And finally: yeah, if you have a clotting disorder you'll also have a clotting disorder while pregnant. I fail to see how that is an argument for giving out the pill without a full workup. Wouldn't you prefer to know *before* you get pregnant that you run a high risk of dropping dead?

Isn't it obvious? If someone isn't going to follow advice and see a doctor, they're not going to follow advice and see a doctor. As it stands, they won't get the pill, they have a high chance of getting pregnant, a high chance of complicated pregnancy, a serious risk of unrelated undiagnosed conditions even if they don't get pregnant, and even if they don't have a complicated pregnancy, it will suck for them whether they have an abortion or not, and it will suck even more for the baby. If they have a chance to get the pill, they again have some risk of serious complications, but at least their chance of pregnancy is vastly reduced, which probably lowers their overall risk and at least leaves an unwanted baby out of the picture.

Everyone knows that the best thing is to see a doctor and follow his or her advice, especially if the pills said on the side "SEE A DOCTOR BEFORE TAKING PILLS AND AT LEAST ___ TIMES PER ___ OR SERIOUS COMPLICATIONS INCLUDING DEATH MAY ARISE. SEE A DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY IF YOU EXPERIENCE ___." That would not change if we increased access for those who won't or can't see a doctor, but outcomes would be improved.

You talk as if people can't see a doctor if it's not required or as if people who don't get a pill prescription will remain abstinent.

What it comes down to is right now we cover the doctor's ass by making the pill prescription only, and say to those who get pregnant "you should've seen a doctor and been on the pill." We can at least let women decide for themselves, and if they get deep vein thrombosis (which, pardon me, sounds a lot less scary than pregnancy, but that is a personal matter), we can still say "you should have seen a doctor first."

And as an earlier poster noted, most pill-prescribers aren't doing anything more than asking a few form questions, maybe checking blood pressure, and writing a prescription. That's the real world of medical practice in the USA.

Brightstar chimes in with some more misinformation. There's no cars that "run on water." There do exist motors powered by hydrogen in various forms. Right now the cheapest way to get hydrogen is extracting it from hydrocarbons. It can be produced through electrolysis in water. Since there's no free energy ride, it takes at least as much power to split H20 into H2 and O2 as you get back out by burning the H2 to produce H2O again. The real world being what it is, you lose a lot of energy in the process. It has to be said again and again, hydrogen is not an energy source, it is energy storage. And no cleaner than the ultimate source of the electricity.

As for digesting "ANY organics" into fuel, that's been around in prototype for a while, and is an exciting technology, but it's an energy reclamation/recycling/efficiency/waste management technology, NOT an energy solution. Again, no free energy ride; you can't live off of eating your own excrement, no matter how good you get at it.

@ikuiku, your snippet mischaracterized what I said and did not address it. I acknowledged that you need renewable electricity for the plug-in hybrid to be a truly clean car. But the fact is that clean electricity in no way "enables" the plug-in hybrid. It has been developed independently, and the same technologies and economic incentives to develop it exist independently.

And WHZ points out an obvious point that even the industry numbers from iSuppli that "as many as" 400 plants producing 1MW of PV cells per year may exist by 2011 (which of course means that there will be less than 400), means that even on the optimistic side PV will be a drop in the energy bucket. He also doesn't mention that 1MW of capacity means peak output, e.g. when the sun is shining at its brightest, what the cells are rated to produce when everything works. You can never get that output since it is dark half of the time, and weather is at least somewhat variable the rest of the time. So this really means something like 150MW on the high side of PV capacity coming online per year in 2011 (ignoring the PV cells that are going offline), in the whole world. When a single coal plant can produce 1500MW.

Sorry to be the curmudgeon, but I'm not too optimistic.