COVID-19 & Healthcare

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:

Dueling dipshits in the House battle for CD 1

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie: There's nothing like a self-involved legislator who wants to abuse the legislative body in which he serves for his own personal gain, especially when he is squaring off against another member of that legislative body for the same contested seat. The Arizona Capitol Times (subcription required) reports that Rep. Adam Kwasman (R-Oro … Read more

The GOP has a jobs bill: keep the womenfolk barefoot and pregnant!

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Back in early December, POLITICO Tiger Beat on The Potomac reported that "The National Republican Congressional Committee wants to make sure there are no Todd Akin-style gaffes next year, so it’s meeting with top aides of sitting Republicans to teach them what to say — or not to say — on the trail, especially when their boss is running against a woman." GOP men tutored in running against women.

The idea was so comical that Gary Trudeau featured it in his Doonesbury comic strip in December.

Doonesbury

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.”

Bad AP reporting on ‘ObamaCare’ in our local media

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Our sad small-town newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, continues to publish every AP (All Propaganda) "Obamascare" story that comes across the wire as filler in its newspaper. For example, the recent Health care website frustrates Spanish speakers. (Even the Washington Post's Ezra Klein was duped).

The editors do not vet these AP reports for accuracy. It turns out this "Obamascare" story was inaccurate. Ferando Espuelas disects the AP's misreporting at The Hill. AP wrongly says ObamaCare site written in Spanglish:

Spanish was my first language. And while I cannot compete with the august members of the Royal Spanish Academy of language in Madrid, I can tell the difference between proper Spanish and pidgin Spanglish. One would hope that respected news sources like the Associated Press and The Washington Post would have at least one person on staff who can actually read the world's second-most spoken language.

Yes, and you would think that a newspaper in the City of Tucson with a large Hispanic population, and presumably some Spanish-speaking employees, would have vetted this story for accuracy as well.

But I digress.