"... the Gardner solution tells poor women, 'If you want birth control, go buy it. If you can’t afford it, good luck.'"

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COMMENTS:
*  The GOP believes it can bamboozle the public; WRONG! The GOP cannot be trusted to devise any leadership on ANYTHING because they lack morality and/or the interest in the well-being of our citizenry. Not a day goes by without some Republican spouting more outrageous remarks against anything that would be remotely beneficial to the country. They deserve to be unseated during the next elections!
*  He got elected!  What do we democrats have to do to get those to come out and vote?  I dont know.  If what these repugs have done to us and our children daughters, and grandaughters isn't enough? then what is?  I guess we get the government we deserve?
*  These guys don't see themselves as smarter than doctors and pharmacists, just more devious in attaining their end of making contraception less accessible, less affordable, and even more susceptible to misuse and abuse.  In their quest for "morality" they are completely without moral compass.
    *  They do not have a moral compass, how else do you explain giving tax breaks to the rich, increasing defense, but cutting education and the willingness to let kids go to bed hungry.
*  Politician's yet again see themselves as smarter that doctors and pharmacists. News flash: not all oral contraceptives are the same. They have different strengths, time/day release dosages, ingredients, etc. Far from "one type fits all". Side effects are common. Drugs are prescription for a reason. Without a co-pay they're very expensive. WTF is the Republican preoccupation with sex?
*  Same wolf, different sheepskin!  Does the GOTP really believe that they aren't waging a war on women - especially lower income women?!?  Shame on them!  IF they went after Viagra/Cialis or any other male enhancement drug they might be able to say "no war on women" - but they don't!  This is all about ensuring that women are breeders period!!
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Senate Republicans return to controversial contraception posture
By Steve Benen, May 26, 2015

Last fall, Cory Gardner’s Republican Senate campaign in Colorado found itself in a tough spot. The far-right candidate had spent much of his career trying to ban common forms of birth control – which made him look like an extremist – and Gardner continued to support a federal “personhood” policy, which he’d been caught lying about repeatedly.

In early September 2014, the Republican tried to fix his problem with a sort of Hail Mary pass: Gardner, despite years of service as a right-wing culture warrior, told Coloradans that he’s actually a progressive champion of contraception access. To prove it, the conservative congressman vowed to introduce legislation to make birth control available over the counter without a prescription.

It was a brazen move, which was largely successful: Gardner won the race. As the Denver Post reported late last week, the GOP lawmaker followed through on the promise he made last fall.

The legislation encourages drug manufacturers of “routine-use contraceptives” to file an application with the Food and Drug Administration to sell their products over the counter.

Gardner is sponsoring the Allowing Greater Access to Safe and Effective Contraception Act with Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H. Their bill also would repeal the Affordable Care Act’s restriction on the use of health, medical and flexible savings accounts to purchase over-the-counter drugs without a prescription.

As longtime readers may recall from last fall, this may seem like a reasonable resolution to an ugly mess. If anti-contraception employers don’t want to cover birth control as part of employees’ health plan, and religiously affiliated employers have moral objections to insurers’ paperwork, this over-the-counter approach makes the purchases more direct: if the FDA approves contraceptive medications for over-the-counter sales, it wouldn’t matter what employers, insurers, or even physicians like or dislike.

But in practice, it’s not quite so simple.

Note, for example, that the whole point of the Obama administration’s policy is to make contraception accessible and affordable: if birth control is available without a co-pay through Americans’ health care plan, consumers don’t have to worry about cost. And since pills can cost several hundred dollars a year, simply adopting an OTC model would leave millions of low-income Americans behind.

In other words, the Gardner solution tells poor women, “If you want birth control, go buy it. If you can’t afford it, good luck.”

For that matter, just as a matter of basic human biology, an IUD can’t just be sold over the counter at a local drug store.

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a non-profit organization of women’s health doctors, generally supports making contraception available over the counter, but the group nevertheless announced its opposition to the Gardner/Ayotte bill late last week.
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