Anita and I were driving our eleven-year-old daughter to swim practice last night when we turned on the radio in time to hear the Weeper of the House saying something about how a ban on taxpayer funding of abortions is the will of the people, dagnabbit, and ought to be the will of the land. Then the announcer mentioned something about the Hyde Amendment (the legislative provision prohibiting federal funds from being used to pay for abortions) and how Republicans are committed to making it the Ultimate Written-in-Stone Rule of All Time. And then some other pandering politician – undoubtedly white, conservative and poorly-endowed – started expressing outrage that so many sweet, innocent little unborn babies are brutally assassinated in this country but I quickly switched off the radio for fear of throwing up and crashing the van into a tree.
Thanks to Google, I learned why Boehner was polluting the radio waves last night. In a 251 to 175 vote, 16 anti-choice Democrats joined House Republicans in passing H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Among other things, this proposal:
- excludes statutory rape cases from being eligible for Medicaid coverage.
- bans using tax credits or deductions to pay for abortions or insurance and turns IRS agents into “abortion cops.” If audited, a woman would have to prove that her abortion “fell under the rape/incest/life-of-the-mother exception, or that the health insurance she had purchased did not cover abortions.”
- prohibits abortions in the District of Columbia.
I sure hope the U.S. Senate and the POTUS do the right thing and kill this offensive waste of time and resources.
Back in February, I read an editorial in the New York Times entitled, “The War on Women.” The essay, which talked about the GOP’s attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, eliminate support for Title X (the federal program that provides birth control, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and HIV and STD testing to poor women) and forbid awarding federal funds to any group that even talks about abortions, among other evil ideas, closed this way:
These are treacherous times for women’s reproductive rights and access to essential health care. House Republicans mistakenly believe they have a mandate to drastically scale back both even as abortion warfare is accelerating in the states. To stop them, President Obama’s firm leadership will be crucial. So will the rising voices of alarmed Americans.
I’m one of those alarmed Americans to whom the Times refers. I don’t understand this whole ‘restrict all abortions in any way possible’ philosophy. Sure, abortion should be a last resort and not a form of contraception. Most thinking people agree on this. But most people support keeping abortion legal in the first trimester, too. (An October 2007 Harris poll asked if people favor or oppose Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision making abortion at up to three months of pregnancy legal, and found that 56 percent of respondents favored the decision.) Why do Republicans want to force women and girls to experience more shame, distress and depression than they already must feel?
I get that the issue is controversial. So are taxes and eminent domain and desegregation and the Internal Revenue Service and war and Kenny Rogers’ plastic surgery. What I don’t get is why white, conservative, male politicians have to be such dicks and try in every way possible to prevent women from having control over their own bodies. Why the War on Women, Weeper?
It’s been almost four decades since the highest court in the land (all guys, by the way) made its ruling. Abortion is legal. Yes, some people are against it for religious reasons – but some people’s religious views dictate that they avoid eating meat on Fridays and fly airplanes into skyscrapers too and you don’t see conservatives fawning and pandering and passing resolutions about that. You lost this one, fellas. Move the hell on. How about starting on that job creation thing now?
And stop making me feel ashamed to be a man, willya? I’ve got a wife and four daughters, for Pete’s sake.
Sources: Between the Lines, New York Times, Thinkprogress.org
Totally agree, I mean WTF do they think they're doing, who the eff do they think they are? Not to mention that most of them were elected on the premise of down sizing government and job creation, NOT taking the rights away from women to govern their own bodies.
ReplyDeletePatrick, they probably believe that a woman's place is in the home too. What puzzles me is how right-thinking individuals sat by and did not exercise their right to vote thereby allowing these bozos to gain office.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me want to scream, and I frequently do. I sign petitions, send e-mails, make my voice heard, but my representatives (thankfully) are Democrats, so the jackasses who supposedly are the architects of this mess don't care what I think. I'm not one of their constituents. I do wonder what the women who voted for all these tea party crap-heads think now about their choices, however. The last of their choices they'll be able to access.
ReplyDeleteI ask this question all the time, and I'm waiting for a valid answer: what have women done to make you hate us so much? Keep your religion to yourself, practice it in your home life if you must, but leave me the hell alone! You don't even know me. You don't know what's best for me. This isn't about taxpayer funds, this is about hatred, plain and simple. Don't tell me this is about fiscal responsibility, because study after study, including scoring from the CBO, says the cost of feeding, raising and possibly incarcerating an influx of unwanted and unsupported children would far outweigh any savings from supplying contraceptives.
POTUS had better step on this post haste, and if I hear one of his famous total cave-in "compromises" I will be totally undone.