Happy F'n 40th Griswold

The landmark Supreme Court case giving (married) women right to privacy in their birth control decisions, Griswold v. Connecticut, turned 40 this week. While the case (in conjunction with the Eisenstadt v. Baird case in 1972 that extended the right to single women) has been important in terms of women's reproductive rights and health, let's not get too hyped about this over-the-hill celebration.

The attack on this fundamental right (and women's sexual behavior) is steadily increasing in state legislatures and pharmacies across the country, as this Guttmacher Institute fact sheet demonstrates. Yet, men's sexual behavior continues to be encouraged and federally FUNDED -- even if you are a sex offender, as was widely reported in the past few weeks.

But, the Viagra/sex offender scandal is just one of many instances of governmentally approved sex - if you have a penis. Of course, governments aren't the only entities working to boost male sex drives while firmly ignoring women's. Corporations are busy R&Ding new drugs & products to get it up, prolong, enhance, improve, increase sensitivity, etc.

In her most recent column in The Nation, Katha Pollitt addresses this double standard:

The only new birth control method coming up soon is actually a nostalgia item, the Today sponge, beloved by Seinfeld's Elaine, which will be returning to drugstores later this year. Two decades into the AIDS epidemic, the only woman-controlled means of protection against HIV--now the leading cause of death among black women age 25-34--is the aesthetically repulsive, cumbersome and hard-to-find female condom. Hormone replacement therapy, promoted since the 1950s as the fountain of feminine youth and sexual vitality, looks to be mostly hype, with the possibility of heart attack, stroke and breast or ovarian cancer.

And what about sex aids for women? Where's that female Viagra they're always promising us? Most newspapers didn't even report that in December an FDA panel turned down Procter & Gamble's application for Intrinsa, a testosterone patch intended to raise libido in women whose ovaries have been removed. The problem wasn't that Intrinsa didn't work (the panel voted 14 to 3 that the manufacturers' trials showed a meaningful improvement in desire and pleasure); the issue was health risks as well as the potential for "off-label use" by women who had simply lost their mojo. A "lifestyle drug" for women! Can't have that.

So, Happy 40th, Griswold. We hardly know ye.