[Crossposted from Tiny Chunks of Empire... hence the Canadian content at the bottom.]
Look, I am going to level with you. I think you should make no mistake about it. The religious fanatics, or fundamentalist Christians, or Christianists, or Dominionists, or whatever name you want to give them, are coming after our birth control. Does it sound crazy? Yes, it does. Does it seem farfetched? Indubitably. Is it happening? Absolutely.
The Wall Street Journal has a great story today on new rules being drafted by the Bush Administration on the definition of "pregnancy" - draft regulations that classify birth control pills and the IUD as methods of abortion. This against a background of Sen. McCain pledging to appoint judges to the U.S. Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade (with, of course, disastrous consequences for the right to privacy in the U.S. as well).
Here's the nut grafs...
Administration supporters say the left's concerns are overblown and very few women would have real difficulty getting birth control. Still, some on the religious right are hoping the regulation would create some obstacles.
If the draft regulation were to prompt some insurance companies to drop coverage for prescription birth control, "that would be fantastic," said Tom McClusky, a strategist with the conservative Family Research Council.
I'll let that one hang in the air for a sec.
Is it happening in Canada? I grant you, it seems far off, particularly given the lack of political will here (so eloquently described by Colby Cosh in several recent articles and op-eds). But make no mistake... the goal is exactly the same. It's always been self-evident that the goal of anti-choice activists has been about re-establishing church control over women's bodies, but it's often too easy to forget that the control they seek to establish is far more pervasive than is sometimes portrayed.
Anti-choice politics is only tangentially about abortion (as the whimpering end to the recent Morgentaler shitfit* seems to demonstrate quite eloquently). It is, very much, about sex in both senses of that word.
*(Recently there was a furore over abortion provider Dr. Henry Morgentaler - who led the fight for legalizing abortion in Canada - being awarded the Order of Canada - a sort of mild, inoffensive, Canadian version of a knighthood. It was a nine-days' wonder in the press but in the end no one actually did anything about it.)