HUCKABEE COMES OUT AGAINST CONTRACEPTION. Wait, did you miss that? That's what Mike Huckabee's statement during the debate that he supports a Human Life Amendment and believes life starts at conception means. First, Huckabee played the nice guy card and said, "If someone is looking for a president who is going to have a mean spirit toward others, I'm not your guy."
But how can such a statement be squared with this doozy? "I would love to see a human life amendment to our constitution," Huckabee explained in response to a question about Romney and Giuliani's views on abortion. "Human life begins at conception."
"Life begins at conception" is code for the extremist anti-choice position that wants hormonal birth control pills, the morning after pill, and intrauterine devices to be outlawed as abortion-inducing agents, or "abortifacients." All these methods prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in a woman's uterus. They prevent pregnancy, but not conception.
Is it nice to go around proposing to outlaw the most common birth control methods in America? Or might American women be within their rights to see such an individual as a mean-spirited person intent on invading their privacy around their most intimate choices? After all, Huckabee is saying that he wants to reach into people's marriages and dictate how they have to have sex; most of those birth control methods that don't prevent implantation are barrier methods, like condoms.
Ann has raised this issue before, but it's time people started asking Republican opponents of birth control direct questions about on their positions and demand that they make their extremist positions clear to all the American people.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
