women’s health

(Update) the GOP’s ‘Planned’ government shutdown

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Republican leaders Senator Mitch McConnell and John Boehner speak after a bipartisan meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House in WashingtonThree of the four steps plotted by the GOP leadership in Congress to allow their caucus to cast meaningless show votes against abortion and defunding Planned Parenthood are now completed.

Last week House Tea-Publicans voted for the Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015, and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. The House earlier this year approved an unconstitutional 20-week abortion ban.

The Senate today took up the House Tea-Publican’s unconstitutional 20-week abortion ban, and it failed to get the 60 votes needed for cloture. Democrats block 20-week abortion ban :

Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked a Republican bill that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The measure failed to advance in a 54-42 vote, falling short of the 60-vote threshold needed.

Democratic Sens. Robert Casey, Jr. (Pa.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.), who all oppose abortion rights, joined Republicans in voting to advance the bill. Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Mark Kirk (Ill.), who support abortion rights, voted against it.

The vote comes amid a roiling debate over Planned Parenthood funding that could lead to a government shutdown on Oct. 1.

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(Update) The GOP’s ‘Planned’ government shutdown

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TrainCrashThere is a train wreck coming, and the GOP leadership in Congress is at a loss to know how to stop it.  Tea-Publicans are the anti-government party that has held the government hostage to their extortionate shutdown demands 11 previous times since taking back control of Congress. Steve Benen documents the impending government shutdown is the 12th time we’ve been through this just since April of 2011, and provides a helpful timeline of all the other 11 standoffs.

GOP leadership knows that the public will blame them for any government shutdown. House GOP leaders to members: We’ll be blamed for shutdown:

House GOP leaders are trying to convince their rank and file it would be a bad move to risk a government shutdown over blocking funding for Planned Parenthood.

At a closed-door conference meeting on Thursday morning, leadership presented their members with polling data from the House GOP’s campaign arm showing Republicans would be blamed for a government shutdown.

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GOP War on Women: Tea-Publicans vote to defund Planned Parenthood

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The GOP’s ” War on Women” is back with a vengeance today in Congress with the cause célèbre of defunding Planned Parenthood health services as a result of surreptitiously recorded undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group out to destroy Planned Parenthood.

This is a well planned and highly coordinated assault between the far-right coalition “Groundswell” and Republican leaders in Congress. Planned Parenthood Attacks Coordinated by High-Ranking Republican Operatives.

TalibanThis morning, the House approved the Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015 by a vote of 241-187, Roll Call Vote 505, with Republicans voting to defund Planned Parenthood, joined only by two Democrats who routinely vote with Republicans, Reps. Dan Lipinski (IL) and Collin Peterson (MN). Only three Republicans broke ranks to vote against the funding freeze: Reps. Charlie Dent (PA), Robert Dold (IL) and Richard Hanna (NY).

The House also approved the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a bill sponsored by Arizona Congressman and anti-abortion religious zealot Trent Franks, by a vote of 248- 177, Roll Call Vote 506, with five Democrats, Reps. Cartwright, Cuellar, Langevin, Lipinski, and Peterson voting with the Republicans.

The Hill reports, House votes to freeze federal funding for Planned Parenthood:

An official with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund ripped the vote as a “callous attempt to insert politics into women’s heath.”

“Millions of Americans rely on Planned Parenthood for birth control, lifesaving cancer screenings, and other critical preventive care, and nothing that politicians in Congress did today will change the fact that our doors remain open to everyone, in every part of this country, who needs high-quality, compassionate reproductive health care,” said Eric Ferrero, the action fund’s vice president of communications.

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Fact checking GOP lies about Planned Parenthood

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GOP 2016 DebateCarly Fiorina set off fact-check alarm bells during the CNN GOP presidential primary debate when she dared Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama to watch a surreptitiously recorded undercover video by the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group out to destroy Planned Parenthood. “Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain,” she said.

Factcheck.org found that the scene that Mrs. Fiorina urges others to watch is not present in any of the Planned Parenthood videos. Politifact called her statement “mostly false.” Sarah Kliff at Vox.com, who actually watched all 12 hours of footage and is in a position to know says Carly Fiorina is wrong about the Planned Parenthood tapes. I know because I watched them. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker says the same thing. Fact checking the second round of GOP debates: Fiorina might have trouble finding this video to show to Clinton. No video has surfaced showing the scene Fiorina describes taking place inside a Planned Parenthood facility.

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Contraception cases are likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court

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The Eight Circuit Court of Appeals today became the first Court of Appeals to accept the view that an employer who provides an employee health insurance plan has a “religious liberty” not to be “complicit” in providing birth control and contraception to its employees by the simple act of filling out a form for an exemption that allows the employer not to have to pay for it. This is about paperwork. Contraception opt-out violates religious freedom: US appeals court:

ProtestorsA U.S. appeals court has ruled that President Barack Obama’s healthcare law violates the rights of religiously affiliated employers by forcing them to help provide contraceptive coverage even though they do not have to pay for it.

Parting ways with all other appeals courts that have considered the issue, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis on Thursday issued a pair of decisions upholding orders by two lower courts barring the government from enforcing the law’s contraceptive provisions against a group of religiously affiliated employers.

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