Echidne of the Snakes, reminds us of what ‘W’ really stands for and it sure as hell isn’t for women. Certainly not for our reproductive rights. As some of you may know, the FDA has conveniently been taking its grand ole time in officially approving mass distribution of the emergency contraceptive pill, Plan B, though two FDA panels have already found it to be safe for women to use. The playing of politics with women’s health and rights continues. Echidne, please elaborate….
In fact, George Bush and his wingnuts care so much for the women of this world that they are prepared to have as many as 68,000 more of them dead:
Dead from what, might I ask?
The US government is trying to block the World Health Organisation from endorsing two abortion pills which could save the lives of some of the 68,000 women who die from unsafe practices in poor countries every year.
The WHO wants to put the pills on its essential medicines list, which constitutes official advice to all governments on the basic drugs their doctors should have available.
Last month, an expert committee met to consider a number of new drugs for inclusion on the list. They approved for the first time two pills, to be used in combination for the termination of early pregnancy, called mifepristone and misoprostol. In poor countries where abortion is legal, doctors currently have no alternative to surgery.
The Guardian understands that the US department of health and human services has been lobbying the director general’s office at the WHO to block approval of the pills, in line with President George Bush’s neoconservative stance on abortion.
While the availability of pills might make abortion easier and could increase the number choosing it, the experts want them listed to reduce the deaths and damage caused by surgery. Every year, 19 million women have unsafe abortions – 18.5 million of those take place in developing countries. An estimated 68,000 women die as a result of botched or unhygienic surgery, while many others suffer long-term damage, including sterility.
All of this sums up to what, Echidne?
[…]…The Bush administration calculus of values is clear: The loss of fetuses counts for more than the loss of already existing lives. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t another hidden value judgment in operation: Punish those women who don’t wish to be pregnant.
Similar sentiments hold sway here in the U.S.. The pro-life movement has expanded its definition of abortion to cover certain types of contraceptives, especially the contraceptive pill. Pharmacists now wish to decide if the contraceptive pill is an abortifacient and they want to have the right not to dispense it. Given this, it is not surprising that the most recent pro-life attack is against “the morning after” pill, also called Plan B, a high dose of progesterone taken soon after unprotected intercourse.
The wingnuts don’t like this pill. It encourages promiscuity, omits the necessary punishment for sexual activity and so on:
Specifically, sexual activity among unmarried women who do not wish to become pregnant. Can’t have that now can we?
Plan B’s most outspoken critic, the right-wing Concerned Women for America, insists it is actually worried about safety, given the lack of studies on the pill’s long-term effects. But the vast majority of medical experts say Plan B is completely safe, in part because birth-control pills have such a well-established safety record themselves. According to the Guttmacher Institute, Plan B was available in 2002 without a prescription in 26 countries, including Switzerland, Israel, and Congo.
A less flimsy argument against Plan B is that it is tantamount to abortion. While science has demonstrated that Plan B works, it has not shown definitively how Plan B works. And, although most researchers believe that it acts by postponing ovulation or preventing fertilization, it could also prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus–which, according to some pro-life groups, is murder. That’s a perfectly respectable, intellectually consistent position for people who believe life begins at the instant when sperm meets egg. But it’s also a very severe standard, given that fertilized eggs naturally fail to implant 40 to 60 percent of the time. This is one reason that the medical establishment defines pregnancy as beginning only when a fertilized egg has implanted.
When did many of these ultra-conservative “pro-life” groups relied on medical science to define anything concerning reproductive and sexual health?
The other serious argument against Plan B is that it will increase risky sexual activity by young people. But peerreviewed studies published in mainstream medical publications (like one just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association) have repeatedly found no such link. Of course, conservatives argue that making emergency contraception available sends a broader cultural message about the acceptability of premarital sex. But, even if that were true, there are the likely benefits of Plan B to consider. James Trussell, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, has estimated that, if emergency contraceptives were widely available in this country, they could reduce the approximately 1.3 million abortions that take place yearly in this country by half. If a culture of life is so sacrosanct, shouldn’t that trump the issue of premarital sex?
Echidne continues…..
How to answer that last question? There are specifications to the “culture of life” in wingnuttia and these exclude most anything that promotes better lives for already existing people. “Life” in the wingnut jargon usually refers to fetuses and to people who are brain-dead. Some already existing lives (such as those of Iraqis or Afghanis) don’t matter much. Women’s lives are valued as equipment for making future wingnuts but don’t seem to possess much intrinsic worth. And in general wingnuts lose all interest in the saving of any lives if it costs them something. Hence the eagerness to ban abortions and the reluctance to fund anything that would make bringing up children easier.
The “W”, by the way, stands for “wingnut”.
A nice sobering reminder. Yes, I’ll definitely be remembering this during my job interview today with Victoria’s Secret. I hate being fertile sometimes. Actually, I have never hate being fertile more so than during this administration. Hot flashes and night-sweats aren’t that bad are they? It still amazes me to no end that many of these “pro-life” groups fail to acknowledge or hell, believe that back alley abortions do happen. Women die because of them. And will illegalizing abortion and going further with banning contraceptives improve this situation? Or will the self-delusion of there being “no such thing as desperate women turning to back alley abortions even if abortion is illegal and contraceptives are incredibly difficult to obtain” continue? Especially with this administration’s politics?
Good luck on the job interview. I’ve got one myself today with a sortware company.
This all ties in neatly to absinance only sex education, in that it really does mean that the right is majorly concerned with how people have sex, and want to punish people for having unnaproved sex.
Actualy, I’ve gotten a few right wingers to admit it to me that, yes, they do think people should suffer an increased risk of harm for having the wrong sort of sex.
This is no longer about abortion, and I think it’s a good tool to use to prove that ‘pro life’ forces are really not what they claim to be, otherwise thay’d be supporting things that prevented unplanned pregnancies. They’re not. They’re supporting things that *cause* unplanned pregnancies among teens and third world women.
They should ban seatbelts, while they’re at it–they only encourage bad driving.
It occurs to me that I’ve been trying to figure this out from the wrong end — from the leaves, rather than the roots. I’m going to sound a bit more flatly Marxist than usual; please bear with me.
The ruling class’s fundamental worry is resistance and revolt. Anything they can do to weaken the ability of people, especially working class people, benefits them. The fact that this will make the quality of life significantly worse for most people — even for everyone — troubles them less than the thought of their own loss of control.
By attacking women’s control over their own bodies, they significantly weaken the power of people to resist their own exploitation. “Yeah, this job sucks, and I don’t get health care, and I get paid crap, but I can’t risk losing my job, because I’ve got Emily to take care of.”
It’s a direct attack on the freedom of half the people who would resist the ruling class, and an indirect attack on the freedom of the other half. The downside is that undermining women’s ability to control their own reproduction also undermines their productivity — so the Democratic Party wing of the US ruling class opted to pose as women’s allies by not actively resisting popular demands for abortion and contraception.
But with the increasing economic pressures on the ruling class, the ruling class has been dismantling social programs that helped limit class tensions in the years after World War II. The ruling class is buying continued economic expansion at the cost of greater social instability.
It’s a sign of the desperation of the ruling class that the Democrats are moving towards open abandonment of support for any policy that benefits working class people — in particular, it’s abandoning support for abortion rights and access to birth control.
Christian fundamentalists have presented themselves as a convenient tool for the ruling class to achieve its ends. It’s easier to use them as a tool if you pose as one of them; it’s easier to pose as one of them if you agree with them. Thus Bush’s sanctimoniousness.
The entire situation is increasingly unstable, and the real problem is the lack of a large, active left rooted in the working class.
Well explained Brian, and rarely done as concerns this issue. Ill add this, just as the ruling class encourages “weak states” in it’s foriegn policy, it also encourages “weak citizens” in its domestic policy. If they can keep you occupied with anything other than your direct economic exploitation, their worry over your ability to organize is lessened. Of course every so often those weak states devolve into failed states, causing headaches and often costing lives. Weak citizens can also occasionally get out of control, start running amuck…