I’ve written extensively on my firmly held belief that the Republicans are waging a war on women. But I’ve been quiet on the recent nonsense about contraception and the Catholic Church, a political wedge issue with no merit other than to drive voters, who might otherwise vote in favor of Democrats, into the desperate arms of some pretty weak Republican presidential candidates.

Yesterday on Meet the Press, Rick Santorum essentially said that all the angst for him was personal, that he’d never support a policy that would deny birth control to women. He claimed to be a good Catholic, who agreed with the teachings of his church.

Yesterday my mail box was filled with posts about Santorum’s hypocrisy during his life, including one post that detailed all of the beliefs of the Catholic Church that Republicans do not support. Most of the E-mails concerned his wife and things that have happened to her in her life. I did not fact check any of them, so forgive me if I am guilty of repeating untruths.

One story, which should have nothing to do with Rick Santorum’s bid for the presidency, claims that Karen Santorum lived with an abortion doctor, many years her senior,  without benefit of marriage. It claims that Karen left the good doctor because she wanted children and Rick was attractive enough as a sperm donor to jettison her belief that abortion might be a necessary procedure at times.

The other story is tragic and can only cause pain to the Santorums when they see it replayed in a presidential campaign.  It claims that Karen Santorum once had a late term abortion that saved her life. Nothing in the story indicates that the Santorums blithely aborted a child. It was a procedure that saved Karen’s life after she became infected by an earlier procedure, which was an attempt to save the life of the fetus.  Nonetheless, the procedure that reportedly saved Karen Santorum’s life is one that many of the out of touch men, including Rick Santorum himself, say they would deny women.

Of course these stories are in the news because Santorum’s star is rising as a GOP candidate for president. Santorum is a Catholic. Catholic Bishops picked a fight with President Obama. Can anyone say wedge issue?

Jonathan Turley blogged today about how all of this is Catholic V. Contraception angst has little to do with the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on a state religion. You should read the entire post yourself, but here are some quotes:

“A black man, accused of being secretly a Muslim, a socialist and an illegitimate pretender to the presidential throne, has accomplished what all of the post-Vatican II reconciliation committees and joint worship services and inter-faith conferences could not.”

“No longer will the Pope be called the Antichrist, nor Holy Mother Church the Whore of Rome. “

“Christians have reunited under the banner of Richard “Coeur de Lion” Santorum to defeat apostasy and reclaim America for Christendom.  The enemy this time?  An HHS regulation requiring most health insurance plans to include FDA approved forms of contraception in coverage for preventive health services.”

“The newest crusade, like its historical predecessors, is largely fueled by the bad faith of its leaders and the ignorance of its foot soldiers.”

“It has never been the law that the First Amendment exempts religion from all civil authority.  The First Amendment “embraces two concepts,-freedom to believe and freedom to act.  The first is absolute but, in the nature of things, the second cannot be.”  Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303-304 (1940)”

Homework

http://jonathanturley.org/2012/02/13/contraception-and-separation/  

In 2010 every politician ran on a plank of “Jobs Now.” I know I did, I have the T-shirt to prove it. But since the electoral winners were sworn in, and took their seats in legislatures, both in states and in Washington, what we’ve seen is a GOP war on women’s rights.

The most recent attack comes in the form of H.R.358, which was passed in the U.S. House, but will fail in the U.S. Senate. HR358 represents the seventh anti-abortion bill passed in the U.S. House this year. I swear when male legislators think about women’s rights, they think with their little head instead of their big head.

Or maybe they really do think that keeping women barefoot and pregnant, or letting women die because of complications of pregnancy somehow crates jobs. Do they think if there are fewer women in the workplace there are more jobs available for men?

Right now the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, is the first line of defense for women’s rights. We also have a champion in the White House. Upon passage of HR358, the White House issued this statement: “The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 358 because, as previously stated in the Statement of Administration Policy on H.R.3, the legislation intrudes on women's reproductive freedom and access to health care and unnecessarily restricts the private insurance choices that women and their families have today.”

In an interesting development, Mitt Romney was confronted by an Iowa voter yesterday who asked him why he wanted to ban birth control. The look on his face was priceless when the question was posed. He was dumbstruck and confused. He says he supports birth control. But supporting the Personhood amendments floating through state legislatures would ban most forms of birth control. Rachel Maddow, on her MSNBC show last night, took Romney to her virtual man cave and explained the facts of life to him. Birth Control prevents fertilized eggs from implanting themselves into the uterine lining of a woman. If “personhood” starts at conception, birth control will be banned.  

Homework

Let Women Die Act

Maddow's Man Cave

No, this blog isn’t about any Weiner. It is about the growing war on women’s reproductive health. There is a movement to define “Personhood.” It even has its own group of activists: Personhood USA. The Personhood website claims that it is engaged in the most important civil rights struggle of our age. That would make defining Personhood more important than discrimination against minorities in education and the workplace; more important than equal pay for equal work; more important than equal rights regardless of sexual orientation. Hogwash.

But it sounds so benign—protecting the “preborn.” Their mission is to: “serve Jesus by being an Advocate for those who can not [sic] speak for themselves, the pre-born child. We serve by starting / coordinating efforts to establish legal ‘personhood’ for pre-born children through peaceful activism, legislative efforts and ballot-access petition initiatives.” Personhood USA is homegrown in Colorado—headquartered in the town where I went to junior high and high school—Arvada.

According to libertarian law professor Jonathan Turley, the real impact of the initiatives being promoted by Personhood USA would be to ban contraceptives. By defining life as beginning at the moment that a sperm cell is introduced to an egg, regardless of its implantation into the uterus, we enter a whole new level of sexual Puritanism. Only about half of all fertilized eggs actually result in a pregnancy, yet this definition of “Personhood” would make even unviable fertilized eggs persons. This goes way beyond trying to ban abortion; it would ban things like birth control pills and IUDs.

Ladies, forget about a career. If you engage in sex at all, you are going to be spending your life barefoot and pregnant because even your unviable fertilized eggs have more rights than you do. Forget about moving up the corporate ladder, you are stuck in poverty. And don’t expect any help with food for those kids. The Republican war on women includes eliminating any nutritional support for moms and kids. Maybe you can send the kids to the store to steal a loaf of bread, leading them into a life of crime. At least they’ll get three meals and a cot if they are behind bars.

Accroding to Sir Issac Newton’s third law of physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The reaction to Personhood USA is Ibis Reproductive Health. Their mission is : “to improve women’s reproductive autonomy, choices and health worldwide…by conducting original clinical and social science research, leveraging existing research, producing educational resources,  and promoting policies and practices that sexual and reproductive rights and health.”

Ibis Reproductive Health is predicting that the 2012 elections could depend on the reproductive health of women in America. Forget about ObamaCare, let’s give the fetus the right to vote. (Just in case you didn’t recognize it, that was sarcasm.)

Homework

Personhood USA

Jonathan Turley's Blog

Ibis Reproductive Health

My post yesterday elicited a response from my personal troll. He left a message that says, in part, “Why should the government be paying for abortions unless for the sole reason of population control? On top of that we get obamacare and now the government can kill off the elderly. Sick country we live in.”

Kevin King, you are absolutely wrong on so many levels that it makes my head spin.

First: Government does not pay for abortions, with limited exceptions for women who have been raped, are victims of incest, or when the woman might die without the procedure. Government has not paid for abortions since it was made illegal to do so. This isn’t about banning abortion; it is about making it impossible for American women to access both abortions and birth control, even if they pay for it themselves. What the bill passed by the House does is take away tax credits for companies who offer insurance to their employees if the insurance includes abortion as a covered procedure.

For people who claim to love and support the U.S. Constitution, the Tea Party seems to have a complete lack of respect for our body of laws. Abortion is a legal procedure in the U.S. Nobody is wild about willy-nilly use of abortion, and nobody considers U.S. policy to be focused on population control, except the lunatic fringe of the extreme right wing.

When a woman is raped, and becomes pregnant as a result of that rape, the lack of access to things like the morning after pill or abortion is making her a permanent victim. Her rapist may or may not be caught and tried. But without any consideration, that woman is sentenced to permanent victimhood. She endures at least nine months of physical stress, possibly followed by a lifetime of paying for a pregnancy that was not her choice, but was forced upon her. There is nothing about justice or freedom in that formula. There is nothing about justice or freedom in a nation that would force the victim of incest to suffer through a pregnancy that was not her choice, but was forced upon her. Sometimes I think that if a man could get pregnant, we wouldn’t see so much testosterone in health care debates.

Second, there is nothing in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that kills seniors. There is a lot in the Ryan proposal to destroy Medicare and Medicaid that does. For some reason, legislators are ignoring the fact that before Medicare and Medicaid, seniors couldn’t get insurance. Insurance companies, especially those with a profit motive, are betting that you will give them your money, but that you’ll never need their services. They have a sophisticated actuarial with one focus, how to pay the bare minimum, so that profit can be maximized. No actuarial has figured out how to get money from seniors and make a profit, because seniors get sick and die. Before there was Medicare, that’s what seniors did. Other than the extremely wealthy, old people had no option, because most of them couldn’t afford health care. The life expectancy of Americans went up because of Medicare and Medicaid, not in spite of it.

When I was running for office, I kept hearing that nobody has ever read the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Bullshit. I’m convinced that no Republican has ever read it, but I’ve read it, and lots and lots of medical professionals have read it. There is nothing in it about death panels. That idea came from Sarah Palin, who clearly never read the bill. The so-called death panels are not about restricting access to health care, they are about giving patients and their family useful information about the end of life process. Today doctors are not reimbursed for the time they spend at bedside talking about options and their impacts upon the patient’s quality of life. Having had many of those conferences last June, when my father was at the end of his life, I can tell you that it is some of the most important work that a doctor does. To call it a death panel is a bunch of bullshit dreamed up because the extreme right wing looks at everything as a political game. If the other side scores a point, the extreme right wing isn’t satisfied in putting up another point, they insist on taking the point off the scoreboard.

Life isn’t a game. Stop playing around with the health of women, children and seniors. Get your testosterone out of my health care and my government.  Kevin, I posted an annotated and highlighted copy of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act below. Read it before you post more nonsense at this site. You certainly seem bright enough, but you are not dealing with facts. You have been led astray by people who are playing a game instead of seriously looking to solve America’s problems. We need jobs, not more restrictions on freedom. This isn’t a game; it is a matter of life and death.

Homework:

ACLU Analysis of Abortion Funding

Highlighted and Annotated Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

American Life Expectancy

The Story of How Medicare Came to Be

I am so angry that I could scream. Yesterday the House voted on an anti-choice bill, and Tipton voted with the Republicans to redefine rape. Obama has threatened to veto this bill, and the Democrats in the Senate swear that it will never make it that far.

Let’s not take chances with women’s reproductive health. The following is text to a letter suggested by my telephone provider, CREDO. Put it into your own words and send it to Scott Tipton.  You can contact him here: https://tipton.house.gov/contact-me/email-me.

251 extremists in the House of Representatives voted to approve an anti-choice bill that would significantly restrict women's access to abortion services and even "redefine rape."

The Republican bill -- which was supported by a handful of male anti-choice Democrats -- represents a vicious assault on women's rights. "The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" or H.R. 3 goes far beyond any other anti-choice measure that has been proposed in the House, including the Stupak Amendment that passed the House last year. It's so extreme it will even redefine rape in order to limit the number of women who can receive abortion care.

We must let these politicians know that their constituents will not forget this vote.

Click on the link below for more information and a way to take action.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/hr3_vote/?r_by=20473-1930092-Goc7m7x&rc=paste1

Mike Pence, a Senator from Indiana has been attacking Planned Parenthood at least since 2007. Every year he tries to get all funding to the organization banned. This year is no different. He has written a bill to block Planned Parenthood, and only Planned Parenthood, from receiving any funding from Title X.

Title X is the only federal program that provides funding for family planning. Since 1976 there has been a federal ban on funding for abortions, with a few very limited exceptions. Because of that ban, Title X primarily funds access to birth control for low income families. There are approximately 4,500 community based clinics who receive Title X funding. Planned Parenthood operates many, but not all, of these clinics.

The government website for Title X says: “Title X-supported clinics provide a number of related preventive health services such as: patient education and counseling; breast and pelvic examinations; breast and cervical cancer screening according to nationally recognized standards of care; sexually transmitted disease (STD) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) prevention education, counseling, testing and referral; and pregnancy diagnosis and counseling. By law, Title X funds may not be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.”

Planned Parenthood receives about a third of all Title X funding, and performs about a fourth of all U.S. abortions. Planned Parenthood is nationally recognized as a source of information for members of both sexes who want to prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases or AIDS. The abortions provided in some locations are funded by individual donations to the organization. None of the money for abortion related serves comes from the Federal government, or from the State government in Colorado.

That doesn’t stop abortion foes from trying desperately to get rid of Planned Parenthood. For a long time I’ve said that banning abortion is a slippery slope leading to a ban on birth control. Young women rarely believe this because they have always lived in a world where a full range of reproductive health services are available. But, back in 1916, there was no “pill” and women could neither vote nor divorce. Margaret Sanger, decided to do something about that, and opened, in Brooklyn, the first birth control clinic in America. Later that clinic became part of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

This latest attack on Planned Parenthood includes a video making the rounds in right-wing internet circles. It is reminiscent of the video attack on ACORN—they both have prostitutes and pimps; they both are staged; they both are heavily edited; they both are false. ACORN lost their fight for survival. We can’t afford to let Planned Parenthood lose. Why not send a donation RIGHT NOW to your local chapter? When you are done with that, call your congressional representatives in Washington and tell them what you think about keeping a full range of reproductive health care available to all women. Maybe send a thank you note to Dianna DeGette for the work she is doing…

Homework

The War on Planned Parenthood

Denver's Diana DeGette Leads the Charge to Save Planned Parenthood

About Title X

Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Biography of Margaret Sanger

KJCT8 Covers Planned Parenthood

List of Local Centers & Services Provided

Planned Parenthood and ACORN videos

When Scott Tipton was recently in Grand Junction, he met with a group of Republican Women and bragged about voting to repeal the health insurance reform bill. They seemed to think it was a good idea, but I’ll bet that none of them had ever read the bill, let alone a good analysis of it.

This is personal for me. I am a diabetic, and in May will be forced to find my own insurance, as the insurance through my employer will run out. That’s a pre-existing condition. Insurance companies will no longer be able to refuse to insure me because I have diabetes. The State of Colorado is in the process of setting up insurance exchanges that were mandated by the health insurance reform bill. I’ll be able to shop for insurance on the exchange, where competition and a requirement that 80% of all premium dollars must go toward health care instead of administration and CEO bonuses.

If my mother weren’t on Medicare, it would be personal for her too. She is a breast cancer survivor who had a mastectomy years ago. Yesterday she was diagnosed, once again, with breast cancer in the other breast. Instead of a mastectomy, this time she’ll be getting a lumpectomy. Believe it or not, she was more distressed at the prospect of another mastectomy than she was at the “C” word. Technology has improved a lot since she last faced cancer. Her sister is a survivor of stage 4 breast cancer. She knows what to expect.

It should be personal for young women, too. Women used to have to pay more for insurance than men did, because it was presumed they would cost more through multiple pregnancies. Also Viagra was covered, but birth control was not. The health insurance reform bill makes it easier for women to access the reproductive health care they need. But the party of small government is still insisting that women should not have access to even private insurance that covers abortion. If a women gets pregnant, they want her to deliver a baby, regardless of her health, the health of the fetus, or the circumstances of conception. That is putting big government into the bedroom of every woman in America. You can’t be in favor of small government and be in favor of government intrusion into the most private decisions a woman makes. The two are mutually exclusive.

Homework

GOP Distortions About Health Care

Lymph Nodes & Breast Cancer

New Rules for Pre-Existing Conditions

Colorado Working on Insurance Exchanges

Abortion Debate in Washington DC

Health Care Reform and Birth Control