Forget partial-birth abortion. These Republican right-wing extremists have set their sights on (gasp!) The Pill!
All this is happening in my own back yard. Makes me proud to be a Democrat.
(If there's a reason why I changed my party affiliation from Republican to Democrat, this is it.)
All I can do is shake my head at the antics of Republican right-wing assholes trying to impose their will on the rest of us.
Headline: Birth control funds retained
Source: Cincinnati Post newspaper
6/20/02
In a dramatic showdown that brought cheers of surprise from women who packed a sprawling meeting room in Wilder, Northern Kentucky's board of health voted 14-13 Wednesday night to retain federal funds that provide birth control and a wide range of family-planning services for 4,500 low-income women and adolescents.
But pro-life advocates said they will continue their fight to remove birth-control pills and intrauterine devices, which they consider abortifacients, from Northern Ken tucky health clinics.
''Near-term results are not always correct,'' said Robert Cetrulo, president of Northern Kentucky Right to Life. ''This issue is like the slavery issue - it's not going to go away until we prevail. Truth prevails. It just takes longer sometimes.''
Betsy Nowland-Curry, executive director of the Kentucky Commission on Women, a division of the governor's office in Frankfort, called the vote ''a tremendous decision,'' but said the issue was not dead.
''We can't get too comfortable in this as a victory because of the (low) status of women in Kentucky,'' she said. ''We have to continue to be vigilant about making sure women have access to family planning.''
Nowland-Curry said the closeness of the vote underscored the ''serious differences in viewpoint as to the meaning of contraception, the meaning and purpose of family planning, and the definition of an abortion.''
Chairman Greg Kennedy, who predicted that he might have to cast the deciding vote, did so aft er the board reached a 13-13 deadlock on Addia Wuchner's motion to reject $170,000 of annual fed eral Title X family planning money. Two board members were absent from the meeting, which took place at the Marquise.
Wuchner also proposed phasing out the Title X funds over three months and implementing new reproductive health programs that were ''free of dangerous drugs and side effects, that respect a woman's natural fertility, and that assist her to make healthy choices out of her self-knowledge, self-control and self-respect.''
A crowd of several hundred listened as board members of the Northern Kentucky Independent District Health Department, which serves four counties, spoke over the course of more than two hours.
Those opposed to keeping Title X funds blamed the pill for an increase in sexually transmitted disease and blamed Title X for erecting barriers between adolescents and their parents.
Those in favor of keeping the funds urged compassion for the underserved and said the health department's mission was to link people with resources, not to prevent resources from being used. Dr. Daniel Courtade told the board that not all households are happy and functional. Some emancipated minors, he said, may not be able to ''get into the bar to see their parents.''
Wilder Police Chief Anthony Rouse, who normally has two officers on night duty, assigned six officers to the meeting site. But the crowd, though frequently impatient, never became unruly.
The 29-member board is entirely Caucasian and includes nine women. The board does not include any men or women who are currently served by the clinic.
Nowland-Curry said she was shocked at the board's lack of diversity and its disproportionate number of female members.
Of the women, five voted in favor of keeping the funding, among them Mary Lou Gastright.
''I was 33 and had had my eighth child when the pill came on the market,'' Gastright said prior to the vote. ''It was a Godsend. What the pill did was give women the freedom to choose their family size, which gave them the freedom to become better educated and find a better job. It also gave them the freedom to leave an abusive, horrible relationship. There was a saying in my family: the woman was no longer kept barefoot and pregnant down on the farm.''
Wuchner said it was ''too soon to say'' whether she would re-introduce the motion at a later date.
Campbell County Judge-Executive Steve Pendery, who voted to keep the funding, said the board is not as divided as it seems.
''We're a lot closer on this than the vote makes it sound,'' he said. ''The board, generally speaking, is committed to the pro-life stance. It's a matter of your interpretation as to which is the proper path to take to get there.''
Pendery said he voted to keep the funding for practical reasons.
Had the board rejected the Title X funds, the state would have been obligated to continue providing Title X services through other clinics or another venue.
Also Wednesday, the board overwhelmingly passed a motion by Barb Black that the district would not offer RU-486.
RU-486, a sequence of drugs that usually causes a miscarriage, is not currently offered at the health department's clinics and is not funded by Title X. There has been no effort by any individual or group to make it available at those sites.
An attempt to broaden Black's motion to include any and all other abortifacient drugs that might be developed in the future failed.
The issue of whether birth-control pills cause an abortion has raged in Northern Kentucky pol itical circles for the last few months as Northern Kentucky Right to Life drew a new line in the sand.
Political candidates were asked to take a stand on the birth-control pill, which has the p otential to cause the destruction of a fertilized egg, and Wuchner presented her motion to reject Title X funds.
Cetrulo said the debate led to ''a change of heart'' among four board members.
''These people have seen the truth,'' he said. ''I get calls about this every day now. The in formation is getting out there that these pills are not doing women a service. That they're really not health care. The y're disastrous to their health, and they frequently cause abortions.''
Nowland-Curry said access to family planning is closely tied to a woman's ability to attain a college degree and advance her career.
''Men don't have to think about these things as much,'' she said.
''Even if they're married, they're not the caregivers - typically.''
Kentucky ranks in the bottom third in the country in the percentage of women who are college- educated, and the percentage of women above the poverty level, she said.
''And we rank 50th on the health and well-being of women in the United States.''
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