I know this topic has come up quite a bit here, but I'd like to get your feedback on how you feel about what you are about to read. This is an article that was in Monday's edition of our local paper. Read. Comment. Think about it.



WASHINGTON- The Bush administration's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been called "ground zero for the ideological wars in this country," and a new HHS proposal leaked last week proves why. In a spectacular act of complicity with extremists on the right, HHS is proposing to allow any federal grand recipient to obstruct a woman's access to contraception.




The American public is nearly unanimous in supporting contraception: 90 percent favor wide availability for birth control, and 90 percent of sexually active women of reproductive age are using it. It is simple common sense: the average woman spends almost three decades of her life attempting to be sexually active without getting pregnant, and access to contraception is the only proven way to avoid an unintended pregnancy.




For most women, birth control is a basic health care need. But with this new proposal, the Bush administration plans to hand over the gears of health care to the few extremists who want to impose their deeply unpopular right- wing doctrine on the many. The "Pill Kills" fringe has generally been ignored for its warped pseudo-science, but not at Bush's HHS.




Its new proposal would make agencies receiving HHS funding promise not to discriminate in hiring against anyone who objects to abortion -- and then redefines abortion as to include most commonly used forms of birth control including oral contraceptives and IUDs.




This is the latest -- and now incontrovertible -- proof that the anti- abortion movement, and the administration that appears beholden to it, opposes basic pregnancy prevention and is firmly committed to control over American's sex lives.




The regulations would be vast in scope and serve as an open invitation for the local extremists to directly meddle with your most important life decisions.




Under the new rule, any health care provider who receives federal funding and would like to prevent women from having access to prescription birth control would have the federal protection for doing it.




State laws requiring hospitals to give pregnancy prevention to rape victims would be automatically invalidated.




Pharmacies nationwide could be granted instant permission to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control. Health centers might be forced to hire religious extremists who would refuse to provide contraception to their patients, even if contraception service is the main focus of the facility.




The new regulation would overrule laws in 27 states requiring health insurers to cover contraceptives. The proposed regulation is one of many campaigns against contraception, all led entirely by the anti- abortion establishment. Few Americans know that not one anti- abortion organization in the United States supports contraception.




Even fewer understand that every effort to ensure Americans' access to pregnancy prevention is met with fierce, well- financed and increasingly successful opposition by anti-abortion groups.




The Bush administration has been able to implement these deeply unpopular attacks against birth control and family planning because the American public doesn't really believe that an anti- contraception movement even exists.




Under the cover of public denial, behind the banner of "Who could be against contraception?" ideological extremists have accomplished much of their agenda.




Approval of the HHS proposal would be the most encompassing and far-reaching attack on the right to contraception they could hope for. What the anti-birth control extremists need now is for the public to continue to believe it can't happen.






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This article is from Beaumont Enterprise's Monday, July 28, 2008's Opinion Page 8A.




By CHRISTINA PAGE
Christina Page is the author of "How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex" and spokesperson for BirthControlWatch.


org

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Chopey

I've read several articles to this effect over the years, and that this has been a goal of the right wing religious for a long time. It's just another reason why I am stupified when I hear conservatives say they vote for Bush because they want less government in their lives, or am dumbfounded when they say they are scared for what might happen should Obama become president. I've been scared of what will happen to women whenever republicans are in power since I was 14. Bush and his cronies have been working towards a religious theocracy here for 8 years and anyone who thinks otherwise just has their head in the sand, IMO. We're all free to practice our faiths however we see fit, but the government should not have this sort of power based on the bizarre ideals of Christian extremists.

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Compromising the health of millions of women. What will they come up with next? Outrageous.

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Let us be silent that we may hear the whisper of God. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I also read something near that on msnbc.. And I'm scared. It's MY RIGHT to choose if I want birth control not anyone else's....

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I had to turn on my "critical reading switch" for this article. It says at the bottom that this was on the opinion page, so it's just that, someone's opinion. It doesn't mean it's fact. Also, a brief google search of the author can tell you a lot. I'm not saying she doesn't have some points that shouldn't be further explored; it would do us all good to really research something well before fully deciding.

There is a video news report on this same topic on cnn.com right now. The article, above, is an opinion in that the writer disagrees with what Bush is doing. However, the info about what the Bush administration is trying to do in the article is accurate.

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I agree that this is not a new thing with the Bush administration. I'm not sure about other Republican presidents because I haven't followed it that closely for that many years. But it is frightening to think. From the time that I started having sex, I used birth control pills and I have always been very thankful for the easy access that I had to them.

While a really am opposed to any thing that interferrs with a persons right to use birth control, I really don't put much stock in this article. It is from the Opinion page and is obviously written by someone with an anti-Bush adgenda (and believe me, I hate Bush!) I would have to read more about it from more impartial news sources to really believe it.

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~Happiness is a large family~

Here is a msnbc link to a similar story..

Bush threatening access to birth control? - Washington Post - MSNBC.com

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Again - this article is an opinion about REAL news. Here is the CNN video:

Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

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