Normally I try to treat the subject of abortion either very dispassionately and logically, or very sensitively (yes, that’s my version of sensitivity). I appreciate it’s a touchy subject. But the latest regulation Lame-Duck Curious George wants to push through is going too far and is getting me rather cross.
Normally I wouldn’t get all hot about this given who is coming in next, and what his record is on women’s reproductive rights. I have no doubt this will be reverted and probably even repealed entirely. It’s the insult that gets me. That this guy (Bush) and his backers (antiquated nits) think so little of my rights and freedoms; that they are so arrogant as to try and regulate this in a lame duck session; that they are so obvious in their overall contempt for women; that’s what earns me the red hair temperament.
I can see no other motive behind this except that Bush and his antiquated nit supporters in this want us to stop having sex. They have this weird idea, I guess, that if they throw up more and more barriers to safe birth control methods, that we’ll stop having sex.
How’d that work out for Bristol Palin?
But more importantly, how well will that work out for the woman who can’t take the Pill and wants an IUD? How well will that work out for the woman with an ectopic pregnancy if she happens to run into a hospital worker opposed to abortion of any kind?
Enough! I am sick of having these arguments about sex, birth control and abortion. The sexual revolution was like 40 years ago. We won it. We’re having sex. We have methods to prevent pregnancy. The abortion battle was 35 years ago. We won that too and keep winning it over and over again. With Obama likely to appoint as many as 3 justices to SCOTUS, we’ll win it for decades to come.
The very simple fact is: Humans like to have sex. Humans like to have sex without consequences. Humans will continue to develop methods and technologies to have sex without consequences. Cleopatra stuck rocks in her naughty bits so she could have sex without consequences.* Every time someone tries to stop humans from having sex, we find a way around it. Medicine, the 60’s, the Internet. You get the idea.
So please stop banging your heads against this biological wall. You cannot legislate adult sex. Not well, not effectively, and not without creating some seriously bad edge cases. Or maybe not so edgy? One in fifty pregnancies can end up being a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy and this regulation would allow people to not treat that. When I’m rushing to the emergency room because I think my innards are about to rip apart and kill me, I’m not stopping to check whether the nearest hospital receives federal funds and whether there might be a virulent pro-lifer waiting to treat me (or not).
I can be sympathetic and agree that no one—excepting for the life and health of the mother—should be forced to perform an elective abortion. But birth control? Stay out of my fallopian tubes!
Birth control has become so accepted that no one dares speak openly against it anymore unless it’s the Catholic Church (and boy howdy do they have the moral superiority when it comes to sex). So the antiquated nits are going after it from the other end; calling birth control methods that work after conception abortion. More and more women are opting out of the Pill towards less hormonal methods, primarily the IUD (my data is anecdotal, not statistical; I’m too lazy to do the real research right now). But even if I don’t have the numbers, that any form of birth control is included in restrictions against abortion is nothing more to me than further invasion of my reproductive tract against my will.
Usually that’s called rape.
* I prefer modern methods, of course, but applaud that ancient lady for her inventiveness.
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