CWA, Family Research Council Decry Low-Cost Birth Control

A fix for high birth control prices has been attached to an emergency war funding measure. CWA and FRC accuse Sen. Harry Reid of not supporting our troops.

Congress is about to do something to remedy the escalating costs of hormonal birth control at university health centers and family planning clinics serving low-income women. But Concerned Women for America and Family Research Council would prefer to keep prescription copays for low-income and college women — the latter being the population likeliest to become pregnant unintentionally — around $50 a month. Prior to the legislative blunder that resulted in the higher prices, copays ranged from $30 to $10 per month.

Domestic spending provisions, including a fix for birth control prices, have been attached to a $194 billion package to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Hill reports, "Knowing they cannot win passage of a timetable withdrawing troops from
Iraq, Democrats have insisted on adding a slew of popular domestic
spending initiatives in exchange for about $165 billion for the wars."

In a startling example of kicking someone and then blaming him for your foot pain, FRC implied Sen. Harry Reid doesn’t care enough about the troops to let the religious right have its way with birth control:

By fattening up the legislation with controversial
earmarks, the leadership has not only jeopardized the timetable for the
bill’s passage but raised the possibility that it will not pass at all. Despite the urgent needs of our servicemen, Reid and his liberal allies are
more concerned about funding the war against the unborn than the war in Iraq.

Who made birth control — something 98% of American women use at some point in their lifetimes — controversial? Those darn anti-choicers, who can’t stop at outlawing abortion and have set their sights on contraception, too.

Both CWA and FRC both also took the opportunity to suggest — without a shred of evidence — that "Plan B can act as an abortifacient." Here is the evidence that they are wrong.

More On the Birth Control Pricing Crisis