There is only one small point to add : The economic system that feeds the oligarchy is dependent upon continuous growth. Opposition to a gently declining population which results from a highly educated citizenry, especially women, is, yes, technically misogyny; it is also anathema to the underlying ideology of a system based upon infinite growth on a finite planet. One crazy idea leads to another.

The attack on women, the attack on human freedom, is moving apace.

i remember when i read "The Handmaid's Tale" and it was so terrifying because it was not some distant work of dystopian fiction, it was real, just a paper-thin remove from reality.

That was twenty-plus years ago. The frothing fomenters of fanatic patriarchy will take full advantage of the loss of Empire and breakdown of society to impose their harsh reactionary vision. Our job is to fight back with our lives.

last 40 years has been an attempt by white males, (the ones who were born on 3rd base but think they hit a triple) to get back to the "good old days" before women and minorities had any real access to education / decent jobs. I was in the first class at my school that let women in (1970 johns hopkins) . even many public funded schools ( university of virginia : up until 1969) did not accept women. now women make up 55% of college grads in this country. we and blacks are no longer AS economically enslaved, at least as a group. so they will attack the economy, education , health care and especially birth control, in a desperate attempt to put us all back in our cages............

Yes its misogyny and always has been and plenty of us pointed that out in the 70's and 80's and 90's and I hope Marcotte is right that the American public will turn away from this agenda seeing the misogyny. But they haven't for all these years. And the teachings of the Church have been viciously anti woman since its inception. They created the first holocaust with the burning of witches to wipe out the wise women and given the chance it looks like they'd do it again. These men and the foolish women who follow them whether Catholic or evangelical are all about controlling women. I was told back in the 70's by a Vermont State legislator; " if you women get abortion on demand, how do we know we'll have enough men for the next war." So you see Ms Marcotte war is Republican birth control. That way it can be selective of which races to cut down on.

The other issue here that is more muted than misogyny is racism. I've talked to these guys in unguarded moments and it terrifies them that the hispanic birth rate is higher than the white one. The only solution for women is a strong women's movement. That's how Roe v. Wade happened. That's how all our gains happened and it can't just be on the net it needs to be in the streets.

And I want a moral exemption from paying taxes for Viagra given to Afghan warlords with the rest of their bribes. And for a lot of other horrible things the government uses our taxes for like welfare for Monsanto. Why can't some woman introduce a bill for moral exemptions to these things as long as we can have a Hyde amendment? Why don't we go on the offensive.

Women stop waiting for society to catch up or legislators to do the right thing. Organize.

It is misleading to report on the Catholic Church without mentioning that these same people sanctioned and covered-up child rape for decades and once found out, they blamed the children they raped (as chjldren should know better).

Any civil society would not tolerate a group that commits decades long, systematic, world-wide child rape.

I wish the author would have painted with a broader brush and not just used Catholics as an example. In fact, the Christian Right--Protestants and Catholics--are all authoritarian misogynists, and have been for decades. It's highly unlikely we'll ever have another Catholic president, but Protestants get elected over and over, and they've been more and more reactionary over the years. Fundamentalist Protestants teach that women must submit to men and are pushing hard to defund Planned Parenthood and all abortion laws. In order to succeed in rightwing politics, women must be twice as authoritarian as men--hence Bachman's and Palin's views on women's subordination. This is not just a Catholic thing. But not all Catholic women are playing the Church's game. Maybe it's time for the rebellious few to pull out altogether--after all, religion is just a voluntary organization.

Nothing illustrates better the incredible stupidity of the American people than the incredible popularity of vicious totalitarian religion. No other western country comes even close to matching their level of belief or the degree of hatred against women as expressed in their ridiculous doctrines about the rights of the unborn and other such nonsense. American women seem to accept their second class status without too much of a fuss probably because so many of them have been brainwashed by religion themselves which explains why theocracy is gaining in popularity. The time for revolt has long passed.

Over population leading to a degraded and overly exploited environment is a National Security issue therefore; those who oppose contraception should be regarded as the enemy.

This also means that 98% of catholic women are hypocrites.

They choose to support what they do not really want. Big Daddy is an oppressor of us all.

As John Lennon said,

"And no religion too."

A factor missing from this commentary. If 98% of Catholic women are using some form of contraceptive, I think it is only fair to ask how the male partners feel about this. I believe that most of them would have to be aware AND APPROVING of the woman's choice. Granted that many would agree only from economic reasons, even still it shows that the men are recognizing the women's right to control their bodies. Not all Catholic men or, for that matter, clergy, are misogynists. I was a priest and knew many others like myself who counseled men and women to let Love, not law, guide their lives.
I do agree with the author that the anti-abortion argument is simply a cover for their real goals which they share in common with Sharia law--keep women barefoot and pregnant--so that the men who have nothing of which to be proud can feel superior to some other creature.

When did women become just cows?

We have found no society 'sustainable' other than the 'stone age'. All others use resources until they're gone.

I do not believe in god, I do not believe in hell, but I do believe in everyone's right to choose. It is not my duty or responsibility to tell anyone how to live their lives, and it is no one's responsibility to tell me how to live my life.

I know there are lots of us out there - how is it that we have allowed the far right to dictate our reproduction policies? It is totally insane. Why anyone would be catholic these days is beyond me.

To those who raise the issue of overpopulation at every chance they get - especially when talking of climate change:
here is your real target. Print out articles like these, make copies and hand them out to people attending Catholic church service. Go to other sites where there are people who insist that contraception is bad and try to convince those people.
Please do not muddy the waters when discussing climate change, deforestation, etc. with your overpopulation obsession. I have NOT seen one person on this forum who denies that overpopulation is a serious problem. But the point I repeatedly try to make was that climate change is a bigger threat and it requires ***immediate*** action - like in 10 - 30 years, which is the window of time available to make massive cuts in atmospheric CO2 levels. There is no humane way I can think of whereby the human population could be drastically reduced in 10-30 years, as it would take a couple of generations of education, wealth redistribution and of course birth control all around the world. In the meantime, please focus your fight against overpopulation where it really matters: go fight the religious crazies who think that birth control is bad, and spare the others who maintain reducing consumption levels by all to equitable levels can and must be done urgently.

Every so often I drop in on the 700 Club just to see how the wind is blowing. I've found that it is there I can learn what is happening in the world, in our government, and in society as a whole.

Last week I dropped in just in time to hear the top woman there reading a letter from a wife and mother, wanting to know what she could do about the things her son was doing that she felt was wrong. The answer, from Pat Robertson himself, was jaw-dropping. I felt as if I'd somehow been sent back two hundred years in time. His answer - not exactly as said - was that since the husband\father was head of the family, it was up to him to make the decision on whether or not what the son was doing was wrong, and then deal with it. And the mother should stay out of it completely.

Good article, good comments.

True Believers in fetus-fetishizing, compulsory childbirth, and the joyful duty of uninhibited breeding for its own sake are wrathfully offended by the permissive attitude that "reproductive rights" are necessary, ethical, and desirable-- and especially that the decision to carry a pregnancy to term is an autonomous decision solely at the discretion of the pregnant woman.

This high dudgeon is all the more ratcheted-up and sustained when these beliefs are rooted in the conviction that they accord with the will and desire of a phantom, problematic Creator and Supreme Micro-Manager of the Universe.

Thus, the secular humanitarian ideal that giving birth ought to be an informed, intelligent choice-- and conversely, that freely declining in good conscience to give birth is both moral and socially desirable-- is to religious anti-choicers a blasphemous perversion of "the natural order of things".

The doctrines and values underpinning Roman Catholic and Protestant anti-choicers proceed from, and are logically consistent with, the fundamental notion that Creator and Supreme Micro-Manager of the Universe is the One in charge of human life, and that individuals are not meant to have, or strive for, absolute control over reproduction. To seek or assert such control is perforce reviled as sinful selfishness and pride.

As if all that doesn't threaten enlightened reproductive policy enough, a second front of mendacity and hypocrisy is maintained by political leaders who may or may not sincerely buy into the religious and ethical anti-choice beliefs, but in any case have a strong interest in practicing a cynical demagoguery that uses and manipulates the issue to gain political power and advantage.

Both the genuine ideological/religious zealots and the cynics believe that the end justifies the means. The "end", alas! plainly and inscapably mandates government and law to control women generally, and specifically coerce economically-disadvantaged women to straddle the horns of a cruel dilemma: involuntary abstinence or childbirth, individual circumstances and consequences be damned.

And since the anti-choice crowd is notoriously indifferent to the fate of those sacred fetuses born into economic and psychological disadvantage, the consequences are damning indeed.

Political, religious, and social leaders promoting the anti-choice, anti-reproductive rights agenda as a wholesome, righteous, smarmy defense of "fertility" are only preaching to an already-enthralled choir.

Child bearing, and the responsibilities that go with it, are the incredible, wonderful burden AND blessing that befalls women and couples.

I have noticed of recent how often the right has evoked the historical groundings of Sanger and now Guttmacher in the eugenics movement. It's not a particularly proud or wonderful aspect of the movement BUT neither do I, as a nurse, feel like my profession is best represented by the doctors and likely nurses who participated in "research" in the prison camps in Nazi Germany, those who psychologically torture (even today) in the name of psychological research, the researchers who withheld syphillis treatment from black men in the not too distant past. And yet, all of the people might call themselves nurse, public health professional, researcher. All professions have less than sterling moments. But far more clearly, public health has a history of helping women and families and family planning is a strong component of that.

It is precisely the conflict between advocacy and ethics that helps us sharpen what we think is "right". That is sometimes, errors help us redirect and improve our thinking.

But clearly nowhere is it more clear that when you see how many children a woman has and who fathers them starkly impacts on the quality of life for the woman and the children than in public health nursing.

And while I uphold the right of people to make reporductive decisions for themselves, we must get a grip on how many people are covering this earth. And we must not blindly assume that the earth can accomodate all comers and that we cannot possibly starve ourselves (our civilization) to death with overpopulation.

I am a reader of the magazine _Conscience_, a magazine for pro-choice Catholics. They do some really fine writing and I would urge anyone interested in this thread to visit their web site but particularly this issue of their magazine.

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/ac5ef03d#/ac5ef03d/14

the only "societies" that will survive are those whose populations can be supported by their resources.

USA -- Forget It

Those who oppose contraception are enemies of all mankind.

The authoritarian agenda is the conservative agenda.

It is very important to understand the underlying theological argument here. According to Augustine human beings are born with a fundamental flaw, in us from the first instant of life, an "original sin": concupiscence, self centered desire. Sexual desire is the most intense expression of this, and anything that encourages this encourages and intensifies sin.

Having any kind of sexual experience intensifies the sinfulness of the already sinful person. On the other hand, God, for his own reasons, made it necessary to have sexual intercourse to propagate the human race, so the only way sex can be experienced legitimately is for propagation. Any way of having a sexual experience without its being at least open to propagation (abortion, contraception, masturbation or homosexually) is encouraging and feeding sin.

All the things you have said about patriarchal authoritarianism are true, but you are not going to get anywhere without overturning the doctrine of original sin and the substitutionary atonement.

No I am not joking at all. It may be antiquated rubbish to you, but to them it places contraception into the core foundation of their whole faith. You can disregard and mock it if you want, but you will lose. I am not advocating the idea that this theological theory is true or accurate as an interpretation of the Christian faith, I am just trying to explain how all of this goes together.

If we had understood it, we would not have been shocked or taken unaware when they moved the goalposts from abortion to contraception, and how same-sex-marriage and even sex education in school fits into the whole thing. It is important to understand how desperately they have to fight to keep this together. It is not just a piece of modernization to get rid of an "antiquated" idea.

There are valid alternate theologies that could be promoted to avoid the whole issue, but you have to understand what you are talking about. Smart people get stupid when they get angry and afraid. By the way, restricting divorce will be the next goal on their list. Don't be surprised when it comes up in some state legislature.

Three points:

(1)-Pragmatic_realist is only about 25 percent correct when he cites the theological basis of the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic sexual taboo. Indeed the theology was almost certainly ex-post-facto embellishment, the patriarchs groping for a rationale to explain their huge terror of sexuality in general -- especially the sexuality of the infinitely orgasmic female, which in matriarchal times -- the first probably 96,000 years of our species' 100,000-year history -- was the wellspring of the entire human social order.

But to overthrow the Great Goddess and the matriarchal (i.e., natural) order she symbolizes, it was necessary first to damn female sexuality as evil (hence the origin of misogyny), and then -- because of the revolutionary power any sexuality acquires under patriarchy -- to damn all sexuality as well.

Finally came the theological rationale. This is merely propaganda, rather like the Crusades to justify the wars required to reopen the European/Asiatic trade routes vindictively closed by the Muslims, or "freeing the slaves" to justify the Northern timber barons' conquest and post-Civil-War savaging of the South.

Hitler did not invent the Big Lie, which is as old as patriarchy and originates from the fact male supremacy is itself a lie. The biological truth is we are all female at conception; a male is in fact a mutated female (which, by the way, makes patriarchy the one truly "unnatural act" and explains the length the patriarchs will go to retain power).

*****

(2)-Perhaps the only long-term compensation granted me by fate or karma for the (indescribably miserable) boyhood years I spent in the South is my understanding of theocracy.

The post-Civil-War South was, and remains, a theocracy. Christianity in the South's savagely capitalist society functions as the brain-police agency; it is the ultimate antidote to unionism, feminism and any other humanitarian values. Should anyone resist, there's always the Ku Klux Klan – the original U.S. death squad – to eliminate heretics and backsliders; indeed the colloquial name for the Klan is “the Saturday Night Men's Bible Study Class.”

Given the long history of capitalist success resulting from southern theocracy, who can doubt this is the governing ethos now being methodically imposed on the rest of the United States.

*****

(3)-Only those who remain willfully ignorant of class-struggle fail to understand how the denial of contraception specifically aids the Ruling Class. But here is a short review: capitalism – infinite greed as maximum virtue/infinite selfishness as ultimate good – demands theoretically unlimited profit. Hence the most perfect form of capitalism is a slave economy, which is the final objective of all capitalist governance: absolute power and limitless profit for the ruling class, total subjugation and genocidal poverty for all the rest of us.

But how, under such circumstances – that is, the total absence of government social services – do the capitalists achieve an adequately large slave class? The answer is by forcing women into unlimited breeding and thereby increasing the birth rate until it exceeds the die-out resulting from the total absence of contraception and health care.

Hence – very specifically – the denial of contraception, which serves three purposes simultaneously: it restores fear (specifically fear of pregnancy) to female sexual expression; the resultant escalation of male-female conflict restores the so-called “battle of the sexes” essential to the maintenance of patriarchy; the plight of the woman who is pregnant and abandoned provides an object lesson to reinforce the rat-pack conformity essential for the capitalists to achieve maximum profit from the rat-maze/rat-race workplace characteristic of the slave economy.

Excellent comments...was glad to see the connection made regarding restricted contraception and eliminating abortions eventually equaling more soldiers. I made that connection even before this latest barrage of attacks on womens' reproductive rights. I am reprinting an excerpt from a comment I posted on another thread because my observation there seems connected...in a big picture sort of way.

****
"Recently, Chicago and Rahm Emanuel were in the headlines. Seems that Jean-Claude Brizard, their new guy on the public education block is a bit of a good-riddance in the minds and hearts of those educators and parents in his last ‘experiment’ city. His vision for revamping Chicago’s school system is nothing more than another piece of the grand design. I mean, imagine the possibilities that must be running through the minds of those standing to most benefit by this recent wave of education reforms...a whole population of undereducated, under-inspired young adults led very intentionally to their corporate tethers...or armies. A whole population of kids, basically, taught to score well on tests, to groom them towards a small pool of job possibilities that are first touted as the “best paying” jobs available and then further talked up as highly rewarding, meaningful and necessary. With less and less incorporation of the arts...of music and painting, poetry and creativity. When’s the last time you heard of a job fair for the arts...or seen musician or sculptor, novelist or inventor listed as job possibilities offered to our children or young adults?...

...We would seem to be shifting the focus...gearing up to produce a vast army of robots and soldiers."

And so, controlling our choices...or eliminating them...regarding contraception and/or abortion would seem to serve a two-fold goal...putting women back in their man-made roles as subservient eye-candy/sex-objects and baby-makers, AND insuring unimpeded production of soldiers to serve and protect this great nation of ours. (I'm not necessarily dissing our great nation...merely its protection or preservation being used as the excuse for sending our kids off to die for oil and to serve as 'muscle' for empire builders).

And I agree that any tax dollars, especially those of women, used to supply or assist in providing viagra to ANY man borders on being the ultimate insult to women. Hmmm, maybe it's the epidemic need for viagra by men that is causing some of their unhinged behaviors. Makes as much sense as anything, I imagine.

Finally, before I am too harshly scolded for any appearance of unfairly categorizing the many good and gentle men of the world...I apologize for seeming to lump you all in with those men and women who would impose their disastrous version of 'world order' on the rest of us.

MollyJ: Thank you for writing those comments; comments that I would have liked to make myself.
Furthermore, people on the left have also discredited Guttmacher and Sanger for their support of the eugenics movement. The eugenics movement is roundly condemned. But what about dysgenics? I see people teaching their children hatred everywhere, without surcease. This is fact and not hyperbole.