"It is time that we end the politicization of this issue.  In the coming weeks, my Administration will initiate a fresh conversation on family planning, working to find areas of common ground to best meet the needs of women and families at home and around the world.   

"I have directed my staff to reach out to those on all sides of this issue to achieve the goal of reducing unintended pregnancies."

-- Barack Obama Statement on rescinding the Global Gag Rule January 23, 2009 

There is joy tonight in the new and improved pro-life movement. This is the movement that says it has given up for the time being on making abortion illegal and instead wants to reduce the number of abortions without supporting contraception. These are the so-called third way-ers and progressive religious pro-lifers who want women who are already pregnant to continue their pregnancies and support bills that offer rhetorical cover for that goal, but very little money.  While they talk about prevention, they really don't like contraception. After all, women who use contraception are having sex, and the religious types are not so progressive that they've given up on the idea that sex is a sin unless it takes place in marriage. If they support contraception for everyone, someone might conclude that they understand sex as a legitimate expression of love outside of marriage, as well as within it, and pleasure itself might be seen as holy. This is not their culture and they will fight a quiet war to be sure government is with them.

And so, when President Obama asks Congress to remove some modest provision for expanding access to family planning from the economic stimulus package he presented to Congress, he sends the message that he too only talks the prevention game, but will not walk the walk; he too sees women's capacity to get pregnant as not a legitimate policy issue. He too doesn't want to deal with the messy issue of sex and pregnancy.

"It is time that we end the politicization of this issue," Obama says. Yet as soon as the Republicans used the family planning provision as a political wedge, he played right into it -- Just take it out of the package, he directed Congress. Every value that undergirds the sexual and reproductive health, justice and rights movements was ignored by the President.

The insensitivity to women is hard to swallow when compared to the purported sensitivity he extends to the hard line anti-abortion movement -- sensitivity that influenced the President's decision not to rescind the global gag rule on January 22 but to do so quietly a day later, without ceremony or celebration with the leaders of the international and domestic movements that represent the thousands of women who were denied information and services as a result of the gag rule.

We were promised that science and evidence would determine policy. Well, the evidence is in that women's economic well being is tied to their ability to decide when and whether to have children. Evidence shows that the cost to low income and unemployed women of unintended pregnancy is increased poverty and joblessness. But politics were more important than facts.

We were promised that preventing unintended pregnancy would be high on the President's agenda. And those of us who support that approach do so not because abortion is bad, but because women want to prevent unintended pregnancy and, for the most part, lack of education and resources, not irresponsible sex, are the reason they fail. The President's January 23 promise of a "fresh conversation on family planning" turned out to be the stale crumbs of political compromise that consistently sweep women's needs under the policy table.

We were promised that reproductive health would be framed as a social justice issue, integrated into the long neglected list of what women need to be full and productive members of the community -- jobs, health care, paid family and medical leave.  But at the very first opportunity to link women's reproductive health to social and economic justice -- the economic stimulus package -- the President denied the link when he picked up the phone and told Henry Waxman to take out the family planning provision. 

The President has asked us to end the culture wars. I say forget it. Bring back the culture war. For in fact what the President and his progressive pro-life buddies has asked us to do is stop talking about the values that are the foundation of our support for women's sexual and reproductive health and rights. He asks us to deal only with "practical solutions" which he then refuses to implement.

The discussion of sexuality and reproduction is a profoundly cultural issue; its long term resolution and the transformation of US social policy into one that is respectful of the values of women's rights, and autonomy and that recognizes that sexual and reproductive freedom is a value requires a cultural discourse. Nothing proves that more than the crass political decision President Obama made yesterday to eliminate family planning access from the economic stimulus package. And it is the cultural discourse of those who do not recognize women's sexual and reproductive lives as a matter of human rights that allows a President to disregard our needs.