While they were destroying the economy, Republicans did not forget about their War on Women, so please don’t feel left behind, ladies.
Republicans sneaked a moral conscience provision in their defundy/delay ObamaCare measure passed on Sunday. That’s code for insurance doesn’t have to pay for your birth control, you “sluts”. This little doodad was slipped in during a House Rules Committee on Saturday evening. All of the Republican men who fathered children they have been denying also offered to pay back support.
Naturally, the National Organization for Women was “appalled” by the actions of House Republicans and called them out for playing hide and sneak with women’s health. Clearly, NOW operates in the past when women had “rights” and we trusted women to make their own decisions.
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In a press release issued Monday, NOW asked, “What about a woman’s conscience?”
This outrageous measure is an aggressive continuation of the Republicans’ War on Women. Republicans are playing “hide and sneak” as they attempt to enact birth control restrictions while hoping no one is paying attention. What the radical fringe that now controls the GOP hasn’t figured out yet is that women — including the 99 percent of sexually active women who have used birth control — are not so easily fooled. Women voters will hold them accountable for their continuing attacks on our access to basic reproductive healthcare.
No woman — no matter who she works for — should be denied health care as basic as contraception. Politicians who vote to restrict birth control will undoubtedly pay a price at the polls in 2014.
Here’s a clue, NOW: Republicans don’t think women are human beings (see their many attempts to compare us to barn animals), so therefore, in their mind, women do not have a conscience. Refer to your Binders Full of Women for clarification, and please stop raising silly points.
Never mind the fact that birth control reduces abortions and forget about your crippling endometriosis and fibroids, girls, or the fact that 1.5 million women rely on the birth control pill for exclusively non-contraceptive purposes. Republicans are against birth control because you look better in the kitchen.
In fact, a 2011 Guttmacher study found that “more than half (58%) of all pill users rely on the method, at least in part, for purposes other than pregnancy prevention—meaning that only 42% use the pill exclusively for contraceptive reasons.”
Remember when Republicans pledged that they wouldn’t stuff unpopular issues into must pass legislation? “Advance Legislative Issues One at a Time: We will end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with “must-pass” legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.”
Not so much.
So when Republicans refused to push back against conservative mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh when he called Sandra Fluke a “slut”, it wasn’t because they are weak, fear-driven children. It’s because secretly they agreed with him when he said:
“What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke [sic], who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute.”
The Republican idea is that birth control is directly related to sex and Republicans are generally against sex unless the person engaging in it is a male elected official having an affair or breaking the law (Sanford, Vitter). Republicans are also allegedly against abortions, and anyone who is not logic impaired can sort out the relationship between birth control and abortion (birth control was designed to prevent pregnancy, hence it’s name), but they are still against birth control because – – sex. Females having sex. Females making choices. UGH. Binders full of women having sex and not asking permission. Double UGH.
Never mind that pregnancy that almost killed you, this is all about slut shaming.
The War on Women is alive and well, patriots.
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