Hey, just wanted to warn you that your link to where Planned Parenthood has more information pops up first to a page asking for money from Planned Parenthood. I suspect it's their doing not yours, but it was a bit weird (and really if they've got a script in their code that does that when people link to that part of the website, I think it's a bad tactic, but that's another conversation.

Regardless, thanks for the heads up! I knew he was trying to get this to happen, didn't know how close he'd come to succeeding.

I'm curious about this. What exactly does "health care providers define abortion" mean? How can you define abortion? Doesn't it mean the same thing no matter how you look at it?

And whats a "crisis pregnancy center"?

I thought originally his intent was to allow health care providers to consider birth control pills, emergency contraception, etc. to be considered abortion also. And therefore not dispense them if they were so inclined. Either way, its pretty sickening that our president wants to tell us what to do with our bodies.

I had hoped so much when I'd first heard about this in liz_marcs LJ a month or so ago, that it was just a rumour, given that it wasn't official at the time. No such luck.

Stuff like this enrages me more than I can possibly express. I am so, so very glad that Bush will be gone once and for all come November.

He's also doing this sort of thing w/environmental regs, too. Going down in a blaze of glory? *grrrrr*

As I ranted in my LJ...
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iEW9FYay0lFbUS4UMghrpSYEKE9AD92MU8IO0 says:

"Leavitt said the regulation was intended to protect practitioners who have moral objections to abortion and sterilization [...]."

Also, godsblightit, lumping abortion and sterilization together shows the agenda -- and it is not the agenda they pretend. It is an agenda of control through mandatory reproduction.

I need to write some physmail instead of just the email I sent.

Does one have to be an American citizen to comment in the 30 day period?

OMFG. I've been away from the world of late, and this is the first place I've seen this. O.M.F.G.

How DARE he.

OMFG. I've been away from the world of late, and this is the first place I've seen this. O.M.F.G.

How DARE he.

Sent my letter. Thanks for the link. Planned Parenthood managed to not only ask for money before giving me the letter to send, but also to ask for money as soon as I had done so. They did not get money.

First, I'd like to mention this: Abortion is the aborting of a pregnancy. If sperm doesn't meet egg and fertilize it, no baby. No baby, no pregnancy. Birth control isn't abortion. *mutters a string of curses coupled with repeated shouts of "THOSE MORONS!"*

This is fucking ridiculous. First off, most of this debate (from what I can tell) comes from RELIGIOUS justification, and if I'm remembering this correctly, there is a little bit of our governmental setup that says something, just a tiny detail, about separation of church and state? Perhaps we should look into the root of the debate, Mr. President. And if this is deemed so, that it is heavily a religious issue, then forcing the beliefs of a faith onto the populus of the United States with laws reflecting the morality of that faith and not the whole of society is infringing on that whole freedom of religion thing, and the separation of church and state. (I'm a Lutheran, here. Just thought I'd point that out. Not bashing christianity, just wishing the zealots and blowhards would keep their religious views out of the legal sphere and understand that THEY don't have to get an abortion if they don't want to.)

Birth control is a great thing, honestly. While I'm pro-choice, I'm really a lot more pro-intelligence when it comes to this. If people are preventing an unwanted pregnancy, then they're preventing the need for that oh-so-squidgy topic of abortion. Threaten access to birth control and you bring about the possible rise in the number of abortions. Isn't that a tidge counterproductive?

And, in conclusion, my uterus is not a ballot box. I'd thank politicians to keep their bills, laws, and suggestions out of it. They're starting to get a bit uncomfortable.

Contraception being retooled into abortion. *ANGER*

It seems like all the things I read on the laws that are being passed or have tried to be passed of late that America is moving further and further away from the ideals that are supposed to define your country. I mean, I know ideals do not equal reality, hardly ever, but this...

I just talked to my Mum about it; she's a health care professional here in Australia and she said that you could object to performing certain things like a termination if you want to but you have a legal obligation to bring in someone else to present the option. Because it's a part of your obligations to the patients. And it's the patient's choice, not yours. Also, that if someone has a problem with anything in this field then they should just get the hell out of it.

Not much I can do from here but I'm really hoping that you lot can squash that bill good and proper.

:(
Jaydeyn

I'm sitting here shaking my head incredulously. I head read about this before, but it still appalls me. There are several really scary aspects to this - the notion that birth control somehow could equate abortion, allowing people in health care to make up their own definitions and to decide if they want to provide health care to persons, the obvious religious bias of this law, and above all the utter misogyny. I suppose it's true in the US, too, that the birth control provisions available to women usually will need to be prescribed by a doctor and/or bought in a pharmacy, while the one male birth control that is widely used can be bought in non-healthcare places? This whole thing smells of taking birth control out of the hands of women completely. How is a woman who lives in a rural area where there aren't too many doctors or pharmacies to get care if she is in a fundamentalist area and they all follow the same "guidelines"?

I'd say that I'm glad the situation is not like this here, but I read an extremely troubling article a while ago that many US-based evangelist churches are trying to take over ground here in Germany, and they are gaining a huge number of members. They have large funds, and they lure people in by an odd combination of very "modern" services and a literal interpretation of the Bible - kind of ironic, because our existing Catholic and Protestant churches tend to have more or less traditional services, but interpret the scriptures far less literally (except for the obvious Catholic dogmas).

It appears that evangelical movements are already lobbying politicians in our national parliament, and their goals seem to be like those of the US evangelicals, no doubt including their goals in this particular area. As an anti-abortion (in that I don't think I would have one myself), pro-choice (because I realise things might be different for other women) Lutheran who believes in the separation between church and state, those fundamentalists scare the living daylight out of me.

Argh that is absolutely ridiculous. I wish I could do something, but I'm not American, so I suppose I wont be able to make the comments. Still, it is mindblowing that BC is equal to abortion. WTF.

The pills prevent ovulation. No egg, no fertilization, no...remote concept of abortion.

This is stupid. Connecting this to another controversal issue, wouldn't this be like denying a gun owner care if he accidentily shot himself because the doctor doesn't support gun owndership?