'NYT' Sunday Preview: Condom on Cover, Christian Contra-Conception Inside

By: E&P Staff It may be a first: a condom package on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. This is what will greet readers this Sunday, highlighting an inside feature by Russell Shorto. The bright red package carries the cover line ?The War on Conception? which is being waged by conservatives who ?are fighting quietly but forcefully to make a number of forms of birth control harder and harder to obtain. Everywhere.?

The article inside is cleverly titled ?Contra-Conception: Is this the beginning of the next culture war??

Conservatives, it explains, ?see birth control as part of an ailing culture that overemphasizes sex and devalues human life.? Indeed, many Christians active in this arena want to alter ?the moral landscape of the country,? Shorto relates. ?In particular?they want to change the way Americans have sex.?

Showcasing a variety of methods beyond the condom, the feature showcases large photos of a birth control dispenser, the abortion pill, the venerable diaphragm, and a pair of IUDs.

The article notes that conservatives have targeted abortion for decades now, but the ?new chapter in the culture war? began after George W. Bush?s victory in 2000, which coincided with the arrival of an abortion pill and the ?emergency contraception pill.?

Now, the article reveals, a group of Democrats in Congress led by Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, have sent four letters to the president asking, "Do you support the right to use contraception?" According to one of them, "the White House has still not responded."

In any event, some Republicans are leading campaigns against condoms, and state legislatures ?are debating dozens of bills? surrounding the ?morning-after? pill. ?To the dismay of many public-health officials, and following the will of conservative Catholic organizations,? Shorto writes, ?the Bush administration has steadily moved the federal family-planning program in the direction of an abstinence-only-until-marriage program.?

The article includes a section on the abstinence, with the growth of "Girls Gone Mild" events, the "virginity pledge," and "Purity Balls," which teenage girls attend--with their fathers. The "intellectual force" behind the abstinence movement is identified as Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation.

But the article observes, "Social conservatives in the U.S. seem to be moving in the opposite direction from much of the rest of the world."