I had a different post planned for today, but after this story I have to change gears.

Basically, HHS is released a proposal on Monday that would allow any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman’s access to contraception. In order to do this, they are re-defining certain forms of birth control as abortion.

This makes me so mad my blood boils, and I encourage anyone who feels the same to leave a comment on this story, and head over to the HHS website and let them know what you think. This is is just outrageous!

Aside from the fact that, um, birth control IS NOT the same thing as abortion, this is just terrifying that our government can be so easily swayed by  certain idealogical forces.  Half the people I know who use hormonal birth control aren’t even taking it to prevent pregnancy (myself included) but I guess the other benefits don’t matter–what was it one of Bush’s cronies said, that women should pray for PMS symptoms to disappear?

My body is my own to decide what I want to do with it, and things like this are just an attempt to relegate women to the role of subservient baby-making machines. A vision of reality like the one in the Handmaid’s Tale is become frighteningly easy to imagine and it’s starting to scare me.

On the up side, this has reminded me that I want to study  herbalism and other natural medicine (I had even considered looking into midwifery at one point, but then remembered that babies frighten me.) and luckily I live near a school for herbalism–alas, their course description is a bit outdated, but I’ll have to call and see if I can’t track down some more information.

Tarot Card of the Day: Ten of Pentacles (again)