GOP Kicks Women Out Of Contraception Debate

[Mommy22alyns]

Can't believe this stuff is happening in 2012.. :shock:

Guess I should get my burka out :evil:

Flabbergasted. Outraged. :evil:

[mockingbird]

This is scary. I'm usually a more moderate republican but I'm leaning democrat this election because they seem to have totally gone off the deep end.

My BC costs $100/month without insurance because it's a brand name and there's a generic available. I can't take the generic. Oh, and the hormone drop with pills makes me nauseous so I take them all the way through instead of taking fourth/period week off (no periods yay! this is probably ebil though too). Therefore, if my doctor forgets to write that I need the brand name, I'm out $400 for every three months. Ding ding, we have a winner for what happened the last time I tried to get this prescription filled. Even with insurance because of the extra fourth box it's up another $55 copay. It actually costs less on my insurance to get the standard 3-box 3-month supply than to buy the extra box. BC isn't always cheap and that is a total strawman argument.

[m0drnmoonlight]

This whole "It's about religious freedom" argument is bullshit, they've declared war on women's rights.

Not everyone wants to be pregnant, not everyone wants to be Michelle Duggar and pop out 20 kids. Some women know their personal and financial boundaries and limit their family size, and some women aren't maternal and simply don't want to have kids. Therefore, they're on birth control, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. They aren't evil, or anti-family, or anything. But these people clearly seem to think they are. And what about women who take it to regulate periods, or stop acne? Are they slutty hussies too?

And banning birth control will not make people stop having sex. Newsflash: Married couples use birth control too.

And they should stop calling themselves "pro-life" until they prove that they care about ALL life and not just saving the cute little babies.

Edited for content

[Shirley MacLaine]

This shit is freaking me out. OMG.

[SimplyMe]

Sorry, never mind, I can't get the image to post from my iPad...

[kb2]

Even if birth control is really inexpensive...if you don't have that amount of money around each month, how in the hell are you going to pay to raise a baby. Especially a baby you would choose to prevent if money weren't a barrier. The less these people think birth control costs, the more destitute they want women having unplanned pregnancies.

[Austin]

Gingrich- Cheated on his first 2 wives. If that doesn't show a major character flaw, I'm not sure what does.

I love this, posted by another FJer:

[Avalondaughter]

Um... the reason birth control is such a small cost (for me), Santorum, is because it's covered by insurance. I pay $5/pack. But I'd probably pay, I'm guessing, $60/pack if I didnt have insurance. He doesnt know what he's talking about because he's never had to pay for birth control.

I have insurance and I paid $90 for my most recent pack

[celtic_thistle]

The fetus fetishists/forced-birthers need to understand that freedom of religion =/= the freedom to impose your religion on everyone else.

[keeperrox]

ZlPUbGvD3oY

[Maude]

ZlPUbGvD3oY

:clap:

I've been thinking on this all day. I'm so very angry on behalf of American women who're being faced with this attempt to obliterate all of the social progress that's been made in the last 50-100 years or so. All I keep thinking is, if Obama doesn't get re-elected, we're going to see some scary shit in the next four years. We're going to see things that I quite honestly never thought I'd see because I was so certain that our foremothers had fought and won that battle for us. :angry-screaming:

[nokidsmom]

I can't believe this stuff is happening in 2012.

I may be nearing menopause, but I want these idiots to get the hell out of my uterus.

[Guest Anonymous]

Unbelieveable...just un-fucking-believeable!

[gilora]

I was living in Washington DC when Oliver North ran for US Senate (Virginia) against the incumbent Chuck Robb. As I recall, Robb had some skeletons in his closet and there was a real concern that North could win. North lost. That episode solidified my belief that there is a line of crazy Americans will not cross.

If I were an Obama strategist, I would be wetting my pants with joy at the idea of a race against Santorum. The ads would write themselves.

OT, but now seems to be a great time to launch a viable third party, consisting of more traditional Reagan-esque Republicans. The GOP needs to either take back its party or abandon it to the Tea Party lunatic fringe.

[lilah]

I think women should fight to make vasectomy's not covered by insurance, and we should leave men out of the debate. Let 'em see how they like that! :evil:

Better yet outlaw insurance covering viagra. Why should tax payers have to pay to help men have an improved sex life? Seriously, it makes my blood boil to think that we have sucha double standard, helping men have a sex life is a nonissue but god forbid women get help paying for birth control!

[Katiebug]

As someone else said, they're attempting to reframe the abortion debate by deeming the Pill and other forms of hormonal contraception along with IUDs as "abortifacient". They're trying to turn safe, legal, routinely-prescribed medications and devices into their very own little abortions and thus have a better avenue to restrict and outlaw them. If you listen to the Catholic Channel on satellite radio or read the wackos on the Catholic Answers forums it's clear that the attitude is not just that they won't pay for employees of church-run entities to have access to such items, it's that they don't want ANYONE being able to use them.

Studies of contraceptive use in the US show that age, race, marital status, education, socioeconomic status, and parity (number of children already born) are indicative of contraceptive method most likely to be used. Use of the Pill drops off after a woman has had one or more children: based on parity, 55% of women who have had no children use the Pill, 29% of those with one child do, and only 15% of those with two are using the Pill for contraception. Having at least one child seems to make a woman more likely to be using an IUD or sterilization (either male or female) than using the Pill. Use of the Pill increases as education and income increases as well and more educated and more affluent women tend to be less-conservative politically.

I'm a married woman and a mother. I'm well-educated and my family is considered middle to upper-middle class (it sure doesn't feel that way, but that's what the numbers say). Because both of us work full time outside of the home, we have to space our children out so that I can take a decent maternity leave (a whopping 16 weeks max of FMLA, but I digress) and so that we can afford the daycare bill for two kids. I have friends who won't be able to have their second children until their toddlers are in school, because of the cost of quality child care. I don't use hormonal BC and hadn't for several years prior to trying to conceive our first child; I don't like the effect of the artificial hormones on my body. We use condoms and they work for us. Of our friends, typically couples use the Minipill or Pill or condoms between babies and then after the safe arrival of the last baby (usually the second) the husband has a vasectomy or the wife has a Mirena inserted.

When women lose the ability to determine their own child bearing, they lose so much. My ability to take care of my family is somewhat dependent on being able to space our kids out. If we have too many children too fast not only will my health be affected but we wouldn't be able to afford the child care that we need for both of us to work - either my husband would have to be a SAHD (which he doesn't want), or I'd have to be a SAHM and we'd lose our house because I'm the bigger breadwinner. Regardless, it's not a pretty picture. Is it awful that I'm starting to feel thankful that I have a copy of "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" stashed away in the basement and I know how to use fertility awareness? At least if things really get crazy we have the knowledge to try to avoid pregnancy. But that's what these nutjobs like Santorum want - basically for married couples to have more babies, and for single people to just not have sex. :roll:

I've always thought that the best way for the pro-life cause to decrease the number of REAL abortions would be to ensure that reliable contraceptive means are available and affordable for anyone who wants them. Instead they want to limit access by redefining some of those reliable contraceptives as actually being abortifacient in and of themselves!

I feel like I'm living in Crazyville.

[apple1]

OT, but now seems to be a great time to launch a viable third party, consisting of more traditional Reagan-esque Republicans. The GOP needs to either take back its party or abandon it to the Tea Party lunatic fringe.

THAT. :clap: :clap: :clap:

[apple1]

I've always thought that the best way for the pro-life cause to decrease the number of REAL abortions would be to ensure that reliable contraceptive means are available and affordable for anyone who wants them.

Absolutely.

I have 2 daughters and a granddaughter. I absolutely CANNOT believe we are having this discussion in 2012.

Something is totally crazy. I KNOW that most people in the US don't want contraception made unavailable.

So how have the extremists and nutcases taken over this discussion? Why is this even a "political" issue?

[Nothing2CHere]

The fetus fetishists/forced-birthers need to understand that freedom of religion =/= the freedom to impose your religion on everyone else.

[Rosa]

Well, and here's the road to freedom of religion:

They don't have to offer employer-based insurance. They could just stop offering it, and lose employees to other institutions (free market!). They could stop offering it and raise salaries til people could afford their own insurance (but then they lose the fat tax break on employer-paid insurance benefits - can't get the church short of federal money!).

Lots of employers don't offer insurance. In fact, lots of hospitals don't offer all their employees insurance. No federal plan forces employers to give their employees insurance - they just have rules for what the insurance package can be, if it IS offered.

(Health Care Reform does force employers that insure some full-time workers to pay a fine if they don't insure all. Which I applaud. That's fucking discriminatory, and it's usually discriminatory on those who can least afford it - insure the managers and not the lowest-paid people.)

edited to fix a dumb riffle.

[GryffindorFTW]

Related. This just crossed my Facebook feed.

Apparently it has not occurred to this genius that it is my choice what I allow to inhabit my body. I know that sounds harsh, and probably encapsulates every right-wing stereotype about heartless feminazis, but it is truly the crux of the argument. Any other conclusion turns women into incubators without free agency.

[Anxious Girl]

This is really freaking me out. We're heading toward things I wouldn't have believed possible. Where will it end?

And people ask me, "Why are you interested in history?" And I'm always like, "Because if you pay attention, it repeats itself, and if you have knowledge you can prevent it from happening again," such as women's rights in the late nineteenth century and early 1920s and 1930s. Will it take another couple of centuries again for us to realize that women need rights, too? Sometimes I feel that humanity is devolving, not evolving if that's even possible.

[emmiedahl]

Just wanted to ask: will vasectomies also be covered under the new laws? My husband's vasectomy was not covered by insurance because it was "elective surgery". It only cost $700, so it was cheap by Santorum's figuring, but this was after he lost his job so it was expensive to us. We were still paying for COBRA insurance, which is crazy-expensive on its own.

I could have had a tubal ligation paid for by the state, but I had a very difficult pregnancy and my husband (and I!!!) felt that I had been through enough. Also, a vasectomy is much easier than a tubal ligation in terms of invasiveness and recovery time.