A Touchy Subject

I've been away for a bit, but I thought I'd come back with controversy.

While my blogs during last year's election made plain my liberal views, I've stayed away from potentially touchy subjects like religion and reproductive rights.

No More.

I've become convinced, through reading and conversing with friends, that individual access to reproductive rights - everything from contraception to abortion - is in grave danger.

From the Stupak amendment and its expansion of the Hyde language through possibilities that it could be interpreted to exclude contraception from any insurance plan purchased with federal subsidies, we need to wake up. Many women still have trouble getting insurance to cover their birth control pills, while many men have prescription coverage for Viagra because erectile dysfunction is characterized as a medical condition.

And about the big one: abortion.

No one wants abortions. No one, trust me, wants to have one. But it is a MEDICAL procedure not a legislative one. Access to this procedure should be through the gateway of individuals and their doctors rather than individuals and the U.S. Senate and House.

I'm of an age that makes complacency on this issue impossible. But for who have always known abortion as a legal procedure post-Roe - including our President - the issue has less urgency.

Whatever your position on this issue, I urge you to check out this piece from the New York Times. It might just wake you up.