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Contraception: The New American Soap Opera
For weeks, bewildered Americans have witnessed politicians debate whether or not contraception should be covered by President’s Obama’s new health care plan. On March 1, after some of the most bizarre theatrical antics remembered in this nation’s political history, the U.S. Senate finally interrupted this surreal soap opera with a cliff hanger. By only two votes, they defeated an amendment that would have allowed religious employers to refuse to pay for the contraception of their employees.
(AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, File)
The pilot episode of the drama began on February 16, when President Obama announced that all the employers of all institutions, regardless of their religious affiliation, would have to pay for contraception. When the Catholic Church and right-wing fringe went ballistic, he compromised and said that if an institution felt it was violating its religious beliefs, then the insurance company would have to pay.
But even that compromise was insufficient. In the weeks that followed, the Republicans launched a war on contraception. They told women that the appropriate birth control pill was an aspirin held by tightly-grasped knees; they created a religious “hearing” on contraception made up of all men; and right-wing radio pundit Rush Limbaugh called a Georgetown University law student, who had defended contraception, a “slut” and a “prostitute.” “No drama Obama” only intensified the plot when he personally called the student and thanked her for supporting his health plan.
Every day brought new and unbelievable episodes in this weird melodrama. In Virginia, the legislature passed a bill that would require a pregnant woman seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound probe inserted into her vagina so she would really know she was carrying a human being. The Governor at first agreed, but then, attacked for humiliating pregnant women, dithered about what kind of bill he would sign. Some opponents, of course, genuinely believe that contraception is the same thing as abortion—the murder of a human being. Some may even realize that less contraception results in more abortions and more government expenditures for unwanted children. The Republicans certainly know that the vast majority of Americans, including Catholics, support birth control, but they just couldn’t stop themselves. They thought they had found a way to defeat the President.
But they were wrong.
Women and independents tend to support birth control. In fact, by March 1, 63% of those polled supported the President’s compromise. Liberal groups mobilised all across the country, noting that the right-wing wants an unobtrusive government unless it involves inserting a probe into a woman’s body for an ultrasound. Senator Barbara Boxer launched “one million Strong for Women,” to make women’s voice heard. Democrats, realising that the Republicans had truly overreached, became positively giddy at how much they had to gain if they could keep the debate simmering.
So, part of this soap opera was simply politics as the loopy, right-wing fringe Republicans became intoxicated with the possibility of electing one of two candidates, both of whom oppose contraception and abortion. (Although former Governor Mitt Romney flip-flopped when he backed away from his support of contraception and joined the Republican opposition a few hours later).
So what’s really going on?
The Republican party, for its part, framed the fight as one of religious freedom and freedom of speech, protected by the first amendment to the constitution. Democrats and women’s rights advocates responded that it was exclusively about women’s health care.
The media, with all its stenographic sophistry, uncritically quoted the language of both sides. The New York Times, for example, said that “ the furor over President Obama’s birth control mandate has swiftly entered a new plane, with supporters and opponents alike calling the subject a potent weapon for the November elections and taking it to the public in campaigns to shape the issue---is it about religious liberty or women’s health?”
Actually everyone has missed the real story.
What neither side wants to say is that this is a counter-reformation, an attempt to return women to the early 1960s, before birth control pill existed and the Supreme Court, in Griswold v.Connecticut (1965), established the right of contraception in the United States. In short, it was a nostalgic effort to return to a time when a middle class man could support a family, women knew their place, Georgetown University law students were mostly men, and African Americans could not vote, let alone become President. It was a time of male and racial supremacy, before the civil rights and women’s movements changed the political culture of this country and economic changes made a two-income family necessary.
At stake in 2012 is the right of a woman to control her own fertility, her own reproductive choices and therefore, to lead an independent life. This is a battle that has raged since the late 19th century. After abortion became legal in 1973, the Republican party inserted an anti-abortion plank into its 1980 platform and ever since, every Republican candidate has had to pass a litmus test of opposing abortion in order to run for president.
For most of human history, sexuality and reproduction have been intricately yoked together. Birth control, particularly the Pill, ruptured that link and gave women the right to enjoy sex without the goal of reproduction. When the Supreme Court formally ratified that rupture by making abortion legal in Roe v. Wade, (1973), many people in this country trembled at the possible changes women’s sexual independence might bring. By then, the women’s movement had challenged and changed laws and customs that governed the daily lives of women in both the work place and at home. The idea of women’s sexual freedom polarised the nation, with both men and women advocating for different choices.
In short, the war over contraception during the last bizarre month was never about religious freedom or women’s health care. It was about controlling women’s right to control their own bodies and to make their own sexual and reproductive choices.
Hardly anyone feels free to say this. Opponents of women’s sexual freedom talk about free speech or religious freedom when what they really want to do is to repeal everything the women’s movement’s changed. Supporters of women’s right to make their own sexual and reproductive choices know they must emphasise women’s health care. Even though contraception and abortion are a central part of that health care, they know they must remain mum about women’s sexual freedom.
This soap opera is hardly over. In fact, we are now seeing re-reruns of this never-ending drama. Some of us remember that in 1969, a feminist group called Redstockings disrupted a New York State hearing on whether abortion should be legal. The panel included a dozen men and one nun. The women’s effort to be heard was thwarted when the hearing was moved.
Today, contraception and abortion are legal, but state by state, laws are chipping away at women’s access to both contraception and abortion. The truth is, this is the last gasp of a patriarchal counter-reformation that is still alive, mobilized and, most importantly, well-funded. Stay tuned, as they say. The soap opera is far from over.
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34 Comments so far
Show AllThe big picture story is that supercharging the contraception issue is part of the 1%'s strategy to distract the 99% from the even bigger wealth inequality and consitutional travesties in progress that are having broad impacts on our lives including family planning.
Yes.
x3
This isn't a "New" USAn soap opera. It airs, like clockwork, every election year.
Yeah, I would tweak the "soap opera" metaphor a bit.
I don't know if this is still true, but one clichéd characteristic of soap operas was that once you got hooked, you could take a break for a year, come back and watch one episode, and get right back in sync.
It's a paradoxical kind of "new": "new" as perpetual déjà vu.
No Ray this is a story in and of itself, the ongoing attempt to control women's bodies. I am so sick of men who see everything that concerns women as a side note to the real story, the one about men. You are part of the problem buddy.
artemix: Every Presidential election season issues like these are brought out to rally the salivating base (the base base) and to keep people's attention focused on anything other than issues like economic inequality, the Defense budget/Military Industrial complex/the attack of civil liberties/rolling back the law to pre-Magna Carta etc.
Yes, there is an on-going attempt to control women's bodies but the reason it's coming up now is because we're in an election season. Slamming someone for pointing out that this is a distraction from increasing economic inequality ignores the disproportionate impact of that inequality on women.
Good for many here for seeing through this crap. I will give you credit for being smarter than the readership at Alternet, admittedly a low bar. :)
The financier class and state power elite love it when we discuss cultural issues like this that do not effect their bottom line, and in doing so spend less time on the drive towards war in Iran and Syria, global climate change, peak oil, bank bailouts, increasing corporatism increasingly enabled by state power, etc. And also spending less talking about real alternatives to the status quo like co-ops, community gardens, local health clinics and public health insurance initiatives we can do now without waiting on the corporate captured centralized Federal government, etc.
Who is the fool here the Repigliecons, or progressives for spreading these memes and falling for the bait, and who is the tool amplifying this meme?
Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant. Thank you Ms. Rosen for saying it like it is, however there is more to be said. The passion around this issue generates from the fear of many males that they will not be able to control their women if they are actually working and producing outside the home. Additionally, women in the workplace are viewed as competition to men who seemingly have a greater entitlement to the available wages.
Interestingly, in our national narcisism we criticize and try to liberate those countries that have imposed the same restrictions on their female populations. I believe it's called Sharia Law. Unfortunately the repubs aren't seeing the similarities and want to take us back to the dark ages.
What mystifies me is the fact that more women, especially those of childbearing age, do not appear to be very vocal on the issue of reproductive rights and contraception. Numerous states, mostly in the midwest and south, have either enacted or have pending legislation restricting women's reproductive choices. Wake up ladies, what are you waiting for?
"What mystifies me is the fact that more women, especially those of childbearing age, do not appear to be very vocal on the issue of reproductive rights and contraception. Numerous states, mostly in the midwest and south, have either enacted or have pending legislation restricting women's reproductive choices. Wake up ladies, what are you waiting for?" -- bluegrass
Exactly! You are asking the right question!! On Sunday, I posed the same question to some younger people -- men and women -- and they seemed absolutely dumbfounded and didn't even know how to respond to me. Within the discussion, I discovered that this issue, for them, has already been decided. I will also tell you that most of the young people in the group I addressed are on psychotropics, of one sort, or another. I can't help but think that the psychotropics distort the reality and the ability to think.
If it comes to pass, with women NO longer having access to the various forms of birth control, will men take up that responsibility? This issue should be as important to men as it is to women!!
"Birth control, particularly the Pill, ruptured that link and gave women the right to enjoy sex without the goal of reproduction." -- Ruth Rosen
I agree -- Ruth Rosen is right. This is NOT about health insurance, this is about control and command -- once again. Female sexuality is at the core of this issue -- that and female independence.
As readytotransform stated on a thread a week or two ago -- "It's all about those apples!" (I'm probably paraphrasing her words, but I'm close!)
Will patriarchy ever end? I wish I believed that it was "just" Republicans who are pushing these bills. There are so many blue-dogs who are as harmful in their approach to issues relating to women and work within their states to also curtail privacy and the medical rights of women. Capitalism and patriarchy are twins! At this time, both patriarchy and capitalism are raging in the extremes. They are NOT female friendly, either. Nor are they friendly to humanity in general. Many "good Christian" churches across this country continue to teach and preach "submission of women." Even if we aren't lined up to go to church on Sundays, we are still effected by the power wielded by those who preach from the pulpit, and those who stand on the shoulders of the prevailing hierarchies!
A few years ago, I began writing to many of my female friends, relating that contraception was going to become a serious issue for women -- AGAIN! Already, at that time, stories were popping up in the alternative press, and even sometimes, in the M$M, the corporate press -- Women had their prescriptions in hand, went to their pharmacies, and the pharmacists, mostly white males, refused to fill their contraception prescriptions, citing their religious beliefs. In some cases, the pharmacy was the only one in the town. In those cases, where else was a woman supposed to go? This issue, to me, always underpinned the issue of abortion as the real goal. Chipping, and chipping, and chipping away, and here we are!
The three monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, have always had their own "problems" with the sexuality of women. All three when you get down to it have had their fundamentalists who viewed women as "property" that must be controlled. In Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive or vote. Part of what has driven the Islamic terrorism against the "West" has been our allowing greater freedom to women to make decisions for themselves. Orthodox Jews for example have much the same viewpoints towards women that Muslims do. The same is true of Christian fundamentalists of the sort that Rick Santorum represents. That millions of Americans will vote for a person like that leaves no doubt that we have the seeds of religious tyranny right here in the USA have taken sprout. That we have grown our own "Taliban" much like the very same organiztion we are fighting in Afghanistan.
"If it comes to pass, with women NO longer having access to the various forms of birth control, will men take up that responsibility? This issue should be as important to men as it is to women!! "
Simple answer: No. They can barely control their penile reflexes. They don't get pregnant, and fathering children is seen as a measurement of their position in society. Society has never factored in the ability of the male to care or foster his offspring to productive adulthood, only his ability to create them.
You bring up an interesting question of pyschotrophics. We are now prescribing more and more of them at ever younger ages seemingly to make our children more educatable. I wonder if a study has ever been done comparing their usage acrossed the economic strata. How many rich kids are put on pyschotrophics in school, compared to those of lower incomes?
Ruth Rosen, thanks for such clarity of thought, namely: "Birth control, particularly the Pill, ruptured that link and gave women the right to enjoy sex without the goal of reproduction".
From a different perspective, I really laugh at the Republicans being great supporters of Papal Infallibility on the issue of making birth control a mortal sin. It is the last shred of Papal Infallibility. In turn, the religious fundamentalists, as basically authoritarians, love religious dogma and absolutes, when sex has been used by the Church as a primary means of control. The joke is also on the Republicans who are basically authoritarians, aways believing in black and white issues, good versus evil, the trap of Manichean thinking, ignoring that life is always in the grey area, always to be judged through the freedom of spiritual discernment. This is what makes us fully human.
Its not a soap opera it is the essence of the war against women, the continued attempts by patriarchy to control female sexuality. That is how patriarchy began and whet it is always about.
So are you suggesting a vote for Oily Bomber if he agrees to TINY incremental reforms, thus selling out the women and children of the middle east to yet more imperialist destruction and death?
Maybe you are referring only to a "war" on American women who hold the same world view you do of prioritizing access to free birth control over stopping U.S. imperialism, ie an American expcetionalist center right prog world view? If that is in fact the case it is a considerably smaller subset of humanity than the all women you arrogantly claim to speak for.
Still waiting for an answer to the question of whether you are voting for murderer of third world women Oily Bomber? The indeed soap opera over free birth control IS more important to mainly white middle class "feminist" first world women than the actual lives of of third world women, isn' it?
Fess up!
Still waiting for an answer Aretemix, are you pulling the lever for the big incumbent bomber over this ONE issue.
The United States is nothing more or less than a bad habit. Our belief in law is a fetish, a reliance upon these little marks on a page to save us from harm. It's gone! It wasn't that good an idea in the first place. Anyone who wants to really understand go here:
http://deeperdarkness.blogspot.com/2011/12/constitutions-and-law-constitutions-are.html
The incredible thing is that the theocratic thugs that promote hatred against blacks, women, minorities and foreigners has a very good chance of winning the next election and implementing their platform. The good news is that should the American situation degenerate into another civil war perhaps they will leave the rest of the world alone at least for a little while.
There are a lot of parallels between our own theocrats and those that we are fighting in the Middle East. Both consider women a "lesser species". Both oppose women's reproductive rights. There isn't a whole lot of difference between our own religious fundamentalists and the Taliban there in Afghanistan when it comes to their viewpoint towards women. Put turbans on our own fundamentalists, let them grow out their beards, and put AK-47's in their hands, and they'd look right at home in the Taliban!
Caption For the Limbaugh photo: "What do you mean you couldn't score any oxycontin?!?!?"
Hi all, I have monitored CD for quite some time, but tried to remain a passive observer. but I just can't be silent on this issue - I’ve really tried - Perhaps that by itself is the incorrect position. The problem is that having been around for enough years to remember what it’s taken to get this far - the sacrifices of our sisters (and brothers)....I wonder how "we" are having this conversation yet again. Everything fought so hard for, is slipping away. From our rights as women, to rights in general.....slipping away...... slip sliding away.... I believe one poster mentioned that people they had talked to seem to have been on psychotropic’s. I think this may be the crux. A large segment of the population is drugged - from childhood now. How can someone analyze and process complex ideas, if they are under the influence of drugs? I remember the cogent conversations, talking points, and speeches in the "NOW" days. I believe such conversations, talking points and yes, speeches would be close to impossible today. We (who have the clarity and history to see what is happening) are talking to people likely under the influence of prescribed drugs. - A bit off the direct subject, but indicative - I tried to have a conversation with a fellow engineer earlier today to re: "Global Warming" which he said is just a scientific "theory". I asked him if he knew what a scientific theory was....... he had no idea of testable hypothesis, or scientific rigor. He thought/thinks that a scientific theory was simply pulling an idea out of your posterior. How can people who have no grasp of the difference between "theory" and scientific theory, possible understand the issue of women’s rights (including reproductive) I am at a loss. I have had conversations with my 92 year old mother, and she never thought she would see the mad dystopia we seem to have slid into.
Recently, I watched Morris Berman discuss his new book, Why America Failed, on Book TV. Within the talk, he brings up the fact that people today don't know the difference between an opinion and an evidence-based argument or article. Therefore, your conversation about a theory reminded me of what Morris Berman discussed. He also discusses the fact that 67% of all psychotropics in the world are swallowed by people here in the United States. He takes the issue further than I did in my comment/post, but I hardly know anyone my age -- late 50s -- who isn't under the influence of psychotropics.
For anyone who is interested, here is the link:
http://www.booktv.org/Watch/13006/quotWhy+America+Failed+The+Roots+of+Imperial+Declinequot.aspx
Tnx for the link, Kay - have been looking for more info on the book
I agree entirely with Ruth Rosen's analysis.
Partisan Republicans tried to frame this issue as one of intrusion by the big, bad government upon religious liberty, while partisan Democrats framed it as an issue of women's access to health care insurance coverage. In fact, the clash was over an assault upon the reproductive decision making power of individual women and privacy rights which were constitutionally guaranteed decades ago by the United States Supreme Court in the Griswold case.
Griswold (on its facts) concerned a challenge brought by a married couple living in one of the states which criminally outlawed the sale or possession of all forms of contraception. Whether prescribed by a physician, sold over the counter at a drug store, to a male, to a female, married, unmarried, young, old, it simply didn't matter. It was all illegal, and even talking about such things could skate close to the line.
Most young people today find it hard to envision such a bizarre world as America in the 50's and early 60's, in which there was no pill, no condom vending machines in the public restrooms, certainly no TV ads for Trojan or vibrators, and huge practical barriers were often in place restricting access to even basic health care information about how women (or sensible men) could minimize the risk of unwanted pregnancy. Pre-freedom of choice America was indeed a whole different world. Fear of pregnancy outside of wedlock was one of the patriarchy's most potent, omnipresent tools for keeping women in their place and scaring people straight.
At the time, one of the most controversial aspects of the Griswold decision (which made conservative strict constitutional constructionists go absolutely apoplectic) was the Supreme Court's discovery of a constitutional right to privacy over decision making in this most intimate of realms. Where was this right in the text, the words of the Bill of Rights? Where was there historic evidence that Madison or Jefferson or any of the proverbial Founding Fathers ever sat around and reached a consensus that state governments could not legislate matters of human sexuality as each state saw fit, consistent with the values of the prevailing religious constituencies?
A fringe group of Federalist Society types still cling nostalgically to this world view even today. For his part, Rush Limbaugh certainly stepped on his own dick with his stunningly sexist take. What everybody learned is how really far back in time some people on the religious right would turn the clock if they just had the votes to do so, and that women are never going back.
Bill from Saginaw
Yes, the days when women married out of necessity, rather than choice are pretty much over, at least in the USA and have been for at least 40 years.
The days when a man could get a housekeeper, nanny, cook, laundress and steady fuck in exchange for room and board based on let's face it, usually meager means, are OVAH. Birth control freed women from having to resign themselves to the drudgery of housework without any other choices. To women who love being house fraus, good for you :D To women who long for something else to do with their lives, YAY and HUZZAH.
OOOOOOOIIIIIIIINK!
del
How healthy must a woman be if all she has to worry about is birth control and abortion? Anyone who goes to a doctor is read a list of procedures and prescriptions what is covered and what is not what has a 10% copay and what has 60 % copay and you make decisions on what is necessary and what you can afford, it is part of the illness, health insurance world we live in today. That is if you are lucky enough to have a job and health insurance in the first place.
Why are we talking about pills in the first place, weren't we supposed to be using condoms while in college? Has aids been cured and no one told me?
Actually neither left nor right are adequately covering this issue. Catholic concerns revolve around the possibility of women being exploited (or exploiting) by the use of artificial birth control, outgrowth of promiscuity (one doesn't need to be a rocket scientist to recognize the legitimacy of this concern raised 40+ years ago) and governments forcing citizens to use it. On top of that one can also point to some companies requiring women employees to use artificial birth control (see Korean textile owners in El Salvador as one example), international financial organizations (World Bank? IMF?) requiring countries to mandate artificial birth control as a pre-condition for loans) and then the environmental fall-out a.k.a off of Seattle in 2003 when large, native fish kills were attributed to estrogen charged effluent.
It wasn't an "anti-women' issue in 1968 - though one can argue that forbidding married couples from using it went too far. And neither conservatives nor liberals are addressing these concerns now in the current public debate.
Cathaholic Priests are drunk on the power of twisting healthy sex into an assembly line of new cathaholics. All that unnecessary guilt over normal human relations is designed to keep driving people into confession of their 'sins'. The whole Madonna/Whore meme imposes an unnatural dichotomy that defines women based only on sex (ex. Mary the 'Virgin' Mother).
All the 'concerns' you've listed are just window dressing to give cover to the control of people through sex. That doesn't mean there aren't real world issues around the exploitation of women, but that isn't what's driving the Vatican's twisted teachings.
"Contraception: The New American Soap Opera"
Control people's sexuality, and their emotional lives are controlled, and from that their minds, our thinking. That goes for both sexes, but is particularly relevant to women, being the sex that gives birth and primary care (breast-feeding).
The Vatican and catholic church has known and practiced this for some 900 years. The pope (always being a decrepit and most likely impotent old man) still bans contraception - for about a billion people.
In the new environment of authoritarianism in the west the past decade, the fascist demand for "kirche, kinder, küche" (church, children, kitchen) for women is reactivated.
Stopping people having sex for enjoyment and using it to control them morally is of course an unwinnable battle. But much control can be had and kept on this pretext.
It's a classic authoritarian and fascist move. Speak ill of sex for the joy of it and try to forbid it various ways, and people will start limiting themselves, ultimately limiting their thinking and reflecting on their role in life - and everyone else's, particularly within the reigning economic system. Controlling people's sex-lives equals controlling the economy.
"Slave, behave" - is the main message in controlling people's sex-lives.
Like rape it's not about sex it's about power. The fact that not a single congressional woman was included in a hearing about religious freedom should illustrate the fact. The fact that the issue originated from the Catholic church an organization that traditionally relegates the women in their organization to an inferior position to the males in their organization further illustrates it.
It's been said repeatedly above but needs repeating -- this is/was a ploy to take attention away from economic inequality, the Defense budget/Military Industrial complex, and the evolving police state.
It has the secondary "beauty" of pissing off women who are rightfully tired of being treated as chattel and resent it when people (like me) call it a side issue. Don't get me wrong -- it's an extraordinarily important issue. The only thing worse than diverting all our attention to the contraception issue would be *NOT* diverting our attention to the contraception issue and allowing this rollback to occur.
So the 1% enemy get to refocus us away from their real concerns AND gets us fighting amongst ourselves.
Not hard to see how this script plays out. After much sweat and money we will (most likely) win most of the contraception battles. Obama will get a surge in the women's vote guaranteeing him re-election. Obama will then continue to screw us all on the economic inequality, military Industrial complex, and police state issues just like a Republican president would.
We lose. But hopefully without great damage to women's rights.
-- Zagone
Rash looks like he's got his windbag filled to capacity in this photo. Likely the NFL will call a penatly for "unsportsmanlike" conduct." Fifteren yard penalty and the down goes over!" Rash's ball! Will Rash be thrown for a loss? Most likely! He deserves it!