Gotta love it when the supposed “anti-abortion” movement makes concerted efforts to up the abortion rate by making it more difficult for women to prevent unintended pregnancy.
In Indiana, the state senate passed a measure that would allow pharmacists to refuse to do their jobs. If a woman wants contraception (including emergency contraception), pharmacists would be within their rights to refuse to fill her prescription. The bill’s sponsor initially said that it wouldn’t apply to contraception, only emergency contraception — a statement he later had to backtrack on, probably when someone informed him that emergency contraception is the exact same thing as standard birth control pills, just in a higher dose. Plus, you know, it’s contraception. And yet, “he claimed this week that it would not apply to birth control pills.”
This is what happens when your movement is run by anti-science fuckwits who don’t understand how birth control works.
Interestingly, the same law allows pharmacists to refuse to fill “end of life” drugs. Considering that assisted suicide is still illegal in Indiana, end life life drugs would be, I presume, some amount of painkillers or other meds prescribed by a doctor that the pharmacists simply decides is too much. I wonder if denying pain meds to elderly or very ill people will be accepted by the Christian right in the same way that they’ve embraced denying birth control to women — some of whom are using it for medical reasons other than pregnancy prevention?
Indiana gets double honors this week for passing a bill that would require doctors to tell women seeking abortions that their fetuses may feel pain — despite lack of scientific evidence to back up such a statement.
Pennsylvania is also considering a “conscience clause” law that would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill contraception prescriptions — it would also make health care providers exempt from law suits having to do with abortion or contraception. Lawmakers are spinning this law to suggest that it’s about allowing doctors to refuse to perform abortions; what they don’t say is that doctors and nurses can already refuse to perform elective abortions. The purpose of this law would allow doctors and pharmacists to be totally outside of the law. Contrary to what “pro-lifers” will tell you, sometimes abortion is medically necessary. For example, if a woman comes in bleeding from a miscarriage and a doctor decides it’s against his morals to treat her, she can’t sue him — and if she dies, her family can’t sue him either. As Jeanne Clarke of NOW said, “”pretty awful that a medical professional sworn to do no harm [could] use this excuse to kill a woman.”
I’m finally reading How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America, and what Cristina Page underlines from the very beginning is that the abortion debates aren’t about abortion at all; they’re about competing ways of life. One embraces the modern family, and wants to allow individuals to make their own decisions about who they have sex with, what sex means to them (whether that’s procreation, pleasure, or bonding), how many kids they have, how their families are structured, and what they do with their lives. The other has a singular vision of “family” — and it’s one where women stay home and raise children, men are the financial backbone, and sex is solely for procreation. These bits illustrate exactly what Page is talking about — the anti-choice movement is totally divorced from reality, and individuals who identify as pro-life often have no idea what the organized movement actually stands for.
Most pro-life people want to decrease the abortion rate. Most understand that people have sex, and that in the entire history of human existence, it has never, ever worked to simply tell people, “Don’t do it.” Most people realize that the one proven way to decrease the abortion rate is to give people contraception and education.
But the organized anti-choice movement is doing just the opposite, because contraception access means that women might not have to be punished by pregnancy. And so they push laws that make it more difficult for women to get birth control and prevent unintended pregnancies. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to most Feministe readers, but it is an issue that your average pro-life voter doesn’t hear a whole lot about. And it’s time to start calling anti-choice organizations out on their abortion-promoting bullshit.