Pro-Right to Control Everyone Else's Life in Wisconsin

What the heck is up with Pro-Life Wisconsin? As much as I disagree with them on it, I can understand their opposition to the actual practice of abortion. However, my main problem with anti-choice activists is just that: they want to take the choice out of the hands of the woman. I don't personally like abortion, but that's not what's at issue here. It's the right to have control over our own bodies, and to decide when we're ready to have children.

Now, however, PLW has partnered with various other virulently anti-choice groups to protest contraception. That's right: not only do these folks think abortion should be outlawed, but they're angling for regular ol' birth control now, too:

In recent years, some anti-abortion advocates have turned their attention to birth control -- not as a means to reduce unplanned pregnancies, but as another target of protest.

One of the most fervent anti-contraception crusaders is Pro-Life Wisconsin, which believes virtually all forms of birth control can cause a "chemical abortion" by preventing an already fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall.

The Brookfield-based group, along with the American Life League and Pharmacists for Life International associate groups, will take their protest to the streets June 7 with prayer vigils staged at family clinics around the country and state.

We've had this debate over emergency contraception before, but now, perhaps realizing they've lost that cause and feeling ever more desperate, the anti-choice movement is showing their true colors in attacking birth control. They don't want women (or men) to have any control over their bodies, their reproductive systems, or their lives. Period.

We're talking turning back the clock a hundred years, back to when women were slaves to baby-making, often at the detriment of their health and very lives.

The date of this anti-pill protest is purposefully significant, too, falling on the 43rd anniversary of the Supreme Court decision ("Griswold vs. Connecticut") that established the right to birth control for married couples. Married couples. The decision is credited with opening the doors to later rulings granting single women the right to use birth control, and eventually, Roe v. Wade.

All of this is apparently terribly upsetting to the likes of PLW, who seem throughly unnerved by the increase of women in the workplace, women waiting until they're ready for marriage and/or kids, and women generally having any power over their own lives.

Because let's not mince words here: PLW and other such groups can holler up and down about how this isn't about women's rights, but rather about the rights of unborn children--but they lose all clarity on the issue when they set their sights on birth control. The pill, condoms, and other such devices prevent pregnancy from ever happening. No fertilization, no sacred sperm penetrating the egg, no so-called "chemical abortions", nada. We are not talking about "ending a life" here.

It's worth noting that I have no clue how they got it into their heads that even condoms might cause "chemical abortions." Clearly these folks have never read up on the subject, and I seriously doubt they've even seen a condom before.

In a way, crazy stuff like this "The Pill Kills Babies!" protest are helpful. They make it clear as day what the actual motives behind such groups are, instead of allowing them to cloud the issue. These folks are ignorant of the facts, but perhaps even more troubling, they're also opposed to women having much in the way of rights or power. Thankfully, the tide of public sentiment and scientific research has throughly turned against them in the last 50 years, and I don't see that changing much any time soon. Still, it's always a good idea to keep an eye on these people and their strange causes. You never think it could happen until you stop paying attention and it's too late. We owe it to the generations that brought us these hard-fought rights to stay vigilant.

Another good way to support the cause is to support the men and women who work everyday to provide women and men with choice and control:

• Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin
• NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin

Fill the pills or find a new job

Good news today from the Wisconsin 3rd District Court of Appeals:

An appeals court today upheld a decision by the state Pharmacy Examining Board reprimanding and placing conditions on the license of a pharmacist who refused to fill or transfer a patient's prescription for an oral contraceptive.

This case was a bit more cut-and-dry than those instances where a pharmacist simply refuses to fill the prescription themselves, but will transfer it to someone that will. That's a different, if equally important, can of worms.

In this case, however, the pharmacist was very clearly in violation of the law by not only refusing to fill the prescription, but also refusing to transfer it to someone or somewhere that would. Thankfully, the affected patient complained and appropriate disciplinary action was taken (and now upheld). Personally, I think his license should be revoked for this, but am mostly content with the court's ruling.

It seems like common sense, at least to me, that a person might think twice before taking a job that would likely entail doing things that go against their personal beliefs. For instance, I don't imagine someone who was staunchly against abortions would go to work at a clinic that offered the service. Why on earth would someone who was morally opposed to contraceptives go to work as a pharmacist who would, on many occasions, have to fill prescriptions for them?