“Republicans Desire To Claim A Scalp”: Why A Congressman Would Say, ‘This Interview Didn’t Happen’
By now, the basic outline of this week’s Planned Parenthood controversy is probably familiar to most news consumers. A right-wing group released a sting video – as right-wing groups are wont to do – featuring a Planned Parenthood official talking candidly about fetal tissue, which prompted a conservative uproar.
Soon after, we came to realize that the right-wing group edited the video in a misleading way– as right-wing groups are wont to do – and the “controversy” didn’t amount to much of anything. It’s not clear why the Washington Post put the story literally on the front page, since there are no credible allegations of wrongdoing. Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum called it a “nothingburger,” adding, “In the end, this is just another sad attempt at a sting video that goes nowhere once you get beyond the deceptive editing.”
Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards officially responded to the story yesterday, explaining that the organization did nothing wrong, though she acknowledged that the Planned Parenthood official featured in the sting video spoke with a “tone” that was “unacceptable.”
In theory, that should effectively end the controversy, such as it was, and since my wife works for Planned Parenthood – her work is completely unrelated to fetal tissue and she played no role in this report – I was prepared to look past it altogether. But a Roll Call article yesterday pushed the story in an unexpected direction: some congressional Republicans have known about the video for weeks.
Rep. Tim Murphy, a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus and chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee looking into the video, said at a Wednesday news conference he’d seen the clip weeks before.
Asked afterward why he and others waited until this week to take action, Murphy struggled for an answer before abruptly ending the interview with CQ Roll Call, saying he should not be quoted and remarking, “This interview didn’t happen.”
Well, actually, it did happen, and members of Congress can’t talk to reporters, then retroactively pretend they didn’t.
In this case, Roll Call asked why the story, if it’s as scandalous as Republicans are now claiming, didn’t break immediately. If GOP lawmakers consider the revelations an outrage, why did some members say nothing for nearly a month?
Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), before pretending the interview “didn’t happen,” said, “Um, I don’t know why. All I know is I saw it and he said he was going to post it eventually, so that’s all I know.”
Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), one of Congress’ most strident opponents of reproductive rights, also said he first saw the video about a month ago, but also said nothing. “The hope was to have as much information as possible so that the authorities could be notified effectively before the media,” Franks argued yesterday.
It’s a curious argument. Republicans have spent the week characterizing this as a potentially criminal scandal, but when some far-right lawmakers saw the video weeks ago, they didn’t feel the need to do much of anything – they didn’t run to the GOP leadership to demand action; they didn’t call allies in conservative media; they didn’t hold a press conference to express outrage. If they genuinely saw the video as proof of illegal Planned Parenthood activities, notifying the “authorities” could have happened immediately.
But it didn’t. So what is this really all about? Consider this Politico report published overnight:
Republicans on Capitol Hill are betting the secretly filmed Planned Parenthood video — depicting an executive allegedly discussing the sale of fetal organs from terminated pregnancies — will give them cover to more aggressively push abortion issues without the political ramifications that have haunted the party in the past. […]
[Iowa Republican Steve King] was one of the first lawmakers to urge the defunding of low-income housing group ACORN, which went belly up following similar undercover videos suggesting criminal activity.
To this day, he keeps a tiny acorn in his pocket to remember his crusade. Now, he’s got his eyes on another organization. “This represents ACORN’s scalp,” King said off the House floor Thursday, pulling the acorn out of his pocket. “Ask me after the appropriations cycle and see if I have a talisman in my pocket for Planned Parenthood’s.”
Ah, there it is. Republicans don’t have proof of Planned Parenthood wrongdoing, but rather, have a desire to claim a “scalp.” When the GOP went after women’s healthcare in 2012, it backfired on the party, so Republicans hope a misleading video will offer new opportunities to try the same move again.
That’s the point of the GOP calls for investigations, hearings, and probes. That’s why Republicans are trying to use this story to raise money and advance their personal ambitions.
Those who were inclined to take the story seriously should probably adjust their perspective accordingly.
Postscript: The video released by the Center for Medical Progress doesn’t show Planned Parenthood doing anything illegal, but whether the video itself was recorded illegally is a separate matter.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 17, 2015
“State-Imposed Ideological Barriers”: Judge Strikes Down North Carolina’s Forced Ultrasound Law For Violating The First Amendment
Doctors in North Carolina are no longer required to display and describe ultrasound images to their patients before proceeding with an abortion procedure, thanks to a federal judge’s ruling on Friday afternoon. U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles struck down those provisions of North Carolina’s forced ultrasound law because they violate free speech rights.
Requiring women to have an ultrasound before they may have an abortion has become an increasingly popular policy, and is currently in place in 10 states. North Carolina, which first enacted its mandatory ultrasound law in 2011, was one of three states to take it a step further — requiring doctors to show the images to their patients and describe the embryo in detail.
While some women do choose to look at their ultrasound before having an abortion, others would prefer to avoid it. Rather than allowing women to decide how to handle their own medical procedures, however, North Carolina’s forced ultrasound law removed their autonomy from the equation. And according to Eagles, it also forced doctors to deliver an anti-abortion message approved by state lawmakers.
“The Supreme Court has never held that a state has the power to compel a health care provider to speak, in his or her own voice, the state’s ideological message in favor of carrying a pregnancy to term, and this Court declines to do so today,” Eagles wrote in her ruling.
Women’s health advocates celebrated the news.
“Today’s ruling marks a major victory for North Carolina women and sends a message to lawmakers across the country: it is unconstitutional for politicians to interfere in a woman’s personal medical decisions,” Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, noted in a statement.
“The court’s ruling makes clear that politicians cannot use physicians as mouthpieces for their political agenda, and reaffirms the constitutional right of every woman to decide for herself whether to continue or end a pregnancy,” Nancy Northrup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, added.
Anti-choice activists typically assume that if women simply have the chance to see an image of their fetus, they’ll change their mind about having an abortion and decide to carry their pregnancy to term. But there’s no scientific evidence to back up that claim. In fact, a large study published earlier this month found that the vast majority of women who seek out abortion services have already made up their mind, and viewing an ultrasound doesn’t sway them. Earlier research has also confirmed that nearly 90 percent of women are “highly confident” about their decision to end a pregnancy, and state-imposed barriers don’t change that.
Perhaps more broadly, it’s important to remember that most of the women who have abortions aren’t exactly ignorant about the realities of pregnancy. About 61 percent of them already have at least one child, and they already know what an ultrasound looks like.
By: Tara Culp-Ressler, Think Progress, January 21, 2014
“An ‘Impermissible Attempt’ To Coerce Women”: Federal Court Permanently Blocks North Carolina’s Narrated Ultrasound Law
A federal court on Friday permanently blocked a North Carolina law requiring women to undergo coercive counseling and a narrated ultrasound prior to obtaining an abortion. The judge permanently enjoined the unconstitutional law, ruling that “the Act requires providers to deliver the state’s message to women who take steps not to hear it and to women who will be harmed by receiving it with no legitimate purpose.”
United States District Court Judge Catherine Eagles called the law “an impermissible attempt to compel these providers to deliver the state’s message in favor of childbirth and against abortion.”
The decision is a clear victory for doctors and women in the state, and a strong indictment of similar laws intended to pressure or shame women out of accessing basic medical care.
Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, celebrated the ruling in a statement. “Today’s ruling marks a major victory for North Carolina women and sends a message to lawmakers across the country: it is unconstitutional for politicians to interfere in a woman’s personal medical decisions,” she said. “This dangerous law would have required abortion providers to perform an ultrasound and place the image in the woman’s line of sight — even if she asks not to view it. The provider would then be required to describe the image in detail — even over the woman’s objection. It made no exceptions for women under any circumstances, including cases of rape, incest, or those who receive a tragic diagnosis during pregnancy.”
The North Carolina law was a clear overstep, but as Salon has previously noted, forced ultrasound laws do virtually nothing to influence women’s choices, making them little more than intentionally punitive policies intended to shame women for making sound medical choices.
By: Katie McDonough, Salon, January 17, 2014
“And This Too Shall Fail”: The GOP Wants To Solve Its “Woman Problem” By Rebranding Its War On Women
Three women in Virginia have started a consulting firm to help the Republican party appeal to women voters, which seems like it will be a real challenge since the Republican party is terrible on the issues that many women care about.
The women behind the firm — two Mitt Romney 2012 campaign alums and a Republican pollster — launched Burning Glass Consulting because they “want to get smarter about how we communicate the Republican message specifically to women,” Katie Packer Gage, a former deputy campaign manager for Romney, explained to the New York Times. “Certainly there are challenges with other demographic groups, but women represent 53 percent of the electorate.”
But better messaging will do little to save the party from its core platform, which the Times frames as an opinion held only by Democratic strategists, but really just seems like common sense. The GOP has for years been buttering its bread with increasingly extreme positions on contraception, abortion, voting rights and other issues that negatively impact and alienate single women voters — the group Burning Glass would most like to reach.
“There were something like 53 million unmarried women eligible to vote in 2012, but on campaigns you don’t hear a specific strategy discussed of ‘How are we going to reach unmarried women?’” said Gage.
The firm seems to think that Democrats have just gotten very good at framing the Republican party as hostile to women, which misses the point that the Republican party is actually very hostile to women.
When you have the chair of the Republican Women’s Policy Committee laughing on Fox News about how women should have to shoulder the financial burden of maternity coverage alone because a man “has never delivered a baby,” you know the problem isn’t about messaging.
When you have a state attorney general wondering aloud why God hasn’t punished the United States for guaranteeing women their constitutional right to abortion care, you know the problem isn’t about messaging.
As Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America noted last week after single women helped defeat Ken Cuccinnelli in Virginia, “The lesson for candidates in 2014 is unmistakable: Dismiss and demean women at your peril.”
By: Katie McDonough, Salon, November 12, 2013
“Pregnancy, Men And Gumball Machines”: Texans Fight Back Against Cuts To Women’s Health programs
It’s hard to overstate just how dire the situation is around women’s health care in Texas. The state has the third highest rate of cervical cancer in the country and one in four women are uninsured. After cutting family-planning funding by around two-thirds last legislative session, conservative lawmakers are now standing by their decision to cut off Planned Parenthood from the state’s Women’s Health Program, a move that ended $35 million in federal funding. (Here’s a timeline of the fight.) Governor Rick Perry, who bragged about the decision at the recent CPAC conference, has said he’ll find the money to keep the program—while still barring Planned Parenthood. No one seems to know exactly where he’ll find the money, given that the state has already underfunded Medicaid by $4 billion last session.
In the meantime, Planned Parenthood, which serves 40 percent of the 130,000 who rely on the Women’s Health Program, has already had to shut down more than a dozen clinics. Non-Planned Parenthood clinics, which may still be eligible for the program if the governor finds the money, are also struggling due to the drastic budget cuts to the program, and soon they may face increased demand. In spite of it all, women’s health advocates promise this fight is just beginning.
More than 300 protesters arrived on Tuesday to welcome Planned Parenthood’s “Women’s Health Express” bus (or as the organization’s president Cecile Richards calls it, the “don’t-throw-women-under-the-bus bus.”) After stopping at cities around the state, the entourage arrived across from the state capitol to protest new policies. It was diverse, both in terms of age and ethnicity, as were the speakers on stage, almost all of whom were female. It was also the second protest of the day—100 women showed up earlier as part of a weekly protest against the decision called “Seeing Red.”
The signs were quite creative. Planned Parenthood had some stating “Don’t Mess With Texas Women” or “No to metas con las mujeres de Tejas.” Then there were the homemade ones: “Dump Anita’s Husband” “Perry screws 130,000 women so who’s the slut?” and, possibly the funniest, “If men could get pregnant, birth control would be available in gumball machines.”
The program featured women who used the Women’s Health Program. At first, Delia Henry read nervously from a script, telling her story of relying on Planned Parenthood for information about her sexual health when her single father was too embarrassed to talk to her. Later, as part of the Women’s Health Program, she discovered she had diabetes during a routine blood test. “This program saved my life,” she said to applause.
In the crowd were women with similar stories. Sarah Jeansonne was there with her two daughters, explaining to them that politicians were trying to take away health care for women. The issue was hardly just politics for her. “It was a public clinic that told me I was pregnant with this one,” she said, caressing her daughter’s blonde hair. “It wasn’t planned. What if that wasn’t there?” She began to tear up.
“We all used Planned Parenthood at one time,” Jeansonne’s friend Kelly Taggle said. “Something has to fill in the gaps.”
The program featured everything from country singers to the Austin mayor, but undoubtedly the crowd favorite was state Representative Dawna Dukes, in red patent leather pumps to show she was “seeing red.” Dukes began with a story of getting excited to speak at her church, founded by her grandmother and where all her siblings had been married. Then she was told she could not speak. At first it was out of fear the church would appear to favor one candidate over another. “I’m unopposed,” she told the crowd.
Later, she said, the church called her back to tell her the U.S. Congress of Bishops barred her from speaking because she supported the Women’s Health Program on her website.
“I’m mad as hell,” she thundered. “I have not the time to go round and round and neither do Texas women.”
Dukes excoriated the governor, pointing out that the state’s Legislative Budget Board, the independent board that runs the state’s calculations, had called the program the most cost effective in Texas and recommended it be expanded. While Perry blames the Obama administration for the change in rules, Dukes was quick to point out that the rules for the program were conceived in 2007, under then-President George W. Bush. “Don’t blame Barack,” she said as the crowd cheered. “Blame your stupid recommendations under the Capitol dome!”
By the time Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards took the stage, the clapping was pretty much nonstop. Richards kept her remarks short. “We do more to prevent unintended pregnancies than any organization in the country,” she said, a frequent point among the speakers.
Then she moved to politics. “We’re the biggest tent,” she said. “By God, women’s health care does not come with a political label.”
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