Posted by AzBlueMeanie: In all the kvetching by conservative media villagers and Beltway bloviators over Hillary Rosen's poor word choice, this statement from Ann Romney appears to have slipped by their selective attention. Ann Romney: "My Career Choice was to be a Mother" (Romney Press Release): "My career choice was to be a mother. And … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
In addition to the "Baby Blunt" contraception bill I posted about yesterday, the Arizona Senate gave preliminary approval Thursday to a bill that would defund Planned Parenthood, HB 2800. Bill on abortion funding advances in Senate:
The state Senate gave preliminary approval Thursday to a bill that would prohibit public money intended for family-planning services from going to organizations that provide abortions.
Opponents called House Bill 2800 a thinly veiled swipe at Planned Parenthood that would curtail access to health-care services such as breast exams and testing for sexually transmitted diseases, particularly for Medicaid recipients.
"All they're going to do is alienate 70 percent of the population, and that's not just women but it's men as well," Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Tucson, said.
The Senate Committee of the Whole recommended the bill for approval, setting up a vote by the full chamber that would send it back to the House.
Let's hear from one of the "intellectual lights" of the Arizona Senate, Cap'n Al Melvin:
"If this organization Planned Parenthood would get out of the abortion business then this controversy might go away, but it's morally and ethically wrong to expect taxpayers in the United States to pay for abortions," said Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, who signed on as a co-sponsor.
The assumptions contained in this ignorant statement from Cap'n Al Melvin are FALSE. The federal Hyde Amendment banning federal funds for abortions has been in place since 1976. Arizona law already bars the state from using any public funds for abortions except when a woman's life is in danger. Public money may also not be used to pay for a health insurance that provides for abortion services. Not one effin' dime of government money goes to elective abortion services. And yet this LIE persists.
Planned Parenthood does a painstaking job of bookkeeping to keep funds received for women's healthcare services segregated from the funds it receives from donors to provide safe and legal abortions, which accounts for less than 3 percent of its services. Planned Parenthood does this painstaking bookkeeping in the event of an audit of its books from the likes of Arizona legislators.
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Bad bills are never really dead until sine die. Political chicanery through back room deals and "strike everything" amendments allows bad bills that are dead to return to life. That is what happened today. The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports Senate OKs bill to allow employers to deny contraception coverage; but … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The GOP war on women returns today in the Arizona Tea-Publican legislature.
First, the bad news. The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports Bill banning abortions after 20 weeks sent to Brewer – Arizona Capitol Times. It is actually less than 20 weeks, based on how the bill calculates time from the menstruation cycle, making Arizona one of the most restrictive states for a safe, legal abortion.
The House’s vote of 37-22 on Tuesday sends the bill to Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican who has signed previous anti-abortion legislation.
Besides the 20-week ban, the bill’s other requirements include mandating the state establish a web site with images of fetuses at various stages of development for women to view.
The 20-week abortion ban would affect only a tiny percentage of abortions performed in Arizona.
The state would join six other states that have similar bans.
Now the good news, at least for today. It appears bill sponsors cannot convince two Tea-Publicans to switch their votes following the defeat of the "baby Blunt" bill last week that would allow any employer to object to a health insurance plan providing coverage for female contraception based on religious or moral objections.
by Pamela Powers Hannley
No longer just a punchline from Blazing Saddles— "Where are all the women at?" became a rallying cry for feminists across the country when a male-dominated Congressional committee refused to allow women to testify about insurance coverage for birth control.
Two Congresswomen– Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Holmes (D-DC)–walked out of the committee hearings because no women were included in the list of wittnesses dominated by male religious leaders. Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif) made the now-infamous decision to block Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke from testifying and labeled her an "inappropriate" wittness.
That fateful day in February, the Republican Party's latest barrage in the War on Women unfolded.
What began as political grandstanding on contraception coverage in the Affordable Care Act, snowballed into dozens of invasive, crackpot bills proposed by Republican Legislatures across the country. Requiring women to submit to (and pay for) vaginal ultrasound examinations prior to having an abortion, requiring women to watch an abortion before having one, giving employers the right to deny insurance coverage for contraception based upon any vague "moral" grounds, giving employers the right to question female employees about their contraception usage, defunding Planned Parenthood and other organizations that perform abortions… the list goes on.
Couple these bills with the Bible-thumping piety from all of the Republican Presidential candidates, most notably Rick Santorum, and you have a bare-knuckle fist fight over women's health, contraception, and choice.
Two months into this latest round in the War on Women, the Republican attack on the country's largest voting block has resulted in an 18-point lead by President Obama among women voters. Obama leads R2publican challenger Mitt Romney 2:1 with women under 50.
On the local level, Republican candidates for CD8 (former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' district) have all jumped on the anti-woman bandwagon–ironically, even Martha McSally. In a recent Arizona Public Media televised debate, candidates Frank Antenori, Jesse Kelly, Dave Sitton, and McSally all agreed that contraception should not be covered by insurance, that a fetus' life sacred (unlike the lives of people they would bomb), and that women don't have the right to choose. Senatorial candidate, right-to-lifer, and current Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake–a hardened Teapublican–voted for the Blunt Ammendment which would have vastly expanded conscience exemptions to birth control coverage.
As for the Democrats, Senatorial candidate and former Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona has been the most outspoken critic of the Republcan's wrongheaded fight against women's health. In a commentary on the Huffington Post, Carmona wrote, "A recent push to block women from getting access to contraception shows the Arizona legislature is not operating from an evidence-based or reality-based point of view."
Congressman Raul Grijalva and Phoenix-area State Senator and Congressional candidate Kyrsten Sinema also have made strong statements, attacking the Republicans' War on Women.
In my opinion, the political upshot of the War on Women will be a rebirth of the feminist movement. You can see it on facebook and Twitter; social media has fueled the outrage. Prime examples are the backlash against Rush Limbaugh for his slutty comments about Fluke (and resultant loss of advertisers) and the flood of bad publicity targeting the Komen Foundation when it tried to defund Planned Parenthood (and the resultant fundraising loss to Koman and boon to PP).
You can also see it in the nationwide Unite Against the War on Women movement, which is organizing women and protest marches across the country on April 28– including a march in Phoenix. Although the Republicans wanted to frame the anti-abortion and anti-contraception debate as a fight for religious freedom, it is all too obvious a continuation of their long-standing War on Women. They can't put this genie back in the bottle.