1069

Clinton vows to fight "insulting" abortion plan


By Michelle Nichols
NEW YORK (Reuters)
Fri Jul 18, 2008

A Bush administration plan to define several widely used contraception methods as abortion is a "gratuitous, unnecessary insult" to women and faces tough opposition, Sen. Hillary Clinton said on Friday.

The former Democratic presidential candidate joined family planning groups to condemn the proposal that defines abortion to include contraception such as birth control pills and intrauterine devices.

It would cut off federal funds to hospitals and states where medical providers are obligated to offer legal abortion and contraception to women.

"We will not put up with this radical, ideological agenda to turn the clock back on women's rights," the New York senator told a joint news conference with New York Rep. Nita Lowey, also a Democrat, at Bellevue Hospital.

"Women would watch their contraceptive coverage disappear overnight," said Clinton.

The planned rule is aimed at countering recent state laws enacted to ensure that women can get contraception when they want or need it. It also would help protect the rights of medical providers to refuse to offer contraception.

Clinton said she has written a letter with Patty Murray, a Democrat senator from Washington, to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt asking him to reconsider and reject the release of the proposed rules.

>snip<

link


What say?

BTW, here's more about Bush's plan, if you haven't heard about it yet:

link

__________________
"I do love this idea that one can scream and scream and scream, with that utopia just one more scream away."
~ Scucca

CaptainCourtesy

I saw this article and was appalled, but not so surprised. Another ridiculous attempt to lump contraception, a highly effective way to avoid unwanted pregnancy and STD's with abortion, two concepts that could only be seen as metaphorical by extreme members of the religious right. Science does not back the assertion that birth control pills and abortion are equal in any way, shape, or form. Regardless of what one's definition of a person is, a person CAN NOT be defined by individual, non-joined sperm and eggs.

This is a ridiculous and "insulting" rule...insulting to the intelligence of anyone who understands basic biology.

__________________
"Never fear. Him is here" - Captain Chaos (Dom DeLuise), Cannonball Run

====||:-D

1069

Agreed. Bush and the Conservative Fundamentalist Right have become an obscene joke.
America'll be well rid of that lot.

His doing this now is going to screw McCain's chances further, don't you think?

CaptainCourtesy

If McCain attaches himself to stupidity like this, absolutely.

roguenuke

This is a stupid plan. Contraceptives and actual sex education are probably the biggest deterrents of unwanted pregnancies. This plan is a step back from a goal of greatly reducing abortions and unplanned pregnancies. Trying to call contraceptives methods of abortions is absurd. Just because something can cause a miscarriage/abortion if misused does not make that it's intent. After this, would laws pop up that would require a pregnant woman to follow her doctor "advice" completely to avoid an unintentional miscarriage? I realize that part may be extreme, but any sensible person can see the need for contraceptives to be fully available to anyone.

1069

You might have a point if their goal were "deterring unwanted pregnancies" and/ or "reducing abortions", rather than harming and subjugating females.
But I think anyone with half a brain knows better by now.

UtahBill

If only the shrub's parents had practiced birth control a bit better.....
Next thing on the religious right's agenda will probably be any form of male sexual release outside of a vagina.
This proposal has zero chance of passing....

__________________
The Age of Reason doesn't have to be a thing of the past.
Being judgemental is the prime directive of some evangelicals.
No success can compensate for failure in the home.

Summerwind

As for the pill and related contraceptives . . . these contraceptives actually stop ovulation, so there is never an egg to be met by sperm. AND it is worth noting, along the lines of subjugating women referred to by 1069, it also may keep women from being able to choose to have children later in life. I will go look for an article, but I know I've read a few times over the past decade that women who have taken the pill earlier in life, because of the eggs not dropping, have a better chance later in life to have successful pregnancies compared to women who did not use the pill in their younger years and dropped all their eggs earlier.

Summerwind

Unfortunate but true. It makes no sense that the anti-abortion crowd somehow thinks the best way to avoid abortion is to keep young women ignorant with abstinence only education, and to restrict and demonize the drugs and devices that would keep women from getting pregnant in the first place. Since that makes no sense, the only logical conclusion is exactly as you suggest. Once they have successfully thrown our reproductive choices in the crapper, I wonder if shoes for women will be the next target? I mean the same "logic" could be used, "We don't want women's feet to be harmed, so they should stay home and in the kitchen. Shoes??!!??? They don't need no stinkin' shoes." I know I'm being ridiculous, but shoes are to feet, what contraceptives are to pregnancy, right?

Summerwind

Y'know, one might think so, except that 1069 has such a valid point about this being aimed at women only. I've never heard anyone, I mean ANYONE, suggest that men should be restricted from any sexual choices except rape. Even as my children were growing up, it was actually quite weird; we mothers would discuss little boys finding their penises very differently than little girls finding their vaginas. Boys would be more like, "Oh, it was so cute, Johnnie found his penis this morning and was moving it around like a stick shift all bath time, so cute." and we'd all laugh. However, a girl would be, "Oh no, Joanie started playing with herself int he tub this morning, I had to slap her hands."

Its quite disgusting all the ways boys' sexuality is supported and girls' are thwarted, from infants to adults where Viagra is considered more medically necessary than contraceptives.