There is no doubt that the coarseness of political life and the politics of personal destruction are tied to the rise of social conservative ideologues, and their fight against a woman's right to choose since Roe v. Wade. The advent of a "Culture War" was born out of a movement that opposed legalized abortion and pretended that was its only agenda for many years. But as religious belief turned from mission to power, the greatest of corrupting influences, the swagger of social ideologues and their control of the GOP, the White House, Congress, Courts, Governorships, State Legislatures and School Boards has them ready to take the next step, an all out war on contraception.
This past weekend in Chicago, Joe Schieldler's Pro-Life Action League hosted 250 people at a conference entitled Contraception Is Not The Answer, opening a new strategic front to advance their ever-more narrow agenda, coming from an ever-expanding cast of ideologically motivated organizations. If conservatives think our culture is coarse now, its probably good to remind them that coarseness is coming less from people actually having sex responsibly than it is from the way uptight ideologues and corporate marketeers and others talk about sex, making it seem clinical and shameful on one extreme, or detached and less sacred on the other. Take the average American's contraception away and its a safe bet life will be more coarse as people's tension increases.
One of those 250 people attending the two-day conference was Rewire's Associate Editor, Tyler LePard.
Kate Looby is the South Dakota State Director for Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota (PPMNS). With this post she begins a regular series of updates she will provide Rewire about the South Dakota ballot initiative.
The voters of South Dakota are being asked to decide whether or not they support a near total ban on abortion in our state. The only exception in the ban is to save the life of the woman. Section 3 of the bill which passed through the legislature and which Governor Rounds signed last winter does allow for the use of contraception - most of us weren't aware that we needed permission from the legislature to use birth control, but the opponents of legal abortion found it necessary to mention that in the bill.
A unique conference will begin tonight in Chicago, and I have a feeling that very few of our readers have heard of it. CINTA, which stands for "Contraception Is Not The Answer," will be convened by the Pro-Life Action League (PLAL) and its infamous leader, Joseph Scheidler. While the media has been catching up with the trend against contraception from the far-right and its increasing influence on politics, we thought it might be helpful to provide some background on the conference presenters.
Earlier this month, on September 11 to be exact, the IRS announced that it had revoked the nonprofit 501(c)(3) status of Youth Ministries, Inc., which did business as the vehemently antichoice Operation Rescue West (ORW). While the IRS does not provide information on the circumstances that lead to revocations of any group's tax-exempt status, a complaint filed by my organization, Catholics for a Free Choice in 2004 provided information on ORW's electoral activities during the Boston Democratic Party convention that we considered to be violations of IRS regulations.
Recommendations are designed to make voluntary HIV screening a routine part of medical care for all patients ages 13 to 64. With these Recommendations, CDC aims to simplify the HIV testing process in health-care settings and increase early HIV diagnosis among the more than 250,000 HIV-positive persons in the U.S. who remain unaware of their infection. The Recommendations also include new measures to improve diagnosis among pregnant women in order to further reduce mother-to-child HIV transmission.
Bobby writes for No on 85 - the Campaign for Real Teen Safety.
Editor's note: This begins our coverage of California Proposition 85, which would prohibit abortions for California teens until 48 hours after their parents have been notified.
Just in case you thought the fight over Prop. 85 [img_assist|nid=586|title=Dr. Laura|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=85|height=100]wasn't being watched carefully by conservatives across the country, Dr. Laura Schlessinger clarified the issue for all of us. In an op-ed that ran in the Santa Barbara News Press last month, Dr. Laura—famous for her vitriolic rants and spastic advice—suggested Planned Parenthood is somehow threatening the future well-being of our daughters.
"Kids are traumatized by so many things: pimples, fat, learning problems in school, bullying and so forth," Schlessinger wrote. "I don't think it helps our daughters' future well-being to have the memory of terminating the lives of their never-first-born children… But this is exactly what Planned Parenthood and the League of Women Voters want for your daughter: that indelible, ugly memory for the rest of her life."
I was on vacation here in Nicaragua last week, staying with friends in a gorgeous house at the top of a hill overlooking the Pacific beach town of San Juan del Sur. The house was built by an American expat who's been living and building in Nicaragua since the 1970s-today, he rents his houses out to gringos in search of a quiet vacation spot on the "undiscovered" Nicaraguan coast. The house was palatial, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't relish my stay there. But as we drove down the long, steep driveway and then along the road that leads into town, amidst the English-only Century 21 and ReMax signs advertising cheap properties for foreigners, I couldn't help noticing the wood and corrugated iron dwellings that crowd the ditches on either side of the road-where the real population of San Juan del Sur lives. The vacation houses in the hills are probably sturdy enough to survive a hurricane, but what of the families living in the valley below? September seems a particularly appropriate moment to contemplate the question, since it commemorates not only the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, but also the anniversary of her lesser-known cousin, Hurricane Stan.
HBO debuted the special "Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater" last night (see preview below). With all the moralizing we hear these days - especially about private human relations - I thought it was worth rereading these words that were spoken 25 years ago and yet are still relevant today:
"However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their [img_assist|nid=575|title=Barry Goldwater|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=80|height=100]religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.
As a veteran foreign aid advocate, I was keenly interested when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced in January a major restructuring of the U.S. government's foreign assistance program under a new vision of "transformational diplomacy." Its lofty goal was described as "helping to build and sustain democratic, well-governed states that will respond to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system." As the details of the new strategic framework for foreign aid begin to emerge, however, my cynical concern that short-term national security and democracy promotion objectives favored by the State Department would trump the traditional focus of U.S. foreign assistance on development and poverty reduction appears to be on its way to being confirmed. Such a shift could prove enormously detrimental to long-term development programs, including family planning and reproductive health.
