Bush Administration: Contraception = Abortion

Thought you'd slip this one by us as you slunk out the door, did you?   You crafty little pro-life zealots in the Bush administration are determined to leave your indelible stain on this country, aren't you?

A draft regulation circulating at the Department of Health and Human Services has come to light and it defines abortion to include a number of commonly used birth control methods, including pills, IUDs and emergency contraceptives. The regulation says abortion is “any of various procedures – including the prescription, dispensing 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.” Several common birth control methods, including pills, can interfere with implantation in addition to ovulation.

However, some in Washington got wise to the scheme. Yesterday, more than 100 members of Congress wrote President Bush, urging him to "halt all action" on the proposal. "The draft regulation could have a disastrous effect upon access to safe and effective birth control for millions of women across the country," the protest letter warns. "The regulation's definitions threaten virtually any law or policy designed to protect women's access to safe and effective birth control. It would allow any provider, who wants to deny a woman emergency contraception or even birth control pills, to claim protection based on a personal belief that such pills fit the regulatory definition."

This issue can be most dire for women in small towns or rural areas, where the number of doctors and pharmacies is limited.  As the Charlotte Observer editorialized: "Without a legally protected right to birth control, those women may be denied a perfectly legal medical product if the only doctor or pharmacist in town doesn't believe in birth control or believes emergency contraception to be a form of abortion."

We've said it before and we'll keep on saying it: Keep the government out of our bedrooms.  Period.

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[JSM]

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."