As Jamelle pointed out, The New York Times has finally noticed the efforts to get family-planning services counted as preventative medicine that must be provided without cost-sharing under the new health-care law.
Jamelle enumerates the reasons families are healthier when women can plan their pregnancies and space them apart. But women are healthier, too. There's good evidence that birth control can help prevent diseases like ovarian cancer and can control the growth of problems like uterine fibroids. Moreover, for many women with long-term health problems, avoiding pregnancy isn't so much a choice as a necessity. He's right that for many conservatives the debate over "abortion" isn't at all about fetuses and has everything to do, instead, with female sexuality. The Catholic Church barely hides the fact that its true agenda is regulating morality. But even religious conservatives have to lose steam when you point out that birth control isn't just about fertility.
