Bush's wars: Afghanistan, Iraq and... Contraception?

We were all worried that with only 100 days until election day Bush would find some way to start a third war.

We thought it would be against Iran, not contraception.

Ever the surpriser, Smirky just launched what is presumably the last topping on the sundae of his legacy: a full-scale war on reproductive rights. Armed with a new proposal that requires all recipients of federal aid programs under the Department of Health and Human Services to not refuse to hire providers, nursers or hospitals that refuse to provide abortion, and some new nomenclature that refers to IUDs and other forms of contraception as abortion, he's apparently fighting this war with far more planning than the ones that drag on in the middle east. He might even win.

I saw Nancy Pelosi speak at Netroots Nation last weekend, and despite my and roughly half the attendees' frustration with her occasional acquiesence-as-consensus-building leadership style, I thought that it was really gutsy of her to say flat out that a good number of Republicans are against contraception. The President certainly just proved that he is.

Our song this week is about Bush's new war on contraception, and how the right's war on choice doesn't end with abortion - it's part of a larger assault on reproductive rights that makes birth control harder and harder to get. Enjoy "Against It All".

Click the play button below to hear the song.

Against It All

They'll extricate it
From the lectures and the lessons they teach
And if they could they'd legislate it
To a shelving unit far from your reach
they'll only mention it in whispers every once in a while
But the focus, it's not the clinic but the CVS aisle

Come on, let's dial any element of progress to a crawl
No matter what they say they're against it all

Incremental little battles in a much larger fight
Instrumental in the war on what you do in the night
Please explain how some kind of life
Can begin in the back of our minds
So pay attention, they flip all the language around so you can't hear it right

Change the name until the connotation fits
Still inocuous no matter what they're called
If they had their way you'd never get your hands on it
No matter what they say they're against it all

Max and the Marginalized are a band and a blog. They do a song every week on the Huffington Post, all 43 of which are available for download here. Add them on Facebook.

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Comments

[schatsie]

Let's think about this.

A woman cannot use any kind of birth control at all, that is has no right to override God's Will...

So if this is applied impartially, this meas that MEN CANNOT GET A VASECTOMY or USE VIAGRA,,,GET IT???

[liberalgirl31]

This goes to show you that the Religious Right is not really "pro-life." It's anti-woman. Women are not supposed to have sex until they marry and once they do, they're supposed to stay home and pump out babies. Welcome to the 1950's! Join Hillary Clinton and NARAL and fight this sexist crap!

www.naral.org

http://www.hillpac.com/action/hhspetition

[Coronadoman]

Bush, on his way out, will twist in ways we cannot predict, but predictably, they will be bad, nasty and repugnant.

So: let's compose a list of things for President Obama to change, by fiat, or with a massively Democratic Congress:

a. Eliminate ban on foreign family planning money that includes contraception, discussion, etc.

b. Immediate tripling of the National Endowment for the Arts. Nothing pisses 'em off like this tiny budget item.

c. Creation of The Truth And Reconciliation Commission, to investigate every evil of Cheney, Bush, Ashcroft, and the whole gang of neocons.

[Broga]

These brave warriors against contraception never seem to see their own kids in the front line. Bush, of course, is happy to pose in fighting man mode on a ship or make noises in front of a captive audience of the military who have to stay respectable. Reminds me of the story from the First World War. A young soldier becomes shell shocked and terrified and runs away from the front line. After running for some miles he is stopped by a man in uniform who says, "What are you doing here, you coward? Answer, I am a general."

The young man says, "Really, I didn't realise I had ran so far and so fast from the fighting."

[jfor]

How come woman never bring up the two things that would in all likelihood end the debate about choice once and for all? One of those things hangs on the left and the other hangs on the right and neither of those things wants the government to make any decisions regarding the health and happiness of either them. In fact you could say that they are the only true bipartisan things in this country.

[lisakaz2]

Do all these Rethugs have 20 kids apiece? Or is it that they prefer their encounters in men's rooms? I don't get it except that they want to keep contraception for themselves and use everybody else's kids as target practice.

[kjdwyer]

Bingo

[darker]

Republican RICH need young people FOR WARS AND INVASIONS so their companies can PROFITEER from our taxpayer dollars streaming into their pockets from USTreasury. No contraception = more youngsters to send over to wars and invasions so THE RICH CAN GET RICHER.

[darthmaul]

War and soldiers are really hard to outsource. Bush has done his best, with the use of blackwater and other merc groups. But it's gone about as far as it can be taken. So that leads us to the question of where do get replacments?

It's really simple, more babies equals more cannon fodder for Republican Wars.

[000Jade000]

So, hire providers and nurses that refuse to "provide" abortion, and make contraceptives = abortion. Nice.

Gotta love the anti-women agenda of the Republican party. Hillary, Obama's other surrogates, women's organizations, and women everywhere need to get on this asap.

[emcd]

Hillary is doing something about it, and you can too! Go to www.hillpac.com and sign the petition!

[girlwild]

I have been saying for years that our young women have rested on our (older feminists) who fought for their (younger women) reproductive freedom. What I hear from younger women is that they don't need to fight because they already have their rights. What they don't realize that from the Reagan era, women's rights in general have been eroding. We still don't have economic parity with men, and reproductive rights have been attacked. Now here we are, with the Bush minions ready to march in lockstep with the fundamentalists and return women to the home where they belong (fundamentalists viewpoint and certainly not mine!), pregnant, unable to follow their chosen career track, freeing up all these good jobs for men etc.

So young women WAKE UP! PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS!

We need a march on DC BEFORE THE ELECTION. And I want Obama to say something about this subject.

[insanityfollows]

This is just unfathomable. Like Laura Bush didn't use the Pill???? C'mon! Like I said before-if women are pregnant and home all of the time, they don't have much time to think or make their mark in the world, do they? This move by the Bush administration is nearly as restraining as a burka. i can't believe we are going to have to fight the fight of our grandmothers and their mothers. What has America come to? Now we don't have sexual freedom or the right to shape our own futures? This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to give up, when I have loved this country, voted, written to my legislators and worn my American pride. In the last eight years, I have seen this nation folding like a house of cards, and it will take us at least 20 years to straighten out this mess. I love the US, but if any more of our constitutional rights go by the roadside, we won't be able to fight for her preservation. I am seriously considering immigration for the survival of our family. I never thought I would be uttering these words.

[lisakaz2]

And don't forget the irresponsible Jenna and Barb. Why doesn't Jenna have a kid already?

[klmebane]

I've been considering emigration for years. I've seen this coming. I am not in the least bit surprised.

The goal seems to have always been 'preserve every mans right to do whatever they want, while taking specific, strategic rights away from women to make them more controllable.'

I am not OK with this. I am not OK with raising my daughter in a backwards place like this. I can't believe how unsafe I feel as a woman in America. I've heard so many people who say that they'd rather live in America than anywhere else. I've always wondered, "why?" All the comforts we have in America can be found in other countries as well. In some instances, more of the rights Americans used to have can be found overseas. Obviously, I'm not saying every other country is better than the U.S., but America is not on top anymore. No country is perfect, America included. Americans have great difficulty acknowledging their mistakes, and America as a country seems to have the same problem.

[kjdwyer]

My breaking point was the first Bush election. For me, that was the beginning of the end. The NYT reported that since that time, more than one million Americans, like me, have left the country and are now living abroad (bringing the total to 6.6 million). That's quite an exodus, no?

Americans have sold themselves into penury and for a couple of generations now have declined mentally to an extent that makes me shudder. I can't tell you how many conversations I have had with people here asking me "what's going on with the people in the U.S.?" I've answered this so many times (in two different languages) that it has become something of a prepared speech. It always ends " . . . and that's why I'm living here now."

You don't have to give up your citizenry. There are many countries where you can establish residency under a variety of options that allow you to maintain your U.S. citizenship. The world is so volatile right now that I would suggest you keep that in mind.

I'm not saying I will never return (for that very reason of volatility), but I wouldn't have traded the last four years for anything. It's an incredibly edifying experience to look at the U.S. from the outside in.

http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Americans_Abroad.shtml
http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/living/index.shtml

Good luck.