Contraception uproar: It's the '60s all over again

Rick Santorum and other conservatives find fertile ground touting values they believe held sway before an era of social upheaval.

By Robin Abcarian,
Los Angeles Times
8:10 PM PDT, March 24, 2012

Last fall, before he became a front-runner in the Republican presidential race, Rick Santorum told a conservative Christian blogger in Iowa that he would use the White House bully pulpit to promote his concerns about something most people considered settled: birth control.

"One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about is, I think, the dangers of contraceptives in this country," the former senator from Pennsylvania told Shane Vander Hart of the blog Caffeinated Thoughts. "The whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, 'Contraception's OK.' It is not OK. It's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

The comments struck some as anachronistic. After all, it has been 50 years since the pill came to market, unleashing the sexual revolution and modern American feminism.

But a few months after Santorum's remarks, thanks to a provision of President Obama's healthcare law, the country was in an uproar about contraception. The president has insisted that most employers offer health insurance that covers it at no cost. Religious groups have vociferously resisted the mandate as an intrusion on religious freedom. Democrats say there's a "war on women." Republicans say there's a "war on conscience." When a law student told Congress she believed her Jesuit university should provide contraceptive coverage, Rush Limbaugh called her a "slut."

(More here.)