Republicans Hate Women

We all know that the republicans have been very busy this year attacking Women’s rights, but I didn’t realize just how busy. I seem to remember Rachel Maddow stating that they had found somewhere on the order of 300+ pending bills. Now I’ve found a report by the Guttmacher Institute that claims there have been 916 bills introduced in 49 state legislatures (the only reason its not 50 is that Louisiana hasn’t convened yet).

I don’t have any idea how accurate the report is, but there is a reasonable amount of supporting data on the website. Also, just based on the number of news reports about some of these bills we know there are a lot of them out there.  I was surprised that there are over 900 however.  Now I’m guessing that there are probably a lot of these bills introduced every year and most of them don’t have much chance of being passed. The scary thing this year is that a number of state legislatures are packed with batshit crazy right wing tea party types and every other republican is afraid of them, so some of these bills are being passed.

Here’s hoping that at least some republicans will have the courage to vote for what the majority of Americans want and expect. You wouldn’t think it would take courage to support a majority position…

I’ve been watching and listening to the debates in congress over the budget, Planned Parenthood, and aside from Bernie Sanders, there don’t seem to be many senators or congressmen that are willing to say anything in plain english.  But yesterday was finally a bit better. 

Nancy Pelosi (D CA) spoke at the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Women, Mondy and Power Summit and said, “There is actually a war on women”. 

Later in an interview with CNN, she said, “If you are talking about jobs, their pay in the workplace, health care … no longer is being a woman a pre-existing medical condition. They want to change all of that. So in every aspect — whether it is employment, whether it is education, whether it is health care, whether it is retirement, whether it is collective bargaining, which affects women as well — women have a lot to lose with the ideological old-style agenda of the Republicans.”

Patty Murry (D WA) said, “We are not going to throw women under the bus to give them an agreement to keep this government open.”

Dianne Feinstein (D CA) said, “It’s an opportunity for the right wing in the House to really sock it to women. I don’t usually use this language, but I really believe this is true.”

Rob Andrews (D PA) said, “We value medicare”.

Of course while they probably fended of the most recent attempt to cut Planned Parenthood functing  (I read one analysis this morning that suggested Boehner didn’t actually agree to pull the rider), they still won’t drop the gloves and go after the blatant lies that the republicans keep spewing.  Case in point, John Kyl (R AZ) keeps claiming that Planned Parenthood spends 90% of its funds on abortion when he fully knows that the real number is around 3% and that no federal funds are spent on abortion related services.  When will someone stand up on the floor of the senate, call him out as a liar, scold him for his actions and propose that he be censured.  Its not that hard. And don’t tell me they are not allowed to be uncivil.  Nothing happened to Joe Wilson when he called the President a liar and nothing happened to Dick Cheney when he told Patrick Leahy to “Fuck Off”.  But both of those comments got a lot of press.

My daughter posted this on her facebook page. We’ve so failed as a generation that our children have to refight battles we thought were won, but I’m so proud that they are willing to.  Thanks to Coffee Party for putting this out there. Take a look.

This is Great!  After the idiocy over the state legislature declaring that uturus is a naughty word, the ACLU in Florida set up a web site so that you can incorporate your uturus.  As they explain on the site, you can’t really incorporate your uturus, but they have set up the ability for you to virtually incorporate it.  Check out the site here.  It also gives updates on on what’s going on in the Florida legislature and other info of interest to the incorporated uturus community.

Good thing I’m not in the Florida House of Representatives.  Republican house leadership has banned the word “uterus” from being spoken on the house floor.  This happened after Rep. Scott Randolph (D-Orlando) threw out the suggestion that maybe his wife ought to incorporate her uterus. I wish I was making this stuff up, but alas I’m not.  My favorite news article on the ban is here.

At least that’s the what state Rep Eric Turner from Indiana is worried about.  Bad enough that the state is in the process of passing legislation that would shorten the time frame for most abortions from approximately 24 weeks (the time at which a fetus is considered viable) down to 20 weeks. One of Indiana’s democrats (Rep Gail Riecken) introduced an amendment to exempt women who become pregnant due to rape or incest.  Here is Turner’s response:

“With all do respect to Rep. Riecken, I understand what she’s trying to do. But as you know that when the federal health care bill was going through Congress there was a lot of discussion whether this would allow for abortion coverage and of course we were all told it would not. And the bill, my house bill 1210, would prevent that for any insurance company to provide abortion coverage under federal health care bill. This [amendment] would open that window and I would ask you to oppose this amendment.”

“I just want you to think about this, in my view, giant loophole that could be created where someone who could — now I want to be careful, I don’t want to disparage in any way someone who has gone through the experience of a rape or incest — but someone who is desirous of an abortion could simp0ly say that they’ve been raped or there’s incest.”

Here’s the video thanks to thinkprogress.org. I love the response from Rep. Linda Lawson(D).