Men Gone Crazy!

I go away for a week, and the men of America have gone crazy. Not all of them, mind you, just the small-minded bigots who want to control women. It's open season on reproductive rights.

In South Dakota, the state legislature has passed a bill to restrict ALL ABORTIONS except to save the life of the mother. There are no exceptions for health, incest or rape. Only certain death. And the Good Old Boys are proud of their work. They know the law will be challenged, and hope this will be the one that lets the GOBs in the newly constituted Supreme Court get rid of that pesky Roe decision once and for all.

In Missouri, Governor Matt Blunt has declared war on birth control. In today's Washington Post, his chairman of the board of election commissioners of St. Louis, Ed Martin, is quoting talking about the national effort to restrict access to emergency contraception and the pill.

"Basically, every state now has an effort going to either make Plan B more easily available or to slow it down or make sure that pharmacists don't have to dispense if they oppose it," said Edward R. Martin, a lawyer and lobbyist with Americans United for Life, who has helped put together some of the proposed "conscience" clauses.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation:

Researchers estimate that widespread use of EC (emergency contraception) could potentially prevent up to half of the approximately 3 million unintended pregnancies that occur annually in the U.S., and one study has suggested that broader use could help prevent as many as 700,000 pregnancies that now result in abortion.

The argument that opponents of emergency contraception are doing so because they oppose abortion just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. EC prevents unintended pregnancy, which prevents abortion. You would think that the so-called "pro-lifers" would be for something which prevents abortion.

But they're not. They oppose it because they oppose all forms of birth control, because emergency contraception and the pill work exactly the same way. From the Washington Post story:

The primary opposition to Plan B, however, has come from groups that contend that it can lead to very early abortions -- though experts say it acts in the same way as regular contraceptives.

The experts are right. There is no difference--Plan B is really just a targeted, higher dose of birth control pills. Unless you, like the Monty Pythons, believe that "every sperm is sacred" and every menstrual cycle a missed baby.

These so-called "pro-lifers" are actually anti-sex and anti-woman. If they had their way, all non-procreational sex would be banned. What these lawmakers really want is control. Male control of women's bodies. Societal control of what is most private and personal, one's reproductive and sexual choices.

Can the Republic of Gilead be far behind?

Notice anything odd about this photo? It's Bush signing an anti-abortion bill. I think this grouping says it all.