Anti-choice activists aren't just against choice when it comes to abortion, but also very often when it comes to any efforts to assume control and authority over one's sexuality and sexual behavior — especially when it comes to birth control. A favorite target is the hormonal birth control because it gives women in particular greater autonomy over sexual choices and sexual behavior.

Access to and use of birth control is far more popular than abortion, which means that it is politically safer than abortion. Anti-choice activists who want to see birth control criminalized alongside abortion thus tend to keep their true beliefs and agenda quiet in order to avoid driving away people who may be willing to help stop abortion, but who would regard criminalizing birth control as crazy and extreme. Fortunately, though, these activists do admit the truth from time to time.

On June 7th, the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that gave married people the right to use contraception, the American Life League, along with Pro-Life Wisconsin and Pharmacists for Life International Associate groups want you to join them in protesting in front of facilities that distribute birth control products. The national day against contraception, Protest the Pill Day '08: The Pill Kills Babies, was started to convince the American people of a simple and imaginative idea: attempting to prevent abortion is abortion too.

These arguments have been confounded by diabolical scientists and experts who insistently point out there's no evidence to support that the birth control pill works the way these groups claim. As we all know, however, if ideology waited for science to prove scientific points, our ancestors would have never have spent all those years wandering the then-flat earth.

Source: RH Reality Check (via Feministing)

The real reasons why anti-choice groups oppose birth control pills would never be accepted by the public. This is why any effort to argue in favor of criminalizing birth control depends on getting people to see birth control in the same way they see abortion. Anti-choice activists have been very successful in their anti-abortion rhetoric, so it's only natural that they would turn now to that same rhetoric in what is ultimately just an extension of their crusade against personal and sexual autonomy.

On the other hand, this doesn't mean that they never reveal the truth about their attitudes. A question and answer document about the campaign is very revealing in this regard:

Q: Isn't it better to be on the pill when you are sexually active?

A: Better for whom? The pill does not prevent you from getting a sexually transmitted disease, it is not 100 percent effective in preventing pregnancy and you could conceive a child who gets chemically aborted before the baby's presence is even known to you. Moreover, sexual activity outside of marriage is seriously wrong.

[emphasis added]

The question "better for whom," combined with the idea that birth control pills abort a baby before the woman knows about it, points to a common argument offered against birth control: it's selfish. Many conservative Christians — mostly Catholics, but also increasing numbers of evangelicals — believe that marriage must be "open" to whatever children God chooses to send your way. Attempting to control one's reproductive systems is a selfish act because it means using sex for personal enjoyment rather than reproduction and because it means refusting to share your life with those children that God wants you to raise.

None of that will find a lot of acceptance among most Americans, any more than the idea that preventing sexual activity outside of marriage is a legitimate reason for criminalizing birth control. This is why you don't usually hear these arguments when Christians argue against legal access to birth control, but they should not be ignored because they are important theological and moral considerations.

It's common for pro-choice activists to point out that there's a contradiction in how anti-choice activists oppose access to and education about birth control when precisely that would help reduce the numbers of abortions which they also oppose. Well, that's addressed here too:

Q: I'm for reducing the number of abortions, but isn't using the birth control pill the only way to do that?

A: The birth control pill does not reduce the number of abortions. The only difference is that you are killing the baby earlier. It is estimated that over 70 million chemical abortions have taken place in the United States in the last 10 years alone. If you're single, abstinence is always your best choice. It isn't always easy, but it always works. By abstaining from sex, you eliminate the possibility of pregnancy and catching a sexually transmitted disease. What birth control has done for our society is turn little babies into disposable objects. Pregnancy is no longer seen as a blessing, but a curse.

Not only that but ... think about this! What happens when you get pregnant while being on the pill? Will you see this new baby as a problem? If a child is conceived at the wrong time or is unplanned, will abortion be seen as your "only option"? After all, the pill is taken to avoid babies; so, when an "accident" happens, will you want to solve the problem by killing the baby?

See, these Christians regard hormonal birth control as nothing more than abortion under another name. The degree to which they are successful in linking contraception with abortion is the degree to which they will be successful in getting Americans to turn against freedom of choice when it comes to birth control. This would, by the way, also make it easier for pharmacists to argue that they shouldn't have to dispense even regular birth control pills to women — not merely emergency contraception, but any hormonal contraception at all. Don't for a second imagine that this isn't an intended part of the plan.

Such success will necessarily be built upon a lie because abortion only occurs with a fetus and birth control pills have no impact on a fetus, which is what we call fertilized eggs that have implanted in the uterine wall. Even preventing implantation isn't abortion and there is little evidence that hormonal contraceptives do this very often.

Remember that between a third and a half of all fertilized eggs don't implant due to entirely natural causes, but anti-choice activists demonstrate no concern with this. Where are the efforts to discover the reasons for this and a treatment that will prevent it? This helps demonstrate that it isn't fertilized eggs failing to implant that bothers them, but rather than fact of women making choices over their own sexuality and reproductive organs.

In case you're concerned with privacy, have no worries — anti-choice activists aren't the least bit concerned with it. One argument often offered by pro-choice activists is the fact that the reasoning behind Roe v. Wade is basically the same as the reasoning behind the Supreme Court decisions which protected a right to access to birth control. People who want to overturn Roe v. Wade must thus either find a way to do so that doesn't undermine people's right to use birth control, or admit that that's precisely what they want to do.

Q: The Supreme Court has ruled that it's my right to privacy -- who do you think you are to say otherwise?

A: On June 7, 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Griswold v. Connecticut decision. The Supreme Court justices first presumed that previous Court decisions dealing with a citizen's right to liberty and security that prohibited invasion of one's home and acquisition of evidence that might later be used to convict him of a crime also addressed privacy within marriage. In fact, the justices argued, "The concept of liberty is not so restricted... it embraces the right of marital privacy though that right is not mentioned explicitly [emphasis added] in the Constitution" and is based on "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights [which] have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance."

This confusing language, which has no relationship whatsoever to what the Founding Fathers intended, gave married women permission to use the birth control pill. The Supreme Court literally created the "right to privacy" out of thin air.

We now know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that not only did the Supreme Court literally make up the right that you claim gives you permission to use birth control, but the most popular form of birth control, the pill, can kill innocent preborn children.

You can't get any clearer than that: American men and women do not have any sort of right, whether a privacy right or some other right, which protects their access to or ability to use birth control. Do pay attention to the fact that the position being expressed here is not limited to hormonal birth control. Although that's what they are focusing on in their claims that it causes abortion, their argument that people don't have a right to use birth control applies to every sort of birth control, including condoms for example.

An America where there is no right to birth control is an America where production of birth control pills or condoms could become a criminal offense. Anyone offering birth control devices might risk prosecution just like companies producing and distributing pornography. Advertising birth control in any way could of course be banned with ease. People who try to use birth control could face criminal prosecution, just as was the case until recently with people engaged in sodomy.

Imagine a couple put on trial in open criminal court because they wanted to use a simple condom — that's the America which could be created by anti-choice activists. They don't want people to have choices in matters relating to sexuality, sexual behavior, biological reproduction, and personal bodily autonomy. In the minds of such people, you and your body belong entirely to God. Doing anything which thwarts what they believe God wants from you is a sin and, therefore, should also be a crime.

When sins are crimes, there is no end to the mischief and harm which religious believers can cause.