Conservatives' calls for taking away taxpayer funding for abortion provider Planned Parenthood and ensuring that religious organizations are not forced to pay for abortions and birth control through their health insurance plans proves we are not a "sane society," complains Jezebel founding editor and Washington Post columnist Anna Holmes in a Style section column today, blandly titled "The politics of birth control."*
The feminist writer opened her column by grousing that "almost 39 years to the day that the right to abortion was decided" by the Supreme Court, "we're still having a conversation about the access to and legality of female reproductive health services." In other words, "dammit, pro-lifers, you just won't quit!"
Sure, "No one in the race for the GOP nomination has called for an explicit ban on contraception. That's because they don't have to," aiming instead to "chip away" at "reproductive rights laws" by a "strategy" that involves "Defund[ing] family-planning initiatives and organizations, legislat[ing] away health insurance coverage of birth control or block[ing] FDA approval for new preventatives," hence making "contraception all but obsolete."
Of course, it's HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, no right-wing Republican she, who recently overruled an FDA recommendation to make the Plan B contraceptive available over-the-counter to young girls. It's hardly a right-wing proposal to prevent completely unfettered access to powerful birth control drugs to minor children without their parents' consent or knowledge. And at least in theory the Obama administration has suggested it agrees that religious organizations should be exempt from requirements to provide health insurance for contraception.
But why let facts get in the way of a good, conspiratorial screed? Indeed, Holmes turned a few times in her January 13 post to quote Michelle Goldberg of the Daily Beast/Newsweek, whom you may recall last year insisted Michele Bachmann was an evil schemer bent on "Christian plot" of "domination" of the United States.
Holmes did find a silver lining towards the end of her screed. The "newly explicit GOP attack on reproductive health services underscores what many abortion-rights activists and advocates have known all along," that pro-lifers aren't fixed no a "fantasy of saving cute, chubby babies but to the very idea that women can, and should, make decisions about their own bodies, and that sex is for more than just procreation."
That's right, Ms. Holmes, pro-life conservatives, especially ones with big families, detest sex. They hate making love and only suffer through it to have plenty of kids to brainwash into conservative Republicans that you continue their war to overturn Roe v. Wade. [Insert evil laugh here]
"Finally, the real agenda is coming out," Holmes closed her column, quoting "online women's health advocacy outlet RH Reality Check" editor Jodi Jacobson.
Actually, Ms. Holmes, the political fight over public financing of Planned Parenthood is only exposing that it's never been about "choice" to the pro-choice Left but rather the political normalization and ongoing public financing of the abortion industry through taxpayer dollars.
*The online version was laughably titled "Conversation over abortion continues 39 years later."
