No one can say that the beginning of 2012 hasn't been exciting, and sometimes disturbing, when it comes to the issues related to teen and unplanned pregnancy. Every day we find ourselves reading, interpreting, responding, reacting, supporting, and sometimes denouncing the multiple opinions that appear in the media about these issues.

I, like many others, had hoped that by 2012, we as a country would have reached a consensus that the best way to ensure a healthy beginning for a child--physically, mentally, and emotionally--is to have the child born into a two-parent loving family who is ready and prepared to welcome a new life. And that the well-being of those children in the long term would be among the highest of national priorities.

Instead, it seems that policies are being promoted by people who will never diaper, clothe, feed, or house the very child whose life may be created as an effect of those policies. Many would argue that intercourse outside of marriage has become accepted, but some people of faith--policymakers included--still see sex within marriage as the only acceptable option. As a Christian, I agree with the latter perspective in principle, but I also realize that throughout history, from before Christ to over 2,000 years after Christ, the human body is weak when it comes to sex and boys and girls and men and women too often ignore the advice of parents, teachers, pastors, doctors, and friends who suggest that waiting to engage in sex until after one says "I do" is the preferred way of beginning a family.

My dilemma with this tug-of-war between aspiration and reality is complete confusion as to how our political and religious leaders can stubbornly ignore the fact that, regardless of religious doctrine, women and men continue to engage in sex--much of it premarital, much of it unprotected. As a result, many children are born to parents who aren't prepared for them. The young child is then handicapped with the shackles of poverty before he or she is even given a chance to pursue a different path of life.

Whatever our view of the rightness or wrongness of sex outside of marriage, we as a society cannot continue to ignore preventive methods that save children from a life of hunger, scarcity, and poverty. Is it right to knowingly deny women the opportunity to prevent a pregnancy? Is it right to dictate to women how they should live their lives? Is it right to support pharmaceutical companies as they manufacture, advertise, and sell products to correct erectile dysfunction, while denying women the ability to protect themselves from the very men who are chemically prepared to penetrate their bodies?

Who determines what is right and what is wrong? Why do women have to continue to be the victims of outdated, ill-purposed, and shortsighted policies in the name of an individual's idea of what's right? I know that the debate will continue because too many of us are silent and depending upon someone else to pick up the fight for us. But, if we don't speak up then the next issue forced upon us will be even more restrictive and destructive. For me, the time is up to be quiet...what about you???

"Chick" photo by Bahman Farzad.

In American politics there are many guiding principles that, while you won't find them taught in school, are true nonetheless. These include truisms like you can't be against Ethanol and win in Iowa, or, the only thing that can sink a really successful campaign is for the politician to be found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. (Ugh, right? Credit for that has been attributed to many different politicians over the years, but a Google search reveals many seem to think it originated with former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards.)

Then again, there are some things that are just common sense. When there is overwhelming support for something, being against that something, whatever it is, is not good for your political health. So, I feel somewhat bad for politicians of late who have come out against the contraceptive coverage provision requiring employers to provide coverage of contraception in their insurance plans without co-pays or deductibles. To be clear, churches and houses of worship are exempt from this requirement, and for religiously-affiliated institutions, the insurance company would be required to offer that coverage directly to the woman.

The media has characterized polling on this issue as mixed, but as a recent blog post by Margie Omero shows, the opinions haven't been mixed so much as the wording of the questions has been. As Omero illustrates, support for contraceptive coverage is extremely high. This is not a shocker to anyone who knows that 99 percent of American women who have ever had sex have used contraception. Americans, it turns out, possess common sense. We understand that contraception is something we all use or benefit from (for example in the case of "penis-ed Americans," as Jon Stewart characterized them the other night). We get that if contraception is accessible and affordable, more people will be able to use it, we will have fewer unplanned pregnancies, and fewer abortions will result from those unplanned pregnancies.

So, back to why I feel pity for many politicians who have opposed contraceptive coverage in recent weeks? Well, while this might help them appeal to a select group of voters in the short term, it is not where the nation is. Perhaps in this election we'll learn a new principle to add to those above--being against contraception is a losing position.

Birth control (and women's access to it) has been in the news a lot lately (a lot), but much of the discussion has been rather abstract. The piece published yesterday on Huffington Post by my colleague Andrea Kane was particularly compelling, not to mention refreshing, because she put the issue into a concrete, realistic context, complete with details about how the policies being debated would actually play out in a real (hypothetical) person's life. A teaser:

Consider some of the most common misperceptions offered over the past several weeks including, "what's the problem: women can just go to a public clinic or to Planned Parenthood for birth control," or "birth control is cheap and easily available" or -- my personal favorite --"what's the big deal: you can just go to a drug store and buy it."

Now, consider a hypothetical Licensed Practical Nurse working at a Catholic hospital making $40,000 a year and raising a child as a single mom. If she wants to use birth control but her employer's health plan doesn't cover it, where do the common misperceptions laid out above leave her? Like the old game show, Let's Make a Deal, here's what's behind those three doors...

Read the rest of "No Right Door on Birth Control" to find out what's behind the three doors. If you want to stay informed and take action, one good way to do so is through the Coalition to Protect Women's Health Care.

Yesterday marked the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. While all these years later many still disagree on the issue of abortion, many would agree on the value of focusing on efforts to reduce the need for abortion by preventing unintended pregnancy. And a significant way to prevent unintended pregnancy is to expand access to contraception.

And yet contraception has become a target of funding cuts in many states. New Jersey's cut of $7.5 million and Texas's cut of $73.6 million are just a couple of examples. This is happening even though contraception is widely supported. A June 2011 survey from Public Religion Research Institute (PDF) found that approximately eight in 10 (82%) Americans favor expanding access to birth control for women who cannot afford it, compared to only 16 percent who oppose it. Support is strong across all demographic, religious, and political groups, including the Tea Party.

All is not lost. A step in the right direction is a decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to include contraception as a preventive service under health reform, meaning health insurers must cover "all Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity" without co-pays or deductibles for patients. Last week HHS elected to enforce this rule for almost all employers (PDF), making an exception only for those employers whose primary purpose relates to religious values and who serve and employ people who share those values--like churches.

But there is still much work to be done. A report by the CDC released last Thursday was the first to focus on teens who didn't want to get pregnant but did. They found that approximately one half (50.1%) of the teens surveyed were not using any method of birth control when they got pregnant.

Today, almost half (49%) of pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned (PDF) and almost half of these end in abortion (43%). Regardless of one's stance on the legality or morality of abortion, contraception is critical to having healthier families and lower abortion rates.

Less than half of teens (ages 15-19) have had sex and the percentage of teen boys who used a condom the first time they had sex is on the rise, according to a new report released today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

Other findings from the NCHS report on teen sexual activity and contraceptive use in the United States 2006-2010 include:

• Dramatic improvements seen over the past two decades. Teen sexual activity and contraceptive use have both improved quite dramatically since 1988. The percentage of teen girls who have had sex declined from 51% in 1988 to 43% in 2006-2010; for boys, the percentage who have had sex declined from 60% to 42% during the same time period. Teen contraceptive use has also improved over the long run. The percentage of teens who say they used any method of contraception the first time they had sex increased between 1988 (67% of girls and 71% of boys) and 2006-2010 (78% of girls and 85% of boys).
  
  
• There is no gender gap when it comes to teen sexual activity. About 43% of teen girls and 42% of teen boys say they had sex--essentially unchanged from 2002.
  
  
• Some improvements in contraceptive use reported. Although teen contraceptive use overall has remained nearly unchanged since 2002, there are some noteworthy improvements. Among teen boys, about 80% say they used a condom when they first had sex--an increase of nine percentage points from 2002. Teen boys' use of dual methods of contraception (the use of a condom combined with a hormonal method) has also increased. Among teen girls, the use of hormonal methods of contraception other than the pill (such as injectables and the patch) increased from 2% in 2002 to 6% in 2006-2010.
  
  
• Religion and morals cited. The primary reason teens give for not having sex (among those who have never had sex) is that it is "against my religion or morals." Some 41% of teen girls and 31% of teen boys cite this as the main reason they have not had sex.
  
  
• Some teens remain ambivalent about pregnancy. A small but significant percentage of teens (13% of girls and 19% of guys) say they would be pleased if they got pregnant/ got someone pregnant at this point in their lives.

"The nation's teen pregnancy and birth rates are now at record lows and the credit for this truly extraordinary progress goes to teens themselves who are making better decisions about sex and contraceptive use," said Sarah Brown, CEO of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "We also applaud NCHS for this important report and for continuing to set the standard for quality data on many important issues."

Check out the full NCHS report.