Published in Billings Gazette
By Ellen Goodman
BOSTON — Maybe Siri was being an alarmist. When I asked my BFF, the talking virtual assistant behind my new iPhone 4S, where I could find birth control, she answered, “I didn’t find any birth control clinics.”
This response wasn’t nearly as chilling as the one she uttered last fall when Siri was asked to find an abortion clinic and pointed to an anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy center.” Nevertheless in this charged atmosphere, she gave me a digital pause.
Sunday marked the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that supported a woman’s right to abortion. The big news this year is that we’ve run the reel right back past the 1973 Roe decision on abortion. Next up for debate is the 1965 decision of Griswold v. Connecticut. This ruling made contraception legal by overturning laws that could send you to prison for giving birth control to married couples.
I used to think that leaders for reproductive rights were either hyperbolic or hyperventilating when they claimed that pro-life politics were targeting contraception. It was only the frayed fringe of the movement that equated birth control with abortion or with sex run amok. But an attack that was once, um, inconceivable, is now gestating in the public square.
Read more: http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion/editorial/gazette-opinion/guest-opinion-more-politicians-campaign-against-birth-control/article_6a690ff6-949a-5bb4-9832-f60ff575d5c7.html#ixzz1kKJ5TVdx
