Playing Politics with Women’s Bodies - The Battle Over Contraceptive Access Exposes Both Parties

By Kelly Bellin

With each passing week, the right-wing fundamentalists tighten their grip over the Republican Party. Their latest frenzied attempt to limit women’s access to contraception will likely backfire on Republicans electorally. Yet as Obama responds with concessions, this right-wing ideological offensive dominates the public debate.

The mess started when the Obama Administration announced early this year that religious exemptions for the health care mandate to provide contraception would be limited to houses of worship. Right-wing religious leaders objected, demanding that religiously affiliated organizations such as hospitals and universities also be exempted, even when employees covered are not primarily of the same faith.

Church and Republican leaders launched a firestorm, accusing President Obama of violating religious freedom and Republicans in the Senate narrowly lost a vote to exempt religious affiliated employers from covering any medical care deemed to violate their beliefs! Electorally, these antics play into the Democrats’ hand, yet mainstream women’s groups have praised Obama as a champion of reproductive rights.

Enter Rush Limbaugh
An all-male House Committee meeting was convened to decide if the contraceptive mandate violated religious freedom. Chairmen Rep. Derrell Issa rejected a request to hear testimony from a woman, Sandra Fluke, to the panel, saying: “the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception.”


Yet Rush Limbaugh, referring to Fluke, revealed the real outlook of Republican leaders when he said: “Who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? Makes her a prostitute.” The next day he defended his statement, calling on all “Feminazis” to make sex videos in exchange for insurers covering their contraception.

The outcry against Limbaugh’s hate-speech was swift and widespread. Dozens  of companies have been pressured to pull their ads from Limbaugh’s show. The entire debate has enraged millions of women, and calls for protests in all state capitols on April 28th may get a major response. If the big women’s organizations put their full resources into the protests, those millions could be brought into the streets.

Obama’s response
Even as the right-wing bigots further isolated themselves, Obama felt compelled to make concessions to them. First, Obama allotted religious employers another year to comply with the federal mandate, and then allowed nonprofit religious employers to shift the cost of coverage to the health insurance companies instead. By compromising, Obama has let the religious right take over a debate that should not even exist – whether or not women have a right to contraceptive health care!

The contraception mandate is widely regarded as an election maneuver to quell growing uproar among women at Obama’s betrayals. In December, the White House overruled the FDA’s decision to give Plan B over-the-counter status. Feeding into the right-wing stigmatization of contraception, Obama said he didn’t want young women picking up Plan B “between the bubblegum and the batteries.”

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America replied: “As we’re looking at 2012, we have a key segment of women’s voters, and it’s our job to show them the clear difference between President Obama and the alternatives. The decision last week makes it harder for us to do that.”

It turns out Nancy Keenan is easily appeased. Obama’s ruling to tighten religious exemptions “makes it clear that President Obama is firmly committed to protecting women’s health,” Keenan told NARAL supporters in January. Such statements cover up the cynical calculations really behind Obama’s decision.

Playing politics
In 2008, women turned out in record numbers to vote, and a large majority voted for Obama, leading many to hail him as the first “feminist president.” However, women have been impacted hardest by Obama’s trail of broken promises and pro-corporate policies. In 2010, many women stayed home, and half the women who voted cast ballots for Republicans.

Obama’s recent legislation to satisfy women is a political necessity for his 2012 campaign. The most recent Washington Post poll reports 50% of women outright disapprove of Obama’s presidency. As a tight election looms, one of Obama’s campaign officials promised that targeted marketing will focus on women, with woman-to-woman phone banking to inform once-supporters of the gains Obama has made for them (ABC News, 11/9/11).

Women don’t need to be told what their situation is under the Obama administration. Last year, states passed a record 92 restrictions on access to reproductive health services. In September the Census Bureau reported more than 40% of single mothers are now in poverty, and a record number of women live in “extreme poverty” – earning less than half the poverty line. One in five women have no form of health insurance. Stepping back, Obama’s stand on the contraception issue, itself lackluster, is a fragile twig to hold onto amid the flood of bipartisan budget cuts and right-wing attacks.

Obama, like the Republicans, is playing politics with women’s reproductive rights. Rather than going onto the offensive, boldly campaigning on why all women have the right to access contraception, he has remained purely defensive and tried to duck the issue.  President Obama supports women’s rights as a wedge issue, only granting limited reforms under pressure or fear losing votes.

2011 was a year of unprecedented attack on women, but it was not a year of unprecedented fight back. Mainstream feminist groups promote the Democratic Party as our progressive option, but the Democrats are not the way forward for women. As history demonstrates, it is through mass struggle, organized resistance and political independence that working class women have forced politicians to concede.

Susan G Komen for the Cure deprives 150,000+ women life-saving breast exams per year through political attack on Planned Parenthood

Comment by Kelly Bellin

Update: Due to the intense fightback, Susan G Komen for the Cure has reversed their decision to remove all funding from Planned Parenthood. This in itself is a success for Planned Parenthood in not only the re-funding, but the surge of support (and donations) that they received in reaction to being persecuted by SGKomen. Women need accessible reproductive health services, and while the reversed decision is a victory, without single payer health care, millions of women lack access to quality health care in the US. 

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation’s leading breast-cancer charity, will cut off its funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates, where the SGKomen has traditionally funded hundreds of thousands of dollars in breast exams. The specific act of pulling funding from Planned Parenthood disproportionately hurts working class women, who are most likely to NEED the low-cost breast exams that PP provides. 

SGKomen is the prime example of a mainstream enterprise that builds itself up as a progressive organization, but in reality only capitalizes on the oppression of the working class. It markets pink memorabilia, selling it to people with good intentions in raising awareness of breast cancer, yet misleading them as to where that money goes and giving them a false sense of what there really is to be done about public health. 

The SGKomen website reads, “We are advocates at the local, state and federal level, fighting for the screening and treatment programs that save lives and the research that brings us closer to the cures.” This quote hardly rings true of SGKomen, which spends only 15% of it’s funds on cancer research, and clearly is not fighting for the screening to save women’s lives. However, Komen has the funds to spend over a million dollars every year in lawsuits against other organizations that use the phrase “for the cure.”

SGKomen spokespersons claim that this is simply a formality, that a recently enacted policy doesn’t allow them to grant funds to organizations that are under investigation by local, state, or federal authorities. They fail to mention that their most recently appointed public policy vice president is a pro-life advocate that speaks out against SGKomen’s previous financial support of Planned Parenthood.  Since this announcement on Tuesday, Planned Parenthood supporters and pro-choice advocates have boldly spoken out against this attach on women’s health, calling the cut what it really is: a political attack on Planned Parenthood for being an abortion provider and letting that get in the way of saving lives.  

Two dozen senators have now signed a letter urging Komen to reverse this decision, condemning them for putting partisan politics in front of women’s health. They’re right: partisan politics are being prioritized, but even more so by their repeated refusal to support single payer health care legislation. It is not only SGKomen that is getting in the way of women’s health, but a for-profit healthcare system that every year deprives millions of Americans adequate health care. 

We support Planned Parenthood! We support single payer health care! 

Obama Overrules FDA, Restricts Birth Control for Teens

By Andrea Perry

Obama recently defended the decision of his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, to continue limiting the over-counter availability of Plan B, the morning after pill, to women under 17. The Federal Drug Administration approved the over-counter use of the drug for women of all ages last February and says this is the first time the Secretary of Health has overruled an approval of the FDA. 

Plan B significantly reduces the chances of conception if taken up to 72 hours after unprotected sex. Women under 17 will continue to need a doctor’s prescription to obtain Plan B, increasing the rate of unwanted teen pregnancies, particularly for those without health insurance or access to abortion clinics.

Obama’s decision was a shock to NARAL Pro-Choice and other organizations who gave full support to Obama during the 2008 election. This was political, an attempt to win centrist votes, not made to further the interests of the majority of women. This shows the need for political independence for the women’s movement, rather than continuing to apologize for politicians prepared to trade away our rights for petty political gain. 

We need a mass resurgence of the women’s movement that fights in the interests of the working class women and demands full access to all forms of birth control and family planning.

By almost any measure, 2011 saw unprecedented attention to issues related to reproductive health and rights at the state level. In all 50 states, legislators introduced more than 1,100 reproductive health and rights-related provisions, a sharp increase from the 950 introduced in 2010. By year’s end, 135 of these provisions had been enacted in 36 states, again an increase from the 89 enacted in 2010 and the 77 enacted in 2009.  Fully 68% of these new provisions, 92 provisions in 24 states, restrict access to abortion services, a striking increase from last year, when 26% of new provisions restricted abortion. The 92 new abortion restrictions shattered the previous record of 34 abortion restrictions adopted in 2005. Comment by Kelly Bellin This review put out by the Guttmacher Institute outlines the historic extent of state attacks on reproductive health services in 2011. While the 1,100 provisions target everything down to pap smears and STI testing, 68% of the provisions restrict access to abortion services. There are currently less than half as many safe abortion providers as there was in 1982 under the Reagan administration. The de-funding of reproductive services is a direct attack on the health of working class women and female-bodied persons.  Additionally, prohibitions on insurance coverage of abortion procedures have made it infinitely more difficult for working class women to have access to abortion services. While abortion may yet be legal on paper, women’s reproductive rights are being cut vigorously by right wing attacks that face little organized opposition from Democrats or even the official women’s organization, apart from e-mail blasts asking for donations and appeals to call unresponsive legislatures. Gone are the days when the mainstream women’s groups would organize mass demonstrations in the face of such unprecedented attacks. One of the most significant legal attacks on reproductive justice came with Secretary Sebelius’ decision to overrule the FDA’s conclusion that Plan B should be given over-the-counter status. What’s more, is the fact that President Obama supported Sebelius because, as the father of two daughters, he doesn’t want young girls to be able to get Plan B “between the bubble gum and batteries.” This both dangerously restricts the resources available for young women and sends oppressive messages about emergency contraceptives, which have side/overdose affects arguably less severe than Tylenol or Advil. At the same time, the only provisions made and/or passed in 2011 regarding sex education were further limiting it to abstinence-only education. As of this year, Mississippi school districts will need to get specific permission from the State Department of Education every time it wants to include info on anything other than abstinence. Thirty-seven states now mandate abstinence-only education. The implications of this logic are that young women will lack information about their bodies, sex, and how to not get pregnant - yet also will have no resources if they do get pregnant. Dismantling sexism will not come out of concessions and politicians who give us lip service. We need to rebuild a serious, radical, fighting women’s rights movement that is not afraid to call out politicians from either party if they don’t stand clearly for reproductive justice. 
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By almost any measure, 2011 saw unprecedented attention to issues related to reproductive health and rights at the state level. In all 50 states, legislators introduced more than 1,100 reproductive health and rights-related provisions, a sharp increase from the 950 introduced in 2010. By year’s end, 135 of these provisions had been enacted in 36 states, again an increase from the 89 enacted in 2010 and the 77 enacted in 2009. 

Fully 68% of these new provisions, 92 provisions in 24 states, restrict access to abortion services, a striking increase from last year, when 26% of new provisions restricted abortion. The 92 new abortion restrictions shattered the previous record of 34 abortion restrictions adopted in 2005.

Comment by Kelly Bellin

This review put out by the Guttmacher Institute outlines the historic extent of state attacks on reproductive health services in 2011. While the 1,100 provisions target everything down to pap smears and STI testing, 68% of the provisions restrict access to abortion services. There are currently less than half as many safe abortion providers as there was in 1982 under the Reagan administration. The de-funding of reproductive services is a direct attack on the health of working class women and female-bodied persons. 

Additionally, prohibitions on insurance coverage of abortion procedures have made it infinitely more difficult for working class women to have access to abortion services. While abortion may yet be legal on paper, women’s reproductive rights are being cut vigorously by right wing attacks that face little organized opposition from Democrats or even the official women’s organization, apart from e-mail blasts asking for donations and appeals to call unresponsive legislatures. Gone are the days when the mainstream women’s groups would organize mass demonstrations in the face of such unprecedented attacks.

One of the most significant legal attacks on reproductive justice came with Secretary Sebelius’ decision to overrule the FDA’s conclusion that Plan B should be given over-the-counter status. What’s more, is the fact that President Obama supported Sebelius because, as the father of two daughters, he doesn’t want young girls to be able to get Plan B “between the bubble gum and batteries.” This both dangerously restricts the resources available for young women and sends oppressive messages about emergency contraceptives, which have side/overdose affects arguably less severe than Tylenol or Advil.

At the same time, the only provisions made and/or passed in 2011 regarding sex education were further limiting it to abstinence-only education. As of this year, Mississippi school districts will need to get specific permission from the State Department of Education every time it wants to include info on anything other than abstinence. Thirty-seven states now mandate abstinence-only education. The implications of this logic are that young women will lack information about their bodies, sex, and how to not get pregnant - yet also will have no resources if they do get pregnant.

Dismantling sexism will not come out of concessions and politicians who give us lip service. We need to rebuild a serious, radical, fighting women’s rights movement that is not afraid to call out politicians from either party if they don’t stand clearly for reproductive justice.