Mitt Romney And The GOP’s War On Birth Control
The night of the Florida Republican primary, Hotline National editor Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) Tweeted, “Romney line about religious liberty CLEAR reference to Obama health law on contraceptives. Sleeper issue in general.”
With the Colorado Republican caucuses on Tuesday, I can only respond, “Oh please oh please oh please.”
Here’s the real question: How much will former Gov. Mitt Romney and the Republican Party’s hostility to birth control cost them with voters, especially women voters, in the fall?
This is not about religion. This is about a Republican party actively campaigning against contraception, something that is enormously popular with the electorate. I would love nothing more than Mitt Romney going around the country telling voters he wants to take their birth control away, which he’s pretty much doing already. Seriously dude, bring it.
According to the Center for Disease Control, 99 percent of American women use birth control during their reproductive lifetime. According to a Reuters report on a Guttmacher Institute study, 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use some form of birth control banned by the church. And a NPR/Thompson Reuters poll found that 77 percent of Americans favor insurance coverage for the birth control pill.
In swing state Colorado, there are approximately 114,000 more women voters than men, and they vote in higher percentages than men do. Personhood measures that would ban birth control have failed repeatedly by landslide margins, and the 2010 version probably cost Ken Buck a Senate seat. Personhood even failed in Mississippi, the most religious-conservative state in the country.
Meanwhile all the Republican candidates are actively campaigning against Title X and family planning funding. A plank in the Republican platform upholds the “life begins at conception” foundation of “personhood”, which would ban the most commonly-used forms of contraception such as the Pill and IUDs. Mitt Romney has repeatedly embraced “personhood”, most notably in 2005 when he vetoed a bill expanding access to emergency contraception for rape survivors “because it would terminate a living embryo after conception”.
For those of you, like Mitt Romney, unsure how birth control works and why “personhood” would ban it Rachel Maddow goes into the Man Cave to explain it all to you.
As for the Obama administration’s decision that Catholic institutions have a year to figure out how to include birth control in their insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, Rep. Xavier Becerra, a Catholic, explained it beautifully on Meet the Press: Religious employers, like any other business that offers insurance, can’t discriminate against women by excluding reproductive healthcare.
Anyone who doubts the power of contraception and women’s healthcare as an issue need only see the blowback against the Komen foundation by supporters of Planned Parenthood. I’ve been in politics for 20 years, and I’ve never seen a public fusillade like this one. Komen badly underestimated not only how many Americans have used Planned Parenthood’s services—1 in 5—but how many people support Planned Parenthood because they provide healthcare, including birth control, without judgment.
The pundit class piled on George Stephanopoulos for asking a question about contraception at the January ABC News debate. Apparently since it didn’t fit within the Cool Kids Acceptable Topics list, it wasn’t worth asking. And Romney fumbled the question badly, just as badly as he did the question on releasing his taxes. It was the rhetorical equivalent of strapping the dog kennel to the top of his car.
But it’s entirely worth asking for the millions of average American working families who get by on $50,000 a year and can’t afford to have another kid. It’s entirely relevant to millions of American women whose economic and physical well-being is dictated by when and if they get pregnant. Self-determining the size of your family is a baseline economic issue.
Mitt Romney and the Republicans are welcome to campaign against contraception all they want, because they are on the wrong side of that issue with voters by a landslide.
By: Laura Chapin, U. S. News and World Report, February 6, 2012
“Good Girls” Vs “Bad Girls”: The Real Losers In The Susan G. Komen-Planned Parenthood Dispute
At first, it appeared that Planned Parenthood was the loser in the dispute over funding breast cancer exams. Then, it appeared that Planned Parenthood was the winner, receiving huge donations from supporters furious over the fact that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation had cut off funding for Planned Parenthood amid concerns that the latter was “under investigation” for allegedly funneling federal monies to pay for abortions.
But there may be no real winner here. And the loser may be women’s health.
On paper, the controversy has waned, largely due to a speedy reaction from backers of Planned Parenthood, which indeed provides abortions services but which also—and primarily—offers affordable healthcare for women. The Susan G. Komen foundation, which had been giving grants to Planned Parenthood, announced last week it would halt such grants because the women’s healthcare provider was “under investigation” by Congress for misuse of funds. The merits of that justification are overwhelmed by the naivete of it; any crank in Congress can start an investigation into anything. Congressional oversight has become increasingly partisan and agenda-driven in recent years (with a few notable exceptions, including GOP Sen. Charles Grassley, who has conducted aggressive inquiries on important but non-attention getting matters regardless of which party has controlled the White House). But for the most part, using the status of “under investigation” as a barometer of anything is laughable.
Then, the Susan G. Komen foundation (whose senior vice president for public policy, Karen Handel, is anti-abortion) changed its story, saying it cut off funds because Planned Parenthood does not perform the breast exams itself, but merely refers women to places where the procedures are done. A lot of Planned Parenthood supporters didn’t buy that flip flop, and threatened to sever ties with the Komen group while increasing donations to Planned Parenthood. The Susan G. Komen foundation then reversed its decision entirely, announcing Friday it would not ban Planned Parenthood from funding.
That sounds as though the fight is over (and that both groups might benefit from the increased attention). But disturbingly, a wedge campaign against women has been started, and is not likely to subside.
The undercurrent of the face-off was that there are two kinds of women—good girls, who have breasts that may become infected with cancer, and bad girls, who have sex. The women who have breasts are allowed to be worried about getting a deadly disease, and so are festooned with pink ribbons and given both cash for research and sympathy if they become ill. Women with cancer get to be treated as victims in need of financial and emotional support. The bad women who have sex are treated as though they are getting what they deserve if they become pregnant or get a sexually transmitted disease.
The bad women, the ones who have sex, are apparently meant to be punished. They can acquire birth control only in shame. And while abortion is still legal, the bad women who have sex must be forced to go through with unwanted pregnancies or endure a great deal of trouble and expense to get an abortion. The insult to women—that if females were forced to think about what they are doing before having an abortion, the exercise would surely make them change their minds—is overwhelming. Women who believe abortion is wrong won’t have one. Making it harder for them to get an abortion won’t make a difference. Women—devout Catholics and others—who don’t believe in birth control won’t use it. Refusing to cover birth control as basic women’s health, or defunding organizations that supply birth control, won’t mean anything to those women.
But for those women who have sex and want to do so responsibly—avoiding unwanted pregnancy and staying STD-free—birth control and sexual healthcare is critical. Planned Parenthood has been a go-to place for such healthcare for many women, particularly young females with low incomes and zero or inadequate health insurance.
The battle between Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation may be technically over. But the effort to divide women over basic healthcare is in full force.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, February 6, 2012
Angry At Komen? You Should Be Furious At Mitt Romney And The GOP
My email inbox has been flooded over the last three days with messages of outrage over Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s surprise metamorphosis into a purveyor of right-wing culture wars – a change that the organization is now frantically trying to undo. Americans have been shaken by the news of a formerly respected and loved organization with a trusted brand turning on many of the low-income women who it had previously taken pride in serving.
I too am angry at Komen’s decision to put right-wing ideology ahead of its purported public health mission. But our deeper anger should be directed at someone else: the Republicans in Congress and GOP leaders who consistently make the same choices involving many times more money, and many times more women’s lives. The shock of the revelation of Komen’s new policies only highlighted how numb many of us have become to the larger, unrelenting attacks on women’s health by right-wing elected officials.
The grants to Planned Parenthood that Komen would have severed totaled $680,000 over the last year – a total that the organization thankfully made up in two days from contributions that have poured in in response to the Komen betrayal. Let’s put that in perspective. Last year, the House GOP voted to zero out the entire $317,000,000 Title X family planning budget – including about $75 million that would have gone to Planned Parenthood’s preventative care and treatment programs for low-income women.
Deciding that this plan wasn’t disastrous enough, the House also passed an amendment to eliminate all federal funding to Planned Parenthood, an estimated total of $363 million, much of which goes to care for the Medicaid patients who make up almost half of Planned Parenthood’s clientele. The amount that Komen would have cut from Planned Parenthood’s women’s healthcare was significant– but the amount that House Republicans were prepared to cut was 500 times larger.
The right wing understands this. Anti-choice groups have rejoiced over the Komen decision, seeing it as a stepping stone to what has always been their ultimate goal: eliminating women’s reproductive rights and destroying Planned Parenthood along the way.
Those who value comprehensive women’s health care need to make the same connection. What Komen did was wrong. What the Republican Party tries to do every chance it gets is hundreds of times worse.
I doubt that Mitt Romney will dare to take a stand on the Komen controversy. But it doesn’t matter. We know where he is on this issue — and not just because we know how he feels about poor people. Last year, Romney supported the amendment that would have eliminated 500 times as much money from Planned Parenthood’s health care services, cutting off a million and half of its most needy patients. So did Newt Gingrich. So did every other major GOP presidential candidate. So did all but seven House Republicans.
The Komen decision was shocking to so many because, in part, we expect more integrity from a nonpartisan women’s health organization than we do from our politicians.
But the stakes from our politicians are bigger. Planned Parenthood provides critical services to millions of American women each year. In 2010, it provided nearly 750,000 breast exams and 770,000 Pap tests to women seeking critical cancer screening. It provided more than four million tests and treatments for STIs. It provided affordable contraception to low-income women, preventing an estimated 584,00 unintended pregnancies. Planned Parenthood estimates that one in five American women has received care from the organization in her lifetime.
Without Komen’s funding, Planned Parenthood would have rallied. Without federal funding, nearly half of its 3 million patients – including many from disadvantaged neighborhoods and rural areas – would lose their care.
Yes, we should be angry at Komen for the Cure. But, like the Right, we need to recognize that this is ultimately a symbolic fight in a much bigger battle.
Today, Komen gave in to the overwhelming response it received from Americans who value women’s health over partisan politics. Our elected officials should face just as much pressure. Take the email you sent to Komen and copy Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. They need to hear the same message, and face the same backlash, five hundred times over.
By: Michael B. Keegan, President-People for the American Way, Published in The Huffington Post, February 3, 2012
Political, “Dumb And Deadly”: A Black Mark On The Pink Ribbon
Hard as I try, I can only conjure up two words to describe the decision on the part of Susan G. Komen For The Cure to pull its support of Planned Parenthood.
Dumb and…Deadly.
For years, Komen and Planned Parenthood have worked together to improve the opportunities for women to discover and get treatment for one of the most insidious of diseases—women’s breast cancer. And they’ve made a great pair. Together, these organizations have done an enormous amount of good when it comes to bringing the illness to the public’s attention and providing the services that have, undoubtedly, saved a great many lives.
Today, this partnership has been torn apart and, contrary to what one might have anticipated just twenty-four hours ago, it is not Planned Parenthood who finds itself struggling to make up the lost funding. The organization has benefitted from a massive inpouring of contributions since the news broke.
Rather, a review of the Susan G.Komen Facebook page makes it all too clear that their own organization is likely in line for a very bad year on the fundraising front given the large number of people who are deeply offended and distressed by the decision and have sworn to cut off their contributions to the group.
While it is tempting to say that the ‘good guy’ in this sad tale has emerged victorious, nothing could be further from the truth.
You see, the big loser in this story will be future breast cancer victims who may not get the diagnostic services or treatment required to save their lives as a result of what is sure to be a drop in funding for the Komen effort.
That is a true tragedy and one that certainly never had to be.
Despite the severe backlash being heaped on Komen For The Cure by one-time supporters, the organization continues to argue that there was nothing political about its decision. But nobody is buying this because it’s simply too hard to swallow.
Komen is sticking to the story that they had no choice but to pull the funding once Republican Congressman Cliff Sterns, a long-time opponent of Planned Parenthood, began a Congressional investigation to determine if Planned Parenthood has violated the rules that prohibit them from spending taxpayer money on abortion services. The Komen group argues that their governing principles do not permit them to contribute money to any entity under Congressional investigation.
But stupid is as stupid does. And, as noted, Komen For The Cure has behaved with shocking stupidity.
If Komen believes that Planned Parenthood provides a valuable service to the women Komen seeks to help and believed that PP did so before the investigation commenced last fall, why in the world would they permit such a congressional investigation—and one that has no time limit and could drag on until Democrats return to power and take over the investigating committee—to interfere with something as important as helping women with breast cancer? At no time has Komen suggested that Planned Parenthood was failing to use the money provided by Komen for the intended purpose. Had this been their position, their decision would have made a great deal more sense.
Are Komen’s rules of operating more important than the very purpose of their existence? If they believed that Planned Parenthood played an important role in helping women with breast cancer before, why would they do anything to interfere with that work, let alone use an investigation into whether or not PP is misusing taxpayer money for abortions – not breast cancer services—as a reason to withdraw their aid?
What if Rep. Sterns’ investigation does turn up some instances of Planned Parenthood breaking the rules? Does this mean that the work they do in support of women with breast cancer no longer ‘counts’? Are women who are in danger of losing their lives suddenly not deserving of help because some others may have received an abortion with some taxpayer money?
Anyway you look at it, this is an illogical and remarkably (here’s that word again) stupid decision.
I understand that there are many people who vehemently oppose abortion and that this would lead them to have a big problem with Planned Parenthood for providing the same.
But these people claim that they are ‘right to lifers’, devout in their desire to protect life. This, once again, causes us to wonder why these folks would take so strong a position when it comes to the lives of the unborn yet are unwilling to take such a position on behalf of a woman who has walked on the planet for a few years already. I simply don’t understand why right to life organizations everywhere are not imploring Susan Komen For The Cure to reinstate the funding to Planned Parenthood so that lives of affected women can be saved – just as they want to save the lives of the unborn.
While Rep. Sterns has taken the time to deny any involvement with Komen’s decision, and I take him at his word, why has he not acknowledged that, while he may be seriously opposed to abortion services, he can still support the work of Planned Parenthood—and Komen’s contribution to that work—when it comes to helping women facing a deadly disease? It is, after all, saving lives that Congressman Sterns proclaims himself to be all about.
Shame on the Susan G. Komen For The Cure for forgetting their mission and the reason so many people have financially supported their efforts and walked so many miles in support. Shame on Congressman Sterns along with any other opponent of Planned Parenthood’s involvement in abortion who cannot see the sheer hypocrisy of hating PP for taking lives while remaining unwilling to stand up for the services of PP that save lives.
I can’t think of a better example of how far afield we have gone when a charity devoted to fighting cancer allows politics to become its guiding force.
By: Rick Ungar, Contributing Writer, Forbes, February 1, 2012
U.S. Circuit Court Of Appeals To Rehear South Dakota Law Promoting Abortion-Suicide Link
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will re-examine on Jan. 9 whether a 2005 South Dakota law mandating what doctors say to women seeking abortions is constitutional. The court will address again a specific provision in the law requiring physicians to inform patients of possible suicide risks in relation to the procedure.
The provision allows women seeking abortions to make informed decisions and should be allowed to stand, said South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley.
“The state is pleased that the full court will address the important issue of suicide risk disclosures for women considering an abortion,” Jackley said in an email. “The 2005 disclosure legislation was an attempt by the [South Dakota] Legislature to put in place proper disclosure requirements to ensure a women considering an abortion makes a knowing and voluntary decision. … It is the state’s position that the legislative enactment on suicide risk disclosures is reasonable, factually accurate, not ambiguous, and lawful.”
Planned Parenthood officials and other abortion rights advocates argue that a link between abortion and suicide never has been proven, and that the law forces doctors to provide patients with erroneous medical information.
“We believe that scientific research is on our side and that when the court hears the merits of the issue, they will uphold the court’s prior decision,” said Jennifer Aulwes, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota. If the provision is allowed to stand, “doctors providing abortions would need to read a medically inaccurate and scientifically unsupported script to a patient that he or she is about to provide medical care to. It brings up ethical issues for health care providers.”
A long court history
The abortion disclosure requirements have been in dispute since their enactment in 2005. Among other mandates, the state law required doctors to tell women seeking abortions:
- That abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.
- That the patient has an existing relationship with the unborn human being that is protected by law.
- A description of all known medical risks associated with having the procedure, including an increased risk of suicide.
Before the law took effect, Planned Parenthood sought an injunction against the requirements, a request that was granted by a district court. An appeals court subsequently overturned the injunction, in part, as it related to the law’s “human being disclosure” provision. In a September 2011 decision, a panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court agreed with the state that doctors must disclose “all known medical risks” of abortion, but the court concluded that the specified suicide risk disclosure violated the U.S. Constitution. The full court, and not just the panel, will rehear the case Jan. 9.
The state says suicide is three to six times more frequent in women who receive abortions compared with women who undergo childbirth. The state’s data primarily relies on a 2009 analysis done by Priscilla Coleman, a human development and family studies professor at Bowling Green (Ohio) State University. She examined the mental state of women who had abortions from data collected by the National Comorbidity Survey, a national mental health survey. She found that compared with other women, women who had abortions were at increased risk for anxiety, mood disorders and substance abuse.
But Aulwes, of Planned Parenthood, pointed to an analysis of the same data in 2010 by Julia Steinberg, an assistant professor of health psychology at the University of California, San Francisco. Steinberg’s analysis failed to find the same connection, even without taking into account preexisting factors such as a history of mental health problems.
By: Alicia Galleges, American Medical News, January 2, 2011
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