On Friday, Sen. Hillary Clinton came down rather hard on a plan put together by the Bush administration to catalogue several very popular contraception methods as abortion. Hillary Clinton considers such an action to be a "gratuitous, unnecessary insult" to women everywhere.

The senator joined forces with family planning groups in an attempt to prevent the administration from defining methods like birth control pills and intrauterine devices as abortion. During a joint news conference with New York Rep. Nita Lowey, at the Bellevue Hospital, Hillary Clinton said this "radical, ideological agenda" that would make women’s rights take several steps back instead of advancing, was not acceptable.

The plan was proposed in order to counter recently-issued state laws that make it possible for women to get contraception whenever they need it. It would terminate the federal funding of hospitals where medical providers are currently required to offer legal abortion and contraception procedures.

Hillary Clinton and the Washington Democrat senator Patty Murray have sent a letter to Mike Leavitt, Health and Human Services Secretary, in which the latter was kindly asked to reexamine and reject the approval of the new set of rules. However, her efforts did not stop here; she also started an online petition on her website, www.hillpac.com, urging people to take action against the release of the plan.

Given the scale of the impact such a law would have on today’s society, one could say that its chances to get approved are rather low. But, in the end, it all comes down to who supports the idea and who is against it. Once the power scale stops oscillating, an answer will be provided for this very delicate issue.