Accessing contraceptives is a health necessity for many women. Contraceptives help prevent unwanted pregnancy while reducing the risk of diseases including endometrial, ovarian, and colorectal cancers. However, finding and obtaining the right contraceptive method often places an undue financial burden on women, particularly low-income women.

One of the many achievements for patients in the Affordable Care Act was defining contraceptive as an essential health benefit that could be covered at no cost under the bill. This has led to a dramatic decrease in costs for most contraceptives and a dramatic increase in contraceptive use.

Unfortunately, while the Affordable Care Act mandates coverage across the full range of contraceptive methods, it does not mandate coverage across the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive products, and, despite the intent of the bill, contains loopholes that allow insurance companies to deny coverage of certain products to women who need them and shift costs onto patients.

Why does this matter? Not every contraceptive product is right for every woman. Different products have different side effects interactions with other medications and conditions that impact women to varying extents, and some products that are effective for one woman may not work at all for another.

PHOENIX – State lawmakers are one step closer to passing a bill that would require parents to give written permission for children to discuss sex and gender identity in the classroom and ban any formal sex education – including AIDS instruction – before the fifth grade.

The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, calls Senate Bill 1456 “a parents’ rights bill.”

“Parents should not have to worry about what schools are teaching their children about human sexuality,” she said in an email. “Too often parents learn after the fact that explicit or controversial materials were presented without their knowledge or consent.”

However, opponents call the measure a dangerous move backward.

“It’s going to impact the ability of teachers to talk about a wide range of issues that impact all students,” said Sen. Martín Quezada, D-Phoenix. Bills like this, he added, “do more harm than they do good to our kids.”

SB 1456 has moved through the Legislature along party lines – finding staunch Republican support and fierce criticism from Democrats. The bill passed the Senate 16-14, and a House committee gave its approval on March 24. The measure now goes to the full House, where Republicans hold a 31-29 majority, for consideration.

Arizona schools are not legally required to teach sex education; school districts usually make those decisions, and parents can opt out of the instruction for their children.

It's a sad fact of life: Many scammers prey on lonely people, so the FBI's Phoenix division has issued a bulletin warning about "romance scams" ahead of this Valentine's Day on Sunday, Feb. 14.

Also called "confidence fraud," these scams involve a criminal adopting a fake identity to gain someone's trust, then using their phony relationship to steal from the victim. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, 560 Arizonans reported collected losses of more than $12 million in connection with confidence fraud/romance scams in 2020.

These scam artists are present on almost every dating and social media site, and often begin interactions attempting to earn trust, but often never actually meet in person. According to the FBI, these scam artists often say they are in the building or construction industry and are engaged in projects outside the U.S. That makes it easier to avoid meeting in person—and more plausible when they ask for money for a medical emergency or unexpected legal fee.

The following tips may be helpful to consider if you develop a romantic relationship with someone you meet online:

• • Research the person’s photo and profile using online searches to see if the material has been used elsewhere.
• • Never provide your financial information, loan money, nor allow your bank accounts to be used for transfers of funds.
• • Never send money to anyone you don’t personally know.
• • If you are traveling to a foreign country to meet someone, check the State Department’s Travel Advisories beforehand (travel.state.gov), provide your itinerary to family and friends, and do not travel alone if possible.
• • Beware if the individual seems too perfect or quickly asks you to leave a dating service or Facebook to go “offline.”
• • Beware if the individual attempts to isolate you from friends and family or requests inappropriate photos or financial information that could later be used to extort you.
• • Beware if the individual promises to meet in person but then always comes up with an excuse why they can’t.
• • If you haven’t met the person after a few months - for any reason - it's wise to be suspicious.
• • If you plan to meet someone in person you have met online, meet in a public place and let someone know where you will be and what time you should return home.

For more information on romance scams, visit here.

PHOENIX – Whether speed-dating on Zoom or making plans for a virtual movie night, couples are getting creative in making and maintaining romantic connections during these times of social distancing.

Even those already in long-distance relationships and accustomed to communicating virtually are finding the forced quarantines and physical separation challenging.

Mireya Treviño, a senior at the University of Texas in Austin, met her boyfriend when he visited from San Antonio for a Halloween party. Despite the distance – the cities are a 90-minute drive apart – the two started talking and officially began a relationship in December.

Treviño, who is studying public health, wasn’t too worried about COVID-19 at first. Then she learned she’d been exposed, leaving her boyfriend to console her from afar.

Cactus Flower blooms Feb. 27-30

Created and performed entirely by funny female, binary and gender-nonconforming humans, the four-day Cactus Flower Comedy Festival will spark loads of laughs in anyone who is not looking for a lot of dick jokes.

The event, which takes place at Tucson Improv Movement's TIM Comedy Theatre, offers storytelling, stand-up, improv and sketch shows to watch, and workshops to exercise your own sense of humor and improve listening and communications skills. All shows are $5 or $7. An all-festival pass is $30, and workshops are $40 each. Reservations are via squareup.com.

Workshop leader Shannon Stott says she has seen improv change lives on and off the stage. She has performed and taught improv for 20 years and now regularly highlights that crossover.

The most important thing, she says, is “to listen to yourself and answer yourself honestly. Your body tells you so much information, and because of society's eyes (a.k.a. the audience) we often don't listen. The consequences can be painful.

That self-awareness makes all the difference in relationships. "Understanding what your relationship is to anyone will inform your scene," Stott says. "Much of the feedback I get sounds like ‘I didn't know I was doing that’. When you are unaware, choices are often made for you, on stage and off.”

Regarding festivals focused on women and non-gender-conforming performers, Stott says, “We must have safe places to practice being strong, outspoken, leading, being loud, silly, emotional and ourselves. Once you experience being heard and seen, you can recognize and internalize it so you can seek it out, on and off stage.”

The CFCF kicks off at 7:30 pm. Thursday, Feb. 27, with F*sT! (Female Storytellers) sharing their best of 2019. It’s likely to be the Fest’s first sell-out. The 9 p.m. show opens with improv duo Allreddy, featuring standup comedian Allana Erickson. Omega creates a long-form Harold, then Baby Fish Mouth Omega performs original sketches.

The 7:30 show Friday, Feb. 28, opens with duo team, I Was Promised Magic. Gretchen Wirges and Ally Tanzillo follow as Ex-Boyfriend. Then comes Phoenix’s RatQween, spontaneously formed at a recent Phoenix festival for female/non-binary/gender non-conforming people.

At 9 p.m., TIM’s premier team, Soapbox, create scenes inspired by true anecdotes from the lives of community leader and former mayoral candidate Randy Dorman and the Fest’s two nationally recognized workshop leaders, Stott and Jill Bernard. A founding member of Minneapolis’ HUGE Theatre, Bernard has been a principal in that city’s ComedySportz franchise since 1993. She has taught improv all over the US, Europe and South America.

Following the Soapbox, at 10:30 p.m., Nicole Riesgo hosts Beginners and Veterans, a standup showcase featuring Rebecca Tingley, creator of the Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby comedy panel, and her frequent co-host, Cami Anderson. Also performing is Steena Salido, co-creator of Tucson's popular standup show Cunts Being Cunts Talking about Cunts and the all-Spanish-Language standup and improv show, Carcajadas, that features TIM’s Como Se Dice team. The rest of the bill comprises comedians who completed TIM’s standup class led by Mo Urban, founder or co-founder of five comedy series in Tucson. Graduates are multiple Moth award-winning storyteller Molly McCloy, TIM Company improviser Holly Hilton, and high-energy newcomer Brandi Dierinzo.

On Saturday at 6, TIM indie teams Three-Headed Monster, #PurseWine and Rough Around the Curves lead up to Unscrewed Theater’s From the Top musical improv team. At 7:30, Urban hosts an especially diverse CFCF Stand Up Comedy Showcase, featuring Jackie Kibler, Andrea Carmichael, Andrea Salazar, Savannah Hernandez and Bethany Evans.

The 7:30 p.m. show features Como Se Dice, TIM’s premier all-female team The Riveters and Jill Bernard performing her one-woman show, Drum Machine. It’s described as a “sweepingly epic, unscripted musical featuring multiple characters.” It’s been featured in more than 40 improv festivals.

Stott and Bernard each lead two workshops on Saturday and Sunday.

The Switch switches to Skybar

Fans of The Switch, where comedians riff off-the-cuff on suggestions texted in by the audience, must remember to head to Skybar at 8:45 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 27. The event has moved following a long run on Mondays at The Hut. The lineup for the debut includes Phoencians Anwar Newton and Erick Biez.

Standups sing, now

Both Tucson’s improv companies have musical teams, and there’s the child of Musical Mayhem known as One Rehearsal Short. Young, brash, awkward and twisted genius Jeremy Segal now has created Show Tune ShowCase, in which seven favorite Tucson Comedians sing show tunes in their sets. We hold our breath for voices we didn’t know existed, but Mo Urban’s always knocks us out in her rock duo. Others in this debut include Joe Tullar, Steena Salido, Tim Maggard, Eli W.T., Jesus Otamendi and Chris Quinn. It’s $5 at 7 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 29 at The Screening Room.

Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby

Rebecca Tingley’s no-holds-barred panel of comedy experts returns to Club Congress at 8 p.m., Tuesday March 3. The show pokes fun at taboos, silliness, awkward moments and other somewhat less than graphic aspects of the act, (because, after all, we all know the actual mechanics). Panelists and guests include Cami Anderson, Paul Fox and Charles Ludwig.

Even More Laughs!

Friday, Feb. 28, standup with Andrew Rivers (see last week’s Laughing Stock), 8 p.m., The O ($15, $30 VIP, via Eventbrite.com; $30, door); Patrick Deguire featuring Zach Pugh, 8 and 10:30 p.m., Laffs Comedy Caffe ($12.50, $17.50); and Last Friday - Last Laughs featuring Roxy Merrari, Ali Musa, Phoenix comic Noni Shaney, Battle at the Roast Room winner Allana Erickson, Michael Barnett, Stephanie Lyonga, Jeremy Segal and Eden Nault. Family-friendly improv with Not Burnt Out Just Unscrewed (NBOJU) at 7:30 p.m.($5 kids and $8 adults),and Free Form Friday Fight Night 9 p.m., Unscrewed Theater (free).

Saturday, Feb. 29, Standup with Patrick Deguire featuring Zack Pugh, 7 and 9:30 p.m., Laff’s Comedy Caffe ($12.50, $17.50). Family-friendly improv with (NBOJU) at 7:30 p.m., Unscrewed Theater ($5 and $8)

Free Open Mics

Sunday, March 1, 6:30 p.m., The O, and 8 p.m., Chuckleheads in Bisbee.
Monday, March 2, 6:45 p.m., The Surly Wench; 9 p.m., Kava Bar.
Tuesday, March 3, 6:45 p.m., Neighborhood Comedy. The Music Box Lounge.
Wednesday, March 4, 7 p.m., The Screening Room; 8:30 p.m., The Rock.
Thursday, March 5, 8 p.m., Laffs Comedy Caffe and 8:30 p.m., Rockabilly Grill.

On Saturday, May 25, 2019, Jellywink Boutique made its return to Tucson and celebrated with their "Grand Opening" event. 

Previously owned by Ally Booker, new-owner Erin Voss stepped in and has brought back the welcoming, inclusive vibe of this unique sex toy shop.

Those 18 and up can walk in and find educational books, attire and of course, sex toys!

Shop-owner Voss offers uplifting words and knowledge.

The store can be found on 416 E. 7th Street.

Sculpture Resource Center artist Joshua Woodhall says he’s been doing art ever since he had the motor skills for it. He has this memory of checking out a library book in middle school and drawing something lewd on its pages.

“The silly librarian took it all over looking for who drew it,” he says. “Everybody got to see my boob drawing.”

This weekend, Tucsonans will have their own chance to see Woodhall’s erotic pieces at the ninth annual Tucson Erotica opening reception at the Sculpture Resource Center, 640 N. Stone Ave., 7 to 11 p.m. on Saturday, April 6. Past iterations of the festival have included pieces ranging from traditional nudes to the type of sculpture you really can’t resist walking around to see from every angle to arguably over-the-top depictions of orgies. But that’s the thing: Nothing is over-the-top at this sex-positive festival. This year, the event will include literary art for the first time as well.

Event organizer Inna Rohr met two burlesque performers at last year’s event, and was so impressed by their sexual energy that she created a series of paintings featuring them.

“They were both really strong an powerful, and the had this absolutely magnificent presence about them,” she says. “The series addresses same-sex relationships and intimacy and how it doesn’t matter who you are because love is still love.”

This is Rohr’s fifth year being involved with the festival. Last year, her featured pieces were playfully positioned bananas and donuts. But she spent much of her last year traveling the world, including visiting family in Estonia. In some places she visited, same-sex relationships aren’t yet normalized.

“The work I was inspired to do there inspired some conversations, and inspired some mind changing,” she said. “That was a cool conversation to have… It’s such a beautiful thing to be in love and to express your feelings and to be okay with it and not worry about what other people would think.”

The cover art she created for the festival also features two women. One of them (the one holding the whip), who goes by the stage name Fiametta Mink, is in charge of organizing the performers for this year’s event. Mink didn’t find her way to burlesque until her 40s, and she said last year’s Tucson Erotica was a particularly good place to perform – she and the other dancers weren’t on a stage, so they were practically face-to-face with audience members who were as respectful as they were enthused.