Birth Control In United States
Lost amid the shock and horror of Friday's news was a remarkable op-ed in the Wall Street Journal
by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who should no longer be called a
"rising star" of the GOP. He commands attention by virtue of being
smart, good at his job, and not a white guy. So it's significant that he
chose to use his platform to break ranks with many social conservatives
in his party by calling for over-the-counter sales of birth control
pills.
Of course, Jindal did so by couching his argument
in a hyper-partisan defensive posture, lashing out at "Democrats [who]
demagogue the contraceptives issue and pretend, during debates about
health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth
control." Jindal recognizes that the vast majority of Americans support
the use of contraception, and that the issue of access to contraception
is a loser for Republicans. So he proposes to take the issue of birth
control out of the political arena by endorsing a proposal
from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) to
allow adult women to purchase birth control pills over the counter.
Women currently need a prescription to get birth control pills from a
pharmacy.
In the op-ed, Jindal praised the ACOG proposal as
"a common-sense call for reform that could yield a result everyone can
embrace: the end of birth-control politics." Republicans haven't
traditionally been terribly supportive of ACOG, an organization many
conservatives believe is too sympathetic to abortion-rights supporters.
In her confirmation hearings, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was questioned sharply by Republicans about her close work with ACOG during her time in the Clinton White House. And religious conservatives complained when they thought ACOG was insufficiently supportive of conscience protections for doctors who refuse to perform abortions.
Jindal's new support for expanded access to certain
contraceptives is also surprising given his Catholic faith. A
spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of New Orleans said
on Friday that, "We disagree with the governor's opinion because, as
the Catholic Church teaches, contraception is always wrong." It's also
significant because—despite Jindal's protests that Democrats have
unfairly portrayed Republicans as anti–birth control—Jindal's own
political background includes actions that could be characterized as
anti–birth control. As a member of Congress, he voted in favor of
removing contraception from health programs abroad funded by U.S.
foreign aid, and he cosponsored the Right to Life Act, which threatened
to ban many popular forms of birth control.
Still, whether Jindal's column reflects a
conversion or not, advocates who work to reduce the rates of abortion
and unplanned pregnancy welcome such a high-profile politician to the
cause. "This is just huge," says Sarah Brown, CEO of the National
Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "We need more people
who identify themselves as opposed to abortion rights who are willing to
find a way forward. This is a powerful way to reduce abortion, and he's
saying you can be pro-life and pro-contraception."
I doubt Jindal's call will be echoed any time soon
by other Catholic Republicans. But a growing group of evangelicals has
also been vocal this fall about the need to promote family planning.
Evangelical Protestants don't have the obstacle of church teaching
against contraception the way Catholics do. In fact, in 2010, the
National Association of Evangelicals conducted a poll of its board of
directors and found that 90 percent of them approved of "artificial
methods of contraception."
Given that position, the New Evangelical
Partnership for the Common Good—a group that includes heads of
denominations and representations from evangelical organizations like
missions and universities—released a 13-page "Call to Christian Common
Ground on Family Planning and Maternal and Children's Health" in October
2012. The document was very blunt: "The research is not ambiguous.
Contraception is credited with preventing an estimated 112 million
abortions worldwide each year." It's very hard to reduce the abortion
rate, the group argues, without supporting contraception. As a result,
they want conservatives to stop blocking funding for family-planning
efforts that provide both contraception and abortion.
It's unclear if Jindal would go that far. But if he wants to save his party from a losing issue, he'll have to do so.
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