Fox ‘Expert’ Blasts Expanding Access To Birth Control: ‘Are We Going To Do Pedicures And Manicures As Well?’

By Tanya Somanader/Think Progress


This week, the Obama administration announced that all health insurers will be required to cover birth control and other women’s health services without charging co-pays. This historic move has sent the burgeoning right-wing campaign against birth control into an apoplectic fit. Today, Fox News’ America’s Newsroom decided to feature one such activist in a “fair and balanced debate” on whether ensuring a woman’s access to birth control is a good idea.

Former Women’s Media Center president Jehmu Greeneoffered the facts that support greater access to birth control. Namely, “50 percent of pregnancies in this country are unintended pregnancies” –the leading reason why women seek abortions — which costs the U.S. over $11 billion a year. Noting that contraception not only allows women to space out their pregnancies and commit to parenting, but also reduces the number of abortions, Greene determined the new policy to be a “text-book definition of win-win.”

Fox’s anti-birth control “expert,” Family PAC Federal Vice President Sandy Rios, however, found her own reasons to lambast the policy as “ridiculous.” Telling Greene that she lives in “la la land,” Rios offered the following “arguments” against the new policy and a woman’s right to use birth control, which are so ludicrous they’re worth listing:

– “Is the White House out of their mind? Does the West Wing not know what the left wing is doing? We’re $14 trillion in debt and now we’re going to cover birth control, breast pumps, counseling for abuse? Are we going to do pedicures and manicures as well?”

– “Why in the world would you encourage your daughters, and your granddaughters, and whoever else comes behind you to have unrestricted, unlimited sex anytime, anywhere and that, somehow if you prevent pregnancy, that somehow you’ve helped them. I would submit to you that uncontrolled sexual behavior is what is harming our girls, not our lack of birth control — which by the way they don’t seem interested in taking anyway.Having a baby is not the worst thing. I think having multiple sex partners without any kind of restraint or responsibility is much more damning, why would you support that?”

– “In Red China, they have this down to a science. The local health care centers make women come in every month to be examined to see if they’ve had their cycle to make sure they are taking their medication and if they have a baby they are roundly punished, if they have an extra baby that baby is aborted. That is the control we’re moving toward.”

– “I’d like to say that the morning-after pill has other detrimental affects. In Great Britain where it was legalized first, there was an outbreak of older men taking young girls in for the morning-after pill so they wouldn’t get caught and so there are no consequences.”

Watch the segment:

Surveying all of Rios’s “arguments,” Greene stated that Rios’s ultimate goal “is she wants to put ideology over public health.” To which Rios replied, “Yes, I suppose I do.” Rios then offered these parting words to Greene: “You all make science a laughing stock. You present science and facts just to present your viewpoint.”