Ol’ W’s administration sure as shit ain’t gonna leave office ‘til they can make damn sure the womenfolk keep that baby-makin’ machine runnin’ like the Good Lord intended ‘em to.
It’s no secret that the Bush administration is no fan of sex or women’s rights. They have been pretty up front about their wacky “abstinence only” and “pharmacist’s rights to deny birth control” ideas. But now that their reign of idiocy is at an end, they’re taking it one step further--trying to redefine “abortion” to include birth control.
A new draft regulation (which does not require congressional approval) proposed by the humanitarians over at Health and Human Services would allow health care workers who object to abortion on “moral or religious grounds” to refuse to supply contraceptives or even let women know what their birth control options are.
According to the Houston Chronicle the new draft rule could wreak such havoc as:
- voiding laws in 27 states that require insurance companies to provide birth control coverage for women requesting it.
- countering laws in 14 states requiring that rape victims receive counseling and access to emergency, day-after contraceptives.
- requiring federal agencies and states to provide funds for “family planning” clinics that provide women only abstinence counseling.
The Chronicle reports:
“Health and Human Services officials issued a statement claiming the regulation would not alter existing rules and is simply designed to protect health care workers from discrimination based on their views of certain medical procedures. That ignores the fact that defining some forms of contraception as abortion is a radical departure from the status quo.”
One small step for the Fundamentalist Right, one giant step back for women everywhere.
Those opposed to the regulation include Planned Parenthood, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association as well as a bipartisan group of 112 members of congress. A group of 26 senators, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have signed a letter of protest.
MoveOn.org and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund have written a petition of their own, to be delivered to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, which you can sign at MoveOn.org.
I think Margaret Cho said it best when she said that what our government is really afraid of is that:
"If we have more choices in reproductive health that it will set off a fuckwave, and women will be out in the street humping fire hydrants--half of the workforce will be lost because we’ll all be generating a huge pussy cyclone.”
If this administration is going to insist on using it’s dying breaths to take away our reproductive rights, I say bring on Hurricane Poontang!
via The Houston Chronicle