Wednesday, November 29, 2006

The anti-contraception campaign

Believe it or not, here in America in the 21st century, there are people opposed to the use of any type of birth control -- even by married people.
I posted the entry below at 3:52 p.m. and at 4:40 p.m. received a response from Mr. Ruben Obregon, the president of the No Room for Contraception campaign (NRC). He wanted clarify the statement that NRC was associated with Tulsa for Life – the organization that sponsored the billboards. He wrote the same message to the Yellow Snapdragons blog – the source of my information.

NRC’s blog praises the billboards here, here and here. They credit the Diocese of Tulsa with putting them up which, if true, is not at all clear from the Tulsa for Life website.

Mr. Obregon also states, as does his website, that his organization is secular. It seems a bit odd to feel this is a point that is important to make. It reminds me of the intelligent design theory that has been presented as secular but is really just old fashioned creationism minus the quotes from scripture. I find this very suspicious. Anyway, you can check out the NRC links page and judge for yourself as to how secular this organization is.

While I totally disagree with those opposing abortion, I can understand their reasoning. However, the reasoning for the position in opposition to contraception of any type – even for married people -- is just beyond me. This is a pre-Enlightenment state of mind that basically sees women as “walking baby factories.” These are people obviously not comfortable with various expressions of sexuality and are organizing to spread their misery. While it is tempting to just dismiss them as rather odd people they do pose a threat to women’s health when they are able to convince physicians and pharmacists to not prescribe or disperse birth control.

You can find a good article about NRC and its founder, Mary Worthington, here at Salon.

2 comments:

RubenO99 said...

>>Mr. Ruben Obregon... wanted clarify the statement that NRC was associated with Tulsa for Life – the organization that sponsored the billboards.

No, I posted a statement to clarify that NRFC *was not* associated with the billboards in Tulsa or the RespectLifeTulsa.org website. I stated that is the Diocese of Tulsa which sponsored these billboards.

>>NRC’s blog praises the billboards here, here and here. They credit the Diocese of Tulsa with putting them up which, if true, is not at all clear from the Tulsa for Life website.

I never claimed it was from Tulsa Right to Life. You really have to get your facts straight -- you could try contacting me *prior* to posting even more misinformation, or actually reading the blog entries you link to.

>>Mr. Obregon also states, as does his website, that his organization is secular. ... Anyway, you can check out the NRC links page and judge for yourself as to how secular this organization is.

Up until this point, just about all of the anti-contraception literature and resources were from religious groups, so it's not unexpected that we would link to them. We'd gladly link to other secular resources, resources from other religions, etc.. Don't mistake links and articles of a religious nature as meaning the campaign is religious. Planned Parenthood has plenty of resources for "Pro-Choice" clergy - does that make PP religious? No.

>> This is a pre-Enlightenment state of mind that basically sees women as “walking baby factories.”

We don't see women as "walking baby factories" nor do we see them as "sex objects".

>>You can find a good article about NRC and its founder, Mary Worthington, here at Salon.

Mary Worthington did not found the campaign, I did. Mary was involved in the early stages of it, which is why she is credited as being a co-founder.

Once again, you should try getting information directly from the source, not from shoddy hit pieces like the Salon.com article.

Anonymous said...

Good work, Sisyphus. There have been numerous stealth bills filed in the VA General Assembly that would establish a definition of pregnancy as beginning at conception, not actual pregnancy (implantation). This is obviously an attack on the right to use common forms of birth control like the pill, but people find it too outrageous to believe. Now we have people just coming right out and saying it.