Two recent policy reversals on the issue of abortion give me hope that the pendulum is starting to swing back— from Bush/fundamentalist extremism to a more rational approach for making decisions about other people’s bodies.
First, the Catholic church agreed to let Catholic hospitals give emergency contraception to rape victims. Such compassion! Before, the church’s position was that rape victims should be tested (while in the hospital being subjected to a rape examine) to see if they were ovulating. If they were, then they would not be given Plan B because that would prevent a pregnancy. Rape victims who were not ovulating could be given the contraception because they were not likely to get pregnant. Only in the bizarro world of the Catholic church did that ever make any sense. Oh, and by the way, the bishops’ reversal came two days before state law would have required compliance anyway. You thought they had developed some heart? Hah!
And in other strange news, Verizon had turned down a request from NARAL for a code that would allow the organization to send pro-choice information to people who had requested the text message. Whatever the company was thinking, apparently Verizon quickly came to realize that most of its customers are young, liberal, and not used to being told no. So Verizon changed its position. I guess we’re still a free country after all.