Fair is fair

We need to demand every elected official who votes to negate the women's right to control their reproductive processes must first issue a sworn statement that his wife (or husband) has never had an abortion, used birth control, or jerked off and destroyed sacred sperm. We need to know how many children they have, and if they are old enough, what their sex lives are like as well.

Assassinating Dr. Tiller went so well

That now the religious fanatics are going after birth control pills, as we knew they would. It's never been about babies but about sex.

The right-wing American Life League and a handful of regional organizations will stand around outside U.S. pharmacies and Planned Parenthood chapters this weekend for the second annual "Protest the Pill Day." Dispatches from last year's protests, posted at thepillkills.com, offer a sense of what to expect.

"About two dozen prayerful witnesses testified to the facts of death about the pill," reads last year's ALL report from the protest at a Planned Parenthood in Napa, Calif. "For one hour the prayers were offered for the many uninformed patrons who come asking the staff of Planned Parenthood to provide chemicals, hormones, and sex-education as an answer to their problems with the natural consequences of abuse of sex."

Their goal, apparently, is to force every woman back to the Scarlet Letter days, where shaming, shunning and stoning were employed to keep those sluts contained. Exactly how does ending birth control usage help end abortions? Lack of birth control makes women have MORE abortions, you guys!

Compare and contrast

To this one:



I thought that they insisted the abstinence classes worked?

Throwing a sop to the religious fanatics

The outgoing Bush administration is planning to announce a broad new "right of conscience" rule permitting medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare workers to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable, including abortion and possibly even artificial insemination and birth control.

For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that healthcare workers also may refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion.

It also seeks to cover more employees. For example, in addition to a surgeon and a nurse in an operating room, the rule would extend to "an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments," the draft rule said.

The "conscience" rule could set the stage for an abortion controversy in the early months of Barack Obama's administration.

[snip]

Health and Human Services Department officials said the rule would apply to "any entity" that receives federal funds. It estimated 584,000 entities could be covered, including 4,800 hospitals, 234,000 doctor's offices and 58,000 pharmacies.

Proponents, including the Christian Medical Assn. and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, say the rule is not limited to abortion. It will protect doctors who do not wish to prescribe birth control or to provide artificial insemination, said Dr. David Stevens, president of CMA.

"The real battle line is the morning-after pill," he said. "This prevents the embryo from implanting. This involves moral complicity. Doctors should not be required to dispense a medication they have a moral objection to."

Critics of the rule say it will sacrifice patients' health to the religious beliefs of providers.

The American Medical Assn. and the American Hospital Assn. in October urged HHS to drop the regulation. The Planned Parenthood Foundation and other backers of abortion rights condemned the rule as a last-gasp effort by the Bush administration to please social conservatives.

"It's unconscionable that the Bush administration, while promising a smooth transition, would take a final opportunity to politicize women's health," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.

Despite the controversy, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said he intends to issue the rule as a final regulation before the Obama administration takes office, to protect the moral conscience of persons in the healthcare industry. Abortion-rights advocates are just as insistent that the rights of a patient come first.

The article lists the dangers of healthcare personnel who refused to participate:

In calling for limits on “conscientious refusals,” ACOG cited four recent examples. In Texas, a pharmacist rejected a rape victim's prescription for emergency contraception. In Virginia, a 42-year-old mother of two became pregnant after being refused emergency contraception. In California, a physician refused to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple. (In August, the California Supreme Court ruled that this refusal amounted to illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation.) And in Nebraska, a 19-year-old with a life-threatening embolism was refused an early abortion at a religiously affiliated hospital.

Allowing people to get in between a doctor and a patient is bizarre. What do these people want, religious police as in Saudi Arabia? Being able to deny women all forms of contraception because using birth control will make women promiscuous? Not allowing women to control their bodies? Trying to ban sex toys? Refusing gay people their civil rights?

All I see are lawsuits. Although this technique is working in more impoverished states, what doctor's office, pharmacy, hospital, outclinic really wants to be known as a denier of such services? How ugly and hateful do people have to be to refuse to do a job when they have gone to school to learn medicine or pharmaceuticals in order to help people? Does it give them savage pleasure to thwart such evils as sex? Do they really want to force women to have babies? Does their belief in God include the concept of Love?

Where are they intending to go with this? And why on earth are we letting them affect our laws?

How many GOP women do not use any form of birth control?

It would be interesting to find out how hypocritical these people are.

This presidential campaign we will soon be leaving the pro-life/pro-choice debate behind and start talking about the evils of contraception itself.

Pam Spaulding of Americablog has the details:

It's been pretty clear that the anti-choice crowd has its sights on not only controlling the womb, but women's sexuality as well. That's why this should scare the bejesus out of women. According to Birth Control Watch, 86 anti-abortion groups are committed to opposing any form of contraception.

Abortion will never end as long as society approves the use of contraception. The practice of contraception means children are unwanted and provides the rationalization for abortion. It is a violation of human dignity to promote or accept the use of contraception.

OK. That extreme view is no surprise. But wait a minute -- there are occupants of the GOP clown car that are equally willing to deny contraception because of their anti-choice views - and they are on the record about it.

Do you want the policies of these men in your bedroom, in your womb, in your doctor's office, at your local pharmacy?

Cristina Page has an excellent piece in the Baltimore Sun that shows just how extreme the views of the GOP candidates are.

Birth Control Watch has more: (my bold)

Eighty six anti-abortion groups have committed to opposing all forms of contraception. Among the groups are Right to Life of Kansas, Pro-Life Ohio, the Life League of New Mexico, North Dakota Right to Life, Connecticut Right to Life, California Right to Life, and the Delaware Pro-life Coalition. However, few of these state's media outlets are covering the groups' opposition to contraception--no matter how eager the groups are to display their extreme agenda. Thus the public doesn't know that their elected officials are pandering to anti-birth control forces in order to secure these groups' support. Yet these groups and their unpopular and dangerous agenda escape notice. Because of this, we'll wake up one day to discover that almost half the candidates running for president are opposed to contraception. Maybe tomorrow?

A study out of France shows once again that the religious right is wrong in its dire warnings of the impact emergency contraception will have on women's sexual choices. Instead of the free-for-all sexapalooza we've been told to brace ourselves for, researchers have discovered the over-the-counter access to EC in France has not had much impact on the amount of sex women have or the number of partners they've have it with. STDs haven't surged to alarming rates either. The only change was a dip in unintended pregnancy rates. Alors, Christian conservatives, time to come to your senses?

A new Zogby poll revealed that 83% of Americans want scientists to continue researching for more birth control methods. Although the same poll found that Americans are satisfied with the birth control choices they have currently, clearly the vast majority of Americans want more birth control access and options. These Americans will be happy to know then that the popular "Sponge," contraceptive was reintroduced to the market this week. It offers women a highly effective over-the-counter birth control option other than the condom. The Sponge was discontinued in 1995 when the manufacturer did not wish to upgrade its factory equipment to satisfy FDA requirements. Synova Healthcare Group secured the rights to the Sponge early this year and, in the process, gave formerly not "sponge-worthy" men new hope.

But don't forget about the pill! We've long known that the birth control pill protects against ovarian cancer, but new research published in International Family Planning Perspectives shows that pills with the lowest hormonal content offer the greatest protection. In fact, depending on the oral contraceptive formulation, the odds of ovarian cancer were reduced by up to 80% among pill users compared to those not on the pill. The lower the dose of one particular progestin, the lower the risk of ovarian cancer. If all women had used some type of birth control pill the study found an estimated four in 10 malignancies might have been avoided; if all had used low-dose pills, that proportion would have been almost three-quarters. Many women believe that if there is no reason to be on the pill other than pregnancy prevention. Not true. And there's no excuse for not making this information widely known now.

Update: Cristia Page of The Huffington Post has more:

In their affair with the "Right to Life" movement, the candidates are being unfaithful to the American public that is devoted to family planning. And like any cheater, they're doing their best to avoid directly answering questions such as: Do you support couples having access to safe and effective birth control options, including emergency contraception?" Considering that even 80 percent of self-described "pro-life" voters and a majority of Republican voters strongly support contraception, these candidates should soon figure out how risky an affair it is.

If you don't start having more babies, the church will die!

JJ of Unrepentant Old Hippie shares a bizarre petition sent to Catholics:

"As you know, the contraceptive mentality pervades the Catholic Church in Canada. Most Catholic couples of child-bearing age are preventing children through sterilization or contraception. The birthrate is suicidal. The death of the Church is certain where contraception prevails. It has been truly said that “Our greatest moral responsibility is to convert the contraceptive mentality.

Contraception is the root of which many spiritual evils are the fruit: abortion, infidelity, divorce, pre-marital sex, acceptance of homosexual activity, the clamor for same-sex “marriage” and the corruption of politics and the media. These inevitably follow when, on a large scale, sexual activity is deliberately diverted from its life-giving purpose to sterile lustful indulgence."

Wow. Just .... wow.

Only slutty women will now chew gum

"Looking for a contraceptive that's convenient — and tasty? The first chewable birth-control method, a tiny, spearmint-flavored tablet that also can be swallowed without chewing, has hit pharmacy shelves."