You Knew This Was Coming.

......or at least, you should have known this was coming. You should have known this was coming ever since we lost the battle of the hanging chads. From the editorial page of the Charlotte Observer:

Bush's latest: Birth control pills are abortion

Proposed rule at HHS would broaden definition of ‘abortion.'

The Bush administration is proposing a rule that defines abortion so broadly that it even includes prescribing or dispensing birth control pills. The rule would likely make it harder for many women to obtain legal contraceptives.

A draft regulation circulating at the Department of Health and Human Services might not appear, on the surface, so threatening. It would cut off federal funds to hospitals and states that try to compel medical providers to offer legal abortion services to women.

The wording is what's troubling. It defines abortion to include a number of commonly used birth control methods, including pills, IUDs and emergency contraceptives.

This is how politics is done my friends. A quiet changing of a definition by the under assistant deputy to Secretary No-Name. Right as they're headed out the door. When everyone's paying attention to very little other than who the next president is gonna be. Because the guy that next president puts in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services? He or she is gonna have a lot more to do than to comb through every word that was inserted or deleted into the Code of Federal Regulations during the previous administration. Chances are that once it's put in there, that definition stays on the books, even if specific policies get changed.

Then, after a quiet period, a judge somewhere says "Well, the federal government has defined oral contraception as a method of abortion for some time now. And according to the Women's Health Assurance Act of 2013, there can be only one abortion provider per county. We therefore find it illegal for there to be more than one pharmacy per county in the United States to carry birth control pills."

And you end up having to take all the Ortho-Novum off your shelves.

You think I exaggerate. That I'm wild-eyed and crazy. Well you know, 15 years ago, if I would have told you there would be pharmacists like Lloyd Duplantis, of Gray, Louisiana, you would have thought me wild-eyed and crazy too. These right wing idealogical lunatics are not to be underestimated, and this is how they work. Unless enough people notice and say something. Before that judge says something.

Do me a favor. Notice. Say something.

(Thanks to Asian Friend for that last link. It takes a village.)