Republican Policy: Keep Women Barefoot and Pregnant

... When Republicans say they want to reduce/stop abortions in this country what they seemingly want to do is to reduce the number of non-pregnant women. I don't know how you can conclude anything else when you take a look at their policies.

First Up: Paying, or rather, not paying for birth control

Surely one way to reduce the number of abortions is to increase access to birth control. (How many times have you heard a Rethuglican harp that women use abortion as birth control?) And yet we see that Republicans just can't stomach the idea that insurance companies would be required to cover birth control prescriptions. The most recent examples of this is Republican nominee for President, John McCain stumbling and bumbling over whether he believes insurance companies should cover birth control when they cover Viagra. Along with an excruciating eight-second pause, he remarks that he hasn't really considered the question and doesn't want to think about the question (despite already voting twice against any such protections.) Then, we have Bill O'Leilly insisting that while erectile dysfunction is a medical condition, pregnancy is not a medical condition -- it's a choice (whereas, of course wanting to get a boner is not a choice, it's a god given right).

Next Up: Limiting access to birth control

The current Republican administration now wants to enshrine in law the "right" for medical professionals to refuse to give information about/give prescriptions for/ fill prescriptions for birth control. So even if you can pay for it, someone can tell you: "No thank you, I don't feel like letting you have access to a legal substance." Yes, screw you if they're the only pharmacy in town, or if your secular hospital has been bought up by a religious hospital. And, while Republicans are quite clear that each state should be allowed to decide their own laws on access to abortion, they want to refuse the right for each state to mandate that medical professionals actually do their jobs As Feministe puts it:

"This proposal’s hiring section seems designed specifically to allow people to apply for jobs they don’t want to do per the job description, but which they don’t want others to do either. The goal then of this proposal is to help people and organizations deny patients their legal rights."

Last Up: Redefining abortion so that it includes pretty much everything except "Honest, honey, I promise I'll pull out"

A proposal that was circulated in the Department of Health and Human Services last week defines abortion as follows:

"...any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”

Guess what folks, that means they want to reclassify oral contraceptives and emergency contraception, among other birth control methods, as abortions.

So, to recap...

Republicans, while decrying abortion, want to make it as difficult as possible for women to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place. These are the folks, after all, who want all women between the time they get their first period and the time they enter menopause to consider themselves pre-pregnant and to be treated by the health care system as pre-pregnant.

The Republican Party seems to be suffering from a mass case of Madonna-Whore Complex. On the one hand, their prominent members have no problem making jokes about women enjoying being battered and raped by gorillas, or spinning tales about bears being trained to rape little girls, or calling the wife a trollop and cunt in public, while on the other hand, they come up with uber creepy Purity Balls wherein girls as young as six pledge their virginity to their daddies until daddy transfers their purity over to their husbands (while simultaneously making sure they have no real Sex Ed to even know what human sexuality is).

Yes, women are scary creatures who will bang a gorilla and fuck everything else in sight because they know they can just abort!abort!abort! so you gotta wrest control of them as young as possible and make sure you keep them barefoot and pregnant by any means possible.

Or something like that.

[sigh]

If you actually want to cut down on the number of abortions, watch the video and sign the pledge

If you agree with Senators Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray that:

"This is a gratuitous, unnecessary insult to the women of the United States of America. … It is an end-run around the rights of women to make choices about our own health, and we are not going to stand for it. … We will fight you every step of the way."

Then sign the petition to Secretary Michael O. Leavitt of the Department of Health and Human Services here.

Let the Pro Life Forced Birth Republican Party know that The Handmaid's Tale was a novel and not an owner's manual.


(Full transcript at Shakesville)
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