This does not compute

One recurring theme in the fight against providing coverage for birth control, is the idea that sex is for recreation and insurance should not cover someone’s recreational activities.  Now, theoretically, I can understand the logic behind that even though I think that it’s a bad argument for a myriad of public policy reasons, not the least of which being that if you want to reduce the number of abortions it makes no sense to make access to birth control more difficult. However, what I cannot understand is that the people making this argument are, by and large, the same conservative Evangelicals who have spent decades railing against a society that cheapens sex and reduces it to nothing but a recreational activity. How is it that the same people who argue that sex is for procreation when they’re fighting tooth and nail to keep me from ever getting legally married are arguing that sex is for recreation now that they’re trying to cut off access to birth control? 

But this isn’t really about paying for birth control, is it? It’s the first salvo in an attack on Griswold v. Connecticut and privacy rights. The end game isn’t just not paying for birth control, it’s banning access to birth control. And they’re not going to stop with birth control, it’s about getting rid of the constitutional right to privacy. People in right wing circles have been grumbling about privacy rights for years–“Griswold” is almost as dirty a word as “Roe”–and they’re seizing the opportunity provided by the health care fight and running with it. 

Or at least that’s the only explanation that makes sense to me, because I can’t see how going after women’s birth control is a winning political issue in an election year. If they’re not playing a long game and going after Griswold, then it’s just bare political incompetence and whoever thought it was a good strategy shouldn’t be allowed to even manage a campaign for mosquito control.

Published by Kathryn Brightbill

I was born at a very young age.

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