Cristina Page had a great op-ed in the Baltimore Sun this week, making a plea that when journalists question presidential hopefuls (of both parties) about their reproductive rights beliefs, that they specifically bring up contraception access.
Why? Because when the Republican presidential hopefuls speak to a roomful of forced-pregnancy advocates, they are doing everything but declaring their desire for a birth-control ban. These are things they're not saying in interviews with national media, or during the debates.
Before this year's National Right to Life conference, which several Republican frontrunners attended, NARAL issued a list of questions for the candidates, and made sure to ask about their position on access to emergency contraception.
While the questions were predictably ignored, at the conference Romney declared, "I fought to define life as beginning at conception rather than at the time of implantation." He's essentially saying he opposes hormonal contraception methods, because they could prevent implantation. Which -- newsflash! -- isn't just emergency contraception. It's the Pill, the NuvaRing, the IUD -- a slew of birth-control methods. Page explains,
Mr. Romney's code, deciphered, meant, "I, like you, hope to reclassify the most commonly used forms of contraceptives as abortions." In fact, he told the crowd, he already had some practice redefining contraception: "I vetoed a so-called emergency contraception bill that gave young girls abortive drugs without prescription or parental consent."
And it's not just Romney. The other Republican candidates are also working to deny women birth control:
Presidential hopeful Sen. Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, beefed up his anti-contraception resume by co-sponsoring a bill to de-fund the nation's largest contraception provider, Planned Parenthood, by excluding it from Title X family planning for the poor. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's campaign officials boast he has "consistently voted against taxpayer-funded contraception programs." And Mr. McCain reports that his adviser on sexual-health matters is Sen. Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who leads campaigns claiming condoms are unsafe and opposing emergency contraception.
But Page and the repro-rights groups seem to be the only one talking about this issue. (Even the National Right to Life's crib sheet on the candidates doesn't feature their stance on contraception.) Yesterday the Washington Post had an article all about Romney and abortion, with nary a mention of birth control. It's time for the national media to start paying attention and quit narrowing reproductive rights issues down to abortion only. Because while the nation may be divided on how we feel about abortion rights, there is widespread and unequivocal support for contraception access. Moderate Republican voters should know that Mitt Romney wants to take away their birth control pills.
I'd also like to see the Democratic frontrunners highlighting this divide on contraception between them and the Republicans. If some political analysts are to be believed, single women are a highly coveted group of voters. And even 80 percent of self-described "pro-lifers" support contraception. The Democrats are with the vast majority of the country on this issue, and it's time for them to start shouting about it.
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I think this is a great idea and more likely to help than debating abortion. Especially if people point out how access to contraception means less abortions.
I've been reading up on EC and whether it interferes with implantation. It may or may not, I've seen studies that say both. But I saw an article that pointed out something really cool - since 40-60% of fertilized eggs don't implant naturally, the use of EC might, on the whole, mean less fertilized eggs going unimplanted, because it keeps so many eggs from getting fertilized in the first place. I don't have the stats to show that EC prevents more non-implantation than it causes, but it sounds likely to me.
Taking away any option beyond abstinence for a women to not get pregnant is terrifying, think of how many people will suffer as a result of unsafe and illegal abortions if there is not even legal birth control.
"Taking away any option beyond abstinence for a women to not get pregnant is terrifying, think of how many people will suffer as a result of unsafe and illegal abortions if there is not even legal birth control."
Yeah, but wouldn't it be really funny to watch the population get up to 340 billion?
Why are these pro-life people so often pro-war as well? Not to mention pro-gun and pro-capital punishment. It seems a little contradictory to me.
Come on, it has to be fucking impossible for them to make it illegal. The country may be in the shit bag right now but I don't see such a regression that birth control becomes banned. All these articles are freaking me the fuck out.
No, Jeremy, I don't think that's funny. Maybe because I might have to worry about dying from an illegal abortion while you never will.
He's essentially saying he opposes hormonal contraception methods, because they could prevent implantation. Which -- newsflash! -- isn't just emergency contraception. It's the Pill, the NuvaRing, the IUD -- a slew of birth-control methods...
Besides EC, I am pretty sure these do not interfere with implantation. They interfere with fertilization, no? Isn't that the whole point, that they don't allow fertilization?
It's kind of sick how obsessed these (mostly male) people are with semen and at what point semen is going to form this or that. Obsessed with what is going on in a vagina or uterus. It's bizarre to me. It's like some sick sexual repression thing or something.
Illegalizing abortion is what these people want to ultimately happen. Making abortion illegal doesn't save one fetus. It DOES, however, kill women.
There are two significant components to this, but the primary one is getting the Republican candidates to be upfront on the issue of contraception, because as Lindsay said, the idea seems to be right now that outlawing birth control is out of the realm of possibility. I wish I were as sanguine.
It's relatively easy to get a Democrat to say he or she favors access to birth control--it's still significant, but necessary, because it might make a few people wonder why candidates are making a statement on something so self-evident. Then the question becomes "who isn't in favor of it?" And then we can show the differences.
That's true Insertus. And Pamela, I know what you mean. It really fucking pisses me off that people who will never experience what it's like to be pregnant or to feel fear of becoming pregnant want to start putting a fucking egg's future and life before mine. I just don't understand why they are so stupid and naive and sexist. Do they think that they're going to create the 1950's again or something? Sometimes I just hate this fucking country.
I'd also like to see the Democratic frontrunners highlighting this divide on contraception between them and the Republicans.
I wrote about this yesterday. It ties in a lot with this book "The Political Brain," by Drew Westen, where he talks all about how Republicans are great at making their values appear to be shared by the majority of Americans, even when the Democratic position is actually much more similar (guns, abortion, etc.). He says the GOP gets away with this because Dems refuse to point out the extremity of the Republican positions on these things, and I think this is a perfect example.
In a country where 98 percent of women have used contraception, Dems need to be pointing out at every chance they get just how radically outside the mainstream the Republican candidates views on contraception really are ...
The problem is that women with means can get BC, abortions, EC, etc regardless of the restrictions and THEY KNOW IT. So it falls into the "it won't affect me" attitude and category, until real draconian laws set in (they're dying from their pregnancy and can't find a doc to give them an abortion to save her life), then they're suddenly freaked out that the washed, pretty masses are being treated like the dirty proletariats.
so many republican moderate women are CONVINCED that candidates are lip servicing the forced pregnancy crowd and "they don't really mean what they say." WHAT!?
i don't find overpopulation funny at all! nor do i find it funny that we could possibly have to face a future where we can't make simple choices like NOT TO BECOME PREGNANT!!!
and seriously, how will this type of thing be implemeted? will our existing forms be recalled (i just had a mental image of an angry mob hunting me down to forcibly remove my IUD, and large burning piles of pills...*shivers*) and contraceptives will have to be aquired through dealers like pot and crack? *what*the*fuck*?
i know a few things i will be finding out b/f i cast MY vote...grr...
i know it seems like a long shot that they could actually DO this...but one thing i have learned in my life is not to count anything out except death and taxes...and even then...i am not sure...
The problem is that women with means can get BC, abortions, EC, etc regardless of the restrictions and THEY KNOW IT. So it falls into the "it won't affect me" attitude and category,
Which is why this issue has to be tied into issues of economic class, and why I'm appreciative of John Edwards's recent edging toward a rhetoric of class warfare in his recent campaigning. He's only calling out the corporations right now, but we'll see where he winds up.
"Yeah, but wouldn't it be really funny to watch the population get up to 340 billion?"
Some people would *still* insist that the population needs to keep growing and whine about elderly people outnumbering future workers if the population doesn't soar to 350 billion...
There are already too many people in this world honestly.
Why are these pro-life people so often pro-war as well? Not to mention pro-gun and pro-capital punishment. It seems a little contradictory to me.
The back part of my mind just screamed "Because wars and executions are things men get to control."
The other side of the back of my brain said "because guns, wars, and executions impact sexuality only in the ways that they make small penised men feel mightier."
The front part of my brain insists that these people simply can't do math, otherwise, they'd have figured out that women can have and make love thousands of times within her lifetime, and yet, even an astoundingly prolific woman will never concieve a hundredth of those times. The GOP never was good at math.
Biology, needless to say, is not something Republicans are in favor of, either. And because they ignore biology, they ignore the fact that the clitoris is the only organ in the entirety of the human body with no purpose other than sexual pleasure. Knowledge of this is a closely held secret, if it got out, it might give the impression sex is about more than teh babeeezz.
Good post. Restricting access to contraception is a significant, but stealthy, part of the Sex Control wingnuts' agenda. Rethuglican candidates should be asked whether they support efforts to outlaw or restrict access to specific means of contraception, and the inquiries should be public, forthright and relentless.
BTW, when did the word fucking become an adjective? I always thought it was a verb or, more rarely, a noun (as in, for example, a good fucking).
Gratuitous vulgarity is the sawdust filler of vocabulary.
All this 'every kind of contraceptive is actually abortion' bullshit reminds me of Monty Python's song, Every Sperm Is Special. Are condoms included? If this is the case, then guys should be banned from jacking off, since the resultant 'aborted' babies would number in the trillions of billions of, well, infinite. Jesus Christ on a Vibrator, when will people wake up? ASSHATS!
Pamela, EC works the same way as the pill, because it is the pill, in different doses (before Plan B, doctors would prescribe a regular pack of pills with different instructions for emergencies). Ever since the pill came out, there's been the wonder that it might affect implantation, because it does change the uteral lining, but scientists aren't 100% sure. Pro-lifers have latched onto that uncertainty and called hormonal birth control "abortifacient" forever, but it's just with EC that anyone's paid attention to them. But don't let them fool you, EC isn't any different from any other hormonal birth control, and they will go after the other kinds whenever they have the opportunity.
Thanks, Marle.
Personally I don't care if it interferes with the implantation, but preventative contraception like the pill does not...
I thought when talking about these issues, people had to sort of keep it in the realm of fact and truth. Apparently those two things don't appeal to anti-choice candidates.
I'm sorry if I'm harping on this too much, but it's really important that everyone knows that ec doesn't work any differently from any other hormonal birth control.
Marle-
I do understand what you are saying, but I was just stating that even if it did prevent implantation, that's not a big deal to me, personally.
For them to equate contraception with abortions, (with which they always advertise as late term "partial birth" abortion [even though I thought late terms account for 1.5% of all abortions?] I do not have stats with me) is ludicrous. It's not about fetuses or children, and certainly not women's best interest. It's about control.
David, no. Pro-lifers want to ban contraception, too. I used to post on a conservative Christian board, and hormonal birth control was called "abortifacient" birth control. When they say life begins at conception, they mean just that, and if your pill prevents one fertilized egg from implanting that's abortion to them. Their rhetoric didn't make it mainstream until emergency contraception, but believe me, they view it all as abortion.