I’ll see your mother with six kids, and I’ll raise you my two nieces and a nephew.

Now, can you show me where these people have anywhere near the power to enforce their will on this issue? There’s talk here about the last person who held Orr’s position, for example (who frankly sounds like a quack to me, but that’s an aside) being anti-birth control. Yet, shockingly, he didn’t seem to have had any effect in blocking the funding for contraception and bc education, now, did he?

The Family Research Council, which Bush’s appointee was an official of, not only opposes the decision in Roe v. Wade but also the decision in Griswold. They are not the only conservative religious group that does so. So yes, there are those conservatives who oppose the right of individuals to make their own decisions concerning contraceptives.

Natural birthcontrol is the most unreliable, for many reasons. Your personal experience may be different, but we can’t make every woman fit the same profile.

Doma,
I’m basing my statement about the efficacy on large scale research studies in the US, Canada, and Europe, not on my personal opinion. So where are you getting your information?

And my statement about granting rights was inelegantly worded, but the meaning relates to politicians and lobbying groups creating a right that doesn’t exist, in order to insist that taxpayers have to pay for choices-again, making it into an ideological argument about what we have to provide instead of engaging in the more honest discussion of whether we ought to provide it on practical and economic grounds.

I think the former view is short sighted and, in the long run, will cost those who espouse it much more than the cost of considering the whole in the first place.
It is also misguided, because it blithely ignores what generations of other taxpayers have contributed to create the society which enables their well being and enjoyment of liberties. Suddenly, instead of
saying thank you by virtue of helping this system along, it’s become a nation of each looking after his own, and good-bye.

The latter group finds that it benefits each indivividual in the long run to encourage (by use of some tax dollars) those who contribute less to step up on the ladder and become contributors in their turn.

As it relates to BC, a woman having more children than she can afford is much less likely to become a contribuor to socierty, and her children are less likely to succeed as well.
To quibble about the cost here seems petty to me, in view of the benefit to all if families can plan theri children according to how they can afford them, either finanvially or psychologically.

The statement about taxpayers granting ‘rights’ for certain BC is just off the wall. Taxpayers grant rights? When did that start?

Natural birthcontrol is the most unreliable, for many reasons. Your personal experience may be different, but we can’t make every woman fit the same profile.

If you can;t pay for BC, the liberty of choosing a pregnancy free life is not available to you.

Not true. The liberty of choosing a particular form of birth control might not be available to you (just as those with lower incomes have all kinds of restrictions on their choices of homes, foods, etc due to their financial status). Not really fair, but not a violation of basic rights.
And honestly, I haven’t priced condoms lately, but I can’t imagine that they’re that cost prohibitive for all but the poorest of the poor, so there are still other options for artificial birth control even if the drug forms are too expensive.

Again, it’s one thing to acknowledge that people will choose to be sexually active and that it’s good to encourage them to do so responsibly- but another to mandate that taxpayers have to grant them the right to use any and all forms of birth control that are available, at taxpayer expense. One consideration is a pragmatic one based on the idea that prevention is less expensive then society paying for consequences. The other is an ideological one that says that the ability to have sex using the form of birth control that each person finds most enjoyable is something that should be financed by society for all individuals, as a basic right.

Natural birth control is the least reliable and riskiest.

Not true either. I wish people would learn the facts if they wish to comment on this form of birth control- the newer methods have proven to be as reliable as the pill, and more reliable than certain other forms of BC.

I don’t know if Medicaid covers BC, but when government policy is prohibitive, it is usually the poor whi suffer the consequences the most.

When health progarms like those for HIV/AIDS channel funds for abstinence, they are preventing a comprehensive use of BC.

This gets back to the personal liberties question, something enjoyed and aggressively guarded by the well-off for themselves, but something not available to those with financial challenges.
If you can;t pay for BC, the liberty of choosing a pregnancy free life is not available to you.

Natural birth control is the least reliable and riskiest.
For a poor woman a child wihout the means to support is a catastrophe, and the risk in using natural birth control is huge.
As long as we’re on the subject of choice, natrural birth control is something else that a woman should be able to choose, not be forced into because for her there are no alternatives available.

Pharmacies and doctors who apply their ideological convictions in order to refuse to prescribe or sell BC are in the wrong business, IMO. These are professions described as serving communities or serving people, and they make their livelihoods by claiming to be such. When they discriminate among patients (not accepting homosexual clients) or refusing to sell BC, they are not performing the dictates of their profession and should find another line of work.

Imagine a Jewish doctor refusing to treat uncircumsized men, or a Muslim doctor requiring that female patients wear veils.

In rural areas, where doctors and pharmacies are sparse, they also represent another way BC use is prevented.

I just remembered the call to protect the right of the poor to choose smoking It appears the right to smoke is much more important than the right to control if and when to have children, at least in some circles.

I’m not even advocating that funding for contraception for poor women should be cut- I just think the argument that it’s a ‘right’ is ridiculous.

And I’m not advocating that anyone should ‘decide’ this for poor women. I’m simply pointing out the whole in the logic that contraception funded by the state should be a ‘right’. There are other options (and not all of them even include prolonged abstinence), so the idea that lack of funds for contraception is equivalent to forced pregnancy is false.

It would be nice if people could at least acknowledge a distinction between having a right to do something and having the right to have taxpayers fund it.

Only ones I can think of are the rhythm method which has resulted in many unhappy surprises for the participants, lol, and abstinence. Or you can take your temperature to see when you ovulate, but that’s a real mood killer, CS. Catholics and some fundies don’t believe in BC- but should they get to decide for poor women?

It’s asked of women who are attempting to do exactly that by using birth control!
There’s riony for you.

And I’m the one who’s being accused of caricaturizing?

Davebo: I have no problem with a rational discussion of what an appointee might do, but the conversation here makes assumptions that the support of an insurance company refusing coverage for BC is the same as disallowing govt funding for contraception for the poor. Those two positions are not necessarily synonymous.

I’d say we ought to heed the title of this post…you know, wait to see what this woman will actually do in her new position rather than convict her before she ever starts?

You’re joking right? Now we can’t judge appointments until we see how they perform? And assume people will change their stripes once appointed?

I can’t wait till next month. “We shouldn’t assume that just because they elimintated the right to use condomes that they are anti sex”.

Was caricature the intent here? Seriously?

it’s better to use funds to pay for contraceptives than to deal with the consequences and promote more abortions or try to fight the battle over abortions and then deal with the consequences of more poor families

True. Prevention costs less than consequences.