Reproductive Freedom?

By Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune

15 January 12

aution: This presidential campaign endangers reproductive health. Women's rights to contraception and other reproductive health services seem to face even more than the usual threats from the 2012 Republican presidential candidates. All of which raises new questions about whose freedoms today's conservatives really want to defend.

And that ratchets up pressure on President Barack Obama at a time when his administration is expected to announce soon how a "conscience clause" might apply to the Affordable Care Act. Such a provision would allow religious organizations to deny insurance coverage for employees' contraceptive and other reproductive health needs.

Yet, timely as it is, the issue of contraception was not welcome in the recent Republican presidential debate on ABC. Host George Stephanopoulos was booed by the largely Republican audience when he pressed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on whether he agreed with former Sen. Rick Santorum that states have the right to ban contraception, even though Santorum was not recommending that states do that.

Santorum believes the U.S. Supreme Court was wrong when it decided in the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision that a right to privacy justified overturning a state ban on contraceptives. Romney tried to dismiss the question as an "unusual topic" since "no state wants to" ban contraception. As Stephanopoulos persisted, Romney called the question "a silly thing." Some audience members cheered Romney and booed Stephanopoulos.

But none of the candidates is calling for an outright ban on contraceptives. Instead they would chip away at women's access, especially if it receives federal funding.

They would deny funding to family-planning initiatives and organizations. They would legislate away health insurance coverage of birth control. They would block federal Food and Drug Administration approval for almost any new contraceptive, especially if it suggests to anti-abortion activists the remotest possibility that it would stop a fertilized egg from developing.

For example, Stephanopoulos could have questioned Romney about how the economic platform on his website promises to "eliminate Title X family planning programs benefiting abortion groups like Planned Parenthood." Created in 1970 during the Nixon years, the program does provide funds to abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, but federal law bars the program from covering abortion procedures. Its other health services like birth control, sexually transmitted disease screenings, and cervical cancer exams have earned praise across party lines. Yet two Republican budget proposals in the past year would have zeroed them out.

Even libertarian Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, fierce defender of individual liberties on most issues, manages to make an interesting exception. He recently joined four other GOP candidates in signing a Personhood USA pledge saying that life begins at conception. However, he did accompany it with a "signing statement" saying he would limit enforcement of said personhood to the states, not the federal government.

Although Texas Gov. Rick Perry used to say he would allow an abortion in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the woman is endangered, he conveniently went through a "transformation" just before the Iowa caucuses. He announced in December that he now opposes abortion in all cases, except when the life of the woman is endangered. Still he maintained opposition to the defunding of clinics that provide birth control.

The question is hardly academic to the many Americans who rely on contraceptives to prevent unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. The Alan Guttmacher Institute, whose findings are quoted by both sides of the abortion debate, estimates that without contraception funding from Medicaid or Title X, the number of abortions in the United States would be almost two-thirds higher and the number of unintended pregnancies among poor women would nearly double.

All of which raises the significance of the conscience-clause debate. One of the cornerstones of the Affordable Care Act that Republicans call "Obamacare" is its expansion of access to insurance coverage for everyone who needs it. Every expansion of exceptions to health care providers would allow private religious beliefs to trump otherwise evidence-based practices in public health.

The birth-control debate is about rights, quite obviously, but it also concerns the ability of any civilization, country or community to fight poverty and advance itself. Around the world and throughout the centuries we have ample evidence that statistics of education, health and optimism are tied to the empowerment of women. That's why sensible conservatives, as opposed to the radical right, understand that "freedom" is something more than a slogan to be limited to guys only.