Surprising absolutely no one, the Bush administration told the vast majority of the population that uses or has used contraception that we can fuck off, and that we are dirty whores* who deserve a dressing down from perfect strangers that are supposedly hired to provide service. In fact, the administration responded to complaints from over 200,000 letter writers by tossing two fingers, by keeping the proposed regulations and adding contractors to the list of people who can obstruct you if you want contraception, sterilization, or abortion.
I assumed that the Bush administration would do this. They don’t care about justice, rule of law, the desires of the electorate, or basic morality when it comes to any other issue, so why break with tradition on this? I wrote this column last week figuring that Bush would stick by these HHS regulations not only out of contempt for the American people, but also because they wanted to embroil the Obama administration in a fight with the Christian right as soon as possible. The more I think about it, the more worried I am about this, because these regulations seem like a perfect “compromise” position. Consider that most people’s idea of acceptable regulations of abortion and other reproductive health services (as well as rights like marriage) are those that allow them personally to have sex as they see fit, but that might control someone else they feel is less deserving. Since these regulations enable oppression to be conducted on a much more individual basis, it might be easy for a lot of people to think, “Well, obviously the religious people won’t try to interfere with my rights, since I’m obviously a good, deserving person.” Then again, the huge outcry over this regulation may mean that I’m worried about nothing.