Orlando Sentinel
August 3, 2008

Shelve arrogant White House push to redefine birth control as abortion

Countless Space Coast women every day make private decisions about bearing children, including choosing to use contraception.

The vast majority of American women use a contraceptive method at some point in their lives.

And 62 percent of the 62 million women nationwide of childbearing age are currently using one, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

It's nobody's business but their own.

But the Bush administration -- which has consistently hacked away at women's right to control their reproductive lives -- is now making an arrogant last ditch effort to cut off access to contraception.

In 2006, Bush appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked for a religious pregnancy-counseling group that believes contraceptives are "demeaning to women."

Now Department of Health and Human Services -- under Michael Leavitt, another Bush appointee -- may redefine abortion to include the prescription and administration of any drug or procedure that stops implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus.

Under that proposed rule change, which would not require Congressional approval, use of birth control pills, IUDs and emergency contraception such as the morning after pill would constitute abortion.

And pharmacies, clinics, hospitals and doctors that receive federal dollars -- such as Medicaid or Medicare reimbursements -- would not be allowed to require health care workers to fill prescriptions for birth control. Or require them to offer information about birth control.

Or to provide the morning-after-pill to rape victims who request it in emergency rooms.

Insurance companies could also deny women coverage for birth control prescriptions, a goal narrow-minded conservative groups that want to impose their views on all Americans -- such as the Family Research Council -- dangerously support.

The supposed intent of the rule change is to shield health care workers from having to provide services that go against their religious beliefs.

But Congress has already passed laws to protect those who have moral objections to abortions from being forced to participate in them.

It's real effect will be to deny women needed information and health services.

Most direly impacted would be low-income, uninsured women who rely on clinics such as Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando for access to affordable contraception and least able to provide for children.

There also would be a hugely ironic consequence of the redefinition of abortion -- more unintended pregnancies and likely more abortions.

That's an outcome no one in the debate over a woman's right to choose, not even the staunchest pro-choice advocate, favors.

And why restricting access to contraception is an absurdly misguided tactic for groups seeking to decrease numbers of abortions.

The ideologically driven rule change should be shelved.

It puts politics above women's health and strips women of their constitutional right to make private medical decisions.

If HHS has the incredible gall to ram it through as a final bonus from Bush to his far-right base, the next president should quickly reverse it.