Over at National Review, Michael New says Democrats were "grandstanding" with their bill yesterday that would have protected the right to contraception:
The aim of the bill was to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
First, contraceptives are widely available.... Furthermore, more contraceptive use would not necessarily reduce the number either of abortions or of unintended pregnancies.... The legislation contained no conscience protections.
This is weak tea. The aim of the bill, needless to say, is to make sure access to contraceptives doesn't become a problem. Contraceptives shouldn't just be "widely available," they should be universally available, and we should make sure to keep things that way.
As for contraception not reducing abortions or unintended pregnancies, that seems a wee bit unlikely, doesn't it? I mean, obviously they do something or else millions of women wouldn't use them.
And conscience protections are embedded in other laws and in Supreme Court rulings. There's no need to repeat them.
New's piece is a good example of why Democrats are grandstanding about this: it's a winning issue. Even Republicans can't really come up with any good reasons against it.
Grandstanding is exactly what we need. I hope they keep it up.
Not getting pregnant would not stop abortions or unintended pregnancies?
What is that? New math?
the level of dumbness republican pundits display in their commentary is endlessly surprising.
As always, consider the source:
"Michael New is an assistant professor of practice at the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America and a senior associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute."
https://pro-lies.org/charlotte-lozier-institute/
He needs more practice.
Conscience protections? What the hell is that?
If I'm a druggist who doesn't want to sell contraceptives, I simply don't stock them. When a customer comes in and asks for them, I don't have to ask them what they are going to use them for, I simply say "I'm sorry, I don't stock any of them." No favored group, no disfavored group, no discrimination against a particular group of customers. I just don't sell them. End of story.
Except women
The "problem" stems from pharmacists or pharmacy assistants who are unwilling to sell drugs that their employer does stock.
"If I'm a druggist who doesn't want to sell contraceptives, I simply don't stock them." The store owner makes that decision. He wants pharmacists to have the right to lie to customers with their employers not being able to fire them. Remember, for conservatives, conscience protections only apply to conservatives and conservativie beliefs. Doctors can be forced to explicitly lie to patients in favor of pro-life positions but conservative doctors can't be forced to meet the minimum standards expected from any professional even if it kills the patient.
Ken Rhodes is right: anybody in the pharmacy delivery chain has the "right" to refuse to sell contraceptives to someone with a valid prescription. And what about that big fight over Obamacare, where Republicans made it possible to deny contraceptive coverage? You pay your premiums, but then you still pay full price for your meds --if they're birth control??
"Accessible" is one thing. High end Teslas are "accessible" to me. But I still can't afford one. Fortunately, a high end Tesla isn't something I need. Birth control isn't a luxury.
Consider a person who is a devout Mormon and who refuses to drink caffeinated beverages. Suppose s/he gets a job as a barista and will happily serve you a kombucha or an Italian soda but refuses to serve you a latte. Ridiculous, right? I mean, why the fuck would they seek out that job in the first place? Unless, obviously, they had some sort of axe to grind and wanted to deliberately withhold coffee from the heathens.
It is exactly the same thing with a pharmacist. If they refuse to fill a legal prescription because they wouldn't take that medicine themselves then they should go get another fucking job. Anti-contraception zealots aside, what if a Christian Scientist refused to fill your blood pressure medication because they thought you weren't praying enough?
The other part he doesn't tell you is that these folks deem the Pill to be an abortifacient, not a contraceptive.
+1
and the best way to fight broad availability of things like 'plan b' (levonorgestrel) is to criminalize all contraception
My apology- I was so slow entering & checking my comment, I missed the one that you posted quicker!
but you get bonus points for the use of 'casuistry' 😉
Those who pretend thst availability of birth control items isn't a problem are guilty of the same dishonesty as those who claimed to not to intend to overturn Roe because it was "settled law." They LIED - imagine that!
And they are dissemblig even more now, since they have at least two SCOTUS partisans quite willing to not only ban birth control in all of its forms, but to mischaracterize IUDs & the morning-after pill as abortifacients. They have no limit to their casuistry when it comes to taking others' rights away, yet look st their own claims to privacy, which they insist is not protected in the Constitution- if you're a Supreme, you can fly any flag - or claim any meaning of the law - thst you please.
This guys editorial reads like a find and replace with "contraceptives" replacing "abortion" from a column from 2016.
Yup. Problem is, even if Democrats managed to codify the protection of contraception, the reliably dogmatic conservative SCOTUS will fish an ostensible reason to misconstrue the Constitution to overturn law.
"As for contraception not reducing abortions or unintended pregnancies, that seems a wee bit unlikely, doesn't it? I mean, obviously they do something or else millions of women wouldn't use them."*
Ah, but the question is "What is it precisely that they do?" Their first order effect is to reduce the likelihood of the NATURAL or more likely, DIVNELY ordained, consequences of a specific HUMAN action, i.e. sexual activity or less euphemistically specifically f**k**g. Since women bear most of these consequences, widely, even more so, universally, available contraception gives rise to widespread sluttiness. If it did not, if women were more universally virtuous (for a fusty meaning of the word "virtuous") than contraception would have no effect on either the number of unintended pregnancies or abortions.
*I had thought that using the plural "they" to refer to something singular, here contraception, was allowable only for humans. Not clear to me why "it" cannot be used in reference to contraception.
I have long understood that the Biblical account of the snake, the apple, & Eve gives the patriarchy justification for blaming Eve for earth's woes.*
But if women (& according to a few judges & politicians), even preadolescent children can seduce men, are women really expected to refrain from sex altogether or outside of marriage, & how would such a situation accommodate all of the heterosexual males who (amazingly enough) seem to seek out females to whom they aren't necessarily married, for sex?
* including the concept of original sin
Here's something that routinely gets swept under the rug: a huge number of married couples use contraception for a number of reasons, none of which are anybody else's business. Is anyone seriously going to try and make the case that if this married couple doesn't want children at the moment then they shouldn't be having sex?
The roman catholic church always has.