Note: Does not actually suppress your identity.
From the state that brought you the ban on sharia law and
on using fetuses in food—like that's an actual thing—comes a new kind of
crazy:
Employers in Oklahoma could opt not to include contraceptives and abortions in employee insurance plans under a measure that secured passage by a Senate committee Thursday.
The measure, Senate Bill 452 by Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, passed the Senate Business and Commerce Committee by a vote of 9-0 with no debate and now heads to the full Senate.
Giving employers the right to decide whether their employees should have access to basic preventive health care, like birth control, is plenty nuts, but just check out the reasoning for this idiotic bill:
Jolley said the measure is the result of a request from a constituent, Dr. Dominic Pedulla, an Oklahoma City cardiologist who describes himself as a natural family planning medical consultant and women's health researcher. [...]
Women are worse off with contraception because it suppresses and disables who they are, Pedulla said.
"Part of their identity is the potential to be a mother," Pedulla said. "They are being asked to suppress and radically contradict part of their own identity, and if that wasn't bad enough, they are being asked to poison their bodies."
Um ... okay, doctor who apparently graduated from Acme Medical School. That's not really how birth control works. It doesn't suppress your identity—it just makes it so you don't get pregnant when you don't want to. It's pretty simple, actually. If you're not a quack.
Studies show that women using contraceptives consider pregnancy more unwanted than wanted, he said.
That sounds like some groundbreaking research, doesn't it? Women who take a pill to avoid getting pregnant are more likely to not want to get pregnant. Sounds like Nobel material right there, doesn't it? And definitely a valid reason for the state of Oklahoma to pass legislation denying health care to women.