Backlash against Sandra Fluke

[vtboy]

Yes, it is more absurd.

Well, I guess if you say so.... which is the definition of the form of logical abandonment known as ipse dixit.

[Trieste]

Well, I guess if you say so.... which is the definition of the form of logical abandonment known as ipse dixit.

It's been nice talking to you. :)

I'm sorry, this surge of 'reproductive health' laws are so far out what was coming before their release that I can't help but see it as a planned sequence. The implications of some of the 'personhood' acts really scare me. My mom had two miscarriages over the years, and while they were traumatic events in and of themselves, the idea that in ADDITION to losing a baby having a cop come by to investigate seems like grinding her loss in salt.

I find myself wondering what on earth these guys are thinking. It stands to reason that someone would be sitting there with one of these bills and say, "Hey this is really going to piss the women off". I have to wonder if they just kind of went "Eh, whatevs" or what...

[Oniya]

I keep coming back to George Carlin's rant about these issues.  It seems like all these recent laws are directed at what happens between 'penis goes in' and 'baby comes out', but at the same time, programs that help families that have actually birthed these children are being slashed. 

[Callie Del Noire]

I find myself wondering what on earth these guys are thinking. It stands to reason that someone would be sitting there with one of these bills and say, "Hey this is really going to piss the women off". I have to wonder if they just kind of went "Eh, whatevs" or what...

It does strike me as a bit.. out there. You got to wonder. I mean.. the opponents point out these glaring flaws and the sponsors go 'oh that's ludicrous' and you KNOW that so long as the law is on the books, the potential abuse will be there. I was talking to my mother.. one of my great-grandmothers had something like eighteen pregnancies and only eight children (and two of them were twins). The causes I don't know but I'm sure of them were environmental. To think that simply by the number of them that she'd be investigated.

Add in this. My mom says sometimes women just simply miscarry. And to make what is already a misfortune into a potential crime, that some elected DA could use as a platform is truly hideous.

I've seen the pain a miscarriage can bring to people. I've told stories of people who had reasons to control their potential reproductive choices and nothing I see in the press releases or speeches shows me that these people putting forth these hideous laws have one WHIT of concern for their fellow man. To demand the level of personal invasion that is being pushed forth in some of these laws is wrong.

I find it particularly ironic that at the same time the people who are pushing these personal invasions forth are the ones who insist they are 'downsizing' government. How can you insist, despite lots of evidence to the contrary, that less regulation is good for the country while at the same time insisting that it's perfectly okay to increase the invasion of a person's privacy to the point that you see no problem at all in violating doctor/patient privacy or looking past closed doors to what happens in the privacy of a person's home?

[Sure]

Pardon if I've misinterpreted what you're saying here, but Planned Parenthood does offer men's services, including cancer screening, infertility screening, UTI testing and treatment, and ED testing and treatment.

To clarify: I know Planned Parenthood offers services to men, but not to the same degree or with as wide a variety as they do for women. They also spend the majority of their time and money on, and have a general focus on, women (and indeed, when they gave interviews on this issue they, from the ones I saw, more often spoke of how they benefit and treat women). They could fix this without outside intervention but choose to continue to focus on women.

I mean, if they just ended up with more women 'customers' (patients? pick a word) that would be fine, but they undeniably and consciously have chosen to focus on women over men.

[Oniya]

All right - what additional men's services would you like to see them offer?

[Callie Del Noire]

To clarify: I know Planned Parenthood offers services to men, but not to the same degree or with as wide a variety as they do for women. They also spend the majority of their time and money on, and have a general focus on, women (and indeed, when they gave interviews on this issue they, from the ones I saw, more often spoke of how they benefit and treat women). They could fix this without outside intervention but choose to continue to focus on women.

I mean, if they just ended up with more women 'customers' (patients? pick a word) that would be fine, but they undeniably and consciously have chosen to focus on women over men.

I would say it is equitable since women typically bear the burden of childbearing more than men. I see very little in the way of pushing the male side of the equation to assume anything like responsible behavior. I see a lot more new laws dealing with the woman than the man. It seems to me all the punitive actions are being pointed towards the mothers and damn near nothing towards the men.

Besides what else could they offer men, besides a course in owning up to their responsibilities?

[HairyHeretic]

I find it particularly ironic that at the same time the people who are pushing these personal invasions forth are the ones who insist they are 'downsizing' government.

If they don't make the Government smaller, they won't fit in your bedroom, obviously

The ones out in the hall won't be able to see and hear everything that way.

[vtboy]

Besides what else could they offer men, besides a course in owning up to their responsibilities?

Having fully participated in every conceivable way (other than physically hosting gestation) in raising a child to an admirable adulthood, I bridle a bit at stereotypical generalizations about male parenting irresponsibility like this one. In fact, every male friend and relative with offspring I can think of has done a pretty good job in this department, sometimes better than their mates. I like to imagine you would think twice before tossing in derogatory stereotypes about women. Why not extend the same courtesy to men?

[Oniya]

To put it in a less inflammatory way:

All right - what additional men's services would you like to see them offer?

Because, quite honestly, I'm not sure what strictly-male-oriented services are left.  STD screening is applicable to both genders.  General health care (including anemia testing, cholesterol screening, diabetes screening, physical exams, including for employment and sports, flu vaccines, help with quitting smoking, high blood pressure screening, tetanus vaccines, and thyroid screening) is applicable to both genders. 

[Callie Del Noire]

Having fully participated in every conceivable way (other than physically hosting gestation) in raising a child to an admirable adulthood, I bridle a bit at stereotypical generalizations about male parenting irresponsibility like this one. In fact, every male friend and relative with offspring I can think of has done a pretty good job in this department, sometimes better than their mates. I like to imagine you would think twice before tossing in derogatory stereotypes about women. Why not extend the same courtesy to men?

Sorry, the sarcasm was directed at the political outlook. There is little to no effort to teach responsibility for our side of the reproductive issue. Notice that few commentators say anything about the fathers in single parent issues.

There are enough adult males I have known who aren't men.  (Which is to say willing to face up to their actions and take responsibility)

[Callie Del Noire]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/12/opinion/christoph-terrel-bill-maher/index.html?iref=obnetwork

Clearly not everyone is happy with Bill Maher's mouth. Though I have to admit that RL is getting more outcry.

[DarklingAlice]

To clarify: I know Planned Parenthood offers services to men, but not to the same degree or with as wide a variety as they do for women. They also spend the majority of their time and money on, and have a general focus on, women (and indeed, when they gave interviews on this issue they, from the ones I saw, more often spoke of how they benefit and treat women). They could fix this without outside intervention but choose to continue to focus on women.

I mean, if they just ended up with more women 'customers' (patients? pick a word) that would be fine, but they undeniably and consciously have chosen to focus on women over men.

Trying to understand this but it seems like saying that it's unfair that there are a greater number of commonly performed procedures in the field of female reproductive medicine than in that of male reproductive medicine. It seems like if you open a clinic offering comprehensive reproductive services you will by nature offer more services to women than men because the female reproductive system is both more internal and medically more complex. That hardly seems discriminatory. It's like calling a sickle cell anemia clinic 'racist'.

[Chris Brady]

Why not extend the same courtesy to men?

Because the media perpetuates the male irresponsibility stereotype to the point of being sexist, and assuming that it's going to be the woman raising the kid.

This is exactly what I'm seeing here.  In fact, this very thread seems to be assuming that men are not worth focusing on.  Especially when it comes to sex.  Everything is hunky dory, guys are havin' the times of their lives, so screw 'em, they don't need help.  Which to me is wrong.  We need to be teaching both genders responsibility, not assuming that one side is too stupid to understand and thus foisting all the help/responsibility on the other.

[Callie Del Noire]

Because the media perpetuates the male irresponsibility stereotype to the point of being sexist, and assuming that it's going to be the woman raising the kid.

This is exactly what I'm seeing here.  In fact, this very thread seems to be assuming that men are not worth focusing on.  Especially when it comes to sex.  Everything is hunky dory, guys are havin' the times of their lives, so screw 'em, they don't need help.  Which to me is wrong.  We need to be teaching both genders responsibility, not assuming that one side is too stupid to understand and thus foisting all the help/responsibility on the other.

I'm not going by the media but what I saw in high school, and to a lesser degree in college and The military. There was a fair number of guys who felt that it was 'h problem, not mine.' less so over the last 10 years and I knew guys who literally moved the heavens to get their kids in their life. I have one friend that to this day I pray his ex FINALLY does something stupid enough to lose any visitation rights she has. She's a waste of skin, a fraud and does NOTHING for her children. When an 8 year tells the judge, after mom was evicted from the court for misconduct, that she rather not ever live with mommy again. THAT tells you something.

[AndyZ]

I'm either repeating myself or answering some parts with things that others could read during this post a lot.  Fair warning.

Currently health insurance companies charge more for group plans, or at least they did, because group plans include everyone in an office whether they are a 22-year-old fitness nut or a 55-year-old diabetic. So group plans are generally more expensive.

In the new health care plan, there is an individual mandate. The justification for this is that people who can afford insurance but don't purchase it when they're healthy need to pay in anyway, rather than just not paying for it when they're healthy and then purchasing it when they're sick and need health insurance. It's my understanding that the individual mandate regulation was put in there to protect insurance companies from going bankrupt from people abusing the system, after the government made it illegal for them to reject people with pre-existing conditions. It used to be that someone with a pre-existing condition could not get coverage at any price. Now they can get coverage, and there was a fear that such legislation opened the door to people waiting until they were sick to buy insurance. My personal opinion is that it makes sense if you're an insurance company, but my sympathy for the insurance companies is absolutely nil. I do think it's barbaric that we still allow private companies to profit off of illness and/or fear of being ill.

Some people in this thread are treating raised premiums as subsidies. So in other words, they're saying that you're subsidizing others' birth control if your premium goes up in reaction to this legislation. Sandra Fluke (and therefore this thread) was not discussing government-subsidized birth control, but supporting the coverage of it via health care.

And not all plans are $10k. I live in Massachusetts and my health insurance costs a little over $2k a year.

I'm actually alright with insurance companies being allowed to offer higher or lower costs due to things like age.  With auto insurance, it costs much more as a teenager because teenagers have more accidents.  With life insurance, it costs more as an older person because you're more likely to die.  If health insurance should not be this way, should we change the other insurance companies to match?

I also vehemently disagree with the concept that the federal government can tell you that you have to buy something just for the "privilege" of existing.  Don't get me wrong; I disagree with the extremists among the Republicans who want to legislate the bedroom, but what's the point of throwing out a Republican for legislating the bedroom and voting for a Democrat who legislates what you're allowed to eat, what you have to buy, and similar things?

That would have to cover a WHOLE new thread. Of course regulating the men that set the rules is always hard to work. I know that had my brother gotten elected to office that he was running for in '10 he mentioned that he'd have lost control of his own financial planning. The bank, law partnership, insurance company and other business would have to been run by someone else, and he wasn't happy with that. Sometimes I doubt that all representatives are ethical about it as they should be but getting laws.

If I wasn't having problems keeping up with my current threads, I'd start one.  Remind me sometime that we should do so?  Ideally well before November, so people can start asking the various candidates and bounce the questions to the news media.

Actually, no, crap on it, I'm starting one up.

That particular comment was directed towards the conservative movement of late, not the mouthpieces of either side, to regulate the reproductive organ of women to the point where a normal (if sad) event such as a miscarriage is grounds for investigating potential manslaughter. The conservative political actions of late have become increasingly hostile towards women, in the interests of the unborn, without pushing one single iota of male responsibility.

I have seen a lot of 'reproductive' health law proposals of late that seem solely be designed to inflame the unspoken moderate feminist into coming out in force. Ultrasounds for abortions? 'Personhood'? Restricting any outlet of reproductive health or medicine that is 'women' only.

I'm sorry, this surge of 'reproductive health' laws are so far out what was coming before their release that I can't help but see it as a planned sequence. The implications of some of the 'personhood' acts really scare me. My mom had two miscarriages over the years, and while they were traumatic events in and of themselves, the idea that in ADDITION to losing a baby having a cop come by to investigate seems like grinding her loss in salt.

You can't legislate morality, and if only Republicans and all Republicans attempted to do so, I'd be completely unwilling to vote for them.

To me, it's sadly become like health care.  Can you really vote against either Obama or Romney with only health care as a debate when they both pass a law in their respective jurisdictions which is practically the same thing?  It becomes something that you have to ignore in order to look for actual differences in their policies.

You could argue that legislating the bedroom isn't as bad as legislating every other room in the house, and I've heard some say that Republicans aren't as bad because they only want the bedroom, but to me, it's one and the same and equally abhorrent.

I find it particularly ironic that at the same time the people who are pushing these personal invasions forth are the ones who insist they are 'downsizing' government. How can you insist, despite lots of evidence to the contrary, that less regulation is good for the country while at the same time insisting that it's perfectly okay to increase the invasion of a person's privacy to the point that you see no problem at all in violating doctor/patient privacy or looking past closed doors to what happens in the privacy of a person's home?

Parties are not monolithic.  It's part of the reason I refuse to join them.

There are Democrats out there who are trying to shrink government, they're just in the minority, in the same way that not all Republicans are for this madness.

You just have to look at the voting record for an individual before voting.  It's a sad fact that far too many purely look at the R or D before making a decision, but you know it's exactly how the Giants want it.

If we had more than two parties which had a shot at getting elected, we could point at the Republicans, say, "Stop legislating X," then point at the Democrats, say, "Stop legislating Y," and go vote for Z.  However, third party voting still seems like it's just throwing your vote away until a significant chunk of people (tens of millions) all agree on a single alternative.

To clarify: I know Planned Parenthood offers services to men, but not to the same degree or with as wide a variety as they do for women. They also spend the majority of their time and money on, and have a general focus on, women (and indeed, when they gave interviews on this issue they, from the ones I saw, more often spoke of how they benefit and treat women). They could fix this without outside intervention but choose to continue to focus on women.

I mean, if they just ended up with more women 'customers' (patients? pick a word) that would be fine, but they undeniably and consciously have chosen to focus on women over men.

This is the inherent nature of government groups.  They hole up on a particular issue, and to them, that issue is king.  They never budge an inch if they can help it, because it lowers their funding and their power if they lose their strangehold on a particular issue.  If an issue is ever fully resolved, the group shuts down, so as we nominalize towards equality, those groups become more and more extreme until their original purpose is lost.

You can't get rid of them, though, because if a politician tries to cut funding for the Save The Purple Whales because the Purple Whales are no longer endangered, then that politician is seen as despising the purple whales and not caring about their destruction.  The group instead goes towards making sure the Purple Whale is never endangered ever again.

Perhaps we can consolidate a number of these groups into things which will never be in question?  If you make a group about all endangered species rather than focusing on a few, and the money goes into all of them, then the group itself works out which ones need to stay and which need to go.  Although I would consider this inferior to simply getting rid of them, I'd consider it a step in the right direction.

Because the media perpetuates the male irresponsibility stereotype to the point of being sexist, and assuming that it's going to be the woman raising the kid.

This is exactly what I'm seeing here.  In fact, this very thread seems to be assuming that men are not worth focusing on.  Especially when it comes to sex.  Everything is hunky dory, guys are havin' the times of their lives, so screw 'em, they don't need help.  Which to me is wrong.  We need to be teaching both genders responsibility, not assuming that one side is too stupid to understand and thus foisting all the help/responsibility on the other.

Already spoken on the media bias and don't really have anything to add.

The problem with the second paragraph is that you can't really legislate morality.  GWB had that whole speech during the 2000 campaign about how he'd love to see a bill where you had to be a good parent.  It's a legislative nightmare, and even when people try, you end up with things like putting the government in your food, bedroom, health care, etc.

I agree that responsibility needs to be fostered, but I don't want the government trying to do it by passing laws which force people to do stuff.

[vtboy]

A new front has opened in the war against the Enlightenment:

http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_20184823/arizona-legislation-access-birth-control-advances

Notwithstanding my misgivings about government requiring that health insurance include contraception, it seems that benighted Arizona is leading the charge back to theocracy. Once a state has decided that employer-provided health insurance must cover contraception, can there be any doubt that the First Amendment is violated when the state also permits actors engaged in secular pursuits to opt out of the rule on grounds of claimed religious scruple?

[AndyZ]

I'm actually alright with the concept of requiring showing the insurance company (not the employer as listed in the law, but the insurance company) the prescription that shows that you need birth control for actual health reasons.  I'm similarly alright with the concept that you have to show the insurance company a prescription for medicinal marijuana or painkillers.

However, implementing that would require removing the federal mandate of providing birth control regardless.

As far as allowing religious groups to get out of things because it violates their religion, there's certainly precedent.  I'm pretty sure some pacifist religious groups can get out of the army and the Amish don't have to pay social security.

So many of these things are happening in response to the new health care act.  When states are doing everything they can in order to stop a federal law, but unable to do directly, I wouldn't really consider that a charge into theocracy.  If a cop doesn't agree that drugs should be illegal and looks the other way when he sees them, he's technically shirking his duty but it's not because he has no respect for the law.

[vtboy]

I'm actually alright with the concept of requiring showing the insurance company (not the employer as listed in the law, but the insurance company) the prescription that shows that you need birth control for actual health reasons.  I'm similarly alright with the concept that you have to show the insurance company a prescription for medicinal marijuana or painkillers.

However, implementing that would require removing the federal mandate of providing birth control regardless.

As far as allowing religious groups to get out of things because it violates their religion, there's certainly precedent.  I'm pretty sure some pacifist religious groups can get out of the army and the Amish don't have to pay social security.

So many of these things are happening in response to the new health care act.  When states are doing everything they can in order to stop a federal law, but unable to do directly, I wouldn't really consider that a charge into theocracy.  If a cop doesn't agree that drugs should be illegal and looks the other way when he sees them, he's technically shirking his duty but it's not because he has no respect for the law.

I'm not by any means convinced that, were the U.S. to adopt conscription today, and to allow for conscientious objectors to opt out of military service, present understanding of the First Amendment would permit a religious test for determination of conscientious objector status.

It is one thing to say that a church, doing strictly church stuff (e.g., preaching, fleecing the faithful, terrifying kids with stories about hell, etc.), may opt out of providing otherwise mandated birth control coverage to its employees; it is quite another to permit actors engaged in secular pursuits (manufacturing porto-potties, producing reality tv shows, selling reverse credit swap deivatives, etc.) to avoid these or other legal obligations on grounds of claimed religious scruple. Moreover, notwithstanding Citizens United, I don't really see how corporations -- and most employers these days are corporations or similar juridical entities -- can have religious beliefs. 

[Trieste]

Just as a note, if you're a conscientious objector and registered as such, you don't get out of military service. It simply means that they'll put you behind a desk somewhere, or have you cleaning latrines instead of on a combat assignment.

[Callie Del Noire]

Just as a note, if you're a conscientious objector and registered as such, you don't get out of military service. It simply means that they'll put you behind a desk somewhere, or have you cleaning latrines instead of on a combat assignment.

I felt serving ones country was a duty that everyone should consider. Consider it fall out from reading Heinlein's Starship Troopers as a kid, there was where I picked up the right to vote is actually a duty. Even if you're counting fuzz on caterpillars in an arctic research lab to steal an example from the book.

I used to yell at my airmen and junior petty officers for not voting. It was the one thing that I most disagreed most clearly with folks like George Carlin, if you don't participate in the voting process, you shouldn't be allowed to criticize.     

That being said. I don't see the draft being reinstated ever again. Too much noise and too many folks would bolt for Mexico/Canada/elsewhere.  I do think that for SOME offenses that the option to serve instead of prison time should be offered. One girl I knew in high school joined the Air Force to get out of jail time for a misdemeanor.. and she's done well since. She's an E8, married and by her own admission it helped her learn discipline.

[vtboy]

Just as a note, if you're a conscientious objector and registered as such, you don't get out of military service. It simply means that they'll put you behind a desk somewhere, or have you cleaning latrines instead of on a combat assignment.

Thank you. What I meant was combat duty.

[Sure]

Trying to understand this but it seems like saying that it's unfair that there are a greater number of commonly performed procedures in the field of female reproductive medicine than in that of male reproductive medicine. It seems like if you open a clinic offering comprehensive reproductive services you will by nature offer more services to women than men because the female reproductive system is both more internal and medically more complex. That hardly seems discriminatory. It's like calling a sickle cell anemia clinic 'racist'.

Not at all. Gynecology is a more well developed discipline but to presume that this implies the male reproductive system is simpler or in need of less care does not logically follow. Indeed, becoming a urologist is harder than becoming a gynecologist (though I suppose it doesn't logically prove the point either). But putting that aside, you have missed two points: Firstly, Planned Parenthood chooses to market (and yes, such organizations do market) themselves as helping women, not both genders, and as providing services to women. Secondly, even if we restricted it to procedures with clear parallels (such as checking for VD or contraception) Planned Parenthood provides more comprehensive services more commonly to women.

So it's more akin to calling a syphilis clinic that provides the vast majority of its services to black people and proclaims itself a helper of black people as 'racist' because they're not helping other races equally. At least in my mind.

This is the inherent nature of government groups.  They hole up on a particular issue, and to them, that issue is king.  They never budge an inch if they can help it, because it lowers their funding and their power if they lose their strangehold on a particular issue.  If an issue is ever fully resolved, the group shuts down, so as we nominalize towards equality, those groups become more and more extreme until their original purpose is lost.

You can't get rid of them, though, because if a politician tries to cut funding for the Save The Purple Whales because the Purple Whales are no longer endangered, then that politician is seen as despising the purple whales and not caring about their destruction.  The group instead goes towards making sure the Purple Whale is never endangered ever again.

Perhaps we can consolidate a number of these groups into things which will never be in question?  If you make a group about all endangered species rather than focusing on a few, and the money goes into all of them, then the group itself works out which ones need to stay and which need to go.  Although I would consider this inferior to simply getting rid of them, I'd consider it a step in the right direction.

Perhaps, but I do have one criticism of your analyses: Treating men equally would actually increase their need for funding, and in addition, would not threaten their status as one of the main providers of healthcare for women. They meet the demand of women (and to a lesser degree, men) needing reproductive healthcare, which will happen for so long as we have reproductive organs. Personally I hope that's for a long time.

I would say it is equitable since women typically bear the burden of childbearing more than men. I see very little in the way of pushing the male side of the equation to assume anything like responsible behavior. I see a lot more new laws dealing with the woman than the man. It seems to me all the punitive actions are being pointed towards the mothers and damn near nothing towards the men.

Besides what else could they offer men, besides a course in owning up to their responsibilities?

Men ought to have no more or less responsibility to a partner they have impregnated or to the child in her womb than the woman herself. That is, he has the right to abandon it and them wholly. Anything less and any argument for female access to adoption or abandonment (and perhaps even abortion) services services becomes sexist, because it posits women have more rights than men.

All right - what additional men's services would you like to see them offer?

Access to urologists for regular check ups immediately springs to mind. Help with various diseases unique to the penis (for example, phimosis). Counseling services. A wider array of contraceptive options. Procedures and the like to try and prevent or help heal prostate cancer, or even to pick up the slack on the failure of certain organizations to treat breast cancer in men. I could go on, but I don't think an exhaustive list is possible.

[Blinkin]

This is a complex and sensitive topic and I will follow my general rules on discussing politics, religion and nascar. That is to say that I'll state my thoughts and go on with life.

I think that overall, the push that states have been making in the last year are the worst kind of forced morality. It didn't work in the 1920's and in fact made some situations worse. Admittedly, baning alcohol and banning a woman's right to medical assistance are vastly different, but the results will likely be the same. The more that you try to force your views on others, the more wrong that you do. I was somewhat pleasantly surprised (yes pleasantly) that someone finally figured out that you can do more at the state level than the federal... I just wish that they had chosen to actually do something productive (no pun intended) than trying to make family planning and personhood the battleground.

On a note from another series of post, I would agree that an option for military service in lue of jail or prison time would be an excellent option and should be one. Although I know many will disagree with me, I would go so far as to suggest that a manditory term of military service would do our whole country well as a means of giving our young (and the last 3 or 4 generations) a sense of discipline, what it means to be American and just what our forefathers (and mothers) have given for us to be able to NOT appreciate them.

Blinkin

[Oniya]

Access to urologists for regular check ups immediately springs to mind. Help with various diseases unique to the penis (for example, phimosis). Counseling services. A wider array of contraceptive options. Procedures and the like to try and prevent or help heal prostate cancer, or even to pick up the slack on the failure of certain organizations to treat breast cancer in men. I could go on, but I don't think an exhaustive list is possible.

From the link that I provided earlier:

Men’s Sexual Health Services at Planned Parenthood

Services offered at Planned Parenthood health centers vary by location. Some of the services include

    checkups for reproductive or sexual health problems  I suspect conditions like phimosis might fall under this.  If not, I agree that referrals to specialists should be included.
    colon cancer screening I should note that even with women, PP only does 'screenings' with respect to cancers.  I agree they should extend breast cancer screenings to men.
    erectile dysfunction services, including education, exams, treatment, and referral
    jock itch exam and treatment
    male infertility screening and referral
    premature ejaculation services, including education, exams, treatment, and referral
    routine physical exams
    testicular cancer screenings
    prostate cancer screenings
    urinary tract infections testing and treatment
    vasectomy

I didn't see any counseling services offered at all for either gender (unless you're talking about counseling with specifically reproductive choices in mind, and even that seemed limited to 'pro/con' pages.)

As far as contraception - the biggest fault to this rests on the companies that aren't coming up with alternatives to what's currently out there, which I agree is very limited from the male end of things:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/mens-sexual-health/birth-control-men-22600.htm