At Salon.com, Sarah Posner profiles David Bereit, once a fringe figure in the anti-abortion movement, and now front and center in the movement to end contraception:
Shortly after joining STOPP, Bereit blamed the Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which ruled state bans on contraception unconstitutional, for “a tragic moral breakdown in our culture,” adding, “It is time for Americans to take a long, hard look at the real legacy of the Griswold decision. Although we can’t undo the consequences overnight, we can begin to take back our society one step at a time. The first step is to put an end to the destructive influence of Planned Parenthood, the organization that forced this tragedy upon our nation 40 years ago.”
At the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally, Bereit told me he opposed the legal precedent that Griswold set, as it laid the groundwork for Roe v. Wade. But when I pressed him about whether he agreed with ALL’s opposition to contraception generally, he paused and said, “I still agree with the position that anything that directly causes the destruction of human life, and there is evidence suggesting that certain birth control devices can have an abortifacient property. I do have opposition to those things,” which he said included birth control pills. He, like other speakers at the rally, repeated the false charge that the emergency contraceptives ella and Plan B, which are covered by the HHS rule, are abortifacients.
If you had suggested to me a decade ago, or even five years ago, that this is where we would be in the United States today -- actively arguing over whether women should have access to contraception, I would simply not have believed you. It is a sign of the general degradation of the liberal strain of discourse in the United States today that this position is not simply laughed loudly out of the room. Woe unto all of us if it gains much more traction.
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