A South Dakota bill that would have given women easier access to contraception and taken substantial steps to decrease the unintended pregnancy and abortion rate was defeated in the state senate — by “pro-life” legislators.
The Birth Control Protection Act said South Dakotans have the freedom to obtain and use safe and effective methods of contraception without government interference.
“It is the public policy of this state that the interest in freedom from unreasonable government intrusions into the private lives of citizens, and specifically the right of consenting individuals to obtain and use safe and effective methods of contraception without interference by governmental entities … ” the bill stated.
Birth control is not abortion. It does not cause or promote abortion. Birth control is the most effective way to decrease the abortion rate. And yet those who claim to oppose abortion the most are the same people who are taking the strongest steps to increase the abortion rate.
It’s things like this that lead pro-choicers like me to conclude that the “pro-life” establishment isn’t interested in life at all; they’re more interested in promoting a particular social agenda that is anti-sex and anti-woman. It’s about relegating women to the role of baby-maker, and taking away our ability to plan our pregnancies and have babies when we’re ready. It’s not about saving lives, fetal or otherwise — it’s about social control. And their opposition to birth control is Evidence #1 of their greater ideology.
Kimberly Martinez, executive director of the Alpha Center in Sioux Falls, which provides services to women and men involved in unplanned pregnancies, opposed the bill and applauded the Senate for its majority decision Wednesday.
“We want to thank the senators who voted no on SB 164, in spite of being bullied to disregard South Dakota values and accept an extreme worldview,” Martinez said.
Martinez said opponents to the bill were concerned that it didn’t specify the age of “consenting individuals” and said the language would have opened the door for minors to access birth control without parental or physician consent.
“The key to reducing the number of unwed pregnancies and abortions in South Dakota is sexual integrity relationship education, which includes healthy decision making, healthy relationships and refusal skills,” Martinez said.
In other words, “just say no” if you don’t want to get pregnant — for your entire life.
It’s interesting that Martinez talks about the pro-birth-control advocates of having an “extreme” worldview when the fact is that 95 percent of people will have sex before marriage, and 98 percent of women who have ever had sex use at least one type of contraceptive method. Most women will spend decades trying to prevent pregnancy, and only 5-7 years actually trying to get pregnant. What’s extreme is telling those women — virtually all women — that they should not be permitted sex for pleasure.
But that’s the “pro-life” agenda. At its heart, it’s incredibly extreme, and thoroughly out of line with the lives of most Americans — even Americans who self-identify as pro-life. And as pro-choice activists, we have to keep emphasizing the myriad ways that the mainstream “pro-life” groups compromise women’s health, contribute to a high abortion rate, and are entirely out of step with modern values.
Crap, well, I guess my move to South Dakota is off :) Seriously, the way pro-life and many pro-choicers frame the debate around birth control and pregnancy is laughable, that pregnancy is the default position for women, that poverty, psychosis, and more weight on the government and environment as punishment for missing a pill or breaking a condom (or in this case, not having access to those things) is justified. Blech.
Wasn’t S.D. the state with that nutbag senator who said he would allow an abortion only for a virgin who had been brutally sodomized, or some damn thing? IIRC, he got really graphic with it, to the point where you were looking for the little door to open up in his forehead and the tiny wooden bird to come out.
And people wonder why South Dakota is depopulating.
bastards!
I am a married woman. My husband and I don’t want children due to many various reasons including my mental illness and poor physical health. I have been told that if I get pregnant most likely I will die I guess these people want me dead then? I rely on the pill and condoms to prevent pregnancy. I just think it is absurd to think that married couples won’t get down. But these nutcases only want people to have sex for babies come on that just isn’t logical.
You are absolutely right. Two things you said especially hit me.
“It’s about relegating women to the role of baby-maker, and taking away our ability to plan our pregnancies and have babies when we’re ready. It’s not about saving lives, fetal or otherwise — it’s about social control.”
I’ve been saying this forever. Did you ever see those programs on TLC about families with 10+ children? The women don’t work, and their vaginas are probably inside out. The families live on donations from the neighborhood. Pro-lifers probably kneel two inches in front of the TV watching these shows in admiration.
The other part of the post that hit me was the information about just how many women use birth control. So many people think that this is a new phenomenon, but it really isn’t. My great aunt is 78 years old, and she used birth control when she was a young mother several decades ago. I’m sure a lot of other Polish Catholic women did too.
What always makes me so upset in these situations is that not only do anti-choicers want to take illogical measures that would only further increase the abortion and unwanted child rate, but they also seem to desire making the abortions that do occur much less safe, which is what outlawing it would do as it’s pretty well established that the legality of abortion has nothing to do with the number of abortions performed in a country. I’m still haunted by the imagery of an entire ward dedicated to the horrific complications of illegal septic abortions described in an essay linked from here awhile back.
Well, there’s that, and the fact that many of these people are likely to take their teen daughter for that evil abortion because that’s when it suits their purpose. The probably hypocrisy makes the cruelty so much harder to bear.
Also, ThickRedGlasses, it’s funny. My mother is a very devout Polish Catholic, and she not only used BC when she first got married to my father, but she is very firmly pro-choice. Women making pragmatic choices about family sizes is nothing new, and I’m rather tired of it being treated as such a hot button issue that’s never been dealt with until this century.
This needs to be shown to every reasonable person who thought anti-choicers are just nice people addled by baby love.
*headdesk*
it’s like talking to walls w/ these people…
They’d probably say your husband doesn’t love you if he “uses” you for sexual pleasure. That you might enjoy it, too, only shows that you’re debased, don’t you know?
This is making me think of my “states rights rant”. I hate it when people suggest that birth control and abortion rights should be decided by each individual state. There’s no way to outlaw or legalize by geographical region in today’s age. All those laws would do would outlaw or legalize by economic groups. Rich and middle class women in South Dakota would travel to a pro-choice state, while the poor women would be forced to stay pregnant against their will.
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, and some states start outlawing abortion, I’m going to start an underground railroad style network of women to help move lower income women across the country to where they can get access.
One dear friend put it thusly, “It’s so those damn stupid fucks can knock up a woman that normally wouldn’t even look at them. Now she’s tied to the bastard for life and he’s got pussy, a maid, and more money than God”. I think she’d spent most of puberty avoiding being preggers so she could become a physician.
She did too!! :)
Uh, just thought you might like to know that the google ad at the bottom of this post on my screen is linking to a pro-life organization. “Heritage House” or something another…
[...] is all to set you up for a very uncivil statement: The misogynist choads of the South Dakota legislature sucked it up and tacitly admitted that they…. When faced with a bill with such alarming language as this, they were forced to vote it down: It [...]
I wish we could broadcast this post on the nightly news. Anti-choicers do. not. care.
Over on Jezebel a couple weeks ago we were talking about abortion (most of us pro-choicers) when this absolutely loathsome anti-choicer started calling us whores and saying she wished more women died from abortion because then maybe fewer women would “kill their babies.”
I told her about my health condition and said I wasn’t going to stop having (protected) sex just because I don’t want to gestate a pregnancy. A pregnancy and childbirth could leave me paralyzed, and I’d be in excrutiating pain for the duration. What would you have me do? I asked.
“Paralysis is not death. That’s the sacrifice you have to make.”
No.
*Wow.* I definitely missed that Jezebel thread.
refusal skills? So I guess if you’re raped, your refusal skills just weren’t good enough?
Assholes.
I keep being astounded that when pro-choicers say “birth control is nothing new,” they only go back fifty or a hundred years. Lengths of sheep’s intestines were used as condoms in Classical Greece and Rome, at least. Hell, the Greeks had a Plan B herb! Taken within a few days after sex, it was better than 80% effective at preventing pregnancy, and extremely safe. It was used so widely that the plant was wiped out entirely, became extinct. Nothing new is absolutely right!
This is an outrage. Another step backwards for the control of women’s bodies…which apparently, are only to be used for producing offspring.
I guess like Amanda said to my comment the right wing crazed people would just think my husband doesn’t love me and that I am sick for liking sex. Oh heaven forbid a woman who likes sex! Someone get me to the fainting couch. Like I have said before on various blogs in the comment section, I come from a large prochoice family. My mom taught us all about birth control but then I guess she was evil for doing that. She just wanted us to be safe. I thank her everyday for the education she gave myself and my brother. I just don’t get these people and I doubt I ever will.
I see the people opposing the bill whipped up the pro-life crowd and the fence-straddlers alike with the usual “what about the children!” cry.
Martinez said opponents to the bill were concerned that it didn’t specify the age of “consenting individuals” and said the language would have opened the door for minors to access birth control without parental or physician consent.
Um. Minors can already buy condoms without parental or physician consent. Also, they can HAVE SEX without parental or physician consent, and they have a right to be safe when they choose to do so.
I think most people would find the idea that healthy relationships involve sex only for procreation to be the extreme one.
I will be right there with you.
“Sexual integrity relationship education?” Is that what they’re calling abstinence education now that it doesn’t poll so well? Hahahahahahaha.
“Also, they can HAVE SEX without parental or physician consent, and they have a right to be safe when they choose to do so.”
It’d take some interesting logical acrobatics to argue that minors who have reached the age of consent (which looks like 13-with-conditions and 16-without in South Dakota) have the ability to consent to sex but neither the right nor ability to consent to birth control.
I’m not in the least bit surprised. These antis in South Dakota are even worse than the Taliban. The contempt the anti-choicers have for women is just incredible.
Preying Mantis, you’re right. Unfortunately they usually don’t have to go through the logical acrobatics because as soon as some people hear “minors” and “birth control” their brains shut down. The fact that large numbers of people oppose easy access to birth control by minors is proof enough.
One of the acrobatic tricks, though, was the addition of physician consent in this sentence: “opened the door for minors to access birth control without parental or physician consent.”
First of all, physicans don’t “consent.” They treat or prescribe. Second, no one can get prescription-only birth control without a doctor’s prescription, so it’s only fear-mongering to suggest otherwise.
A case like this is why I have no respect for Ron Paul or the retarded lemmings who babble about their “rEvolution” and how their precious Dr. Paul is OMG TEH OSUM. He thinks our liberty, our lives, our health are a matter of “state’s rights,” so let’s overturn Roe. Fuck Ron Paul and the tinfoil hat he rode in on.
The moment someone figured out that babies were the result of sex someone else said “there’s gotta be a way to get around this.” And isn’t it funny that all these antis never say one word about limiting access to condoms? Nope, it’s all about what the women use. Gee, that’s fair.
When more and more people begin getting refused their BC in SD from activist pharmacists, this will change.
Best. Comment. Ever.
I want that quote framed. Patricia Beninato wins the internets!
:blush:
Hey, it’s both funny and true, so you get one(1) INTORNETS as a prize*.
*(Winner may not actually recieve the internet.)
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