The GOP has a WAR ON WOMEN.
EXAMPLE ONE:
From Balloon Juice:
Arizona Senate Passes Bill Permitting Doctors to Withhold Prenatal Information From Women
by ABL 2.0
The Arizona Senate passed a bill this week that allows doctors to withhold from pregnant women information regarding prenatal problems because disclosing that information might lead to an abortion.
Seriously.
From Addicting Info:
It’s called a “wrongful birth” bill and it’s all about preventing women from having an abortion, even if it kills them. The Arizona Senate passed a bill this week that gives doctors a free pass to not inform pregnant women of prenatal problems because such information could lead to an abortion.
In other words, doctors can intentionally keep critical health information from pregnant women and can’t be sued for it. According to the Arizona Capitol Times, “the bill’s sponsor is Republican Nancy Barto of Phoenix. She says allowing the medical malpractice lawsuits endorses the idea that if a child is born with a disability, someone is to blame.” So Republicans are banning lawsuits against doctors who keep information from pregnant women so as to prevent them from choosing to have an abortion.
YES, YOU READ RIGHT.
is this where we are as a country? We’re withholding medical information from women because that information might lead to abortions while simultaneously passing bills in state after state with such pithy names as “Right to Know” or “Right to Know and See” or “Informed Consent” the claimed purpose of which is to make sure women are fully informed? And not only are we withholding information, but we’re immunizing doctors from liability?The one person in the media who has been on this story from the beginning was Rachel Maddow.
What the hell?
Frank Rich, writer-at-large for New York Magazine, talks with Rachel Maddow about the effectiveness with which Democrats have held Republicans to account on women's health issues
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EXAMPLE TWO
From Balloon Juice:
The So-Called Pro-Life PartyBut, we already knew that, didn't we?
by John Cole
They stop caring about you the moment you are born:
Leticia Parra, a mother of five scraping by on income from her husband’s sporadic construction jobs, relied on the Planned Parenthood clinic in San Carlos, an impoverished town in South Texas, for breast cancer screenings, free birth control pills and pap smears for cervical cancer.
But the clinic closed in October, along with more than a dozen others in the state, after financing for women’s health was slashed by two-thirds by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
The cuts, which left many low-income women with inconvenient or costly options, grew out of the effort to eliminate state support for Planned Parenthood. Although the cuts also forced clinics that were not affiliated with the agency to close — and none of them, even the ones run by Planned Parenthood, performed abortions — supporters of the cutbacks said they were motivated by the fight against abortion.
Now, the same sentiment is likely to lead to a shutdown next week of another significant source of reproductive health care: the Medicaid Women’s Health Program, which serves 130,000 women with grants to many clinics, including those run by Planned Parenthood. Gov. Rick Perry and Republican lawmakers have said they would forgo the $35 million in federal money that finances the women’s health program in order to keep Planned Parenthood from getting any of it.
And they aren’t stopping with Planned Parenthood:
Nationally, the newest target is Title X, the main federal family planning program. All four Republican presidential candidates support eliminating Title X, which was created in 1970 with Republican support from President Nixon and the elder George Bush, then a congressman.
Like other federal financing, Title X does not pay for abortions. Only some of it covers birth control. Title X also provides money for cervical and breast cancer screening, testing for H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases, adolescent abstinence counseling, infertility counseling and other services.
Planned Parenthood receives about a quarter of Title X’s $300 million budget and sees about a third of Title X patients. The remaining money goes to clinics, community health centers, hospitals and state agencies.
Mitt Romney’s fiscal plan proposes eliminating Title X because it “subsidizes family planning programs that benefit abortion groups like Planned Parenthood.”
Rick Santorum, in a recent debate, acknowledged, to boos, that in Congress he voted for appropriations bills that included Title X money. He pledged to rectify that if elected, saying, “I’ve always opposed Title X funding.”
President Obama supports Title X, which serves five million low-income people.
If thousands of women die of breast and cervical cancer in the war Planned Parenthood, well, so be it. You gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, doncha know.
Say it over and over and over.
THE GOP WAR ON WOMEN.
THE GOP WAR ON WOMEN.
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