What happens when you take copious amounts of hormonal carcinogens, steep in utter disregard for humanity, sprinkle with false compassion, stir all in a thinly veiled broth of vote grappling, and spike with pieces of women’s broken health, families torn asunder, and children dead and forgotten? You get something more messed up than the proverbial soup-sandwich. That’s what happens when politicians from divergent parties decide to advocate for more birth control in a quest for votes. That’s the recipe for this election cycle’s soup-sandwich.
For years, Planned Parenthood and its allies have lobbied for over-the-counter “emergency contraception” without age restrictions or medical supervision. EC is a concoction of the hormones in daily contraceptive birth control, given in much larger doses. The abortion giant lobbied, then gave huge kudos to politicians and government officials who helped facilitate that process. Planned Parenthood whines incessantly for expanded access to birth control, as if it were not available for a pittance on every street corner already.
In June 2013, after a federal court ordered over-the-counter availability for EC regardless of the age of young people seeking it, Planned Parenthood head Cecile Richards said, “This is a historic moment for women's health—and a huge step forward in Planned Parenthood's work to expand access to birth control. Hopefully, with this decision, women all over the country will soon be able to walk into a pharmacy and pick up emergency contraception off the shelves, as soon as they need it—no barriers, no shame.”
Enter a few Republicans—normally assumed to be on the other side of the political spectrum from those promoting abortifacient birth control—some of whom, in this election cycle, have decided to advocate for over-the-counter birth control, no doubt in a bid to garner women’s votes. Suddenly we see Planned Parenthood’s political action arm ascending the bully pulpit to proclaim that over-the-counter birth control is not good for women—that it actually increases the cost of obtaining the class one carcinogens. Time magazine quotes Planned Parenthood Action Fund executive VP Dawn Laguens: “The reality is that [Republican] Cory Gardner’s proposal [of over-the-counter birth control] would actually cost women more by forcing them to pay out of pocket for the birth control that they are getting now at no cost thanks to the ACA.” In other words, if they don’t come to Planned Parenthood to get their birth control, Planned Parenthood gets no money.
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In this evolving “war on women” that has been declared on both sides of the contraceptive conundrum, we see no politicians crying out about the harm that these pills and devices pose for women, much less the death they can deal to tiny humans. No, what we see are politicians from both sides stepping out in a bid to win the female vote by claiming they are doing women a favor easing the burden of obtaining the stuff that harms them. It harms them in so many ways, in fact, that the product risk information goes on for pages and pages.
Contraception is the very root of the tree whose “fruit” is abortion. It is at the contraceptive level that people make the conscious decision to separate sexual intercourse from the creation of children. It is from that decision and the sexual license and chaos that follow that the same people resort to abortion when birth control fails to perform as promised. It is for easier access to this that some Republicans are screaming. And it is their screaming that Democrats say validates their point that women need more birth control but that Republicans are not worthy of women’s trust.
What could be more messed up than a soup-sandwich? This election cycle has produced the definitive answer—a political birth control soup-sandwich.
Reprinted with permission from STOPP.org.