Uh, what? Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal declaring his support for over-the-counter birth control. Was he blackmailed by an evil feminist militia? (They're just everywhere these days. It's an epidemic.) Did he get someone pregnant? Did he rationally consider how widespread access to birth control could help prevent unplanned pregnancies?
Nope, he just really doesn't want the Democrats to win any more elections — and he wants to swing the birth control ball into his own "unapologetic pro-life Republican" court. He wrote:
As a conservative Republican, I believe that we have been stupid to let the Democrats demagogue the contraceptives issue and pretend, during debates about health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth control. It's a disingenuous political argument they make.
Republicans aren't actually against birth control, he writes — just against "forcing" employers to buy it for others under Obamacare. (Argh, for the 34932847th time that is noooot how it works.) Also, he doesn't think that parents who don't want their teenage children to be "involved with sex" deserve "ridicule," and specifies that he only thinks women over 18 should be able to buy birth control for themselves. Now he has the paranoid mom vote in the bag — and slyly cuts most teenage girls out of the equation.
Sure, the more people who support ACOG's recommendation that birth control should be sold over the counter, the better; this shouldn't be about partisan politics. Except that that's totally what it's about for Jindal. Plus, he can use this argument against Obamacare's contaceptive mandate, because if women can buy birth control themselves, why do they need the government's help?
Bobby: don't pretend you're our new BFF. We're not buying your new GOP campaign for the girlz.
[WSJ]