An open letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, which has recently proposed a rule that would define hormonal contraception as abortion, creating a giant loophole for health practitioners who want to get and keep jobs as health practitioners without actually providing needed health services like contraception.
Dear Mike Leavitt,
This rule could turn the routine trip to the pharmacy that millions of women make every month into a nightmare of fear and humiliation. Fear that, this month, the pharmacist who doesn't believe in birth control pills won't fill their prescription. Fear that the other pharmacy in town will be closed by the time she drives across town. Fear that, maybe this month, she'll have to drive an hour to a third pharmacy and hope that the pharmacist on duty will give her the medication that she is legally entitled to. Fear that she just won't be able to get her prescription refilled before her current lack of pills runs out. Fear that she won't be able to take her own birth control pills reliably because sanctimonious pharmacists won't let her. Fear that, when she goes to pick up her birth control pills, she'll get a lecture about her sex life instead.
Imagine if men had to go through this every time they picked up their Viagra prescription. Imagine if men had to go through this nightmare of fear and humiliation for the high crime of wanting a normal sex life free of worry and fear.
It would be unacceptable. This rule is equally unacceptable and it is an insult to women everywhere.
Give Mike Leavitt a piece of your mind here.
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And the fact that the pill and other contraception don't cause abortion...I'm so sick of this rhetoric that every sperm/egg is a person bs. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but it prevents pregnancy, it doesn't terminate it. Fucking christ people (government agencies and Christian right), stop trying to control women's bodies.
with this kind of "preventing conception is the same as abortion", i've never understood, why then isn't male masturbation abortion? my god, think of the BILLIONS of sperm dying needlessly on a daily basis!
bettybrown - not trying to be anti-religion or anything, but this Monty Python video seemed apt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kJHQpvgB8
That is so well written, Ceka. This regulation makes me so angry because it's chipping away at women's reproductive rights little by little.
omg - f'ing hilarious video! thanks nettle!
Seriously, do any of them realize that less than a third of fertilized eggs implant in the first place? And that many that do implant spontaneously abort within the first few weeks?
MY GOD, OUR WOMBS ARE NATURAL BABY KILLERS!