Seriously Perverted

You don’t really have to be a “birth control mom” to understand that the Republican and Red Beanie obsession with other people’s sex lives is just plain wrong.  Trying to turn the reproductive

with apologies to R Crumb

health of women into a moral and religious freedom issue is one of the worst perversions of our time.  I no longer require birth control but recognize the importance of birth control and abortion access as central to the recognition of women as a functioning adult capable of making moral decisions in a free and functioning democracy with constitutional rights.  Women’s Reproductive Health is not a fucking political football.

Just a few weeks ago, the notion would have seemed far-fetched. The country is deeply divided on abortion, but not on contraception; the vast majority of American women have used it, and access hasn’t been a front-burner political issue since the Supreme Court decided Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965.

But then Rick Santorum said states ought to have the right to outlaw the sale of contraception.

And Susan G. Komen for the Cure yanked its funding for Planned Parenthood.

And the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops teed off on President Barack Obama’s contraception policy.

And House Republicans invited a panel of five men — and no women — to debate the issue.

And a prominent Santorum supporter pined for the days when “the gals” put aspirin “between their knees” to ward off pregnancy.

Democratic strategist Celinda Lake says it’s enough to “really irritate” independent suburban moms and “re-engage” young, single women who haven’t tuned into the campaign so far.

And, she says, the stakes are high: Women backed Barack Obama in big numbers in 2008 but then swung right in 2010. If the president is to win reelection in 2012, he’ll need to win women back — and Lake and other Democrats see the GOP push on contraception as a gift that will make that easier.

“I feel like the world is spinning backwards,” said former Rep. Patricia Schroeder, who has often related the troubles she has as a young married law student getting her birth control prescriptions filled in the early 1960s. “If you had told me when I was in law school that this would be a debate in 2012, I would have thought you were nuts … And everyone I talk to thinks so, too.”

Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University, also sees the chance of a huge female backlash if the Republicans overreach.

There are so many things about this article in Politico–by a woman–that piss me off that I hardly know where to start.  The first is the bogus description of  “deep division” in the country about abortion.  The only deep division that I can see comes from the right wing continually pushing lies like the existence of abortion on demand hours before giving birth and bogus, nonexistent procedures like “partial birth abortion.” 

The frustration of the right wing over their inability to control access to Plan B, hormonal birth control and first trimester abortions is at the root of all this.  The push to force sonograms, invasive vaginal probes, and “life” begins at the moment of conception religous tropes is building to a crescendo. If only the red beanie set were this obsessed about ending world hunger or nuclear war or ensuring universal health care. The vast majority of women have basically had, are having, are using or will use all three of those things.  To characterize normal reproductive health measures as murder and anti-religious is ridiculous.  But I’d like to add this warning, if the political and punditry class on either side think they can turn us all into a new voting segment, I think they’re also going to learn the meaning of the word backlash.  Women’s reproductive health shouldn’t be trapped in the land of political gamesmanship. Just who the hell are they to score political points with women’s lives??

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