Opinion Piece Examines American Life League's 'Protest The Pill' Day

Main Category: Sexual Health / STDs
Also Included In: Women's Health / Gynecology;  Abortion
Article Date: 11 Jun 2008 - 9:00 PDT

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Last Saturday's "Protest the Pill Day '08: The Pill Kills Babies," organized by the American Life League, was a "really, really ill conceived" campaign against "our right to choose when and how to start a family," Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial writer D. Parvaz writes in an opinion piece. According to Parvaz, the campaign was held on the anniversary of the 1965 U.S. Supreme Court Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which struck down a state ban on the use of contraceptives by married couples.

The author goes on to discuss the ongoing Washington state battle over the right of pharmacists and owners of pharmacies to deny women emergency contraceptives if it contradicts with their religious beliefs. According to Parvaz, Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) has said the rules taken up by the state Board of Pharmacy last year are key not only to access to EC, but also to other drugs, such as HIV treatments, adding that a pharmacist with a religious objection should turn the prescription over to someone else to dispense. She notes that Dino Rossi (R), who is running against Gregoire in the November election, sides with the suing pharmacists but has previously "dodged" questions about funding clinics such as Planned Parenthood.

ALL's campaign's message that the "pill is bad" is the "predictable next step of the anti-choice movement," which also is trying to deem EC an "abortive agent, conflating it with the legal, FDA-approved" medication abortion drug Mifeprex, also known as RU-486, according to Parvaz. "A cross between something out of The Onion and teen-targeted anti-smoking ads, The Pill Kills campaign looks almost like a farce," Parvaz writes, adding, "Except it's not."

It is "odd that we live in a culture that values planning in everything from education to retirement to weddings, yet we're expected to believe that starting a family is something that's supposed to happen, without preparation or choice," Parvaz writes, concluding, "If they want to take away my unfettered access to birth control, they're going to have to pry that right from my cold, dead fingers" (Parvaz, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 6/7).

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