The XX Factor: What women really think.

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  More Stimulation

  Posted Tuesday, January 27, 2009 5:06 PM | By E.J. Graff

  Rachael, it's lovely to agree with you ... at least partly. I too am vastly in favor of contraception being available to all, and yet agree that it shouldn't be in the stimulus package.

  I've long found it amusing that Viagra, but not contraception, is regularly covered by health insurance: Why should men's sexual pleasure be underwritten but not women's? I don't know whether Medicaid covers Viagra without a waiver (according to MSNBC, 27 states' Medicaid programs do cover contraception, but they had to seek a waiver to do it.) If yes, obviously contraception should be, too. And I agree that underwriting contraception for poor folks seems like a no-brainer-except for the radicals (and yes, they do exist) who believe that all sexual activity should lead to babies.

  And yet like you, Rach, I humbly disagree with my admired friend Ruth Rosen's position ... although for different reasons. I don't have any economic philosophical objections to its inclusion: After all, this stimulus package includes money for food stamps, the GAO, the census, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, unnamed projects for the Department of Homeland Security, information technology projects for the Department of State... and what's most relevant, Medicaid. If the Obamites deem a project good for the country, it's in this bill.

  So why do I disagree with Ruth? Because the White House is already showing incredible savvy in making controversial changes about women's health. I was wowed by the fact that the controversial global gag was repealed on Friday at about 4:45 p.m. ... perfect timing for missing the American news cycles. Thursday's and Friday's news cycles were dominated by Gitmo closing; Monday, the news media were all over the plan to back higher fuel-emissions standards, a big symbolic move on environmental policy. Obama slipped through his move to improve women's lives by allowing women's health providers to talk freely about all options without losing U.S. funding with no controversy. (If Rick Warren's ghastly inaugural prayer was a fig leaf for this repeal of the gag rule, well, it was worth it.)

  That's why I don't mind seeing this particular, um, withdrawal from the stimulus package: because I'm guessing that the Obamamites are being savvy—taking this fight out of the public eye so that they can handle it in a better way.
  

  Filed under: Barack Obama, birth control, contraception, stimulus package, family planning, gag rule

About E.J. Graff

• E.J. Graff is associate director and senior researcher at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, where she directs the Gender & Justice Project. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center. As a journalist and author, her work has appeared in such venues as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy magazine, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Good Housekeeping, The Nation, The New Republic, and in more than a dozen anthologies. She collaborated on former Massachusetts Lt. Governor Evelyn Murphy's book Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--and What To Do About It (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Her first book, What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, has been widely cited in legal journals, reprinted for academic use, entered as courtroom exhibits, and quoted by government policymaking bodies.

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