The GOP's Race to the Dark Ages
January 8, 2012 6:56AM
Post by Sarah Posner
Rick Santorum thinks Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that invalidated criminal bans on contraception, was wrongly decided. He's off the deep-end on this one, and completely out of touch even with his fellow Catholics, but his statement provoked an exchange at last night's debate about whether states should be permitted to ban birth control.
Mitt Romney feigned surprise -- and emphasized that he would be absolutely, positively against banning birth control -- but the moderators failed to ask him about his enthusiastic support for "personhood" bills that would effectively ban certain kinds of birth control (not to mention fertility treatments). Santorum turned the question to be all about the Griswold ruling on a "penumbra" of rights created under the constitution, anathema to conservatives because of how it underpins Roe v. Wade, and, as Chris Geidner points out, Lawrence v. Texas. They claim these rights are not actually found in the Constitution but were created by "activist judges" -- this from the people who think the 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection to fertilized eggs.
It seemed that the moderateors, George Stephanopolous and Diane Sawyer, threw out those questions for sport: after all, criminalizing birth control would require either the passage of a "personhood" bill, which couldn't be pulled off even in Mississippi, or the overturning of Griswold combined with the political will in a state to pass a ban on birth control, quite possibly one of the most popular inventions in the history of the world. (Don't you think Big Pharma makes a bundle on birth control pills? They'd squash such a thing faster than you can say progestin.)
That's not to say that Santorum's, or any of the Republicans' views on this issue aren't dangerous, or to minimize the absurdity that in 2012, we had a presidential debate about whether to ban birth control. For real? Well, yes, for real. Some conservative think tankers argue there has been a "war on fertility."
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/5550/the_gop's_race_to_the_dark_ages/
