Category: war on women

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Politics war on women

A Republican Representative Stands Up – His Letter Supporting Women’s Choice

I know! This is hard to believe! A Republican Representative supporting a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body? Are you for real?

Yes, this is real. Rep. Doug Cox (R-OK), who is also a Physician, has had enough of the Republican’s War on Women and he is standing up to defend these women against the onslaught from his fellow Republicans and their cavemen mentality. Cox shared his displeasure with the Republican’s war on women in a letter to The Oklahoman.

All of the new Oklahoma laws aimed at limiting abortion and contraception are great for the Republican family that lives in a gingerbread house with a two-car garage, two planned kids and a dog. In the real world, they are less than perfect.

As a practicing physician (who never has or will perform an abortion), I deal with the real world. In the real world, 15- and 16-year-olds get pregnant (sadly, 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds do also). In the real world, 62 percent of women ages 20 to 24 who give birth are unmarried. And in the world I work and live in, an unplanned pregnancy can throw up a real roadblock on a woman’s path to escaping the shackles of poverty.

Yet I cannot convince my Republican colleagues that one of the best ways to eliminate abortions is to ensure access to contraception. A recent attempt by my fellow lawmakers to prevent Medicaid dollars from covering the “morning after” pill is a case in point. Denying access to this important contraceptive is a sure way to increase legal and back-alley abortions. Moreover, such a law would discriminate against low-income women who depend on Medicaid for their health care.

Is my thinking too clouded by my experiences in the real world? Experiences like having a preacher, in the privacy of an exam room say, “Doc, you have heard me preach against abortion but now my 15-year-old daughter is pregnant, where can I send her?” Or maybe it was that 17-year-old foreign exchange student who said, “I really made a mistake last night. Can you prescribe a morning-after pill for me? If I return to my home country pregnant, life as I know it will be over.”

What happened to the Republican Party that felt that the government has no business being in an exam room, standing between me and my patient? Where did the party go that felt some decisions in a woman’s life should be made not by legislators and government, but rather by the women, her conscience, her doctor and her God?

Those are some powerful questions to ask any supporting member of the GOP. Cox has been known for speaking his mind about his party’s policies that perpetuate back-alley abortions. He is a recent winner of Planned Parenthood’s Barry Goldwater Award. Cox also proposed that his views aren’t so ostracized by Republicans in private.

“I have people who tell me they feel the way I do, but are afraid to vote the way I do,” he said.

I wonder how much longer Rep. Cox will be able to call himself a Republican. Expect him to receive a swift scolding from the Republican leaders, followed by a revocation of his Republican card.

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Abortions contraceptives Politics Republican war on women

This is how you stop the Republican #WarOnWomen

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Abortions Featured new mexico war on women

New Republican Bill – Rape Victims Having Abortions are “Tampering With Evidence”

Cathrynn Brown
Cathrynn Brown

This bill is being pushed in New Mexico by… guess who… a Republican! She wants to throw rape victims in jail for aborting a pregnancy due to rape. That’s right, if this bill goes through, the victim of a rape would then go to jail if she aborts the rapist’s seed!

We have seen multiple attemps by Republicans to exert FREEDOM on the bodies of women by telling them what they can and cannot do with their own body. This FREEDOM was on full display during the 2012 elections when contraceptives, rape and abortions played a major role in the voting booths. Americans spoke up loud and clear by voting for candidates with more progressive ideas on the rights of women over their own bodies, but like everything else, Republicans fail to accept the results of the election.

Huffington Post reports that House Bill 206, introduced by state Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R), would charge a rape victim who ended her pregnancy with a third-degree felony for “tampering with evidence.”

“Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime,” the bill says.

Third-degree felonies in New Mexico carry a sentence of up to three years in prison.

We are now back to their War on Women. Time to dust off the hashtag #WarOnWomen!

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Planned Parenthood Politics war on women

Ohio Senator Nina Turner To GOP – Get Out Of My Panties

Republicans just lost the presidential election partly because of their very public war against women. You would think that this loss would have been a wake up call to these Republicans to stay out of women’s private decision making regarding their own health decisions, but no, not these Republicans. A week after the American people overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama, Republicans went to Ohio to continue their War.

Their latest attack on women would ravish Planned Parenthood in Ohio, taking away some $2 million federal dollars from the organization. In a response to these attacks, Democratic Ohio state Senator Nina Turner came to a press conference prepared. She wore a t-shirt with one simple message for the Republicans – Get Out Of My Panties – another meaning for the acronym GOP.

During the Tuesday press conference, Stephanie Knight, Ohio CEO of Planned Parenthood, echoed the message emblazoned on Turner’s shirt, saying in part that the state ‘does not want to turn the clock backward and hand over to politicians the personal medical decisions that belong to a woman.’

Huffington Post reported that Turner, who made headlines earlier this year after introducing a protest legislation that would restrict men’s ability to get prescriptions for Viagra, said that her fellow lawmakers across the aisle need to ‘get a grip.’

‘We are not going back to the dark ages. We are not going to suppress our voice or our choice. And we are not going to forget,’ she warned, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

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Featured Paul Ryan Rape war on women

The Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Todd Akin Connection

The Republicans would love for you to believe that what Todd Akin said was just something that happened in his brief moment of  insanity. That Todd had a moment, a very bad and unfortunate moment.

But a quick check of the Congressional voting record of other Republicans found that Mr. Legitimate Rape’s comment was not only accepted by the Republican base, Congressional Republicans like Paul Ryan even tried to create laws based on Akin’s belief.

In fact, over the past decade in Congress, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has co-sponsored 32 abortion-related bills that Akin has also sponsored or co-sponsored. Here are a few anti-choice bills that both Akin and Cantor supported:

HR 3: The 2011 No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, first introduced in 2011, included language about “forcible rape” in its early versions that set a dangerous precedent for Republican attempts to narrow the definition of “legitimate” forms of sexual assault.

HR 5276: The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act of 2010 would require doctors to describe “the pain experienced by the unborn child” to women seeking an abortion.

HR 649: The 2009 Ultrasound Informed Consent Act sought to force women to look at an ultrasound of their fetus before being allowed to continue with their decision to have an abortion.

HR 2752: Akin was the primary sponsor of the Parents Right to Know Act of 2009, which sought to strip funding for health clinics like Planned Parenthood that provide FDA-approved contraceptives to minors without first obtaining parental consent.

Akin’s anti-abortions views are not, in fact, too radical for the top Republican in the House. Akin’s fellow Republicans want to claim they disagree with his offensive views behind the GOP’s stance toward women’s health, but their voting records say differently.

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Politics Republican war on women

Male Republican Cancels Event Teaching Women How to Sit

Republican Sen. Marty Golden sent out a mailing advertising the July 24 business etiquette event on “posture, deportment and the feminine presence.” His website said women would be taught to “sit, stand and walk like a model.”

But Golden canceled the event Tuesday after critics said the former police officer and longtime politician was out of touch with the lives of working women.

Golden’s spokesman says the planned event was similar to ones being organized by other elected officials and classes conducted in local high schools.

Democratic state Sen. Liz Krueger says she sometimes feels as though she drives “three hours north and 50 years back in history” when she goes from Manhattan to Albany, the state capital.

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contraception Politics war on women

The Catholic Church Vows to Continue Fighting the Contraception Issue

This is one fight the Catholic Church is up for. They have found their voice and are determined to make the Contraception issue their main goal.

The issue – for those who have already moved on to more important things – is a policy that many Republican governors and the last Republican president have maintained over the last decade. It deals with providing contraception to women as part of their insurance coverage without a co-pay. This issue was not a problem for the Church when Republicans brought it up and in some cases demanded the Church pay for the coverage. But now that President Obama is continuing the policy, suddenly, the Bishops are up in arms.

Their argument it seems, states that requiring Religious organizations to provide contraception to their employees without a co-pay is immoral. So to satisfy the Bishops’ concern, the administration removed the requirement that religious organizations must pay for this benefit and placed that requirement on the insurance providers themselves.

But apparently, this move by the administration was not enough as Cardinal Timothy Dolan told CBS’s Face The Nation on Sunday, “we didn’t ask for the fight, but we’re not going to back away from it.”

Meanwhile, Republican Paul Ryan and Congressional Republicans have all agreed on a budget that will strip needed services from the poor and put more money into the pockets of the rich. If Ryan’s budget passes, medicare as we know it along with other services that benefits the poor will end.

So far, these same Bishops and the Catholic Church are silent on the Ryan Budget.

The conclusion: Giving women the right to have contraception – something over 90% of Catholic women already enjoy – is a big no-no and the Church is willing to fight with everything they have to keep the dreaded contraception out of their hands. However, take away life saving benefits from the poor and the Catholic Church is apparently okay with that!

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contraception Nikki Haley Politics war on women women

Nikki Haley – “Women Don’t Care about Contraception”

Appearing today on The View, Nikki Haley – the Republican governor of South Carolina – did her best to promote her new book, Can’t Is Not An Option, but managed instead to somehow continue the Republican war on women. Haley, considered a future star in the Republican party, informed the women of the view that women in general do not care about contraception.

“Women don’t care about contraception,” Haley said, “they care about jobs and their families…” She was cut off by Joy Behar, who bristled along with the rest of the panel and noted that women should care about contraception. “The media cares about contraception,” Haley tried again, and then concluded that while women might care about contraception, they just want to be able to make those decisions themselves, without government involvement.

Interesting position for a female Republican governor!

Indeed!

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Politics Rape Republican war on women

High-Ranking Member of the Teaparty Accused of Kidnapping and Rape

So this must be what they mean when they engage in the war on women. Here is one of the high-ranking members of the Teaparty, behaving rather badly. His actions cannot be considered as having tea with his victim… no… it’s more like kidnap and rape.

His name is Michael John Kobulnicky, the public relations director for the San Diego Tea Party, and this is his contribution to the War on Women;

According to East County Magazine, Michael John Kobulnicky is accused of offering a woman a ride on February 25, but instead of taking her home, he drove to secluded island, pulled the victim out of the vehicle, sexually assaulted her, and left her in the sand. San Diego Police Lt. Andra Brown said, “He dragged her out of the car and sexually assaulted her pretty brutally.”

East County Magazine reports:

“He dragged her out of the car and sexually assaulted her pretty brutally,” San Diego Police Lt. Andra Brown told ECM news partner 10 News in late February, shortly after the February 25 assault occurred…

After Kobulnicky’s arrest, the San Diego Tea Party issued a statement indicating that Kobulnicky took leave the group in January for personal reasons and had not been in touch since then, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. He has been removed from his position while the legal process runs its course, the statement said, adding that “”Our hearts and our thoughts go out to the victim.”

…According to his website, Kobulnicky supports Christian values, is a father of five sons, and is co-founder and president of the National Council of Americans, Inc, a nonprofit that helps youths.

…He is charged with rape, kidnapping, and forcible sex with a foreign object. Evidence includes surveillance video shot at a local convenience store shortly before the kidnapping occurred. Kobulnicky is being held without bail pending arraignment on Monday.

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