Salon: Rick Santorum is Coming for Your Birth Control

[DeathToTheOil]

Here is an actual Rick Santorum quote: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.” And also, “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

These comments were not dug up from some bygone moment of ideological purity, before dreams of a presidential campaign. He said it in October, to a blogger at CaffeinatedThoughts.com (they met at Des Moines’ Baby Boomers Cafe).

It’s pretty basic: Rick Santorum is coming for your contraception. Any and all of it. And while he may not be alone in his opposition to non-procreative sex, he is certainly the most honest about it — as he himself acknowledged in the interview.

This is important, because while reproductive rights are always cast in terms of pro or against a woman’s right to an abortion and in what circumstances, even liberals are surprised to find out what social conservatives really want to do about contraception. Liberals are even willing to cast the proposed defunding of Planned Parenthood and all Title X programs (a position that has become mainstream in Republican circles) as an abortion issue, when it is actually about contraception. (The Hyde Amendment already bans almost all federal abortion funding.) So is this about “babies” or is this about sex? Rick Santorum isn’t even pretending it’s (only) about kids.

Speaking to ABC News’ Jake Tapper, Santorum recently reaffirmed his opposition to Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that struck down a ban on discussing or providing contraception to married couples, and established a right to privacy that would later be integral to Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas. (It is generally better-known how Santorum feels about gay people.) That would be the case where the majority asked, “Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.” Rick Santorum disagrees. He thinks, using the currently popular states’ rights parlance, that “the state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have.” This is a view Santorum has held at least since 2003.

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/04/rick_santorum_is_coming_for_your_birth_control/

I can guess what his position on marital rape is.

[WingDinger]

1. Yeah, so those that are at risk of having babies like his, must carry to term.

Or fighting cancer.

[my2sense]

2. We are living in dangerous times....

this is terrifying. I've never understood the need of some to shove their beliefs on others. We are regressing. What's next, witch hunts?

[Kalidurga]

3. Witch hunts are alive and well ask a pagan...

ask anyone of them that have been discriminated against in courts for their beliefs rather than their actions. Ask why the pagan symbol isn't just a given on a service person's tombstone after dying in combat and it has to be fought for...

[JHB]

4. It was always about Unauthorized Sex

For the people driving the no-choice agenda, what outraged them, made them foaming, red-faced angry was people doing The Wrong Thing And Getting Away With It.

They viewed the pill and lifting of prohibitions on contraception as ushering in an age of immorality, depravity, decadence, and decline. They have a very narrow window of publicly acceptable forms of sexuality, and they want to bulldoze everyone who differs back in the closet.

They've come far enough that they don't feel the need to hide that behind fetuses anymore.

[WingDinger]

6. It always falls to demographics.

As Oreilly said: White people arent reproducing fast enough, and minorities, by extension, are reproducing too fast.

Just like in Israel, we worry about our palestinians{Everyone browner than a historical redcoat} voting. And even worse, usually voting Democrat. Therefore, the diluting of power, away from a clear majority, white european male, shall be be prioritized over frivolities, like voting. Hang on, it's gonna get bumpy.

[Rozlee]

15. Direct hit.

It's not just Santorum either. Each one of the Republican candidates has signed the fetal Personhood Pledge with 14th Amendment Rights. Scratch that. I don't think Romney has. Props for him. This would outlaw artificial birth control in ALL cases and abortion across the board with no exceptions, and to protect the fetus at all cost, even if the mother needed chemotherapy during pregnancy. This even extends to ectopic pregnancies, according to many of their proponents.

During the Mississippi fight when they were voting on Personhood, Planned Parenthood and other groups put out ads and warnings that the group would try and outlaw all birth control like the Pill, IUD, and morning after pill. Personhood USA said it was nonsense and fear-mongering. The morning after pill they would outlaw because it destroyed a fertilized egg. This is silly. The morning after pill works almost along the same lines as the birth control pill does; it's just a little extra. It can delay ovulation, block fertilization or keep the egg from implanting in the uterus. Almost the same formula for most artificial birth control and, I might add, at a far earlier stage.

I have an anti-choice teabagger sister who listens to some idiot on one of her radio hate channels who talks about this kind of garbage and how the world is breeding itself into extinction because of birth control. In another three or four generations, our planet will be giving it's last gasps because of the feminists, anti-life crowd, he says. You can't convince her that there's 7 billion people in the world and growing. She says here in Texas, schools keep closing because too many babies are being aborted. No, I tell her. They're closing because pRick Perry is taking money from education to give tax breaks to big business. And the guy isn't even talking to her; we're Hispanic. He's always carrying on about how Muslims are pro-creating and I point out to her how can the human race become extinct if there's still Muslims in it? I guess the guy doesn't consider them humans. But, this Personhood movement has been embraced by almost all the Republican candidates. It's terrifying that we live in a country where one of our major parties is controlled by dinosaurs that think women shouldn't be able to have any control over our bodies. Obama and the democrats are wasting a great opportunity if they don't make political hay from this if one of them is given the nomination. Women would vote against the Republican in overwhelming numbers and maybe even carry it on to the congress if they could make a production of it and got a national diaglogue started on it. If the thought of it becoming law terrified the most conservative state in the union like Mississippi into voting against it by a large pluralilty, it wouldn't play well to Main Street USA. I'm still not 100% sure if Romney's made the Pledge. As desperate as he is for the evangelical vote, you'd think he would have.

[WingDinger]

17. Funny though, since most are males, Women are the focus of their control.

It seems that boys will be boys still is in effect.

They regularly allow women in jail, to be chained to their birthing bed. It is a small jump, to incarcerating women, till they birth, if they are suspected of wanting the pregnancy terminated.

Birth control pills would have to be stopped online. So, a level of surveillance unknown would be initiated.

It is fitting that they intend us to live in earlier times. With the rythym method, and its dismal failure calling the shots.

Then they square this with not teaching sex ed.

We have a real Taliban working here. I will be the one to strangle their asses in teh bathtub, given half a chance.

The changes they intend, call for war.

[ehrnst]

14. The argument "women are slutting around on taxpayer money"

Is being used to defund Planned Parenthood, and medicaid funding for contraception.

[WingDinger]

7. Didnt FUCK first mean approval by the king to copulate? I guess that makes you king.

Yes, the poor should cease copulating as they arent blessed by society as having enough resources. Only turkey basted starlets get to do what nature urges.

[maddiemom]

20. Belated applause!

Good funny/sarcastic take on the whole ridiculous controversy.

[Survivoreesta]

8. Thank God that my dad became sterile>

I didn't learn about it till I was 28. I spent my teenage years TERRIFIED that he would knock me up!

[Vogon_Glory]

9. And The Corporate Media And The Electorate Remains In Denial

Rick Santorum wants to ban access to birth control--and the corporate media and the electorate continues to be in denial.

I have been in the trenches of the reproductive rights struggle for years now--as were my admittedly Republican parents. We have seen the same people howling with outrage about the "dead babies" caused by abortion talking sotto-voce about the "need" to restrict access to contraception. Some of us have tried to talk to regional heads of Planned Parenthood and NARAL about the need to re-frame the reproductive rights struggle AWAY from the dead-end abortion issue and start talking about the fact that the same jokers who want to outlaw abortion ALSO want to outlaw birth-control.

The anti-choice right is now feeling its oats and flexing its muscles. One of the two likely Republican presidential candidates has gone on record concerning his opposition to birth control. Progressives and Democrats now have a strong issue to use on the Tea-publicans--and it looks like that the Democratic Party establishment will do what they so, so often do when they have a chance to press home with a winning issue: they'll stand pat, put on their happy faces, keep their hands in their laps, and say nothing.

[Survivoreesta]

10. "So we wait...hesitate...and we're making such a mistake">

Yes. I admit it. I'm old enough to remember that song! But your points are bullseye, VG!

[Kennah]

11. This really does make sense

If there were fewer condoms, there would be more Santorum to go around.

[Mosaic]

12. Protestants

Being a protestant is having the haunting feeling that someone, somewhere is having more fun than you are. Jealous bastards. A fanatical Catholic, santorum, is no better than a protestant.

[maddiemom]

21. Not broad definition protestant

Just puritanical to evangelical, born again type protestants.

[LynneSin]

13. What the hell was done to lil Dick Santorum when he was a kid???!!!

Because the guy is fricking sexually repressed beyond anything I have ever seen in this generation.

Did a Catholic nun catch him beating at the lil dick and beat the shit out of him or something?

Maybe he was sexually abused by a Catholic Priest - I mean he is a Catholic.

For someone to be that sexually repressed something had to have happen to turn him that way

[City Lights]

16. Of all the GOPer candidate, none give me the creeps as much as Santorum.

My creep meter is off the chart with him.

[eppur_se_muova]

18. "how things are supposed to be ... " according to WHOM ?

Where do these wingnuts get off deciding that they're the ultimate judges of how things should be ? Oh, right, it's God's Word. Or their interpretation of God's Word, or their interpretation of some fundie preacher's interpretation of etc. etc. oh and of course there must be occasional exceptions for themselves because they're God's Chosen Ones and if you don't believe them just ask the voices in their heads.

To be an authoritarian, you have to believe there is one and only one, one-size-fits-all, **RIGHT** way to do things. The more diverse and pluralist our society becomes, the fewer people there are who are going to accept that notion. That's why I don't think Santorum is going to play well in most of the country.

[maddiemom]

19. Santorum birth control

Now Santorum's true agenda comes out. Sex should only be for procreation, which confuses me a little. Does this mean any woman past child-bearing age (since men can become fathers quite a while longer) should not have sex? Or is it just during the child bearing age that preventing pregnancy should not be allowed? Does this mean that women should bear children as often as "God" sees fit? Forget about overpopulation being a serious threat to our planet.

I am astounded at how backwards our modern world has become. I'm old enough to remember George Romney being a Michigan governor who several times ran for the presidential nomination. I don't remember ever knowing he was a Mormon. On the other hand, JFK ( a certified Catholic, but by no stretch devout) had to bend over backwards to insure the nation that his religion would have no bearing on his governing the country. Now we have Santorum making it plain that the most hidebound policies of Catholism impact his beliefs in how the country should be run. (full disclosure: I'm an agnostic from a family of mixed religions, with a Catholic ex and a Catholic daughter, neither of whom are "Rick Santorum Catholics&quot

[maddiemom]

22. Double standard

I grew up during the so-called Sexual Revolution. This was when women were casting aside the old double standards, that had their mothers feeling guilty, and men loved the new availability of women, BUT many men were still hung up on the double standard when it came to bringing you home to Mom. (Not all, but too many.) Not having to worry about pregnancy set women as free as the guys had always been. What it seemed at first, if not quite right, however. I so envy my daughter's generation where men (except for Santorum types) are no longer conflicted.

[Athena66]

23. So who would

Santorum appoint to head up his "Office of Outlawing Contraception"? Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar?

[Viva_Daddy]

24. We just passed the 7 billion people "milestone".

Many are wondering how long it will be before we are unable to feed everyone (that point may have already passed). Makes one wonder how many people there would now be on earth if we had not had contraceptives for the past 50 years...and this idiot want to ban them?

[Athena66]

25. Maybe not that many more,

because, as you suggested, there would not have been enough food for them and massive starvation would have taken place. Not to mention many more deaths from disease because of immune systems weakened by starvation, and the inability of the world to deal with contagion in such a huge population, with resources stretched ever-thinner (not that we do a stellar job of disease control in many parts of the world as it is). Such a likelihood does not seem to bother people like Santorum and those who think like him. They only care about embryos and fetuses, and not about the already-born.