COVID-19 & Healthcare

SCOTUS keeps injunction in place in Little Sisters until the 10th Circuit rules on the merits

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a temporary injunction on New Years' Eve in the case of Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius, to an objection by an order of Catholic nuns who minister to the elderly that they do not want to sign EBSA Form 700 claiming an exemption for a religious organization, which would allow their employee health insurance provider to provide contraception coverage under the ACA "contraception mandate" to their employees.

The Little Sisters' health plan administrator, Christian Brothers Employee Benefit Trust, also objected to the “contraceptive mandate” and said it would not incorporate it in the Little Sisters plan. Federal law exempts “church plans” from the ACA mandate, so there will be no contraception coverage in the health care plan.

The Little Sisters are objecting to completing paperwork.

The theory goes that even filing the EBSA Form 700 would make the Little Sisters a part of the scheme, and thus draw them into support for abortions or abortion-related services. (Somehow they equate contraception with abortion; not all contraception is an aborticide). It is an absolutist extreme position.

It is an extreme position not shared by American Catholics. Most American Catholics don’t consider birth control to be a threat to their religious belief. In fact, 82 percent of Catholics say contraception is “morally acceptable,” according to a Gallup poll from May 2012. Catholic support for birth control is a mere 8 points below the 90 percent of non-Catholic Americans who have no moral objections to birth control.

As usual, wingnuts don’t realize everyone else has the internet too

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Gaslight

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gaslighting is a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory, perception and sanity.[1] Instances may range simply from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.

The term "gaslighting" comes from the play Gas Light and its film adaptations. The term is now also used in clinical and research literature.

CAP’s latest assault on the constitutional right of privacy in health care decisions of Arizona women

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

TalibanOn the opening day of the Arizona Legislature this year, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Arizona's appeal from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals striking down the legislature's 20-week abortion ban as unconstitutional. The source of this anti-choice bill, Mullah Cathi Herrod and her Christian Taliban at the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), vowed to retaliate against Arizona women. Arizona cannot enforce abortion ban, Supreme Court rules:

Herrod signaled that her organization, which has been at the forefront of pushing lawmakers here to enact more restrictions on abortion, is not done yet.

"We are already taking the next steps to protect women and their pre-born children from the dangerous and deadly practices of the abortion industry," she said, promising details in the coming days.

One of CAP's foot soldiers in the Arizona Legislature, Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Peoria), is the sponsor of HB 2284 (.pdf) which would, among other provisions, allow for the Christian Taliban to make unannounced "inspections" of abortion clinics to harass and intimidate abortion service providers and their patients. The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports, Anti-abortion bill would permit unannounced inspections of clinics:

A Peoria lawmaker has introduced an anti-abortion bill that would allow health inspectors to examine clinics unannounced. The bill also would make it a crime to circumvent the state’s parental consent law.

The bill, HB 2284, introduced Thursday by Rep. Debbie Lesko, also requires abortion clinics to report whether an infant survived a procedure and what steps doctors took to save it.

The legislature’s attempt to defund Planned Parenthood before the U.S. Supreme Court

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

TalibanLast November the state of Arizona petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review of a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking down the Arizona legislature's attempt to defund Planned Parenthood of Arizona as a family planning service under Medicaid (AHCCCS) on the specious argument that it also separately provides for abortion services. Providing funding to the family planning services side of Planned Parenthood allegedly "indirectly" subsidizes the separately maintained and accounted for abortion services of Planned Parenthood.

State and federal law have long prohibited public funding of abortions, hence the separation of services and separate accounting by Planned Parenthood. Should the state of Arizona succeed on its specious claim, many areas of the state would lose family planning services because Planned Parenthood is the only provider in those areas. Planned Parenthood also provides wellness services for such things as cancer screening for cervical and breast cancers, and a host of other services. In effect, the Arizona legislature, at the behest of Mullah Cathi Herrod and her Christian Taliban at the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), would deny low income Arizona women access to basic health care and family planning services.

The case is Tom Betlach, Director, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, et al., v. Planned Parenthood Arizona, Inc., et al. (Docket 13-621). A responsive brief was due on January 21, 2014.

Rep. Goodlatte’s weird “abortion ban as jobs plan” comment was not made in a vacuum

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As AZBlueMeanie reported yesterday:

Apparenlty the NRCC forgot to school their male members of Congress that they should also not say stupid things in open committee hearings with C-Span cameras rolling.

You can't make this shit up. Congressman’s New Jobs Plan: Deny Women Access To Abortion So They Can Make More Babies:

During a debate over an anti-abortion bill currently advancing in Congress, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) suggested that Republicans support restricting access to abortion because it will ultimately benefit the economy if women have more children. Goodlatte noted that carrying pregnancies to term “very much promotes job creation.”

Goodlatte made the comments while presiding over a committee mark-up of the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act,” or HR 7, on Wednesday afternoon. That legislation would dramatically restrict women’s access to affordable abortion care by imposing restrictions on insurance coverage and tax credits for the procedure. Goodlatte, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, advanced HR 7 by scheduling it for a full committee mark-up on Wednesday.

Explaining his support for the measure, Goodlatte [said]:

“I would suggest that it is very much the case that those of us in the majority support this legislation because it is the morally right thing to do but it is also very very true that having a growing population and having new children brought into the world is not harmful to job creation,” he said. “It very much promotes job creation for all the care and services and so on that need to be provided by a lot of people to raise children.”

This is nothing new with anti-choicers, who have been obsessed with "low birth rates" for decades and are furiously peddling the panic in an obvious attempt to get the economic elites to support their policies. Given how much money right wing bigwigs like the Koch Bros. have pumped into the campaigns of anti-choice politicians and legislation, the strategy appears to be working at least somewhat. 

Now, if you have the reasoning and arithmetic skills of a five year old, it would seem absurd to think the human population, having gone from 1.5 billion worldwide in 1900 to over 7 billion now, is in the throes of precipitous demographic doom but that is exactly what anti-choicers would have you believe.

A sampling of the evidence: