The language of the bill stipulates that a woman would have to show her medical records to her employer in order to even be considered for contraceptive coverage. If a woman were using the pill for one of its intended purposes, an employer could choose to stop insuring her, citing “moral objections,” and the woman would have to pay out of pocket for her contraceptive expenses. If an employer finds that the woman has a medical reason to be taking contraceptives (this means the employer would learn of the woman’s ovarian cysts, early menopause, or any number of other medical issues), he can choose to insure her. But if the findings aren’t to his liking, the woman can be dropped.
IT’S HAPPENING EVERYWHERE: In Mississippi, the legislature is looking at legislation that would effectively close the only abortion clinic in the entire state. Kansas is supporting an anti-abortion measure that would cause the Kansas University Medical Center to lose its accreditation. Wisconsin has banned private health insurers from offering abortion coverage. In Idaho, a similar bill would force women to go to crisis pregnancy centers if they wanted an abortion. And Idaho also - along with nine other states - has passed a bill that requires women to have an ultrasound before an abortion.Contrary to GOP claims, the controversy surrounding health insurance coverage for contraceptives has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on religious freedom. Let us be perfectly clear what the U.S. Constitution states:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion …”
It means church leaders have NO RIGHT to impose church doctrine on citizens, on the followers of other denominations, on citizens of no religious affiliation, or to enlist the aid of government to enforce church doctrine even on their own parishioners. Please note: 97% of Catholic women use contraceptives - thus going against the teachings of their Church. In exercising their freedom to chose whatever healthcare options they deem best for themselves, women deserve legal protection from ecclesiastical overreach and abuse:
The religious freedom argument is a foil used by radical clerics
and social conservatives to bully government into acting as
Enforcer and Inquisitor on their behalf.
Simply stated, this argument represents a direct assault on the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution. Yet, the GOP, in pandering for votes, is all too ready and willing to sellout your rights to the Inquisition. Worst of all, the GOP wants to empower your employer with the right to pry into your medical records, your private affairs, and your bedroom in the name of religious freedom - and dictate what medical treatment can be prescribed by your doctor. Furthermore, the GOP wants to empower THE STATE to pry into your uterus with ultrasound probes - sanctioned by laws that are tantamount to sexual abuse.
Now let us consider the above quote within the context of this story, Moroccan Girl Forced to Marry Her Rapist Commits Suicide:
Amina, a 16-year-old girl from Larache in northern Morocco, who was forced to marry her rapist, chose to put an end to her life by swallowing rat poison last Saturday. According to al-Masa'a [ar], Amina was raped by a man ten years older than her when she was barely 15. And to preserve what is called “family honour”, Amina's marriage to her rapist, was arranged. A judge approved the marriage.
According to the same newspaper, Amina took the rat poison while she was in her husband's (rapist's) house. When he noticed that her health was deteriorating, he rushed her to her family's home. On the way he did not stop beating her, said Amina to her family, a few hours before her death.Meanwhile, the American Taliban - radical social conservatives aided and abetted by the Republican Party including former GOP candidate Michele Bachmann, and candidates Gingrich and Santorum - are determined to outlaw all forms of abortion with no exceptions for incest or rape. Only the moist heartless, despotic authoritarians - who stick their noses into everyone's business - find any merit in further victimizing victims by heaping more shame and pain upon them. In short, the GOP has morphed itself into a party of voyeurs, sadists, and born-again rapists.
Here is Bill Posey's voting record on issues of vital concern to women:
Voted AGAINST the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (HR-11)
Voted AGAINST extending the Children’s Health Insurance Program (HR-2)
Voted AGAINST food safety regulations (HR-2749)
Voted AGAINST expansion of anti-hate crimes bill (HR-1913)
Voted AGAINST the Infant Mortality Pilot Program (HR-3470)
Voted AGAINST Planned Parenthood (H-amdt-95)
Voted AGAINST stopgap disaster relief (HR-2608)
Voted YES to authorize the pre-abortion ultrasound requirement (HR-2400)
For years, Republicans have been hellbent on turning back the clock of civilization; turning back hard-won labor laws; turning back the struggles of Suffragettes; turning back civil rights and voting rights; turning an impoverished middle class into an underclass; and turning America yet again into a "half-savage country."
The headlines are grim. Darkness is descending on America … falling on hills, plains, and deserts; falling on farms, villages and cities; falling on the living and dishonoring the dead.
Yes, if they want war they'll get it - I'm not giving up my hard earned rights without a fight!
ReplyDelete"Darkness is descending on America … falling on hills, plains, and deserts; falling on farms, villages and cities; falling on the living and dishonoring the dead."
ReplyDeleteLiberties loss can come in many shapes, sizes and forms. Perhaps Professor Piekoff was right in stating America was trending towards fascism when he wrote his book "The Ominous Parallels."
While I do not approve of mandates, individual or otherwise you are quite correct Octo, this has nothing to do with "Religious Freedom." It has much to do with control by those in the 'socon' movement. It is frightening, STATIST in the worst sense, and dangerous.
I read recently of an Armenian woman forced to marry her Turkish rapist at age 15. That was 100 years ago.
ReplyDeleteI think this has everything to do with religion and if there is any religion as much obsessed with sex; as afraid of sex and terrified of women as Islam, it's Christianity. And yet we liberals often seem to me to be all about keeping the public as helpless and dependent on the kindness of strangers as possible. Old Jimmuh Carter had the guts to tell the Southern Baptists to take a flying leap -- what about the rest of us? Think this would continue for long if women cooperated in putting a stop to it rather than going to church picnics with Bubba and the kids?
But it's all good news, isn't it? You don't win elections by infuriating half the population -- unless of course, we timorous and pewling 'progressives' stay home and don't vote -- as usual.
And trending toward fascism? You betcha!
As I witness these outrages against women my feelings range anywhere from panic to depression. I truly don't know what to make of this legislation coming from various GOP controlled state houses.
ReplyDeleteI have my suspicions on what is behind this. But I do not want to share right now what those suspicions are, because I need to find out more.
One blog I often read is "Angry Black Lady Chronicles" and one of the writers, Emily Hauser, does a better job of expressing my outrage:
"There is a purely incandescent rage that comes over me now on a nearly daily basis over the blatant dehumanization of women that is currently sweeping the nation. It is exhausting. It is heart breaking. It is spirit crushing. And there’s nothing to be done but to continue to feel it, because I refuse to stop fighting for my right, my daughter’s right, my mother’s right, my sister’s right — the inalienable right of all women everywhere — to human dignity.
But every once and a while, a particularly galling aspect of the GOP’s War on Women floats to the top of the filth, and I am gobsmacked anew. And today it is as simple as this: Women do not reproduce on their own.
If the Republican Party is so anxious to control women’s sexuality (and it clearly is), it had better start shaming men, too.
That is, unless its representatives are willing to argue that men are constitutionally incapable of not sticking their junk into the nearest available lady bits, and we gals have all the power.
I, for one, have too much respect for men to buy that."
This is not just a problem for women, as we surely know, but our partners, husbands, fathers, brothers and all males are affected by what the GOP is trying to do.
We cannot allow them to do this to us!
My Dear O (family should have nicknames for one another), I think that you cover all the bases quite well. It is a war and it has been ongoing. Sometime ago as some of us debated the significance of sexism and whether it continued to play a major role in modern America, for me it was about these undercurrents that have lingered just below the surface in spite of the advances of feminism have now raised up full force,fathered by GOP efforts to gain control and support for its platform of "defeat Obama at all costs."
ReplyDeleteThe ugly not so secret truth are that this misogyny appeals to a significant segment of the American people. Legislatures are indeed going to absurd lengths to return women to second class citizenship status They believe that women are incapable of making our own decisions about how to est use our wombs. The hubris in such positions inspires a slow smoldering violence in the so called gentler sex that I both fear and anticipate the chaos that will ensue when the dam breaks.
Rachel Maddow did an excellent job covering the individual states where anti-women legislation has passed or is being proposed. Watching this segment makes one believe we've regressed 50 years as a modern civilization.
ReplyDeleteOcto and All,
ReplyDeleteNow, if there's anything a simple dino understands, it's the creative power of IGNORANCE. 'Tis a force in the world to be reckoned with. The anti-female onslaught we are witnessing is the product of this very quality: see, if my religion commands me to use the courts and the legislature to impose my irrational, misogynistic beliefs on you and you try to prevent me from doing that, you're allied with that Kenyan atheist Muslim liberal tyrant illegally occupying the White House. Yessiree, that's the only explanation for your disrespectful intransigence….
What's surprising to so many of us about this whole affair, I think, is that basic reproductive rights and the relationship between church and state in the USA seemed to have been settled doctrine since way back when. We reckoned that we didn't have to re-debate "issues" such as the constitutional and civic need to grant someone, say, a special exemption from all legal liability if his religion commands him as a driver never to stop at stop lights and always to drive drunk and at least 65 miles per hour in residential areas. What's the real difference between such a religious professor and some degenerate moron who believes an abused fifteen-year-old girl should be forced to bear her incestuous rapist's child and then taught some creationism if she betakes her shattered self back to the local public school?
Nothing better illustrates the barbarism of the anti-female crusaders than the Republican governor who recently responded to a press question about an ultrasound bill that if a woman doesn't want to look at the image set before her, she can just close her eyes. That sounds to me like a rank confession that the basis of any such law isn't compassion, it's PUNISHMENT: we are going to do this to you even if we know you won't look at the ultrasound monitor and therefore won't be moved to change your mind. That leaves the ultrasound law promoters' sadistic satisfaction in your discomfort as the only plausible motive.
Obviously God doesn't do enough punishing to please these self-pitying idiots, his arms being to short to reach the ground, so it's our job to do it for him. If it feels good, after all, it must be evil and in fact unless it's miserable, it's sinful. Don't forget we're here to suffer so that God can sort us out.
ReplyDeleteWill the real majority please stop camping out in the park, beating bongo drums and vote? We don't have to put up with this and it's nobody's fault but the lazy, self-involved, too busy to vote liberals who ain't gonna vote for Obama because (your pet peeve here.)
In my comment above, I mentioned my suspicions around why we suddenly find ourselves in a controversy, via Rick Santorum, over birth control, contraception coverage, pornography, and gay marriage.
ReplyDeleteI didn't want to offend anyone by naming my suspicions, but here's part of a lengthy piece from daily kos that confirms what I've been thinking:
“What give Opus Dei its importance is the influence it wields and also that it deploys its immense financial resources…Opus Dei knows very well that money rules the world and that religious hegemony of a country or a continent is dependent upon obtaining financial hegemony.” Hutchison quotes Javier Sainz Moreno, professor of Law at Madrid University. (pp 261-262)
The New York Times ran an article titled “Bishops Were Prepared for Battle Over Birth Control” on February 9. “Seven months earlier, [the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops] had started laying the groundwork for a major new campaign to combat what they saw as the growing threat to religious liberty, including the legalization of same-sex marriage. But the birth control mandate, issued on Jan. 20, was their Pearl Harbor,” wrote the excellent religion correspondent, Laurie Goodstein. An accurate description of the battle, but the strategy for war, according to a New York Times Magazine article published in December 2009, had already been formulated the previous September when “about 60 prominent Christians assembled in the library of the Metropolitan Club on the east side of Central Park.” Attendees included “more than half a dozen of this country’s most influential Roman Catholic bishops….At the center of the event was Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a Roman Catholic who is this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker.” The professor is also closely associated with Opus Dei.
The Times Magazine article continues: “As a starting point, George had drafted a 4,700-word manifesto that promised resistance to the point of civil disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same-sex marriage.” It’s obvious, therefore, why it was essential for the bishops to link contraception and abortion by declaring that birth control and morning-after pills are “abortifacients” - a “truthiness” now carried forth by the Religious Right without question by GOP voters as to why this seemingly eternal verite had never been preached to them before as similarly the evils of abortion had never been a political campaign issue for them until 30 years ago."
Shaw - I have periodically run into the Opus Dei in print and conversation over the years. I am not surprised to see speculation that they are involved in the War Against Women. This certainly has their fingerprints all over it. This country is ready to explode and there seems to be so many players who want to participate in pushing her over the edge. Rather disgusting really and how bitterly ironic that they refuse to see the correlation between what they are doing and what Islamic countries they so love to vilify are doing. No difference at all really.
ReplyDeleteShaw and All,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the link. My comment will focus on this quotation from Robert George:
”In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded [my bold].”
The words ‘projection,’ ‘false consensus’ and ‘availability heuristic’ come to mind. Let me define:
Projection - an emotional defense mechanism that removes bad deeds, emotions or motives from oneself and falsely attributes them to another person. Projection is a commonly used propaganda technique that denies bad motives in oneself and ‘assigns’ them to imagined enemies.
False consensus - the tendency to vastly overestimate the degree to which our behavior, attitudes, and beliefs are shared by others. ‘Complementary projection’ assumes that others think and feel the way you do.
Availability heuristic - the tendency to base our judgements within a narrow frame of reference, rather than on complete data. IOW, you think only as your friends think, and have no knowledge or experience beyond your immediate circle.
(continued)
I offer these definitions to put Robert George’s words into perspective. He accuses others of violating his ‘freedom of religion;’ yet he is all too willing to impose church teachings on an entire population and thus deprive others of their freedom to chose. In essence, he says, since the church forbids abortion or contraception, THE STATE shall limit access to all citizens regardless of what any citizen believes. His phrase ‘common welfare’ connotes a false consensus based on the false assumption that everyone agrees with him (although 97% of Catholic women of childbearing age use some form of contraception). Finally, his phrase ‘regardless of his or her faith‘ demonstrates a fallacy of the availability heuristic, since he obviously does not exchange views with Unitarians, Reform Jews, or the liberal wing of various Protestant denominations. This is why I said in the above post:
ReplyDeleteThe religious freedom argument is a foil used by radical clerics and social conservatives to bully government into acting as Enforcer on their behalf.
None of these so-called mandates force any woman to chose contraception in violation of church teachings. Gay rights does not force any church to perform a gay marriage ceremony. Parishioners are free to chose according to their conscience and/or needs; and the government has no business acting as Enforcer or Inquisitor on behalf of any denomination.
The defense mechanisms (projection, false consensus, and availability heuristic) are not just propaganda tools but also logical fallacies wielded for purposes of propaganda, and no one wields these better than the Reichstag wing.
I suspect the recent pedophile scandals are lurking somewhere behind these controversies - a least in the minds of church leaders. In covering up these abuses and violating the trust of parishioners, church leaders have been accused of losing all moral high ground. In response, it seems the Vatican has shown its primordial mean streak in trying to reassert church authority, a mean streak that disrespects our Constitutional tradition that separates church and state.
Shaw,
ReplyDeleteInteresting -- the initiatives that have been passed and proposed are just about the most blatantly sexist things I've ever heard. I think any Republicans who support that kind of rubbish are going to run into a voter backlash the likes of which they can hardly imagine. Lots of voters may have short attention spans, but this stuff is so jaw-dropping that it's impossible to forget in only half a year or so.
To pick up where I left off earlier, this story made headlines last summer when the Prime Minister of Ireland criticized the Vatican for putting church law above state law in covering up the pedophilia child abuse scandals.
ReplyDelete"The Cloyne Report [the 426 page document detailing how bishops ignored child protection guidelines mandated by civil authorities] excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism -- that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day [my bold]. The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation,” spoke Prime Minister Kenny on the moral failings of the Church.
In response, the Vatican recalled its envoy to Ireland. What is increasingly clear is that the church is determined to preserve its institutional power and authority and has repeatedly suppressed truth – even to the extent of putting children at further risk. The loss of moral authority is only part of the story. Financial ruin due to compensation claims is another - as the archdiocese of Boston well knows. That is why, in my opinion, the Church is redoubling efforts to reestablish authority … by throwing women under the bus under a bogus claim of religious oppression. It is an especially nasty “Hail Mary” pass when you are about to lose the game.