"Pro-Lifers" Protest Contraception

By Cristina Page, RH Reality Check. Posted May 6, 2008.

Tired of the same-old lame protests outside of abortion clinics? Looking to impose your religious beliefs in other people's lives in a new and exciting way? The pro-life movement would like to expand your horizons.

On June 7th, the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that gave married people the right to use contraception, the American Life League, along with Pro-Life Wisconsin and Pharmacists for Life International Associate groups want you to join them in protesting in front of facilities that distribute birth control products. The national day against contraception, Protest the Pill Day '08: The Pill Kills Babies, was started to convince the American people of a simple and imaginative idea: attempting to prevent abortion is abortion too. These arguments have been confounded by diabolical scientists and experts who insistently point out there's no evidence to support that the birth control pill works the way these groups claim. As we all know, however, if ideology waited for science to prove scientific points, our ancestors would have never have spent all those years wandering the then-flat earth.


The campaign website is chock full of important information and you don't want to miss the informative "Talking Points" section. Here's a sampling:


Q: The Supreme Court has ruled that it's my right to privacy -- who do you think you are to say otherwise?


A: On June 7, 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Griswold v. Connecticut decision. The Supreme Court justices first presumed that previous Court decisions dealing with a citizen's right to liberty and security that prohibited invasion of one's home and acquisition of evidence that might later be used to convict him of a crime also addressed privacy within marriage. In fact, the justices argued, "The concept of liberty is not so restricted... it embraces the right of marital privacy though that right is not mentioned explicitly [emphasis added] in the Constitution" and is based on "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights [which] have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance."



This confusing language, which has no relationship whatsoever to what the Founding Fathers intended, gave married women permission to use the birth control pill. The Supreme Court literally created the "right to privacy" out of thin air.


We now know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that not only did the Supreme Court literally make up the right that you claim gives you permission to use birth control, but the most popular form of birth control, the pill, can kill innocent preborn children. If there is a chance that human beings are going to be murdered, I am going to do everything in my power to help prevent that from happening. If you knew there was a chance that someone might poison your neighbor, don't you think you would try to notify your neighbor and do as much as you could to help save a life?


And before you despair that your right to privacy is being lost, take comfort in the knowledge that once we all finally live in a country where ideology is valued over evidence and our government is run by and for those who subscribe, or succumb, to the exciting agenda of these groups ... privacy will no longer be needed. Your point of view and way of life will, conveniently, be decided for you. So what are you waiting for?! Sign up now!

See more stories tagged with: anti-choice, abortion, pro-life, pro-choice, contraception, birth control

Cristina Page is the author of 'How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America' (Perseus Books, 2006).

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