The battle to ban birth control

Another successful campaign has centered on condoms. In 2000, at the behest of then-Rep. and anti-choice ally Tom Coburn, R-Okla., the National Institutes of Health convened a panel of experts to evaluate the condom's effectiveness at preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The panel concluded that correct condom use definitively protected against the spread of HIV and gonorrhea, and that there was "a strong probability of condom effectiveness" for other STDs, including human papillomavirus (HPV). Coburn used the findings to declare that condoms don't protect against HPV -- a wild misappropriation of fact that has nonetheless become a big part of the anti-choice argument against the condom's efficacy. Under pressure from Coburn and other anti-choice activists, the Centers for Disease Control was forced to revise its Web site fact sheet on condoms. There is now a box in the center of the page that reads, in part, "While the effect of condoms in preventing human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is unknown, condom use has been associated with a lower rate of cervical cancer, an HPV-associated disease" -- not quite the same as saying, as the CDC previously did, that condoms protect against HPV.

Such subtle shifts in language have helped anti-choice activists to argue that condoms actually help spread STDs such as HPV by giving users a false sense of security. "When condoms are distributed to youth, they are more likely to engage in the activity," says Worthington. And that's why, she says, they're at risk for everything from AIDS to unintended pregnancy. "In the real world, everyone knows that condom use is never 100 percent correct," she says matter-of-factly.

While no one is suggesting that activists like Worthington will ever succeed in outlawing condoms or the pill, they are making incremental progress in passing laws that are making access to birth control more difficult. Of the 23 states that mandate employers to provide insured coverage for prescription contraceptives to their employees, 14 have exemptions for religious employers, and Missouri allows any employer, religious or secular, to deny coverage for any kind of contraception. During the 2005 legislative session, more that 80 bills in 36 states were introduced that would restrict minors' access to birth control. On the federal level, the Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act, currently being considered in Congress, would allow insurers to ignore state laws mandating contraceptive coverage. And then there is the matter of pharmacists and "conscience clause" laws. South Dakota, Arkansas, Georgia and Mississippi already allow pharmacists to refuse to fill contraceptive prescriptions. And at least 15 states have legislation pending that would allow not just pharmacists to refuse to dispense prescriptions, but would also protect cashiers who refused to ring them up.

"There are more laws on the books and proposals to welcome pharmacists to obstruct women's access to birth control than there are pharmacists willing to do it," says Page. "99.9 percent of pharmacists know their role is to fill prescriptions and not to make moral judgments."

That doesn't mean that a law on the books wouldn't have a practical effect. "Once you have it as a law," says Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank that tracks campaigns meant to curb human rights, "you organize more and more pharmacists to refuse dispensing pills."

One reason for the new push to restrict birth control may have to do with changes in the Catholic Church -- although this is hard to prove, because like many anti-contraception campaigners, Worthington insists that her site has nothing to do with Catholicism, even though she identifies herself as a Catholic and NRFC is filled with discussions of Catholic texts, like the "Humanae Vitae" and the Bible-study document "The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality." Still, Berlet sees a connection to the appointment of Cardinal Ratzinger as pope -- an appointment that radically conservative groups like Human Life International have enthusiastically supported. "I think they see in the Vatican some room to push this issue further to the right," says Berlet.

Like the Catholic Church, NRFC opposes the use of contraception even within marriage. The "About Us" page on the site claims that "the constant promotion of and use of contraception leads to promiscuity, and a general lowering of morality and furthers the idea the sex has nothing to do with childbearing or commitment. When this attitude is brought into marriage, it can taint the relationship from the beginning."

NRFC sees the availability of contraception as the root cause of the need for abortion. The "About Us" page also quotes a passage from the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Planned Parenthood v. Casey to argue that "In law and in practice, [contraception] led to the necessity of abortion because contraception proved not to be failsafe": "[F]or two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail."

In order to support the idea that contraception is dangerous, Worthington publishes articles on the site that take qualified language from scientific studies and distort their conclusions. One of them, "Oral Contraceptives declared carcinogenic by World Health Organization," takes the news that the WHO found that estrogen-progestogen-based contraceptives increased a woman's risk for breast, cervix and liver cancer while decreasing the risk for endometrial and ovarian cancers, and concludes: "It does not seem logical that any woman would place her body at risk for these deadly cancers, even if for the sake of reducing the risk of other cancers. Meanwhile, in the process a woman on The Pill is destroying her fertility. Medical doctors and researchers agree that one of the best ways to prevent some common cancers (such as breast cancer) in women is to conceive and bear a child and to breastfeed naturally. This is the body's natural means of protecting itself from cancer."

Worthington doesn't mention that the WHO concluded, "Because use of combined estrogen-progestogen contraceptives increases some cancer risks and decreases risk of some other forms of cancer, it is possible that the overall net public health outcome may be beneficial." Nor does she qualify her assertions with the fact that the WHO reviewed only previously published data, much of it gathered under studies conducted at a time when birth-control pills contained much higher levels of hormones than they do now. And her citation on breast-feeding comes from the anti-abortion group the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer.

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