The Latest in the Left’s War on Women Is… Restricting Access to Birth Control Pills? (Guest Post)

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First off, technically the left isn’t trying to restrict access to birth control pills. But if they’re allowed to use the dishonest mental gymnastics of equating “access” to mean “forcing someone else to buy something for you” then I can take a few liberties with my post’s title to garnish some click bait. But that doesn’t mean that the title is deceptive, either. In the words of the once-great Damien Sandow, allow me to beg your indulgence…

Recently the none too leftist publication, The National Review, made the conservative case for making birth control pills an over the counter drug, as several Republicans running for the Senate have adopted this position.

Senate nominees Cory Gardner (Colorado), Ed Gillespie (Virginia), Mike McFadden (Minnesota), and Thom Tillis (North Carolina), in addition to some Republican House candidates, are calling for the Food and Drug Administration to reclassify a number of hormonal contraceptives as over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, making them accessible without a prescription. They’re not the first Republicans to call for deregulating the market: Former HHS and state health official and governor Bobby Jindal (Louisiana) endorsed the idea in 2012.

Hormonal birth control has been around for a long time, and while it has some dangers, they aren’t going to be addressed by hauling women in for a perfunctory, often uninformative doctor’s visit. Over-the-counter availability is a market-based approach to medicine, and it drives down the cost of drugs substantially. The pro-life movement has had some unease about birth control as evidence has appeared that it can, in some instances, destroy an embryo, ending a human life. But requiring a prescription is no way to address that concern.

Kudos for the Republicans for trying something radical like becoming champions of using market forces to drive down costs and with it, increase the availability of a good. Granted, this is mainly in reaction to how effective the left has been at convincing women that birth control should be the main concern that they should be thinking about (as opposed to trivialities, like jobs, the economy, energy, etc). But hey, it’s good to see the party doing the right thing for kind of wrong reasons as opposed to its recent history of doing the stupid thing for the wrong reasons. While I found this idea interesting, it wasn’t the idea, but rather the reaction of the radical left that prompted this post.

In The Nation’s newsletter that I subscribe to one of their headlines that caught my eye was an article by Zoe Carpenter called, Don’t Fall for the GOP’s Over-the-Counter Contraception Racket. There were too many ridiculous claims in the article for me to address, but I thought that one excellent point was

None of these people were championing the proposal before their campaigns.

I think that this is a fair point to contest. Politicians making claims that may or not be true to appeal to an audience is the nature of the beast. If I’m hearing a candidate take up some new position that only came into existence when campaign season started then I think some hard questions as to what will happen after the election are fair game. Unfortunately that sentence I cited is about the only bit of sense in Carpenter’s article – most of it centers around the fact that leftists can’t grasp why anyone would disagree with them over abortion, mandates, etc. And National review did a good job of pointing out the other side of the coin:

The Left’s response to this political development continues its cynical treatment of this issue. Liberal-leaning doctors’ groups and abortion advocates such as Planned Parenthood supported proposals like the ones Republicans are touting now . . . until Republicans started touting them.

Let’s back up a bit and look at what the actual objective is here – it is maximizing access to oral contraceptives for women by making the product as inexpensive as possible. At the end of the day that end goal should be all that matters. But Carpenter still opposes it

Nor is making contraception available without a prescription an alternative to the birth control mandate (or, needless to say, the entire healthcare law).

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Image appears via The People’s Cube

I understand the left’s position that this doesn’t address coverage for abortions, the Obamacare mandates, etc. But why wouldn’t the left at least support making birth control pills cheaper? If this issue were about access, a better response would have been something along the lines of “While we applaud Republicans finally coming around to the need for women’s access to contraception, we still disagree with their unwillingness to support…”. But they didn’t. Why? Very simply, it’s about control. As I wrote a while back about how lost in all of the birth control pill controversy was why condom use wasn’t being mentioned:

They’re cheap. In the left’s efforts to get the public to accept sacrificing any freedom over their health care decisions, having expensive medical needs are necessary to show why average citizens need them.

Condoms are easily accessible. The evil, capitalist system has crated a product that is so cheap and easy to purchase that it would be difficult for the government to swoop in and take over their distribution, thus the need to force solutions that are easier to control.

As I’ve always argued, however much leftism claims to be about helping people, at the end of the day it’s about controlling them. One of Carpenter’s last point is

When conservatives fight to empower women to make decisions about their own bodies in all cases, regardless of income, then maybe we’ll take them seriously.

Or maybe when the radical left stops defining empowerment as dependence on government and stops fighting anything that could weaken that dependence, then maybe we’ll take them seriously.

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Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog

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@George+Wells:

Yeah, I’m going to go back in there again just to make you happy. Thank you very much.

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn what you do. As long as it doesn’t involve me and since we live in different states, I’m sure there is little chance of that.

Having been backed into a wall by those of you who would deny us our constitutionally guaranteed equal rights, what did you expect us to do?

What remind me again, what part of the U.S. Constitution speaks of marriage or homosexuality? It seems to have been omitted in my copy of the Constitution.

I watched for over fifty years as absolutely nothing was done for gay people.

And you watched, as well, as thousands of gays killed each other, refusing to alter their habits to prevent deaths from HIV/AIDS. Seems gays were their own worst enemy. The life style, the culture of bath houses and multiple partners, all refused to be altered with those who had the most to lose by continuing that culture. So please, you can blame us “breeders” (the people your friend wants to kill) but gays are responsible for their own deaths in many cases. Even now, gays continue to infect those who are not infected after the taxpayer has foot the bill for enlightenment about the AIDS virus.

What gays have gained, they gained IN SPITE of you.

I have not, nor will I ever, promote mental illness.

@Tom:

Okay, Bill, why don’t you enlighten us as to why women overwhelmingly vote Democrat. Extra credit if you can do it without some crass generalization insulting women. Good luck.

Well, Tom, that’s not difficult at all. Why do blacks vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, despite the fact that Democrats are traditionally supportive of racism, segregation, racial inequality and denying blacks their right to vote? Because, Tom, Democrats have discovered that instead of trying to deny blacks their equal opportunity to enable themselves to climb out of poverty and need, they can exploit their poverty and need for their own political purposes. Thus, Democrats have pushed policies which, while pretending to help those in poverty, has done more than anything else to KEEP minorities in poverty and, as such, dependent upon the Democrat party to provide those bare necessities to survive upon.

We now see the same tactics used to capture the woman vote; women need the Democrat party to fight for their equality even though we can see that Democrats, as much or more than any other group and certainly more than Republicans, under-pay women, abuse women and use women as objects. Ms. Fluke spoke of the fallacy that without the government, women cannot have birth control (though they already have it and have had for a long time). No one uses women for nothing but to reach a political end like Democrats and the current “war on women” lie is but the latest Democrat strategy to create an imaginary need, then hop right up to the plate to provide it… making the situation worse each and every time.

To see the true opinion of women held by Democrats, look no further than how they treat women that do not align themselves with the liberal ideology. They even turn on their own women when they fail to stay on-topic.

Liberals oppose easy access to birth control because they can’t use it as a weapon
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/09/12/its-come-to-this-planned-parenthood-now-attacking-gop-plans-to-expand-access-to-birth-control/
DNC invokes images of violence on women
http://dailycaller.com/2014/09/03/dnc-chairwoman-scott-walker-gives-women-the-back-of-his-hand/
While Obama accuses everyone else of waging a war on women, he still has not corrected his own “pay gap”

White House #WarOnWomen continues as analysis shows “pay gap” persists

Clay Aiken encourages people to punch Ann Coulter in the face and call her “c**t”, no left wing outrage
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2014/05/21/will-media-care-dem-candidate-aiken-tweeted-about-punching-ann-coulter
NYT war on women; woman editor fired for demanding equal pay
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/05/why-jill-abramson-was-fired.html
Left only interested in an imaginary war on women for political purposes, not in any real women’s causes
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/08/cair-to-brandeisuniv-idUSnPn5nmHrl+84+PRN20140408

http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2014/april/commencementupdate.html

Victim of Islamic genital mutilation victimized again by Brandeis University

Unequal pay; using women for political purposes
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/08/on-equal-pay-day-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-gender-pay-gap/
Unequal pay… by Democrats

War On Women: Senate Dems Pay Female Staffers $5,500 Less Than Men – Update: Dems Declare Today “Equal Pay Day”…

http://freebeacon.com/politics/senate-dems-remain-on-front-lines-in-war-on-women/
Grayson shoves, bruises his wife

Trainwreck… ALAN GRAYSON Domestic Incident CAUGHT ON TAPE – Wife Releases Pics of Bruises! (Video)

#51:
“I have not, nor will I ever, promote mental illness.”

You give me a good laugh. Thanks!

“What remind me again, what part of the U.S. Constitution speaks of marriage or homosexuality?”

I doubt that that has anything to do with it. There’s nothing in the Constitution about interracial marriage either, is there? No, I didn’t think so. But we have it, right? Sure. Didn’t have it before, though. And now we’re getting gay marriage, too. Remind me, again, what difference does it make? None.

Felons are allowed to marry. Child molesters are allowed to marry. Drug addicts are allowed to marry. Murderers are allowed to marry. The mentally ill are allowed to marry. But YOU… DON’T want gays to marry? How… weird is that?

“And you watched, as well, as thousands of gays killed each other, refusing to alter their habits to prevent deaths from HIV/AIDS.”

Yep.
Some people are really stupid. Really stupid people often get what they deserve. Fortunately, most gay people aren’t so stupid. Some are, and Republicans like Retire05 like to make a big fuss about that small minority of gays who act self-destructively. Self-destructive people often get what they deserve. Seems fair to me.