NYT - The War on Contraception

[Burma Jones]

Maybe this will get people to tell the 'Pukes to go away.....I gotta say, this will not go over well with the Libertarian wing of the GOP

<snip>
"R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is considered one of the leading intellectual figures of evangelical Christianity in the U.S. In a December 2005 column in The Christian Post titled "Can Christians Use Birth Control?" he wrote: "The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age — and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm.. . .A growing number of evangelicals are rethinking the issue of birth control — and facing the hard questions posed by reproductive technologies."
<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07contraception.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

[salin]

1. and the right used to refer to the left as wanting a "Nanny State"

This push to codify a narrow religious belief - one not held by many who fall under the broad umbrella of the "Christian" faith - is nothing short of a desire for a nanny-state theocracy.

[Vogon_Glory]

2. Many of Us Have Said This about the Right For YEARS

Many of us who have been in the struggle for reproductive freedom have said that the Far Right's goal has been not only to outlaw abortion, but also to severely restrict access to contraceptives, if not outlaw artificial contraception altogether. We have argued, begged, and pleaded to get our point across, and have seen our efforts stymied because of the apathy and denial of the American electorate. The psychological effect for our efforts worse than screaming into the Grand Canyon; at least with the Canyon you get to hear echoes.

Let's face it, most of the American public is apathetic when it comes to access to contraception. They assume that they can get it, or that it will always be available. The less-fortunate among of are either too busy trying to get their daily bread or have concluded that politics don't affect them.

As for today's crop of Republicans, I'd say that most of them are into serious denial. Many of these people haven't given much thought as to what their religious radical brethren are trying to foist on them, and most of them still reward the Republican pols who pander to such anti-sex fanatics by re-electing them.

Here in Texas, the state legislature has gutted funding to Planned Parenthood ostensibly because PP "Promotes" abortions. Most of the politically savvy know that the right wing's REAL reason is because PP provides contraceptives and birth control devices to women.

I have concluded that short of a Democratic sweep and subsequent massive anti-campaign corruption prosecutions, the only way many centrist and right-of-center voters are going to wise up about the religious right's medical agenda is if little Becky Sue gets cervical cancer or AIDS because of their local school board's "abstinence only" curricula.



:banghead: :argh: :rant:

[tanyev]

3. Irony: Prescott Bush served as the Treasurer for a Planned Parenthood

1947 national funding campaign.

http://www.randomhouse.com/doubleday/thefamily/extras_documents.php
http://www.randomhouse.com/doubleday/thefamily/media/thefamily_document007a.pdf

[Demeter]

4. The Plan Has Always Been That Only the "Right" People Procreate

Eugenics by any other name would be just as distasteful. Now telling the troops to cover the earth, like the rabbits did Australia, is just asking for some countermeasures.....

[corbett]

5. Excellent Piece By NYT!

It touched on nearly every aspect of this ludicrous debate. The bottom line is that the FDA's mandate is to judge applications based on science. It did so and its advisory board voted that emergency contraception is safe and should be made available over the counter. The kicker is that most of the advisors on that panel which voted in favor of moving morning-after to over-the-counter status are people of faith. They stated clearly that the morning-after pill is not the same as a chemical abortion.

[Rose Siding]

6. K and R.

snip>While Americans as a whole don't hold such a dark view of comprehensive sex education, many do feel there's something wrong with a strictly clinical approach. This ambivalence, according to Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, gets to the root of the problem and may explain the numbers. "One of the things I'm most often asked is why the abortion and unintended pregnancy rates are so much lower in Europe," she says. "People talk about the easy access to contraception there, but I think it's really a matter of the underlying social norms. In Europe, these things are in the open, and the only issue is to be careful. Here in the U.S., people are still arguing about whether it's O.K. to have sex."