Expect a massive shitstorm over this

Not that it will make a difference to the teabagger population which has already turned its back on actual science, but the Institute of Medicine has advocated that insurance companies be mandated to provide contraception coverage in the interest of having better-spaced pregnancies to foster healthier mothers and healthier babies (NYT link):

A leading medical advisory panel recommended on Tuesday that all insurers be required to cover contraceptives for women free of charge as one of several preventive services under the new health care law.

[snip]

Administration officials, who say they hope to act on the recommendations by Aug. 1, are receptive to the idea of removing cost as a barrier to birth control — a longtime goal of advocates for women’s rights and experts on women’s health.

But the recommendations immediately reignited debate over the government’s role in reproductive health. Women’s groups and medical professionals applauded the recommendations while the Roman Catholic Church raised strenuous objections.

Why does the Catholic Church get to dictate national policy? If we're grandstanding about sharia law, how about we put Papal law under the same category?

In addition to contraceptive services for women, the panel recommended that the government require health plans to cover screening to detect domestic violence; screening for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS; and counseling and equipment to promote breastfeeding, including the free rental of breast pumps.

The panel also said all insurers should be required to cover screening for gestational diabetes in pregnant women; DNA testing for the human papillomavirus as part of cervical cancer screening; and annual preventive-care visits. Such visits could include prenatal care and preconception care, to make sure women are healthy when they become pregnant.

Defending its recommendations on contraceptive coverage, the panel said that nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States were unintended, and that about 40 percent of unintended pregnancies ended in abortion. Thus, it said, greater use of contraception would reduce the rates of unintended pregnancy, teenage pregnancy and abortion.

Gee, ya think? Of course the objections of thd denizens of wingnuttia to contraception have nothing to do with babies or life and everything to do with punishing the dirty sluts living in poverty. Check out these comments that were posted on MSNBC.com's article yesterday:

"Here is a birth controll method that will work:

•No welfare after the first child.
•No welfare after 2 years lifetime.
"

"I don't understand why birth control is a cost that needs to be covered by the government. People don't choose to get sick, you can choose to have unpredicted sex and get pregnant. I know you don't choose to get pregnant but it turns out if you don't have sex you will get pregnant 0% of the time, there isn't another medical condition that can boost that kind of prevention rate."

We already have a no-copay birth control---say NO

Maybe we shouldn't pay for welfare for people that can't adhere to simple birth control practice... see how many pregnancies happen when these girls (and guys) know that there will be no help for them in they are stupid enough to have unpredicted sex and get knocked up

And the single most idiotic comment of them all:

m of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's cheaper to pay for the birth control then for a pregnancy and/or abortion. On the other hand, I don't use birth control and see no reason why my premiums should go up to pay for everybody else's, when it's an expense they ought to be able to factor in. I think the definition of insurance is to pay for something unexpected. I have no problem with the yearly preventatives because in comparison those are lower in price and save more money in the long run.

I'll bet that last commenter has never had a blood transfusion, or a stent installed, or a coronary bypass, either. But I'll bet she's not sitting up at night grinding her teeth in rage about having to pay permiums to cover these procedures in other people.

What comes through in these comments (and the many others I haven't quoted) is the way contraception is linked with "sluttishness" ("Just say no") and the fundamental inconsistencies of wanting women who have sex to be punished by pregnancy, and at the same time have no help with said pregnancy. And it's this dichotomy, which we hear verbalized over and over again by those who profess to only be concerned with TEH BAYBEEEEZZZZZ, that shows them to less concerned with America's children than with thinking Eve wasn't punished enough for eating that apple.

Further proof that conservatives aren't about "babies", they're about punishing women who have sex

Nicholas Kristof:

The Bush administration this month is quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world’s poorest women in Africa.

Thus the paradox of a “pro-life” administration adopting a policy whose result will be tens of thousands of additional abortions each year — along with more women dying in childbirth.

The saga also spotlights a clear difference between Barack Obama and John McCain. Senator Obama supports U.N.-led efforts to promote family planning; Senator McCain stands with President Bush in opposing certain crucial efforts to help women reduce unwanted pregnancies in Africa and Asia.

There is something about reproductive health — maybe the sex part — that makes some Americans froth and go crazy. We see it in the opposition to condoms to curb AIDS in Africa and in the insistence on abstinence-only sex education in American classrooms (one reason American teenage pregnancy rates are more than double those in Canada). And we see it in the decision of some towns — like Wasilla, Alaska, when Sarah Palin was mayor there — to bill rape victims for the kits used to gather evidence of sex crimes. In most places, police departments pay for rape kits, which cost hundreds of dollars, but while Ms. Palin was mayor of Wasilla, the town decided to save money by billing rape victims.

The latest bout of reproductive-health madness came in the last couple of weeks when the U.S. Agency for International Development ordered six African countries to ensure that no U.S.-financed condoms, birth control pills, I.U.D.’s or other contraceptives are furnished to Marie Stopes International, a British-based aid group that operates clinics in poor countries.

The Bush administration says it took this action because Marie Stopes International works with the U.N. Population Fund in China. President Bush has cut all financing for the population fund on the — false — basis that it supports China’s family-planning program.

It’s true that China’s one-child policy sometimes includes forced abortion, and when traveling in rural China, I still come across peasants whose homes have been knocked down as punishment for an unauthorized child. But the U.N. fund has been the most powerful force in moderating China’s policy, and a State Department team itself found no evidence of any U.N. involvement in the coercion.

Mr. Bush’s defunding of the U.N. Population Fund — backed by Senator McCain — has persisted since 2002. What is new is the extension of that policy to a leading private family-planning organization like Marie Stopes International.

“The irony and hypocrisy of it is that this is a bone to the self-described ‘pro-life’ movement, but it will result in deaths to women who just want to space their births,” said Dana Hovig, the chief executive of Marie Stopes International. The organization estimates that the result will be at least 157,000 additional unwanted pregnancies per year, leading to 62,000 additional abortions and 660 women dying in childbirth.

There is not a single person among those of us who believe that women do not cease to be human the minute they become pregnant who favors forced abortion. But how does denying contraception to millions of women do anything to end a practice of forced abortion that isn't even funded by the organization being denied funding?

The so-called "pro-life" movement extends far beyond banning abortions. If they get what they want in regard to abortion, their next target is contraception. Because as far as these lunatics are concerned, if you are a woman who has sex, or even if you are raped, you deserve to be punished, as Eve was, by a pregnancy you don't want. Forget for a moment the idiocy of using an oft-translated allegorical story as the basis of public policy. With every sledgehammer that Republicans use in an attempt to placate the flat earthers who control their party, they show ever further how pervasive their fear and loathing of female sexuality is. And no number of right-wing pundits masturbating to television images of Sarah Palin changes that fact.

Sarah Palin's America takes effect September 25

I never repost diaries from other sites in their entirety, and I only cite diaries at Le Grand Orange when they're particularly cogent and insightful, given the amount of chaff that finds its way amidst the wheat over there. But the diarist who wrote this, "Elise", has given blanket permission to disseminate this diary far and wide:

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt has proposed a new rule that will limit the rights of women to receive medically accurate information and treatment. The alleged goal of the rule is to protect the rights of health care workers, volunteers, and trainees. The result would be limited access to birth control and abortion for women all over the country - regardless of state law.

From CNN:

The rule, which applies to institutions receiving government money, would require as many as 584,000 employers ranging from major hospitals to doctors' offices and nursing homes to certify in writing that they are complying with several federal laws that protect the conscience rights of health care workers. Violations could lead to a loss of government funding and legal action to recoup federal money already paid.

The comment period ends on September 25th. We have 19 days until this rule takes effect.

This rule does not provide a clear definition of birth control or abortion - allowing the health care worker to utilize their own personal definition each time, so if you go to your doctor attempting to get birth control pills, you may find yourself denied that prescription because the doctor defines birth control pills as an abortifacient.

Leavitt says you shouldn't concern yourself too much though:

But Leavitt said the regulation was intended to protect practitioners who have moral objections to abortion and sterilization, and would not interfere with patients' ability to get birth control or any legal medical procedure.

"Nothing in the new regulation in any way changes a patient's right to any legal procedure," he said, noting that a patient could go to another provider.

It's that simple - your doctor, nurse, receptionist, volunteer, pharmacist, pharm tech, etc. won't help you get your birth control? Just go somewhere else!! And I'm SURE you won't have any trouble finding another provider...or maybe you will - based on the rule.

From WaPo (bold is mine):

The regulation drops the most controversial language in a draft version that would have explicitly defined abortion for the first time in a federal law or regulation as anything that interfered with a fertilized egg after conception. But both supporters and critics said the regulation remains broad enough to protect pharmacists, doctors, nurses and others from providing birth control pills, Plan B emergency contraception and other forms of contraception, and explicitly allows workers to withhold information about such services and refuse to refer patients elsewhere.

Just how far does this regulation go? The same WaPo article gives us a clue:

But critics said they remained alarmed at the scope of the regulation, which could apply to a wide range of health-care workers. For example, the regulation would cover "participating in any activity with a reasonable connection to the objectionable procedure, including referrals, training, and other arrangements for offending procedures.

In other words - if your job is to clean the tools used in an operating room after a patient has had a vasectomy or a tubal ligation, you would be protected from any punishment if you flat out refused (on grounds of conscience) to clean those tools because you disagreed with that patient's right to get that procedure.

Here's the language from the actual rule:

Assist in the Performance means to participate in any activity with a reasonable connection to a procedure, health service or health service program, or research activity, so long as the individual involved is a part of the workforce of a Department-funded entity. This includes counseling, referral, training, and other arrangements for the  procedure, health service, or research activity.

Which facilities would be affected by this new rule?

Hospitals, nursing homes, physicians offices, Offices of Other Health Care Practitioners, Outpatient care centers, Medical and Diagnostic Laboratories, Home Health Care Services, Pharmacies, Dental schools, Medical schools, Nursing schools, Occupational Therapy Schools, Optometry Schools, Podiatry Schools, Pharmacy Schools, Public Health Schools, Residency Programs, Health Insurance Carriers and 3rd-Party Administrators, Grant awards, Contractors, and State and Territorial governments.

Daily Kos diarist, Malacandra gave us an idea as to exactly how this kind of law could be interpreted in a widely missed diary last week, Bush Administration to protect Vegetarians of Conscience. Can you imagine going to the butcher to get some sirloin for dinner and being told that you'll have to go elsewhere because the butcher is a vegetarian? And that their job is protected - even though they refuse to perform that job - because of a law that protects their "freedom of conscience"??

How many women will be put at risk due to this new regulation because they will be unable to get access to birth control - which isn't solely used for preventing pregnancy. According to the Center for Young Women's Health, birth control is prescribed for a wide variety of medical problems:

Adolescent girls and young women are frequently prescribed oral contraceptive pills for irregular or absent menstrual periods, menstrual cramps, acne, PMS, endometriosis, and hormone replacement therapy. For example, girls diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) (a hormone imbalance which causes irregular menstrual periods, acne, and excess hair growth) are prescribed oral contraceptives to lower their hormone levels back to normal and regulate menstrual periods. Girls with acne that is not responding to simple measures are often prescribed hormone pills. Girls whose ovaries are not producing enough estrogen (because of anorexia nervosa, excessive exercise, or damage to the ovaries from radiation or chemotherapy) often take oral contraceptive pills to replace estrogen. Girls with endometriosis are also often prescribed oral contraceptives, in cycles or continuously, to suppress the condition.

The CDC gives us a sense as to how many people would be affected by this rule:

In 2002, 98% of women who had ever had sexual intercourse had used at least one method of birth control only 7.4 percent of women who were currently at risk of unintended pregnancy were not using a contraceptive method.2 The most popular method of birth control was the oral contraceptive pill, used by 11.6 million women in the United States, followed by female sterilization, condoms, male sterilization, and other methods of birth control.2

98% of women have used a method of birth control - and this regulation could result in refusal of access to health care for every single one of those women depending on how they access that birth control.

• The ACLU has a letter you can send.


• Planned Parenthood has a letter you can send.


• NARAL has a letter you can send.

I urge you to sign and send every one of them - and pass every one of them along to every single family member and friend you know.

We have 19 days. After 19 days this regulation goes into effect and every single health care worker in the United States will be able to refuse any woman health care based on their own personal moral views.

NARAL provides us with a few specific results this regulation could have:

-- This regulation could undermine good state laws that require hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape survivors and ensure that pharmacies fill women’s prescriptions for birth control.

-- The proposal could allow health-care corporations (hospitals, HMOs, and health plans) to refuse to provide services or make referrals for birth control.

-- The proposed regulation could affect Medicaid and the Title X family-planning program. For instance, staff at clinics or health-care plans that contract for Medicaid services could refuse to provide contraception.

The ACLU provides us with a link to the PDF of the rule here if you'd like to read it yourself.

If this rule takes effect, I wonder what other health care procedures and medications providers could begin to deny patients because of their own personal conscience...the list could extend well beyond birth control or abortion. Just think of all the different religions out there and the wide variety of procedures people object to based on those religious beliefs.

Please take action today and please ask everyone you know to join you. This rule has the potential to eliminate access to healthcare for women all over the country - and will very likely hit women in less populated areas the hardest. Some women simply don't have the option to "find another provider" in their area. Some women don't have the option to "find another pharmacy" in their area. We must do everything in our power to stop this rule before it takes affect.

If you aren't concerned, you damn well should be.

Update: Junkyard Dem has added a link to Digg. Please Digg this story up. The more who learn about this rule and take action, the better.

This is what happens when women are not permitted to control their own reproductive destiny

This is what America will look like; the Republican version of utopia, after John McCain and the Republicans get their way of a society in which abortion is prosecuted as a crime, self-righteous doctors, nurses and pharmacists are allowed to impose their views on the public at large, and where low-income women have no access to contraception (emphases mine):

As Sam rightly points out, women in Malawi, regardless of age, are not empowered to make decisions about their own health. When they are sick or giving birth, they must wait for their husband or other male relatives to decide when they should be taken to the hospital. This leads to delays – particularly when the decision-making man has gone far away from the village – and many women who come to the hospital at all come late, when complications have already set in.

[snip]

Some have described obstetrics in sub-Saharan Africa as a roller coaster of highs and lows, sometimes terrifying and sad, sometimes unpredictable, always interesting, and very rewarding to those of us who are privileged to participate in the drama of childbirth. This particular story had a happy ending. But the poverty in this area is compounded by poor education. Illiteracy rates are alarmingly high, and girls often drop out of school early. The prevailing belief in this area is that the role of a female in society is to marry, have many children, raise the children, and look to her husband for guidance in all matters. Even as we train more clinical officers and try to improve our medical services to women, we must remember that the environment we work in does not allow the women themselves to have a voice in their choices of health care or where and when they will seek medical help.

Let's look at that again: "the role of a female in society is to marry, have many children, raise the children, and look to her husband for guidance in all matters."

Here is John McCain's good friend "Pastor" John Hagee on women and marriage, from his book What Every Man Wants from a Woman:

Only a Spirit-filled woman can submit to her husband's lead. It is the natural desire of a woman to lead through feminine manipulation of the man. The battle of the sexes began in Genesis 3:16, when God said to the woman, "Your craving shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you." In the Art Scroll Tanach Series, author Meir Zolotowitz stated, "Woman's punishment is measure for measure. She influenced her husband and he ate at her command. Her punishment was that she would now become subservient to him."

Why did Saint Paul say, "I do not permit a woman to ... have authority over a man" (1 Tim. 2:12)? It was because it is the natural thing for a woman to try to do. She is, by instinct, a manipulator of the situation. Fallen women will try to dominate the marriage. The man has the God-given role to be the loving leader of the home. [Pages 12-13]

We also know that John McCain is hoping people don't see his voting record on the availability of contraception:

Here is John McCain's voting record on contraception and women's health (NOT including his voting record on abortion rights):

• Voted to uphold the global gag rule, a policy that bans overseas health clinics from receiving U.S. family‐planning aid if they use their own funds to provide legal abortion services, give referrals, or even take a public pro‐choice position.
  
• Voted to de‐fund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an organization that provides family‐planning services – not abortion – for the world’s poorest women.
  
• Voted to earmark one‐third of all HIV/AIDS prevention funds for ineffective, unproven, and dangerous “abstinence‐unless‐married” programs.
  
• Voted to take $75 million from the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant to establish a new “abstinence‐only” program that censors information about birth control.
  
• Voted to impose a federal parental‐consent law on teens seeking birth control.
  
• Declined to help reduce the need for abortion and improve maternal health by opposing effort to require insurance coverage for prescription birth control, improve access to emergency contraception, and provide more women with prenatal health care.
  
• Voted against legislation that would have prevented unintended pregnancy by investing in insurance coverage for prescription birth control, promoting family‐planning services, implementing teen‐pregnancy‐prevention programs, and developing programs to increase awareness about emergency contraception.
  

He doesn't believe women have the right to prevent unwanted pregnancy, and he pals around with guys who believe women should be subservient to their husbands. Now please remind me again how their dream vision of a male-controlled America in which men make health care decisions for women differs from that in sub-Saharan Africa.

If you thought the Supreme Court composition wasn't important, take a look at this

I remember the days before abortion was legal. I remember the girls who disappeared to "visit grandma for a few months" and then re-appeared in school under code of silence, sworn to Never Mention It Again.

When I went to college, there was a clinic in town with a sliding fee scale where you could obtain contraceptives. Even though by that time abortion was legal, even in provincial, conservative Bethlehen, Pennsylvania -- college students had access at low cost to a physician who would prescribe birth control pills, insert an IUD, or offer up a diaphragm and jelly or condoms with spermicidal foam for those students who wanted to be responsible about their active sexuality.

Today, the right to terminate an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy is hanging by a thread, but the hand-wringing about at what point a woman ceases to be a human being and simply becomes a vessel for a parasitic developing being that has more rights than she does isn't stopping at the angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin question. Emboldened by the relentless march towards a legal definition of abortion as murder, those who don't believe women should be permitted to prevent unwanted pregnancy (that is, have sex without the "punishment" of the mark of her sin), have been able to take steps towards "conscience exceptions" in medical fields. Pharmacists are now permitted to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives they believe (erroneously) to be "abortifacients". Doctors are permitted to refuse to prescribe them.

If your child has a raging fever and runaway systemic infection, should a Christian Scientist doctor be allowed to refuse to prescribe antibiotics? Then how is this any different?

If for no other reason than the kind of medieval thinking about women's right to control their own bodies BEFORE having to deal with unwanted pregnancy, John McCain must NOT be elected this November. Because if he is, he WILL perpetuate this:

The Bush administration wants to require all recipients of aid under federal health programs to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control.

Under the draft of a proposed rule, hospitals, clinics, researchers and medical schools would have to sign “written certifications” as a prerequisite to getting money under any program run by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Such certification would also be required of state and local governments, forbidden to discriminate, in areas like grant-making, against hospitals and other institutions that have policies against providing abortion.

The proposal, which circulated in the department on Monday, says the new requirement is needed to ensure that federal money does not “support morally coercive or discriminatory practices or policies in violation of federal law.” The administration said Congress had passed a number of laws to ensure that doctors, hospitals and health plans would not be forced to perform abortions.

In the proposal, obtained by The New York Times, the administration says it could cut off federal aid to individuals or entities that discriminate against people who object to abortion on the basis of “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

The proposal defines abortion as follows: “any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”

Mary Jane Gallagher, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which represents providers, said, “The proposed definition of abortion is so broad that it would cover many types of birth control, including oral contraceptives and emergency contraception.”

“We worry that under the proposal, contraceptive services would become less available to low-income and uninsured women,” Ms. Gallagher said.

In other words, a family planning clinic receiving federal funds would not be allowed to require that a nurse or other employee distribute family planning supplies.

The article's headline specifies "abortion", but the proposal also includes "conscience clauses" for contraception as well.

Given that so-called conservatives want to gut programs that help low-income families, you'd think that they'd want to provide assistance for low-income women to be able to avoid having children they can't afford. Or are they saying that just as housing, health care, and all the other things the middle class has taken for granted for the last two generations are now the exclusive province of the wealthy, now family planning is too?

Someone ask John McCain what he thinks of this

Meet the new "faith-based" drugstores:

When DMC Pharmacy opens this summer on Route 50 in Chantilly, the shelves will be stocked with allergy remedies, pain relievers, antiseptic ointments and almost everything else sold in any drugstore. But anyone who wants condoms, birth control pills or the Plan B emergency contraceptive will be turned away.

That's because the drugstore, located in a typical shopping plaza featuring a Ruby Tuesday, a Papa John's and a Kmart, will be a "pro-life pharmacy" -- meaning, among other things, that it will eschew all contraceptives.

The pharmacy is one of a small but growing number of drugstores around the country that have become the latest front in a conflict pitting patients' rights against those of health-care workers who assert a "right of conscience" to refuse to provide care or products that they find objectionable.

"The United States was founded on the idea that people act on their conscience -- that they have a sense of right and wrong and do what they think is right and moral," said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Society, a Chicago public-interest law firm that is defending a pharmacist who was fined and reprimanded for refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control pills. "Every pharmacist has the right to do the same thing," Brejcha said.

But critics say the stores could create dangerous obstacles for women seeking legal, safe and widely used birth control methods.

"I'm very, very troubled by this," said Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center, a Washington advocacy group. "Contraception is essential for women's health. A pharmacy like this is walling off an essential part of health care. That could endanger women's health."

The pharmacies are emerging at a time when a variety of health-care workers are refusing to perform medical procedures they find objectionable. Fertility doctors have refused to inseminate gay women. Ambulance drivers have refused to transport patients for abortions. Anesthesiologists have refused to assist in sterilizations.

The most common, widely publicized conflicts have involved pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills, morning-after pills and other forms of contraception. They say they believe that such methods can cause what amounts to an abortion and that the contraceptives promote promiscuity, divorce, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and other societal woes. The result has been confrontations that have left women traumatized and resulted in pharmacists being fired, fined or reprimanded.

In response, some pharmacists have stopped carrying the products or have opened pharmacies that do not stock any.

"This allows a pharmacist who does not wish to be involved in stopping a human life in any way to practice in a way that feels comfortable," said Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International, which promotes a pharmacist's right to refuse to fill such prescriptions. The group's Web site lists seven pharmacies around the country that have signed a pledge to follow "pro-life" guidelines, but Brauer said there are many others.

"It's just the tip of the iceberg," she said. "And there's new ones happening all the time."

So just go to another drugstore, you say? Like which one? You mean the one at Wal-Mart, where the pharmacist can refuse to fill your contraceptive prescription if you're unmarried, or black, or just because he thinks you should be barefoot and pregnant, or that you should suffer the "consequences of your sins"? Why is it that women should have to shop around to get basic health care, while these very same drugstores that won't sell contraception are perfectly willing to sell Viagra? Who are these men who are taking Viagra supposed to be fucking?

All the WATBs like these idiots, who think they're somehow going to get revenge on the candidate they think "stole" (but never explain quite how) the Democratic nomination from Saint Hillary the Faux Feminist Warrior Queen by voting for a guy who is perfectly willing to turn them and their daughters into brood mares had better wake up and smell the fucking coffee. Because this is the Christofascist Zombie Brigade in action -- and they are NOT going away quietly. And when push comes to shove, they will be good little Republican foot soldiers and vote for John McCain. And these sulking tantrum-throwers are ready to help them do it.

Why I didn't blog about choice yesterday

Well, there are two reasons. One of them is that I just plain didn't think about it. Now you could ask why I didn't think about it, and I have to admit that since I no longer have to think about unwanted pregnancy, it isn't at the forefront of my mind.

But there's another reason, and that is that I'm tired. I'm really, really tired of this battle. I'm not saying that we have to capitulate, but I've been fighting this battle since the early 1970's, only to see many young women either dismiss early feminists as an anachronism, or shrug their shoulders and say, "Oh, they'd NEVER make abortion illegal again." Well, sue me for thinking sometime that if that's how they feel, why are we busting our asses to preserve this right that the women most affected take for granted?

I'm not talking about the progressive blogosphere, where the young activists congregate. God knows they do yeoman work trying to drive home the realities behind the "Save the BAYBEEZZZZZ!!" rhetoric. I am talking about the larger society, where every single election we have to fight this battle over and over again, with fewer people taking it seriously as a right we have to continue to fight to retain.

By ceding any portion of their right to bodily self-integrity, young women who are not on the front lines of this battle have enabled one of the crazier pieces of legislation to attempt to seize state control of women's uteri: an amendment to the state constitution in the state of Georgia that reclassifies most of the common methods of contraception (i.e. all nonbarrier methods) as abortion, while defining a fertilized egg as a human being.

I've railed for years about the prospect of government inspection of used tampons, investigation of every menstrual period and prosecution for miscarriages, as a way of dramatizing the logical outgrowth of such legislation, which pops up every now and then like the unwanted mice that somehow find a crack in the foundation you hadn't patched yet. And yet where is the demand for staunch pro-choice candidates? The Democrats are supposed to stand for women's equality, but every time Chuck Schumer chooses a candidate like Bob Casey, or Hillary Clinton looks for "common ground" with fetophile absolutists, our rights over our own bodies are increasingly endangered. I know a woman whom I will not identify here who has a horror story of her own about how her health has been endangered by doctors' determination to salvage her uterus at all costs. I hope she will decide to tell her story soon.

While young people are wishing that we baby boomers would just die the fuck off already so they could get the share they feel they're due of an ever-shrinking pie, we boomers have been out there trying to apply the brakes to an organized drive by religious fanatics to once again make women prisoners of our own biology. Perhaps many of us let our guard down and didn't kick up enough of a ruckus when groups like NARAL decided to do things like endorse Joe Lieberman, who had the gall to say that if a hospital refuses to prescribe emergency contraception out of "religious principles" (sic), well, that dirty slut who got herself raped can damn well just drive to another hospital. But you know what? We get tired. Tired of fighting the same Goddamn battle for thirty, forty years. We need help now. And we need it from those women who are going to be most affected by the Handmaid's Tale society the Christofascist Zombie Brigade has in store for them.

On the other hand, when did "sense" have any relevance to conservatives?

Yesterday Amanda wrote about how the new meme that characterizes the new "child swiftboating" -- that the parents of Brittany Wilkerson should not have had their child because they didn't have health insurance -- is inconsistent with the equally right-wing agenda that all pregnancies should be carried to term and that doctors and pharmacists opposed to contraceptives need not prescribe and fill prescriptions for them.

Fresh on the heels of the right having yet another working family to kick around, one with a child not old enough to talk back yet, comes Captain Codpiece to try to keep the world safe from fucking:

The Department of Health and Human Services appointed Susan Orr — who has spoken out against contraception — to a post responsible for U.S. contraception programs.

Orr, who will be acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs, has been directing child welfare programs in another branch of HHS. Prior to joining the Bush administration, Orr was senior director for marriage and family at the Family Research Council, a conservative group that favors abstinence-only education and opposes federal money for contraception.

In 2001, she was quoted in the Washington Post favoring a Bush administration plan to drop a requirement that health insurance plans for federal employees cover a broad range of birth control.

“We’re quite pleased because fertility is not a disease,” she said at the time. “It’s not a medical necessity that you have it.”

So let me see if I have this straight....you shouldn't have access to contraception if you work for the government because contraception isn't a medical necessity and you should produce lots of babies. But if you don't work for the government; say, for an employer that doesn't provide insurance, then you should let your baby die.

Or is it that fucking, like health insurance, is only for the wealthy too?

What to do with your old diaphragm

Most women don't use a diaphragm anymore. Last time I checked the statistics, only 3% of women use one. It's really a shame, though, because if you don't want to pump hormones into your body, the diaphragm, used correctly, is an inexpensive, non-interruptive, highly effective method of contraception.

But what do you do with the old ones when it's time to replace them? It seems a shame -- and certainly not "green" -- to just toss it. If you look at it, there ought to be SOMETHING that Heloise could come up with for it -- temporary drain stopper, gravy strainer...something...

The Thompson family of Tennessee thinks they've found a good use for it: teething ring!

Here's the full video:

As someone who used to use one, I can tell you that you're right. That is one mighty HUGE diaphragm.

(via BradBlog)