Republicans Discover Birth Control

Sometimes, what you see is not what you think you see. 
Take this photo for example: This gorilla looks pretty happy, despite the fact he is strung up by his arms--is that not a goofy grin on his face?  
But no, that is a dead gorilla and the white hunter leaning on his gun has not actually tickled the gorilla but shot him dead. 
The natives are just part of the safari.  

And so it is with the new Republican strategy to embrace over the counter birth control pills, without prescription "24 hours a day," as the ads for Republican candidates now say.

Actually, the FDA considered legalizing OTC (over the counter) birth control pills some years ago, but Republicans were scandalized.

Of course George Carlin famously lampooned the requirement for a woman to first go to what in his time was a male doctor to get a note to take to a male pharmacist to be granted permission to control her own fertility. He evoked the image of the male pharmacist, sitting alone in his store at night, looking over all the prescriptions for birth control pills--"Oh, I know what you're doing..." But those were different times, sort of.

By the 21st century, birth control pills had a safety record which justified making them over the counter, from a medical point of view.

Making BCP's prescription controlled has been, it must be admitted, an exercise in paternalism on the part of the government. 

But, with the bizarre chimera of our commercialized medical system, neither public health concerns nor individual freedoms are exempt from financial considerations:  If birth control pills are prescriptions, then insurance policies will pay for them (or not) but if they are not, then no insurance company will pay for them--over the counter drugs are almost never covered by insurance. 

So we are back to the Rush Limbaugh narrative: If a woman asks for an insurance company or the government to pay for her BCP's she is asking someone else to pay for allowing her to have sex, which to Mr. Limbaugh's very odd mind, makes her little better than a "slut" because she is asking for someone to pay for her having sex. 

Or, as Scott Brown has read the Republican Hymn Book, for insurance or the government to pay for BCP's makes a woman dependent on government. Women should pay out of their own pockets for BCP's, or risk giving up their independence and self reliance. 

But, there is hope in all this. Democrats have been saying that to oppose birth control or to impede access to birth control only makes unwanted pregnancy and abortion more likely. So if you are really concerned about doing away with abortion, go for birth control to do away with unwanted pregnancy.

Republicans, for their own cynical political motives have finally discovered they can embrace birth control.

Will wonders never cease?