What the Pill Means to Me

From Cristina at Reality Check"

Tired of the same-old lame protests outside of abortion clinics? Looking to impose your religious beliefs in other people's lives in a new and exciting way? The pro-life movement would like to expand your horizons.

On June 7th, the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that gave married people the right to use contraception, the American Life League, along with Pro-Life Wisconsin and Pharmacists for Life International Associate groups want you to join them in protesting in front of facilities that distribute birth control products. The national day against contraception, Protest the Pill Day '08: The Pill Kills Babies, was started to convince the American people of a simple and imaginative idea: attempting to prevent abortion is abortion too. These arguments have been confounded by diabolical scientists and experts who insistently point out there's no evidence to support that the birth control pill works the way these groups claim. As we all know, however, if ideology waited for science to prove scientific points, our ancestors would have never have spent all those years wandering the then-flat earth.

The campaign website is chock full of important information and you don't want to miss the informative "Talking Points" section. Here's a sampling:

Q: The Supreme Court has ruled that it's my right to privacy - who do you think you are to say otherwise?

A: On June 7, 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Griswold v. Connecticut decision. The Supreme Court justices first presumed that previous Court decisions dealing with a citizen's right to liberty and security that prohibited invasion of one's home and acquisition of evidence that might later be used to convict him of a crime also addressed privacy within marriage. In fact, the justices argued, "The concept of liberty is not so restricted... it embraces the right of marital privacy though that right is not mentioned explicitly [emphasis added] in the Constitution" and is based on "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights [which] have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance."


This confusing language, which has no relationship whatsoever to what the Founding Fathers intended, gave married women permission to use the birth control pill. The Supreme Court literally created the "right to privacy" out of thin air.

We now know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that not only did the Supreme Court literally make up the right that you claim gives you permission to use birth control, but the most popular form of birth control, the pill, can kill innocent preborn children. If there is a chance that human beings are going to be murdered, I am going to do everything in my power to help prevent that from happening. If you knew there was a chance that someone might poison your neighbor, don't you think you would try to notify your neighbor and do as much as you could to help save a life?

And before you despair that your right to privacy is being lost, take comfort in the knowledge that once we all finally live in a country where ideology is valued over evidence and our government is run by and for those who subscribe, or succumb, to the exciting agenda of these groups...privacy will no longer be needed. Your point of view and way of life will, conveniently, be decided for you. So what are you waiting for?! Sign up now
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/05/02/pro-lifers-announce-national-day-to-protest-the-right-to-use-contraception

So, I am 33 years old. Never been pregnant. I often reflect on this fact with pride. For all the generations of women who have come before me with no choice over their reproductive organs, I am one of the lucky few who can make a choice--a choice!--over her family size, her womb, her overies. They are mine, all mine, thanks to the pill. Which of course, makes fundies very nervous. After all, if I'm not making more white babies, them Ay-rabs will take over the world, right??

It makes me angry that anyone, much less a concentrated group of people, who try to take this choice away from women through shame and misinformation.

The way I was raised (very fundemental Christian) and the late start I had in life would limit my choices. Except, I had options. I was able to choose a life outside motherhood, a life where I focus 100% on my wonderful husband. A life where we both can sleep in on the weekends, where we can travel, where I can be 33 year old law student.

For years and years, I did nothing but care for other people's children. And I loved it. I need to always have children in my life. In fact, I just got off the phone with a precious little eight year old who I have loved since babyhood. This is not about whether I love chldren or not. A fact others very often don't understand. It's about the major, major lifechanging commitment a child is. I mean, people sit down and plot out the consequences of buying a home and all the responsibility that will ential, but we are supposed to just charge into having children? The greatest responsibility of all?

I write this as my sister is 5 months pregnant with her first child. A girl. I am so excited about her arrival. I can't wait to be a part of this child's life and do whatever I can to help her survive the tenous path girlhood requires. Knowing this little life is coming makes me more aware of recycling, buying locally, recognizing the materialistic, disposable culture we live in. But it doesn't make me want a child.

And while there are other methods of birth control than the pill, birth control pills are very important. My husband reads this blog, and he may cringe to read this, but the guys I had sex with before him? Some of them lied about wearing condoms, I found out later. Besides feeling violated and angry, I was also afraid, as it as my future and my life that would be profoundly changed by pregnancy, not their's. The pill is vital for a single girl's safety while she is looking for love and how DARE anyone try to take that away!

I wish I could say Canada's policies are one thousand times better, but they are not. We must be vigilant over the safety and health of our bodies from those who would take control of our bodies away from us.