Jay has said that not only are conservatives wanting to stop a woman's right to chose, but they want total control, including how and when we have sex and who we have sex with. I was hoping he was just being a little paranoid and exaggerating. But today, in the New York Times Magazine is an artilce titled, "Contra-Contraception." It's about the conservative and Chritian-right wanting to take away contraception because it is a form of abortion and encourages promiscuity outside of marriage.
Here's one of the money quotes.
Many Christians who are active in the evolving anti-birth-control arena state frankly that what links their efforts is a religious commitment to altering the moral landscape of the country. In particular, and not to put too fine a point on it, they want to change the way Americans have sex. Dr. Stanford, the F.D.A. adviser on reproductive-health drugs, proclaimed himself "fully committed to promoting an understanding of human sexuality and procreation radically at odds with the prevailing views and practices of our contemporary culture."
Of course, the Morning After pill has come under fire--a thunderbolt of Christian anger to destroy wrong-doers. But when Plan B, a different kind of pill that acts more like a birth control pill, meaning that it keeps a maybe-fertilized egg from implanting, which is the legal definition of pregnancy, it seemed like a win-win situation. But the religios right still saw it as an abortion because they don't like the definition of what constitutes pregnancy, meaning that they believe an egg that has been fertilized is the beginning; therefore, Plan B stopped the pregnancy from occurring. So, if you're going to believe that, then all forms of contraceptives are abortion tools. Plan B was shot down. No one could get a straight answer out of Bush, of course, even though federal regulations under the Bush Administration state, ""Pregnancy encompasses the period of time from implantation until delivery." But here's Bush's response, or nonresponse:
At a White House press briefing in May of last year, three months before the F.D.A.'s nonruling on Plan B, Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked four times by a WorldNetDaily correspondent, Les Kinsolving, if the president supported contraception. "I think the president's views are very clear when it comes to building a culture of life," McClellan replied.
Intersting how that word "culture" keeps coming up by the same people with the same political agenda, huh?
But it wasn't just that this pill and other contraceptives are really abortions. There's also the belief that the availability will just result in promiscuity. Here's another money quote:
Meanwhile a government report later found that Dr. Janet Woodcock, deputy commissioner for operations at the F.D.A., had also expressed a fear that making the drug available over the counter could lead to "extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an 'urban legend' status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B."
Oh good grief! Sex-based cults? Give me a break. They are ignoring a basic fact--humans want to have sex, and they don't need a pill to give them permission. By the logic of the religious right, if there wasn't any form of contraception, all these people who are unfaithful to their spouses and engage in illicit sex will all of a sudden become moral, upright citizens who only have sex in the missionary position with their spouses. But, don't worry about all those influences out there that might encourage people to have sex, such as pornography, tv shows, movies, and that ol' standby human nature, let's just make sure that the possibility of pregnancy isn't stopped.
There's a lot more to the article; it's 9 pages after all. It also goes into the fact that other countries don't have our hang ups and their abortion and unwanted pregnency rates are lower than ours--always a point of contention for the right-wingers. Of course, all those countries aren't trying to encourage a "culture of life."
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