Those are the words of Sharon Lerner in a very interesting article about why there is no requirement in the health care reform to have birth control paid for, to have pelvic exams paid for, to have STDs covered by insurance.
Lerner is the author of “The War on Moms: On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation,” due out in this spring. She is a journalist who has covered women's issues and health for years. Her written work has appeared in The Village Voice, where she was a columnist, as well as The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The American Prospect, The Nation, and Ms. among other publications.
Why Doesn't Health Care Cover Birth Control?She says it is not covered because politicians are fearful of addressing it in this climate where we are so accepting of the religious views of women's right. She expresses that view well.
In truth, a broader sentiment seems to be fueling the discomfort with contraception. Perhaps the American Life League gets to the heart of it best, noting on its website that birth control leads to “a state of mind that treats sexual activity as if it has nothing to do with babies”—i.e., to put it in plain terms, promiscuity. Birth control somehow shades into abortion, and together both lead women down the path to immorality.
Some feel women are supposed to sit back and let this happen without making too big a fuss....because after all we are all Democrats, and our party is in power. The very reason we should NOT accept it.
More from Lerner's perceptive article:
Why Doesn't Health Care Cover Birth Control? Politicians won’t address the subject.She points out that abortion was lost to horse trading, and it seems like other rights in women's care will suffer the same fate.
Abortion, it seems, was lost to political horse-trading. But there are also deeper forces at work that will continue to affect the 10 million women who are expected to participate in a health care exchange—an infuriating irrationality that taints not just abortion, but many other health issues that are perceived to be connected to women’s sexuality.
The best example is birth control, which was also recently thrown under the health-reform train. So far, none of the three reform bills has required insurers to cover contraception, although it is almost universally used by heterosexually active women. Other preventive services, such as some counseling about sexually transmitted diseases and pelvic exams, didn’t make the cut, either. Nor have the bills protected these services from “cost sharing,” which means that women may well end up paying for much of their birth control out of their own pockets.
She points out that even those who are for women's rights to good health care are facing attacks from the religious right extremists.
Few in Washington or elsewhere would cop to such plainly sexist views. Once it’s actually put into words, the blanket condemnation of all sex without the intention of making babies is obviously out of step with the way most people think and live. It’s arguably even more retrograde than the idea that certain methods of birth control are equivalent to abortion. Yet in July, when senators debated an amendment put forward by Barbara Mikulski proposing full coverage of birth control and other preventive women’s health services, the conversation focused on Planned Parenthood and abortion, despite the fact that neither was mentioned in the amendment.
It’s the rare—and almost always female—politician who’s willing to brave these irrational currents to fight for birth control. Mikulski’s amendment is now the only remaining hope of getting birth control completely covered and paid for in the final health-reform bill. The majority of politicians seem intent on steering clear of the whole tawdry mess. Yet it’s worth remarking that even as they give off an air of quiet disapproval, most of these lawmakers somehow do not have huge broods of children themselves. If the subject of birth control comes up, they often respond—or, rather, don’t—with the kind of wide-eyed panic you might expect from someone accused of playing footsy with another man in an airport bathroom. When George W. Bush was asked whether he supported the use of contraception, for instance, the usually garrulous father of two stayed mum.
Women are now falling into the silence left by these hypocritical and terrified politicians. Though lawmakers have treated birth control and abortion as abstract matters of values, the consequences of their heady decisions for women will be quite real. The consequences will be harshest for the middle- and low-income women most likely to participate in a health exchange. If they have to pay for part or all of the cost of birth control themselves, women will be less likely to get it. Some will get pregnant. And virtually all of the women who want abortions will be unable to get them covered through our new national health plan.
Our party has often adopted the rhetoric of the religious right, making it sound like the only good American is a Christian American. It angers me, though I was raised Southern Baptist. Hubby and I are proud recovering Southern Baptists....we learned the hard way that these groups will impose every belief of theirs on our nation. And when we cave, they go the next step.
We took every trace of abortion out of health care reform...now they are going after birth control.In just five short years, the primary movers and shakers in the absolutist anti-abortion/anti-choice movement seeking to promote the “personhood” of zygotes (the single cell that forms after a sperm fertilizes an egg) have amassed nearly $58 million in tax-deductible contributions for their cause.
Even the lead up to one of the worst economic periods in U.S. history has barely registered a blip in the group's collective money-drawing power according to an examination of IRS and state campaign finance records conducted for RH Reality Check. Four out of the five groups are raising more cash than ever with sophisticated fundraising operations, flush investment portfolios, and robust revenue-generating activities. This isn't your grandma’s church bake sale by any stretch of the imagination.
..."The "Personhood Amendment" that conservative activists are filing today in Tallahassee would add language to the state constitution that defines someone as a "person," regardless of age or health status, "from the beginning of the biological development of that human being."
Pat McEwen of Palm Bay is one of two leaders of the loose collection of activists, collectively known as Personhood Florida.
If they succeed with this egg as a person movement, there would be no need for birth control anyway.
How did we get to the point where Democratic politicians are afraid to even stand up for birth control being paid for by insurance.
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