Louisiana wingnut Gov. Bobby Jindal
continues to try to pretend he's a "moderate" with
this week's op-ed on birth control in the WSJ.
Let’s ask the question: Why do women have to go
see a doctor before they buy birth control? There are two answers.
First, because big government says they should, even though requiring a doctor visit to get a drug that research shows is safe helps drive up health-care costs. Second, because big pharmaceutical companies benefit from it. They
know that prices would be driven down if the companies had to compete
in the marketplace once their contraceptives were sold over the counter.
So at present we have an odd situation. Thanks to President
Obama and the pro-choice lobby, women can buy the morning-after pill
over the counter without a prescription, but women cannot buy oral
contraceptives over the counter unless they have a prescription.
Contraception is a personal matter—the government shouldn’t be
in the business of banning it or requiring a woman’s employer to keep
tabs on her use of it. If an insurance company or those purchasing
insurance want to cover birth control, they should be free to do so. If a
consumer wants to buy birth control on her own, she should be free to
do so.
Now, this is where it
sounds like Jindal makes no small amount of sense, making the fiscal conservative argument that making contraception as widely available as possible is one of the best preventative health care cost reduction measures you can take. (Kids? Expensive.) But as Irin Carmon explains,
Jindal has no clue what he's talking about because his facts are all garbage.
At first glance, this seems like giving bipartisan credit where it’s
due, until you realize that many on Jindal’s side erroneously equate
with abortion the high dose of hormonal birth control pills taken up to
72 hours after unprotected sex. To those attuned to this particular
dog-whistle, Jindal is implying President Obama and “the pro-choice
lobby” are conspiring to make it easier for women to “abort” (by which
they mean blocking an hours-old fertilized egg from implantation, which
the morning after pill has never been shown to do) than to prevent. To
most everyone else, it just seems like a twist of ridiculous government
bureaucracy, and Jindal gets to have it both ways without conceding that
the main opposition to emergency contraception access comes from his
own camp.
And Jindal conveniently doesn’t mention the fact that
young people under 17 are unable to access emergency contraception
without a prescription, despite the fact that the sooner you take it,
the more effective it is. This was first due to a politicized handling
of medicine under Bush, and more recently a politicized handling of
medicine under Obama, both of them acquiescing to the hysteria of social
conservatives like Jindal. Which brings us to another pressing issue
that Jindal addresses only indirectly: Minors’ access to contraception.
He writes, “Parents who believe, as I do, that their teenage children
shouldn’t be involved in sex at all do not deserve ridicule.” That’s
true, but do they deserve the ability to deny their “teenage children”
access to birth control if they’re going to have sex anyway? He says
these over-the-counter rules should apply to women over 18, despite the
fact that the ACOG recommendations didn’t say that at all.
My question is how long Jindal's "moderate position" lasts (and it's really just more wingnut code speak anyway). My guess is "until the next time he gets dinged by the forced birth crowd" for not being misogynist enough. Let's remember, that while Jindal isn't a complete Neanderthal on contraception, he is very much so on education,
cutting libraries to the bone across the state and trying to
funnel taxpayer money to religious zealots in school.
Don't be fooled by the guy. Jindal is just Romney without the millions (of dollars, he still has the millions of policy positions).
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