Conservatives Step Up Attacks On Public Funding For Birth Control

[ehrnst]

<snip>Some opponents, like conservative commentator Sandy Rios, say subsidizing birth control is simply too expensive in an era of tight budgets. "We have $14 trillion in debt, and now we're going to cover birth control?" she said on Fox News, adding, "Are we going to do pedicures and manicures as well? I think that would be a good idea."

Others, such as Jeffrey Kuhner, president of the conservative Edmund Burke Institute, say birth control is no less than an affront to God. "In short, liberals want to create a world without God and sexual permissiveness is their battering ram. Promoting widespread contraception is essential to forging a pagan society based on consequence-free sex," he wrote in an opinion piece for the Washington Times.

Still others, like Marjorie Dannenfelser, of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, insist that providing birth control doesn't even work at preventing abortions.

"As the money (for family planning) goes up, so do the number of abortions," she said. "We have not seen a reduction in abortions since the full funding of family planning. We have seen an escalation."</snip>


http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/09/07/140156682/conservatives-step-up-attacks-on-public-funding-for-birth-control


Birth Control is like a manicure? Really?

[TwilightGardener]

1. It's a manicure for your lady parts.

[MidwestTransplant]

2. it's like they drink stupid or something.

[ehrnst]

3. "Consequence-free sex" for women seems to be the latest boogeyman

lately...

[gratuitous]

4. These are the arguments they're proffering? Really?

Because I can tell Sandy Rios that covering the cost of birth control pills is a lot less expensive than covering the cost of an unwanted or an at-risk pregnancy. As for an affront to God, I was praying the other day and mentioned Jeffrey Kuhner, and God said, "Who?" So I don't know that Mr. Kuhner is necessarily a good spokesman for God or an authority on what God might want. I'd also be interested to see Ms. Dannenfelser's studies that back up her assertion that greater access to birth control for women doesn't translate ot fewer abortions. I don't know where her fantasyland is that features "full funding of family planning," but it doesn't exist on this planet.

In other words, the opposition to this long overdue and common-sense idea had better get better arguments or just shut the hell up.

[ehrnst]

5. They think that single women will stop having sex if they can't get BC pills.

Really.

[arbusto_baboso]

8. No. They WANT the consequences in place for women who have sex out of wedlock.

They'd rather have huge societal costs so they can "punish" "immoral women" than do the humane thing (and Christian thing, too, btw) and take some measures which would alleviate suffering.

[MedicalAdmin]

17. The only sure cure for sex is marriage...

... and even then it's not a panacea.

[surrealAmerican]

21. It's not only single women, either.

How many married women want the dozen or so children they would have without birth control? Even people who want a child or two don't usually want quite as many as they would have without birth control.

[ehrnst]

6. Apparently, women having consequence-free sex is at the root of our spending problems.

Along with promiscuous nail care.

[EC]

7. But men can have promiscuous sex

with their blessings and some viagra to boot?

On edit: Medicare even pays for that damn vacuum pump for hard to get hard-ons. How is that a medical need? Doesn't a hand job do the same thing? Let those guys use their vacuum cleaner hose, why are we paying for their pumps?

[ehrnst]

10. I had no idea. OMG. I just googled it and...

http://www.medicarepenispumps.com/

[EC]

13. I know...

My guess is the men that use this are just not turned on by their wives. I'm thinking that gay men trying to pass as straight use these because their wives certainly wouldn't turn them on.

[dawg]

16. I doubt that.

Some men don't respond to the ED meds. I can't imagine anyone prefering a device to a real, live woman. (Especially one he loved and respected)

[Missy Vixen]

18. Maybe the wives should have a device of their own

>My guess is the men that use this are just not turned on by their wives.<

Gosh. Maybe they can dump her old, wrinkly ass, and get that beautiful eighteen-year-old down the street. That'll fix it all.

:eyes:

[PotatoChip]

19. In addition, Michelle Bachmann's husband's clinic received

Medicare funds for their anti-gay 'treatments'. Being gay according to the Bachmanns is an 'illness' apparently. :grr:

[Arkansas Granny]

9. This information from the Guttmacher Institute refutes her claim about

not seeing a reduction in abortions.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

[ehrnst]

11. Facts, schmacts. (nt)

[CTyankee]

20. Yep. Consider the source. They have an "agenda." Guttmacher is affiliated with Planned Parenthood.

That, of course, makes all their data suspect, irrespective of the fact that so many health departments use their reproductive health data and they have never been seriously challenged in any of their studies.

Ridiculous bullshit.

[sinkingfeeling]

12. You know, we could afford anything we wanted if we just had enough nerve to slash the

DOD budget by 3/4's and raise taxes on millionaires.

[hifiguy]

14. Free-basing teh stoopid is a very bad idea

and this is yet more proof. What is there left to say about morans like this? :crazy:

[mfcorey1]

15. Where is the attack on Viagra, Cialis, penile implantst and other male enhancements that lead to

pregnancy in women? We need some voices that say that if a woman becomes pregnant and cannot have an abortion, then a man has to have a vasectomy because he caused the condition. Silly policies require silly but make sense responses. It is time for government to leave the uterus alone!