contraception

The GOP’s ‘Planned’ government shutdown

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Our less-than-less-than-do-nothing Tea-Publican Congress has just a week of session days left to avoid a government shutdown on October 1. Here is the House Calendar for September (Congress is also scheduled to work on October 1 in anticipation of the fiscal deadline).

Screenshot from 2015-09-15 14:45:45

So what do Tea-Publicans plan to do with the few days that they are in session? Why, play to their far-right Tea-Publican base on Faux News, of course! Ahead of Planned Parenthood Battle, House to Vote on Abortion Bills:

As lawmakers return this week for some behind-the-scenes work on a continuing resolution — a measure that could be endangered by anti-abortion members insistent on defunding Planned Parenthood — House Republicans will put forward two bills to address the embattled group and potentially appease those conservatives.

The House is scheduled to vote on two abortion measures: one from Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., that would put a one-year moratorium on Planned Parenthood funding and one from Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., that would add criminal penalties for violating the Born Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002.

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Mutiny on the Boehner: Iran, Planned Parenthood, then government shutdown

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FreedomWorksPhase one of the Mutiny on the Boehner is now complete.

On Wednesday, the mutinous GOP House Freedom Caucus took Captain Queeg the TanMan hostage and forced him to pull the scheduled vote on the resolution of disapproval of the Iran agreement. They then forced the nominal Weeper of the House to accede to their hair-brained “Tortilla coast gambit” based on a debunked conspiracy theory about IAEA “secret side deals” with Iran. The GOP House Freedom Caucus ‘Tortilla Coast gambit’ to delay the Iran deal is a fraud.

On Thursday, the House voted on two resolutions claiming that the President had not given them all the information required to be reviewed by Congress under the Iran review law passed by Congress.  Not true: As Max Fischer wrote:

You can read, for yourself, the law that Congress passed articulating its authority to disapprove the Iran deal. Section 135 describes the congressional review period, and specifically articulates the documents that the Obama administration is required to give Congress. There is nothing in there about the text of IAEA safeguards agreements with Iran.

These two resolutions from the GOP’s Gimmicks-R-Us Shoppe were approved on a straight party-line vote without a single Democrat in support. Roll Call Vote 491 243-186 (straight party-line vote); Roll Call Vote 492 245-186 (straight party-line vote). This demonstrates that the TanMan is not in command of his mutinous ship.

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No, anti-choicers, there aren’t thousands of clinics that could easily replace Planned Parenthood

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

PlannedParenthoodIsCritical-HealthAffairs

As anti-choice activists continue to push the now-thoroughly discredited “Planned Parenthood sells baby parts!” story as a ruse to defund the organization and deprive millions of women of contraception and health screenings (since federal funds can’t be used on abortion), you will often hear them speak of “thousands of community health clinics” that are readily available to low income patients who currently use Planned Parenthood. This, it turns out, is a bunch of garbage (as is approximately 99.9% everything claimed by anti-choicers but mainstream news people continue to treat them as a credible movement for dog knows what reason). The Congressional Budget Office commissioned an analysis of health provider availability for women who need contraception and found that Planned Parenthood is a crucial provider of birth control to a large number of regions and the women who live in them, as the graph above illustrates.

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Anti-choicers are out to replace Planned Parenthood with “clinics” that don’t offer birth control

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

What Does Planned Parenthood Do?

A lot of very naive people hold a cherished illusion that the abortion debate can be solved through respectful dialog leading to a truce where the pro-choice side cedes ground on things like later term abortions and parental consent and the anti-abortion side agrees to stop opposing birth control and sex ed. This will lead to a glorious permanent state of first term abortion remaining legal while gradually fading away, as formerly irresponsible women (the trollops!) will have finally reined in their capricious behavior, upon realizing how serious a thing abortion is!

As I’ve exhaustively explained here too many times to count, the naive illusion ignores how those compromises on abortion are actually terrible and imperil real women* and how relentless the anti-choice movement is in its quest to return America to the legal climate of 1964, when it was still legal for states to ban birth control. Opponents to full reproductive rights of women are not interested in a compromise. They are interested in a solution. Theirs. And they are highly adept at exploiting how little average people know about how laws and public policies work, while expertly taking advantage every possible way to game the system in their favor. They have demonstrated this since 1976, when they convinced Congress to ban Medicaid funding of abortion (Hyde Amendment) on the absurd theory that taxpayers should not pay for abortions (as opposed to any other medical intervention). Subsequently, anti-choicers convinced sympathetic majorities in the Supreme Court to allow states to restrict abortion procedures on spurious medical grounds.

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Third Circuit latest Court of Appeals to rule in favor of access to contraception

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In a little reported decision by a panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals last week, the court upheld federal rules intended to ensure access to birth control Opinion (.pdf), over a claim by employers who objected to the “tweaked” rule after Hobby Lobby. Obama Administration Is Quietly Racking Up Court Victories For Birth Control, Despite Hobby Lobby:

ProtestorsThe Third Circuit became the fourth federal appeals court to reach a similar conclusion in a challenge brought by an employer who objects to some or all forms of birth control, despite concerns that the Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby would impede access to contraceptive care.

The Hobby Lobby opinion permitted an employer to ignore a version of the Obama Administration’s birth control rules, yet it also contained language suggesting that, with a slight tweak to those rules, access to contraceptive care could be restored.

The rule in Hobby Lobby required employers to cover contraception in their employer-provided health plan. The tweaked version of the rule only requires employers with religious objections to birth control to send a form or a letter to the federal government saying that they wish to invoke an exemption to the rule, and informing the government “which company administers their health-insurance plan.” Once this occurs, the employer is freed from its obligation to comply with the law, and the government works separately with the insurance administrator to ensure that the objecting employer’s workers receive contraceptive coverage.

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