This isn't the first time some bullshit right-winger pulled this Communist theory out of their ass. So, a few thoughts.

• Tucker Carlson and all the rest of these assholes are avowed free-marketeers and capitalists. Many of them have opposed health care reform for more than a decade, in part because they don't want to see doctors be able to successfully monetize their educations. That is, of course, unless those doctors are performing abortions, in which case they should be poor.
• Most people who've studied economics understand the theory of supply and demand: when supply goes down and demand remains the same, prices go up. Anti-abortion activists have spent more than 35 years trying to drive abortion practices out of business through extra-legal harassment, intimidation, murder, assault, over-regulation (again, exposing the limits of their love of a free market) and attempted bans on abortion providers and abortion clinics. If abortion providers are getting rich off of their practices — and they've got no evidence other than Tiller's profits, which he had to plow back into providing security for himself, his employees and his patients — they've got no one to blame but themselves.
• The whole stupid concept rests on the idea that since Carlson and his ilk think abortion is immoral, the people who think they're providing a legitimate, necessary and legal medical service for women have no right to make money. I don't think Tucker Carlson would like to be on the receiving end of a national debate over how much money he should be compensated for spewing conservative bullshit and amoral hot air from his piehole.

Now, mind you, Tucker Carlson's compensation for being a conservative talking head isn't a matter of public record, but let's guess he easily makes over $150,000 a year (and likely much, much more) for his work. Technically speaking, then, Tucker Carlson, while appearing on Fox News yesterday as a compensated contributor, just made money off of abortion. And he's not the only one.

While Operation Rescue's non-profit status was revoked by the IRS in 2006 for illegal political activities, it meant that its donors couldn't legally take a tax deduction for their donations — though its website helpfully promises confidential "advice" about nonetheless making suchdonations. What this means is that, unlike much of its competition, it don't have to disclose how much money they pay their directors or staff. But if it's anything like its competition on the right, it's pretty substantial.

Take Focus on the Family, headquartered in Colorado Springs (median household income: $51,227). its employees do pretty well for themselves — hell, you might say that they're "enriching" themselves by advocating abortion. For instance, the organization's president, James Daly, is paid $240,000 per year by its political action arm (which allows it to lobby). Its CFO, Wade Crow, makes $136,000 and Senior Vice President Thomas Minnery makes $150,000. From the strict non-profit side, Senior VP Bufford Tackett pulls in $180,000 every year; COO Glenn Williams $172,000, and 10 other senior VPs make between $120,000 and $147,000. Its 5 highest paid employees that aren't considered officers make between $116,000 and $137,000. That means Focus on the Family has at least 20 employees who make more than $100,000 every year.

Over at the Family Research Council in DC, its President, Anthony Perkins, makes more than $200,000 each year, while its Executive Vice President Chuck Donovan makes $175,000 and its VP of Administration, Paul Tripodi, makes $125,000. Its top 5 employees who aren't officers pull down between $117,000 and $138,000, given them at least 8 employees that make more than double the median household income in the United States today — and that's not including the former board member their political arm continues to shell out more than $100,000 a year to.

In a shining example of the wage gap, the American Life League only pays its President, Judith Brown, $127,000 each year. Her husband, like Todd Palin, is the uncompensated EVP, and no other director makes over $100,000 — but 3 of its top 5 employees do. David O'Steen, Executive Direction of the National Right to Life Committee, and his second-in-command Darla St. Martin both make over $100,000, though they don't pay O'Steen's mother, who serves on the Board.

More amusing is the compensation structure over at the Concerned Women of America, where Board Chairwoman Barbara LeHaye's son, Lee, serves as CFO and makes $115,000, and President Wendy Wright makes $121,000. Barbara LeHaye is the only compensated Board member, pulling in $26,000 herself. But the male Executive Director George Tryfiates, makes $129,000 and the male Director of Development pulls in a cool $135,000 each year ( i.e., more than the female President). In fact, of the top 5 employees outside of the directors, only one is a woman — and she makes under $100,000. No wonder the wage gap isn't on its agenda.

This, by the way, is just a sampling of the people (and the ways) that anti-abortion advocates enrich themselves while serving God's supposed will. Conversely, the mean annual wage for all obstetricians and gynecologists is about $200,000 — and most of those people don't have to hire armed body guards and buy bulletproof vests and armor their cars to go to work. So, maybe people like Tucker Carlson ought to stop getting paid for flapping their lips about how doctors have the audacity, in a capitalist society, to make money for providing a legal and demanded medical service, or stop bitching about how other people make their money doing things they disagrees with.

Tucker Carlson Decries Doctors Who "Get Rich Performing Abortions" [Huffington Post]
Focus on the Family 990 2008 [GuideStar]
Focus on the Family Action 990 2008 [GuideStar]
Family Research Council 990 2008 [GuideStar]
Family Research Council Action 990 2008 [GuideStar]
American Life League 990 2008 [GuideStar]
National Right to Life Committee 990 2008 [GuideStar]
Concerned Women for America 990 2008 [GuideStar]
Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2008: 29-1064 Obstetricians and Gynecologists [Bureau of Labor Statistics]

Related: Video of Jon Stewart's Epic Takedown of Crossfire [About.com]
Operation Rescue [RH Reality Check]
Donate [Operation Rescue]
Colorado Springs, Colorado [US Census]
Undermining Women's Choices [Concerned Women For America]

Earlier: How The Anti-Abortion Movement Demonized George Tiller

Pro-choice activists are, according to Lynn Harris on Broadsheet, worried about 3 specific rulings of Sotomayor's: Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush, in which she ruled that the global gag rule was Constitutional; Amnesty America v. Town of West Hartford, in which she ruled in favor of anti-abortion protesters; and Lin v. Gonzales, in which she ruled in favor of asylum for a Chinese woman because of China's enforcement of its one-child policy. But, for most pro-choice activists, the first case is the most concerning.

According to Filipovic (a lawyer herself):

The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP) argued that the Gag Rule violated their First Amendment, Equal Protection and Due Process rights. On the First Amendment claim, CRLP argued that the Gag Rule prevented the organization from fully communicating with international non-governmental organizations; if non-U.S.-based NGOs worked with CRLP to advocate for abortion rights in their own countries, they would lose U.S. funding. Thus, the Gag Rule's speech-chilling effect prevented CRLP, a domestic organization, from carrying out their mission, thereby curtailing their freedoms of speech and association. CRLP also argued that the Gag Rule violated their Fifth Amendment Equal Protection rights by privileging anti-abortion views and putting the CRLP on unequal footing when it comes to domestic competition with anti-choice organizations, and violated CRLP's Due Process rights by, as Sotomayor summarized in her opinion, "failing to give clear notice of what speech and activities they prohibit and by encouraging arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement."

In other words, the CRLP argued that by not allowing NGO's in other countries to work with CRLP to advocate for abortion rights abroad, the global gag rule violated CRLP's right to speak and associate in the United States. It further argued that, by allowing anti-abortion groups to work with and talk to NGO's abroad without risk to their funding, the government was violating their right to equal protection; and that, since the standard for what speech did and did not qualify international NGOs to lose their funding, the gag rule violated due process.

Sotomayor ruled against the suit. In terms of the First Amendment argument, the Court had previously ruled against Planned Parenthood on similar grounds in a similar case, so she dismissed that one. She dismissed the due process claim, stating that, because the risk was to international NGOs, not the CRLP, the CRLP lacked standing. And she dismissed the equal protection claim because it did not apply to a suspect class (one's beliefs about abortion are not a class) or infringe upon a fundamental Constitutional right (the right to government funding). But what seems to worrys people the most was this statement of Sotomayor's in the ruling:

"the Supreme Court has made clear that the government is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds."

Filipovic doesn't find this decision particularly worrisome:

If anything, CRLP v. Bush highlights precisely why Sotomayor should, in a sane world, be an easy confirmation: She sticks to the rule of law, respects precedent and writes thoughtful and reasoned opinions. She was nominated to the federal district court by George H.W. Bush. Her decisions are left-leaning insofar as she generally seeks to protect Constitutional rights by supporting religious freedom and free speech, and she often sides with the plaintiffs in discrimination cases - hardly "activist" material.

While Filipovic disagrees with some of Sotomayor's decisions, stating "Sotomayor would not have been my first choice, primarily because my political leanings are far to the left of her legal theory," and a handful of other First and Fourth Amendment decisions she disagrees with Sotomayor about, she supports the nomination because of Sotomayor's overall legal philosophy.

Plus, she adds:

Right-wingers are going to oppose her nomination with full force - we would be foolish to do it for them.

But when have liberals ever made things easy on ourselves?

Abortion Rights Backers Get Reassurances on Nominee [Washington Post]
Fair and Balanced: Weighing Sotomayor's Opinions [RH Reality Check]
Sotomayor And Abortion [Broadsheet]

Bennett Gordon, writing for the Utne Reader, says:

Researchers often reduce sex down to its most basic, physical elements, viewing intercourse in terms of function and dysfunction, rather than idiosyncratic preferences.

He — and the Boston Globe's Drake Bennett — are (of course) mostly concerned about Viagra. The latter writes:

At its worst, they warn, [sex science] is pushing us into a sort of sexual arms race as people engage in sex acts that hold little interest for them, partake of a growing pharmacopeia of sex drugs, even get formerly unheard-of cosmetic surgeries to measure up to a fictional sexual ideal.

I don't know that sex science is to blame for that as much as sex marketing — but Gordon and Bennet conflate the two.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the marketing of Viagra. Many people swear by the drug's regenerative properties, but Bennett writes, "the benefits of Viagra and similar pills have to be balanced against the fact that they have made our sex lives seem like something that can - and should - be fixed with a drug."

And, while that's do doubt true, I'm not sure that's an argument for less knowledge or research, even into the mechanics of sex and sexual pleasure.

So what is the problem?

The overly medicalized science isn't just misguided, it also prevents helpful work from being done. Bennett quotes Amy Allina, program director at National Women's Health Network, saying, "We don't really know - and this is a timely one - how unemployment affects a couple's sex life."

Interestingly, 12 years ago, I participated in a sex study of how worry (as opposed to fear) affects arousal... so there was certainly work being done on stress and (at least female) arousal more than a decade ago, even if it Allina and Bennett haven't seen it around.

They do think there is hope, though.

Scientists are now proposing a new, more "humanistic" model of sex, according to Bennett, that respects the idiosyncrasies of people and their relationships. Looking beyond the physiological, sex science could promote a more healthy view of sex as it functions inside of relationships.

Which, again, is great: sex quite often has a psychological component and a social-psychological component, and understanding how those interact with the physiological component is important. But do we have to throw the boner-pills (or the supposedly forthcoming ladyboner pills) out with the proverbial bathwater to get there? Can't we understand our bodies and our minds and our relationships better and thus have better sex?

Are Sex Studies Bad for Sex? [Utne Reader]

Related: Mary Roach: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm [TED]
My Beautiful Cervix

Earlier: Mary Roach Writes About Sex (And Not Even In a Dirty Way)
Being Cervix-y

In fact, it's not as ineffective at preventing pregnancy as we might think.

The best available estimates indicate that with "perfect use," 4% of couples relying on withdrawal will become pregnant within a year, compared with 2% of couples relying on the male condom. More realistic estimates suggest that with "typical use," 18% of couples relying on withdrawal will become pregnant within a year, compared with 17% of those using the male condom. In other words, with either method, more than eight in 10 avoid pregnancy.

So, if it's just pregnancy we're concerned with avoiding, it's actually not the worst choice.

Which is a fact not lost by the majority of women who have used it at one time or another.

A majority of sexually experienced women rely on withdrawal at some point in their life-56%, according to the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth. (By comparison, 82% have ever used the pill, and 90% the male condom.)

Notice, please, that it doesn't say that the majority of women have used it in monogamous relationships (or that women who rely on hormonal birth control use condoms for that purpose). But there is often a lot of finger-pointing at women who practice withdrawal, as though they're just playing Russian roulette with their reproductive systems, despite this fact:

A smaller study, the Women's Well-Being and Sexuality Study, found that 21% of younger and more educated women were using withdrawal.

So you can be smart and educated and practice withdrawal?

In fact, women who practice withdrawal aren't the only ones taking pregnancy tests — and they're not even the majority.

However, only 5% of women at risk of unintended pregnancy currently use the method (11% when those who use it in conjunction with another method are included).

Jones thinks it's time to stop utterly stigmatizing women who practice withdrawal.

Also, we're hearing anecdotally that because of the current economy, fewer women are able to afford these more effective methods, yet many cannot afford to have another child right now. For these couples, withdrawal may be a good backup option when used in conjunction with condoms. Withdrawal can provide ‘extra insurance' against pregnancy for all couples, even those using hormonal methods. And withdrawal is far more effective at preventing pregnancy than use of no method at all.

She's not, however, advocating that everyone use it, or use it instead of more effective methods of birth control (and actually-effective methods of disease-prevention, like condoms). She's just suggesting that health providers start talking about it in a scientific fashion with their patients, and that they stop telling women who use it that they might as well use nothing at all — which is both inaccurate and unhelpful.

Does Withdrawal Deserve Another Look? [Guttmacher Institute via Feministing]

[Image via BBPANTONE]

Taylor caught conservative Robert Stacy McCain mid-masturbatory fantasy envisioning the consequences of a world in which a 17-year-old woman can get Plan B without a prescription:

Plan B - the drug that allows guys to breathe a sigh of relief the morning after using some chick for selfish pleasure-will now be available to 17-year-olds without a prescription.

Who cares that she's not even old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes legally? Get her drunk on wine coolers, get what you want, then the next morning, take her to CVS to get Plan B and make sure there's no chance the slut will show up in a few months talking child support payments and DNA tests.

So guys, if you screw a 17-year-old and "forget" to use a condom, remember: Nothing says "thanks a lot, you cheap whore" like the gift of Plan B!

Gross. In Robert Stacy McCain's world, women (and certainly those of the age of 17) have no sexual autonomy and the men who engage in sexual intercourse with them have no interest in them as people, no feelings for them as partners and no thought of protecting them (or themselves). On behalf of my high school boyfriend, fuck this guy.

Taylor's response, I'll admit, is somewhat more eloquent than mine.

While I'm never one to say inflammatory things, it seems that part of the reason that some women get abortions (which Plan B is not, mind you) is because of the overwhelming and disproportionate social shaming that comes with getting pregnant the "wrong" way. Women as baby-carriers must be virtuous, pure; to interfere with that image is to abandon their responsibility of stopping Raging Penis Monsters from getting in their panties. It turns a biological state into an ethical duty in the worst manner possible, either making a woman a bitch who ain't shit but a ho and/or trick, or into a shining Republican Christian beacon of responsible fertility and excellence in leadership, potentially up for Regional Vagina Manager of the Year.

Taylor hits the nail on the head. In the eyes of many Republicans, women who mistakenly get pregnant are stupid whores or out for the cash money (see also: welfare queens and pregnant teenagers) and those who "successfully" manage their fertility by not engaging in too much sex or contraception are to be commended.

Luckily, for the drunken 17-year-old sluts of Mr. McCain's fantasies, today's Onion presents Plan C.

Reduces the chance of aborting pregnancy after unprotected sex (i.e., if a regular birth control method succeeds and you have a sudden dramatic change of heart). Not intended to replace responsible choices in life.

It's always scary when The Onion's parodies sound a little too similar to real Republican ideas.

A Little Bit Weird About Sex, Just Saying [Pandagon]
Morning After Morning After Pill Re-Impregnates Guilt-Ridden Women [The Onion]

The University of Cambridge explains:

Although claiming to show the living fetus, [Lennart] Nilsson actually photographed abortus material obtained from women who terminated their pregnancies under the liberal Swedish law. Working with dead embryos allowed Nilsson to experiment with lighting, background and positions, such as placing the thumb into the fetus' mouth. But the origin of the pictures was rarely mentioned, even by ‘pro-life' activists, who in the 1970s appropriated these icons.

So, when anti-abortion activists are showing pictures of their "babies" to clinic clients, they're actually using pictures of aborted fetuses.

Nilsson's photographs aside, the exhibit itself is about the development of fetal imagery in science and popular culture over the last millennium, starting with the idea that fetuses were tiny — but fully formed — humans. Despite the imagery, abortion was common and accepted before the Enlightenment period until the point where the fetus started to move, as that was considered to only reliable sign of actual pregnancy.

Distinguished by their periodic discharge of fluids, especially blood, women in their fertile years were perched between good growth and evil stagnation. An interruption of the monthly course was variously interpreted as a harbinger of pregnancy or a sign of ill health: a woman might be expecting a child or need to take herbs to restore the flow. Something she passed could be the returned period, an abortion or a false conception.

Pregnancy remained uncertain even when the bleeding failed to reappear and the abdomen started to enlarge. The earliest reliable sign was ‘quickening', when a mother-to-be felt the child move in the womb-but in some cases pregnancy was revealed for certain only at birth.

Therefore, if you weren't yet pregnant, per se, abortion wasn't necessarily really "abortion"... or evil.

Some theologians placed ensoulment, or the acquisition of a God-given immortal soul, at conception. Yet from the late Middle Ages the Aristotelian view dominated. For practical purposes, quickening tended to be interpreted as coinciding with the entry of the soul. Understanding the early embryo as not-yet-human contributed to widespread tolerance of abortion. This would begin to change only in the Enlightenment.

So, the Enlightenment apparently had its flaws.

In fact, the Enlightenment — and thereafter the Industrial Revolution — led to governments thinking about maternal health and maternal care for even unmarried pregnant women (and the criminalization of abortion) for the good of the workforce.

In the late 1700s governments and medicine focused intensely on pregnancy because a healthy and numerous population was now seen as essential to a well-ordered, competitive state. The punishment and prevention of abortion and infanticide were hotly debated in legal and medical circles. New lying-in hospitals provided care, food and shelter for poor, unmarried women. They also trained midwives and the man-midwives, later called obstetricians, who were taking over childbirth among the upper classes. These institutions increased anatomists' access to embryonic and fetal specimens.

Access to specimens, from spontaneous abortion (miscarriages), induced abortions and cadavers led to a greater understanding of fetal development which, in turn, contributed to debates about (of course) evolution.

To produce a series, Soemmerring needed embryos that, hidden in women's bodies, were hard to obtain.

The main source was abortions, spontaneous or induced. Very occasionally anatomists carried out post-mortems of women who turned out to have been in early pregnancy. Some had committed suicide precisely because they feared a child. Soemmerring found a rich embryo collection already established in Kassel. Further specimens came through personal medical networks. The foundling house and the lying-in hospital there furnished the anatomical theatre with human material: corpses, still-births and abortions.

This led to drawings comparing human fetuses to other animal fetuses by Ernst Häckel, which showed many species were similar at the early stages of development and drew ire from creationists and others opposed to evolutionary science.

But it wasn't until the 1930s that a scientist, Arthur T. Hertig, collaborated with a technician, Miriam Menkin, and a gynecologist, John Rock, to view the first fertilized egg.

To ‘harvest' elusive embryos, Rock recruited married women under 45 with at least two children who were scheduled for hysterectomy. They were asked to keep diaries of their periods, body temperature and sexual intercourse. Rock's assistant Miriam Menkin admitted that she hinted to the patients that it would be helpful if they had sex before the operation, which was scheduled to follow ovulation closely. Data from the women's diaries were combined with the morphology of the embryo and changes in the uterine lining specific to each day of the menstrual cycle to date specimens unusually precisely. At the time, no one involved regarded the procedure as an artificial abortion; once it was seen in this way, the work became impossible to repeat.

Of course, the anti-abortion movement has never been shy about taking advantage of discoveries, technology and even photographic images they opposed, or would have opposed, for their own ends.

‘In our presentation, we would show the eighteen-week LIFE Magazine cover, and ask, is this being human? Subsequently, we will show very human looking babies at sixteen, fourteen, twelve, and eleven weeks (…) We will then show them one more visual at six weeks, and then we'll show no visuals under six weeks (...) We will not show visuals under six weeks, because we feel that if we do, the audience may change their minds', instructed the ‘pro-life' campaigner Barbara Willke in her 1973 manual, How to teach the pro-life story.

Yes, goodness knows, we wouldn't want people to have enough information to choose for themselves!

Making Visible Embryos [University of Cambridge via New Scientist]

Allen, who hadn't had a Pap smear in 10 years despite the urging of her regular doctor, scheduled an exam following the death of British reality TV star Jade Goody from cervical cancer. Although she finds Pap smears traumatic, when meeting her gynecologist and nurse for the first time, she failed to reveal her mental illness or that she finds the experience trauma-inducing.

The nurse was a perfectly kind and decent woman. The doctor she went off, mid-process, to fetch was probably more or less human too – by that point my judgment was somewhat impaired – but neither appeared to have even the most basic comprehension of my position.

"Why are you so upset?" asked the doctor, laughing, presumably in some misguided attempt to lighten the atmosphere. Lying naked from the waist down on a couch with my legs in the air didn't strike me as the most appropriate time to discuss it. "None of us like it," she told me, smiling. "But it's not as bad as going to the dentist." By the time I left, I was in such a state I cannot even remember going home.

Well, to be frank, of course he lacked comprehension of her position — because she didn't tell him anything about what her position was. He and his nurse were facing a person who, for very legitimate but undisclosed reasons, was having a severe emotional reaction to a routine medical exam.

Allen says that a short conversation before or after the exam might have helped — although, by her own admission, she was so upset by the end of it that she doesn't remember getting home. And, yes, some doctors can lack bedside manners, or patients can be stacked too close together to allow for conversation, or the patient's own demeanor might lead them to believe that she doesn't wish to engage in conversation. But, at the end of the day, when you're visiting a doctor for the first time, or have relevant medical information of which they are unaware, information that wouldn't come up on a checklist screening (like mental illness or a history of assault) but can affect the exam or its results, the full responsibility doesn't lie with the gynecologist. If you wouldn't go to your therapist and keep quiet about it, you shouldn't keep it from your regular doctor or your gynecologist, either.

I'm not going to pretend it's fun to tell a relative stranger, health professional or not, that you've been raped or have a history of mental illness that predisposes you to find certain medical procedures or examinations traumatic. It's not. I never thought to inform my doctors until graduate school, actually, when, due to switch in my birth control prescription, I ended up with a yeast and a bacterial infection (nasty, I know). The doctor at student health services was, let's say, far from experienced in the art of giving a pelvic exam and, in an effort to preserve the sanctity of his specimens, shoved the speculum in me without any lubrication. When the examination was over, I sat up, looked him in the eye and told him that before he shoved a speculum in another woman without lubrication and told her to relax, he'd damn well better think to ask if she had a history of sexual assault.

Recently, when I went for my 6-month follow-up exam to my rape kit (and my annual Pap smear), I explained to my doctor — who has always been extremely efficient but with whom I lacked a certain rapport — that I'd been sexually assaulted since my last visit. And suddenly, the experience of the exam changed. She was kind, thoughtful, and empathetic — and she spent more time talking me through the (very gentle) pelvic exam than she had in the past. I imagine that most medical professionals - particularly gynecologists - would do the same if they could, if only given the right information.

Why I'm Never Going To Have Another Smear Test [The Guardian]

Basically, as Alkon sees it, there are legions of desperate wannabe moms out there who go to bars, pick up men, lie about their birth control status and get pregnant for the purpose of finding a financier to bankroll motherhood. Those who just fuck up their birth control too much should either start getting Depo or get an IUD so they can ensure they don't get pregnant. But, if pregnancy catches up with a dude who wasn't expecting it, well, it's totally unfair that the system makes him pay child support.

Not once does Alkon suggest that if a man doesn't wish to assume to risk of impregnating someone that he should either religiously use condoms regardless of what the women says about her birth control method (or STD status) — particularly if he is being taken home from bars for one night stands — or refrain from engaging in sexual activity that carries a risk of pregnancy. In fact, she dismisses the latter as "unrealistic." But, the risk of the pregnancy is utterly the woman's, and if she's not prepared to have an abortion, give the kid up or support it financially on her own, then she shouldn't be having sex.

Gotcha Pregnancies & Men's Rights [Pajamas TV]

Related: Advice Goddess [Official Site]
Dr. Helen [Official Site]

Earlier: Getting Knocked Up "Accidentally On Purpose" Is All The Rage In London

Pamela Merritt at RH Reality Check writes:

The legislation would create the crime of "coercing an abortion" if a woman has experienced threats of having a scholarship for higher education at a public or private institution revoked because she is pregnant; threats of employment discrimination or termination if she continues her pregnancy; stalking, assault or domestic assault. Many of the people with whom I discussed HCS HB 46 & 434 were initially supportive until they looked beneath the surface. The bill would make physicians and anyone assisting them criminals for helping women obtain an abortion "with knowledge" that the woman has been "coerced" and would prohibit the woman from consenting to an abortion as the "victim of a coerced abortion."

In other words, if you ever felt coerced to have an abortion (but, naturally, not if you felt coerced to carry a pregnancy to term), you can never, in the future, ever consent to having an abortion. Merritt explains:

Consider a woman who is pregnant as the result of rape who, with her doctor, decides that an abortion is the best course of action. Imagine that rape survivor also mentions to her doctor that her boyfriend agrees with her decision, but has been aggressive with her about it. With HB46, now the doctor must turn the situation over to the government which mandates that the doctor label that rape survivor a "victim of coerced abortion" who "lacks the consent required by law."

Ugh.

Merritt goes on to note that the situation is actually worse than even just that. The same people pushing to permanently restrict a woman's right to choose an abortion if a third-party deems her coerced are also pushing laws to make sure she can't get birth control or Plan B if the pharmacist morally objects and would criminalize the act of carrying a child to term if one is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Merrit says

I have to wonder if [the pregnancy criminalization bills] SB459 and SB 529 would open up the legislature to felony prosecution for committing the crime of "coercing and abortion" should the abortion restriction bill HCS HB 46 & 434 become law, because it threatens women with unemployment, incarceration and the potential loss of scholarships should they carry their pregnancy to term while addicted to drugs or alcohol.

God, if only we could lock those guys up.

Missouri Legislature: Coerced Pregnancy, Fine; Voluntary Abortion, No Way [RH Reality Check]

(That's .024% of the total stimulus package, if you're counting).

The provision that pissed off Republicans so much that they threatened to vote across the plan en masse wasn't even a massive service to hand out birth control willy-nilly on the street. It was a change to administrative law that would have allowed the 23 states that don't yet participate in a waiver program allowing them to cover contraceptive services for poor women who don't qualify for Medicaid to do so without a long application process.

State Option to Cover Family Planning Services. Under current law, the Secretary has the authority under section 1115 of the Social Security Act to grant waivers to states to allow them to cover family planning services and supplies to low-income women who are not otherwise eligible for Medicaid. The bill would give states the option to provide such coverage without obtaining a waiver. States could continue to use the existing waiver authority if they preferred.

As Samhita at Feministing pointed out, it's simply a way to reduce administrative costs to states that wish to provide this service. How terrible!

In the midst of all the hullabaloo, that fact was, of course, lost, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took a lot of heat for daring to suggest that providing birth control services to people that couldn't afford them might stimulate the economy by having people spend money they wouldn't already have — the same way the stimulus package includes money for roads. But that wasn't good enough for pretty much anyone, so Pelosi and Barack Obama have decided to pull the money out of the stimulus package to increase its chances of passing both the House and the Senate.

Both Pelosi and Obama plan to bring the legislation back at some point, but that hasn't stopped the criticism from the left (nor should it). But hopefully by then they'll care slightly less about getting some overwhelming majority to vote for it for the sake of optics and a little more about passing legislation that Americans by and large support.

Obama Begs Waxman to Yank Birth Control from Stimulus [Washington Independent]
House Dems Axe Birth Control Funds From Stimulus Bill [Fox News]
New Right-Wing Stimulus Myth: Progressives Want To Spend ‘Hundreds Of Millions On Contraceptives’ [Think Progress]
Conservative lies: Wasteful spending on contraception hurts our economic stimulus package [Feministing]
Officials: Family planning money may be dropped [Associated Press]
Daily Intrigue: Mirth control [Politico]
On Obama's Urging, House Dems To Drop Family Planning From Stimpak [Marc Ambinder]
Obama On Family Planning Funds [Marc Ambinder]
Politico's Thrush invents Pelosi controversy [Media Matters]

Just to refresh everyone's memory, here is what the leaked memo said: "The Department proposes to define abortion as 'any of the various procedures — including the prescription and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.'"

Leavitt doesn't refute the idea that this is what the Bush Administration's HHS department believes, he merely says, in a blog post on the HHS website, that "the issue I asked to be addressed in this regulation is not abortion or contraceptives." He prefaces that with the sentence, "The Bush Administration has consistently supported the unborn." That reminds me of Beetlejuice when they continuously refer to the "undead," as a race of people. His language is appalling. He's calling them "unborn" like you'd refer to "the Jews" or "the Chinese." They're a bunch of frickin cells, dude. They're not a group of people.

Leavitt wants to ensure that medical practitioners have the right "to practice according to their conscience, and patients should be able to choose a doctor who has beliefs like his or hers." I made a similar point with the original post on the HHS memo, but what if I were diabetic and all the doctors at the hospital in my small town thought that giving me insulin was disrupting God's plan for me? The same thing can go for birth control, because, as many Jezebel commenters pointed out, birth control has many non-sex-related uses, like regulating fibroids.

Katha Pollitt put in her two cents on the Bush administration's "Stealth Assault On Reproductive Rights" on the Nation's website earlier this week. Mike Leavitt's "respect for moral beliefs only goes one way. A Catholic hospital has no corresponding obligation to hire pro-choice workers or accommodate their moral beliefs by permitting them to offer emergency contraception to rape victims or hand out condoms to the HIV positive," Pollitt raged. "A 'crisis pregnancy center' would not have to hire pro-choice counselors who would tell women that abortion would not really give them breast cancer or leave them sterile. Only anti-choicers, apparently, have moral beliefs that entitle them to jobs they refuse to actually perform."

Pollitt provides a link to more info and how to help make sure our reproductive rights are upheld, and I'll do the same. Also provided with this post is a picture of Mike Leavitt's thin-lipped, smug little face, (above) so that you can fantasize about kicking him in the nards. That's one kind of religiously sanctioned birth control I can get behind!

HHS Chief Denies New Rule To Attack Contraception [Reuters]
Stealth Assault On Reproductive Rights [The Nation]
Fight Bush's Proposed Anti-Birth Control Regulations! [Reproductive Health Reality check]

Earlier: Bush Administration Memo Tries To Define Birth Control As Abortion