The Automatik

I was just tipped off by a friend on the Internet to this article from Cristina Page on an alleged proposal by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to define contraception as abortion.

(Note: For some background on why contraception might be considered abortion, please see my May 7 piece called “Women Are Soldiers In The Misogyny Army.” )

I worked with HHS for eight years and spent a lot of time reading and interpreting regulations, so I wanted to see the source data for this article. It was not linked in Ms. Page’s post, so I did some digging.

A Google search for “HHS Contraception Abortion” yielded several pages of results, most of which were boilerplated from Ms. Page’s article.

However, this one, from Reproductive Health Reality Check, provides a link to a PDF of the leaked HHS document. Here is the linked PDF.

Please note that this document doesn’t have a title or a designated section in the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations). It also bears the text “Draft” and “This is a confidential, deliberative, pre-decisional document and does not necessarily affect current policy efforts or plans. For official use only.”

So what is the Code of Federal Regulations anyway?

From the United States Laws and Legislation Guide:

What’s the difference between the U.S. Code and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)?

As you’ve discovered, a few words are used in several different publications. However, with respect to legal issues, “code” refers to a set of currently valid law or regulations arranged by subject. The U.S. Code contains laws - what you’re supposed to do - and the CFR contains regulations - how you’re supposed to do it.

Every regulation in the CFR has to have an “enabling statute” or “statutory authority”. Despite the way it might seem sometimes, agencies cannot just create regulations because they feel like it - there must be a law in force that requires the regulation. That law is the enabling statute. Only after an enabling statute has been created can a regulation be developed.

Therefore, the U.S. Code and the CFR represent different kinds of law and different stages in the legislative process, with the U.S. Code preceeding the CFR.

Please note that because this proposal document does not have any USC or CFR sections listed in it, it means it is in its infancy (pardon the pun) and may not even ever come to light.

According to this article in the New York Times, this proposal circulated in HHS on Monday July 15.

Christina Pearson, a spokeswoman for the department, declined to discuss the draft. “We don’t normally comment on whether we are considering changes in regulations,” she said.

Despite the fact that this is NOT official legislation at this time, I feel that it is very important to keep an eye on this. Unfortunately, without a designated section in the USC or CFR, there isn’t a way to find it.

However, if you ever want to look things up on the CFR, you can go here: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/CFR/INDEX.HTML

Title 45 CFR, Public Welfare can be found here:

http://www.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/cfrassemble.cgi?title=200745 It covers the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) General Administration, as you can see.

The “Church Amendments” referred to in the PDF of the proposal are at 42 USC (United States Code) 300a - 7. The USC page is here:

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/uscode/

I found this Cornell Law Site by Googling “42 USC 300a.”

Here you can see that it’s actually Title 42, Chapter 6A, Subchapter VII, which can be found on the USC page here:

http://www.access.gpo.gov/uscode/title42/chapter6a_subchapterviii_.html

Hopefully this will be helpful in looking up this data when monitoring this proposed document.

In the meantime, please contact your insurance providers and health care providers to let them know how you feel about this.

Planned Parenthood is also on the case. If you go to their site, you can see more about this proposal and how to express your feelings on it.

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Today’s Yahoo! Canada headline:

Dos and Don’ts of Summer Office Wardrobe

If your boss gazes at your cleavage, it’s a problem with your boss, NOT your cleavage. Once again, it’s OUR fault for having breasts which tempt men into sin.

And lest you think I’m overreacting, the opening paragraph of this article is directed solely at women and their clothing.
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In a development reported in multiple Internet news sites and blogs, “a federal appeals court has struck down a Texas law that makes it a crime to promote or sell sex toys.” (1)

It’s difficult to get one’s head around the idea that any state would consider sex toys a threat, but apparently that is the case. According to Statesman.com:

The state also argued in a brief that Texas has legitimate “morality based” reasons for the laws, which include “discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex and the pursuit of sexual gratification unrelated to procreation.” (2)

This implies that it is not merely the termination of a pregnancy—abortion—that is construed as murder in Texas. We should also include sperm and eggs as victims of the Great American Holocaust. After all, according to the U.S. Government, I am pre-pregnant, “regardless of whether [I] plan to get pregnant anytime soon.” (3)

Feasibly I could rack up one murder a month per annum; the unfortunate male members of my species will be charged as serial killers.

And the weapon of choice? “[A]n artificial penis or vagina [used] ‘primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs’.” (4) Thankfully, there is always an exception, in this case, “for instances in which the purchase meets a ‘medical, psychiatric, judicial, legislative, or law enforcement’ need.” (5)

I’m trying to imagine what police officers, lawyers, and judges, might need a sex toy for in the course of their chosen professions, None of the scenarios are anything less than horrifying and all involve the word “rape.”

As for doctors, I suppose they invoking the long-standing tradition of Dr. Freud’s favorite, hysteria, when the woman in question was herself under threat of strangulation by her own uterus (6) and needed the “manual stimulation of the [her] genitals by the doctor to ‘hysterical paroxysm’.” aka orgasm. (7) Now what exactly is a threat here? Oh right. . . sex toys.

It’s not bad enough that one would want to self-pleasure in the privacy of one’s own home; the statute also indicates that, “[a]nyone in possession of six or more sexual devices is considered to be promoting them.” (8) Let the War on Dildoes begin in earnest! (Kids, remember: JUST SAY NO. . . orgasm.)

However, thankfully, a brave soldier in this ongoing battle, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, has recently asked the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case, yoking masturbation to those old chestnuts, bigamy and incest, (9) the same nasty things that threaten to run rampant in a world where homosexuals are allowed to exist and engage in sexual interaction. (10)

Personally, I’m grateful that Mr. Abbott is so dedicated to this cause because without him, I might try to rise above my station and seek sexual pleasure for its own sake. I’m indebted to him and his brethren for instructing me on what to do with my sexual organs since I honestly had no idea what to use them for! With him around I am reminded that I am after all, a woman, nothing more than a baby-making machine, a vessel who willingly and gratefully accepts the tool of the state.

1. Stephen Kreytak, “Court overturns Texas ban on sex toys,” Statesman.com, February 14, 2008.
2. Ibid.
3. January W. Payne, “Forever Pregnant,” Washingtonpost.com, May 16, 2006.
4. Bonnie Goldstein, “The Texas Dildo Massacre (NSFW)”, Slate.com, March 3, 2008.
5. Ibid.
6. Wikipedia, “Female hysteria.”
7. Ibid.
8. Stephen Kreytak, “Court overturns Texas ban on sex toys,” Statesman.com, February 14, 2008.
9. Bonnie Goldstein, “The Texas Dildo Massacre (NSFW)”, Slate.com, March 3, 2008.
10. Sean Loughlin, “Santorum under fire for comments on homosexuality,” CNN.com, April 22, 2003.

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