Ordinarily, I am not what you’d call an “angry person”. I am kind to animals, trees, and on occasion, telemarketers. I do my best.
However, I have my limits, and I’ve been pushed past them. Elizabeth Dole started it all by suggesting that a pending bit of legislation–an appropriations bill that’s designed “to provide assistance to foreign countries to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and for other purposes”–be named for the late, less-than-great Jesse Helms. You heard me: Jesse Helms. Perhaps Helms accomplished good things during his miserably long reign in the senate, but none of them had anything to do with HIV/AIDS. In fact, if you were to draw up a short list of public officials most responsible for promoting AIDS hysteria and hindering HIV treatment/education programs, Helms would be on it–possibly in the number two spot, right below Ronnie Reagan. Needless to say, he was no friend of The Gays, either. Let him rot in anonymity.
Then, as if Dole’s audacity (and selective memory) weren’t shocking enough, Mike Leavitt’s Department of Health and Human Services “released a proposal that allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman’s access to contraception.” Now, I’m no big-city lawyer*, but as I understand it, their argument goes something like this:
1. There’s a lot of debate about when life begins.
2. Many people (they claim “49% of Americans”) think that life begins at the moment a woman’s egg is fertilized.
3. Contraceptives like the pill, the patch, and others may allow fertilization, but prevent fertilized eggs from attaching to the uterus. (However, there is no scientific evidence to prove this.)
4. Because of item #3, some people who believe that life begins at the moment of fertilization also believe that the pill, the patch, and similar forms of contraception constitute a form of abortion.
5. Because such people would experience suffering and “discrimination” in being forced to dispense contraceptives to women, such people should not be forced to do so.
Have Leavitt and Dole discovered a time machine that I don’t know about? Are they living in 1965? Am I? I seem to recall someone saying something about time only moving forward, but maybe I’m mistaken.
I’m going back to bed.
* Though I did perform Atticus Finch’s courtroom monologue from To Kill a Mockingbird for an audition in 10th grade. Does that count?
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