OUR VIEW: Value of contraceptives goes beyond pregnancy prevention
By The Bakersfield Californian
In case you missed it, Rick Santorum's big-money donor, 71-year-old Foster Friess, recently told NBC's Andrea Mitchell an old joke. In his day, he said, birth control was so simple aspirin did the trick: Girls simply held one between their knees. In other words, if women just kept their legs shut, they wouldn't need birth control.
That joke isn't funny today. It certainly wasn't funny for young women 40 years ago. So many of them saw women's reproductive rights trampled on in the workplace and elsewhere. Some no doubt remember watching women who became pregnant get fired from their jobs -- there was no such thing as guaranteed maternity leave -- or being asked in job interviews if they planned to get pregnant anytime soon. It was often made clear that applicants wouldn't be considered unless they could guarantee several pregnancy-free years.
Women's rights may have indeed "come a long way, baby," but based on recent events, it seems less and less so. In fact, some progress has receded. Evidence? Consider the all-male panel that testified last week before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which held a hearing on the recent debate over contraception and health insurance.
Democratic women on the committee walked out in protest after a fellow Democrat tried to call a female witness, only to be barred by Issa. The witness, a Georgetown University student, would have talked about a classmate who lost an ovary because of a syndrome that causes ovarian cysts. Georgetown, which is affiliated with the Catholic Church, does not insure birth control, which is used to treat the syndrome. Issa said the hearing was about religious liberty, not reproductive rights, and claimed a college student didn't have the credibility to testify before the committee.
Women are being denied access to medical advances that do more than just prevent pregnancy. An aspirin between the knees will not treat ovarian cysts, migraine headaches and other ailments. But in any case, it's nobody's business if (and why) a woman chooses to take birth control.
For a party that prides itself on getting government out of our lives, that seems to be a hard concept for Republicans to grasp.
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