smacky and bucky

From my page-a-day calendar: As a public health nurse serving poverty-stricken tenement families whose misery was mostly the result of unchecked childbirth, Margaret Sanger was prompted to launch a revolution to make birth control acceptable. Braving harassment from religious groups and government, Margaret's 30-year-long, two-steps-forward, one-step-back approach was accepted by the medical profession and increasing numbers of the public.

I'm tempted to go on a rant about how in the 21st century, nearly a century later, religious groups are STILL attempting to control the poor, going so far as to use political pressure to get the Bush government to pull funding for overseas aid programs for women and children, arguing that the UN family planning program, "might be used to promote advice on abortion."

Instead, I'll say thank goodness for the internet, where teens can learn the truth for themselves, even if certain adults continue to believe that if you preach abstinence loudly enough, teens will never be curious about sex.

Thank God for Atheists like Margaret Sanger, who understood that knowledge is power, and tried to give that power to the needy. And shame on groups that hide behind tax-free religious status while they pull the strings in their true purpose as hugely influential political lobbying groups. Pushing your agenda on everyone isn't religious and it isn't American.