Part of the price of keeping the government operating this week is another debate over the financing of Planned Parenthood. Whoopee.
At least it’ll give us a chance to reminisce about Senator Jon Kyl, who gave that speech against federal support for Planned Parenthood last week that was noted for: A) its wild inaccuracy; and B) his staff’s explanation that the remarks were “not intended to be a factual statement.”
This is the most memorable statement to come out of politics since Newt Gingrich told the world that he was driven to commit serial adultery by excessive patriotism.
The speech in question was Kyl’s rejoinder to the argument that Planned Parenthood provides a critically important national network of women’s health services.
“You don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does,” Kyl declared.
Planned Parenthood says that abortions, which are not paid for with federal money, constitute 3 percent of the services they provide. That’s quite a gap. But only if you’re planning on going factual.
Anyhow, that was definitely a high point. Next year, Kyl is retiring from the Senate and returning to the private sector, where he will have leisure to contemplate that this was the single moment of his public career for which he became nationally famous.
But there’s another part of Kyl’s speech that’s more significant. Take a look at the “good” nonabortion services he does mention. They don’t include contraception, which seems strange since Planned Parenthood has definitely gone public with its association with family planning.
And he’s not alone. Senator Patty Murray, one of the leaders of the defense of Planned Parenthood in the Senate, says that she doesn’t remember any of the lawmakers who wanted to strip Planned Parenthood’s funds mentioning that they supported contraception services. “They just lump everything into one big basket with the word ‘abortion,’ ” she said.
This is important because it speaks to a disconnect in the entire debate we’ve been having about women and reproduction. For eons now, people have been wondering why the two sides can’t just join hands and agree to work together to reduce the number of abortions by expanding the availability of family-planning services and contraception.
The answer is that a large part of the anti-abortion community is also anti-contraception.
“The fact is that 95 percent of the contraceptives on the market kill the baby in the womb,” said Jim Sedlak of the American Life League.
“Fertility and babies are not diseases,” said Jeanne Monahan of the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, which has been fighting against requiring insurance plans to cover contraceptives under the new health care law.
Many anti-abortion activists believe that human life and, therefore, pregnancy begin when the human egg is fertilized and that standard birth control pills cause abortions by keeping the fertilized egg from implanting in the womb. This isn’t the general theory on either count. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines pregnancy as beginning with the fertilized egg’s implantation. Dr. Vanessa Cullins of Planned Parenthood says that the pills inhibit the production of eggs or stop the sperm before they reach their destination. “There is absolutely no direct evidence that there is interference with implantation,” she said.
Beyond the science, there’s the fact that many social conservatives are simply opposed to giving women the ability to have sex without the possibility of procreation.
“Contraception helps reduce one’s sexual partner to just a sexual object since it renders sexual intercourse to be without any real commitments,” says Janet Smith, the author of “Contraception: Why Not.”
The reason this never comes up in the debates about reproductive rights in Washington is that it has no popular appeal. Abortion is controversial. Contraception isn’t. A new report by the Guttmacher Institute found that even women who are faithful Catholics or evangelicals are likely to rely on the pill, I.U.D.’s or sterilization to avoid pregnancy. Rachel Jones, a lead author of the report, said the researchers found “no indication whatsoever” that religious affiliation has any serious effect on contraception use.
What we have here is a wide-ranging attack on women’s right to control their reproductive lives that the women themselves would strongly object to if it was stated clearly. So the attempt to end federal financing for Planned Parenthood, which uses the money for contraceptive services but not abortion, is portrayed as an anti-abortion crusade. It makes sense, as long as you lay off the factual statements.
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, April 13, 2011
April 14, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Abortion, Affordable Care Act, Anti-Choice, Congress, Conservatives, Democracy, Democrats, Equal Rights, GOP, Government, Government Shut Down, Health Care, Ideology, Lawmakers, Planned Parenthood, Politics, Pro-Choice, Religion, Republicans, Women, Women's Health, Womens Rights | ACOG, Adultery, Contraception, Family Planning, Family Research Council, Insurance Plans, Newt Gingrich, Patriotism, Pregnancy, Reproductive Rights, Sen Jon Kyl, Sen Patty Murray |
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They hate big government, those conservative Republicans—especially a big federal government, trying to meddle in Americans’ lives on everything from healthcare to light bulbs.
Except, of course, when it comes to the District of Columbia, which the GOP-controlled House seems to view as its own little political petri dish. As part of its pending agreement to cut $38 billion from the federal budget, negotiators decided to cave in to the GOP’s demand to bar the District from using its own money to subsidize abortions for poor women.
A lot of people don’t like abortion, think it should be illegal, and don’t think government should pay for it. That’s a simple equation: if you don’t like abortion, don’t have one. If you think it should be illegal, take it up with the courts, or push for a constitutional amendment banning it. Barring government money from being spent on a legal women’s health service—however controversial—is not defensible. We all have to pay for activities we don’t want, through our taxes or health insurance premiums. Some taxpayers would prefer that their contributions to the federal treasury not be used to pay for wars; some who pay health insurance premiums don’t want the pool of money to be used to pay for someone’s Viagra. But group funds don’t allow for individual micro-management.
The attack on the District of Columbia adds even more insult to the unforgivable injury Washingtonians already endure as the nation’s only legally disenfranchised voters. It’s bad enough that U.S. citizens in Washington—people who pay local and federal taxes, volunteer, serve in wars and on jury duty—don’t have a full voting representative in the House and have no U.S. senators. It’s the height of arrogance for members of the U.S. Congress from other parts of the country to presume to tell the District how to spend tax dollars it collected from its own citizens. Aside from the abortion restrictions, the pending budget agreement also reinstates and expands a private school voucher program for the District.
D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray, who was arrested at the Capitol this week in protest over the meddling, sounded just like a genuine political conservative as he described his objections: “I’m tired of being a pawn in a political game. All we want is to be able to spend our own money.”
How unfortunate that congressional Republicans, who demanded the control over the District—and Democrats, who caved into their bullying—can’t see their way to apply true conservative principles when it comes to the city where they work. Other jurisdictions have imposed a “commuter tax” on people who live in one state and work in another. Members of Congress pay taxes in their home districts and states, but not here. If they want a say in how District funds are used, maybe it’s time they started to pay up.
By: Susan Milligan, U.S. News and World Report, April 12, 2011
April 12, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Abortion, Big Government, Congress, Conservatives, Democracy, Democrats, Federal Budget, GOP, Health Care, Human Rights, Ideologues, Middle East, Politics, Republicans, Women, Women's Health, Womens Rights | D.C. Home Rule, District Of Columbia, House Republicans, insurance, Mayor Vincent Gray, Poor, Taxes, Vouchers, Washington |
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Female members of the U.S. Senate made clear Friday that they have no intention of “throwing women under the bus” by giving in to Republican demands to approve several policy riders attached to a budget bill designed to keep the federal government operational.
“Since they (Republicans) don’t know how to create jobs, they’ve changed the topic to their radical approach to the budget,” said U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland). “And it is radical. They’ve cut $1 billion at the National Institutes of Health, $1 billion dollars from Head Start, $50 million from prenatal care — the changed the topic from jobs since they didn’t know how to do it.
“Then they said, ‘Oh, we are going to fight to bring down the debt and the deficit.’ And that hasn’t worked out because, to their surprise, we had specific, immediate, achievable ways to become a more frugal government. Since they lost that fight, they want to change the topic again so that all we are talking about is a radical, ideological agenda in riders. … Let’s get back to what we should be talking about: How to avoid a shutdown.”
The numerous policy riders attached to the bill, Mikulski said, can be voted on another day, and do not have to be a part of a budget discussion.
Perhaps the most contentious of the riders attached by the GOP is a complete ban of all federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
“This is not about abortion,” said U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York). “Republicans need to wake up. Since the Hyde Amendment of the last 30 years, federal money does not pay for abortions in this country. What they are cutting in this bill is the safety-net for poor, at-risk women for pre-cancer screenings, for prenatal care, for early detection of STDs — for all the types of safety-nets that keep our families safe.
“This is unacceptable and we will draw the line in the Senate.”
The frustration being voiced by the women of the Senate was also present in a prepared statement issued Friday by U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack, a Democrat who represents Iowa’s 2nd District.
“As a government shutdown looms, politicians in Washington are still wrapped up in political Russian roulette where the clear loser is Iowans,” Loebsack said. “Instead of shutting down the government in an effort to restrict women’s access to health care, we need to think about our military families who are worried about how they are going to put food on the table, even while their loved ones are defending our nation overseas.
“A government shutdown can still be averted, but the grandstanding and misplaced debates about social policy must be put aside. We must work together toward a compromise that addresses the needs of our constituents, and keeps our economic recovery on track. Time is running short — I call on Congress and the President to put our constituents ahead of politics.”
In a Facebook posting Friday, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland called the situation “an outrage” that “hurts women,” and noted that more than 54,000 women in Iowa and Nebraska would lose access to screenings and preventative health care if the policy rider barring federal money for Planned Parenthood remains intact.
Although the policy rider in connection with Planned Parenthood has been one of the most discussed and contentious items attached to the budget bill, it is far from the only attachment to H.R. 1, the continuing resolution passed by the U.S. House on Feb. 19. Other riders have included a prohibition of funding for the Biomass Crop Assistance Program, limitations on the FDA’s ability to transfer funds, stalling a transfer from the Federal Reserve for the creation of the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and development of a government-sponsored “consumer products complaints database,” prohibits funds for the U.S. Department of Education for regulations on Gainful Employment, stalls funding for several environmental and conservations programs including the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act, prohibits funding for the implementation of health care reform provisions, halts funding for capital advances or rental assistance contracts for HUD Housing for the Elderly projects and bars the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay.
By: Lynda Waddington, The Washington Independent, April 8, 2011
April 9, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Abortion, Budget, Congress, Conservatives, Deficits, Democrats, Economy, Environment, GOP, Government Shut Down, Health Care, Ideology, Planned Parenthood, Politics, Right Wing, Senate, Women, Women's Health, Womens Rights | EPA, FDA, Gitmo, HUD, Sen Barbara Mikulski, Sen Kirsten Gillibrand, Social Policy |
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Last night Ryan Grim reported that the GOP may force a government shutdown largely over funding for Planned Parenthood under Title X:
At a late-night White House meeting between the president and key congressional leaders, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) made clear that his conference would not approve funding for the government if any money were allowed to flow to Planned Parenthood through legislation known as Title X. “This comes down to women’s health issues related to Title X,” a person in the meeting told HuffPost.
The negotiations are dominated by men: All of the principal negotiators in both parties are male, as are most of the senior staff involved. (House Democrats, led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have largely been left out of key talks.)
House Republicans have been insisting the roadblock to cutting a new budget deal is not just the culture-war riders attached to the spending plan, but a source familiar with a top-level White House meeting earlier Thursday said most of the discussion in fact was about the riders.
The Hyde Amendment already prevents government funding for abortions, and abortions are a tiny part of the services Planned Parenthood provides.
The government is on the verge of being shut down because Republicans want to inset a provision into the budget that would prevent millions of women from getting contraception or cancer screening. This could be brinkmanship:Because the Republican base sees a shutdown as an end unto itself, the Republican leadership has a really strong political incentive to stretch this out as long as possible and cut a deal at the last minute. If this is the case, then culture war rhetoric serves as political cover for Republican leaders who want to cut a deal that might be hard to sell to the base.
In the past few weeks, we’ve been treated to a bevy of coverage insisting that Republicans have abandoned the culture war and are focusing on fiscal issues. Republicans like these stories because they make them look less extreme. But as Greg noted earlier today: “In its current form, at least, the budget debate is not meaningfully about fiscal matters. It’s over abortion, women’s health, and whether our environmental policies should be premised on climate science.”
What’s more, it’s not like pursuing the culture war and trying to defund the federal social safety net for women are mutually exclusive goals. In this case, they’re complimenting each other — when you’re trying to appease the Republican base, there isn’t a much better sweet spot intersection between the culture war and fiscal conservatism than women’s reproductive health.
By: Adam Serwer, The Washington Post, April 8, 2011
April 8, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Abortion, Class Warfare, Congress, Conservatives, Deficits, Environment, Federal Budget, GOP, Government Shut Down, Health Care, Human Rights, Ideology, Planned Parenthood, Politics, Republicans, Right Wing, Tea Party, Women, Women's Health, Womens Rights | Cancer Screening, Contraception, Culture Wars, EPA, House Republicans, Hyde Amendment, Rep John Boehner, Reproductive Choice, Republican Base, Title X |
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When a couple dozen brawny, uniformed and helmeted firefighters, led by a bagpipe player, marched through a crowd of pro-union protesters in Madison, Wis., last month, I knew, almost to a certainty, that Gov. Scott Walker had picked a fight with the wrong crew.
As the firemen assembled on the Statehouse steps, the swelling, boisterous crowd, which had raucously encircled and occupied the Capitol for days, pushing back against Governor Walker’s plan to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights, all of a sudden slipped into silent reverence.
While the plan exempts policemen and firemen, the first responders rallied under the oldest first principle of militant unionism: An Injury to One is an Injury to All. And the presence of these mostly white, husky, mustachioed firemen — many with soot still speckling their uniforms — had highlighted a major issue that generally goes undetected by the news media when covering labor conflicts.
In short, it’s what my old union called “the Husband Issue.”
Allow me to explain.
I spent five years as an organizer, and hundreds of hours in the living rooms, at the kitchen tables and on the porches of countless low-wage nursing assistants, hospital food workers and clinical lab scientists, trying to talk them into our union.
These were almost always women. No surprise, really. Whatever growth there has been in organized labor over the last few years — and there hasn’t been much — has been primarily among service workers, that near-invisible class of underpaid workers who clean bedpans, vacuum hotel rooms and mop the floors of operating rooms. I recall one heady organizing drive in Southern California that unionized 9,000 hospital workers, and they were almost exclusively low-wage immigrant women.
Most of those I was recruiting had never been in a union before, had no relatives in unions, and were being introduced to a strange new concept, collective bargaining. For any question a woman had, whether about dues, strikes, seniority, pensions or what she had to gain from forming a union, I had an answer ready to go. (Dues give you power; strikes are rare; every one deserves to retire with dignity. You want a direct say in your wages and benefits, don’t you?).
There was one rebuff, nevertheless, against which I was utterly powerless. It had nothing to do with politics, the boss or dues. Seven simple but devastating words: “I need to ask my husband first.”
Despite the endless training we got on how to ease workers’ doubts, we could never really establish a convincing response for the Husband Issue. It would shift the dynamic so suddenly, and require treading on such volatile emotional territory, that we would often politely say goodbye and scuttle out the door.
(For the record: No man I ever spoke to said, “Excuse me, I have to check first with my wife,” before signing a union card.)
In the current storm over public employee unions rattling the Midwest, this issue of gender is usually overlooked. Women, working as state clerks, teachers and nurses, dominate the organized public sector. And just as Rust Belt Republicans have deftly exploited longstanding stereotypes about public workers as lazy, pampered and gorging themselves on the taxpayers’ teat, they have also made cynical use of gender clichés to try to keep female-dominated unions in their place.
The reality that women are increasingly the breadwinners, providing the financial stability for middle-class families through a good union job, doesn’t seem to inform the Republican state of mind. Instead, women’s income and benefits are still perceived by many as strictly supplementary to the nuclear family, if not entirely superfluous. And therefore they are a prime target for budget cuts.
In addition, pink-collar jobs already require a saint-like disposition and an overall doing-more-with-less attitude. Cutting the pensions of these female workers, freezing their wages and curtailing their rights seems, to many, one of a piece with the suffering and forbearance reserved for our mothers.
The error committed by the antiunion governors is that their attack this time around was so slashing that it cut to the very marrow of organized labor: middle-class white men who saw their futures and their rights threatened. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich even signed a law that goes so far as to prohibit policemen and firemen from negotiating over their staffing, or even the number of patrol cars and trucks at their disposal.
Police officers and firemen? Who is going to successfully argue that these guys are pampered and spoiled?
Call it what you want, and ascribe it to whatever motivation you please, but there’s just a radically different emotional atmosphere, a very divergent set of optics and ultimately an explosive political dynamic established when stoic firemen in bulky parkas and red helmets are on the picket line rather than teachers in pink T-shirts.
For better or for worse, they are still the Alpha Males of American society, our designated and respected protectors. They might be routinely taken for granted as a reliable conservative force, but someone forgot they are also still union men. These are men who recall clearly how the old-line male-dominated industrial unions — the steelworkers, autoworkers, miners and millworkers — have been whittled down or expunged. And to fiddle around with their livelihoods is like watching someone push your dad around. The reaction is an instinctive anger, horror and a sensation of the bottom falling out.
So, when those firemen took the steps of the Madison Capitol a few weeks ago, I was among those heartened and stirred. I could not resist, though, feeling more than a twinge of disappointment. I fear if it had been just some state home care workers or public school kindergarten teachers up there on the steps, it would not have ignited the same public sympathy and this fight would not be taken as seriously as it is.
By: Natasha Vargus-Cooper, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, April 2, 2011
April 3, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Employment Descrimination, Equal Rights, Governors, Income Gap, Jobs, Labor, Media, Middle Class, Politics, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Women | Firefighters, Gov John Kasick, Gov Scott Walker, Husband Issues, Midwest, Policemen, Public Employees, Republicans |
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