Democratic leadership fails U.S. troops on EC

Congressional Dems may have sold out U.S. servicewomen over emergency contraception, Beccah Golubock Watson reports:

On Wednesday, May 16, advocates were optimistic that legislation requiring emergency contraception to be stocked on all military bases would pass in the House. “We had the votes on Wednesday night. Things were looking good,” says Monica Castellanos, press secretary for Rep. Michael Michaud (D-Maine), one of the lead co-sponsors of the amendment that was scheduled for a vote the next day. But then, something mysterious happened.

For reasons that remain unclear, Michaud withdrew the legislation the next morning. According to Castellanos, it was purely a logistical snafu: “Key supporters had to be in their districts.” But sources close to the issue tell a different story: The legislation, an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, with bipartisan support, was dropped by a Democratic leadership unwilling to go to bat for pro-choice issues. Despite Michaud’s confidence that the votes were there, Democratic leadership wasn’t so sure, and they didn’t want to hang around long enough to find out. The legislation might not have sunk, but they jumped ship anyway.

In 2002, emergency contraception was added to the Basic Care Formulary, the list of 214 medications that all military treatment facilities must have on hand. A month later, EC was removed from the list under pressure from the Bush administration.  Michaud's withdrawn legislation would have put EC back on the BCF.

Comments

[bob koepp]

Are there any other avenues by which EC can be made readily available to troops? Maybe not, so long as the FDA refuses to do its job. But then, I notice that there are "regular" (i.e., non-emergent) contraceptives on the BCF with which one can fashion one's own EC (we might call this Plan C). This might violate a few laws and regulations, but when regulators aren't doing their jobs, why should anybody else give a damn about the regs?

[mudkitty]

Great - more abortions from those who claim to hate abortion. Actually, what they're really on about is fund-raising on the issue...if abortion were really illegal, they wouldn't be able to separate suckers from their wallets any longer.

[Eric Jaffa]

mudkitty -

Maybe you're referring to the Bush Administration, but Congress could have fixed this.

Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House. She isn't going to do fundraising calling for abortion to be made illegal.

[PersonMan]

Jesus, these congressional Democrats. No surprise the approval ratings are so low. Republicans hate them because they are Democrats, and Democrats hate them because they aren't doing a god damn thing.

I hate it when politicians claim to have a mandate (Bush claimed he had one after losing the popular vote!) but the Democrats were elected on the backs of a couple of key issues with the expectation they would *do something* about those issues.

They are so afraid of doing anything wrong they aren't doing anything - which is the worst thing of all to be guilty of, especially when one of the main charges against you is that you are innefectual cowards. As bad as Bush has been, Republicans can now say that the blame is shared across both Republicans and their Democratic enablers.

[soullite]

It's things like this that make me not call myself a Democrat. They're damned cowards, and I'm afraid it's a basic part of the liberal mentality. They won't fight because they are personally weak people who abhor involving themselves in conflict. They won't ever take risks, and as a result they can never really serve any constituency but the powerful. That why we'll probably still have troops in Iraq in 2012, and the next President (who will almost certainly be a democrat) will be a one termer.

[mudkitty]

Sometimes it comes down to the math.