicans - which speaks volumes about the Republican Party -, enjoys attacking ordinary people who have different views that he does and who for all practical purposes can’t fight back. He tried it again last week when he savaged Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student, with misogynistic and vitriolic comments and misrepresented the position of Ms. Fluke in her testimony before congress. The blowback has been severe, (So far he has lost 7 sponsors for his radio show.) though probably not sufficient to cripple his style for long. He is a terrible spokesperson for Republican causes and I hope he continues his garbage-mouth tactics at least through the national elections.

Obama recasts birth control debate on own terms

"WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama waded deep into the culture wars of American politics by rushing to the defense of a female law student Rush Limbaugh verbally attacked.

And by doing so, the president cast the contraception controversy raging in America as an issue of women's rights, not religious freedom.

Friday's telephone call of support to Sandra Fluke was nothing short of an election-year appeal to a crucial voting bloc — and it also had the political benefit of forcing Republicans to choose between siding with the president and taking what critics view as an extreme position to counter him.”

For the complete article click HERE.

****

Have You No Shame, Rush?
NYT OP-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd March 3, 2012

“AS a woman who has been viciously slashed by Rush Limbaugh, I can tell you, it’s no fun.

At first you think, if he objects to the substance of what you’re saying, why can’t he just object to the substance of what you’re saying? Why go after you in the most personal and humiliating way?

Then, once you accept the fact that he has become the puppet master of the Republican Party by stirring bloodlust (earning enough to bribe Elton John to play at his fourth wedding), you still cringe at the thought that your mom might hear the ugly things he said.

Now he’s brutalizing a poised, wholesome-looking 30-year-old Georgetown law student as a “slut,” “a prostitute” and “round-heeled” simply for testifying to lawmakers about wanting the school to amend its health insurance to cover contraception.”

For the complete article click HERE

Pointe shoe quiz March 2, 2012

Who is the maker of these shoes?

Returning readers have seen this photo before. As I wrote in an earlier entry “I think this image is so lovely as it is evocative of both the beauty of the shoes design and the extensive training required to wear them confidently and successfully.”

Boot techs and boot sex

Contemplating the perversity of inanimate objects

Gepetto’s ballet boot techs: The guys fit the custom boots Gepetto crafts and sells, custom adjusting the shanks and padding and for some women they are the first to penetrate them in their new boots getting their ‘boot cherry’. St Lucy’s AST slang now includes ‘boot-dicks’ = Gepetto’s boot techs and ‘boot-cherry’ for a girl who is not a virgin, but is fucked for the first time while standing in her new ballet-boots. For a St Lucy’s girl being penetrated while lying on her back or on all fours in ballet boots doesn’t count as having her boot cherry picked.

The techs have medical degrees and specialize in orthopedics and especially the leg, foot and ankle. It didn’t start out that way, but in the last several years because of the number of orthopedic problems encountered in women wanting to wear ballet boot – many of whom are turned away because they couldn’t wear them safely – and especially in professional KP boot fighters it became obvious for his financial and his customer’s physical safety he needed medical specialists doing the fitting and adjusting of his custom ballet-boots. A job as a boot tech for a board certified Orthopod isn’t an obvious career move, but for a young strong virile male who likes young tight pussy it’s hard (no pun intended) to think of a better niche, even in sex drenched Vegas.

The Okamoto 004: A few girls under the age of 16 are fitted with Gepetto’s ballet boots even knowing they will outgrow them in six months, so you know their parents have money! Fortunately none are from St Lucy’s because of the 4 years of pointe requirement. Gepetto has a rule that his boot techs must all use condoms if the woman he’s fitting asks to see how well her new boots feel during ballet-sex. That service is called a ‘field trial’ and covered in the cost of the adjustment visit(s) which is built into the starting price of the standard (unarmored) boots at $2,500 per pair.

Condoms are required because even if the girl says she is on the pill young women aren’t too good at remembering to take them and Gepetto doesn’t want to make the headlines by being involved in paternity problems. The condoms are also for the techs protection since most of the professional KP boot fighters are promiscuous (Go figure!) so the possibility of STIs is more likely while field trialing with a professional boot fighter. The techs use Okamoto 004 Condoms which the guys say are amazing and feel as though they are wearing almost nothing,

Gepetto started out with only one board certified Orthopedic specialist, but found that even as virile as he is he couldn’t keep up the level of service required given the number of field trials he was expected to perform, so a second hunky orthopod was brought in to spread the load which has worked a lot better, especially when there is a KP boot competition coming up and the professional fighters are in town and want their boots checked. Well, some of us are just curious about the new tech and want to see how good he really is. A really good tech will check his patients foot health; the length of her nails, her calluses, ankle mobility, toe pads and give her a foot massage. It’s here that a tech must have a really good bedside manner to be successful. When Mike the original Orthopod gives me a fitting by the time I put my feet in my boots and lace them up I’m fully aroused, nipples hard and erect, pelvis tingling, nearly panting with desire and the gusset of my tights is soaked with my natural lube. Of course I insert my Oves or diaphragm ahead of going for my fitting appointment otherwise I’d be too aroused and fully tented so my cervix would be too deep to reach to place the Oves or diaphragm correctly.

Latex grab and the Okamoto 004: The other day I went to have a boot adjustment of a pair of Gepetto’s lightly armored KP boots I’d had refurbished. I wear that style when I am duty manager at the casino and while the outer leather and heel blades were fine the inner padding needed replacing. Knowing there was a new boot tech, Adam, who had been on tech rotation for the last three months I was interested in how he would handle my fitting so I booked an appointment with him and I prepared for a field trial by double bagging, wearing a flat spring latex Reflections over the Oves cap I had screwed down tight on my cervix. I was CD 18 and luteal so there was no danger of him impregnating me even if all three methods (condoms, diaphragm and cap) failed, but I wanted to have some fun with him.

Adam had read my file and knew I used to compete at the senior level as a KP boot fighter and still sparred and use my blades occasionally in the casino to slit the laces of some drunken boot-chick who wants to fight. So he paid particular attention to my ankle strength and flexibility as well as my nails and calluses and said I have lovely feet for a ballet dancer and I think he’s right considering that I have been in pointe shoes for a large part of the last 25 years. He was particularly impressed that I didn’t have bunions, a fact that I attribute to good genes and trying to wear properly fitting pointe shoes. He gave me the most wonderful foot massage before I put on my toe pads and pulled down the convertible feet of my tights over my padded toes and then put on my socks. I wear socks in my boots over my pads and tights so that I can take my socks off and still fit in my boots when I’m menstrual and my feet swell. Once I had warmed up my legs and feet with a few minutes of stretches I zipped the boots up then adjusted the laces until my insteps were compressed by the padded tongues and laces holding my arches against the insoles covering the titanium shanks while he watched.

I walked around in my boots getting used to the wonderful feel, how comfortable they were with the weight I can put on my heels and my weight pressing my insteps down tighter in my boots until I took a little of my weight on the tips of my toes compressing my gel-pads into the quarter of a stress ball in the toe boxes used to cushion the tips of the wearer’s toes. Then I asked Adam for a field trial to make sure the padding didn’t’ shift. I knew it wouldn’t because I’ve had other pairs of Gepetto’s boots refurbished, but I wanted a plausible excuse to cover my lust for Adam to give me an orgasm penetrating me from behind while I stood bent over the short barre in his adjustment Sallé.

I’d worn a single button closure mid thigh coat-dress in lime green linen by Chanel over a sports top and tights so it was just a matter of him opening that one button and I shrugged out of my dress and was immediately down to practice clothes. He hung my dress over the far end of the barre and rolled down my tights as I unzipped him and carefully unpacked his erection from its cup while he snapped on nitrile exams gloves and fingered me caressing my clitoris which was swollen with blood and ready to play. Then he caressed my engorged labia and inserted two fingers into me and I quivered as he caressed the ring of nerves surrounding my entrance and felt the rim of my diaphragm high up in my post-pubic vault. He asked what type it was and I told him it was a latex flat spring that was the hardest type to under-thrust and he smiled pulled his fingers out and reached for the condoms.

I watched as he tore open the packet pulled out the 004 and rolled it on to his rock hard erection. His tip was already dripping pre-ejaculate which immediately began collecting in the small reservoir tip. I had a moment to admire his erection glistening in its lightly lubricated latex sheath before he turned me around had me bend over and hold on to the barre. Adam is a big man. He had me spread my legs in second position so he could stand between them and when he gently spread my labia he found I was just the right height in 7” heels that he could position his tip against my entrance w/o having to bend his knees. Then he moved his hands to my hips to hold me steady and pushed. .

For me it’s always special the first time I take a new man and Adam was no exception! I tried to relax and gasped as his tip disappeared inside me and then with a single long smooth stroke he buried his entire length in me until his pelvis was hard against my tight buns and his tip slid along the latex dome of my diaphragm as it glanced off my cervix. And then the fun began! I had intentionally not lubed up with DiveGel+ knowing that half my natural lube would be collecting in the dome of my diaphragm and that all his lube would be contained in his sheath so that after a few strokes the lube on his condom would be gone and given how tight I am and how large he is there would be considerable friction between the two latex surfaces as he repeatedly thrust against the folds in the dome. It was just a matter of time before friction dried out the two latex surfaces causing the latex to heat and begin to stick together, a condition known as ‘latex grab’.

At that point a contraceptive failure of some sort was almost certain. There were several possibilities; the friction could wear a hole in his condom, or wear a hole in my diaphragm, or both, or pull the diaphragm off my cervix, or pull his condom off. My diaphragm was new and the dome much thicker than the condom and with the flat spring rim that only flexes in a single plane it would be very difficult for him to displace the rim from behind my cervix by latex grab alone. So I thought the most likely result would be either his condom would burst or that he would slip out of it. It seemed to me that because of the small reservoir and my very tight grip it was probable his pre-cum would be forced down along his shaft so the after a few minutes he would slip out, and that’s exactly what happened!

Fortunately for me he had just taken me to a mind-blowing G-spot orgasm where with a white knuckled grip I clutched the barre as he held me quivering, gasping, moaning, mewing, toes curled, calves cramping, back bowed and sweat dripping off me as he kept me in ecstasy until my vaginal contractions became so strong and friction of the two latex surfaces so great that he slid out of his sheath and came in me spewing his molten pearl against the stretchy rubber dome! When he came it felt as though he was trying to drive his tip through my diaphragm and into my uterus as he planted his seed in the depression the dome of my diaphragm made in my anterior fornix. When he finished he stayed inside me as we caught our breathe enjoying the few minutes of afterglow before he started to soften. Then he reached for the base of his sheathe as he pulled out and found it wasn’t there and when he withdrew he was bareback!. He was shocked and very apologetic and offered me Plan B One-Step or ella, but I told him I was fine with two effective barriers that hadn’t been displaced and besides I was Luteal and couldn’t be impregnated at this point in my cycle. He was so relieved! When I told him how I caused his 004 to come off he was fascinated, he hadn’t heard of latex grab and learned that when male and female barrier methods are used simultaneously the couple need to use plenty of a good water based intimate lube.

Murder case dismissed in death of newlywed wife

(CNN February 23, 2012) -- An Alabama judge on Thursday abruptly dismissed the murder case against a man accused in the scuba-diving death of his newlywed wife off Australia's coast. The decision from Judge Tommy Nail came near the end of the second full week of David Gabriel "Gabe" Watson's trial in Birmingham. The entire article can be found HERE

Personal comment: It was a difficult case to make and the way the judge summed it up the prosecution didn’t present a convincing case. Gabe Watson has married again. It would probably be a good idea if his new wife doesn’t go SCUBA diving with him.