Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
US liberals and feminists are denouncing a "war on contraception" being waged by the Bush administration and religious conservatives who already made gains in the fight against abortion.
Although never officially declared, the left sees many facets to this war: efforts to ban the open sale of the "morning after" pill; the promotion of abstinence as the chief way of avoiding pregnancy; and the introduction of laws allowing pharmacists not to sell contraceptives.
No prominent conservative group has yet officially gone on record against the use of contraception -- with the risk of alienating a large majority of women taking the pill -- and some on the right refuse to admit the existence of a campaign.
"I do not think there is a war on contraception," said Carrie Gordon-Earll, a spokeswoman for the Christian Evangelical group Focus on the Family.
"There is no evidence of the so-called war" she said in reference to a May 7 New York Times Magazine article titled "The War on Contraception."
"The article reads more like a political commentary than the news."
Still, feminists say the evidence of a concerted attack on contraception is mounting:
- The Food and Drug Administration has refused to approve the open sale of the morning-after pill in pharmacies despite support for the plan by the scientific community.
- Health insurers are under mounting pressure not to cover the morning-after pill.
- President George W. Bush has nominated a conservative who stands against abortion and supports abstinence as the head of social welfare with duties to oversee contraception for low-income women.
Bush critics say the overriding campaign -- waged in the name of a fight against abortions and unwanted pregnancies -- stresses the "dangers" of contraception.
Meanwhile the conservative Concerned Women for America group claims on its official Internet site that the IUD, or intrauterine device, is an "abortive contraceptive" despite medical arguments that this was not so.
And four state -- Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakota -- have further approved laws allowing pharmacists to refuse to sell the pill, the Guttmacher Institute on reproductive health research points out.
"Here at home we know it's not just 'choice' that is under attack, it's contraception which is under attack," said Senator Hillary Clinton at a June 13 meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association.
"We also have to understand that there is a broader agenda at work and it is aimed right at family planning and contraception," Clinton said.
Others on the left agree that the conservative right has moved on from a more focused fight against abortion to one spanning contraception on the whole.
"The right-to-life movement has moved on, they are on to fighting contraception," said Christina Page of the NARAL Pro-Choice America group.
"They've by and large won the abortion war," Page told AFP. "They are just waiting for an 86-year-old justice to step down" she said of associate justice John Paul Stevens, who has voted to uphold the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on a woman's right to abortion.
Some observers say the conservative "war" has already borne fruit.
"I have been very surprised to meet with intelligent lawmakers who strongly support contraception, but believe emergency contraception to be abortion -- not based on science, but simply on misconception," said Lara Foley, assistant professor of sociology and women's studies at the University of Tulsa.
"These lawmakers are often shocked to learn that (based on medical definitions) emergency contraception prohibits but does not terminate pregnancy."
im/zak/kd
US-society-health-women-contraception
AFP 220908 GMT 06 06
COPYRIGHT 2004 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.
