[ As of last week, Republican efforts to ban birth control in
America have officially started, and teenagers in Texas are its first
victims]
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IS THE RIGHT TO CONTRACEPTION ABOUT TO END IN AMERICA?  
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Thom Hartmann
January 4, 2023
The Hartmann Report
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_ As of last week, Republican efforts to ban birth control in America
have officially started, and teenagers in Texas are its first victims
_

, Image by Thomas Breher from Pixabay

 

To paraphrase Pastor Niemöller, first they came for our abortion
rights. Now they’re coming for our birth control.

Psychologist Dr. Marty Klein notes at 
[[link removed]]_Psychology
Today
[[link removed]]_ that
there are typically only a few reasons why people oppose birth
control. They are:

— Fundamentalist religions fear sexual pleasure, which birth control
facilitates
— Contraception effectively limits family size, empowering women
— Contraception promotes personal autonomy [making women more likely
to challenge male authority]
— Birth control may make abortion more acceptable to society

As of last week, Republican efforts to ban birth control in America
have officially started, and teenagers in Texas are its first victims.

When Clarence Thomas wrote
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his _Dobbs_ concurring opinion that the Supreme Court should next
overturn the right to birth control in the United States, a lawyer and
a judge in Texas were apparently listening.

Most Americans have no idea this high-stakes drama — heading toward
the Supreme Court but already now law in Texas — is even going on.

LOST IN THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY CHATTER, A TRUMP-APPOINTED FEDERAL
DISTRICT JUDGE IN TEXAS JUST A WEEK AGO PUT A STOP
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TEENAGERS GETTING CONFIDENTIAL ACCESS TO FEDERALLY-FUNDED BIRTH
CONTROL PILLS AND DEVICES IN THAT STATE.

He did it based on a lawsuit filed by attorney Jonathan Mitchell, the
same man who co-authored the Texas “abortion vigilante” law.
Everybody ridiculed that effort at first, you’ll recall, but the
Supreme Court upheld it and today it’s Texas law and spreading
across Red states like a fungus.

Mitchell is also known as the guy who supported the Mississippi
abortion ban before the Supreme Court that led to
the _Dobbs_ decision overturning _Roe v Wade_.

Perhaps anticipating Clarence Thomas’ later call to overturn Supreme
Court decisions legalizing birth control,  homosexual behavior, and
gay marriage (_Griswold v Connecticut, Lawrence v Texas, Obergefell v
Hodges_), Mitchell even wrote
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his amicus brief for the _Dobbs_ case an originalist reference
similar to the argument the Texas judge would later make against birth
control:

“The right to marry an opposite-sex spouse is ‘deeply rooted in
this Nation’s history and tradition’; the right to marry a
same-sex spouse obviously is not.”

IN THE TEXAS FEDERAL LAWSUIT MITCHELL BROUGHT, _DEANDA V. BECERRA
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TRUMP-APPOINTED JUDGE MATTHEW KACSMARYK
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THAT TEENS BETWEEN 15 AND 18 SHOULDN’T BE ABLE TO MAKE BIRTH CONTROL
DECISIONS INDEPENDENT OF THEIR PARENTS BECAUSE, HE RULED, THAT
HAD _ALWAYS_ BEEN THE LAW IN THE EARLY YEARS OF AMERICA:

“For centuries, the common law held minors were incapable of giving
consent to make important life decisions.”

Somehow, he managed to overlook the fact that the age of sexual
consent “for centuries” was, in every American state
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founding of this nation in 1789, 10 to 12 years old. It wasn’t
raised to 14, 15, or 16 in _any_ US state until
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But don’t try to argue facts with people running on religious or
male-power arguments.

ALTHOUGH THE FIGHT FOR WOMEN’S BODILY AUTONOMY IS AS OLD AS TIME,
THIS PART OF THE STORY BEGINS IN 1970.

Richard Nixon had a reputation as an awkward, bumbling
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when it came to sex, but even he knew that teenagers should be able to
get birth control without their parents’ consent.

A teenage pregnancy could destroy a young woman’s life, and, at that
time, over one-in-ten girls became
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years old. Fully 92 percent of those teenage pregnancies, according to
research published [[link removed]] in the
following decade, were unintended
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prevented with access to birth control.

So, in 1970, President Nixon signed into law Title X, a federal grant
program that included funds for confidential access to birth control
for people across the nation _regardless of their age_.

Nonprofit agencies were formed in each state to receive the federal
money and provide birth control (among other services): in Texas
“Every Body Texas
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that administers Title X statewide through 32 agencies and 156
clinics.

THE WEEK OF CHRISTMAS, BECAUSE OF KACSMARYK’S _DEANDA V. BECERRA
[[link removed]] _RULING,
TEXAS AGENCIES AFFILIATED WITH _EVERY BODY TEXAS_ LEARNED THEY HAD
TO START TURNING AWAY TEENAGERS, VIRTUALLY ALL OF THEM GIRLS AND
WOMEN, WHO WERE SEEKING CONFIDENTIAL BIRTH CONTROL.

This is now the law in Texas.

Picking up the beat, Republican legislators in Missouri, Idaho, and
Louisiana have introduced or are proposing birth control bans
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those states, according to the Pew Trust. Expect Republicans in your
state to soon try the same.

LEST YOU THINK THAT HYPERBOLIC, CONSIDER HOW REPUBLICANS IN THE US
HOUSE AND SENATE VOTED WHEN DEMOCRATS INTRODUCED THE _RIGHT TO
CONTRACEPTION ACT
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CLARENCE THOMAS SUGGESTED THE COURT SHOULD OVERTURN THAT RIGHT.

Fully 195 Republicans voted
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the legislation in the House; only 8 supported it. And when it reached
the Senate, it was killed by a Republican filibuster.

The _Deanda v. Becerra
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in Texas banning confidential dispensing of contraception to teenagers
will be appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, known across
the nation as the place most likely to uphold crackpot rightwing
rulings. From there it goes to the six crackpot rightwingers on the
Supreme Court.

Republicans appear quite fixated on banning both abortion and birth
control nationwide.

AUTHORITARIAN SOCIETIES HAVE A LONG HISTORY OF TRYING TO REGULATE
WOMEN’S BODIES.

THE _FIRST
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THE NAZIS BURNED
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MAY OF 1933 WERE BIRTH CONTROL GUIDES BY PLANNED PARENTHOOD FOUNDER
MARGARET SANGER, SHORTLY BEFORE HITLER BANNED BIRTH CONTROL
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THAT NATION (SOLDIERS WERE ALLOWED TO POSSESS CONDOMS “TO MAINTAIN
THEIR GOOD HEALTH”).

Birth control was similarly banned in Romania by Nicolae Ceaușescu,
bringing that nation Europe’s highest infant mortality rate and
lowest life expectancy (particularly for women), a legacy
which continues
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this day even though Ceaușescu was overthrown and killed in 1989.

And now the GOP wants to ban birth control in the United States,
starting with the youngest and most vulnerable among us.
Authoritarians, after all, always first attack those least able to
defend themselves before they climb the ladder of the society they
intend to conquer.

This opening shot — coming out of Texas, just like the first ban on
abortion (and from the same lawyer) — should make all Americans sit
up and take notice.

_Thom Hartmann is a NY Times bestselling author 34 books in 17
languages & nation's #1 progressive radio host. Psychotherapist,
international relief worker. Politics, history, spirituality,
psychology, science, anthropology, pre-history, culture, and the
natural world._

* abortion bans
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* Birth Control
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* contraception
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