Hillary Clinton took on the Bush Administration’s plan to define birth control as abortion and undermine women’s rights, today in a press conference and the blogosphere. Here’s a clip from the press conference:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In a blog post cross posted on the HuffPo and RhRealityCheck, Clinton said:

The Bush administration is up to its old tricks again, quietly putting ideology before science and women’s health. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is poised to put in place new barriers to accessing common forms of contraception like birth control pills, emergency contraception and IUDs by labeling them “abortion.” These proposed regulations set to be released next week will allow healthcare providers to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it. We can’t let them get away with this underhanded move to undermine women’s health and that’s why I am sounding the alarm.

The new rules set forth by the Bush administration would “pose a serious threat to providers and uninsured and low-income” women seeking care and “could prevent providers of federally-funded family planning services, like Medicaid and Title X, from guaranteeing their patients access to the full range of comprehensive family planning services.”

And, these new arcane rules from BushCo may even “invalidate state laws that currently ensure access to contraception for many Americans.”

In fact, they describe New York and California’s laws requiring prescription drug insurance plans to provide coverage for contraceptives as part of “the problem.” These rules would even interfere with New York State law that ensures survivors of sexual assault and rape receive emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms.

We’ve seen this kind of ideologically driven move from the Bush administration before. Senator Patty Murray and I went toe to toe with the Bush administration to demand a decision on Plan B by the FDA. We won that fight and we need to win this one too.

When I learned about these proposed rules, I immediately joined with Senator Murray to call on the Bush administration to stop these dangerous plans. I am joining with New York family planning and healthcare advocates to spread the word. Now is the time to raise our voices. I will continue to press HHS and I hope you will join me. I have posted information on how to get involved here.

Head over to HillPac and sign the petition there and email your friends to get involved too. The battle to protect women’s rights never ends… Don’t let the Bush administration get away with turning back the clock on women’s rights.

Do you ever have times when you shake your head in disbelief and don’t think it can get any worse?

It isn’t funny anymore.

It wasn’t funny when the Government gagged the climate scientists from speaking about polar bears at international meetings.

It wasn’t funny when President Bush put the gag on women’s clinics in Africa by denying them funding by the United States when they advised poor African women about abortion.

It wasn’t funny when Philip Cooney, the former chief to President Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality quit when it was revealed that he had doctored scientific reports to downplay the importance of global warming only to get a job at Exxon Mobil days later.

It wasn’t funny when the Bush Administration paid Armstrong Williams $241,000 to promote Bush’s No Child Left Behind program on the air.

But I thought it couldn’t get any worse.

That is why I was completely disgusted to read about the testimony of former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona today, writing about the pressure he received to alter information, and the total censorship of other matters belonging to the medical and scientific field.

As reported in the article:

“Dr. Carmona, who served as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, said White House officials would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues because of political concerns. Top administration officials delayed for years and attempted to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand tobacco smoke, he said in sworn testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

He was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of every speech he gave, Dr. Carmona said. He was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings, at least one of which included Karl Rove, the president’s senior political adviser, he said.

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to the Kennedy family.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.

The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people.

The article continues:

“On issue after issue, Dr. Carmona asserted, the Bush administration made decisions about important public health issues based solely on political considerations, not scientific ones.

“I was told to stay away from those because we’ve already decided which way we want to go,” Dr. Carmona said.

He described attending a meeting of top officials in which the subject of global warming was discussed. The other officials concluded that global warming was a liberal cause and dismissed it, he said.

“And I said to myself: ‘I realize why I’ve been invited. They want me to discuss the science because they obviously don’t understand the science,’ ” he said. “I was never invited back.”

He said the science is clear that effective sexual education efforts must offer what he called a “comprehensive approach.”

“However, there was already a policy in place to only support sexual education efforts that discussed only abstinence, he said.

After serving one full term as surgeon general, Dr. Carmona was not asked by the White House to serve another. Before becoming surgeon general, he was in the Army Special Forces, earned two purple hearts in the Vietnam War, was a trauma surgeon and a leader of the Pima County, Ariz., SWAT team. He is now vice chairman of Canyon Ranch, a resort and residential development company.”

What is WRONG with these people?

When scientific evidence shows abstinence-only education ineffective, this nation is supposed instead to march to the drumbeat of the Family Research Council?

And the comment on the Special Olympics? That doesn’t deserve further discussion. And they call themselves “compassionate conservatives”?

It is no wonder that this President is ordering his staff not to testify in the U.S. Attorney firings scandal. He shouldn’t let anyone say anthing to anybody. They aren’t likely to report good things.

There is only one name for this Administration. Sicko.