Monday, July 21, 2008

The Best Contraceptive Pill



According to the abstinence folks is probably an aspirin firmly held between the woman's knees. Hillary Clinton has written about the recent Bush administration proposal which equates the contraceptive pill with abortifacients:

The Bush Administration is up to its old tricks again, quietly putting ideology before science and women's health. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is poised to put in place new barriers to accessing common forms of contraception like birth control pills, emergency contraception and IUDs by labeling them "abortion." These proposed regulations set to be released next week will allow healthcare providers to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it. We can't let them get away with this underhanded move to undermine women's health and that's why I am sounding the alarm.

It's good that Senators Clinton and Murray are raising a bit of an alarm over the proposed changes in the DHHS. These have to do with the health care providers' conscience clauses and misapply the term "discrimination" in a way which I think actually cheapens the term. For more on this, see my piece for Huffington Post.