The Broadsheet column on Salon.com today has a terrific piece about anti-contraception fanaticism and the real-life implications of handing over the levers of power to ideologues set on imposing religious values through government policy. The article focuses on Manila, Phillippines, where Mayor Jose Atienza has banned contraceptive services from public health clinics (not unlike the strategy employed recently in Missouri). The policy has injured many poor women in the city, prompting 20 of them to organize a lawsuit. Broadsheet writes,

Although affluent women in Manila have continued to be able to get contraception from private clinics, the executive order has had a particularly devastating impact on the 70 percent of women from Manila who live below the poverty line. While ostensibly issued to "uphold natural family planning," the main effect of the law has been to prohibit healthcare workers from promoting or distributing contraceptives. Public clinics suddenly being unable to pass out the free contraception received from programs like USAID has had a devastating effect on many women's lives.

How devastating? Consider the testimony of the plaintiffs, quoted in a Reuters story today and elaborated on in the lawsuit press release. They describe either experiencing or witnessing: choosing between contraception and food for their children, multiple pregnancies after being told it would be dangerous for them to have more children, unwanted pregnancies forcing families into extreme poverty, abstinence leading to troubled marriages and divorces, backroom abortions, maternal deaths from multiple pregnancies, abortion deaths ... you name it.

There's a small window into the devastation that results from "pro-life" successes. Wonder when Human Life International will honor Mayor Atienza.