Civil & Human Rights

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Last week, the Tea-Publican Arizona legislature took up the "Baby Blunt Amendment" that doubled-down on crazy, permitting employers to terminate contraception users on "religious or moral objections" to their private life Arizona Senate Committee Endorses 'Tell Your Boss Why You're On The Pill' Bill.  

Former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona wrote this opinion in response. Richard H. Carmona, M.D.: Arizona Effort to Block Contraception Simply Bad Health Policy:

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.

The legislature's recent actions actively create problems rather than trying to solve them. And, at best, they are wasting our time.

Whenever I've had to make a major decision as a doctor, cop or for a company I've worked for, I ask myself: What is the value proposition here? Will my decision bring added value to the population I have the privilege to serve?

These questions are clearly not being considered by the folks I like to call the "chronic politicians" at our state capitol and in Washington.

We have real problems here in Arizona, and there are reasonable and politically possible solutions to them. But it's pretty clear that solving problems isn't what these politicians hope to do. Instead, they seem intent on scoring political points rather than solving the problem.

Trying to block women from getting access to contraception or defunding Planned Parenthood is completely nonsensical from a policy standpoint. As the 17th Surgeon General of the United States, I can say without hesitation that these bills would be bad for public health and deleterious to the health of women.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

There was the threat to shut down the federal government over a Tea-Publican plan to defund Planned Parenthood. There was the Susan G. Komen Fund attempt to defund Planned Parenthood. There is a similar bill to defund Planned Parenthood in the Tea-Publican Arizona legislature.

There was the "Blunt Amendment" that by which Tea-Publicans sought to give employers preferential status to determine the health care coverage of individual employees, in particular contraception coverage for women. There is a similar bill in the Arizona Tea-Publican legislature that has passed the Senate.

Just how radically extreme is this GOP war on women? A Bloomberg poll out today holds the answer. Republicans Losing on Birth Control as 77% in Poll Spurn Debate – Bloomberg:

Americans overwhelmingly regard the debate over President Barack Obama’s policy on employer-provided contraceptive coverage as a matter of women’s health, not religious freedom, rejecting Republicans’ rationale for opposing the rule. More than three-quarters say the topic shouldn’t even be a part of the U.S. political debate.

More than six in 10 respondents to a Bloomberg National Poll — including almost 70 percent of women — say the issue involves health care and access to birth control, according to the survey taken March 8-11.

* * *

The results suggest the Republican candidates’ focus on contraception is out of sync with the U.S. public. Seventy-seven percent of poll respondents say birth control shouldn’t be a topic of the political debate, while 20 percent say it should.

As for Rush Limbaugh’s misogynistic comments about Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, "men are split over whether the radio host should be let go from his job — 49 percent say so, while 47 percent disagree. Fifty-six percent of women support the move compared with 39 percent who don’t. Almost one in three Republicans, 30 percent, say Limbaugh should be fired for the remarks."

In a press release from the Arizona Democratic Party today, Interim Chair Harriet Young had this to say:

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Arizona Tea-Publican legislature is one step closer to reducing women to second-class citizens who are property of the state by stripping women of their Constitutional rights and liberties in Arizona. Birth-control-exclusion bill goes to AZ Senate:

A Senate panel voted Monday to let employers with religious or moral objections refuse to include contraceptive coverage in their health insurance plans for their workers.

HB 2625 would repeal a decade-old mandate that says companies that provide coverage must also include contraceptives. Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, said the move is necessary to protect freedom.

The measure already has been approved by the House, meaning it needs only approval by the full Senate before going to the governor.

"I believe that we live in America. We don't live in the Soviet Union," Lesko said. "And so government shouldn't be telling employers, Catholic organizations or mom-and-pop employers to do something that's against their moral beliefs."

Wow. This Lesko is seriously whack. She has a different definition of "freedom" than everyone else. And the Soviet Union? Please. This is the most authoritarian piece of legislation yet from the Tea-Publicans.

What Lesko is really saying is that Constitutional rights and liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are not shared by all Americans equally, but are ranked according to classes of individuals, including the legal fiction of corporations ("corporations are people too, my friend"), who enjoy a preferential legal status over lower-ranked classes of individuals.

This is the only possible explanation for why employers (including corporations, many of them multi-nationals) and insurance companies should enjoy a preferential legal status to make health care decisions for American women, rather than American women enjoy the individual "freedom" to make health care decisions for themselves in consulation with their physician:

Class 1

Corporations, Partnerships, Nonprofit Organizations, Trusts, Sole Proprietorships

Class 2

Males (preferably White)

Class 3

Fertilized human eggs, zygotes, fetuses

Class 4

Females*

* Constitutional rights and liberties subject to and limited by the preferential status granted by the state of Arizona to higher ranked classes. Voidable upon the occurrence of pregnancy.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Did you know that March is Women's History Month?

The GOP decided to celebrate Women's History Month by shifting its war on women into high gear this week, and take women back to the dark ages when women were chattel property of their husbands or families, second class citizens who do not possess full constitutional rights and liberties, and their uterus is the property of the state — their sex lives and reproductive health subject to stringent government regulation by men in government and religious institutions. We have moved one step closer to the dystopian world of The Handmaid's Tale. (h/t graphic Daily Kos).

Earlier this week the main anti-abortion bill of the Christian Taliban aka Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), which did not have enough votes to get out of the committee to which it was assigned in the House, was pasted into an unrelated bill on the Attorney Gneneral's Office  in a "strike everything amendment" by CAP's point man woman Rep. Kimberly Yee (R-Phoenix) in the Senate Judiciary Committee and — surprise! — the bill passed the committee and moves to the full Senate. Sweeping abortion bill advancing in Senate – Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required):