Olympic Condom Ads ... Chinese condom company Elasun is using the upcoming Olympic games to creatively, but very simply, promote its products to the Chinese people and visitors alike.  The company's condoms take the place of well-known sports equipment in the ads, here's the Elasun take on basketball:

 

 

Stephen Hutcheon of Aussie paper the Brisbane Times has the rest of the images and adds this bit of interesting trivia, via Reuters:

Speaking of prophylactics, Reuters reports that the phrase "avoiding pregnancy" has become a euphemistic way of saying that you're going to avoid the Olympics.

In Chinese, "bi-yun", means contraception. "Ao-yun" means the Olympics. So bi-yun in the context of the Games is a sort of double entendre meaning avoiding the Games.

I remember in Sydney how scores of people left the city over the Games period rather than put up with the perceived inconvenience. As it turned out, however, Sydney has probably never functioned more smoothly. Public transport worked, the roads were empty and it was a great atmosphere.

But with all over zealous security measures in place, it's probably a good time for the locals to take a short break a long way away from Beijing.

Interesting Polling on Abortion Rights ... The Christian Science Monitor's Dante Chinni posted an article today that breaks down support for abortion rights by an interesting set of demographics and uses the polling to predict that Barack Obama, a supporter of abortion rights, may have an edge over John McCain in terms of total votes on the issue.  Of course that assumes that turnout matches the polling sample.

More on the HHS Anti-contraception Proposal ... I'm sure you know the story by now... the Bush administration's department of Health and Human Services leaked a proposed rule two weeks ago that would limit women's access to contraception by redefining popular birth control methods as abortion and legally empowering medical practitioners to deny dispensing birth control to women with a prescription.  The regulation would also remove all federal funding from subsidized birth control that millions of low income women depend on. The proposed regs have been reported in just about every main stream media source and commented on fairly exhaustively by leading activists and politicians, including Sen. Hillary Clinton right here on RH Reality Check.

Truthdig, in "A Parting Gift to the Religious Right," and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in "Shell game on women's health," each recently ran articles that do a good job at summing up the proposed regulations and the coverage to date.