Can You Hear Me Now? Got Pills?

George Bush is one slithering SOB. It is bad enough that he tossed out that Dred Scott reference during the debates last week. That went over the average person's head and wrote him off as being stupid for saying that he wouldn't vote to bring back slavery. He was really assuring right wing pro-lifers that he'd appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Even the people I know who claim to be leaning towards being pro-life are proponents of contraception and effective family planning. But, what these same folks don't realize is that not only is he anti-abortion, without exception, he is also anti-contraception.

No one who paid attention to the May scuffle over emergency contraception should be surprised. After all, Bush stacked the Food and Drug Administration's scientific panels with appointees who succeeded in blocking the drug from becoming available over the counter. His appointees to the FDA Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee weren't just religious conservatives, they were among a fringe minority of religious conservatives who object to certain kinds of contraception, insisting they're forms of abortion.

For instance, Joseph B. Stanford, a Utah physician Bush appointed to the FDA committee, refuses to prescribe the birth control pill, saying it's "incompatible with Christian values." As Stanford—and the "Human Life Amendment" plank of the Republican Party platform—would have it, pregnancy, and life, begin when a sperm and egg meet. Thus, the IUD, the birth control pill, the patch, the vaginal ring, and other hormonal contraceptive methods become objectionable because they either can or are designed to work after fertilization.

Bush started his term by removing a budget provision that required some insurance companies serving federal employees to cover contraception. Then federal National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed fact sheets about sex education and the effectiveness of condoms from their websites. Bush went on to cut funds for family planning throughout his time in office while pouring money into "abstinence-only" education, which forbids frank discussion of birth control. For the past three years, Bush has withheld $34 million for international family planning from the United Nations Population Fund. Meanwhile, he is promising to increase abstinence funding, already at record levels, and to insist that nearly one-third of domestic funding for HIV/AIDS be spent on abstinence.

The president has installed several far-right conservatives to wage the war against contraception. He appointed Tom Coburn, a former Republican congressman who has opposed condom use, as co-chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. Dr. W. David Hager, another Bush appointee to the FDA reproductive health panel, is a former spokesperson for the Christian Medical Association and co-author of a book that recommends scripture reading and prayers for various ailments.

Sadly, the "prayer method" doesn't work very well when it comes to preventing pregnancies—an idea not lost on voters. When the advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice America conducted focus groups in swing states, female voters between 18 and 39 said that the single most convincing election message about choice is that the next president will make a range of decisions that affect not only abortion, but also birth control. Yet most in the focus groups were unaware of Bush's record on contraception.

Wake up people! I am not about to live the rest of my life under the American Taliban without a fight!