Speaking of crimes, the civic league advocates prosecuting adults who engage in any kind of consensual sex that doesn’t meet with the league’s approval. Which is lots of kinds.
Portland Republicans (please turn off the oxymoron alarm) have begun a petition drive to recall three School Committee members, citing both the birth-control and budget messes as justification. But it’s mostly about the former, with Nick McGee, chairman of the GOP city committee, telling the Portland Press Herald that giving kids access to reproductive health care involves “family-value decisions.”
McGee is a model of restraint. A letter writer in the Lewiston Sun Journal called Portland “a pharmaceutical-pushing, sexualized cesspool of politically correct brainwashing.” And Republican congressional candidate Dean Scontras announced he was joining the Portland recall effort — even though he lives in Eliot — because the birth-control decision “appears to be part of the larger agenda by secular progressives to lower our cultural standards.”
Of course, it doesn’t do much to raise those standards when politicians meddle in a controversy, not to seek consensus, but to advance their own agendas. Which in McGee’s case is to resurrect the decaying remains of the city GOP. And for Scontras is to raise his profile with potential conservative voters in the 2008 primary.
It just goes to show that there are worse transgressions than being a member of the Portland School Committee.
Although, not many.
Pregnant comments may be e-mailed to aldiamon@herniahill.net.
Related:
Patchy problems, What are they? What’s in them? What do they do?, Seeking help?, More 
- Patchy problems
- What are they? What’s in them? What do they do?
There are dozens of variations on the birth-control pill, all of which have differing amounts of various chemicals simulating two hormones: progesterone and estrogen.
- Seeking help?
Here are some local sources for information on birth control and reproductive rights, related health problems, or for general medical advice.
- Interview: James Carroll
The Phoenix 's Adam Reilly recently spoke with Globe columnist James Carroll about his new book, Practicing Catholic (Houghton Mifflin), and his critical but durable relationship with the Roman Catholic Church.
- A bitter pill
In W’s world unaffordable birth control pills may become the “weapons of mass destruction” that we couldn’t find, until now.
- Letters to the Portland Editor, May 12, 2006:
Readers sound off on last week's Birth-Control series
- Thoughts on the 36th anniversary of Roe V. Wade
To commemorate that anniversary, the Maine Choice Coalition, along with the Maine Civil Liberties Union, the League of Young Voters, and the Portland Phoenix, are teaming up to screen the film I Had An Abortion at SPACE Gallery on Wednesday, January 28.
- Controlling birth
Not surprisingly, I am searching for yet another birth control pill that doesn’t wreck my life.
- Like blood for chocolate
If you told me a year ago that I would be back on the birth-control pill, I would have said no way.
- Repro on the Red Line
Safe sex just got a little easier for women in Cambridge and Somerville, who won’t have to go quite as far for birth control, emergency contraception, or testing for pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections.
- Beyond rhythm: A new contraception
This article originally appeared in the March 28, 1978 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
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Topics:
Talking Politics
, U.S. Government, U.S. State Government, Christian Civic League of Maine, More
, U.S. Government, U.S. State Government, Christian Civic League of Maine, Portland School Committee, Nick McGee, Amanda Rowe, Richard Malone, Mike Hein, Politics, U.S. Politics, Less
