The War on Women Is Very Real
Republicans have no real or serious plan for progress for America. Their goal has been so transparent even though in 2010 the successful extremists’ tea party ‘won’ on creating jobs. The Republican jobs plan was actually a rightwing culture war taken from their decades old play book, attacking every minority group in this nation. That old bait-n-switch gag worked again and fooled Americans as we continue to reap the harvest of their anti-family actions. Throughout the current 111th Congress, Republicans opposed virtually every effort to assist Middle America; while continuing to be the champions of Wall Street and those ‘Corporations are people my friend” as Mitt Romney proclaims.
Most telling of all is their war on women which has exploded from every Republican office on Capitol Hill and State House.
Republicans have redefined rape, introduced numerous anti-abortion laws, demonized women who receive any type of assistance in caring for their families and they are currently waging war on birth control, as they joined hands with Catholic Clergy in an attempt to take America back to the dark ages, where women were subservient to their white masters.
Republicans in conjunction with the Roman Catholic Church are currently seeking a ‘special exemption’ to oppose regulations governing health insurance drug coverage responding to President Obama’s proposal for contraceptive coverage for employees participating in health care plans. What Republicans fail to realize is that ‘the pill’ is often used in woman from 39 to menopause to correct hormonal imbalances, reduce menopausal and premenopausal symptoms; it is not just used for birth control.
Here is what Republicans are hiding in their made up ‘war on religion. Health insurance does not belong to the Catholic Church; it belongs to their employees, who pay for it, even though a portion may be part of the employees’ compensation. This is an employee benefit issue and the Catholic Church is NOT and does NOT provide health insurance directly. Republicans also do not mention that every one of them and their families have used contraceptives since its inception; even their own taxpayer funded health insurance plan cover contraception!
The federal administration is implementing the law as it has existed FOR MANY YEARS, and been upheld by state and federal courts wherever it has been tested. Republicans hide the fact that as far back as 2000, it was Republicans who mandated that health insurance drug plans must cover contraceptives in Iowa, New York and Arizona.
- In 2005 Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee passed a law to require health insurance drug policies to cover contraception.
- In 2006 Republican Gov. Mitt Romney enacted the same requirement in Massachusetts. These Republicans policies exempted churches (including tax-payer funded Catholics) but church-affiliated hospitals and universities are not.
- There are now 28 states which have this requirement.
While Republicans are viciously trying to eliminate birth control, they introduced an amendment to a spending bill that would promote contraception for wild horses!
These are the SAME contraception policies supported by President Obama! What changed….there is a black President, a Democrat in the White House or simply a long awaited agenda by Republicans and the Catholic Church to seize an opportunity to put women ‘in their place.’
A study by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization which studies sexual and reproductive issues, reported in April 2011, that 98% of Catholic women use or have used contraceptives. Will the Catholic Church start excommunicating the majority of their flock? Likely not! They cannot financially afford to do so.
Bishops of the Catholic Church have for centuries had misogynistic policies against women and the plan to ram their ideology down the throats of all American women.
This is a partial list of the very real war on American women by Republicans:
1) Republicans’ H.R. 358; includes a provision that would allow hospitals to refuse to perform an abortion on a woman, even if that refusal threatens her life, and let her die. Republicans are actually protecting a rapist’s right to breed by demanding government-forced childbirth.
2) Republicans are seeking to reduce women’s access to abortion care and, they are actually trying to redefine rape.
3) Georgia Republicans want to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to “accuser.”
4) South Dakota Republicans proposed a bill that could make it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care.
5) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids.
6) Congressional Republicans have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.
7) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids’. Republican Officials Cut Head Start Funding, Saying Women Should Be Married And Home With Kids.
8) Congressional Republicans want to cut Head Start, by $1 billion, 200,000 kids will not go to preschool.
9) Republicans are pursuing a spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens even though two-thirds of the elderly poor are women.
10) Republicans are pushing to eliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program while supporting a bill to provide contraception for wild horses.
11) Republican Chris Christie vetoed a spending bill that would have funded non-abortion services for women via organizations including Planned Parenthood.
12) Republicans continue to oppose pay equity for women, even even though women typically earn 23 percent less than men for comparable work.
13) The Violence Against Women Act which protects against domestic violence and sexual assaults, first passed in 1994, reauthorized in 2005, provided billions to enhance investigation and prosecution of violent crimes perpetrated against women, but today every Republican voted against reauthorizing it!
Women should remember Rick Santorum’s wife Karen had a partial term abortion ‘to save her life’ but he does not want any other woman in America the option of making this same choice.
When it comes to the best interests of the American people, the contrast is clear: Democrats are taking serious action on important issues, such as Wall Street reform, the economy, healthcare and fiscal responsibility and equality for women. The Republican agenda consistently blocks progress, change, jobs, and fairness, representing only the huge health insurance companies and Wall Street corporations in some odd way hoping their anti-women, anti-worker, anti-family, anti-heath care agenda will be to their advantage in the 2012 November election.
The democratic freedom enjoyed by millions of women is seriously eroding in America as Republicans transform the ‘land of the free’ into the former land of the enslaved.
As Think Progress reports “Conservatives have launched an all-out assault on affordable access to birth control, but their war on women’s health care does not stop at contraception. To a man, they oppose everything from no-cost coverage for cancer screenings to the elimination of domestic violence as a preexisting condition. See the chart below showing the extreme positions on women’s health care issues that the four remaining GOP presidential contenders have taken.”
Filed under: Republicans
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