FROM NEWSWEEK

Should Birth Control On Campus Be Free?
Experts are discussing whether the birth-control pill should be considered preventive care under Obama’s health plan.

Every month George Washington University freshman Jessi Payton walks to the pharmacy on campus and pays $15 for her birth-control prescription. Her mother’s insurance covers the bulk of the cost, and the rest comes from the money she saved waiting tables last summer. Since she doesn’t have a steady income, Payton is grateful for her mom’s assistance. “I know so many people who need to go on the pill, and they can’t because it costs too much money or their parents won’t pay for it with their insurance,” she says. “It’s scary because that doesn’t mean they aren’t having sex.”

While college health centers have been handing out complimentary condoms to students for years, birth-control pills have always been held under lock and key (unless, you have a prescription and a way to pay). Under President Obama’s new health-care plan, however, that could all change. A panel of experts got together last month to begin discussing which kind of preventive care for women should be covered for free. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who wrote the women’s health amendment to the plan, has said the aim was always to include family planning. But whether the birth-control pill falls under that definition and whether it should be deemed preventive medicine—and hence, free—has sparked a debate from college campuses to Capitol Hill

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Sino-implant (II)
According to United Nations estimates, about 200 million women worldwide have an unmet need for safe and effective contraception--that is, they neither want to get pregnant nor do they use a modern form of family planning. As a result, each year 70 to 80 million women face unwanted pregnancies.

Contraceptive implants, which were introduced more than 25 years ago, are one of the most effective family planning methods developed to date. Even though they have potential to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies significantly, they are underutilized, primarily because of their high cost. Few programs and clinics are able to offer the method and stockouts are frequent.

To address these problems, FHI is facilitating the introduction of Sino-implant (II)--a long-acting, safe, and affordable contraceptive implant. Sino-implant (II) cost about 60 percent less than implants on the market in 2009, according to the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition database. As a result, it can be offered to women on a much broader scale than the other implants and reduce the high unmet need for contraception.

Sino-implant (II) is a subdermal contraceptive implant manufactured in China by Shanghai Dahua Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. It has an annual pregnancy rate below 1 percent. The product is composed of two thin, flexible, silicone rods, each containing 75 mg levonorgestrel (a synthetic form of the hormone progesterone). These are inserted under the skin of a woman's arm or thigh by a trained health care provider. Sino-implant (II) is currently labeled for four years of use.

From Popular Science

Birth Control Pills Shown to Alter Structure of Women's Brains

You aren't yourself anymore. It's a familiar complaint heard by women who have recently gone on birth control pills. Now studies are providing evidence for what many of those women, and the men who love them, have long known intuitively: the pill can alter the female brain, making a woman act like a different person.

The pill turned 50 this year, and it has gone through many iterations since the Food and Drug Administration gave the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle a green light to market the first oral contraceptive on June 23, 1960. Drug companies continually roll out contraceptives containing lower doses of hormones and entailing fewer side effects. But women who have gone on hormones can point to the effects that have stubbornly endured: moodiness, depression, decreased libido. (This last one makes some birth control pills perversely effective. Not only do they protect you from pregnancy if you do have sex, they also zap your desire to have sex in the first place -- and turn you into an unstable mess, which may in turn zap your partner's interest in sex.) But believe it or not, we still know very little about the consequences of taking daily hormones on a woman's brain.

That is changing, say Craig H. Kinsley and Elizabeth A. Meyer in Scientific American. They point to a recent study in the journal Brain Research comparing the brains of women on birth control pills with brains of other women and men. When the study's authors examined high-resolution images of participants' brains, they found the women on hormones showed more matter in some areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with cognitive activities like decision-making.

The Brain Research study prompted breathless news reports suggesting that the pill makes you smarter. But Kinsley and Meyer point out that the brain works like a "neural beehive," and disturbing one part of the hive could impact the other. The fact that one brain region becomes larger than the next does not mean a woman on hormones is more intelligent or effective. It is also possible that her brain is going haywire. (Kinsley and Meyer actually use the word "catawampus.")

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