BlogHer - Birth Control Pills To Be Defined as Abortions; Women Can Be Denied Pill, IUD - Comments

I can't believe this

MnMommyof2 — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:34:12 -0500

I Don't even know where to start. There have already been so many good points made.This is totally and completely one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. I they stop women from preventing pregnancy then are benefits going to improve for low income families that didn't want that baby to being with? NO. Are there going to be all of a sudden more adoptive families that will adopt all of these extra births? NO. Why would the government feel that they have any right for me to prevent a pregnancy that I don't want. Why is it always men that make rules limiting women's rights for their own bodies? Why is it ok to have spermicide in condoms that will kill sperm that could potentially produce a baby? Why is this even something that is brought up by the government? As previously posted "how much of our tax money is going to be wasted on this issue"? I can think of a million things that the money could go to first.

I could go on for a lot longer but I am so angry about this I better stop.

An Attempted Blow to Women's Freedom

Ellie Pope - Transforming Sex — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:13:01 -0500

This isn't just about contraception and abortion. This is also an attempt to reduce our sexual self-expression.

Condoms are a great tool, but really, they are inconvenient. Especially for a fluid-bonded couple, or a couple who enjoys a LOT of sex (condoms cost each time you put it in!), the pill or IUD is a great option.

This limits women's freedom in having sex, and everyone's (women's and men's) enjoyment of intercourse.

Ellie, www.transformingsex.com

Ridiculous

valgal — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:32:51 -0500

For so many reasons is this proposal ridiculous. Without writing an essay (and I do feel like it after reading this), here are my points:

Unfortuantely, the pharmaceutical industry in this country is just as powerful as the oil industry. The government will never allow this to pass because that would mean they make less money.
The proposal refers to 'various procedures' and includes only involving what females would take or do. What about the men? What about spermacide in condoms? What about everytime a man masterbates into a towel and millions of sperm are killed?
Since when is preventing a pregnancy killing? We are being punished because we are responsible enough to know when we are ready to raise children? In the same sense, why are we not punished for preventing colds, obesity, etc.
Our country is already over-populated. And, parents who can't even feed the kids they have are popping more out! Our government ought to open their eyes and spend their time and our money on proposals that actually make some common sense!

Condoms will never be taken off the shelves . . .

makriese — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:02:16 -0500

and Viagra will always be covered by most (if not all) health plans. Condoms will always be available because 1) they prevent conception from occurring at all, and (admitting that I'm a bit cynical) 2) because they leave the "choice" to the guy.

www.leftcoastmom.com

Screaming till I'm blue.

Angie The Average — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:05:31 -0500

Can you imagine how much further our tax money would go if this kind o crap were not hogging it?

I would love to see an actual dollar amount wasted on the entire abortion issue, including actual court, legal fee etc... and money spent on wages to pay legislation to sit and decide for me. I would image the amount could feed a small country for 10 years.

Do they not understand that the money wasted so far could have been put to better use in cutting down the amount of abortions? I guess we are not to have sex at all seeins we can't have an abortion and we can't use birth control. What in the hell do they propose we do?

My husband had a vasectomy, I can't use the pill and we have 3 boys, is he now murderer? Does a Urologist now reserve the right not to do those too?

I don't mind them having an opinion and even prostesting till their legs turn blue, but my goodness it has to stop. Who the hell gave them the right to burn my hard earned tax dollars.

I had asked several times in a different discussion on who ahs actually adopted or fostered? NO one answered. Then I asked if they would still continue if the money came directly out of their own pockets, again No answer. So either I'm a blithering idiot who does'nt deserve a response or no one can answer truthfully.

Still screaming.......

And yet, ED is a medical condition...

MMarquit — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:25:59 -0500

I've pretty much had it with the way birth control is treated in this country. Not only can pharmacists force their own views on the rest of us, and not only are our bodies controlled by and large by men making the decisions, we are also subjected to the illusion that this is somehow a lifestyle choice and shouldn't be required to be covered by insurance.

Yet Viagara and other erectile dysfunction medication HAS to be covered. Is this a "medical condition" that is life threatening? Or is having a sex a choice?

Birth control should be available, and insurance companies should be required to cover it. This latest move is ridiculous beyond anything I've heard yet. But, unfortunately, it fits right in with the recent moves in the past few years to reverse freedoms granted in the past and bring women and their bodies under stricter control.

YieldingWealth.com

LendingLeaves.com

Not the first time I'm hearing of this...

hafre02 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:07:50 -0500

A close friend of mine, who is very involved in the Christian community, mentioned this as a discussion held during her bible group a few months ago.

I think the cross over of religion and science is playing a significant part in a scenario where neither should be playing a major role. Women who take the pill are not "ending" a life seeing as there is no egg being fertilized to "create" life.

Speaking as a woman who is pro-choice, I can not even being to explain my frustration more so than by saying - this is RIDICULOUS!

Lisa G.

ParentsOvernight.com

A slippery slope indeed...

Higgs2001 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:05:03 -0500

I believe this is a very slippery slope the Department of Health and Human Services is going down. I mean, where does it end? Will condoms soon be taken off the shelves because they “prevent implantation” as well? Technically, they do, right!? Furthermore, what would the DHHS have us do? Over populate the world (more-so than it already is) with thousands more children a year, and rapidly declining resources? What would the DHHS do then? Solve what they think are the world’s problems, and then pass the byproducts over to the Department of Transportation when the roads are over crowded, or the Department of Child Protective Services when the number of unwanted children are dropped off in dumpsters, or, how about to the Environmental Protection Agency when our carbon footprints are so large that they cause the earth to go into Global Warming overdrive? It’s seems that no matter how far our country comes, no matter how “progressive” we think we are, that the archaic and antiquated ideals that once governed this fine country are still alive and well today.

re: wait a minute

ebyrdstarr — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:07:33 -0500

Elaine, I don't disagree with you that an objective reading of the proposal ought to exclude the pill. But many oral contraceptives at least have the secondary mechanism of effecting the endomitrial layer, lessening the chances that any egg that slips through and gets fertilized will implant. The argument by the hard core fundies is that this secondary mechanism, even if it actually has any effect in only a fraction of 1% of cases, is an abortificant and therefore immoral in all cases. This is why we have to be so vigilant and argue against this now. Rational people may not think this proposal targets the garden variety pill, but that is the ultimate goal of the people behind it.

Wait a minute

wannabe hippie — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:33:22 -0500

That definition in no way includes the Pill. The Pill acts to prevent you from ovulating, not by making the (potentially) fertilized egg fail to implant. No egg = no chance of life. Sounds like they're more likely going after RU486. And yes, an IUD would fall into that catagory.

Just for the record, I'm totally pro-choice and in no way support this move.

--
Elaine
mama to two girls gone wild, Lily (5) and Anya (3)
www.WannabeHippie.com

Horrifying.

zchamu — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:26:19 -0500

What if a person whose religion doesn't believe in blood transfusions is your nurse on the operating table? Can they refuse to treat you too?

Horrid stuff on so many levels.

Visit my blogs at ThreeSeven (all that's irrelevant and amusing) and
ecochick (all that's green, cool and Canadian).

my sister, the hardcore

ebyrdstarr — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:06:01 -0500

my sister, the hardcore Christian that she is, has never had sex as she is unmarried, yet she's been on birth control since she was 18 to control her menstrual cycle that is severely messed up due to ovarian cysts. She would never think of aborting any pregnancy. She would probably forgo her birth control the second she got married so she could produce as many babies as her damaged reproductive system would allow. I think the idea that any pharmacist would deny her the medical treatment she needs is even more offensive to me than the idea that I would be denied my family planning. And I'm really, really offended by the idea that the federal government wants to approve pharmacists denying me my family planning.

Are we going to allow pharmacists to disapprove of narcotic pain-killers and therefore refuse to fill those valid prescriptions? Decide for themselves that giving Ritalin to kids is wrong and override a doctor's decision that the child needs the drug? Sheesh. Nobody forced these people to become pharmacists; if you can't fill the valid prescriptions that customers bring to you, maybe you should just find another line of work.

So I'm a baby-killer??

SaritaB — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:53:42 -0500

Wow. I come from a Catholic family, so I know about ultra-conservative views, but saying that preventing pregnancy is the same as abortion is out of line.

What that's saying is, even if you're a very devout, religious person who uses the "rhythm method", you're aborting embryos left and right, because you're preventing a pregnancy each and every time. What's next, saying we're baby-killers because we purposefully forgo sex when we're ovulating???

And, frankly, as a woman who's struggled with adult-onset acne since the age of 20, whether or not I use the Pill for a contraceptive, it's pretty darn effective as a hormonal-controller (thus stopping my incredibly embarrassing breakouts) without having to take an antibiotic.

What is this world COMING to???

"Todo el mundo sonríe en el mismo idioma."
(Everyone smiles in the same language.)

Birth Control Pills To Be Defined as Abortions; Women Can Be Denied Pill, IUD

Suzanne Reisman — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:39:07 -0500

Every day, I take a birth control pill (except during the "off" week). In this way, I am no different from a large number of American women. My daily pill is not an abortion under any recognizable definition of the word, but new regulations under consideration by the Department of Health and Human Services say that it is. Further, people who oppose abortions can deny me my right to medication that has been prescribed to me by a doctor.

Today's New York Times reports:

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.” [emphasis mine]

In plain English, Marilyn Keefe, Director of Reproductive Health Programs at the National Partnership for Women & Families, tells us:

The leaked draft of the regulation would put politics ahead of women’s health by allowing individuals and organizations to redefine accepted, FDA-approved methods of birth control including oral contraceptives, IUDs and injectables as abortifacients. This definition is at odds with widely accepted science, and the government’s own definition, that pregnancy begins with the implantation of a fertilized egg.

The administration is hiding this under language that, according to the Times, that "requires 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 that "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." What? Why the urgent need for this law, which craftily defines birth control as an abortion? And what does this mean?

Mary Jane Gallagher, President and CEO, National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, explains:

Currently, low-income and uninsured women and men who walk into a government-funded health care facility to receive family planning services do so with the full knowledge and expectation that they will receive access to the full range of contraceptive services. These proposed rules could mean that providers of federally-funded family planning services could no longer guarantee their patients access to contraception, as they would redefine abortion so broadly as to include many methods of contraception, including oral contraception, intrauterine devices and emergency contraception.

She told the New York Times, “We worry that under the proposal, contraceptive services would become less available to low-income and uninsured women.”

It is not just low-income women who will find themselves in trouble if this law passes. (Although, as usual, they will bear the brunt of the effect because they lack other resources and alternatives.) Nancy Keenan, President of NARAL Pro-Choice America, noted that we should not expect Republican candidate John McCain to change course on this disastrous policy:

The regulation would allow health-care corporations or individuals to consider birth control "abortion" and therefore to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it... Sen. McCain has a long record of votes against birth control [voting 22 times against birth control], and Americans can only expect to see these attacks on women's health to continue with McCain in the White House.

It doesn't matter why you take the Pill. Someone has the right to deny you your medicine based on his or her own personal moral code. Freedom of religion? Nah, not when my religion disagrees with the pharmacist's. Right to privacy? Women have no rights when it comes to reproduction. Our uteruses are the nation's uterus, and if we are stupid enough to not buy into a particular frame of religious thinking that not even all religious leaders agree on (see my friends at the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice), then by God, we will be forced to comply, no matter what the cost.

Note: BlogHer already scheduled a podcast interview with Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. We are soliciting questions and comments for Richards by Friday, July 18.

Suzanne also blogs at Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants, Just Cause, and Political Voices of Women.