The right is still fighting against contraception

March 16, 2006

It seems hard to imagine, but in Missouri, state GOP lawmakers have voted to ban county health clinics from providing family planning services. This isn’t about access to abortion — it’s about access to contraception. It may be the 21st century, but based on some of the comments from the legislature, you wouldn’t know it.

An attempt to resume state spending on birth control got shot down Wednesday by House members who argued it would have amounted to an endorsement of promiscuous lifestyles.

Missouri stopped providing money for family planning and certain women’s health services when Republicans gained control of both chambers of the Legislature in 2003. But a Democratic lawmaker, in a little-noticed committee amendment, had successfully inserted language into the proposed budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 that would have allowed part of the $9.2 million intended for “core public health functions” to go to contraception provided through public health clinics.

The House voted 96-59 to delete the funding for contraception and infertility treatments after Rep. Susan Phillips told lawmakers that anti-abortion groups such as Missouri Right to Life were opposed to the spending.

“If you hand out contraception to single women, we’re saying promiscuity is OK as a state, and I am not in support of that,” Phillips, R-Kansas City, said in an interview.

It’s rather breathtaking. Under the GOP approach, even low-income married people would be unable to access birth control at public health clinics — because the right believes it’s “immoral.” They weren’t kidding.

State Rep. Kate Meiners (D) noted, “It’s going to have the opposite effect of what the intention is, which will be more unwanted pregnancies and more abortions.” Unfortunately, reality-based arguments like these had no place in the legislative debate.

We’ve all heard the “so goes Missouri…” line; we can only hope it’s not the case this time.

Cause and effect implication..
Missouri will become notorious as the crowded land of promiscuous squallor.

This contraception ban will produce a flood of starving un-wed mothers and poor who will raise children in poverty and neglect who produce more single mothers …….

Do these guys know about rabbits?

  • “Rep. Susan Phillips told lawmakers that anti-abortion groups such as Missouri Right to Life were opposed to the spending.”

    Did she bother to actually ask her own constituants? Or do they not matter?

  • They will reap what they sow, its just too bad all the people that will be caught suffering from their idealogical insanity.

  • Is it just me, or does it appear single women are climbing the ladder as a threat to all that is good in society? I am sure gay people will maintain their number 1 position, but it appears single women are now a close second.

  • Wrong Beth. The Religious Right and the GOP don’t consider single women as a threat to their society.

    They view all women as a threat to their society. At least, all women who do not know their place (in the home, raising children, taking orders from their husband and/or father )

  • I am sure gay people will maintain their number 1 position, but it appears single women are now a close second.

    I agree with Gridlock: it’s not just single women. It sure seems like its potentially sexually active women that are public enemy #1 to the nutjob theocrats.

  • I am sure gay people will maintain their number 1 position, but it appears single women are now a close second.

    Their target is any sex that is not intended for procreation of more sacred life. I guess they want to have lots of company.

  • “If you hand out contraception to single women, we’re saying promiscuity is OK as a state, and I am not in support of that,” Phillips, R-Kansas City, said in an interview.

    But we’re OK with single men, or married men for that matter, being promiscuous. That is as long as it’s in the biblically-condoned man-and-woman sense. Boys will be boys, you know.

    Missouri gets a little bit more embarrassing every day. I’ve got to get out of this state …

  • So when are rubbers going to become an illegal product? I’ll tell you I haded Margaret Attwood’s (?) book the “Handmaid’s Tale”, but were headed to that world down to the Arab terrorists.

  • “Handmaid’s Tale”

    I liked the movie, which starred Robert Duvell, who lives in Northern Virginia. The movie really shows the distopia we will get if Pat Robertson and the Theocratic Reationaries gain control in this country. Which they will probably attempt if they lose in 2006 or worse 2008.

    The problem with the Susan Phillipses of this world is they think the laws of their city, state and country are somehow a reflection on their own morality. They are too lazy to go out and preach a teaching that God expects people to refrain from acts that while legal, are still sinful. Nope, for them, the state is the only authority and all sinful acts must also be illegal acts.

    Which basically means we have no reason to retain religion in this country and we should start taxing all the churchs out of existance 😉

    One ‘t’ in Atwood.

  • Geez — I hate it when my homestate makes it onto the pages of the Carpetbagger Report for this type of stupidity. And prm — I take it you live in the ShoMe state also — we’ve got to get more Democrats into the state legislature this year.

    It really concerns me that this legislation is piled on top of slashing 90,000 people off the Medicaid rolls last year. Because it will be the less affluent and capable members of society who are eligible for these services who are affected; 1st we’ll have increased pregnancy rates, then to add insult to injury less prenatal care, and finally less access to medical services after the children are born. It sure makes me wonder what the demographics of Missouri are going to look like in 10 or 15 years.

  • prm and marcus, i’m just to your north and i keep trying to give you our southernmost tier of counties. now that i know people down there, i’ll have to start feeling bad about that idea.

    glad to see the heartland is well represented on here. so much for the Red mantra that all the lefties are east-coast elitists.

  • Zeitgeist — If things get any stranger in Missouri I may trade my tennis shoes in for Birkenstocks and move to the East Coast. Do they serve chicken-fried steak in Massachusetts?

  • you could introduce a whole new kind of fusion cooking – chicken-fried lobster.

  • prm and marcus-
    I used to live in a red state of mind town and I feel your pain.
    Keep the faith .
    I reminds me of the Invasion of the Bodysnachers ….
    It’s easy to get paranoid……
    Like in “don’t sleep or you’ll become one of them.”

  • Zeitgeist,

    In Southeast Missouri there’s a joke that if you gave the Bootheel to Arkansas it would increase the average IQ of both states by 20 points. I suspect you feel the same about your southern-most counties and Missouri.

    Marcus,

    A couple of people I know have decided to run for state senate in Missouri as Democrats — one in a safe Democratic district and another in a suburban district against a Republican that dislikes women and sex. The Mrs. and I will be pulling out the checkbook for both.

  • prm — A person I met through a DFA meeting is running on the Dem ticket here in the 137th. I’ve talking him up to some of my neighbors, many have been effected by the Medicaid cuts. Hopefully I will be able to turn out some voters for him

    I’m breaking my own rules here, I try not to judge anyone by their appearance, but if you want to see one dumb looking human being, check out this photo on my rep’s homepage. MO State Rep. Mark Wright, a Texas transplant nonetheless. Go figure.

  • When my wife and I were first married and poor, we decided early on not to have kids. Either the state or county government paid for my vasectomy, I can’t remember. (Now, we are well off.)

    Subsidize birth control and contraceptions. It works, saves money, and people want it.

    I’m not just a liberal in theory, I actually believe in this crap.

  • Interesting some of you mentioned “Handmaid’s Tale”. I didnt think the movie was very good, and for the most part I thought the book was interesting. The most memorable part of the book though, for me, was the “appendix” which supposes that the book you just read was transcribed by historians from recorded tapes found some 150 (??) years after the events in the text. This section sets up some of the history that created the America inhabited by the characters and is truly scary. Financial and environmental catastrophes lead to a nearly fascist state which is then targeted by religious extremists (assasinations of political leaders and judges).

    So, anyone up for “V For Vendetta” this weekend?

  • Marcus,

    If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect someone had some fun with Photoshop on that forehead of his. I would have sprung for a better photograph.

  • Anti-sex, religious moralist whackos. Every sperm is sacred. I’ve been saying it for years: this has never been about abortion, it’s about fundamentalist totalitarianism.

  • 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale — what’s the next dystopia the wingnuts will take as an operations manual?

  • It makes me really, really, really ashamed to live in Missouri. But at least I don’t live in South Dakota.

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