Lest you think it's all about abortion, just take a look at how the Bush Administration has been quietly fighting women's access to birth control.

Senior Food and Drug Administration officials must testify about the federal agency's failure to decide whether a controversial emergency contraceptive pill may be sold without a prescription, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled late Friday.

The decision by Magistrate Viktor Pohorelsky came in response to FDA legal efforts to keep secret the agency's discussions and correspondence about the pill, called Plan B.

Barr Pharmaceuticals of upstate Pomona makes Plan B. Barr bought the rights to the drug from Women's Capital Corp., which in 2003 applied for approval to sell it over the counter. Barr pursued the application. Two advocacy groups and nine women from a group called the Morning-After Pill Conspiracy sued the FDA in January 2005, alleging it ignored a statutory deadline for deciding whether Plan B could be sold without prescription. In December, the FDA lost a motion seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed.

Questioning the FDA's intentions, Pohorelsky said in his order: "Thus, inquiry about contacts between those outside the agency and those within the agency is appropriate to expose whether improper influences led to the FDA's actions."

And here we've been hearing it's all about abortion. Clearly the Bush Administration has something else in mind. So why do conservatives want the State to prohibit women's access to birth control, too -- especially when countries that restrict access to birth control have higher abortion rates?

Maybe because it's not about abortion, but rather about punishing women who dare to have sex.

Let's look at the Utah legislation I blogged earlier:

"Abortion isn't about women's rights. The rights they had were when they made the decision to have sex," Buttars said. "This is the consequences. The consequence is they should have to talk to their parents."

There it is, in plain text. "Consequences." If a woman has sex, she must faces "consequences."

Jeez, if women could have sex without "consequences," they'd end up thinking they were human beings -- citizens! -- and then all hell would break loose!

And so we get this conservative push that seems to be about abortion, but really is about making women have to face "consequences" for having sex. Thus: no access to abortion; no access to birth control; letting pharmacists deny any family planning prescriptions; banning sex education in schools; de-funding women's healthcare; and demonizing feminists and anything to do with female liberation, women's equality and women's rights.

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