Viagra? Sure. Birth control? Not so fast....

[lagilman]

A PSA if you live in one of the affected states...



"In Ohio, women may lose direct access to their ob/gyns, coverage for infertility treatment, and coverage for cervical cancer screenings.

In New Hampshire, women may lose coverage for contraceptives, direct access to their ob/gyns, and coverage for maternity care.

In Tennessee, women may lose coverage for osteoporosis screenings and direct access to their ob/gyns.

Most sexually active women aged 15-44 have used birth control.But who's paying for it? If Sen. Michael Enzi (R-WY) has his
way, insurance companies in almost every state won't have to. Next week, the Senate will consider a bill introduced by Sen.
Enzi that would allow insurance companies to ignore state laws that protect patients, including laws that prohibit insurance
companies from covering some prescription drugs, but not birth control.

Urge your senator to vote against S. 1955.
http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/enzi_bill

For years many insurance plans covered prescription drugs, but refused to cover birth control pills and other prescription
contraceptives for women. Planned Parenthood spent nearly a decade convincing lawmakers in 23 states to remedy this inequity.
Sen. Enzi's bill threatens to reverse this progress by overriding state laws that protect patients, including laws that
require coverage for prescription contraceptives, cervical cancer screenings, maternity care, mental health treatment, and
dozen of other benefits guaranteed under state law.

Speak out now. If you live in an affected state, urge your senator to vote No on S. 1955.


Thank you,

Cecile Richards
President
Planned Parenthood Federation of America"

Comments

[mt-yvr.livejournal.com]

I vaaaguely remember hearing about this a while ago, or rumblings of it. Seems so bloody odd.

[chaoticgoodnik.livejournal.com]

Why does Sen. Enzi hate women? :/

Seriously, just when I thought this week couldn't get much worse in terms of reproductive rights for women, this happens.

[(Anonymous)]

I live in Ohio. I had no idea this was going on. Thanks for posting it.

www.bicknell-brown.blogspot.com

[chibiaingeal.livejournal.com]

I tried, but I received this message:

We're sorry but it appears that you are not eligible to participate in this campaign. This campaign is designated for constituents of the targeted decisionmaker(s) and based upon your address, it appears that you do not live in an area represented by the targeted decisionmaker(s).


:( I wanted to voice my opinion. I am on birth control but not because I'm sexually active. That makes that muchmore angrier when people talk about insurance companies not having to cover it or pharmacists being allowed to deny filling my prescription.


*grr*

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to think I spend two hours a day either reading about the latest idiocy they're coming up with, or writing letters to my idiot senators. I'm also beginning to think that when I win that @!!@$ lotto, if it's big enough, maybe I should run for office.

I never thought they'd go after BC again because it's hard to justify Viagra without paying for BC. And I remember them refusing to pay for BC. Someone calculated out what BC for the fertile "in the right age group" vs. paying for the deliveries and complications cost, just for one company. Amazing it took them so long to figure out the BC was cheaper. . . .

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

It's not about money, it's about values. Abortions are less expensive than even healthy births in hospitals. Birth control is less expensive than pregnancy... but those who hold values that include one or more of "the wages of sexual activity are babies" and that birth control is immoral, unethical, wrong, and that women are defined as baby-making nurturers by nature, and any woman who doesn't have lots of children is a disgrace to humanity and not a Real Woman, tend to want to force the rest of the world to conform to their values.

If you want to feel nauseated, go look at the website for the Eagle Forum, or Concerned Women of America, or the values/belief pages of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the other organizations aligned with those mentalities. I came across some hardcovers on a featured books display in the local Barnes & Noble last night, which I don't remember the title of but the comments on the cover were claiming that feminists were ruining the USA.... I did some book rearranging to put them under other books...

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Alas, yes. It's Southern Baptist morality -- true conservatives don't mind other people's business, they demand privacy for personal issues.

Can't go to those sites--I get upset enough filtering them through a half-dozen blogs.

But book rearranging is good for the soul. ;^)

[arouraleona.livejournal.com]

One of these days we're going to see Atwood's Handmaids Tale come at us... as our rights are slowly and constantly chipped away as if our lives and opinions (only fully recognised about 50 years ago) have absolutly no value when compaired to the men who feel they know what we need better than we do.

It's disgusting.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Once in a while I wonder if generations from now, we will be the curiosities on the family tree . . . the ones who were childless, who had careers, who wrote books and had lives that seem alien to those who cope with the future and its many changes (diminishing resources demand we become more creative or cease to be the top of the evolutionary heap.)

But then I write SF. I did not ask for this gift, or to be childless, or any of the rest of it. I just try to make it work.

[arouraleona.livejournal.com]

Or here's a thought, maybe one day we'll be the norm... and people will get it?

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I hope so. Children should be born because they are wanted and prepared for, and no one should have them for the so many wrong reasons.

And no one should think it odd that people choose no children.

It's the children themselves who change, every generation. For most of them, they think it's weird that women couldn't work at whatever they wanted, or work and have families, too. Many think that their gay friends are just like them, except they're wired a little differently about sex. That's a great step forward.

But the "getting it" part. I think a lot of it is simply that some of us run a little differently in the pack. And salesmen and lawyers and farmers don't understand their artistic children -- never have understood them. Only the most generous in heart can just accept them.

That's a conflict that may never end. We celebrate our artists after they are gone, usually. Not while they live.

[allaboutm-e.livejournal.com]

I look forward to seeing all the anti-abortionists rallying to the cause of readily available birth control ...

what, me overly optomistic?