Contraception is abortion?

[napi21]

Can you imagine living in a place where birth control is considered an "abortion" and health insurers won't cover it? Where even rape victims are denied emergency contraception?


It seems unbelievable, but the Bush Administration is quietly trying to redefine "abortion" to include birth control. The Houston Chronicle says this could wipe out dozens of state laws that protect women's reproductive freedom and protect rape victims.1 Access to basic health care for millions of women would be jeopardized. And it's being pushed as a "rule change"—meaning, it doesn't need congressional approval.


Can you sign an emergency message to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, whose department is considering this rule change right now? Tell him: "Contraception is NOT abortion. The Bush Administration's proposal to change the definition of abortion and reduce women's access to birth control must be stopped."

Clicking here will add your name to this message:
http://pol.moveon.org/contraception/o.pl?id=13468-3013288-wijG64x&t=4

[AndyTiedye]

1. Better to Write Your Congresscritters

We can't possibly dissuade Bush**'s political appointee from making this change. He does not have to answer to us in any way.

Congress is another matter.

Put forth a bill reversing the rule change.

The Repiggies will filibuster of course, but at least we can make them take some heat for that.

[napi21]

3. Don't you really believe a lot of Pubs would fight this too?

I know a LOT of people who disagree with abortion still use birth control! In fact, I don't think I know anyone who hasn't! I honestly think all we have to do with this is get it some publicity!

[Hekate]

9. It's going in under the radar. It's not on the front page of the LA Times or the NY Times or any...

... Times at all. No one is talking about it on the 5:00 news. I heard about it because I am on the Planned Parenthood mailing list.

Very few understand its implications even if they vaguely hear about it. They won't know (and intentionally so) until it affects them, which it will, profoundly.

But abortion is legal, they will say. No worries. -- Sure, until they get one more Supreme Court justice on their side and then Roe vs. Wade will be overturned, as promised. So bye-bye to The Pill, the Morning After Pill, Plan B, every IUD, Depo-Provera, and on and on and on.

I am almost past both tears and rage at the unspeakably foul creatures that are wrecking every aspect of our civil government they possibly can. I don't know how on Earth we can undo the damage they have done to us.

Hekate

[offog]

24. This is f***ing scary.

I graduated from high school in 1977 and never had to worry about access to birth control. I can't imagine what things will be like for women in America if that evil proposal passes.
And what's this I hear about how a lot of health plans will cover viagra for men but not birth control for women? Uh huh. So men have a constitutional right to get laid, but women are supposed to cross their fingers and hope the guy is willing to use protection.
If the Bush administration tried to ban Viagra, that would sure make the 5:00 news!

[Hekate]

25. I graduated high school in 1965.In our town of 25K everyone would've known if my BF bought condoms

The Pill was only available to women over 21 -- married women over 21, usually. Below that age an unmarried girl's mother or father would have had to try to persuade the family doctor to prescribe it. Needless to say, abortion was illegal, dirty, and dangerous.

It was one heckuva foolish girl who slept with her boyfriend. The punishment for unauthorized pregnancy was a forced drop from high school as soon as she began to "show", and either a quickie marriage or deep pressure to put the baby up for adoption. Bye-bye first-born child.

My boyfriend was as scared of these consequences as I was. His best friend got married at the end of his freshman year of college.

I am not judging kids who behaved differently than I did in high school. I simply waited and went on the Pill after I turned 21.

At some point the law caught up with the so-called sexual revolution ... and now we have a couple of generations of women of reproductive age who not only don't remember the bad old days, but imagine that they could never return.

"No going back" is just a slogan, as far as I'm concerned. In Colonial times purveyors of remedies to "regulate the menstrual cycle" actually advertised in newspapers, and within the first trimester I think it was pretty much "no harm, no foul" as far as the law and society were concerned. "Female problems" were handled by other women, such as midwives. When the midwives were driven out of business by the all-male graduates of all-male medical colleges, eventually that sort of first-trimester thing became identified with abortion and was criminalized. Long before I was born abortion at any stage had been legally redefined as outright murder, and doctors and their patients could be (and were, if they were caught) prosecuted.

I've had two pregnancies, two live births, and now have one grandchild. I recognize that I have been monumentally lucky in my reproductive history. I know women who have had trouble conceiving, who have miscarried, who have become pregnant from date-rape, who have had still-births, who have had abortions they have regretted but would do again given the same circumstances, whose pregnancies have threatened their own lives, and I know of women who have carried babies with no chance at all of independent life outside the womb. I will not judge these women's choices, but religious fanatics and their enablers can and will and do judge them and try to make the ones who have chosen abortion out to be criminals.

I know it's bad karma on me, but I hope George W. Bush and his gang rot in the Hell they claim to believe in. They do not give a flying fig for the lives of actual living women.

Hekate

[notadmblnd]

2. maybe someone should make the argument that abstinance is abortion too?

After all every female that reaches puberty has two days a month that she can conceive. By their reasoning, if these girls aren't having sex, their eggs are not fertilized and this results in abortion in the form of their menstrual period.

makes as much sense as their argument right?

[napi21]

4. Naw, that's not what they believe. I went through 12 years of a Catholic School

and what they teach is that the only thing that is WRONG & a sin is to do something that interupts the natural conception process. Abstinence is the ONLY BC method (they always called it the rythom method) that is acceptable.

They taught that BC pills were a sin because they prevented the natural conception of a baby.

[notadmblnd]

6. well I'm not Catholic and it makes sense to me. I say we run with it

You gotta remember that the fundy nuts are the majority and they ain't too smart. I think we could sell it to em. Any young woman who's not having sex is wasting her eggs.

Of course I'm being ridiculous here.

[Posteritatis]

12. I'm waiting for some of them to consider birth abortion

If you didn't have that kid, they wouldn't have died some eighty years down the line! Murderer!

[Lint Head]

5. Yeah sure. And a twinkle in your Dad's eye is a living being.

I guess that would make a shot in the dark a Supreme Court Justice. :dem:

[gratuitous]

7. Life begins at the moment . . .

The man unhooks the woman's bra.

[nancyr]

8. Priceless observation!

[aasleka]

10. This was the whole basis of choice

This is what the right wingers want all along, the whole basis for choice started with birth control and the womens right to not have to ask her husband to let her take birth control.

[PurityOfEssence]

11. Sex is bad. Children are punishment. God loves your pain.

It's just a sadistic game of cosmic chicken.

Go ahead loser; blink.

[dmr]

13. Recreational ejaculation contributes to the delinquency of a uterus denied contraception.

Any ejaculation that is not intended for procreation is aborting the seed of a future human.

Viagra should only be dispensed in Fertility Clinics.

Can't waste a man's seed unnecessarily now, can we?

To use their thinking ... :evilgrin:

[crimsonblue]

14. next up: masturbation...

because every sperm is sacred.....

[CatholicEdHead]

21. That has been in the conservative Catholic talking point list for quite a while

The Catholic Church will turn around, but not for 30-50 years before this cycle of JPII works its course.

[judasdisney]

15. Why surprised? Where have you been for 8 years? Wake the F up

[PCIntern]

16. THIS IS AND HAS BEEN THE "MASTER PLAN" ALL ALONG...

this intent was stated many years ago...don't fool yourself: this and Holocaust/Nazism Revisionism and complete and utter roll-back of The New Deal are what's happening. It may take more than 100 years, but they're working hard on it, believe me. Buchanan's book is hardly the first shot fired...

[DangerousRhythm]

17. Birth control pills are used for more than contraception...

They are also used to regulate irregular menstrual cycles and to alleviate menorraghia (excessive, heavy bleeding) and metrorraghia (intermenstrual bleeding). To put it plainly, if they mess with the Pill, they are screwing over tens of thousands of women who need the Pill for its hormonal benefits to them, thereby lowering their quality of life and potentially destroying their health. I never hear people talk about this, probably because it's "icky" or whatever, but it's a big issue as far as I'm concerned. More people ought to know.

[MountainLaurel]

18. Do you think they care?

The people who are trying to declare birth control as abortion? These are the same sick fucks who write books about how menstrual pain can be prayed away. They'd probably consider it a side benefit, since women are all EEEEVIL carriers of Eve's sin in their eyes.

[DangerousRhythm]

26. Good point and no, I don't really think they care. :\

I just have to try, y'know?

[aasleka]

20. It's not just the pill, they want to make the women ask their husbands for permission

To buy condoms or any other birth control, this was what started Rowe VS Wade.

[DangerousRhythm]

28. Positively frightening. N/T

[Firespirit]

22. I am taking Yaz to deal with PCOS.

Perhaps up to 15% of premenopausal women deal with that condition.

However, I am Queer (bisexual specifically), so I guess that accidentblessing of birth eliminates my right to exist, in RW Hellworld.

[DangerousRhythm]

27. Yep, PCOS is a real pain...

I think these wackos just have no idea and don't particularly care about the problems of women, sadly. For some of them, I guess the ability of a woman to be a broodmare trumps all.

[windoe]

19. I have signed every petition on this

and written many letters. If women lose their freedom it will be a dark day indeed. I am worried about young women today.

Contraception and abortion rights are human rights issues, period. Men are allowed to do as they wish today, and are very aggressive in this culture, and women need some kind of defense to protect themselves.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

23. Next Step: Not giving it up on the first date is abortion.