Anti-abortion crowd sets its sights on birth control

kurth

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Wed May-10-06 08:14 PM
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Anti-abortion crowd sets its sights on birth control

Anti-abortion crowd sets its sights on birth control
Scripps Howard News Service

(SH) - It's no secret to those who follow Washington politics that birth control has been "next on the list" of anti-abortion, religious conservatives. Following the enthronement of President Bush's Victorian coterie in 2001, their top priority - an imposition of "everything but" a ban on abortion - has been accomplished in five short years. Now there's undeniable proof that abortion was not the home run they longed for, but more tantamount to first base in a long-range plan to ban birth control, too.

First, the widely maligned Alan Guttmacher Institute - widely maligned by religious conservatives, that is - issued a report showing the economic divide disproportionately foists more unplanned pregnancies on poor women, while simultaneously denying them access to abortion. Courtesy of the so-called Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funds for abortion, and the abstinence-only crowd, women living below the poverty line are now four times more likely than affluent women to experience unintentional pregnancy. In addition, The Washington Post informs us that 50 percent more poor women gave birth in 2001 than in 1994, while the birth rate decreased among affluent women.

The Guttmacher data only documents what happened until the year the Victorian coterie took over in Washington, including national policy on birth control. The New York Times this past weekend chronicled what has happened since. "Many Christians who are active in the evolving anti-birth-control arena state frankly that what links their efforts is a religious commitment to altering the moral landscape of the country. In particular, and not to put too fine a point on it, they want to change the way Americans have sex. Dr. Stanford, the F.D.A. adviser on reproductive-health drugs, proclaimed himself 'fully committed to promoting an understanding of human sexuality and procreation radically at odds with the prevailing views and practices of our contemporary culture.' "

The Times also tells us that the uber-conservative group Focus on the Family, which holds a front-row seat in the Bush court, posts a kind of contraceptive warning label on its Web site: " 'Modern contraceptive inventions have given many an exaggerated sense of safety and prompted more people than ever before to move sexual expression outside the marriage boundary.' Contraception, by this logic, encourages sexual promiscuity, sexual deviance (like homosexuality) and a preoccupation with sex that is unhealthful even within marriage." With the president's public approval ratings competitive with Herbert Hoover's in the "most hated ever" range, one would think these diehards might retreat. No, they're forging straight ahead, hoping to wring every regression they can write into federal law and regulation before they decamp or are kicked out of town in January 2009...

http://www.modbee.com/24hour/opinions/story/3282463p-12102387c.html