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
The Most Terrible Things Rick Santorum Has Ever Said
On the Catholic Church’s abuse scandals: “Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”
On same sex marriage and bestiality: “In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality…”
On the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s decision to approve same sex marriage: “This is an issue just like 9/11. We didn’t decide we wanted to fight the war on terrorism because we wanted to. It was brought to us. And if not now, when? When the supreme courts in all the other states have succumbed to the Massachusetts version of the law?”
On the link between same sex marriage and national security: “I would argue that the future of America hangs in the balance, because the future of the family hangs in the balance. Isn’t that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?”
On the war in Iraq: “As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It’s being drawn to Iraq. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the eye to come back to the United States.”
On contraception: “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
On the Affordable Care Act: “I would tell you that my first priority as a president of the United States is to repeal Barack Obama’s healthcare plan. I think it’s the most dangerous piece of legislation, well, in many generations. It is the reason that I’m running for office. Because I believe Obamacare is a game changer. I believe Obamacare will rob America, the best way I can put it is, rob America of its soul.”
On President Obama’s pro-choice stance: “I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.’”
On global warming: “I believe the earth gets warmer, and I also believe the earth gets cooler, and I think history points out that it does that and that the idea that man through the production of CO2, which is a trace gas in the atmosphere and the man-made part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas, is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all of the other factors, El Niño, La Niña, sunspots, you know, moisture in the air.”
By: TNR Staff, The New Republic, January 5, 2012
Rick Santorum Is Coming For Your Birth Control
Here is an actual Rick Santorum quote: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.” And also, “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
These comments were not dug up from some bygone moment of ideological purity, before dreams of a presidential campaign. He said them in October, to a blogger at CaffeinatedThoughts.com (they met at Des Moines’ Baby Boomers Cafe).
It’s pretty basic: Rick Santorum is coming for your contraception. Any and all of it. And while he may not be alone in his opposition to non-procreative sex, he is certainly the most honest about it — as he himself acknowledged in the interview.
This is important, because while reproductive rights are always cast in terms of pro or against a woman’s right to an abortion and in what circumstances, even liberals are surprised to find out what social conservatives really want to do about contraception. Liberals are even willing to cast the proposed defunding of Planned Parenthood and all Title X programs (a position that has become mainstream in Republican circles) as an abortion issue, when it is actually about contraception. (The Hyde Amendment already bans almost all federal abortion funding.) So is this about “babies” or is this about sex? Rick Santorum isn’t even pretending it’s (only) about childbearing.
Speaking to ABC News’ Jake Tapper, Santorum recently reaffirmed his opposition to Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that struck down a ban on discussing or providing contraception to married couples, and established a right to privacy that would later be integral to Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas. (It is generally better-known how Santorum feels about gay people.) That would be the case where the majority asked, “Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.” Rick Santorum disagrees. He thinks, using the currently popular states’ rights parlance, that “the state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have.” This is a view Santorum has held at least since 2003.
The trouble with this is that not only have more than 99 percent of sexually active women used at least one form of birth control, helping people get access to birth control is actually a popular issue. According to a June survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, 82 percent of Americans actually want to expand access to birth control for women who cannot afford it, while only 16 percent were opposed.
Santorum isn’t alone. Five of the current or former Republican presidential candidates signed the Personhood Pledge (though unlike Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul added some caveats to their support). Mitt Romney told Mike Huckabee he’d support an amendment saying life begins at conception — which Personhood folks interpret as the fertilization of an egg, meaning that contraceptives like the IUD and sometimes even the pill are murderous. (Good luck figuring out what Romney actually thinks on that one.)
Santorum just happens to be happiest putting it at the top of the agenda. In the Caffeinated Thoughts video, he promises that “all those issues are going to be front and center with me,” and says, ”I know most presidents don’t talk about these things and maybe people don’t want us to talk about these things. But I think it’s important that you are who you are… these are important public policy issues.” Among those important public policy issues: Sex for fun. In the same video, Santorum bemoans sex becoming “deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure.”
Many people don’t want them to talk about these things because it shows the true colors of what social conservatives wish for this country, which is very different from what Americans wish for themselves. Maybe the near-win in Iowa yesterday is the end of the road for Santorum, and maybe no one will ever succeed by openly suggesting a contraception ban that would send the condom police into America’s bedrooms. But that’s clearly the world Santorum wants, and it’s one that is entirely consistent with the antiabortion movement’s goals. That would be the same movement that over the past year decided it had a mandate in states across the country, the same one that demanded endless obeisance from the Republican candidates in Iowa this year — and mostly got it.
By: Irin Carmon, Salon, January 4, 2012
Newt Gingrich: “Life Begins At Implantation”
As Newt Gingrich surges to the head of the GOP presidential field, he is running headlong into some of his former positions. Slammed by conservatives and competitors for previous support of the national health insurance mandate and universal coverage, climate change, and foreign policy, Gingrich is backpeddling towards more right-wing positions. It appears to be no different with women’s reproductive rights.
Revealing how far right the GOP has shifted, fellow contender Michele Bachmann and others blasted Gingrich for holding tempered and standard GOP positions on abortion, including supporting federal funding of abortions for victims of rape or incest, or to protect the life of a mother. Apparently feeling the heat, Gingrich is taking a major step to his right. Not only did he recently endorse fetal personhood, but he told ABC’s Jake Tapper he now believes that life begins at the implantation of a fertilized egg:
TAPPER: Abortion is a big issue here in Iowa among conservative Republican voters and Rick Santorum has said you are inconsistent. The big argument here is that you have supported in the past embryonic stem cell research and you made a comment about how these fertilized eggs, these embryos are not yet “pre-human” because they have not been implanted. This has upset conservatives in this state who worry you don’t see these fertilized eggs as human life. When do you think human life begins?
GINGRICH: Well, I think the question of being implanted is a very big question. My friends who have ideological positions that sound good don’t then follow through the logic of: ‘So how many additional potential lives are they talking about? What are they going to do as a practical matter to make this real?’
I think that if you take a position when a woman has fertilized egg and that’s been successfully implanted that now you’re dealing with life. because otherwise you’re going to open up an extraordinary range of very difficult questions
TAPPER: So implantation is the moment for you.
GINGRICH: Implantation and successful implantation.
Gingrich’s implantation position is not as radical or ambiguous as that of some “personhood” activists whose “life begins at conception” view could criminalize birth control. Still, his new-found idea that life begins at implantation is a sharp contrast to his previous positions. Implantation occurs 7 to 14 days after conception — well before most women even know they’re pregnant — and defining life at this point will essentially ban all abortions.
Gingrich’s radical step backward is still not enough for Bachmann. At her book signing in Rockville, SC this afternoon, she insisted that life begins at conception (even before implantation) and that Gingrich’s new view “will put a doubt in people’s mind as to his commitment to standing up to the pro-life cause.”
By: Tanya Somanader, Think Progress, December 2, 2011
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