Subtitle

The Not Quite Adventures of a Professional Archaeologist and Aspiring Curmudgeon

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Give me pills!

So, I was looking over at another blog, Skepchick (www.skepchick.org), and saw that they had linked to stories regarding an attempt to organize a day of protest against the birth control pill.

No, really, check it out: http://thepillkills.com/index.html

At first I thought this was a joke (and, perhaps this site is a well-concealed joke, though it increasingly looks unlikely), but then I started thinking about the pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control pills based on the belief that they cause spontaneous abortions (my understanding, while this claim may not be completely unfounded, it is rather spurious, but ask your doctor for more information, really, you should).

An amusing dissection of the matter can also be found here:

http://feminocracy.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/the-pill-kills-omg/

But, let's be realistic, the use of contraceptives, including the birth control, realistically create less opportunities for abortion, and therefore, probably results in less abortions, not more. This is not about preventing abortion (if it was, folks such as those who oppose the birth control pill would be in favor of contraceptives and comprehensive sex education, not the abstinence-only travesty that they tend to push). Hell, I'm not even convinced that it's about "controlling women" - the accusation usually levelled at them. It seems much more likely that it is about a knee-jerk fear of sex coupled with scientific illiteracy which is fed by a denial of reality and a fear that maybe they don't know what the "way, truth, and light" is after all.

In other words, these folks are afraid of the world as it is, and so they're trying to force their beliefs down the throats of everyone else.

Oh, and also from Skepchick - how about a teacher who was fired for wizardry: http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=79533

I can't make things like this up...

4 comments:

Library Poet said...

I still find it amazing how many religious people are afraid of anything to do with sex. They won't let you have sex. But, then if you do, they won't let you protect yourself. Then if you get pregnant you don't the right to choose. Where is the logic in that?

Anthroslug said...

I wonder if it's even religion per se, but rather perhaps having an absolutist worldview. Religions provide this, but so do non-religious belief systems.

Library Poet said...

Yeah, I guess the people in nineteenth century England were like this too. They didn't have birth control to look down on, but they did find many innocent things to be indecent. Such as, racy sensationalist novels and women being actresses. I guess there is often some sort of movement, whether overt or underground, which tends to try to keep women in their place. Wherever that it.

Kaylia Metcalfe said...

During this period, approximately 6,605,000 to 11,725,000 chemical abortions occurred in the United States annually.

During this period, a total of 196,325,000 to 324,325,000 chemical abortions wiped out the equivalent of the entire United States population!

(from the link)

Holy crap… could you even imagine how up a creek sans paddle we would be if all those babies had been born?