greenpass: Chipping away at women's rights

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August 27, 2004

Chipping away at women's rights

My mother, who has lived abroad for most of her life, called me in shock today about this article, describing how a growing number of doctors and OBGYNs are refusing to prescribe or fill prescriptions for any form of hormonal birth control, including the Pill, no matter why they were prescribed.

Anti-abortion believers have apparently decided on the basis of two articles printed in the Christian conservative Paternoster Press in the UK and a similar publisher in the US that abortion routinely happens when women use birth control, because although the Pill really works by supressing ovulation and fertilization entirely. Mainstream medicine finds that ovulation occurs maybe 2-3% of the time, and in that case fertilization is extremely rare, but anti-abortion activists claim that that number is far higher - apparently with only these two pieces of literature to back them up:

Crockett SA, Harrison D, DeCook J, Hersh C. Hormone contraceptives: controversies and clarifications. In Kilner JF, Cunningham PC, Hager WD eds. The reproductive revolution: a Christian appraisal of reproductive technologies, sexuality and the family. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI and Paternoster, United Kingdom, 2000.
Larimore WL, Alcorn R. Using the birth control pill is ethically unacceptable. In Kilner JF, Cunningham PC, Hager WD eds. The reproductive revolution: a Christian appraisal of reproductive technologies, sexuality and the family. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI and Paternoster, United Kingdom, 2000.

These people believe that if an egg is ovulated, and then fertilized, against all the odds, it will then not be able to implant into the uterine lining (the actual beginning of a pregnancy). This for them counts as an "abortion". However, you can't even detect pregnancy until an egg implants into the wall of the uterus, so these people are saying that abortion is happening before a woman is even detectably pregnant. The problem is, there's no evidence anywhere that the Pill prevents an egg from implanting into the lining of the uterus. Modern medicine says that the reason you don't get pregnant when you're on the Pill is because the egg never gets to the stage of implantation in the first place.

What I find so disgusting about all this is that the Pill is such a central part of women's health. With women my age it's routinely supplied for debilitating menstrual cramps and excessive bleeding, irregular periods, and acne which it clears up a treat. With older women it's prescribed for shrinking fibroids and controlling endometriosis. In addition, since the Pill reduces your likelihood of getting ovarian cancer by 80%, it's used as a lifesaving medication by women who have a strong family history and genetic disposition to the disease.

I have two problems with the stance of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, that bills itself as the educated, medically erudite arm of the pro-life movement. First of all, they don't address the fact that there is absolutely no evidence to back their claims up besides a theoretical fear of loss of a single fertilized cell that hasn't even caused its progenitor to become pregnant yet. Although they bill themselves as doctors, they seem to forget that even doctors need to provide proof of these claims - you can't just sit back and say "I'm a doctor, I know." The lack of scientific data and hard evidence that what they claim is happening is actually happening is worrying. What if they suddenly decide that a life-saving heart medication is "against their beliefs" because it has a 0.005% chance of causing a heart attack? But of course, they'll never do that, in the same way that every single one of them will happily provide Viagra even if it's for an "immoral" affair. Because it's ok to hold women to your own moral, clearly stated Christian standard, but not worry about what men are using their drugs for.

The other problem I have with their stance (apart from the whole pro-life thing in the first place) is that if they so strongly believe that life begins at conception, and are willing to deny contraception to millions of women in this country, then why is there not one word about the thousands of fertilized eggs discarded every year in IVF treatments? According to their stance every single cell they discard is a murder or an abortion, and yet on their position page they list:
--post-abortion health effects
--post-abortion breast cancer risk
--perinatal hospice
--human cloning
--RU 486
--the oral contraceptive "controversy"
--partial birth abortion
--mandatory abortion training for doctors
Doesn't look like they care much about human life, except when it might allow women to have sex without getting pregnant.

Pro-choice activists focus on the big issues, like partial birth abortion and making sure Roe v. Wade isn't going to get overturned. But this is a far more insidious way to prevent women from making their own choices about their bodies, including about other medical decisions that might be the difference between their own life and death from something like ovarian cancer or excessive menstrual bleeding. Since when were women only as important as the cells that they might, all medical evidence to the contrary, possibly produce?

One thing that I know John Kerry will do is protect a woman's right to choose. One of the many things I hope he does first thing is put a mandatory requirement to cover oral contraception into government funded HMO's and health-care packages. George W. Bush got rid of this requirement for federal health plans in his first budget to Congress. This is a central plank of woman's health care - and not just reproductive, but all health care - and needs to be as available as widely as Viagra. There's not an HMO or doctor or pharmacist who would refuse a man Viagra - we need to demand that the far more essential right to oral contraceptives is constantly maintained.

Posted at 08:21 AM in Women | Permalink

Comments

In addition to the invitro fertilization hypocrisy you point out in the above, generally conservative pro-lifers also adopt 'tough on crime' sentencing standards allowing for the death penalty. While there is certainly a moral chasm separating the abortion of a human fetus and the execution of a convicted criminal, the supposed 'sanctity of human life argument' cannot and should not be allowed to judge like-cases in unlike ways. If human life is sacred fundamentally, there must be a responsibility to ALL kinds of human life. After all, most pro-life beliefs are grounded in fervent Christian faith. Let's not cast stones on Earth. If you are pro-life, let's let God decide what to do with convicted criminals in the after-life, and stick to trying to rehabilitate them for THIS life.

Posted by: Punnker | August 27, 2004 at 10:45 AM

Just look at yesterday's Federal bench decision finding that the "PBA" Act is unconstitutional because of the lack of an exception for a woman's health.

How much more evidence does anyone need that the social conservatives so enamored with this see women as instruments, not as citizens with liberties, and not as human beings with rights of individual sanctity? Once a woman becomes pregnant, no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the risks to her health, no matter what the prospects for the future of mother and child, she loses all human dignity as well as rights and liberties in the eyes of social conservatives.

Yet this same group of politicians has no problem taking scads of Big Pharma money from the makers of Viagra, Levitra, and any other ED drug maker. Yet the same people who have bought into the bogus culture war idea that abortion is more important than the economy, health care, Social Security, the environment, education, or foreign policy gobble these pills as a lifestyle choice, not because they have to have them.

These social conservatives are sick. I've only set up a simple straw man here; the truth of their depravity, moral corruption, and perverted social agenda is far worse than I could ever do justice in this space.

As a post script, I refuse to spell out the conservative engineered term by which this topic is discussed, and I will only use "PBA" in quotes to show the correct contempt for their rhetorical invention. It's properly known as a dilation and extraction or "d & x" procedure.

I refuse to play according to conservative wordsmithing and I urge everyone reading this to resist and refuse their focus-group divisiveness as well!

Posted by: Patrick | August 27, 2004 at 12:30 PM