Category Archives: social justice

A Handy List of Ludicrous Anti-Abortion Legislation

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For your reference. I’ll try to update this as needed. Read the linked articles for more information about these bills and why they are so harmful.

  • Oklahoma State Bill 1433–defines a fertilized egg as a “person” and seeks to extend human rights to said “persons”; conflicts with Roe v. Wade.
  • Georgia House Bill 954–bans all abortions after 20 weeks, even in cases of rape and incest, unless the woman’s life or health was threatened (this last exception was only added later); also conflicts with Roe v. Wade; this is the bill that a George state rep defended by comparing women to lifestock.
  • Mississippi House Bill 1390–would close the state’s last remaining abortion clinic on a technicality to “prevent back-room abortions.”
  • Arizona House Bill 2036–bans all abortions after 20 weeks because, according to lawmakers, that’s when fetuses begin to feel pain (which is false); conflicts with Roe v. Wade; defines fetal age as beginning at fertilization–up to two weeks before a woman’s last period, which is how fetal age is usually calculated. So really, it’s after 18 weeks, not after 20 weeks like the other dumb bills.
  • Mississippi Senate Bill 2771—would make all abortions performed after a fetal heartbeat can be detected illegal; doctors who perform such abortions could serve up to 30 years in prison. Women seeking abortions would be forced to undergo an invasive transvaginal ultrasound to check for a heartbeat, which can be detected just 6 weeks after gestation.
  • Alabama Senate Bill 12–would have mandated all women seeking abortions, even victims of rape and incest, to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound and view the image. Why? To help “a mother to understand that a live baby is inside her body.”
  • Virginia House Bill 62–slashes state funding for low-income women who are pregnant with complications and need abortions.
  • Arizona Senate Bill 1359–allows doctors to withhold information from pregnant women that may cause them to seek an abortion (such as fetal abnormalities) by shielding them from potential lawsuits.
  • Kansas House Bill 2598–same as above, plus a bunch of other restrictions for good measure.
  • H.R. 2299–would prevent women under 18 from crossing state lines to get an abortion without their parents’ consent.
  • Tennessee House Bill 3808–would create an online list of the names and addresses of all abortion doctors. Not insignificant given the recent bombing of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Wisconsin.

One note–I’ve chosen not to attempt to find updated information on how these bills did in HRs and Senates, first of all because that would take all of my time, and second because that’s not the point. Some of these bills passed, some of them are still being deliberated. Point is, none of them should’ve made it onto the floor to begin with.

Another note–I stopped writing this post not because I was unable to find any more bills, but because I just got tired and sad from looking at them.

A Sacrifice They’re Willing to Make: Mississippi’s War on Abortion

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The last remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi is perilously close to shutting down thanks to a new proposed law, Mississippi House Bill 1390. The law would require that all doctors performing abortions be board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology (reasonable), and that they also have admitting privileges at a local hospital (not so reasonable).

The reason that’s not so reasonable is because Jackson, Mississippi, home of the besieged abortion clinic, has two hospitals with Christian affiliations, and any hospital can refuse to grant admitting privileges to a physician for any ol’ reason, such as that said physician is a godless heathen who wants to help women murder their unborn fetuses babies.

To make it even better, the law would give the clinic’s physicians (all of whom are board-certified OB/GYNs but only one of whom has admitting privileges) less than two months to acquire them. As Evan McMurry writes at PoliticOlogy, “This is part of the pro-life’s recent death-by-a-thousand cuts tactic: if they can’t overturn Roe v Wade outright, they’ll make accessing and performing abortions so onerous that the practice will be effectively impossible.”

But of course, as it usually is with these laws, things get even more ridiculous. From the HuffPo article:

The State Senate voted to pass the bill Wednesday, but it was held for further debate on Thursday, when lawmakers had an odd exchange over the bill on the Senate floor. Sen. Kenny Wayne Jones (D-Canton) asked Sen. Dean Kirby (R-Pearl), who chairs the Senate Public Health Committee, whether ending abortions in the state would force women to resort to dangerous, back-alley abortions.

“That’s what we’re trying to stop here, the coat-hanger abortions,” Kirby replied, in reference to the abortions provided at the clinic in Jackson. “The purpose of this bill is to stop back-room abortions.”

Okay, first of all. No reputable doctor performs abortions with a coat hanger. In fact, I’m just going to go out on a limb and amend my statement to say, No doctor performs abortions with a coat hanger.

All of the physicians in question are board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology–a certification that I’m pretty sure Senator Dean Kirby does not have.

Incidentally, you know when dangerous abortions do actually happen? When abortion is made illegal. Research invariably shows this. (I know, I know, Republicans don’t believe in science anyway, but it was worth a shot.)

The truth is that making something illegal, especially if that thing is considered absolutely necessary by many people, does not mean it won’t happen anymore. It just means that it’ll happen out of sight, and therefore without regulation. This is why countries that are more progressive than ours are starting to experiment with drug decriminalization, but that’s a whole other topic.

Drug policy is a different ballgame because, while there are many psychological and societal factors that may lead people to become addicted to drugs, most of us can agree that nobody needs illegal drugs in order to have a decent life. Abortion is another matter, however. Unless conservative lawmakers are willing to provide comprehensive sex education and low-cost (or free) birth control (not to mention end sexual assault), there may not be a way to eliminate the need for abortion. For instance, from a comment on the HuffPo article I linked to:

I live in Mississippi. Yesterday I taught classes in the poorest part of the Delta to pregnant or parenting teens on parenting skills. I would much rather teach classes to teens about safe, effective birth control. The state won’t let me. It doesn’t matter how many facts or statistics I roll out…nobody listens. I am frustrated beyond belief.

So that’s what we’ve got.

Anyway, because politicians in states like Mississippi refuse to provide the resources to prevent abortion from becoming necessary, they must face the fact that women are going to get them whether they’re legal or not. But they don’t face this fact.

In the quote from Senator Kirby, which I provided above, he states that his purpose in making abortion unattainable in Mississippi is to prevent women from having dangerous abortions. So basically, his argument is this: we’re going to restrict women’s access to a safe, standard medical procedure in order to prevent them from obtaining the potentially dangerous, unregulated version of that procedure, despite the fact that restricting the safe thing actually leads to an increase in the use of the dangerous thing.

Kirby’s reasoning makes such a mockery of logic and common sense that I had to read the original quote several times before I understood it.

Mississippi’s Republican governor, Phil Bryant, had this to say about the proposed law: “This legislation is an important step in strengthening abortion regulations and protecting the health and safety of women. As governor, I will continue to work to make Mississippi abortion-free.”

Wait a minute. First he wants to merely “strengthen” abortion regulations. But then he says he wants to “make Mississippi abortion-free.” That should convince anyone who wasn’t already convinced that this law has absolutely nothing to do with making sure that abortions are performed safely. Rather, it has everything to do with making Mississippi “abortion-free.”

That’s right, he didn’t even try to pretend this was about women’s safety.

In my opinion, the fact that criminalizing abortion leads to dangerous back-alley abortions is the strongest argument for keeping abortion legal. It’s the strongest argument because it doesn’t lean on emotion or ideology. We can argue left and right about when life begins and when fetuses feel pain and whether or not women have the right to choose what to do with their bodies (hint: yes), but we cannot argue with the preponderance of evidence that shows that criminalizing abortion does not prevent abortion. It merely makes it dangerous.

Pro-lifers’ continued refusal to accept this argument says one or both of these things about them:

1. They are unwilling or incapable of accepting and understanding basic facts about economics and decision-making. That is, despite all the evidence showing the negative consequences of the criminalization of abortion, these politicians (and voters) continue to believe that banning abortion would plunge us all into Fun Happy No-Killing-Babies Land.

2. They understand these facts, but just don’t care. This is undoubtedly the worse alternative, because it means that the pain, injury, and even potential death that will come to women who try to obtain illegal abortions are, to borrow from Shrek‘s Lord Farquad, a sacrifice that Republicans are willing to make.

So, ignorance or malice? Take your pick.

Agribusiness is Ruining Capitalism (Among Other Things)

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Agribusiness is the reason we can’t have nice things.

The same industry that recently terrified consumers by including pink slime (or, euphemistically, “boneless lean beef trimmings”) in 70% of supermarket ground beef is now responsible for a new Iowa law that makes it a crime to misrepresent yourself in order to get a job at a farm. It had already been a crime in Iowa to record audio or video at a farm without the owner’s permission, but now that the organization Mercy for Animals has inconveniently shot footage of atrocious animal abuse at the Iowa egg farm Sparboe, lawmakers are upping the ante.

Oops, did I say lawmakers? I meant the lobbyists that have them on puppet strings.

The purpose of these “ag-gag” laws (as they’re being called) is obvious–it’s to make it harder for people to get access to farms and find out what’s really going on there. Agribusinesses may claim that these laws prevent them from being “misrepresented” and that the abuses filmed by activists were just a “one-time” thing, the truth is that if they had nothing to hide, they’d have no problem with people coming in and looking at their farms. As one hog farmer says, “We have a problem with a lot of undercover videos that go into livestock production facilities looking for things that might be out of ordinary and, I think many times, fabricating things that are not happening on regular basis.”
He does not specify how it is possible to “fabricate” something that, as he says, is simply “out of the ordinary.” (Which, of course, it isn’t.)

One might wonder why it would even be necessary to pretend to be someone else in order to get a job at a farm, or to film without the owner’s permission. Well, it’s because they won’t let you do it otherwise. All the books I’ve read about factory farming, such as Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and the companion book to Food, Inc., mention how difficult it is to obtain access to these farms.

Even assuming that a journalist manages to enter the premises without hiding his/her identity or intentions, many states have laws that make it extremely dangerous to criticize agribusiness. Consider this passage from Fast Food Nation:

Having centralized American agriculture, the large agribusiness firms are now attempting, like Soviet commissars, to stifle criticism of their policies. Over the past decade, “veggie libel laws” backed by agribusiness have been passed in thirteen states. The laws make it illegal to criticize agricultural commodities in a matter inconsistent with “reasonable” scientific evidence. The whole concept of “veggie libel” is probably unconstitutional; nevertheless, these laws remain on the books. Oprah Winfrey, among others, has been sued for making disparaging remarks about food. In Texas, a man was sued by a sod company for criticizing the quality of its lawns. … In Colorado, violating the veggie libel law is now a criminal, not a civil, offense. Criticizing the Greeley slaughterhouse could put you behind bars. (pg. 266-67)

So, it’s not very surprising that activists now have to go undercover to tell the truth about what’s going on inside factory farms.

Iowa’s new law wouldn’t be so bad if these films didn’t have as huge an impact as they do. Four of Sparboe’s biggest clients–Target, McDonald’s, Sam’s Club, and Supervalu–have stopped doing business with the farm since seeing video that Mercy for Animals created. Similar results came about for other farms due to whistleblowing films (see the fifth paragraph of this article for some examples).

Ag-gag laws like Iowa’s are now pending in seven other states, including Illinois, where I attend school and where I will soon be writing to my district’s state representatives.

One may debate the importance of animal welfare (well, I wouldn’t debate it, but many people would), but here’s something that most Americans probably consider undebatable: consumers deserve to know the truth about the products they buy so that they can make informed decisions about their purchases. Companies that cannot make products that consumers want to buy should either change their business model or go out of business.

But laws that protect agribusiness from public scrutiny turn this model upside down. Now industrial farms can produce food (or, I should say, “food”) using whichever methods are cheapest and easiest for them, regardless of what consumers would actually buy if they knew the truth.

Of course, the notion of companies hiding their manufacturing methods from the public in order to cut costs without sacrificing consumer loyalty is neither new nor limited to the agriculture industry. Controversies over conditions at iPhone factories and the safety of pharmaceuticals, for instance, are old news by now.

However, agriculture is different for several reasons. First of all, the fact that certain states depend so heavily on it means that agribusiness lobbyists can more easily bend state lawmakers to their will. Second, the increasing pervasiveness of industrial farms means that, without regulation, it is becoming impossible for ethical farmers to compete (except by pandering to the sort of consumers who shop at Whole Foods). Third, unlike iPhones or Nike sneakers, food directly impacts people’s health, making it that much more urgent for people to know how their food is produced and to be able to make choices based on that knowledge. Finally, unlike most other industries, agriculture affects every single person who eats animal products of any kind. To avoid products from industrial farms, you would literally have to become a vegan–or, at the very least, dedicate your life to finding out exactly where all those free-range hens and cage-free eggs are actually coming from, since product labeling standards are pretty lax for these things.

A free market isn’t really free if basic information about products is kept from consumers. Most Americans probably wouldn’t want to eat eggs that come from hens whose beaks are burned off to keep them from pecking each other in overcrowded, filthy cages. They probably wouldn’t want to eat beef from cows that were literally bulldozed into the slaughterhouse because they were too sick to walk.

The legislators who pass laws allowing for these flagrant abuses to be kept secret from the American public ought to remember who they were elected to serve.

Here’s a hint: it’s not the agribusinesses.

Update (3/15/12): Et tu, Utah?

Not All Activism is Good Activism

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I’ll be honest with you: whenever I see a social media campaign going viral, I get suspicious.

It’s not because I think people are evil or stupid, or because I dislike popular things (although that is often the case). It’s because for anything to become popular, it must be simple, easy-to-understand, without nuance.

The violence in Uganda is none of these things.

I have not posted the Kony 2012 video to my Facebook like so many of my friends have. That is because I don’t know–I can’t know, really–if the video does justice to the reality in Uganda. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch the video here.

My views on this subject are much more complex than the act of posting a video. That’s why I’ve chosen to add my two cents not by reposting it, but by writing this.

First of all, look at some other types of activism that have gone viral lately. There were the SlutWalks, started when a Toronto cop told a bunch of students that women should avoid “dressing like sluts” in order to not be raped. SlutWalk consists of some very simple concepts: Don’t blame women for their own rapes. It’s not about what they’re wearing. And, by the way, what’s so bad about being a “slut?”

Then there was Occupy Wall Street, and all the other Occupy protests it spawned. The message of OWS was simple, too: there is too much damn inequality. The gap between the One Percent and the 99 Percent is too wide. Wall Street’s gains have become excessive.

There’s obviously plenty to criticize about SlutWalk and OWS. The former has been accused of marginalizing the voices of non-white, non-hetero, non-middle class women and pandering to the very sexist forces it seeks to combat by having women march around in their underwear.

The latter, meanwhile, has been criticized for being too ambiguous, not having specific demands for the government or for the financial sector, being anarchist/socialist/Communist, being unrealistic, consisting of too many people who supposedly majored in something stupid in college and don’t deserve jobs anyway.

But for all of their failures, SlutWalk and OWS have ensured that the issues of victim-blaming and economic inequality have entered our public dialogue–and stayed in it.

Kony 2012 seeks to do a similar thing. By “making Kony famous,” its creators insist, we can place Joseph Kony on the public agenda and “do something” about his terrible crimes.

But this is where things start to get dicey.

First of all, let me just say that I think awareness is extremely important. I think that American citizens, as a whole, aren’t nearly aware enough of what’s going on in their own backyards, let alone on another continent. More awareness, in my opinion, is almost always better than less awareness.

So on that front, I commend Invisible Children and the Kony 2012 campaign. The video they have created is well-made in a way that ensures that nobody who watches it can remain ambivalent about what’s going on in Uganda.

However, the purpose of the video isn’t just to spread awareness. It’s to raise money.

For what, exactly?

Invisible Children supports military intervention–yes, you read that correctly–to stop Kony. Specifically, the money it raises goes towards supporting Uganda’s government and its army, which Kony’s LRA is fighting against.

But here’s the sad, sad irony of the situation: Uganda’s army is likely just as bad as Kony’s. It has also been reported to use child soldiers and has been accused of raping civilians and looting their property.

Guys, I don’t know how else to say this: do not give money to these people.

Besides this glaring issue, Invisible Children has also been criticized for their own actions as a charity organization. Last year, they spent about 8.7 million dollars, but only 32% of that money went to direct services. The rest covered the organization’s internal costs.

I know what you’re thinking: yeah, yeah, that’s any charity. Sure, all charities have to cover certain costs before they can contribute money to the actual causes that they support. However, not all charities are as bad about this as Invisible Children, which was rated 2/4 stars by Charity Navigator.

Here’s another thing not all charities do, but Invisible Children does. That’s right, they’re actually posing with guns and soldiers from the Ugandan army. This is unprofessional at best and narcissistic and self-congratulatory at worst. (Here’s the source.)

According to Foreign Affairs magazine, Invisible Children has also exaggerated its “facts” about the LRA in order to gain support. Now, some people don’t see much of a problem with this. Whatever keeps the checks coming, right?

Needless to say, I disagree. If you need to manipulate information in order to raise money, you’re not behaving ethically, and that’s the case whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a non-profit. That’s just what I believe.

Fortunately, there are plenty of more reputable charities that provide aid to Uganda. Here are some: War Child, Children of Uganda, Kiva (you can make microloans to people all over the world, including, obviously, Uganda). Some great organizations that aren’t specific to Uganda are Doctors Without Borders, Help International, Women for Women.

So giving money to Invisible Children might not be the best idea, especially if you don’t want your money going to an army that rapes people. But what about the other half of Kony 2012’s mission, raising awareness?

I’m not sure how making Kony a “household name” is going to help things, to be honest. Unlike campaigns like SlutWalk and OWS, which targeted ordinary American citizens to make themselves aware of issues they can actually do something about, Invisible Children wants to stop a powerful Ugandan warlord. But contrary to their claims that Kony needs to be “made famous,” he’s already quite well-known among the people who matter. The International Criminal Court indicted him for war crimes back in 2005, and the American government has already had Kony on their radar for some time. In fact, as the Foreign Affairs article I linked to above discusses, they’ve been sending troops there for a while. So far, though, they haven’t succeeded in actually capturing him.

But even that raises difficult questions. Does Invisible Children want the United States to intervene militarily in order to stop Kony? If so, how is this any different from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (which, ironically, were strongly opposed by the very same progressive-minded people who are now feverishly posting the Kony video on Facebook)? And if not, what exactly are ordinary Americans supposed to do upon learning about Kony?

These are all questions that aren’t really being asked in the rush to spread an admittedly powerful and emotional video. But they need to be asked. You’ve Facebooked it, you’ve Tweeted it, you’ve favorited the video on YouTube. Now what?

Unfortunately, just the act of asking these questions, and of suggesting that Invisible Children may not be winning any awards for the world’s most ethical charity, is frowned upon. Every article and Facebook post I’ve come across that criticizes this campaign has been deluged with comments about how “they’re just trying to do a good thing” and “why do you have to criticize everything.”

Ah, the age-old question–why, indeed, must we criticize everything?

Here’s the thing. The stakes are quite a bit higher here than for other viral campaigns. If SlutWalk fails, nothing happens. If Occupy Wall Street fails, nothing happens. If Kony 2012 fails, nothing may happen–or, Uganda’s army will obtain more power that it can use to rape more people and enslave more child soldiers. Kony may be captured and someone else may take over who is even crueler. The United States may become involved in yet another costly foreign entanglement.

Another fact worth noting is that many, many African writers (including Ugandan ones) have been criticizing this campaign very strongly. Now, I’m not one of those people who claim that Americans have no place doing charity work in Africa because White Man’s Burden, but I do think that when the very people you’re trying to help are criticizing the help you’re providing, you need to sit down and listen. I’ve included some links to these criticisms at the end of this post.

I keep hearing the remark that criticizing Kony 2012 only “brings down morale” and keeps people from donating money. However, as long as the criticism is factual–that is, as long as Invisible Children really does support the Ugandan army and really is only spending a third of its money on actual aid to Uganda–then those are facts that potential donors ought to know before they make their decision.

If you’re relying on misinformation or lack of information to get people to donate to your cause, what you’re spreading isn’t awareness. It’s propaganda.

As I said before, awareness is important. But a free society thrives on dialogue. Posting a video and then condemning everyone who dares to criticize it is not dialogue.

These are, quite literally, matters of life or death. This is not the time to be upbeat and positive about everything you hear just because you don’t want to rain on the parade.

For more perspectives on Kony and Invisible Children’s campaign, here are some good sources:

Limbaugh Really Should Educate Himself About Birth Control

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Up until this week, those of us with a shred of optimism and/or naivete could have pretended that the difference between liberals’ and conservatives’ perspectives on birth control were due to something as benign as “differing beliefs.”

However, now that Rush Limbaugh has run his mouth on the subject, I think we can all agree that much of the conservative opposition to birth control is due not to differing beliefs that are equally legitimate and should be respected, but to simple, stupid ignorance.

The following is probably common knowledge now, but I’ll rehash it anyway:

  • Sandra Fluke, a 31-year-old Georgetown University law student, was proposed by the Democrats as a witness in the upcoming Congressional hearings on birth control. Her history of feminist activism and her previous employment with a nonprofit that advocated for victims of domestic violence made her an appropriate witness for their side.
  • Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, turned her down because, he claimed, her name had been submitted too late.
  • The resulting panel of witnesses for the Congressional hearings turned out to consist of absolutely no women whatsoever, which is really funny in that not-actually-funny-way because hormonal birth control of the sort whose mandated insurance coverage was being debated is only used by women/people with female reproductive systems.
  • A week later, she testified for House Democrats, mentioning that birth control would cost her $3,000 over three years. Lest anyone misinterpret her argument as being solely about those slutty women’s desire to have tons and tons of sex, she also mentioned her friend with polycystic ovary syndrome who developed a cyst because she was denied coverage for birth control pills (which would’ve helped because they would’ve reinstated a regular menstrual cycle).

A few days later, Rush Limbaugh decided to insert his expert opinion into the discourse surrounding mandated insurance coverage of birth control. His expert opinion?

What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke [sic], 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? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.

The next day, he clarified his views:

So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.

And the next day (allow me to shamelessly quote Wikipedia):

The following day Limbaugh said that Fluke had boyfriends “lined up around the block.”[18] He went on to say that if his daughter had testified that “she’s having so much sex she can’t pay for it and wants a new welfare program to pay for it,” he’d be “embarrassed” and “disconnect the phone,” “go into hiding,” and “hope the media didn’t find me.”[19]

I’m not going to waste anyone’s time by explaining how misogynistic Limbaugh’s comments were, especially since plenty of excellent writers have done so already. However, it continually shocks me how he gets away with saying things that are not only offensive and inflammatory, but simply inaccurate.

First of all, a primer for anyone who’s still confused: except for barrier-based forms of birth control (i.e. condoms and diaphragms), the amount of birth control that one needs does not depend on how much sex one is having. Hormonal birth control works by preventing ovulation, and in order for it to work, it has to be taken regularly and continually. For instance, you take the Pill every day, or you apply a new patch every week, or you get a new NuvaRing each month, or you get a new Depo-Provera shot every three months. You stick to this schedule whether you’re having sex once a week or once a day or ten times a day. You stick to it if you’re having sex only with your husband, and you stick to it if you’re having sex with several fuck buddies, and you stick to it if you’re a prostitute and have sex with dozens of different people every day.

Same goes for IUDs, which last for years.

Therefore, when Limbaugh says that those who support mandated insurance coverage of birth control are “having so much sex [they] can’t pay for it,” he’s not merely being an asshole. He’s also simply wrong.

And for the record, he didn’t even get her name right. It’s Sandra, not Susan. One word of advice for you, Limbaugh: if you’re going to call someone a slut and a prostitute, at least use their correct name. But I guess we should give him credit for knowing which letter it starts with.

I don’t care what your views are on mandated insurance coverage of birth control. I don’t care what your views are on how much or what kind of sex women should be allowed to have (as much as they want and whichever kind they want, in my opinion). Because whatever your views are on these things, you have to agree that these questions should not be getting answered by people who have absolutely no understanding of how these things actually work.

For instance, Limbaugh completely ignored the part of Fluke’s testimony in which she described the problem faced by her friend with polycystic ovary syndrome. This friend’s predicament has nothing to do with sex. Absolutely nothing. For all we know, she’s a virgin.

After all, polycystic ovary syndrome isn’t caused by anything that involves sex. The current medical opinion is that it’s probably caused by genetics.

Unlike some feminists, I don’t think that men should be excluded from debates about women’s health. But men (and women) who show little or no understanding about women’s health should absolutely be excluded from these debates.

You wouldn’t let a doctor who believes that babies come from storks deliver your baby. You wouldn’t let a mechanic who doesn’t know how an engine works work on your car. And you shouldn’t let politicians and commentators who think that you need more birth control if you have more sex decide whether or not birth control will be covered by your insurance.

And, for the record, I also don’t think that Congressional hearings on birth control should look like this: