When the Christian Right says they care about you August 26, 2006
Posted by Evil Bender in Religion, wingnuts.trackback
it’s a good sign they don’t give a shit. Take Focus on the Family, an organization dedicated to creating an American Theocracy and generally controlling the lives of others. They’re up in arms about this weeks long-overdue decision to finally allow Plan B to be sold over the counter, where it can be most effective.
“This decision is a disaster and a danger for girls and their parents.” That’s the blunt and straightforward assessment from Carrie Gordon Earll, senior analyst for bioethics with the Colorado-based ministry. “There are no safeguards, legal or otherwise, to prevent this powerful drug from falling into the hands of teen girls — or, worse, into the hands of men bent on sexually exploiting teen girls by flashing a magic pill as a promise that they won’t have to worry about getting pregnant.”
See, before Plan B was over-the-counter, young girls were never being exploited by older men. But now that there is another layer of protection, we’re sure to see all that change. See, now men will be easily able to talk women into having unprotected sex, because an expensive, less-effective pill is so much easier to convince a woman to use than is a condem.
Or could it be that Focus on the Family really only objects to the idea that people might have sex without producing kids?
FotF only cares about peoples’ rights when those people are using them to deny others rights. So while it’s a terrible decision to give adult women more control over their own bodies, it’s perfectly acceptable to let pharmacists pretend they are doctors:
“There are efforts to prevent the pharmacists from having any discretion in this regard,” says Brauer. “There’s an effort by New York’s version of the ACLU to remove the licenses of three pharmacists — not because they wouldn’t dispense Plan B itself but because, in their clinical judgment, they felt that refills were not appropriate use of the drug.”
So a pharmacist won’t refill a drug because they don’t think they should (after all, they must know better than the FDA). And I’m sure that decision has nothing to do with the spate of pharmacists who won’t fill orders for birth control or other means of avoiding pregnancy; nope, it’s just their deep care for their customers, and their decision without seeing a medical history or, you know, having proper training, not to sell this particular product because it’s “not appropriate.” Right.
A good rule of thumb to remember is that whenever groups like FotF start talking about protecting you, what they really want is to control you. In fact, that’s pretty safe to assume when almost anyone relies on “protection” to justify what would otherwise be questionable actions.
Nicely put. It’s actually been quite amusing to note the huffing and puffing over the Plan B decision, from the Right. I guess the thing Christian fundamentalists (particularly) still can’t get over is the fact that people like being – and want to be – sexually active outside of marriage (and even people INSIDE of marriage might not want a baby/another child … WOW!), and that our wild and crazy scientists have developed ways to make it safer and reduce the immediate consequences of sex (the Pill, condoms, IUDs, etc etc). That’s a great step forward, one would assume. Hey, don’t get me wrong, abstinence is wonderful for those who feel it’s right for them … but why should it be the only choice? It’s a very personal choice, actually.
I have read some comments about Plan B and contraception in general on other blogs, where folks believe they are completely against contraception altogether because it ‘promotes promiscuity and molestation’. But all I can say is, ‘Huh’?? I thought it promoted safe sex and personal responsibility. HUMANS are the ones with the promiscuity and molestation issues. Interesting too that they tend to lump the two into the same sentence, despite their complete disparity – ‘promiscuity’ being a personal choice and not in any way ‘a crime’. ‘Molestation’ giving you no choice in the matter – and a very serious crime. Focus on the Family scare me, because they represent folks who would quite literally give you ‘no choice in the matter’ based on their own personal beliefs.
Nicely put. It’s actually been quite amusing to note the huffing and puffing over the Plan B decision, from the Right. I guess the thing Christian fundamentalists (particularly) still can’t get over is the fact that people like being – and want to be – sexually active outside of marriage (and even people INSIDE of marriage might not want a baby/another child … WOW!), and that our wild and crazy scientists have developed ways to make it safer and reduce the immediate consequences of sex (the Pill, condoms, IUDs, etc etc). That’s a great step forward, one would assume. Hey, don’t get me wrong, abstinence is wonderful for those who feel it’s right for them … but why should it be the only choice when there are others out there? It’s a very personal choice, actually.
I have read some comments about Plan B and contraception in general on other blogs, where folks believe they are completely against contraception altogether because it ‘promotes promiscuity and molestation’. But all I can say is, ‘Huh’?? I thought it promoted safe sex and personal responsibility. HUMANS are the ones with the promiscuity and molestation issues. Interesting too that they tend to lump the two into the same sentence, despite their complete disparity – ‘promiscuity’ being a personal choice and not in any way ‘a crime’. ‘Molestation’ giving you no choice in the matter – and a very serious crime. Focus on the Family scare me, because they represent folks who would quite literally give you ‘no choice in the matter’ based on their own personal beliefs.
Oh no, double post! feel free to delete one ;) !!
The only conclusion I can draw from FotF’s argument is that women are incapable of making decisions for themselves. From letting older men trick them into having sex to changing their minds about wanting to get pregnant after a sexual encounter (because, after all, why else have sex?), women repeated show themselves to be incapable of exercising their free will. It’s good that we have organizations like FotF to make sure that women don’t have to think for themselves.
Thank you sketchgirl for once again reminding us that molestation is not the byproduct of access to birth control. Molestation occurs, in part, when the victim lacks the agency to take control of the situation. Since FotF wants to take away women’s agency over their sexual choices, I see them as the ones who promote the kinds of justifications that lead people to justify molestation. This frightening New York Times story that includes this explanation of pedophilia:
“It is rationalization that allows them to avoid admitting that their desires are harmful and illegal,” said Bill Walsh, a former commander of the Crimes Against Children Unit for the Dallas Police Department, who founded the most prominent annual national conference on the issue. “That can allow them to take that final step and cross over from fantasy into real-world offenses.”
At the risk of sliding down the slippery slope, linking promiscuity and molestation may be the kind of dangerous thinking that eventually leads to justifying one’s sex crimes.
Since “Plan B” prevents the implantation of the unborn human it is an abortifacient and therefore many pro-lifers are from their perspective quite reasonably against its use.
From the pro-life perspective it is not only about the woman’s body since there is another person’s life at stake. Even the pro-abortionist should admit the fact that there is another human’s life at stake during an abortion.
On a side note, many pro-abortionists believe that a woman should have a right to choose whether the human in her womb is a person or not and if she believes that the human is a not a person she should be free to kill it. But I think that argument is not reasonable since the state of the human’s personhood is independent of the woman’s perspective on the issue. Hence, any time a woman performs an abortion she could be killing a person. Do you folks agree?