Chile Resumes Free Birth Conrol and Emergency Contraception Program

After an initial dispute over the legality of its implementation, President Michelle Bachelet signed a decree on Monday that will resume a program begun in September to give free birth control, including emergency contraception (EC), to all women aged 14 and older.

This is a huge victory for women in this socially conservative country where, according to the BBC, "teenagers have 40,000 unwanted pregnancies a year" and "35% of all pregnancies are terminated illegally." Abortion is prohibited and divorce was legalized in 2004.

Predictably, conservatives are upset and plan to illegally restrict access to EC:

"Some conservative mayors have refused to let their city health services distribute the pills.
One of them, Pablo Zalaquet of La Florida near Santiago, called Bachelet's decree 'a black day for our country, a slap to the institution of family.'" ---from the AP

If "the institution of family" is the patriarchal hierchy that retains the necessity of illegal abortions, then let's get slap-happy!

It seems like conservatives around the world are determined to restrict women to the role of "baby machine" despite the many alternatives to abortion that are available, such as EC. EC is not abortion; a woman needs to be pregnant first before she can have an abortion. What's next, make menstruation illegal because a woman could have gotten pregnant and didn't?

Yeesh, this reminds me of the Monty Python song, "Every Sperm is Sacred."