Religious right Republican Rick Santorum is opposed to contraceptives. He believes the state has the right to regulate this most private part of a person's life. In October he even said contraceptives give "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be." He gets his "how things are supposed to be" from the Catholic Church and the Bible. More on this below.
Even though Republicans portray themselves as favoring small government, it seems they only want to limit government intervention in corporations, banks and on Wall Street. The government regulation of what goes on in your bedroom is actually promoted by the religious right.
One U.S. Supreme Court decision Santorum is upset with is Griswold v. Connecticut from 1965. In that case the U.S. Supreme Court decided it was no business of the state government, or any government, whether people decided to use contraceptives or not. Santorum believes that a state does have the right to tell people they cannot use birth control. This is inline with the teachings of his Catholic "revealed" religion.
Another powerful member of the religious right who believes government has the right to regulate your sex and reproductive life is Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. A protege of televangelist and con-man/faith healer Pat Robertson, McDonnell wrote his thesis while a student at Robertson's CBN University which specifically attacked the Griswold decision. He wrote that the Griswold decision against states having the right to dictate to people what they can and cannot do as far as contraceptives are concerned, "postulated a new view of marriage by asserting that the 'preservation of marital privacy' precludes state interference with the right to use contraceptives, even though the state had long been empowered to regulate the legal and sexual relationships of marriage." Based on this philosophy, McDonnell and the religious right must feel slavery should not have been outlawed since it had long been legal to own slaves in the United States.
One consequence of Santorum's and the religious right's desire to stop people from using birth control is that the number of abortions will skyrocket. Without the right to use contraceptives it is estimated the number of abortions would increase by two-thirds.
Most Christians who oppose abortion seem to do so based on religious grounds. They believe the Bible shows God is against abortion. Although there are reason based arguments against abortion, many Christians believe God made his opposition to abortion known in the Bible. This is not correct.
One callous, materialistic and disgusting portrayal of God in the Bible has God placing a monetary value on people. In Leviticus 27:3-7 he places financial value on men and women and on boys and girls of different ages. Women and girls are ALWAYS worth less than men and boys are. However, it's interesting to note that the Bible god puts absolutely no value on infants until they reach one month old. Verse 6 reads, "And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver." Even the elderly have a higher value than infants and young children do in the eyes of the Hebrew god as verse 7 shows with, "And if it be from sixty years old and above; if it be a male, then thy estimation shall be fifteen shekels, and for the female ten shekels." Since the Bible god does not think enough of infants from newborn through five years old to give them a value of any kind, surely he does not value unborn children.
Another example of the Bible god not truly valuing human life whether in or out of the womb is the horrid disgusting Bible story of Noah and the flood. (A joke the Deist Thomas Paine included in The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition , for the Kindle version click here, is "Do you believe in Noah? Ah, no.") As this story goes, the Bible god killed every living thing on planet Earth with the exception of the inhabitants of the ark. That includes not only millions of mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers, but also millions of infants and millions of unborn children. The excuse given for this mass slaughter was because the world was full of sin and the only righteous people were Noah and his family. But me must ask ourselves what sin could unborn children and infants have committed???
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