by matttbastard
x-posted @ Comments From Left Field
WaPo: Bush puts birth control opponent in charge of family planning office:
Susan Orr, most recently an associate commissioner in the Administration for Children and Families, was appointed Monday to be acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs. She will oversee $283 million in annual grants to provide low-income families and others with contraceptive services, counseling and preventive screenings.
In a 2001 article in The Washington Post, Orr applauded a Bush proposal to stop requiring all health insurance plans for federal employees to cover a broad range of birth control. “We’re quite pleased, because fertility is not a disease,” said Orr, then an official with the Family Research Council.
Yes, that Family Research Council. Wait – it gets better (via Shakesville):
– At the 2001 Conservative Political Action Conference, Orr cheered Bush’s endorsement of Reagan’s “Mexico City Policy,” which required NGOs receiving federal funds to “neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.” Orr said that it was proof Bush was pro-life “in his heart.”
– In a 2000 Weekly Standard article, Orr railed against requiring health insurance plans to cover contraceptives. “It’s not about choice,” said Orr. “It’s not about health care. It’s about making everyone collaborators with the culture of death.”
– Orr authored a paper in 2000 titled, “Real Women Stay Married.” In it she wrote that women should “think about focusing our eyes, not upon ourselves, but upon the families we form through marriage.”
My oh my, I do believe we have ourselves a textbook fetus fetishist of the highest order here! Anyone who considers using sensible and, um, legal methods of birth control to be collaboration with “The Culture of Death™” (ZOMG!) totally deserves a complimentary 5 year subscription to Monthly Uterus Magazine. And while we’re at it, give one to acting Surgeon General Steve Galson and the new director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Janet Woodcock, too (Berlynn, I’m gonna singlehandedly put your ad rev through the motherfucking roof!)
Consider it penance for many, many years of death culture collaboration on my part, although I did somehow manage to avoid partaking in any teen sex cult activity (sigh).
Oh, and try not to think too hard about the low-income families and young women whose access to vital contraceptive services, preventative screenings for cervical cancer, and counseling has once again been placed in jeopardy by this latest ideologically-motivated appointment on the part of the Bush admin (hey, remember how well the last one worked out?) I’m sure The Decider™ had good reason to decisively assert his relevance (“unfinished business” indeed) by throwing the underprivileged under the bus, and wasn’t cynically pandering to an increasingly dissatisfied base GOP constituency.
As they say, “women and children first.” Although I always assumed that colloquialism meant “first to be saved,” not “first to be tossed overboard.”
More on Orr and the FRC from RH Reality Check and Jill @ Feministe (h/t Kyle), who also links to a Planned Parenthood petition calling on (reproductive) freedom-loving Americans to express their opposition to Orr’s appointment.
Related: As the increasingly-militant USian anti-choice lobby continues to escalate the war on regulated pregnancy by attacking access to contraception, Fern Hill examines the “lively tug-of-war going on between morality and merchandizing.” Gee, maybe free-market absolutists are onto something.
I said ‘maybe.’
Update: Deborah Lipp gets to the crux of the matter (emph in original):
It is absolutely true that if you want to prevent abortion and preserve life, then safe, legal abortion combined with safe, legal, accessible, inexpensive birth control is the way to make that happen. The fact that the “pro-life” (snort) movement doesn’t favor any of those things doesn’t mean it’s not true. It means they’re not pro-life.
Indeed.
bastard.logic 