Another Dark Day For Lloyd Duplantis Of Gray, Louisiana. And A Bit Of A Frustrating Day For Myself.

Lloyd Duplantis is the pharmacist who got on National Public Radio during the height of The Era of Bush Induced Insanity to declare that he refused to sell birth control pills "in the name of science." Seriously. He said that. And a mere 5 years ago there were enough people who believed him, and not the actual science that shows the use of oral contraceptives leads to a lower lifetime risk of cancer, that his ilk was having a major influence on public policy. Lloyd Duplantis scared the piss out of me 5 years ago, and I decided I had to do what I could to make sure his attempt to turn our profession into a home for religious fundamentalism did not go unopposed. Today, the little blog garden you see before you is gathering hits at a far greater pace than the website of his organization, Pharmacists For Life International, my writing secured me a regular platform in the nation's leading trade magazine, and we have this news out of the nation's capital:

WASHINGTON — Federal drug regulators on Friday approved a new form of emergency contraceptive pill that prevents pregnancies if taken as many as five days after unprotected intercourse.

The pill, called ella, will be available by prescription only. Developed in government laboratories, it is more effective than Plan B, the morning-after pill now available over the counter to women 17 and older.

That pill gradually loses efficacy and can be taken at most three days after sex. Ella, by contrast, works just as well on the fifth day as the first after sex.

I win. As do the women of America. Lloyd Duplantis of Gray, Louisiana has turned out to be just another schmuck who's 5 minutes of fame is over, his only accomplishment the jump-starting of my writing career. For which I'll always be thankful.

Moving on...

Studies have found that many women fail to realize they are at risk for an unplanned pregnancy after unprotected sex.

No way. I've always said you'll never go broke betting on stupid, but there is just no fucking way that can be true.

Studies have shown that more than one million women who do not want to get pregnant are estimated to have unprotected sex every night in the United States

Wow that's a lot of sex. Why do you suppose The New York Times had to go and rain on my parade like that? Rubbing in the fact that of the over one million drillings that are going on in the country this night, none of them will be involving my oil rig. That was just mean of them.

No matter. Even though I will fall asleep this weekend alone, I will wake up in a world a little bit saner than that in which I fell asleep five years ago. Where science is once again the primary factor in the drug approval process, where impassioned political arguments now involve money, and not how many people we should be killing in a country that never attacked us. Where presidents can speak in paragraphs and Proposition 8 has been overturned. Lloyd Duplantis seems like nothing but a bad dream now. About as scary as a Belgian waffle.

Maybe this means my blog is more powerful than Jesus. If so I think it should be getting me laid more.