Adoption is a reproductive choice

When economically-strapped families abandoned their babies as foundlings, at least they had a choice. 

When women stopped giving birth at home, they moved into a system that made their choices for them.  A recent yahoo! news story describes how women around the world, still bleary from industrial-strength anesthetics, unwittingly signed over their illegitimate babies for adoption as late as 1987. 

In Spain, an 80-year-old nun, Sister Maria Gómez, became the first person accused of baby snatching in a scandal over the trafficking of 1,500 newborns in Spanish hospitals over four decades until the 1980s.

Did adoptive parents choose babies with health problems?  

Until midcentury, eugenics proponents did their best to forestall this issue.

After then, the answer depended on the adoptive family.

(A)t midcentury, when social workers were still reluctant to place less-than-perfect children, many ordinary families expressed both willingness and desire to raise many different kinds of children as their own….Well-educated adopters were particularly interested in identifying children who could take advantage of a college education.

How many of these babies were from out-groups such as Native Americans?  And where did those children go? 

Eighty-five percent of the Native children removed from their families from 1941 to 1967 were placed innon-Indian homes or institutions, said the Association on American IndianAffairs report. The aim, said White Hawk, was assimilation and extinction of the tribes as entities, as their younger generations were removed, year after year... 

Did biological parents choose to extinguish their own culture?

Kudos to the families who adopted special-needs children.  Even the families who adopted Native children may have thought they were doing good.  Still, the decision about whether to put the children into the system at all belonged to the parents, especially mothers, and the news story makes it clear that those women were deprived of their choice.

I hope we can all agree that adoption is loving response to an unintended pregnancy, and yet the choice to put the baby up for adoption belongs strictly to the biological mother.

Knit a Uterus Now

Don't feel comfortable asking your man to show his support for reproductive rights?  Knit?

Here's a daffy new way to express your support for affordable and accessible contraception: 

Knit a uterus and send it to your elected representative.  governmentfreevjj.com plans to send these knitted uteruses to male representatives.  Their message is "Dear Men in Congress: If we knit you a uterus, will you stay out of ours?  Hands off my uterus! Here’s one of your own!"

To my mind, the message should also include those two important words:

I vote.

Also, female politicians also vote against reproductive choice, for example, Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. They may need their own knitted uteruses.

Not sure who voted how?  NARAL has a handy interactive map showing how congresspeople voted on choice issues in 2011.  prochoiceamerica.org/government-and-you/us-government

You can find instructions for your own textile art here.   Even if you don't know the difference between a knit and a purl, let your elected representatives know how you feel about reproductive choice.

How Much Does a Eugenically-desirable Baby Cost?

Effing cheapskates!

Serious Applicants Only Please! Nice couple is looking for a young woman for egg donation. Must be between the ages of 18-25 and Caucasian, with family heritage from Europe, UK or Scandinavia preferred. Height 5.0' -- 5.10'. Healthy individual, smoke & drug free with healthy BMI. College education or attending college preferred. You must be willing and able to travel to Naperville and Downtown Chicago on multiple occasions. Please be prepared to provide one or more photographs with your application. A childhood photo would be appreciated as part of your application or selection process.

We are not an agency. We are working with a reputable fertility specialist, Dr. *** ****. Your health and confidentiality will be respected. If you are willing to help us, please go to Dr. **** donor website at www.****.com to complete your application, use Reference Code: HealthyBaby22012. Donor Compensation is up to $5,000 and will be given to the donor when the egg retrieval has been completed. Applicants will be expected to attend all scheduled appointments. We are looking for an immediate commitment and desire to begin the process within the next 1-3 weeks. This is a very personal and emotional decision for us and we appreciate your consideration and generosity.

Do not contact poster. Contact DR. ***** directly. Anonymous donors only. Only applicants posting directly with Dr. **** will be considered. Thank you in advance!

    Location: Naperville / Chicagoland

    Compensation: Up to $5K 30-60 days

$5000?  Who do they think they are?  Who’d sell eggs to them when the agency below offers “Compensation: First time donors receive $7,000+; Repeat donors receive up to $10,000”

Creating Pathways to Parenthood

Maybe not now, but someday you may hope to have a family of your own.  Imagine you couldn’t.  These are the people we help, and maybe so can you.

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Got eggs?  Can’t carry them to term?  Call in a gestational surrogate.

Become a Gestational Surrogate with one of the top agencies in the world and earn up to $40,000 and possibly $80,000 if you are a Surrogate twice.

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* Loved being pregnant and delivered easily on time

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Got the eggs but somebody’s shooting blanks, or there’s no man around?  Buy the sperm.

NY Sperm Donors Wanted/Make Money/Give the Gift of Family/New York, NY

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Apply online at: ****.com

~ Earn up to $14,500+ annually

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~ Minimal time commitment (less than 5 hours per month once qualified)

By being a sperm donor, you can supplement your income while giving others the chance to experience the joy of starting a family of their own.

Apply ONLY if you meet the following:

Basic Requirements

    Must be between 19 and 38

    Must be attending a four-year University OR hold a Bachelor's Degree

    Must be able to commit to our program for at least a year

    Must reside close enough to our facility to visit 2-3 times a week

Apply Online at: ****.com

You must pass the online screening before visiting our facility!

We are constantly recruiting males from all ethnicities, religions, and races.

No Clomid?  No needles?  No labor and delivery?  $14,000 a year for a checkup and a bunch of girlie magazines?  Young men, there are worse ways to pay for college.

Normally I include URLs so you can check my sources.  In this case I don’t want to send any traffic to these ads, though you can easily find them.    

If you find them on Craigslist, please flag them.  Flagging means that you request Craigslist to take down the ad.  If any one ad receives enough flags, Craigslist takes it down automatically. 

Even if you think that selling or renting out your body parts looks like a great deal, as someone who is at that moment using Craigslist you’re obliged to flag ads that violate Craigslist’s terms of use.  The terms forbid the sale of “blood, bodily fluids or body parts” but the site doesn’t maintain employees to enforce the terms.  It relies on users to do that. 

To flag any ad on Craigslist, open the ad.  Look for the box in the upper right corner that says

please flag with care: [?]

miscategorized

prohibited

spam/overpost

best of craigslist

Left-click on “prohibited.” That's all there is to it.

I kinda wish I could've made this kind of money when I was in the "right" age group.  I'm not entirely against this traffic, but I marvel to see how much people will pay for a "perfect" baby when so many children with issues are available for adoption right now.

Department of Stupid Questions I

(Disclaimer: I’m not a political commentator.  I may have completely misunderstood the situation. Still, this question has troubled me for weeks. I’d appreciate your considering it and adding your opinion.)

Are Republican candidates trying not to get themselves nominated this year?  Could the Republican party have said, “There’s no way we can win against Obama.  Even if we won, we don’t want to inherit the economy.  But we have to run somebody.  Who can we throw under the bus?” 

Could all the contenders be saying, “Huh, they want me to run, but I don’t want to be elected.  Let me offend as many people as possible before the convention.”?

If that’s what they’re doing, congratulations to them.  On the campaign trail and on their websites they say over and over again that they abhor various forms of family planning.

How do the voters they’re addressing feel about family planning? 

For up-to-date information, I checked a survey from the Pew Charitable Trusts about the birth control insurance mandate.

I use the birth control insurance mandate as a proxy for opinions on birth control in general. It’s not a perfect match, but the results of the February, 2012, survey below are timely.  The birth control insurance mandate required institutions with religious objections to birth control should be required to provide coverage to their employees. 

According to the Pew Trusts

A narrow majority of men (54%) who have heard at least a little about this issue say religious institutions that object to the use of contraceptives should be given an exemption from the new federal rule. Only about four-in-ten women (42%) agree.  ….Among Catholics who have heard at least a little about the issue, 55% favor …an exemption …, while 39% oppose exempting…. White evangelical Protestants, by an even larger margin (68% to 22%), favor …an exemption. ….By contrast, a majority (55%) of the religiously unaffiliated who have heard about the issue say religious institutions that object to the use of contraceptives should be required to cover them like other institutions…

So more than 50% of men, of Catholics, and of white evangelical protestants believe in limiting reproductive options.  The major Republican candidates are speaking their language.

Here’s who disagrees: women of childbearing age (53%), Democrats (64%), religiously-unaffiliated people (55%), and the health insurance companies.  Insurance companies don’t vote, but women, Democrats and people of less strident religious belief do. 

More Women than Men Vote; Some Women Vote Republican

If I read the numbers right, according to the Census Department, in the 2008 presidential election, women voters overall outnumbered men 

              2008 voters

Women    116,525,000

Men         108,974,000  

Now, not all those 116 million women voted Democratic.  43% of women voted Republican according to the US Statistical Abstract, Table 404: Democratic and Republican Percentages of Two-Party Presidential Vote, by Selected Characteristics of Voters

            Democratic Republican

Women ...57% ..........43%

Men ........52% ..........48%

We know that more women than men vote.  Based on the numbers above, can we assume that to 42% of the 43% of those Republican women voters access to birth control may be an important consideration?  

In that case, all the 2012 Republican platforms (and Ron Paul’s) are destined to offend an awful lot of actual voters.

Republican and Libertarian Anti-Family-Planning Platforms

Here’s what Mitt Romney says:

I vetoed a bill that the Legislature forwarded to my desk. Though described by its sponsors as a measure relating to contraception, there is more to it than that. The bill does not involve only the prevention of conception: The drug it authorizes would also terminate life after conception. … I understand that my views on laws governing abortion set me in the minority in our Commonwealth. I am pro-life.  (7/26/05)

Here’s what Rick Santorum says: 

He cosponsored and strongly supported numerous other bills that defended unborn victims of violence, ensured state laws on parental consent are observed by neighboring states, and championed legislation to protect the conscious rights of individuals and health care providers so they need not choose between their work and their moral principles.  He steadfastly opposed the federal funding of abortion and supported President Reagan’s Mexico City Policy… that kept U.S. taxpayer dollars from going to organizations that perform or promote abortion overseas.  

Here’s what Newt Gingrich says: 

Gingrich pledges to uphold this consistent pro-life standard as president.  …. Gingrich pledges to the American people that if elected President he will (i) only nominate judges to the Supreme Court and federal judiciary who are committed to restraint and applying the original meaning of the Constitution, and not legislating from the bench (ii) select pro-life appointees for relevant executive branch positions, (iii) advance pro-life legislation to permanently end all taxpayer funding of abortion in all domestic and international spending programs, (iv) defund Planned Parenthood; and (v) advance and sign into law a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion.  

Not that what Ron Paul says matters much, but here’s his plan:

* Immediately saving lives by effectively repealing Roe v. Wade and preventing activist judges from interfering with state decisions on life by removing abortion from federal court jurisdiction through legislation modeled after his “We the People Act.”

* Defining life as beginning at conception by passing a “Sanctity of Life Act.”

Because he agrees with Thomas Jefferson that it is “sinful and tyrannical” to “compel a man (sic) to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors,” Ron Paul will also protect the American people’s freedom of conscience by working to prohibit taxpayer funds from being used for abortions, Planned Parenthood, or any other so-called “family planning” program.  

Did someone in their parties tell them, "Okay, fellas.  May the best man lose to Obama?"

Can’t they think of a way to say “If elected, I will not serve?”  Are they desperately saying the most offensive things they can think of in order to lose the nomination?  

Greater minds than mine, at the New York Times, say this

And they hadn’t foreseen that a prolonged exposure to vapid, wacky or outright dangerous ideas would start to repel the swing voters needed by the party in November. The longer this field has talked about birth control, or protected the low tax rates for the rich, the better Democrats have done in the polls.

 Am I missing something, or am I taking the Pew Trust, Census Department and Statistical Abstract numbers to their logical extremes?  More stupid questions to come.

Cargo cults won’t revive the economy

My friend Martine’s sister had a miscarriage a few decades ago.  When she returned to work, desolate over her loss, her boss grilled her to make sure that she hadn’t had an abortion. 

This is what the Republican contenders want to return us to?

Or maybe they don’t want women to earn paychecks at all, to send us back to the kinder, küche, kirche, which I loosely translate to “barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.”  Is the Republican party a cargo cult?

After World War II, Rosie the Riveter gave up her job and returned to raising her family.  She succeeded at that as well, bearing so many children that we experienced the baby boom.   Pent-up demand and the introduction of so many tiny new mouths turbocharged the economy.  The US prospered, particularly  white male heads of  nuclear families. 

The term cargo cult is now considered derogatory.  It describes stone age people who observed the riches that arrived in cargo to the occupiers of their lands, particularly in the South Pacific.  When the occupiers—the military or the colonists—left their land, the cargo stopped.  

These people had no experience of modern economies, of how goods are produced and distributed.  All they knew was that they wanted the modern riches back.

So they reproduced what they saw the occupiers do.  They gave orders into disconnected telephones.  They fashioned telegraph wires out of vines.  They built life-size airports out of straw.  They hoped that if they acted like the Europeans and Japanese, they’d bring the cargo back.

People who behave like this are called a cargo cult.  In a pre-literate society, it’s understandable.

On the other hand, educated men should know better.  “The US economy thrived in the 1950s.  Women couldn’t control their fertility in the 50s.  If we could only put the genie back in the bottle and send women back to the kitchen, the prosperity will return.” 

“It’ll be especially good for us, since women will be too busy with children to compete with us for jobs.”

(They may be thinking that women won’t be able to compete for public office, either.)

Educated women and men who recognize post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies need to stand together and say, “We won’t vote for people who think that turning the clock back will revive the economy. Literate and capable workers and voters, including the ones with uteruses like Martine's sister, will.” 

A most noisome, painful and fatal disease

The Economist article about German baby hatches reminded me about what we used to do with those infantile economic liabilities, unwanted babies.

It’s hard to imagine, or for anti-contraception activists to grasp, but in the old days people controlled their family sizes by abandoning their children.

A baby hatch is a revolving door.  People (please read “mothers”) can leave newborns anonymously.  A parent puts the baby in the door and turns it.  A caregiver on the other side of the wall accepts the baby without ever seeing the mother.  The old trope about putting the baby in a basket on the steps of the church works the same way.

Babies left this way are called foundlings.  Not all of them illegitimate.  They're also the offspring of families unable to afford them.

I’m surprised to learn that Germany still has about 200 baby hatches, and that people use them.

I wish more people would read John Boswell’s The Kindness of Strangers: Child Abandonment in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. In the days before contraception, parents had to abandon infants.  Can’t afford or can’t keep that baby?  Leave it at a monastery or a foundling hospital.  Maybe some kind couple will adopt it. More likely, someone will buy it to turn it into a pickpocket, prostitute or chimney sweep.

Monasteries were happy to take on unpaid workers.  They raised them to be monks.  They  balked at their role as family-of-last-resort only when the law required them to offer adolescent foundlings a choice about whether to take the orders.

Which is better: preventing that pregnancy from coming to term, or knowing that the baby will probably be turned into a three-year-old chimney sweep because he’s small enough to climb into the chimney if you prod him hard enough, and knowing that he’ll probably die of scrotal cancer before he’s old enough to procreate? 

Chimney sweep's cancer, also called soot wart, was the first occupational cancer, identified by Percival Pott in 1775. Pott wrote 

they are thrust up narrow and sometimes hot chimnies, [sic] where they are bruised burned and almost suffocated; and when they get to puberty they become ... liable to a most noisome, painful and fatal disease

due to the accumulation of coal tars under their uncircumcised foreskins.

Affluent countries now protect unwanted or unaffordable children, but you still see them in poorer countries.  Take, for example, Brazil’s meninos de rua, or “marginalized children,”  pre-pubescent pickpockets.  Nancy Scheper-Hughes andDaniel Hoffman wrote in 1994 

These street children do not so much "run away" or "choose the streets" as they are thrown out of homes where hunger, abuse, poverty and neglect make life under bridges and in bus station restrooms seem more "peaceful"

These Oliver Twists may not have been foundlings, but their mothers' inability to care for them marginalized them nonetheless.

 

A woman who can afford contraception sleeps easier knowing that she won’t have to abandon a baby to a solitary, nasty, brutish and short life.  Family planning is a technological great leap forward.

This t-shirt shows that you're logical and lusty, honey

When men agree that they’d rather wear “I support affordable contraception—and I vote” t-shirts than go without, they can celebrate with a little positive reinforcement.

Why?                                                  

We don’t need to read Psychology Today to know that “There is a substantial difference, and men have a much stronger sex drive than women.” 

Sex drives.  Logic moves to the back seat. Still, most heterosexual men, when they think logically, understand that women who are busy with children, or worrying about how to bear and afford children, can’t respond as enthusiastically to amorous overtures. 

Add contraception and voilà!  Women can relax and enjoy sex more, presumably more often as well.  To men, contraception means more nookie.

“Men initiate sex often and refuse it rarely. Women initiate it much more rarely and refuse it much more often than men.”  Any man with raging hormones would welcome products that allow his woman to put aside her reservations and refuse sex less.

In fact, with certain exceptions, not to support contraception means either that the man is consistently illogical, or, well, he’s just not that interested in sex.  The exceptional man, the one who can validly object to contraception, is the one who commits with his partner to have as many children as possible. 

Fine.  God bless those couples.  May both parents remain healthy as long as it takes to support and raise all those twenty children.

For the rest of us, contraception allows couples to enjoy sex more (women) and thus enjoy more sex  (men).

The time has come for men and women to get out of bed and stand together in favor of reproductive choice.  Women, having lower libidos, can begin the dialogue.

Woman: 

Not tonight, honey.  I’m worried about contraception.

Man: 

Don’t we have some in the nightstand?

Woman: 

Not contraception for us.  Contraception for women who can’t afford it.  I really don’t think we should have sex until we're comfortable that anyone who wants contraception can get it.

Man: 

But, darling!

Woman: 

Don’t you agree that if we didn’t have birth control we’d be having less sex?

Man: 

Well, yes.

Woman: 

So isn’t contraception important to you?

Man: 

Well, yes.

Woman: 

Good.  We’re on the same page.  Now we need to show our support for family planning.  We need to tell our candidates that it affects our vote.  Both of us.

Man: 

Sweetie!  I’ll get blue—

Woman: 

Angel, I know you have your needs.  That’s why I bought you this t-shirt.

Man: 

How’s a t-shirt going to help me with this—

Woman: 

All you have to do is promise me that you’ll wear the shirt outside the house and things can go back to normal.

Man: 

It says, ‘I support affordable contraception—and I vote.’  What are the other guys going to think?

Woman: 

They’ll think you support contraception and you vote.  They’ll think that your sex drive is powerful enough that you’ll even make a statement by wearing the shirt.  And they’ll think that you’re actually getting some.  This t-shirt shows that you're both logical and lusty, honey.

Man: 

Oh, well, when you put it that way…

Woman: 

Let’s see how it looks.   Oh, wow!  That’s hot!  Come here, babe!

Who cares if the strike only lasts ten minutes, as long as men wear the t-shirts and show their support for a technology that improves modern life?  

A man will wear the t-shirt if his woman gives him a good reason.  If he doesn’t, well, don’t you have to wonder what motivates him?

Powerful men need infant-care experience

Powerful men being powerful, they delegate childcare to others.  Let’s give them some hands-on experience by providing them with infant simulators.

Infant simulators are computerized baby dolls that enable people to practice caring for an infant 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They’re called RealCare Babies. 

During a simulation:

•     RealCare Baby cries for care at all hours, day and night
•     caregiver has to figure out what Baby needs: feeding, burping, rocking, diapering
•     caregiver wears unique wireless ID to ensure accountability
•     RealCare Baby's computer tracks its care and safe handling

Under my modest proposal, powerful men would care for the simulators themselves, and not be allowed to foist the babies off on aides or family members.

After, say, seven days let’s see what Rush Limbaugh, Cardinal Dolan, and all the Republican candidates have to say about forcing every pregnant woman to give birth. And let’s see what the RealCare Babies say about them.

• detailed data is downloaded after the simulation, including exact times of missed care & specific mishandling—Shaken Baby, head support failure, wrong positioning and rough handling

Yes, this plan would be expensive, but the media attention it drew would be priceless.  Imagine a haggard Mitt Romney stumbling to the dais after several constantly-interrupted nights.  (I don’t imagine that sleep deprivation would make a huge difference to Rush Limbaugh’s performance.)

For added verisimilitude, we can provide them the infants the mothers and doctors might have preferred to abort.   RealCare Special Needs babies include tracheostomy tubes and suction catheters, gastrostomy tubes, nasogastric tubes, and urethral catheters.

Then let’s see what these men have to say about the importance of contraceptive choice.

"the worthlessness and filthiness of certain classes of people"

A century ago powerful men prevented unintended pregnancies. They sterilized the “unfit.”

Indiana was the first state to enact a forcible sterilization law.  By 1942, 30 states had enacted similar laws.  Indiana Acts of 1907, Chapter 215, authorized sterilization of anyone who is “insane, idiotic, imbecilic, feeble-minded or epileptic, and by the laws of heredity is the probably potential parent of socially inadequate offspring likewise afflicted.”

In 1912, J.N. Hurty, President of the American Public Health Association, presented a paper entitled “Rural Hygiene” at the association’s annual meeting. 

The family physician, after becoming cognizant of a contemplated marriage which must lead to nervous and weak offspring, should take steps to prevent its consummation.  If the rules of professional secrecy regarding matters of importance to progeny work against social progress, they are in so far immoral.  The physician must take an active part in race hygiene.

Hurty began his career as a pharmacist.  "It was not until Hurty had become the [Indiana] State Health Officer and had observed the stupidity of mankind, the worthlessness and the filthiness of certain classes of people" that he promulgated eugenics.* 

Fifteen years later, in his decision on Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., expanded on Hurty's theme:

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

To Hurty and Holmes, if you had absence seizures or bipolar disorder, maybe even dyslexia, your pregnancy wouldn't be a gift from God.  It would be a drain on the state, and should be prevented, whether you wanted it or not. 

It’s been four generations now since Buck v. Bell.   If you want to safeguard your right to decide whether or when to have children, tell your elected representative how important it is to you.  And tell him or her that you vote.

* You can learn more in THE HOOSIER HEALTH OFFICER: A Biography of Dr. J.N. Hurty and The History of the Indiana State Board of Health to 1925, by Thurman N. Rice, MD, published by the Indiana State Board of Health, 1946.

I support affordable contraception—and I vote

Ladies, we need to answer the men who call us sluts because we enjoy sex, who tell us to put aspirin tablets between our knees, who tell us that forcible pregnancies are “gifts from God.”

Our answer should be, “You don’t want us to have sex.  Then we all refuse to have sex.”

 It’s been a long time coming, but Rush Limbaugh finally sent me over the edge yesterday when he inveighed against Sandra Fluke.  "Well, what would you call someone who wants us to pay for her to have sex? What would you call that woman? You'd call 'em a slut, a prostitute or whatever," Limbaugh ejaculated.

Ms. Fluke is a Georgetown University law student who testified before a congressional panel about the costs of having responsible, protected sex. 

Limbaugh objects to her health insurance's covering the cost.  “We are getting screwed even though we don't meet her personally!”

Here’s what I don’t understand.  Today couples have the technology to enjoy sex.  Before affordable contraception, every woman, every time she had heterosexual vaginal intercourse, had to accept that she might end up pregnant.  Before affordable contraception, every sexual contact could lead to a deadly disease.

Today, contraceptive technology (used properly) allows a woman to express her love for her partner without worrying about being able to afford and care for a child.  Their partners, the ones who think with the heads with brains in them, benefit as well.

Today, barrier methods (used properly) allow partners to be intimate without fearing disease and death.

For couples who choose to use contraception, sex is now joyful in a way it never has been before.  Yet bombasts like Limbaugh, Santorum and Romney want to return us to the days of deadly coat-hanger abortions, syphilis wards and threat.

Ladies, we need to speak up.  We need to band together like the Trojan women.

We need to tell them there’ll be no more sex until they agree that every couple should be able to afford contraception, and to use it if they choose.

Men can show their support.  Let’s print a bunch of “I support affordable contraception—and I vote” t-shirts.  Let’s make sure that the only men with sexually-satisfied smiles are the ones in the t-shirts.