So much for pushing to keep abortions "safe, legal, and rare" as I've heard it called here and there. I desperately want to be articulate and well-spoken, but I'm utterly gobsmacked, here. I'm a New Hampshire resident, and I am -SO ASHAMED- of Judd Gregg right now.

My high school was a small one, where the entire student body from 8th-12th grade was maybe 400 kids. That's smaller than the -graduating class- of some of my friend's high schools in larger cities. Every year, -every year-, we would have anywhere from three to eight teen pregnancies. This was during the mid-90's (I was class of '96) when AIDS was a front-page topic and PSA's about safer sex were everywhere. Despite that, we'd still have that many girls getting pregnant. Worse yet, one girl that I remember had her first at the age of 13, her second at 16. I don't know if she had any more children after that, because she dropped out of school shortly thereafter.

Does Judd Gregg even -look- at the teen pregnancy statistics for his state? Does he even care? Apparently not, if he's willing to let himself be quoted about how the bill would've blocked "abstinence-only" programs. The studies are out there regarding their inefficacy, all he has to do is read them. But wait, he apparently doesn't -care- enough about preventing teen pregnancy to read up on whether the sex-ed courses he approves of will even -work- or not. Oof, that's it. Ending my rant before I spiral further into unintelligibility.

Some Republicans aren't interesting in reducing the number of abortions through comprehensive sex-education, making the emergency contraceptive pill OTC and readily available to rape victims, and stop allowing pharmacists to refuse to refill women's contraceptive medication. They're interested in keeping women pregnant against their will, stigmatizing women who have recreational/non-procreative sex (even if it's with their own husbands and married women and single women use protection), and stigmatizing sexuality in general with religious, Radical Rightwing dogma.

This is not only anti-women's-reproductive-rights, but also anti-contraceptio, which is permitted by the Bush Administration.

Damn. That's "contraception". Forgot the 'n'.

I don't know, this strikes me as a poison-pill amendment. We all know that abstinence-only education is useless, but a lot of people really seem to believe they work (in much the same way they believe, against all the available studies and evidence, that D.A.R.E. works to keep kids off drugs). I also imagine they aren't real thrilled about teen access to contraception. That said, I don't think there's any inconsistency or hypocrisy here. They don't want girls getting pregnant, and they also don't want them having sex! Note the 'and' instead of a 'but' in that last sentence. It's depressingly myopic, but it makes sense.