We may win a little skirmish now and then in the battle for women's rights, but the fight to subjugate women continues anew the next day. There is really no powerful organized opposition from our leaders in Congress.
Posner is right. The anti-choice side doesn't care if the polls show agreement for them or not. They do not care. Their goal is to change policy to suit them, trying to change minds in the process. They are just getting started.
Birth control: The right’s still winning
She points out the tendency of some liberals to do a victory dance and think the problem is solved.
It’s far too shortsighted, and worse, dangerously complacent, to measure victory election cycle by election cycle. (Even gaming the outcome of this year’s election is a risky proposition at best.) The opponents of birth control insurance coverage don’t use an election as a metric. Sure, they’d love to win, but even a loss inspires them to redouble their efforts, not to pack up and go home after learning they are on the minority side of public opinion.
They are evangelists. If public opinion isn’t on their side, they’ll strive to change public opinion. They are dogged, well-financed and unrelenting. Their claims about the proper role of religion in governing and policymaking — which Democrats fail to contest forcefully enough — are eroding the separation of church and state, and taking down gains made in access to reproductive healthcare along with it.
She then points out how the Health Care bill was harmed by the efforts of among others Bart Stupak and Jim Wallis.
Indeed, the Affordable Care Act in its final form was cobbled from capitulations to religious demands. Conservatives — including Democrats like former congressman Bart Stupak — threatened to prevent passage over their false claim that the bill would require federal funding of abortions. Even a superfluous reiteration of the Hyde Amendment’s abortion funding ban, offered by Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., failed to satisfy Obama allies like Jim Wallis. He pressed, in the name of “the faith community,” for even greater restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion, even though no taxpayer funds were going to be used for it in the first place.
I like her choice of the word "capitulation". That is exactly what happened. Gloria Feldt, a former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America said we need to take this movement very seriously. She said we tended to call it a fringe movement.
Few people believed Feldt when she predicted in 2004 that opposition to birth control was more than just a fringe movement that needed to be taken seriously, she says. But if the right is “successful in pulling that thread,” she adds, “the entire fabric of contraceptive coverage will be unraveled.” The pro-choice movement, Feldt contends, must “set the terms of engagement or lose the battle.”
Exactly. We need to take over the language and set the terms of engagement. Instead even now there are few loud voices speaking out on the absurdity of even questioning that birth control should be treated as a health issue.
I remember something that happened in 2009 that showed how much pressure was being put on Democrats by one group. Democrats for Life booted U.S. Representative Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) out of their group because he considered birth control as an issue that should be covered by insurance.
Democratic congressman kicked out of Democrats for Life for supporting birth control.
Ryan said he tried to convince officials with Democrats For Life of America, which he referred to Monday as a "fringe group," that the use of contraception is needed as part of any plan to reduce unintended pregnancies but that failed.
Kristen Day, Democrats For Life's executive director, was ready to move on. "DFLA gave Congressman Ryan ample opportunities to prove he's committed to protecting life, but he has turned his back on the community at every turn."
Ryan insists he's still a strong pro-life advocate. The proposed bill includes funding for comprehensive "teen pregnancy prevention" sex education and expanded coverage of "family planning" for low-income women. "We're working in Congress with groups that agree with preventative options while is getting left behind," Ryan said. "I can't figure out for the life of me how to stop pregnancies without contraception. Don't be mad at me for wanting to solve the problem."
I have been surprised the last few years to learn that much of the opposition to birth control is coming from the Southern Baptists. I grew up in that Southern Baptist culture, and I feel I can be critical fairly. The head of the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville had this to say about contraception:
First, we must start with a rejection of the contraceptive mentality that sees pregnancy and children as impositions to be avoided rather than as gifts to be received, loved, and nurtured. This contraceptive mentality is an insidious attack upon God’s glory in creation, and the Creator’s gift of procreation to the married couple.
That quote was in an article by
Reverend Al Mohler
It was in an article describing deliberate childlessness as a sin.
I don't know when evangelicals began to take part in the anti-contraception movement. However they do not intend to back down.
Posner points out the "long game" the anti-choicers are playing...changing the rules.
The opponents of birth control coverage are playing a long game. As they ransack family planning funding and prop up religious organizations, they are transforming the way information — and misinformation — about abortion and birth control is passed on to the public. Their efforts are enabled by narratives about religious persecution, demanding, in effect, to create a religious alternative to public health policy based in medicine and science. The Constitution doesn’t require or even envision that. Democrats and their pro-choice allies need to stake out their own long game.