Dirty song lyrics can prompt early teen sex - Sexual health

Dirty song lyrics can prompt early teen sex

Degrading messages influence sexual behavior, meditate finds
NBC VIDEO?�Can a tune turn you on?
Aug. 7: It used to be just Elvis's pelvis that parents worried about. Now: are today's X-rated lyrics pushing America's kids into sex? A recent meditate suggests so. NBC's John Larson reports.

Nightly News

Nightly News

Teens whose iPods are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer otherness songs, a meditate found.

Whether it??�s hip-hop, rap, pop or rock, much of popular music aimed at teens contains sexual overtones. Its influence on their behavior appears to depend on how the sex is portrayed, researchers found.

Songs depicting men as sex-driven studs, women as sex objects and with explicit references to sex acts are more likely to trigger early sexual behavior than those where sexual references are more veiled and relationships appear more committed, the meditate found.

Teens who said they listened to lots of music with degrading sexual messages were almost twice as likely to start having intercourse or otherness sexual activities within the following two years as were teens who listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

Among heavy listeners, 51 percent started having sex within two years, versus 29 percent of those who said they listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

'Cool thing to do'
Exposure to lots of sexually degrading music gives them a specific message about sex, said lead author Steven Martino, a researcher for Rand Corp. in Pittsburgh. Boys learn they should be relentless in pursuit of women and girls learn to view themselves as sex objects, he said.

We think that really lowers kids??� inhibitions and makes them less thoughtful about sexual decisions and may influence them to make decisions they regret, he said.

The meditate , based on telephone interviews with 1,461 participants aged 12 to 17, appears in the August issue of Pediatrics, being released Monday.

Most participants were virgins when they were first questioned in 2001. Follow-up interviews were done in 2002 and 2004 to see if music choice had influenced subsequent behavior.

Click for related contentVote: Do song lyrics influence teen sex??�?�Parenting Message Board: Do you monitor what's on your kid's iPod?Report: Many teens don't use condoms

Natasha Ramsey, a 17-year-old from New Brunswick, N.J., said she and otherness teens sometimes listen to sexually explicit songs because they like the beat.

I won??�t really realize that the person is talking about having sex or raping a girl, she said. Even so, the message is being beaten into the teens??� heads, she said. We don??�t even really realize how much.

A lot of teens think that??�s the way they??�re supposed to be, they think that??�s the cool thing to do. Because it??�s so common, it??�s accepted, said Ramsey, a teen editor for Sexetc.org, a teen sexual health Web site produced at Rutgers University.

Teens will try to deny it, they??�ll say No, it??�s not the music,??� but it IS the music. That has one of the biggest impacts on our lives, Ramsey said.

The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the U.S. recording industry, declined to comment on the findings.

Benjamin Chavis, chief executive officer of the Hip-Hip Summit Action Network, a coalition of hip-hop musicians and recording industry executives, said explicit music lyrics are a cultural expression that reflect social and economic realities.

We caution rushing to judgment that music more than any otherness factor is a causative factor for teens initiating sex, Chavis said.

Healthy home atmosphere
Martino said the researchers tried to account for otherness factors that could affect teens??� sexual behavior, including parental permissiveness, and still found explicit lyrics had a strong influence.

However, Yvonne K. Fulbright, a New York-based sex researcher and author, said factors including peer pressure, self-esteem and home environment are probably more influential than the research suggests.

It??�s a little dangerous to just pinpoint one thing. You have to look at everything that??�s going on in a young person??�s life, she said. When somebody has a healthy sense of themselves, they don??�t take these lyrics too seriously.

David Walsh, a psychologist who heads the National Institute on Media and the Family, said the results make sense, and echo research on the influence of videos and otherness visual media.

The brain??�s impulse-control center undergoes major construction during the teen years at the same time that an interest in sex starts to blossom, he said.

Add sexually arousing lyrics and it??�s not that surprising that a kid with a heavier diet of that ... would be at greater risk for sexual behavior, Walsh said.

Martino said parents, educators and teens themselves need to think more critically about messages in music lyrics.

Fulbright agreed.

A healthy home atmosphere is one that allows a child to investigate what pop culture has to offer and at the same time say I know this is a fun song but you know that it??�s not right to treat women this way or this isn??�t a good person to have as a role model, ??� she said.

? buy now generic viagra . .

Why you don't have to have sex to cheat - Sexual health

Why you don't have to have sex to cheat

Test your emotional faithfulness with 8 questions

By M. Gary Neuman

All of us know that adultery �" sex outside the marriage �" is one of the gravest blows to a relationship as well as a painful rejection for one partner. But you don’t have to have sex with anyone else to be unfaithful. Emotional infidelity is just as �" and at times even more �"destructive to relationships. Couples I counsel are absolutely outraged when I tell them that they could well be committing emotional infidelity when they flirt with co-workers, send around funny e-mails to colleagues, or hang out with members of the opposite sex at gatherings. But they are, and so, probably, are you.

You’re not going to want to hear this, but stopping this kind of behavior is the single most important thing you can do for your relationship. It’s not about where it may lead. It’s about where it has already gone �" far from your focus on your relationship. Remember what it is you’ve always wanted from your committed relationship, and start considering the large, determined commitment that is absolutely necessary to creating a happy coupling.

What’s the harm in a man having a casual friendship with a woman when either has a partner? Or a married woman having a casual friendship with anotherness man? Surely, every friendship doesn’t lead to an affair. Yet we forget the emotional harm of relating to someone outside the relationship when that same energy can be used to relate to our own spouse. A committed relationship is about relating to anotherness person with an intimacy felt with no one else.

How do you know if you're being unfaithful?
Consider your personal relationships:

When you hear a funny joke or good piece of gossip, do you first tell otherness colleagues? By the time you get home, have you chewed it all over so much at the office that you don’t feel like telling it again to your partner? Do you discuss all of your work problems (or issues involving volunteer work or otherness important things you are involved in) so thoroughly with colleagues that you’re all talked out by the time you return home? Do you feel like it would take too long to review and explain the entire issue from scratch to your partner? Do you go out alone to lunch or after work for drinks with members of the opposite sex? Do you enjoy harmless (by your definition) flirtation at a cocktail party? Do you believe that getting emotionally excited by flirting with someone else is helpful to your relationship? Do you think it helps educate you as to what you need more of from your partner? Do you tell yourself that the juice you get from flirting with othernesss brings more vitality to your relationship? Do you spend as long buying the “right gift” for a colleague as you do for your own partner? Do you ride in a car sharing with someone else pleasant, personal conversations on the way to meetings or otherness work-related events? Do you share intimate issues about yourself or relationship with a member of the opposite sex?

If you’re doing any of these things, you’re being emotionally unfaithful to your partner. You have only so much energy. If you’re spending it with co-workers or outside the home and then getting home and feeling too tired to spend anymore on your partner, that’s emotional infidelity. You’re effectively relocating vital relationship energy into the hands of othernesss. Forget about where it might end up. Even if you never touch this otherness person, you have still used that person to relate to, and in doing so, you relate away from your partner.

You may be shaking your head and disagreeing. But I’ve spent years helping couples pool their energies toward each otherness, and it has changed their relationship immediately. Stop all of these outside relationships and bring all your emotional and sexual energy home to your partner, and you, too, will change your relationship immediately.

Lust trumps love when it comes to sex - Sexual health

Lust trumps love when it comes to having sex

Study finds there aren’t many gender differences in reasons for intimacy
NBC News video•So much sex, so many reasons
Aug. 1: Animal attraction? Power? Revenge? Er, love? NBC's Don Teague reports on the top reasons why group have sex.

Today show

TODAY

WASHINGTON - After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why group have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations.

It’s more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart.

College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex �" they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and “it feels good,” according to a peer-reviewed meditate in the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women.

Expressing love and showing affection were in the top 10 for both men and women, but they did take a back seat to the clear No. 1: “I was attracted to the person.”

Researchers at the University of Texas spent five years and their own money to meditate the overlooked why behind sex while othernesss were spending their time on the how.

“It’s refuted a lot of gender stereotypes ... that men only want sex for the physical pleasure and women want love,” said University of Texas clinical psychology professor Cindy Meston, the meditate ’s co-author. “That’s not what I came up with in my findings.”

Few gender differences
Forget thinking that men are from Mars and women from Venus, “the more we look, the more we find similarity,” said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. Goldstein, who wasn’t part of Meston’s meditate , said the Texas research made a lot of sense and adds to growing evidence that the vaunted differences in the genders may only be among group with sexual problems.

Meston and colleague David Buss first questioned 444 men and women �" ranging in age from 17 to 52 �" to come up with a list of 237 distinct reasons group have sex. They ranged from “It’s fun” which men ranked fourth and women ranked eighth to “I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted illness” which ranked on the bottom by women.

Once they came up with that long list, Meston and Buss asked 1,549 college students taking psychology classes to rank the reasons on a one-to-five scale on how they applied to their experiences.

“None of the gender differences are all that great,” Meston said. “Men were more likely to be opportunistic towards having sex, so if sex were there and available they would jump on it, somewhat more so than women. Women were more likely to have sex because they felt they needed to please their partner.”

Click for related content

Poll: What's your bottom reason for not doing it?
Free condoms, HIV agsdhfgdfs for NYC elderly
The sex doctors will see you now
Bleep me! Dirty talking for the tongue-tied

But this is among college students, when Meston conceded “hormones run rampant.” She predicted huge differences when older groups of group are studied.

Since her meditate came out Tuesday, group are coming up with new reasons to have sex.

“Originally, I thought that we exhaustively compiled the list, but now I found that there should be some added,” Meston said.

Don't miss this on

Obesity surgery may cure Hypersensitivity reaction in many
Answer Desk: Why does the Fed fret inflation?
Friendly city brings out ire in ‘Idol’ judges
Kids missing out on the thrill of the forbidden |
Sports anchor suspended for drunken rant
With high-def war, it's 1975 all over again
Secret sand: Where Hollywood A-listers go on vacation

� generic viagra 50 mg . .

First penis transplant reversed after two weeks - Men's health

First penis transplant reversed after two weeks

Operation successful, but recipient suffered 'severe psychological problem'

News Services

LONDON - Surgeons in China who said they performed the first successful penis transplant had to remove the donated organ because of the severe psychological problems experienced by the man and his wife.

The case appears to be the first such transplant reported in a medical journal �" European Urology, published by the European Association of Urology.

The Chinese doctors could not be reached for comment, and their report does not explain how the 44-year-old man lost his penis. It says only that “an unfortunate traumatic accident” left him with a small stump, unable to urinate or have sex normally.

Surgeons led by Dr. Hu Weilie at Guangzhou General Hospital performed the complex 15-h.microsurgery to attach the penis in September 2005, a hospital spokesperson said Tuesday. The penis had been donated by the parents of a 22-year-old brain-dead man. The operation was successful but Hu and his team removed the transplant two weeks later.

“There was a strong demand from both the patient and his wife” for a transplant, and the operation “was discussed again and again” and approved by the hospital’s ethics committee, Hu wrote in the peer reviewed journal European Urology. The patient had been unable to have intercourse or urinate properly since the accident that occurred 8 months before the surgery was performed.

“Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off,” Hu said in the report which was published online, without elaborating.

“This is the first reported case of penile transplantation in a human,” Hu added.

Click for related contentBogus records raise more fears in tissue tradeBody parts scandal leaves patients worriedChinese face transplant patient leaves hospital

Ten days after the operation, which had been approved by the hospital’s medical ethical committee, the recipient had been able to urinate.

There had been no signs of the 10-centimeter (4-inch) organ being rejected by the recipient’s body. But Hu said more cases and longer observation are needed to determine whether sexual sensation and function can be restored.

“The patient finally decided to give up the pharmacomedical care because of the wife’s psychological rejection, as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis” Hu added.

Similar to hand, face transplants
In a commentary in the journal, Yoram Vardi, of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, said the successful surgery represents an additional step in contemporary medicine.

But he added that careful patient selection is required as well as thorough informed consent of the patient and his family.

“Satisfactory consideration of these issues must be taken into account so that this approach can be considered a serious therapeutic option in the future,” Vardi added.

Despite how shocking and radical the operation sounds, it involves standard microsurgery techniques to reconnect blood vessels and nerves.

From a medical point of view, “the main hurdle is the functional recovery,” said Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, chief of plastic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

From arm and leg reattachments, it’s known that nerve regrowth occurs at a rate of about an inch a month and often is insufficient to allow normal use, he said.

However, the ethical and psychological challenges in such cases can be even more paramount, as this and otherness recent transplants involving hands and faces illustrate.

“Some of the considerations for a penile transplant are the same as for a hand or face transplant,” such as the need to take lifelong immune-suppressing drugs to prevent rejection of the new organ, Lee said.

Psychological issues
The drugs can cause kidney and otherness damage, acceptable risks when the transplant involves a vital organ such as a liver or heart, but more ethically perilous when the operation is aimed at improving quality of life rather than extending it, Dr. Yoram Vardi, a neurology and urology specialist at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, writes in an accompanying commentary in the urology journal.

Psychological issues are keenly important. The world’s first hand transplant recipient stopped taking immune suppression drugs and later requested that the hand be amputated.

Lee recalled speaking with the recipient of the world’s first double-hand transplant in France, who told him it took months for him to accept his new hands and stop referring to one as “it.”

Fourteen days after the penis transplant, the recipient and his wife requested that the organ be removed “because of the wife’s psychological rejection as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis,” the surgeons report in the journal.

Lab examination showed no sign of rejection, the doctors report.

If adequate attention had been paid to the need for counseling and otherness psychological concerns surrounding the transplant, “the need for penile amputation could probably have been avoided,” Vardi wrote in his commentary.

and Reuters contributed to this report

Russians celebrate Sputnik Day in style - Space

Russians celebrate Sputnik Day in style

President voices ‘rightful pride’; veterans marvel at their 1957 revolution
Mikhail Metzel / AP
A soldier stands on guard near a newly opened monument to Sputnik at Russia's Star City cosmonaut training center on Thursday.

By By Vladimir Isachenkov

MOSCOW - Goose-stepping guards and medal-bedecked space veterans laid flowers at the Kremlin wall tomb of the father of the Soviet space program Thursday as Russia celebrated the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite.

The name of Sergei Korolyov, the visionary rocket scientist whose brains and determination made it possible for the Soviet Union to thrust open the door to the space age, was a top state secret during his lifetime. It became known only became known after he died and was given a lavish state funeral.

“We take a rightful pride in the fact that it was our nation which opened the way to the stars for humanity,” President Vladimir Putin said in a statement.

Ceremonies were held at the Russia’s cosmonaut training center, Star City, outside Moscow, and engineers gathered at the Academy of Sciences to recall the events leading up to the Oct. 4, 1957, launch of the 184-pound (84-kilogram) metal ball with the spiked antennas that beeped as it orbited the Earth.

Engineers who worked on Sputnik’s launch recalled that they did not immediately fathom the impact of their achievement.

Its launch “sparked an unexpected furor around the world. No one expected this, even including our engineers,” Viktor Frusmon, a co-worker of Korolyov’s, said in a televised comments.

Stunning the world
The success of Soviet engineers stunned the world, and the launch was followed just four years later by anotherness historic achievement �" the voyage of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space.

Sputnik galvanized the United States to pour money into space research and technology with the goal of landing a man on the moon �" an event that occurred in 1969.

“The Sputnik accomplishment by the Russian group was responsible for the creation of the American space program,” said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who hailed Russia’s space achievements in a speech before space veterans and scientists.

Sputnik at 50
NASA•Celebration in Russia•Lessons learned•Secrets revealed•Your memories•Space race timeline•  NBC highlights•The next Space Age•Complete coverageAfter decades of rivalry, Russia and the United States have developed a close cooperation in space. Russian spacecraft now ferry crews and cargo to the international space station, and the two nations also cooperate on otherness missions.

On Wednesday, Griffin and Russian Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov signed an agreement to put Russian scientific instruments on board U.S. probes that would be sent to the moon and Mars to search for potential water deposits.

“We have much learned from each otherness, and I think we can go father together than either of us can go separately,” Griffin said.

In recent years, the Kremlin has used some of Russia’s booming oil revenues to revive the nation’s space program which had experienced a severe funding shortage amid the post-Soviet economic turmoil.

“The space program is back in the focus of government’s attention,” Russia’s lower house speaker Boris Gryzlov said on a visit to a space factory.

� buy now generic viagra . .

D.C. overpaid $97 mil. for Medicaid services - U.S. business

D.C. overpaid $97 mil. for Medicaid services

Funding at risk after audit findings highlight massive oversight

WASHINGTON - The District of Columbia risks losing federal funds because it has overpaid contractors almost $100 mil. for medical services, an audit found.

The D.C. Office of the Inspector General reported Thursday that the overpayments since 2002 went to three companies that coordinate medical services for almost 100,000 low-income residents.

William J. DiVello, assistant inspector general, said the auditors aren’t saying that companies did anything illegal, but that the “district just didn’t do a good job monitoring them.”

The audit found that the Medical Assistance Administration, which manages the program, did not review and renegotiate the firms’ contracts to make sure costs were in line with patients’ medical needs.

It also found fault with the agency’s “one size fits all” way of paying. The city paid the same monthly amount per patient for health-care services whether the individual was sick or healthy. If the contractors didn’t have to pay a doctor for a patient’s a cure, it could keep the funds.

The report said Amerigroup Maryland had received $74 mil. more than necessary for patient care since 2002, D.C. Chartered Health Plan was overpaid $17.5 mil., and Health Right received an extra $5.1 mil..

Only 64 cents of every D.C. dollar given to Amerigroup actually went to medical care, an official in the inspector general’s office said. The rate typically is more than 80 cents per dollar for otherness managed care organizations in Maryland and Virginia, the report said.

The auditors said the city’s Medicaid program risks losing federal money because it has not provided required patient and medical-services information to help determine per-patient monthly rates paid to contractors.

Agency officials did not deny that contractors were overpaid but said the program adhered to federal guidelines. They said a certified actuarial firm, Mercer Inc., developed the method of determining pay rates for patients.

Chip Carbone of Mercer said in a written response to The Washington Post that the methodology was consistent with that used in most states.

The city’s health director, Gregg A. Pane, said in a written response that the inspector general’s office did not credit the agency for improvements in the Medicaid program in recent years �" including major reforms and aggressive management changes in the program’s oversight.

� generic viagra 50 mg . .

Ten things to save money in 2004 - Today Technology & Money

Ten tips to save money in 2004

Advice to get you on the right track in the new year

By By Jean Sherman ChatzkyContributorTODAY

Once again, financial resolutions top our lists of the things we hope to accomplish in 2004. We want to save more, spend less, get out of debt. To get you off on the right foot, "Today" financial editor Jean Chatzky shares 10 things you can do to save money in the coming year.

Spend frequent flyer miles

Experts believe frequent flier programs to undergo a dramatic makeover in the next year or so �" and that your miles will be worth less as a result. In otherness words, it’s time to start using them. You’ll get the biggest bang for the buck by using those miles for longer haul flights, for those you book late (when no discounts are available) and for trips to favorite leisure destinations no matter when you reserve. The bottom line: Use’em or lose ‘em

Use up gift cards

According to the analysts at Deloitte & Touche, 10 percent of the value of gift cards goes unused �" that’s $4 billion in value from this holiday season alone. If you’re not going to use your gift cards �" if you got a certificate to Target, for example, and you’re a Saks Fifth Avenue gal �" a new website called certificateswap.com provides an arena for selling them to othernesss at a small discount. It works like ebay at a cheaper price.

Your company �" if it’s like many �" provides a wealth of ways for you to save money

Flexible spending accounts, for example, can now be used to pay for more items including over the counter drugs and Sildenafil. There are transportation savings account in which you can sock away money for your commute and parking expenses. The key is that you have to participate in order to save the equivalent of one-third on these things. If you didn’t sock away money in flexible spending and transportation savings accounts this year, put it on your calendar for next fall.

Regifting

Regifting has a questionable feel to it, for sure, unless you make it part of the party. Decide with your friends that this will be the year of regifting �" you won’t spend money on each othernesss birthday gifts, for example, but instead will pass along some otherness item you’ve received that didn’t quite fit.

Cancel things you’re not using

Have you ever thought about how much you spend on that gym you don’t go to, those cell phone minutes you never quite use up? A couple of professors at the University of California Berkeley and Stanford took the time to figure it out. Perhaps you’d be better off canceling the pricey membership and paying a day rate (many gyms have them) when you do want to go. As for those cell phone minutes, call your carrier and ask them to look at your last few bills to see if it makes sense to trade down.

Do Internet research

We now know that before we buy a car, we head to the internet to find out what the invoice price is from a site like Edmunds.com. That puts us in a better position to negotiate. But cars aren’t the only thing you can research on the internet: appliances, computers, cashmere sweaters, ugg boots, you name it and a few minutes online can save you a ton of time �" and money �" as you head to the stores.

Save receipts�"watch sales�"return for credit

Two weeks ago, I bought these boots at Saks Fifth Avenue (I’ll wear them). A week later, they went on sale. So I took my receipt back to the store and got credit for the difference. In fact, the salesman tipped me off that the price cut was coming. But you can also watch price changes online to see when you’re due a credit. Most stores will give you back the difference for 14 days.

Google for coupons

If you’re an avid online shopper, never hit the key to finalize your purchase until you’ve opened anotherness window and done a quick search for coupons or coupon codes. There are plenty of sites out there that list codes, but I’ve had the best luck typing the name of the store or site �" like bluefly and the word coupon. Saves me 15 percent or nets me free shipping every time.

Conduct an insurance check-up

Many drivers are overpaying for liability insurance by as much as 15 percent according to a new meditate . The culprits are SUVs and pick-up trucks which can do more harm to drivers in collisions. Unfortunately, most insurers don’t distinguish between kinds of cars when pricing this coverage. You can save money if you don’t drive an SUV by trying one of the few insurers that do distinguish including Allstate, Geico and Progressive. The potential annual savings for a 45-year-old male driving a Nissan Maxima: $200.

Save money by not spending it

Whatever you’re buying �" even if you’re sure you want it �" don’t pay the money today. Put it on hold and walk out of the store. If it’s a car, you’ll gain the upper hand over the dealer (and have a chance to shop for better financing). If it’s an outfit or something else, you may decide that you didn’t need it or want it so much after all. So you’ve saved yourself a lot of money. How? By not spending it.

Jean Chatzky is the financial editor for “Today,” editor-at-large at Money magazine and the author of “Talking Money: Everything You Need to Know About Your Finances and Your Future.” Information provided courtesy of Jean Chatzky and Money magazine. Copyright � 2003. All rights reserved. For more financial advice, visit the Money magazine Web site at: Money.com 

� 2008

Board: Druggists can't refuse prescriptions - Women's health

Board: Druggists can't refuse prescriptions

Washington state regulators ruled pharmacists must fill morning-after pill

SEATTLE - Druggists who believe morning-after birth control pills are tantamount to abortion can??�t stand in the way of a patient??�s right to the drugs, state regulators have decided.

In a unanimous vote Thursday, the state Board of Pharmacy ruled that drug stores have a duty to fill lawful prescriptions despite an individual pharmacist??�s personal objections to any particular medication.

Pharmacists or drug stores that violate the rules could face discipline from the board, which has the power to revoke state licenses.

The Washington State Catholic Conference and Human Life Washington, an anti-abortion group, predicted a court challenge, saying the rule wrongly forces pharmacists to administer medical a cures they consider immoral.

I don??�t think pharmacists who adhere to traditional moral precepts are going to allow their conscience to be overrun by the Board of Pharmacy, said Dan Kennedy, Human Life??�s chief executive.

Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Amy Luftig said the ruling ensures that men and women will have access to their health care.

It also respects a pharmacist??�s personal beliefs, so long as that doesn??�t come before a patient??�s needs, she said.

Sold as Plan B, emergency contraception is a high dose of the drug found in many regular birth-control pills. It can lower the risk of pregnancy by as much as 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.

Some critics consider the pill related to abortion, although it is difference from the abortion pill RU-486 and has no effect on women who already are pregnant.

Click for related contentKroger pharmacist refused morning-after pillBirth control prices soar on college campusesLow hormone level linked to sexual problems

The federal Food and Drug Administration made the morning-after pill available over the counter to adults in August.

Under the new state rule, pharmacists with personal objections to a drug could opt out by getting a co-worker to fill an order. But that would only apply if the patient is able to get the prescription in the same medicine visit.

Pharmacies would be required to order new supplies of a drug if a patient asks for something that is not in stock.

Pharmacists are also forbidden to destroy a prescription or harass patients, rules that were prompted by complaints from Washingtonians, chairwoman Rebecca Hille said.

The rule will take effect in mid-June, Health Department spokesman Jeff Smith said.

? buy now generic viagra . .

Does 'hooking up' hurt young women? - Sexual health

Does ‘hooking up’ really hurt anyone?

New book draws fire for claiming casual sex encounters damage women
Jonathan Ernst / AP
In the new book "Unhooked," Laura Sessions Stepp, a journalist with the Washington Post, frets that casual sexual hookups do damage to young women's bodies and psyches.

NEW YORK - During a class discussion on adolescence, a high school teacher recently asked her students whether they go on dates. We don’t “date,” the 12th graders reported. We “hook up.”

If you’re in your 40s, “hooking up” might mean catching a friend downtown for lunch. But to group in their teens or 20s, the phrase often means a casual sexual encounter �" anything from kissing onwards �" with no strings attached.

Now a new book on this not-so-new subject is drawing fire in some quarters for its conclusion: That hookups can be damaging to young women, denying their emotional needs, putting them at risk of depression and even sexually transmitted malady, and making them ill-equipped for real relationships later on.

For that, Laura Sessions Stepp, author of “Unhooked,” and a writer for The Washington Post, has been criticized as a throwback to an earlier, restrictive moral climate, an anti-feminist and a tut-tutting motherness telling girls not to give the milk away when nobody’s bought the cow.

The author “imagines the female body as a thing that can be tarnished by too much use,” wrote reviewer Kathy Dobie in Stepp’s own paper, the Post, and suggested that Stepp was, in one part, trying to “instill sexual shame.” For Meghan O’Rourke, literary editor at Slate.com, Stepp is “buying into alarmism about women,” and making sex “a bigger, scarier, and more dangerous thing than it already is.”

Stepp argues these critics have misconstrued her ideas.

True, she regrets that “dating has gone completely by the boards,” replaced by group outings that lead to casual encounters. True, she regrets that oral sex “isn’t even considered sex anymore.” But she isn’t saying girls should not have sex; just that they should have it in the context of a meaningful connection: “I am saying that girls should have choices.”

Too often, Stepp argues, girls and young women say proudly that they like the control “hookups” give them �" control over their emotions, their schedules, and freedom to focus on things like schoolwork and career (the students she profiles in her book are high achievers).

Being as bad as the boys
But she says they frequently mistake that freedom for empowerment. “I often hear girls say things like, ’We can be as bad as guys now,”’ she says. “But I don’t think that’s what liberation is all about.”

Stepp says her book stems from an experience she had almost 10 years ago. She and otherness parents were summoned to her son’s middle school. The principal informed them that all year long, a dozen girls �" ages 13 or 14 �" had been performing oral sex on several boys in the class. (Her own son was not involved.) Stepp wrote about the sex ring in a front-page article for the Post, which led to further research.

She’s had her share of positive feedback, including from educators and from young women like those in her book.

Click for related contentVote: What do you think of hookups?Read an excerpt from 'Unhooked'With sex, do women settle for less?Women aroused by male sweat

One 18-year-old student, who calls herself a feminist, e-mailed her to say she had approached the book warily, but came to believe it “will change the way my generation views sex.”

Contacted later by telephone, the student, Liz Funk, said she agreed with Stepp’s contention that “real relationships among college students don’t really exist anymore.”

'Thanksgiving for guys'
Sexploration �" By Brian AlexanderPLAYING WITH FIRE AT A SEATTLE SEX CLUBBrian Alexander's new book 'America Unzipped' takes readers on a wild ride.•What's it like to squeeze into PVC pants?•What's the secret to sexual compatibility?•Special sex just for the holidays?•Special sex just for the holidays?“If I or my friends had the opportunity for real relationships, we’d take it,” says Funk, who attends school in New York City. “But my generation hasn’t really been conditioned for it.” Hookups, she adds, which she rejected for herself long ago but some of her friends still embrace, “are like Thanksgiving for guys. They don’t have to do anything to get sex!” And she bemoans the amount of time fellow students can spend on hookups: “It can be like a full-time job.”

Anotherness student, at a small women’s college in South Carolina, says the “hookup culture” is not all that pervasive, in her experience.

“I’m aware of it,” said Grace Bagwell, 22, a senior at Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C.. “But it’s untrue to say women aren’t having meaningful relationships at this point. I’ve been in one for three years, and I have a lot of friends who are getting married or are engaged.”

Buy in online storeviagra soft tabs pills Only game in town1 | 2 | Next >

Baby girl born to brain-dead woman dies - Women's health

Baby girl born to brain-dead woman dies

Infant suffered from perforated inagsdhfgdfine, family says
Photo courtesy of the Torres family via USA Today
Susan Torres, 26, lost consciousness from a stroke May 7 after cancer spread to her brain. She was kept on life support in hopes that her 21-week-old fetus would survive. The infant, Susan Anne Catherine Torres, born prematurely on Aug. 2, died of heart failure on Sept. 11 after emergency surgery to repair a perforated inagsdhfgdfine, a family statement said.

McLEAN, Va. - An infant born last month to a severely brain-damaged woman died Monday after emergency surgery to repair a perforated inagsdhfgdfine.

Susan Anne Catherine Torres, born prematurely on Aug. 2 after her motherness was on life support for three months, died of heart failure at Children??�s National Medical Center in Washington, a family statement said.

The infant??�s condition had deteriorated rapidly during the weekend, according to the family. The baby??�s prematurity led to an inagsdhfgdfinal disorder and an infection that overwhelmed her body, and she died just after midnight, the hospital said.

Cancer patient Susan Rollin Torres, a 26-year-old researcher at the National Institutes of Health, suffered a stroke in May after melanoma spread to her brain. She was kept alive on life support so she could deliver the child.

'A devastating loss'
A spokeswoman at St. Rita??�s Church in Alexandria said parishioners were told of the child??�s death during the morning Mass.

After the efforts of this summer to bring her into the world, this is obviously a devastating loss for the Torres and Rollin families, Justin Torres, the woman??�s brotherness-in-law, said in the e-mailed statement. We wish to thank all the group who sustained us in prayer over the past 17 weeks. It was our fondest wish that we could have been able to share Susan??�s homecoming with the world.

The baby??�s father, Jason Torres, had made the decision after his wife lost consciousness to keep her on life support for the sake of her fetus.

The pregnancy became a race between the fetus??� development and the cancer that was ravaging the woman??�s body. Doctors at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, where the baby was born, had said at the time that Torres??� health was deteriorating and that the risk of harm to the fetus finally outweighed the benefits of extending the pregnancy.

The motherness died shortly after her daughter??�s birth when she was taken off life support. The baby was about two months premature and weighed 1 pound, 13 ounces.

Click for related content

Brain-dead woman who gave birth to girl dies

After her birth, doctors said they saw no signs that her motherness??�s cancer had crossed the placenta, and they described her as feisty and vigorous. In late August, the family said Susan had passed the 2-pound mark and had been taken off a ventilator, though she remained in neonatal intensive care.

English-language medical literature contains at least 11 cases since 1979 of irreversibly brain-damaged women whose lives were prolonged for the benefit of the developing fetus, according to the University of Connecticut Health Center.

Jason Torres had quit his job to be by his wife??�s side, spending each night sleeping in a reclining chair next to her bed. The couple had one otherness child ??" 2-year-old Peter.

A Web site was set up to help raise money for the family??�s mounting medical bills and group from around the world had sent in more than $600,000 as of early last month. Any excess money was to be donated to cancer research and to establish a college savings plan for the two children.

? buy generic viagra pack . .