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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29467 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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I think a related suggestion might be plausible, but there's a complication.

In the US, the bulk of the pro-life movement is religious, specifically Christian. There are certainly many individual exceptions, but the major organizing groups are either church-affiliated or formally secular but largely staffed by Christians. Where abortion is concerned, the Catholic part of the movement and the Evangelical Protestant part are entirely on the same page, but there is no similar agreement on birth control. Opposing birth control is part of Catholic dogma, while Evangelicals generally have no moral problem with contraceptives, so long as they are used within the context of otherwise proper sexual ethics.

That said, Evangelicals very much support the right of Catholics to follow their consciences on the issue, even if they differ on the object-level question. Catholic opposition to taxpayer-funded contraceptives is a given, and Evangelicals usually have other ideological reasons for opposing "free" stuff. So you'd likely have very minimal organized Christian support for taxpayer-funded contraceptives.

However, Evangelicals (and many American conservatives in general) have supported a related measure for pretty much the exact reasoning you lay out above--rescheduling oral contraceptives from prescription-based to over-the-counter. I would not expect Catholic support for this type of measure, but at least it doesn't raise the same conscience issues as direct subsidy.

In the US, the bulk of the pro-life movement is religious, specifically Christian.

I am not religious, and I understand the pro life movement completely. Hormonal birth control is just abortion by another means. Condoms will never work as a substitute for a semi-eugenic program of putting those implants into arms for most of the population getting abortions...and again, those are still abortions, just hormonally induced when the baby is like 64 cells.

I don't think this is true for standard birth control. I know it's true for the morning after pill but I think normal birth control stops ovulation

There were several comments that made the starting assumption that the pro-life movement in the US was solidly against birth control generally as well. This is untrue, hence my explanation above.

Let me define a few terms more tightly, while recognizing that they are sometimes (IMO) misused.

"Birth control" covers all methods of preventing, interrupting, or otherwise regulating pregnancy. "Contraceptive" is any method that prevents conception--the union of sperm and egg into zygote. Condoms and other barrier methods are examples. "Abortifacient" is any method that ends a pregnancy after the zygote is formed, including any method that prevents implantation in the uterus.

I'm aware that some hormonal birth control operates as an abortifacient by preventing implantation (Plan B, etc.), but the most common types of regularly-administered hormones (via pills, patch, implant, etc.) prevent ovulation. This would be a contraceptive, not an abortifacient.

While the Prog-Est oral program primarily inhibits ovulation, it also affects implantation and other portions of development of a healthy early pregnancy.

I would not expect Catholic support for this type of measure

Yeah, Pope Francis would have to change longstanding Catholic doctrine. That only happens every couple of years.

But if the Evangelicals unilaterally decided to support free birth control then, with bipartisan support from pro-choice people, it could get passed without requiring the Catholics to get on board. Maybe they'd perceive it as a betrayal or something, but they could still stand united on the abortion bad part.

I mean, evangelicals have lots of policy views that Catholics aren’t totally onboard with, so hitting defect just means they’ll get defected on.

The evangelicals would only support it if it were only free to married couples. They don't want abortions but they don't want sex out of wedlock either.

Why would Evangelicals support raising taxes and undermining freedom of conscience when a different policy choice is better? It's not about 'betraying allies'--though that's usually something to avoid when possible--but that Evangelicals actually have an array of moral and ideological preferences in addition to ending abortion, and should logically attempt to satisfy multiple preferences simultaneously first.

Yes, expanding access through OTC contraceptives is a more modest approach, but it should also accomplish much of the stated policy goal.

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