Yesterday after Senator Kelly Ayotte announced a new piece of legislation that would allow birth control to be sold over the counter (OTC), the New Hampshire Democrats and a slew of other far left wing extremists responded by claiming the bill would somehow decrease access to birth control for women. Unfortunately for Democrats, many organizations have long touted OTC birth control as have voters.
In another statement today, the New Hampshire Democrats are citing the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as opposing OTC birth control. What’s truly ironic and almost amusing is this same organization supported OTC birth control back in 2012. What has changed since then? Clearly their politics. From their report in 2012:
Access and cost issues are common reasons why women either do not use contraception or have gaps in use. Although oral contraceptives (OCs) are the most widely used reversible method of family planning in the United States, OC use is subject to problems with adherence and continuation, often due to logistics or practical issues. A potential way to improve contraceptive access and use, and possibly decrease the unintended pregnancy rate, is to allow over-the-counter access to OCs.
Remember, Obamacare was already the law at this point so they knew exactly what was in the bill. It’s bad enough Democrats are playing politics with women’s healthcare but this organization has zero excuses. Not only did they support OTC birth control back then but Americans in general, by a margin of 70%, support legalizing birth control to be sold over the counter.
A Reason-Rupe poll was conducted in October 2014 and asked the following question:
Do you think it should be legal or illegal for adult women to purchase birth control pills or patches over the counter without a doctor’s prescription?
• Legal …………………………………………………..70%
• Illegal ………………………………………………….26%
• Don’t Know/Refused ………………………………4%
Clearly Americans believe that birth control should indeed be sold OTC by a huge margin. Again, this is after Obamacare has been around for a few years.
Planned Parenthood and Democrats are using the same tired argument that woman may end up paying more for birth control if it is finally sold OTC. Did they ever stop and think that pharmaceutical companies charge more since many popular forms of birth control are sold through prescription only? Writer Elizabeth Brown from Reason countered with the following:
Affordability isn’t the only factor in making something accessible. Those championing the contraception mandate as a way to increase access assume everyone always has insurance coverage. What about undocumented women? Or those between jobs and temporarily uninsured? What about young women who can’t let their parents know they’re on the pill? Or domestic abuse victims who want to keep this information from their husbands? These are just a few of the situations in which a woman would find OTC pills much more accessible and affordable than the prescription-only kind, even if those prescription pills came with no co-pay.
And again, millions of women remain uninsured even though Obamacare is in place. Those women should have the same access to birth control as those who have health insurance. It’s unclear why Democrats would argue against this idea when it’s simply increasing access, not removing access for anyone since insurance will still cover birth control as mandated in Obamacare.
What Democrats are doing is playing a political game with women’s healthcare again. They played games with women’s healthcare when they pushed Obamacare. Democrats assured women that they’d be able to keep their doctors, health insurance and hospitals they went to but that was a lie. They also claimed that the majority of people would see savings on average of $2,500 per family if Obamacare was put into place. That too is untrue.
So why are Democrats playing this political game with women’s healthcare again? Because Republicans are the ones who sponsored the bill. Democrats claim to be the “party of choice” but that only seems to apply when it comes to abortion. They certainly weren’t outraged when the Plan B pill aka “the morning after pill” became available over the counter. Healthcare is an extremely important issue to women in New Hampshire. Democrats need to put aside their political extremism and allow women to make their own healthcare choices for a change.
Cross posted from Examiner
