How foolish of the so-called pro-lifers, who seem to be mostly pro-birthers to push Title X money away from Planned Parenthood and similar organizations. Many poor people cannot afford any other source of birth control and reproductive health counseling. Sometimes no other place exists near their homes.
It makes far more sense to help women prevent unwanted pregnancies than to rail against their ending them. This is also more economical.
Why don't they understand this?
8
The 1%'s subtle racism sprouted the abortion wars. Case on point:
The Knights of Columbus ad on page 3 of the Marthasville [MO] Reporter of 1951/03/23 [an ad that I suspect was more widely published]. That ad rails against family planning because it would mean a decline of the white race. By the 1960s, KofC ads had migrated away from that racist origin to being anti-abortion.
6
"In its continuing assault on reproductive rights, ..."
Let's call it what it is, a war on women, brought to us by the dark ages mentality of evangelicals via their lackey in the White House, Mike Pence. That's what it is. Full stop.
The Vatican is up to its chin in this swamp too, with their refusal in 1968 to update family planning doctrine to allow use of the pill and the condom. Full story at Mother Jones News:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/04/catholic-church-vatican-bishops-birth-control/
Religion: Dragging the world back to a male dominated Dark Ages.
7
The problem with abortion is that it kills unborn babies. Girl babies, colored babies and imperfectly formed babies make up a large portion of those killed, so it isn't feminist nor racist nor Aryan superiority to oppose abortion.
2
I'm sick and tired of men, most of whom are old, white Republicans--as well as the religious right wing--controlling (and legislating against) women's reproductive rights. Enough already!
8
The anti choice movement could care less about abortion, and their attempt to undermine contraception proves it. They know undermining contraception will result in more abortions. I don't refer to this group as pro life because that's just their marketing slogan. How many so called pro lifers give a darn about what happens to the child of an unwanted pregnancy? Very few. How many support welfare for poor women that can't afford a child? Very few. How many adopt children themselves? Very few.
6
"It’s ironic that a rule change clearly rooted in anti-abortion sentiment will threaten access to contraception — the very thing that prevents unintended pregnancies."
With all due respect, it is NOT ironic. It is exactly what was intended. The goal of the self-styled pro-life movement is to keep women from having sex (or anything else) outside of marriage, period. If they could make unmarried women ineligible for any form of health care, they would. V.
4
I am a free spirit, a free woman, nobody tries to prevent women to have sex. Condoms are in every gas station, supermarket etc ... Walmart and target offer birth at $4.00 a month so enough of the birth control not being available. I had many lovers, a husband, two kids and an abortion at 8 weeks back in the 80’s which I deeply regret. Abortion is not healthcare except in rare cases... life is precious even when if untimely. I wish I could be pro life all the way but I am 99% prolife...
2
Just a reminder to those that don't vote - you are more to blame for all of this than someone who voted for Trump. You can bet your bedonk that the Trump administration will quite literally and blatantly do what Georgia did and just flat out close polling stations and physically prevent people from voting in 2020. They really don't care. They can only win my cheating, and they'll do it as much as possible. Start making arrangements now to make sure you can and will vote.
5
@thundercade, I fail to see how not voting at all is worse than voting for a horrible person. Because logically and mathematically, it's not. The people most responsible for policies like this are the ones who deliberately voted Republican. Lots of people don't vote, for a variety of reasons, voter suppression including hours long lines and inequitable ID requirements, illness, long, inflexible work hours, lack of transportation or simply being overwhelmed by personal problems among them. All of these obstacles are highly correlated with poverty, and disempowerment by existing government policies. And besides, we all have a right to abstain, for whatever reasons.
Thank you Donald for leading the charge to Make America Pure Again, and reestablishing the principle that sex should be for procreation only! You are setting a glorious personal example.
6
So much for moderating influence by Ivanka. She does a better con than her dad.
5
What's odd- or perhaps not so odd, is that Republicans repeatedly try to pass and sometimes do pass these gag laws, prohibiting doctors from advising and referring their patients based on the doctors' medical judgement and knowledge of services available. These laws, when passed are always overruled as illegal and unconstitutional. Sure, they work with foreign aid, because the US government is not bound by the same requirements. Populations in foreign countries don't have the same rights to US resources and services as US citizens and legal residents. In fact the US is under no legal or constitutional requirement to provide foreign aid at all. This is not true when it comes to distribution of services and resources to populations within the US. In many areas, especially rural areas in the US, Planned Parenthood is the only source of health care for people dependent on Medicaid or reduced cost health care, or in some cases any health care at all. Withholding funds from Planned parenthood denies those populations their right to equal protections, services and benefits, and medical rules and standards preclude doctors from withholding information from their patients, which qualifies as medical malpractice. It would be helpful if people could actually remember such recent history and stop repeating the same mistakes.
6
Everybody seems to forget that easy access to birth control actually decreases the need for, and the number of, abortions.
There WILL be abortions, the real question is whether or not they will be legal and safe, or illegal and dangerous.
12
This is what comes of indulging straw man arguments instead of cutting DIRECTLY to the chase.
Similarly, the abortion debate is hiding behind the issue of "life" because it is low-hanging rhetorical fruit. In reality, it is an extension of the general efforts of theocratic-minded people to punish the sexual activity of consenting adults (especially women). A glance at the history of legislation on this topic tells the real story. There have been laws about what races may marry, what RELIGIONS may marry, what sexes may marry, whether people may have sex before marriage, what KIND of sex a couple may engage in, what products they may use (condoms were a no-no too, once), whether the children of unwed couples may receive gov't benefits. Heck, it's the reason AIDS research was de-prioritized for so long.
The same desire that truly drives the abortion objection drives the contraception objection, and it's not saving lives; it's CONTROL. Unauthorized couplings and sex for reasons other than approved purposes MUST carry grave risks. Love the wrong person and you risk legal disadvantage. Children of unapproved sex will be denied common benefits. As to AIDS, the same forces championing "life" would tell the LGBTQ community to just die for their non-conformance. And abortion? Birth control? No, that would potentially make sex outside marriage and for non-reproductive purposes less risky. So it's all got to go.
8
Logic and common sense should tell us that banning both contraception and abortion will increase the population of a world already crowded. I can only suppose that the Evangelicals and the GOP want to accelerate our travel over the cliff of world warming. But they then do not believe in climate change. So the second coming will speed up a bit? Sad!
4
Of course there will be lawsuits to attempt to stop this "new" rule. As others have pointed out, it has seemed to be the intent of the so-called religious right all along to force women back into what they believe is their true position, i.e., subservient to men. Or, as one of my former professor said aloud in the classroom, "barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen." That he neglected to also include in the bedroom might only have been an unintended oversight. It is particularly strange - though that is not a strong enough word - that the same people who advocate denying women any reproductive choice seem also to be the ones who punish them through cuts in social programs that would help them to lead better lives and give better lives to their children.
4
That's the point, as the extremists want to eliminate contraception and sex they think is "inappropriate." A Jewish acquaintance ended up at a Catholic hospital in an emergency and was told that a priest would have to decide whether she could continue taking the pill during her stay, as it was against hospital policy. This, despite the fact that she was taking the pill for reasons other than contraception. It's this level of micromanagement that all Americans should worry about. What's next, being refused a blood transfusion because of the religious beliefs of your doctor? (By the way, this happened in the last ten years, not last century).
12
Ah yes. As soon as the baby pops out of the womb of the woman who had no access to birth control, the Republican party does not care one iota about you or your future or your health.
11
It's always been caught up in the so-called "abortion" wars, because the war isn't over abortion, it's over being a democratic republic or a fundamentalist theocracy.
There's only one Abrahamic God whose followers believe life begins at conception, and his most avid acolytes believe the act of sex is to be used only to reproduce. [And not all his followers believe either of these things.]
Abortion illegal, contraception illegal, masturbation illegal, etc. And with Planned Parenthood in particular, which does so much more than family planning, it's a type of slow motion eugenics when coupled with making regular health care or healthy foods unavailable to the poor. Don't feed them, don't give them health care, let them die off.
Sounds fanatical, doesn't it?
5
Why isn't The Times putting an article about this gag rule on its front page every day?
Editorials and Op-Eds are fine, but the news should cover this problem above the fold.
7
What do all these so-called Right to Lifers do when they or their relatives are confronted with an unwanted pregnancy, the threat of maternal death due to complications during the pregnancy, or if they realize that they cannot possibly bring another child into the world and give it what it needs? If they're rich they pay out of pocket. In truth only the very rich or someone with a rich patron can afford this sort of idiotic attitude. Only ignorant people can overlook the fact that every child should be wanted and cherished. Ask any person who was not wanted how it feels to grow up unwanted. If that doesn't change your mind you are missing an important human quality; compassion.
9
I no longer believe that the anti-choice lobby is a good faith effort based on valuing human life. Nothing they do makes life easier for women who are in untenable situations nor do they require anything at all of men. I can only conclude that this movement is able controlling women whose reproductive independence threatens the current power structure. That they also hate women seems quite likely as well. Someone will need to make a decision about a woman's life: it must be the women herself, not people who hate or need to control women and not the government.
7
Contraception should be FREE to all humans on the planet. There are simply too many humans on Earth. All we need to do is control the birthrate, and it's the cheapest and easiest solution to a seriously mounting problem. If the richest people in this country alone (Bezos, Gates, et al) would provide funding for this relatively simple act, the human race, and planet, would benefit infinitely more than any space exploration or benevolent "gifting". It would be the right thing to do.
8
Planned Parenthood must get out of the abortion business if they want to continue receiving funding. This is really what this is all about. Planned Parenthood performs more abortions than any other facility and makes the bulk of their money by doing so.
Tax payer funds must never be given to end the life of the innocent life in the womb. This money should be directed towards pregnancy care centers which performs all services except abortions. They give high quality compassionate care in a loving environment. I do not want my tax dollars going to an organization that makes most of its money through abortion which I strongly oppose.
2
@WPLMMT
"This money should be directed towards pregnancy care centers which performs all services except abortions."
No, they don't. They don't provide "care." They don't provide prenatal care. They don't provide any other reproductive health services. They don't do anything except shame women into bearing children they don't want. They are religious organizations that should not be receiving tax payer dollars, as far as I'm concerned.
16
I do not want my tax dollars going to provide services for the tax-exempt Catholic Church.
7
A Freedom FROM Religion Act is long overdue because Republicans willfully ignore the separation of church and State. As a woman I’m angry that religious institutions are determining what healthcare services I and others can access.
There was a time in this country when new brides were given cloth and embroidery floss to sew their own decorative shroud. She was expected to finish it by her first anniversary so it would be ready just in case she died in childbirth. This way her husband could quickly bury her and find a new wife.
Some religious regimes force their women to wear shrouds while alive in the form of burqas. This is where the Christian sharia extremists are taking us, one lost right at a time. Before long women will be dying not just from botched back alley abortions but in hospitals from ruptured ectopic pregnancies, and from septicemia due to retained products of conception following a spontaneous abortion. Some states already prosecute women for spontaneous abortions (miscarriage) and stillbirths — Alabama, Mississippi and Utah.
This assault on our freedoms and rights must end. This assault on our persons must end.
20
so many of us women, now situated better economically, may remember the visits we made in our late teens and twenties to low-cost clinics for pap smears, breast exams, and birth control when we had no doctor and almost no money. I am relating just the easiest scenario, and yet I, like many other women, needed and was very grateful for the help I received. Title X is essential, women's health is essential, the contributions that we women make towards all of society are essential. We have to vote, all of us, more now than ever. I gathered up some nonvoting women in my neighborhood in November, and got them to vote, and I intend to do so again.
14
Do straight men really want to go back to the day when women lived without birth control and would be ostracized by all society when they got pregnant out of wedlock?
Really guys, torching Planned Parenthood is not in your best interests. Think about it.
13
Another reason why we need more democrats that are women in office everywhere, from local politics to national politics. This war on women has got to stop.
13
Re: "...The Trump administration’s cruel new family planning rule threatens access to contraception and other health care for poor women..."
As a former Catholic, ('born, 'N, bred...), long, reaffiliated to Neo_Paganism, I DON'T take my 'moral' marching orders from...
'N.A.M.B.L.A., On.The.Tiber', as the R.C.C. has come to be labeled...
Trump is 'Pro_Forced_Birth', and/or, 'Pro_Choice' as circumstances-/-audiences, require...
As someone voting, against Republicans, X's 40+ years, I DON'T take my marching orders from Republicans, either!
'Religious_Freedom' applies to ALL peaceful faiths, (thus, excluding Xian_Identity, I.S.I.S., Boko-Haram, etc.), or...
It's merely another empty rhetorical device, like, 'Plausible, Deniability', 'family_values', etc.!
No one should be permitted to play with millions of other people's lives in this grossly, sadistic fashion!
As 2020 approaches / I continue the rest of my life...I shall continue to avoid Republicans...electorally!!
3
I am chagrined that in the 21st century, we are still discussing birth control- let alone threaten access to birth control.
No one has any right to prevent any man or woman from their access to birth control.
Moreover, birth control should be encouraged for everyone regardless of wealth.
Some people think that you can have as many kids as you want as long as you can afford them.
I would posit that no one should have large families these days because of the carbon footprint of each one of us regardless of how rich or poor you are.
Any responsible person would encourage birth control for everyone and especially for themselves.
Birth control prevents abortion and that is a good thing for everyone. No one wants abortions to occur.
I am pro-choice but hope that someday, abortions will be obsolete when birth control is free or cheap so that everyone who wants access to a wide variety of birth control will have access to it.
Any action otherwise is comparable to insane, religious dogma.
10
@marian - Actually, there'll always been a need for some abortions, such as to save the mother's life, or when the fetus is discovered to have serious anomalies incompatible with life. But LARCs can go a long way toward preventing unintended pregnancies, if only they could be made affordable for all.
6
Yes, let all women practice Abstinence for one month, and then see how this affects men. There would be howling and screaming FROM men for contraceptive availability for all.
14
This will a massive step backwards for step for the US ...women have been treated as second class citizens for years and this will just make matters worse.
7
I always thought the Republicans were the ones who demanded there be less government in our lives? They want more government in our lives if it helps jam their agenda down our throats. A shame they don't place onerous restrictions and irrational, harassing demands on gun dealers.
10
"People of conscience" need to stop taking other people's medical conditions so personally. It is not a personal, moral, spiritual failure if you do not absolutely prevent every abortion ever from happening. It's likely you don't even understand the situation. You'd think from the way so many social conservatives support "gun rights" and the "just in case" notion of the necessity to own and carry arms that they would understand the need to leave abortion law alone. It only reveals their cherry-picking hypocrisy.
12
Time to get the E.R.A. ratified.
Then get every available lawyer to focus on how this amendment applies to healthcare, making sure women are treated equitably in every aspect, from insurance costs to reproductive and abortion products and services.
3
There are many economic factors surrouding the right-wing's obsession with birth rates.
The first thing is the old laissez-faire doctrine. Present in the liberal toolbox since 19th Century France, laissez-faire simply states that any liberal society should estimulate birth, but do nothing regarding death (faire vivir, laissez morir). That is, the individual is sacred before birth, but expendable after it: death should be celebrated and cultivated with birth; life as fuel for death. This is what Foucault (not by chance, a French) would later call "biopolitics".
But why did laissez-faire existed? Transporting to nowadays America, we have two main objectives:
1) increase "whiteness" of the American population. With white women without contraceptive tools, birth rate of white women will rise. This is a point of honor for the Western far-right in general, so it goes without saying (the inverted side, obviously, will be the extermination of the black and hispanic population, be it by straight up killing, sterilization and expulsion, Liberia-style);
2) with the borders closed to immigration, white women will have to make up for the population growth deficit which will ensue. Capitalism needs infinite growth, so constant population growth is a must, and it must come from somewhere.
5
The Administration's new rules continue to execute the game plan created now over twenty years ago, by forces concerned with the subjugation of women.
I say, 'subjugation of women', and not 'protection of life', because of the thought experiment I have posed in these pages before. Consider that artificial womb technology becomes viable. Then, any women who becomes pregnant, can have the fetus transferred to an artificial womb. In that instance, if society determines that such transfer is legal, then life is protected, and women are not subjugated. If society determines otherwise, then women are subjugated, revealing the true purpose behind these machinations. Their rights are limited, simply because they were born with a womb.
One recent scientific article regarding artificial womb technology development is worth reading. It reviews clinical outcomes for prematurely-born infants. It clarifies nomenclature, and discusses the ethics of artificial wombs in neonatal clinical settings, when a fetus must be removed from the uterus prior to 22 weeks gestation (the outer limit for viability outside the womb). See: https://jme.bmj.com/content/44/11/751.abstract, and references therein.
Technology will eventually advance past the nonsense pursued by those who claim to be pro-life. And 'eventually' will come sooner, not later. Are we ready for the legal, moral, and ethical questions raised by such advancements?
2
After our second child, I told my wife I was deeply apprehensive about the risks to her health that would be posed by another baby or her continued use of contraceptives. With her agreement, I promptly had a vasectomy.
I didn't know the Church position on the matter but in a later discussion with my priest, I casually mentioned my vasectomy. When he asked why, I told him my primary responsibility as a husband was to protect my wife and our family. He nodded and said OK without further comment.
Later it occurred to me that was a clear example of the gross institutional hypocrisies that infect our defective culture. It marked the onset of a gathering sorrow and anger at the dark triad that attacks, exploits and deprives the most vulnerable among us.
Damn them all!
11
The anti choice crowd often argues that they are not anti contraception only anti choice. This article shows the insincerity and hypocrisy of that argument. They are not just anti choice they are against all access to family planning, women's health, sex education, reproductive choice (including the choice to get pregnant through various means), and post birth familial support programs. At least these new rulings make that clear.
5
As someone who has, for the past 40 years, worked in support of reproductive rights including a Ph.D. in Public Health and stints working at Planned Parenthood and other community clinics it continues to shock me when I see the extent to which the Trump administration is slowly moving to fully impede a woman's right to access abortion services and separately contraceptive services. This pattern does not stop at our borders as it is being promulgated to restrict traditional funding by USAID for women's health including maternal and child survival programs.
It is clear to me that when Trump talks about "Make America Great Again" he is actually alluding to moving women back into the 1950s in a full-out war against the advancements that women have made in contraceptive and personal rights. In fact, Trump and his associates are interested in the overturning of the Griswold v. State of Connecticut SCOTUS decision which provides privacy related to contraceptive decisions.
It is a war against women by the Christian Right and the people who are the supporters of Trump.
11
February 27, 2019
Surely threatens the nature of the family and core parent stability have proper healthy options in all matters of living with rights to make personal decisions - and nothing can more sensitive and deterministic as becoming a mother or father and with conscious responsible living maturation's freedom. Either we are free to live with control of the birth decisions or not and if not there are always grave alternatives that aggravate the spirit of humanism and for coping in ones own very personal concerns, where lessons learned are its won remedy to both family and our culture - true to freedom of for purity of the first order our bodies and our breeding with pride and ownership in the name and honor of love.
2
I keep hearing that the new Pope is so concerned about the poor, not to mention the vulnerable, yet I find his anti-contraception policy to be unconscionable. Having absorbed 7 years of church history, I shouldn’t be surprised. I thought Jesus was a compassionate revolutionary - what ever happened to that?
6
The 116th Congress has 102 women in the House (89D, 13R) and 25 women in the Senate (17D, 8R). I believe that they will make their voices heard on this subject. And then there is 2020!
4
Banana Republican and their supporting cast of primitive anti-abortion zealots represent a direct assault on women's rights, public health and, in a larger sense, the nation's wellbeing. Trump and the GOP apparently didn't get the message this past November. A much stronger message will have to be delivered in 2020.
10
Outlawing abortion AND eliminating access to contraception have always been the goals of the anti-choice movement and the Republican party that caters to them...this is not some new development under the Trump administration. The anti-choice movement is made up of fundamentalist religious fanatics and misogynists who believe that women should never be allowed to make choices about when or whether they have children, except via abstaining from sex altogether--an abstinence which the fanatics and misogynists no doubt consider sinful, even unlawful, for a married woman if her husband does not approve.
Bottom line: They don't care about reducing or eliminating abortions, period. If they did, they would of course support contraception and science-based family planning education. Their endgame is to make all women of reproductive age the hostages of their own biology, to restrict women's life choices, sexuality and opportunities, and to put them under male control, just like back in the "good old days."
210
@danielle - Even today, far too many on the right view an unintended pregnancy as "punishment" for women for having sex without the intent to reproduce. Sadly, "punishment children" don't fare well in this society.
In case anyone wonders if this is really about controlling women's sexuality, I'll remind people that when contraception was first made legal in the US, it was legal only for married women. It was still illegal to prescribe it for unmarried women.
36
So often I hear these restrictions defended by advocates of abstinence: "Just don't have sex." That little word "just" makes it sound simple, but it conceals so much. If I don't want to get pregnant, do I "just" stop having sex with my partner, cutting out a valued and important part of our relationship? If I never want to get pregnant, do I "just" stop having sex for the rest of my life? Do I "just" stop engaging in a healthy means of pleasure, of fun, of intimacy, indefinitely? Or what if my birth control costs money that I don't have? Then do I "just" not have sex until I can afford it? Is sex a luxury for the financially secure?
Abstinence isn't a simple choice. At the best of times, it can be an imperfect compromise. Often it isn't feasible. But advocating abstinence as a one-size-fits-all alternative to readily available family planning solutions--from contraceptive pills to abortion--sweeps all of these personal negotiations under the rug. So then from that perspective, if we do have sex, well then, since we didn't apply that simplest of solutions--since we didn't "just" not have sex--we deserve what we get, right? We don't deserve the pill, we don't deserve an abortion, and we certainly don't deserve authority over our own bodies.
For some, restricting access to family planning and abortion is about fetal rights. Some claim that it's about women's health and safety. But I agree with @MegWright: it's also about punishing women for having sex.
29
Lets just call a spade a spade. The Trump administration and the Republican party are anti sex. While they all apparently engage it, in the end, the Republicans just don't like sex.
7
@JMWB
ROFL.
They are not at all anti-sex, never have been, any more than they are anti-money.
They are anti-female to their core and anti-intellectual.
9
disclosure: I am not a woman. but I can still understand how this anti-woman program of the Trump cabal is demeaning and insulting and even dangerous to women, and that not only women but all of us - ESPECIALLY KIDS -suffer from these misguided policies. the question is: why do they endlessly pursue this? in the short and shallow political term, it is of course to appeal to the most conservative elements of the Trump base. but, while we all may suffer the consequences, who actually stands to benefit by keeping women subjugated and forced to bear children against their will? we can easily identify the victims in this kabuki, but who are the actual villains and what can they hope to gain?
4
Many people think Hillary Clinton lost the election because women didn't vote for her. They either stayed home or voted for the sexual tyrant who sits in the White House now. Ask the question of your representatives: Do you support funding birth control for poor women? If the answer is no, go on to the next candidate. And VOTE.
11
It sounds so righteous to be “pro-life.” They think they’re saving all of the “babies.” (Don’t “pro-life” folks have faith that God would take all of these “infants” into his care? Wouldn’t that be better than being an unwanted child on Earth?)
A fetus is the possibility of a life. The pregnant woman’s life is the actual here-and-now life being affected. The woman must have the final say, no matter the reason, and no matter anyone else’s opinion.
Access to free birth control is the only thing that will greatly reduce unplanned pregnancies. That’s where our government’s focus should be regarding this issue.
11
The Genie is out of the bottle. Women have had a taste of the freedom that birth control allows, and they won't go back to the pregnancy roulette wheel. There is a strange group of people in our country who think sex is dirty and is only acceptable for the purpose of procreation. This is what needs to change. Until that happens, donate money to Planned Parenthood, the only organization that stands between desperate poor women and wacko sex rules enforcers.
13
This harms not just women, but entire families. It is the wise woman and good mother who maintains the intimate bond with her husband. Access to affordable, reliable contraception and freedom from unwanted pregnancy is the most pro-family thing I can think of.
10
@Jane
Not every female is either married or into men, or a breeding person at all.
Many girls and women are raped and impregnated against their will.
4
One quibble: contraception REDUCES unintended pregnancies - not prevents.
5
This is awful. The states must step in and provide these services. If I were the govern or NY or CA I'd refuse to send one penny to the Feds. The blue states have the money. Money talks!
2
NY and CA and MA and the rest of wealthy blue America subsidizes the poorer red states... but we all have the same 2 Senators. this is a feature, not a bug, intended from the get-go to insure the rural places would dominate (and hold onto their slaves), no matter how poor or backward. today's slaves are called by more up to date names, but the dynamic is he same.
6
@Pottree - When the founders made their unwise compromise to get the smaller states on board, the largest states were only 10 times larger than the smallest one. Now, the largest state is 70 times larger than the smallest one. If CA were to have the same proportion of senatorial representation as WY, it would have over 100 senators. This is the most anti-democratic feature of our form of government, but this also helps determine the formula for the anti-democratic electoral college. At every level of our federal government, we're being governed by the minority.
2
@Pottree It was doe to get the small states in and it worked for awhile. It no longer works. CA should have about 18 Senators to Iowa's 2. It is unfair but we are not a democracy; we are a constitutional republic with a very dumb electoral college.
2
When the subject of climate change comes up, republicans like to say they are not scientists. But it is amazing how the whole party thinks they are gynecologists.
34
"Either of these options would amount to a huge loss for women around the country." And that is really the point.
7
I hope people realize now that opposition to abortion has nothing to do with “protecting the babies”. It has always boggled my mind how a person who is not clinically insane can seriously think that a mindless fetus is a human person, let alone that its biological existence is more important than the human life of its mother. Nor is it a religious belief, as most world religion, including Islam and Judaism, do not recognize a fetus as a person, while Christianity used not to care. Now “Pro-Life” is revealed for the deep social pathology that it is, rooted in a uniquely American fear of, and revulsion from, sex. Contraception is quite simply the greatest invention in the history of the world because it has liberated half of humanity to lead the lives we want rather than being shackled by the biological mechanism of reproduction. Sex to make babies is what animals do. Sex for pleasure and affection is a uniquely human feature, part of what makes us special. And now a new wave of Puritans, including not a few self-hating women, want to reduce us to brood mares once again!
10
Women's bodies are simply props Republicans use as campaign fodder. They do not want to reduce abortions, as abortions are at the core of their cynical, and fake, "values" political strategy. Reducing access to family planning and contraceptives will increase abortions. A perfect result for the GOP, which always seeks to aggravate and exploit national problems and issues, not reduce or resolve them.
108
@Winston Smith And if the abortions increase, desperate women who have no access to safe procedures, may die as they have in the past. Perhaps that is just fine with those who advocate for the kind of rules and laws that prohibit all access to all forms of contraception.
15
This is blatantly unconstitutional. If abortion is legal, the federal government should not be discriminating against people who get or provide the service, period! They may be able to make concessions to faith-based groups who who disagree on religious or other ethical grounds, but only to the point that they need not provide or pay for such services (except indirectly, through taxes -- we all pay taxes to support things we do not necessarily agree with -- it's part of living in a republic). Compare this to something like same-sex marriage. Would the federal government declare that if same-sex couples want to marry in a government building, it must be in a separate room with a separate entrance, and a separate magistrate to marry them? The federal government, in this case, is discriminating against people attempting to get or to provide a legal service. Unconstitutional!
11
Birth control allows every woman in America to space out when she and her partner have children, it allows women to go to get educated, work, and in general control their own destiny.
I cannot imagine going back to a world where every woman is destined to have a child. I cannot imagine a world where women can't control when they have children.
The success of our country depends on women having control of their reproductive destiny.
16
The Trump administration defends and supports abusive and predatory men: Roger Ailes, Rob Porter, Roy Moore, Brett Kavanaugh and Trump himself, to name a few. Their's is not criminal behaviour. It is "boys being boys." The message is clear, powerful men can do what they want. They don't care about the abortion issue. The bones they throw to the religious right keeps them in line, and has the added bonus of subjugating women. Something they quietly rejoice in.
10
Birth control hasn't been "caught up" in the "abortion wars." This is a feature, not a bug. Anything Republicans can do to make women's lives harder, they can and will do. They are despicable.
21
This is clearly rooted in religious objections to sex for pleasure. Particularly for "jezebel' women, who must be made to bear the consequences of their licentious behavior.
What are the consequences of such behavior for men? The Oval Office and the Supreme Court.
26
What these attacks on Women are about is slavery. The Antis are really again'st freedom, freedom to chose your own path. These rules are a path to punishment for all that fail the Antis narrow christian Sharia moral law. One step closer to Gilead. It would be to obvious if the Antis could pass a law that any women who passes through a door of a Planned Parenthood Clinic be tattooed with a P to designate promiscuous or prostitute or with an F for Fornicator. But it is still slavery the Antis want, to force the yoke of their Narrow Sharia morals on all women and to force this Sharia code with Law. The Antis Theocracy is on the march.
5
The hypocrisy of the Trump administration here is really sickening. A man who has cheated on three wives is making the decisions to deny women essential health care. No matter how you feel about abortion, everyone can agree that preventing an unwanted pregnancy in the first place is far preferable to figuring out what to do about it after the fact.
As several commenters have pointed out, birth control pills serve many uses beyond just preventing pregnancies. As a long-time sufferer of ovarian cysts (and having been hospitalized for ruptured ovarian cysts), I can strongly state that birth control pills saved me from a lot of pain for a lot of years - and enabled me to eventually have children, rather than losing my ovaries to disease. If men had to go through what so many women go through on a monthly basis, birth control would most certainly be covered by all insurance.
16
@Kristi - Good points. 58% of women who use hormonal contraceptives use them solely for or additional for control of disorders of the reproductive system, such as polycystic ovaries, endometriosis, polyps, amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, menorrhagia, etc. Those conditions, if not treated and controlled by hormones, grow increasingly painful and must be treated by repeated surgeries.
4
This assault is not new, it has been going on since Roe was decided.
And it's not only the Trump administration, and it's not only men, The truth is there are many women supporting these positions.
The goal has always been to stop abortion, then stop birth control. Always. And to install sympathetic judges to do just that. We are in a dangerous place, and if people don't wake up and out-vote those who would drag us backward, the assault will succeed.
10
I am anti-abortion. That being so, I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would be anti-contraception. It prevents abortions, which I am against.
If you are against abortion, you should support policies which help prevent them. That's just common sense.
12
The whole point is to subjugate women to the control of (white) men, in every way, in all aspects of their lives. White men think, and so they demand, that they must do that (as well as control everyone else) to keep their place at the top of the hierarchy. It is not about the science, or sense, or even (actual) religious adherence. It is power and control.
10
"[A] rule change clearly rooted in anti-abortion sentiment will threaten access to contraception — the very thing that prevents unintended pregnancies."
Wow, how could that be? Under the guise of "anti-abortion" they are causing more unwanted pregnancies, which is the reason for most abortions.
Could it be that they are lying hypocrites whose real goal is to put men in charge of women's bodies, and that's why they oppose the one thing -- contraception -- that really does decrease abortions? Which, incidentally, explains why so-called Christians are Trump supporters.
12
OK then. If you keep women from obtaining birth control - by any measure - then stop prescribing erectile dysfunction pills for men.
Abortions are performed in hospitals, also. Don't hear any screaming and hollering about that - only Planned Parenthood.
Banning abortion won't solve anything. It's been going on for centuries and will continue to happen - legal or illegal. Women will do what they have to do for their own sakes. And yeah, people need to mind their own business.
17
Someone please explain to me why 'quality of life' is not the most important issue on this subject. Why on earth would you force a woman that does not want a child and cannot afford to raise a child to have that child anyway? It's almost sadistic. What good does it do society? We have a party in this country that shames and belittles the poor and the needy while at the same time espousing policy that not only perpetuates their lot but, at the same time, forces them to add to their own numbers?
17
Something is wrong in the heads of people who burn so much energy to do real harm to other people lives purely on religious grounds. "Mean" is not a strong enough word to describe the mental processes that allows them to override normal feelings of compassion for other people who do not for whatever reasons fit in the narrow and twisted framework of the disapproving mind. The people who aided and abetted Hitler were just as sick in brain as Hitler. They are the kind of people who need to be called out directly by using the Hitler comparison; if normal people don't not fall back on history to stop non-sense and non- rational people then there is no point to preserving facts from the past for learning.
2
The whole Constitution is made a lie by these people who defy “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”.
5
"Savages" is too generous a description of this administration.
7
Indeed, controlling women's access to and use of birth control is an end goal. Republicans and conservative Christians wish to control women, and they seem to really want to punish them for having sex.
17
@Kimberly - I've begun to think they're simply punishing women for being women.
5
A friend was diagnosed with cervical cancer by Planned Parenthood during a normal pap checkup by PP, who set her up with funding for the life saving surgery. She was new to town and hadn't found another job yet, so was uninsured. Other friends have had breast cancer and other maladies detected and treatment arranged via those same regular PP checkups, available at income based fees. I've had all my well-woman checkups at PP for many years, including my most recent mammogram.
I am now seventy and the thought of returning to those dark days when all hospitals had a "septic abortion ward" to treat the millions of maimed and dying (up to 1.5 million annually, that we know of) victims of those botched, back alley abortions is terrifying. Women have and will always seek ways to terminate unwanted pregnancies, and the Jesus of the latest batch of bible thumping zealots never said a peep about any of this.
If we continue to head back to the neanderthal days of idiotic restrictions against womens' reproductive freedoms, maybe our 51% of the world's population should initiate a "Lysistrata" approach -- deny men access to our bodies for sex until they knock off the restrictions. And put the blame where it should lie -- in the penises that created our dilemmas in the first place. It takes two, after all.
30
Trump and the GOP are hypocrites....cut family planning and abortion services because the fetus is a person but then do NOT support that newborn person with adequate health care, food or education....cut all those "entitlement" programs. I hope the lowest rung in hell is reserved for these hypocrites and liars.
18
It disgusts me that women vote for these old men.
19
We should put this to a vote, with one stipulation: only people who have never used contraception, nor had intercourse with someone who was using it, can vote against it.
3
Trump is in a war against women, another war against endangered species and wildlife.
Amazing Republican politicians and this administration supposedly supporters of "small" government want to control women's wombs while they are fertile (15 to 50?). They will cause more pregnancies and more abortions ... back to wire hangers.
Disgusting.
16
These are true, dogmatic villians in HHS who would enslave women of reproductive age, force conversion to their form of religion and the discipline they demand in the name of God. They are no better than Al Queda. And they excuse or support their libertine President. How sad that they use their religion as a sword, when christianity is used by the true believers as a shield.
12
The best solution is for all women who use birth control to go on a sex strike. No more sex for husbands, boyfriends, hook ups, whoevers. Let men see how much access to birth control actually impacts their life. If men want sex, they can put a ring on it and support the resulting child. Or they can pay a sex worker.
Access to birth control is not just a convenience for women, it's a convenience for MEN who presumably enjoy unprotected sex that is highly unlikely to result in a child.
I realize access to birth control is also a necessity for many women's health reasons, but I think it will take men feeling the impact to make a real change.
6
Sounds to me like providing birth control and abortion access will be the new National Emergency. The new Dem president can take the money by defunding ICE.
4
Many right to life people also believe birth control is wrong. Don't you know that birth begins before intercourse. It begins in the sperm.
Remember they don't want insurance to pay for birth control.
5
I am immediately writing another check to Planned Parenthood.
11
Separate entrance, separate records, separate staff... Is a red "A" emblazoned on your chest next?
6
Elimination of access to Birth Control is the secondary goal of the abortion war. Once Roe vs Wade is overturned, watch all the forces turn to all out war on the different methods of birth control.
8
And just how does the Trump group plan to cope with the influx of welfare babies? Ship them overseas?
5
Sex Education should begin before puberty.
In all public schools sex education should be taught in Elementary School...sooo
Bring in the gerbils and other animals....and do "show and tell"
in Kindergarten...and then...wait...hold on..bring in the birth
of a human infant...and wait...hold on...show ...just how much
it will cost a woman to give birth to...to take care of her newborn...all on her own....and the COST of doing so...in
terms of actual dollars...and actual time spent...and actual
emotional cost...might just sink into the elementary school
student's brain by the time the all reach puberty...and I think
that these youngsters...can tell YOU...the pundits...what THEY plan to do...and that is...protect themselves from the
pundits...and exploiters of those who are still innocents.
Let's get started on sex education in Public Elementary Schools...and not vote for anyone in Congress who does not
agree with this solution.
1
No abortions, no sex ed, no access to decent affordable health care, no prenatal check ups. What else does this administration want to do to satisfy the extremists on abortion? I assume the next step will be locking up every woman who is pregnant to force her to carry the pregnancy to term no matter what.
What is wrong with America? We were founded on the basis of freedom and rights, not the constant interference we're seeing with abortion and women's right to have a private reproductive life. The answer for most of this is simple. Nothing in Roe v Wade forces a woman who doesn't want an abortion to have one. The tragedy is when a woman wants one or must have one for medical reasons and cannot because the extremists have decided that they know better than the woman what is best for her.
If we want to cut down on the number of abortions (it will never be zero) children need to be taught about their bodies, every piece. Before they ever begin to develop interest in sex they need to know what it is, how it works, and how to pleasure themselves without having intercourse. Every child needs to learn to respect the word no when it comes to sex. Every child needs to know about birth control and yes, condoms. Innocence in this case is not protection.
And every child should be wanted, loved and cherished. Making it impossible for women to obtain abortions will increase child abuse. If you don't want an abortion, don't have it. Just don't make my decision for me.
20
The problem here is that of personal responsibility. Freedom without responsibility is not only unworkable, when it happens, it infantilizes. This goes for both sexes. Wanting to be sexually active but unprepared for its natural result is exactly what a child would want in choosing pleasures but avoiding effort. There has been progress the last 60 years, but this is a glaring weakness of sex education and general mores. I want matters more than I should.
@TD women ARE taking responsibility for their reproductive health via Title X.
4
The Republicans assault on women, especially poor women, never ends.
They aren't "pro-life." They couldn't care less.
True "pro-life" groups, if they really, really want to cut down the amount of abortions performed in this country, would be throwing birth control at people. If there is no conception, there can't be an abortion, right?
But the GOP strategy is different. They WANT conception among the poorest in America. Because that is a very easy way to keep them in a cycle of poverty, with children they aren't given the resources to take care of. Deny lower class families, food, a decent place to live, health care, and an education and there they will stay, unable to "lift themselves up by their own bootstraps" because you do everything you can to hinder their getting boots in the first place.
We all know that a Republican member of Congress is against abortion until "his mistress gets pregnant." This is just another way to keep people of color down, like tricks to prevent them from voting.
The Republicans are as transparent as can be.
10
@Joe
Oh, for pete's sake.
The issue is misogyny not racism, racism, racism.
All the evangelical black churches and Catholic churches are not spewing their hate for ll females on the basis of race.
Death by a thousand cuts. My donations to planned parenthood will be getting an increase. Healthcare is a fundamental right and that includes birth control. Get over it evangelicals.
9
If the women in this country voted in sufficient numbers, both at the state and federal levels, to ensure their right to make their own decisions about their own health, all of this vicious nonsense would go away.
1
"...the administration is not on the side of science or public health." Neither are the vast minority of angry white voters. Rich Republican women will not be affected, since they can and do go anywhere they like to obtain an abortion and contraceptives. That's the only group that Congressional Republicans and Trump cares about. This is meat thrown to what J.D. Vance calls the "hillbilly" voters in order for Trump to remain in power. In the past, he certainly would not women to not have access to contraception and abortion. Republicans need to re-brand themselves, if honest, to the Cruel Hypocrites Party.
2
Women will die. Families will be harmed. Infants will be endangered . All to please a radical and rapid evangelical pro-birth populace that Trump and the Republicans are catering to and pandering to as well. Our country has lost its way in so many areas of American life. This is just one of them. We are truly going backwards...
11
This nonsense is being imposed by the tenets of the Catholic Church and the Evangelical fanatics who have nothing better to do , it seems , than antagonize women and the LBGTQ folks whom they regard as criminals.
That the Catholic Church has the chutzpah to dispense moral advice is beyond hypocrisy.
And the Evangelicals have lately been revealed to be harboring large numbers of pederasts also operating as child pederasts and abusers while pretending to act as clergy.
These criminal organizations are not only not paying taxes , but also seeing to it that legislation is being passed that has stripped both our female and alternative life style populations of their right to full fledged citizenship as defined in our Constitution.
Since when has our Republic become a corrupt theocracy and, more importantly , why ? Women and alternative life style folks comprise well over 50 % of our voting citizenry.
7
For the GOP and the Christian right that was always the plan. Deny women contraception and they will be forced to have children which in turn will keep them out of the workforce thereby restoring men to their rightful place!
6
The sooner we jettison religion, Christianity in particular, from the political sphere, the sooner we can get to solving the real problems confronting society, such as poverty, income inequality, unaffordable health care, crumbling infrastructure, and under-funded public education. We waste more time, money, and energy as a society fighting these Neanderthals who are destined to eventually lose the battle to send women barefoot and back to the kitchen anyways. They eventually lost to society finally putting its foot down against slavery, disenfranchised women, racial discrimination, and homophobia and will lose to sexual misogyny as well. Let’s just cut to the chase and stop tolerating this nonsense, once and for all.
4
So a clinic gets Title X funds if it creates a separate "abortion" entrance to its building? That is to do what? To make sure the abortion protestors outside have clearly identified targets?
13
The unending assault on women's reproductive rights after Roe began with the Hyde Amendment in 1975 & has been non-stop since then.
Not far from the surface of this anti-woman, anti-abortion, anti-reproductive rights & anti-poor women assault is the unadulterated & racist hatred of women, with special contempt for poor women.
This 50 year campaign hurt poor & young women most of all. The ignorant, threatened, white male-privileged lawmakers began their attack with sadistic glee, reassured that their male parts were still intact.
Their female Stockholm-Syndromed counterparts, with bibles in hand, began their campaign against abortion & the women who exercised this Constitutional right. Hostile forces attacked clinics, so we out-maneuvered, out-shout & out-womaned them in our clinic defense.
The state-by-state chipping away at abortion access over these 50 years has hurt poor & young women the most, as will this gag order. It is devastating to Planned Parenthood & to all who need & want the incredible health care they provide.
So all of us who have a pulse must pick up the gauntlet & fight back! We must stand with Planned Parenthood!
And the Democratic Party better start walking & chewing gum at the same time. Put the same energy into fighting the gag rule that you do into fighting Trump & you might just earn the credibility you have with young women, right or wrong.
5
Is the executive branch allowed to just spit on Supreme Court precedent like that?
2
The Republican hypocrites may sometimes express outrage at the treatment of women and girls in fundamentalist Islam, but they are pushing relentlessly every chance they get, to put American women, particularly the poor and deprived among us, into “reproductive burkas.” We must fight them tooth and nail!
6
Being American but also part Greek and living n Europe it astounds me that after all these years the US is more concerned about making abortions illegal, stopping woman from having access to birth control ,etc. instead of dealing with the fact that, in the US one of the richest countries in the world, we have such a high percentage of children living in poverty and are reliant on food stamps(if they are lucky enough to get them). It's a disgrace and obviously these policy makers don't care about the welfare of children being born!!! Woman get out there and vote !!!
12
As Rick Santorum revealed 10 - 15 years ago, this is also on the anti women anti choice agenda. No surprise, just gall pure bigoted hypocritical gall.
6
This entire concocted controversy is just a result of Trump deciding to go after the most gullible Americans as his “base.” And really, Trump’s only displayed talent so far has been his magic trick of getting churchgoing evangelicals to worship an adulterer/thief/embezzler/traitor who has no interest in redemption.
3
"Birth Control Gets Caught Up in the Abortion Wars"?
No: both birth control and abortion are essential fronts in a religious war against human sexuality.
8
The proponents of this law say they are against abortion. I don't believe them. If they were really against abortion they would do everything in their power to make birth control available to every woman, all the time. What they are actually against is the idea that women should have sexual lives that are under their own control. And scratch the surface and you will find a particular version of Christianity — and a particularly nasty version at that. This is nothing more than Christian Shariah law.
9
Women are the cause of all of society’s woes because they have dared to move beyond being barefoot and pregnant! The right wants to go back to the days of litters of babies so women learn their true place once again be in accordance to God’s law; whereby, they are subservient to men!
That is such drivel! I have been saying for decades that the right has been after birth control as much as abortion. It is all about control and putting women in their place since the 60s. Also, this about making America a theocracy.
Have the Dark Ages come upon America? Perhaps!
4
We really have to ask ourselves why men are coming for the availability of contraception for all women. Is it all about power or all about white? Both?
First they came for abortion rights and I did not speak out because I was ambivalent about them, then they came for the right to contraception....
But they never did come for the right to viagra.
5
The decision to reproduce is not one to be legislated. Half of the world’s population would agree the women!
Roman Catholicism opposes abortion and contraception. Roman Catholics are a majority of the Supreme Court.
3
The publicans, as always are determined to hurt those who the easiest to hurt. Arguments can be made with respect to abortion, but limiting or barring contraceptive services is a clear violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
1
No American's access to contraception is threatened.
Anyone is free to purchase it anywhere if they choose.
1
This is the right battle to fight. Improving access to birth control and medical abortion appears to be the most effective way to improve lives, and has broad public support.
The obsession with expanding access to late term abortion despite public hesitance is a strategic blunder that jeopardizes services which are much more broadly relevant.
@Simon - The problem is that both the NY and VA bills have been lied about outrageously. Neither allows the killing of a viable infant. Both of those bills were intended for the rare, extreme cases where the mother's life is in immediate danger or the fetus has been discovered to have serious anomalies incompatible with life, and is expected to die before, at, or shortly after birth. But US law, since 2002, has made it illegal to kill a viable infant.
4
Once a God-king is in charge, there is no limit to what his idolizing followers will do to control others. No limit.
7
Nobody knew this better than the authors of “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”.
3
It makes no sense to deny poor women access to contraceptives if your ultimate goal is to eliminate abortion.
2
When GOP Senator Rick Santorum ran for president, he opposed birth control and abortion. And he said people shouldn’t be concerned about being able to pay for a college degree because it wasn’t really needed. There’s the package. That’s America of the 1950s. It was a white man’s world back then. Today, it’s called MAGA.
7
“Emphasize abstinence”. Ah, the old fashioned Catholic way so the church could accumulate more members and have more subjects for their abuse.
What a mixed up group we have - they call themselves Health and Human Services? A joke.
5
So why don't you all begin to categorically endorse a Dem nominee...
My own shortlist:
1. Long-held clear positions on controlling guns, permitting abortion, and advocating civil equality
2. Hasn’t already provided enough lame network-news video, positional flip-flops, or closet skeletons – including slurs – to make them a deer in Trump's highbeams
3. A proven record of not driving government into bankruptcy, and – as important – being able to steer government away from one
As an example of #2, folks start talking up the pragmatic centrism of Klobuchar...
Then, stories come out about Reid having to speak with her regarding HR issues, and her quashing employment offers – presumably sought by a staff member – to work elsewhere...
In that light, her “record” of the most sponsored US Senate bills begins to look contrived....
From the cheap seats, Congress looks to be:
• 10% ethical and transformative leaders
• 30% decent folk who think their ethical horse-trading is both more effective and ethical than it actually is
• 50% followers. They followed what other people told them to do to get elected and – now in DC – they follow what other people tell them to do, including how to get re-elected
• 10% grab whatever’s not nailed down or made of solid granite. As AOC soliloquizing on Congressional Insiderism – which was, by the way, succinct and factual – these were the people taking notes to see if they missed some angle
i.e. as a crucible – somewhat hit or miss...
2
Governor Northam said if a baby is born alive a conversation will take place. Right wingers have twisted that to say the Democrats want an option to kill it.
BUT what he was saying is, if the baby has defects incompatible with life outside the womb do the parents want a full court press medical intervention to keep it breathing for a while or do they want to love and hold it while it passes.
7
People need to just mind their own business.
If you're against abortion, don't have one.
But if you're against abortion, realize that the absolutely most effective way to reduce the number of abortions (short of just not having sex, but that's not happening...) is to increase access to birth control and sex education.
Keep abortion legal and safe and minimally utilized.
240
This is a Republican war on women. It is an attempt to control women, to further marginalize them, to strip them of autonomy, and to confirm that they are less than equal.
This is Trump's diabolical path for 2020. This is the Republican's shameful path. They need evangelicals to vote for them despite everything else.
Make your voice heard in support of women's health care, women's fundamental right to choice, women's control over their own bodies - it does not get more fundamental than that. Support PP (and similar clinics) with $$. And, VOTE for Democrats.
10
OK, tell me this - Where's the power under the Constitution to do any of this? Class action, please, and the plaint is "ultra vires" insofar as it relates to withholding medical treatment.
This is just another attempt at allowing Religious beliefs overrule an individual's rights to seeking out contraception and health care for women. Another step towards eliminating Separation of Church and State. Something that every citizen is entitled to under our Constitution.
Apparently the only conscience that is worth considering are those Anti-Choice people. Pro-choice apparently does not have a place in the United States. I hope this reaches the Supreme Court. Then we will really know if we, as citizens, have the right to decide for ourselves or is Trump and his Administration, the GOP and Religious Groups in charge of the choices we make.
A dangerous precedent for sure.
7
The Reagan administration did this too, and extended the gag rule to USAID funded family planning clinics around the world. IPPF clinics were often the only healthcare available for women in the developing world. Public Health facilities were shuttered, and the lives of women and children were neglected.
So AIDS was allowed to emerge and flourish, which ironically evoked feelings of humanity towards homosexuals, who were scorned rather than loved by those who always Judge. Then those zealots promoted abstinence-only useless sex Ed, so curiosity led kids to the Internet, where they discovered a world of alternate lifestyles. Now we can choose our own gender, or try another.
Denying real healthcare to poor women to punish and judge them. What might go wrong this time?
3
The Editorial Board has captured the nuances of this pernicious rule change, but none of the particulars can matter until the #metoo movement reaches the GOP policy makers. We are bombarded with little blue pill ads on television now, as if the need for Planned Parenthood and all facets of reproductive and STD care were not the by-product of men’s rights to their own reproductive health. Yet, one could think the potential impact on their partners took place on another planet.
1
We NEED an Equal Rights Amendment so that the right to an abortion is spelled out and enshrined in the Constitution. Then this constant privacy assault from the religious right can finally be stopped.
So, angry citizens of all ages, sexes, and stripes, maybe now, with energized young voters in the mix, the idea of an ERA can get some traction.
It has to start now; progress will be slow at first but, if we can flip enough Republican seats and state houses, it can get done.
Avanti!!!
1
The Trump and the GOP administration purposefully intend on removing contraception from the poor. This is not just some unfortunate side effect of going after abortion procedures, its a purposeful move to make it more likely that the poor are chained to their standard of living. It is means to force a patriarchal, religious driven society - even against the majority. All I can say is you will reap what you sow.
2
Readers need to stop taking up the seemingly logical notion that antiabortion groups should favor contraception as it prevents abortions. First, many of these people believe that contraceptive drugs are abortifacients. They also believe that women who use these drugs will become sexual libertines. Opposition to birth control is not loudly proclaimed by antiabortion groups as it is an unpopular position, but rest assured it is very much on the minds of the religious fundamentalists who drive the movement.
5
The GOP do not care if women suffer. They do not care of children suffer. They do not care if poor people suffer. Once you accept that, all of this makes perfect sense.
5
Please include in these editorials how these extremists consider birth control pills and IUDs forms of abortion.
Following their logic, why isn't the destruction of every embryo not used for IVF considered an abortion?
1
The word hostility is used often here. Hostility to women. Hostility to abortion or birth control. Hostility to public health funding... I think it's just plain hostility—in need of a target.
Doesn't matter exactly the target beyond it being vulnerable people. Some people feed on hostility. The bullies on the playground types.
3
This is the only issue that the "base" really cares about, they are vehemitly anti-abortion rights; the rest is just hatred of Hillary or President Obama.
Intransigence then, intransigence now. It is the evangelical extremists refusing to compromise that has divided this Country.
And the irony is most certainly, that these faux-christians are behaving anything but "christian".
Join the human race, support Women's health, and their Right to make their own decisions respectively.
6
Perhaps when a child is born a simple test be done to determine who the father is.
Then said father is financially responsible for the child.
I'm guessing that birth control pills would suddenly be popular with men.
5
End most abortions by passing a law that requires all men to get a vasectomy, reversible only upon consent of his wife.
Since the GOP wants to control reproductive rights this should pass without a hitch.
12
There is from a next-decade perspective, only one solution, Universal Health Care that would include free birth control for all. That is what Swedish UHC provides and perhaps other countries as well.
With the Republicans of Gilead - see Michelle Goldberg - the Swedish/rational solution will never be formulated, let alone legislated.
Never in America.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
6
In this country,recently, it has become common to see Syrian refugees with 2 , 3,.. beautiful children panhandling.These were possibly middle class family and sold whatever they have to pay for their trip here.When you see how young their kids are it is clear they were born at a refugee camp.One can then ask is it not proper and wise to dispense BC pills or other contraceptive means to families who will be very fortunate if they and the children they already have got back to normal living conditions without inviting more mouths to feed?.In this and many other countries you see single mothers with children begging or struggling to feed themselves and their children.A lot of times the men do not stick around to help the Mom raise their kids or employment rate is quite low.In developed Nations too it is not that uncommon that the couple or one of them lacking the consciousness, discipline or any other self restraint being engage in an act that results in pregnancy.When these happen it is common to have a much less well adjusted children.So PP folks are the best placed to dispense the prudent advice and recommend birth preemption means that keeps fam size to a manageable level or postpone child bearing.Better to minimize the advent of Fams with dysfunctional dynamics or that of Society members with serious behavioral damage.Hence, true leadership is expressed via being supportive of PP folks and others tackling Fam planing issues not by declaring, subtle or not, War on them.TMD.
2
If anyone ever doubted there was a GOP “war on women” agenda - here’s your proof. All of this right wing faith based nonsense should fall clearly under separation of church and state. Why isn’t that case made more often?
7
Birth control has not been 'caught up in the abortion wars' because the war has always been on women's freedom and sexuality, not just whether they carry fetuses to term. Abortion is an easy Trojan horse and marketing vehicle for the rest of it.
2
Setting Trump aside, the Catholic church needs to stay out of the government's decisions on birth control. The problem is...80% of Catholic women take "the Pill" so the church has lost control and wants the government to use tactics to control on their behalf!! The Pill should be available OTC.
8
Contraception has not just been 'caught up in the abortion wars'. Contraception is the unstated target of those wars. It is all about the forced-birthers controlling women, who they see as secondary humans, by any means possible.
186
@AnnaJoy It is consistent with Michelle Goldbers oped piece yesterday. The of the evangelicals is the Republic of Gilead as portrayed in The Handmaiden's Tale. I just started watching it and I am horrified by the similarities to today. The series first season was filmed before Trump's election but eerily the back story of how the Gilead came about is frighteningly similar to today. Immigrants and gays are demonized, a hard core evangelical ideology is pushed, there is a national emergency declared, Congress men are murdered by "terrorists" then a civl war ensues. A religious state is set up women are stripped of their rights and because "fertility" has become environmentally threatened fertile women are forced to serve as breeder for the elite. Whose wives must participate in the ritualized rape. All while misquoting the Bible. The main character is brutally slapped for correcting the misread verse.
My first thought was this is Mike Pence's fantasy world where gays are executed as "gender traitors", unless they are fertile, in which case they are subjected to genital mutilation to control their desires.
This all has to stop. The Hasson case is far more scary when you think of how many like him their might be.
Everyone gets your hands off women's reproductive rights and decisions.
24
@DRTmunich I have not seen the series, however the book by Margaret Atwood is superb and even more terrifying. Highly recommended.
23
@Stephen Csiszar
I’ve neither read the book nor seen the series. It’s too traumatizing to subject myself, especially since the book came out only a year or two after I graduated from the fundamentalist evangelical school I had attended from kindergarten to my senior year. For thirteen years I was subjected to the diatribes of the perfect dominionist vision of submissive women in all aspects of personhood and the increasingly incensed, raging anger booming daily from the chapel pulpit at American society for thwarting that dream.
It was real and horrifying. I lived in a sort of proto-Gilead and was traumatized to the point I’ve needed years of therapy to recover. Why would I want to resubject myself to an imagined version of my reality?
Still, for all the others who have never experienced the hard core, fundamentalist evangelical proto-Gilead project happening right now across this nation, “The Handmade’s Tale” is a must.
And you must all vote Democratic. If you’re a Jill Stein/third party voter, you are equally responsible for the coming American Gilead.
7
With all the constant setbacks and defeats, the fight for reproductive justice seems to be by far, one of the least successful missions of Progressivism. I know we have the grassroots energy, even if at times we lack the zealousness of the anti abortion ground troops who relish bullying people in front of clinics. It’s clear we need new leadership in all levels of the movement, from government to healthcare advocates. There should be no apologies or compromise over matters of private physical autonomy, or life saving medications that can help secure one’s socio-economic status. I’m hopeful that the new Democratic House, and new leader of Planned Parenthood Dr. Leana Wen will be successful in ways that eluded Cecile Richards and her peers.
1
Women unite! The GOP continues its war on women's reproductive rights and access to services such as cancer screening and birth control. The right wing's unrelenting attempt to make abortion illegal is having residual effects from a group of evangelicals and other uninformed and unenlightened individuals within the GOP. The push back from women has been tepid at best as they have seen their control of their own bodies being taken away by the GOP. It is time for women to speak up. These rules and laws are being driven my GOP men who are attempting to please a minority of right wing voters who are intent on living in the dark ages.
83
@Ron Unfortunately, there are quite a few forced-birther women as well. Women unite, indeed. If only they would.
11
@myasara
Yeah, sadly even conservative, pro-life women who have had their own abortions or gotten them for their daughters remain on the pro-life side. It seems to be one of those issues where people think of themselves as the exception to the rule and that everyone else still deserves to be punished. I think that if the wealthy wing of the republican party thought that access to safe abortion would completely end they wouldn't support it either. They know that they can spend money to fly their own family members to wherever it is being performed, they don't care if poor women are sacrificed in their quest for voters.
14
There is no limit to the denial that population is the root driver of a calamity already underway.
I have seen almost no insect eating birds in my current visit to south Florida, only birds that eat fish or carrion.
4
@Steve Bolger
Forgive the (worse than usual) irreverence in the context of a serious discussion – but you haven't yet seen the half of it down there...
https://www.nbc-2.com/story/39946522/viral-video-shows-bobcat-climb-familys-lanai-to-chase-after-squirrel
When the gators start chasing bobcats across the screen panels – probably time to consider staying in a high-tax state...
I find it curious that people of good will on both sides of the issue can’t at least agree that abortion if different from regular healthcare, like treating the common cold. There is another life involved, whether you believe women should be able to terminate it or not.
1
It the issue is “soul”, that only develops from the experience of living after birth. Without the upload of civilization, we are just animals.
3
Parents are responsible for their children’s care after they’re born. Hospitals have pediatricians and pediatric units. These too involve another human life, and are generally considered regular healthcare.
The only thing special about abortion has nothing to do with medicine: the determination of moralistic religious busybodies to assert their authority over women.
As the Trump gag rule demonstrates, anti-abortionist are not even secure enough in their beliefs to deal in the honest truth. The rule rescinds the obligation of clinics merely to inform the woman of available procedures and legal options. It actively uses public funds to undermine public health. To believe that’s good for the public or for the women involved is an act of cynical paternalism.
5
As you say, there are two lives involved. And the pregnancy was caused by a third, the man, who seems to get a free pass if he creates a pregnancy he doesn't want. Remember the 3 GOP right to life congressmen who told their mistress to have an abortion? And one reelected after that came out?
4
It's good to see the NY Times Editorial Board waking up to the damage that unnecessary and ill-informed government regulations can do to a business. This particular business, abortion, has its own unique set of circumstances. Putting that aside for a moment, this is what government does repeatedly to businesses across the spectrum when it involves itself in trying to achieve preferred outcomes. The only difference here is that the it's a sacred cow of the left that is being regulated in ways that make no sense, impose unnecessary costs, and result in poor outcomes to the customer.
1
With a Supreme Court somewhat overloaded with Catholic justices compared to the nation's demographics, it may currently be a little hard to get them to agree that federal and state enforcement of Catholic and some Evangelical church doctrine amounts to Establishment of Religion. But unless federal and state governments can establish a compelling interest in limiting health care other than such religious doctrine, what else can it be?
Abstinence is not family planning any more than it is practicing safe sex. It is the absence of family planning. My parents had 4 children over 10 years. That is family planning. I can attest from walking past their locked bedroom door and hearing what I heard that they were sexually active. They were regular church goers who were deeply faithful, but did not feel that it was the place of either the government or their churches to tell them that a married couple could not enjoy each other's company without risking additional unwanted children. Family management is proper health care, and health care professionals must be allowed to do their jobs. Keep the government and the churches out of our bedrooms!
11
Not caught up, denying contraception to as many women as possible has always been the long term plan of people like Pence and Douthat all along. They see women as having a minor role outside of the home. Women are to be punished by pregnancy and constrained for female sexuality is to be feared.
At last the complacency that women had over their rights to reproductive freedom has been shattered.
One can only hope this becomes a signature issue for every Democratic candidate in 2020.
14
If Planned Parenthood stops participating in Title X, where will they get their funding from? Private donations only? I gladly donate to PP, but I want my donations go to health care rather than lobbying. While I disagree with pro-life advocates, they do have a right to their opinion, and I can understand their not wanting to fund abortions. So let's take funding for PP private, so they are free to accomplish their mission without government interference.
2
The most effective birth control is no sexual contact without prevention. If there's no prevention, there should be no intercourse.
Regrettably, for far too many, sobriety and self-control are absent factors in preventing pregnancies.
If we don't want more abortions, then focus on avoiding unwanted pregnanices before the fact, and not after.
6
@Lake Woebegoner
You're welcome to live a life of celibacy and eschew romantic relationships.
I refuse to accept that, and it's not reasonable of you to expect anyone else to.
3
There are lots of us who support contraception and oppose abortion, or at least elective late abortions. (I personally have always favored RU-486 while opposing late abortion).
The Trump administration is doing the right thing by allowing those of us who support contraception but oppose abortion a way to express our feelings and offer support.
The country has been divided far too long between pro-abortion and anti-contraception camps.
But there is a middle to which I belong and I thank the Trump administration for acknowledging my existence.
1
Does acknowledging your existence have to include misleading women about their options and prognosis? Does acknowledging your existence require a bright yellow line down the center of the title X clinic, with entrances, personnel, and computer records separated? Because that’s the form this “acknowledgement” takes. (Except the bright yellow line; that’s my artistic flourish.)
You oppose funds for abortion. Fine. I oppose funds for war. Does that mean I get to regulate the pentagon? Because, you know, I’d like my existence acknowledged.
6
Neither side in the abortion wars has emphasized contraception which is the humane way towards reproductive choice.
Thus our attention is focused on Democrats attacking nuns and Republicans defending them. Actually the nuns ARE wrong, but they have a constitutional right to BE wrong.
Our attention needs to be elsewhere. A few nuns here or there are hardly our biggest problem.
I have been looking for some time for a non-profit organization which supports contraception and EXPLICITLY eschews abortion. I have yet to find one to which I could donate.
But such an organization is sorely needed. And we need a national movement towards a soft reproductive rights strategy. Right now, half of America ignores the rights of women, and the other ignores the rights of babies and unborn. Both sides ignore the fact that a fetus has both a mother and a father. We impose responsibility on the latter but deny them any rights.
Why is America addicted to inhuman and unfair solutions to problems?
1
Death by a thousand tiny cuts seems to be the methodology of the pro birth crowd. Alas, the actual data doesn't matter to them. Since replacing the useless abstinence only sex education with comprehensive family planning education in our school systems, teen births have dropped 60% in our area and similar results are found nation wide. Access to low cost or free birth control has resulted in a significant drop in births among low income women, so much so that the overall birth rate is no longer a replacement rate. One would think that the pro birth anti abortion forces would be thrilled to see a concurrent decline in abortion but no. They want to throw the baby out with the bath water and hurt the very programs that are reducing the number of unintended and unwanted pregnancies.
23
The major reason for all abortions is quite simple: People do not want to be held accountable for their decisions. The New
Rule will make people realize getting an abortion may not be as easy at they once thought, requiring people to think instead of making rash decisions. As a former manager once told me, "If you don't raise the bar, they will never learn how to jump."
2
And who are you to hold the bar or say where it should be set? The women in question don’t work for you, or your boss.
You seem quite certain every abortion is the product of irresponsible sexual behavior. Why then, for goodness sake, would you require this putatively irresponsible person to be a parent? Aren’t you perpetuating generations of louche irresponsibility?
In point of fact, a great many who choose abortion are married and practice birth control. No birth control is 100% effective. The future is what happens while you’re making other plans.
6
@Mark - 50% of pregnancies in the US are unplanned. That's in part because birth control fails, often . Take an antibiotic, and your birth control fails for the whole month. Have the flu, and it's the same thing. But doctors don't tell you that. Then there's the 18% failure rate of condoms, and the fact that hormonal birth control requires that it be taken every single day at roughly the same time, no exceptions. Given the fact that there are human beings involved in all this, it's not as easy as you make it sound.
1
The right-wing cruelty knows no bounds. Eliminate contraception and abortion access. Then limit programs and services which help struggling mothers/families raise the child when it is born, criticize the woman for having babies "she can't afford," and block efforts to create national policies for maternal/paternal leave after birth and block efforts to provide healthy, supportive, affordable child care so that mothers can work. Jocelyn Elders said years ago that they only cared about the fetus. That still seems to be true.
31
What is really terrifying is not that the new, proposed Title X will pass but that it is hardening the factions supporting and opposing Donald Trump in 2020 and thereby helping him win. Some of the strongest supporters of Planned Parenthood are the women who understand now how a safe abortion would have made the lives of their families better. Why is Planned Parenthood today so afraid that teaching about abstinence or adoption will erode and destroy their medicine and science? Haven’t science and religion co-existed for centuries? Zero tolerance on both sides could destroy everyone; it’s time to negotiate for everyone who will otherwise suffer.
Thank you for recognizing that opposition to abortion is just religion masked as paternalism.
Science and religion don’t coexist in the law. In the law in this country we have separation of church and state.
The state’s actions may coincide with religious belief or contradict it; that’s of no consequence. What matters is the state’s protection of rights and liberties, including the right to choose whether and when to bear a child.
1
The bottom line in all this is that many men - and women - feel the need to have the power to control others, in this case women's bodies. This is sometimes based on religious beliefs but sometimes it is just because they can. It is also, testament to the ignorance of those who create policy, who often have no clue as to the larger repercussions of their small-minded actions.
11
In Brazil, contraceptive pills are over the counter medications. I can go into a drugstore and, with the help of a pharmacist, choose the best pill for me. The US should do the same. I was appalled when I discovered I would have to pay more than a hundred dollars in the US to see a nurse (who does the same as a pharmacist in my country, nothing more) in order to get a prescription and be allowed to purchase my pills. My thoughts went to the poor women of the US. When I talked about it, some of my friends mentioned poor women can use condoms, but let’s put it this way: if condoms were that great (for many reasons) pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t be competing with their number of contraceptive pills, and I myself wouldn’t need the pills.
24
Many have targeted contraception almost as much as abortion. Long ago I realized that it is worthless to discuss with a so-called "pro life" advocate how many weeks should be allowed before barring an abortion.
There is no reply--or I am told that life starts at conception. And I'm often advised that contraceptives should not be utilized. Although it might not be said up front. this is a religious issue for many.
My Catholic parents had six children, and we eight lived on my fathers transit authority paycheck--very low pay levels in the 50's and 60's. My mother was a housewife. And they never considered contraception, as it was a sin. We REALLY do not need to return to those days of no choices.
29
You should have asked your mother what she REALLY thought.
More women have to get out there and talk to — more women. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have the benefits of a sound education have to realize that we have to instill the self confidence to speak up. The last election clearly shows that we will get change when we demand change.
8
@Maureen I am stunned by the number of my women friends who have admitted in recent years that they have had at least one abortion during their lives. This includes many of my former Catholic school classmates. Imagine if all those girls and women had actually been forced to bear those children, and the impacts on our society and families, crime and welfare rates.
6
The statistic that more than 40% or likely just about half of the over 3 million patients served by Planned Parenthood receive care mainly as their sole source of health care…not because they are flippantly treating abortion mechanics as a useful way of deleting a complication of sexual practices but because their marginalized options place their more common and everyday concerns for healthful medical choices to everyday problems requires that they utilize the sometimes only facilities that are open to them and do not place unethical obstacles in the tedious hoops many medical providers use to coerce patients into ignoring the lack of a Welcome mat and instead placing a stupid and cruel conditional strait-jacket on their simple and straightforward desire to practice necessary health habits.
These expectations are not unlike those of families who have multiple choices and usually choose factors of convenience and practicality even when these are not the primary factors involved in seeking family care. These kinds of considerations, pushed to the background because in comparison to the triage of importances we can live without these trivialities such as complete disclosure and an inclusion of absence of trust and responsibility so often dictated by conformists who care not about the complexities of life an otherwise two-dimensional person must represent herself as not being affected in any way. Makes looking in the mirror difficult.
7
It is time with the recent election of many women to Congress that legislation gets introduced to hold the man responsible for the pregnancy becomes financially responsible for the birth of his baby. With DNA, this is now possible. Time for women to rise up and fight for their reproductive rights.
16
@P.Gorman I agree. I would go a step further and demand that fetuses in the womb are eligible for life insurance, child support starts at the moment of conception, as well as dependent tax deductions.
2
Ah. So, then, if the man doesn’t want the baby born, can he require the abortion? Or is his financial obligation entirely in the hands of the woman?
Your suggestion seems to boil down to: don’t have sex if you’re not prepared to raise a child. What I want to know is, what right do you think you have to apply your bluenosed moralism on the rest of us?
1
@AuthenticEgo And how about protecting all those sperm? They are potential life too; should hey just be discarded?
Socrates says that the number one way to decrease abortions is to provide free modern contraception and a decent sex education to people.
The number two way to decrease abortions is to require the biological fathers to provide financial assistance through age 18.
23
That’s right. If you can’t prevent sex, at least punish it.
4
Let's make sure that in the public mind this becomes (and remains) a struggle between "anti-abortionists" and "pro-healthcare" or "complete healthcare" groups. The worst mistake that was made was to make it a pro-life vs. abortion providers issue. As a side issue, one should push for laws that force biological fathers to hand over their income to the mothers of their children (if not married) proportionately to their income for 20 years. So if they father one child, they give up half, if they father two, they give up two thirds, for three children, they'd give up three fourths. This would put some urgency behind the issue of contraception.
14
This is an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of women. It is a bill of attainder, an easily identifiable group of people subject to punishment under law, and forbidden by Article 1, section 9 (and 10 for the states; note how many state restrictions on abortion have been overturned in the courts as unconstitutional). Men are never subject to the kinds of restrictions on medical procedures and medications that women are, and women seeking abortions self-identify, making them very easily identifiable. It's time for people to recognize that any abridgment of abortion rights that restricts access or subjects women, care providers or clinics to extra unnecessary steps or processes such as 72 hour waiting periods, vaginal ultrasounds, unnecessary and impossible to obtain admitting privileges, excess regulation of entrances/staff, etc., is unconstitutional. Only women get abortions, and only women are subject to these particular unconstitutional infringements on their rights.
37
The goal of the pro life movement is to make abortion a thing of the past. We certainly are working hard to achieve this outcome and we will not give up this very important battle. We have determination and grit on our side. And also a lot of young members with bounds of energy are joining in this fight. We will never give up and this is what concerns the abortion supporters. They know we are adamant.
4
@WPLMMT OK. But what are your views on women using contraceptive methods? I’m from a country where abortion is illegal (Brazil) but we can buy contraceptive pills without a prescription. This is the way I was able to not ever becoming pregnant.
20
Adamant? No. Poorly educated in the realities of human reproductive biology? Absolutely. The only rationale the evangelicals have in their nonsensical abortion ban is a twisted reading of biblical texts. As the eminent archeologist Dr. Indiana Jones once growled, “Ghost stories and fairy tales, kid.”
7
@WPLMMT, how will you make abortion a thing of the past? Do you imagine that we didn't have hundreds of thousands of abortions every year prior to Roe?
You describe yourself as pro-life. You know that this rule will force Title X clinics to close across the country. How do you propose to provide health care for the populations these clinics serve? What's your plan?
8
How about calling a spade a spade and stop using Trump as the fall guy. There are far too many men here and in the rest of the world who feel they have the right to control a woman's body and in particular her reproductve ability.
Trump is a good and easy target, but there are hundreds more like him in our Congress and State Houses and if one looks beyond, there are millions, more likely billions, of men who oppose any measure which puts women on a more equal footing.
There is no medical reason why abortion should be a risky procedure which leaves opposition to it in the hands of moralists; a majority who are, without coincidence, men. Unfortunately, here in our nation, morality is left in the hands of men who in their sanctity appear untouched by the reality which faces more than half our population.
32
It’s Trump’s policy and administration promulgating this rule. He is cynically and explicitly using abortion to gain political support for his unrelated bask-the-rich economic policy. To that extent, it actually is him alone.
1
Apparently there are two "methods" of family planning that, under this rule, Title X facilities would be encouraged to "push."
One is abstinence. The other is what we now call, uh, "fertility awareness"; i.e., the rhythm method.
Beyond the potential damage to women's reproductive health that is almost guaranteed to accompany lack of access to birth control medications, one has to ask: If "abstinence" and "the rhythm method" are the primary family planning methods "pushed" by what will primarily be faith-based Title X facilities, what could possibly go wrong?
22
Birth control isn’t “caught up” in this debate. Denying women control over when they have kids and how many they have is the whole game. Restricting or eliminating access to birth control is just the next step.
42
There is nothing like a person who has been a sexually predatory person for over 3 decades, trying to establish policy for 165 million women who will need services in the coming decades, and unfortunately state legislators that don't understand what is at stake for the fact that the rate of teenagers, and others getting pregnant has dropped, all because of these services. What we don't need, are more younger mothers, starting a life of dependence, all because they won't have easy access to birth control. What kind of non thinking is going on by so many?
34
The hypocrisy of denying birth control to mostly poor women is not only racist, but completely illogical. People who support pro-life/anti-abortion measures have made it clear that they care only for the unborn. Once a child has come into this world, these same people support programs that lead to neglect, abuse, poor education, poverty, and ill health. Women don't fare much better. In this strange new world, abortion is criminalized, a pregnancy is no longer a woman's own, and little to no help is given the mother. Our society has a problem on its hand and it's lack of compassion and kindness.
38
@MKathryn It's also due to people who still believe in an invisible man in the sky who acts like the warlord who terrorizes villages. All formed as explanations for "why does stuff happen?" back in the days when most folks believed eclipses were the result of a dragon in the sky taking bites out of the moon or sun.
1
The simple truth is that if you truly care about saving life from conception forward, and that was the primary thing that mattered, you would fight tooth and nail for sex education, birth control, and women's health. That's what prevents unwanted pregnancies, and helps fetus's grow into babies. The rebuttal is just a canard being put forward by those whose true motive is to control women at the expense of healthy life.
33
@Dore
There are about 100 million Americans who are anti-abortion. You and I disagree with them. But, unlike you, I can't say that each and every one of them just wants to control women. If you know the minds of 40% of Americans you must have superpowers.
Trump's rule is clearly anti-abortion and creates all kinds of funding restrictions that make abortion substantially less available. But I'm missing where contraception comes in. We are told that: "Critics of the rule worry that this will open the door to participation in the program by groups ... that emphasize abstinence over contraceptive use." The rule is all about abortion but critics are worried it will affect contraception. A better explanation why contraception is at issue is needed. The changes are being made by regulation. I would like to know what the regulation says about contraception. The overwhelming majority of Americans support contraception. If Trump is making it harder to get, the people need to know.
@michjas, contraception is at issue because women's clinics providing contraceptive services to the poor will close their doors. The rule makes it harder for poor women to get contraception.
20
@michjas - Title X provides funding to clinics for contraception, cancer screening, and STD testing and treatment. Take away those funds simply because the same clinic offers abortions (which Title x funds don't pay for), and funds for contraception will be greatly reduced.
These days I call the anti-abortion faction the forced birth movement. The undermining of access to contraception isn't an unfortunate side effect of their attack on Title X; it's a feature; it's part of their agenda to undermine women's power and autonomy by denying us access to the things that allow us to control when and whether to give birth.
24
Birth control didn't get "caught up" in the abortion controversy, but rather is another item on the continuum of views on the far right that want to limit women's options when it comes to their sexual and personal health.
If those folks really cared about family planning and women's health they would have found another way to show their disapproval of a legal, safe procedure besides making sure it was even more needed.
14
It's clear that Trump doesn't care for women except to sexually assault them or have extramarital affairs with them. His buddies have sex with women who are kept as slaves (Kraft) and/or underaged girls (Epstein). We can't forget Roy Moore who cruised high school football games trying to pick up teenage girls.
Isn't it ironic that these adulterers and assaulters are so against birth control and abortion? They do anything they want and care less about the sadness, pain, and destruction they bring into the lives of women and children.
34
Socrates,
My father was a Knights of Columbus man and they were the group that started the March for Life in Washington, DC the year after Roe v Wade became law. They are outstanding and the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization. Due to my parents active participation in pro life causes I got on board. The K of C has been extremely successful fighting against abortion along with many other pro life groups. They have been able to change many hearts and minds that abortion is evil and a scourge on society. They have all certainly made a positive contribution to the anti abortion movement and will continue to do so for as long as it takes to end abortion.
4
@WPLMMT My DAD was also active in the K of C, while my Mom provided potluck meals for events. The K of C was a males only club, in which the womens' role was mostly to provide the pies and food from back in the kitchen.
14
@WPLMMT
Did I guess right: the Knights of Columbus are an all-male organization. Men don't get pregnant.
10
@WPLMMT The chapter of the Knights of Columbus at the catholic college that I attended in the 1980s were the biggest cocaine peddlers and date rapists on campus. But yes, they were fully on board with taking away women's reproductive rights. Try busting out that moral cesspool of patriarchal Catholicism and look at what the forced birth movement is really about.
12
Well, if more of these misguided and disguised anti-abortion plans pass maybe one unintended consequence is that we would end up reducing imports of babies from overseas having more healthy babies available for adoption domestically, and perhaps families looking to adopt would be willing to pay for the healthcare of those mothers.
2
I absolutely would not want my tax money supporting any 'family planning clinic' that would propose only 'fertility awareness'. Studies have shown that many women have more than one fertility cycle per month. Some women might have one cycle in a given month, but more than one in another month.
This sounds like Russian roulette to me.
26
Uncouple the issues of contraception and abortion. There may be a few on the right who cannot do that for religious reason, but the majority of the left refuse to for political and philosophical (but not scientific) reasons. Let the fundamentalists natter on about the immoral equivalence of abortion and contraception. The vast majority are well past that with no chance of return. But abortion will always have its limits and there will never be a time when abortion on demand will have similar support. Most Americans have some notion of restricting abortion at some point and late term is both barbaric and unnecessary. The 12000 or so that occur each year are rarely for the causes claimed-fetal anomaly or life endangerment. That is a useful and exploitative lie. Most are done for other reasons, so killing a viable life will always be where the unresolvable conflict arises.
3
@TD terminating a late term pregnancy is ALWAYS for fetal anomaly or life endangerment. You don't cite sources so I assume this is a guess on your part. Almost all require two physicians to sign off on it. How fortunate that you have never had anyone in your family faced with such a heart wrenching decision. And how easy it is to judge others without knowing what they experience. Medical doctors are compassionate souls and the ones who help women through their darkest days are saints.
41
@Laura
You do not site sources, either, nor does anyone who repeats the lie, knowingly or unwittingly. But then lies only have the lie as a citation, right? The source is the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute. Try searching that. As far as my family goes, yo ualso have no sourcing or first hand knowledge. Don't assume. Guttmacher is scholarly and unapologetic. They support abortion rights, but do not need to twist facts, and in fact do their job as researchers, not propagandists, like PP.
1
@TD Cite a credible source for your claims.
Thank goodness President Trump has taken a stand on this very important issue of pro life. President Trump promised he would defund Planned Parenthood and he is living up to that promise. Defending the most defenseless in our society is a human rights issue and the most important one of our time. Glad to see someone cares.
3
@WPLMMT
Actually, the most important issue of our time is massive environmental degradation from human overpopulation and overconsumption.
Current Human Population
7,686,807,790 (and growing)
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
"Be fruitful and mindlessly multiply" has been an epic environmental disaster.
Take your head out of everyone else's uterus and look around for a change.
92
@WPLMMT what about poor women who have no other source of healthcare and ob/gym care? Aren’t they worthy of a defense? Aren’t their lives worthwhile? Or does your concern cease at the birth canal?
6
More women will die of cancer if this policy is carried out. Why do you not care about what physicians have to say? You want to stop abortions? Start with universal access to effective, low cost birth control.
9
This attack on contraceptive rights by the Republicans isn't simply some byproduct of their attack on abortion rights. Rather they are two parts of the same reactionary Christian fundamentalist agenda.
That backwards looking minority has been providing the modern Republican Party with it's ethos for decades. They control both the conservative movement and the Republican Party. Their disdain for and rejection of advances of womens rights, reproductive, medical, employment, civil, all of them, is a core principle of their beliefs. That is who they are and they run the social issues agenda of the Republican Party.
It is high time that the media, the press, the Democrats and all non-Christian fundamentalists realized these facts. They need to stop taking for granted the permanence of the hard won rights of the womens movement that the Republicans are intent on reversing. If they do not then soon enough we will all be waking up and wondering how that backwards minority managed to impose it's misogynistic will onto everyone else as government policy and law.
39
Let's be real though: many women are ambivalent about preventing pregnancy, misuse birth control, and young males refuse to wear condoms. Birth control is not the answer to preventing unwanted pregnancy. According to the liberal guttmacher institute, half of the women who got an abortion didn't even bother using contraceptive. Half of them did, but clearly used it wrong. Unless we get real about the general incompetence and noncompliance of these BC users, we can't push BC as a savior and human right.
2
@chris
Ah, birth control actually is the answer preventing unwanted pregnancy. The majority of women using birth control do not become pregnant.
That's real.
41
@chris Reducing access to contraception won't get people to use it correctly. Reducing access only reduces access and increases the odds of a pregnancy.
30
@chris your "many women misuse birth control" comment reveals your gender as male. Even vasectomies have a failure rate. Was that guy non-compliant too? I recommend a science book. Biology to start. No drug presents the same way in all humans.
8
The pro life movement is not going away. A recent poll shows that 47 percent of Americans are now pro life which is up by 8 points. Science has certainly helped but also people are beginning to see that abortion is the taking of innocent human life. This is very good news and hopefully the numbers will only increase.
5
@WPLMMT
The poll sponsor in question you reference was the Catholic men’s organization the Knights of Columbus, which has militantly opposed legalized abortion for many decades.
The Knights have had a history of finding what they are looking for in polls on abortion policy.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/the-big-pro-life-shift-in-a-new-poll-is-an-illusion.html
Back in reality, most people prefer that a woman and her doctor be left alone to deal with her own pregnancy rather than subcontract out the decision-making to state and federal capitals run by right-wing loons.
The forced birthing movement is going away.
Buh-bye.
78
@WPLMMT
Well, I am vehemently pro-life. I also am vehemently opposed to re-criminalizing abortions. Which poll do I go in?
And don’t say I can’t be pro life if I support legal abortions. Abortion is also never going away. Women have sought abortions ever since they first made the connection between pregnancy and babies; and they will continue to seek abortions. I believe that the number of abortions will be most reduced by enabling women to choose to give birth by providing her with high quality, affordable healthcare for herself and her child; access to paid family care leave; good public schools and safe parks where children can learn and play; decent affordable housing; nutrition support if necessary; - all the things that actually make it possible for a woman to decide to give birth. Women do not get abortions out of ignorance or cold hearted blood lust. They get them because 18 years of financial, physical, and emotional responsibility for another human being is a burden they cannot shoulder. Rather than punish women and doctors, let us lessen the burden. We will save way more babies that way than by trying to guilt trip women into having children they do not want and cannot care for.
57
@WPLMMT
Interesting numbers:
47% “pro life”
90+% in favor of allowing abortions on the first trimester.
8
Some economists believe birth control and abortion, introduced in the 60's and 70's, are the real reasons for the drop in the crime rate starting in the early 90's. There were fewer unwanted children to go on to a life of crime.
We need federal funding for abortion. All birth control should be free. There is no reason poor women who can't afford to raise a child, or another child, should have to scramble to pay for abortions or birth control.
Medicare for all must include free birth control and abortion services. It is a service to all society, not just women.
54
We are now hearing the term abortion care used. When an abortion is performed, there is absolutely no care or concern for a baby. I think these modern terms are used to ease the consciences of those who support abortion and for no other reason. An abortion stops a beating heart every time one is performed. This never changes.
4
@WPLMMT
Abortions generally remove unwanted sperm from a rapist, a relative, a deadbeat, an ex-boyfriend, or other social cretin which has unwelcomely attached itself to an ovum.
When you ban the right to choose, there is absolutely no care or concern for female sovereignty, circumstances, medical condition of the mother, congenital defects or context.
You are simply treating girls and women as indentured birthing vessels.
Leave women alone to decide based on much better information than your 100,000-foot concern for the 'unborn' who you're not being forced to raise for a lifetime.
102
@WPLMMT Most women who have an abortion feel relief, not the need to ease their consciences. But don't take my word for it - here's a scientific study that supports my position: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0128832
The study did note that "higher perceived community abortion stigma and lower social support were associated with more negative emotions", so perhaps it is the lack of care and concern shown by the right causing some of these negative emotions.
7
@WPLMMT - incorrect.
1
I would love to see a woman who is being prescribed the pill for ENDOMETRIOSIS and or severe pains due to ovulation sue the Federal and or State governments when they refuse her access to it or payment for it as medication solely.
(Outside of Lena Dunham) I have heard too little about how the Pill is used to control other health issues outside of pregnancy. In fact a woman on the pill for this reason could still want to get pregnant but be resigned to taking it short term to avoid pain.
There are many medications out there that were originally designed for one use that in turn are now prescribed for other symptoms and illnesses.
This angle could win against the type of situation article is presenting.
207
@Ignatius J. Reilly
Sandra Fluke's testimony before Congress did in fact address how the Pill is used to control health issues outside of pregnancy.
Remember how she was vilified?
105
@Ignatius J. Reilly I had endometriosis back in the late 1980s early 1990s. My health insurance company refused to cover the pill because, in their opinion, it was an unnecessary luxury to take the pill. That I wasn't using it for contraception didn't matter. It wasn't covered and that was the end of it. Insurance companies haven't changed much.
There are other things they refuse to cover too. If you have a handicapped child in need of physical therapy to help him/her walk they will put you through the paces after they refuse to pay for it. The child can't walk now, why bother to help it learn.
Abortions should be covered 100% by insurance. Abortion is a medical procedure. It takes special training to do one safely no matter what the reason is for the abortion. I think that the attitudes on abortion are depriving women of good health care and a fair discussion of alternatives when necessary. It shows how little certain segments of our country think of women.
37
@Ignatius J. Reilly
My 21-year-old daughter has been on birth control pills since she was 17 for severe menstrual pain and heavy bleeding. She's not taking it for birth control, but to control her menstrual cycle. Her bleeding is so heavy that she must wear the biggest and widest overnight pad and change it every few hours. She has a bleeding condition that causes heavy menstrual bleeding and birth control pills is what hematologists recommend for her condition.
18
I feel saddened, disgusted, nauseated that after a life’s work of providing health care to mostly poor women in Title X clinics—that we have come to this. So much trauma, pain—and yes, unplanned and some unwanted pregnancies— will come of this. I am a nurse practitioner. Title X has been a lifeline for so many women. One assault after another. Surely our country will not condone this.
394
@Lauraluna -- the sad fact of the matter is that the majority of white women voted for this; indeed by a thin margin it appears the majority of college-educated white women did, though that may be within the margin of error for exit polling.
23
@Lauraluna
Unfortunately, in these times, you also have to prescribe political activism along with medical services. People have got to get out and vote. They also have to speak up. They have to organize.
52
Birth control is what prevents unwanted pregnancy. It would be nice if men always used condoms, but if they don't, it's the woman who gets pregnant - never the man. True, the Trump folks say, but let's not pay for birth control.
But let's still pay for Viagra and Cialis, which can produce pregnancy, sometimes wanted, sometimes unwanted.
This double standard speaks volumes about whose sexuality the administration is trying to control.
484
@Howard
For disease control, condoms should always be used, unless you are sure you have a healthy, monogamous partner, and you are too. Women have been assigned by nature to do something men can't. Men do something women can't. It is reality. If either partner is not prepared for the responsibility of sex, then neither should be indulging in the freedom of sex. If anyone consents to sex, and they refuse to accept its results, then for all the sex education and public information, they are still functionally children.
7
@TD, that's a tad judgmental. No, if people engage in sex and the result is pregnancy, they're human. It's been happening since the dawn of time.
Do you support the proposed rule change? How would you compensate for the closing of Title X clinics in rural areas? This is about health care, not passing judgment on people.
68
@Howard
ED drugs are the apple to the contraception orange. Please. One supports natural function, the other prohibits it. But fine. Make men pay for ED drugs, no insurance. How does that change anything? Will women and men who want freedom of sex but no responsibility choose any better? No.
1
No sex education.
No access to birth control.
No abortions.
No support for single moms.
This is the GOP plan. It's just plain mean-spirited. And the goal is to control women's bodies, sexuality, and lives.
Anyone who is truly against abortion would support three of the four things above. I support all four of them because I support women and choice and sovereignty over own's own body.
If you're against abortion don't have one (or don't impregnate anyone if you're a man against abortion). Other than that, keep your hands, laws, and religion off our bodies and off our access to birth control.
583
@Anne: If we had more of the first three, we might have very much less of #4 -- which to me is the whole point of the exercise.
49
@AACNY
No concern for the “host” of the unborn.
No honesty about the very real physical risks of pregnancy.
No admission that not all pregnancies are viable or that a significant fraction of pregnancies end in natural miscarriages.
Minimal support for women who continue their unplanned pregnancies and therefore lose their jobs or otherwise fall into poverty.
And while we’re at it, let’s reduce food stamps and other supports for those unplanned and unaffordable children of your forced births. Their parents were irresponsible to have them.
155
@AACNY
I see that you're against abortion but what about the other points? Care to address them in any meaningful way? Doesn't it seem wrong to attack:
Sex education,
Birth control,
Support for single mothers?
What kind of society are proposing? One where we're all in the dark? Where women have little control over their reproductive liberty and are financially and educationally compromised?
70
When we talk about abortion or contraception, there's often an unspoken assumption that women are choosing to have sex and want ways to avoid pregnancy. Working from that assumption, some people suggest that women should choose not to have sex, so they wouldn't need contraceptives.
Unfortunately, for many women, avoiding sex is not an option. The unpleasant truth is that many women are coerced, pressured and/or forced to have sex, in relationships where they lack the resources or opportunities to leave.
The idea that women and girls can protect themselves from pregnancy by "saying no" assumes that all men will take "no" for an answer. For many women, contraceptives that the women can control themselves are essential for preventing pregnancy and starting to gain control of their own lives.
330
@Marjorie - I think many coercive, pressuring, caddish men who demand access to women's bodies but do not want the accompanying responsibility to care for them or their offspring agree with you completely on the value of contraception and abortion.
22
@Marjorie
I'm very in favor of contraception coverage, whether it is for men or women. But the cases you are describing are the minority. Women choose to have sex and contraception takes time and energy and money and side effects. The problem here isn't coercion.
5
@Marjorie
In the male led relationships which the Christian Right adores so much, women don't really have the right to consent or not. Sex is a duty. Divorce is a sin. And big families are "arrows in a man's quiver."
There's no room for contraception in that worldview.
Consent? What's that?
76
what women need to do is VOTE.
All women. 18 or 108 years of age.
And be women's advocates, regardless of abortion views.
women's health care is paramount. But not considered important in our nation.
Women make up more than 50% of the population. Women are very often the only parent in a family. Women are the only ones who can give birth and ensure a "society" continues to exist.
Even if white-male-dominated DC elected officials refuse to acknowledge.
Women - please VOTE keeping women's issues uppermost in mind. Just VOTE for your mother, your sister, your daughter. VOTE the males out of office.
245
@c
Women do vote and have been for nearly a century. As for women being women's advocates, we are.
We all need to vote with women's issue at heart.
21
@c
The reason that doesn't add up to the win you think it should is that women do not come together monolithically on these issues. Just because women of a certain political bent and world view call their thinking womens' issues, that doesn't make it about all women. There are obviously millions of women who reject some or all of such thinking. It doesn't represent them or their experience, and it takes a dim view of half of humankind, the half they love, rather than suspect.
5
@AKC--Get your point, but not all antifeminists are male, and not all feminists are female. Do some research and know who your friends are.
13
Of course cruelty is only the icing on the cake for those who wish to impose their so called morality upon others. Those without means will also be harder hit, and again, since many of those self-righteous people also think that being poor is a form of punishment in itself, all the better.
30
For the record, during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush, a similar Administration edict was promulgated. Planned Parenthood of New York City, in its Bronx clinic, had a patient with an ectopic pregnancy who needed medical advice around abortion to save her life. The case went up to the Supreme Court and was lost, the argument being that PPNYC wasn't obliged to take the Title X funds if they wanted to be free to provide abortion counseling or services. The Bush Administration never put the ban into effect and the Clinton Administration reversed the policy. So much for history.
7
@Peter Purdy Bizarre, since an ectopic pregnancy will never ever result in a live birth, and will kill the woman in the process. (I know, I had one.)
4
It’s always been about men not having more power than women in reproduction. So let’s change the focus and advocate for men to have more options than condemns, menopausal women or abortions, and watch women’s reproductive rights be emancipated.
1
The Republican Party is spreading politicization of abortion to contraception, further dividing Americans into those who believe in the traditional family where “Wives, submit to your husband as to the Lord,” against those who believe in women’s rights or simply the practical necessity of abortion and contraception. Poor, young, and minority women are the most vulnerable, volatile, and dangerous should they rebel, so the authoritarians must control them, body and mind. The Republican’s hardening of their rightward trend should be seen for what it is—a retreat into their fortress of 30+% of America. We must advance—fight for abortion rights, free women’s and family medical care with no government intrusion, universal daycare, paid maternity leave.
46
If you look at the statistics, the abortion rate plummeted under Obama (no credit given). However the decline in abortions stalled in 2017 and the stats in 2018 appear that the abortion rate may be going back up (but not for sure yet). Who is actually pro-life here?
53
“Birth Control Gets Caught Up in the Abortion Wars”
Sorry folks, it wasn’t ever really about Roe v Wade and contraception was not somehow ensnared in its wake. It was always about overturning the Griswold v Connecticut case, which overturned a law passed in 1879 that banned the use of any drug, medical device, or other instrument in furthering contraception. But first Roe had to go down. That’s been the anti-choice, control of women, agenda.
46
That's because the republican party's anti abortion platform includes hostility to birth control. This is not new, this is what the GOP is.
66
Amazing, sex-phobic theocrats still trying to control women's bodies in the 21st century. Even more amazing after so many revelations of hypocrisy made public in recent years.
80
I think I speak for many other women when I say that birth control is the greatest invention in the history of the world.
205
@Carson Drew You would think it's one of the greatest inventions for men, too. Yet so many of them seem hell-bent on us becoming parents every time we have sex.
2
There's a simple and direct relationship between lack of birth control and abortion. You want to reduce abortions? Make sure every sexually active man or woman has easy access to affordable birth control.
151
The forced birthers are also against birth control, especially free and easily accessible birth control.
18
It seems obvious the Trump-led Republican Party is not so much pro-life as they like to say, but pro no healthcare benefits in any fashion for those that most require it affordably. As soon as Democrats can learn to campaign, just by referencing this type of policymaking they can make the Republican Party look hopelessly lost without the faintest clue on how to govern responsibly - unless of course they're governing for the top 1%.
36
When everything is an "assault on reproductive rights", nothing is.
Clinics will not be strictly prohibited from using funds a certain way. Isn't that what they've been claiming they're already doing all along?
6
@AACNY: You're honestly suggesting reproductive choices and right, including the choice of abortion, are not under attack?
54
@AACNY, you're being disingenuous. Did you read the column? This rule is similar to state TRAP laws that force closure of women's clinics by imposing expensive and unreasonable--and capriciously interpreted--requirements, such as adding separate entrances, electronic records systems, widening hallways, etc. And even if a clinic complies, an administrator can add new requirements.
19
@AACNY: Who's saying everything is an assault on reproductive rights?
Lots of other kinds of assaults are going on in the world, obviously. As a Republican, surely you know what they are.
2
"It’s ironic that a rule change clearly rooted in anti-abortion sentiment will threaten access to contraception — the very thing that prevents unintended pregnancies." The religious opponents of choice are immune to irony. For them, it is more important to punish evildoers --- women and providers involved in abortion --- -- than it is to prevent the so-called evil of abortions.
47
@cross22
Actually the pregnancy and birth is the punishment. For millennia, society used the threat of pregnancy to control female behavior. Women who had children out of wedlock were shunned, vilified, and forced into poverty and degradation. They were living reminders of what awaited women who didn’t “save themselves” for marriage. The advent of effective available contraception changed that equation, and conservatives, especially religious conservatives, have been melting down ever since. They hate to admit it, but the motto of the anti-abortion movement is “the wages of sin are motherhood”.
39
@aem - Well, in all fairness, there were "shotgun marriages," which put the "punishment" of parenthood on both partners. Such marriages were seldom good for men (who used to be able to just walk away and disappear if things go too bad), women, or the resulting children.
1
Laws aside, abortion is not going away. Wealthy women will go to a different state or fly to Europe if necessary. Poor women, who are desperate, will seek out abortions that are not necessarily safe or they will attempt to self-abort. Some will die. Although Sadly, I don't think the "pro-life" crowd cares too much about the lives of poor women.
153
Anne,
47 percent of Americans are now pro life up 8 percentage points. I guess some are beginning to see the gruesome side of abortion. This is good news for the babies in the womb.
@Anne, I've talked to anti-choice zealots who argue that a woman who dies from a botched abortion is responsible for her own death. They really don't care.
14
@WPLMMT Pro-life doesn't necessarily mean anti-choice (and it depended on how the question was asked in the poll). I am not pro-abortion - I'd never have one - but I'd never send a woman to jail for having one, because it's her body, her health and her business - not mine. Make abortions illegal and that's what you're doing, sending women to jail. I am pro-choice and pro-life, and I am not alone.
12
But her emails!
80
This is just unreal. This assault against reproductive rights is bringing our country further into some regressive nightmare.
90
Someday, people in secular and liberal bastions of American society will begin to question the dogmatic view that contraception prevents abortion, and instead embrace the statistics that show that high rates of contraception are associated with the highest abortion rates in the country (see NYC). Contraception changes social norms and sexual decision-making just like helmets change NFL decision-making. Abortion is the concussion. The sooner we figure this out, the sooner we can begin to balance as a society the value of unlimited sexual freedom with the holocaust of abortion required to sustain it.
4
@James: Do you only have sex, James, when you intend to father a child? I'm assuming you don't. And I'm using you yourself have used birth control or have asked your partner(s) to do so.
My guess is that you are primarily concerned about the 'unlimited sexual freedom' of women.
231
@James Actually, access to contraception reduces the number of abortions, according to tis recent article in US News and World Report https://bit.ly/2sVwpwK But I do like your "abortion is the concussion" metaphor. Nobody starts out wanting an abortion and the goal is to avoid the need. Just as helmets help protect people from concussion, contraception protects people from unwanted pregnancy, preventing the need for abortion. The decision to play football or to have sex is separate from the protection: people need them both.
91
@James
You appear to be suffering from a possible severe biblical concussion as you seem unable to recognize and synthesize plain facts.
The steep drop in teen pregnancies and abortions in the state of Colorado from 2009 to 2017 was mainly due to one thing: free, low-cost access to IUDs.
Intrauterine devices — tiny, T-shaped pieces of plastic placed in the uterus — are the main reason Colorado’s teen birth rate fell 54% and the teen abortion rate declined 64% in those eight years, Colorado health officials said.
The astounding numbers, capturing the eight-year period since IUDs became an affordable option for low-income health clinics, were released along with a study estimating the state avoided paying nearly $70 million for labor and delivery, well-baby check-ups, food stamps and child-care assistance because of fewer births to teen moms.
“This is one of the biggest public-health home runs that I’ve seen in my 35-year public-health career,” said Dr. John Douglas, executive director of the Tri-County Health Department, which has six clinics in Douglas, Arapahoe and Adams counties. “The work that’s happened is really striking.”
https://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/30/colorado-teen-pregnancy-abortion-rates-drop-free-low-cost-iud/
The number one way to decrease abortions is to provide free modern contraception and a decent sex education to people.
I hope you recover from your right-wing concussion.
Information, news and facts are available to critical thinkers.
262
The anti-abortion movement has waged a war against poor women, especially ones living in red states. The reduction in clinics provides the most hardship on them- middle class women have the resources to overcome such road-blocks. .
Most anti-abortion activists are not seeking to outlaw birth control, but anything that punishes clinics that are connected to abortions will be celebrated by them.
Of course, the only "baby" Trump cares about is the one he sees in the mirror, and that one needs the worship of every anti-abortion voter.
It is a shame that there is almost no way for Democrats to appease the desires of the anti-abortion zealots who wish to give full citizenship to an egg the moment it is fertilized.
My argument is that if you are going to call a fertilized egg a baby and citizen, then abortion would need to be considered first degree murder- you can't call a woman who plans and pays for aborting a citizen anything less than a first degree murderer.
If we Democrats can't win the anti-abortion vote at least they can make clear the natural conclusion of these anti-abortion policies and fire-up an equal reaction from those on the other side of the issue.
21
Given the violent history of the forced pregnancy alt-right, I have to wonder if the demand to separate facilities offering abortion from main clinic buildings is to make it easier for the movement's foot soldiers to carry out bombings and assassinations.
It is also very, very troubling to demand separate health records for women who need abortions. All medical records must be electronic now - much less safe than a paper file. Is this so the alt-right foot soldiers can find them easily? What do you think would happen to those women?
Is this paranoid? Yes.
It is also aligned with historical statements I've heard from the forced pregnancy alt-right going back to the 1980's, that women who have abortions or seek abortions should be identified and executed. In the name of god.
126
@Myrasgrandotter: Sadly, it's not paranoid at all.
35
@Myrasgrandotter - I would disagree with you about electronic records. Yes, they have the problem of being hackable, but in other ways they are--or could be if done properly--superior to paper records. And, I'm not sure why you think they would go to the bother of hacking such records to actually go after women who have had abortions. Their efforts seem much more focused on making legal abortion non-existent in this country, forcing women once again into back-alley type abortions where any kind of record is unlikely to be required or kept.
2
The anti-choice movement is about exactly that: taking choices away from women. This is not even just about reducing abortions, because that could easily be accomplished by promoting contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies in their first place. This is just another front in the battle of protecting, or fighting, women's rights every step of the way.
156
@NM
not to mention......its not just punishing poor or young families for having kids
its also, when teenage girl gets pregnant....she should be ostracized and banned from her religious community
so many prominent conservative intellectuals have defended these rules...most prominently in the recent defense of the school where Ms. Pence teaches - saying when it was pointed out how draconian these rules are, that ostracizing kids for their sexuality is integral to christian ethics...so it's prejudicial to argue against schools deserting their most vulnerable students precisely when they (and an unborn child) need support the most
have a baby and then show up to ER when you need care seems to be the attitude. society doesn't have a duty towards the vulnerable - if anything it has a reverse duty to punish them and make sure the community knows it is right and proper to judge, condemn, and shun them, making this message public so that everyone - but especially young people - will understand that the vulnerable or imperfect are to be shunned, and at all costs (including that of robbing an innocent unborn child of a support system and a moral-religious community).
6
@Carla - Yes, they are really living by the words and deeds of Jesus, aren't they.
2
I cannot fathom this. Withholding reproductive care from poor women. Shame on anyone who agrees with this. This is simply hatred toward over one half of the human population.
209
@Wendy Morgan
Withholding reproductive care is the reason why pregnant women in Louisiana have the highest rate of congenital syphyllis in the country. So the Bible thumpers reply by saying that it can be treated with antibiotics without mentioning that 40% of these babies will either be stillborn or die within the first 30 days after their birth.
That’s what happens when reproductive care is limited or eliminated.
Hard to believe this is the 21st century.
24