Women’s health has long been a political football, especially during election season. This year unfortunately, it is beginning to look like both teams are trying to dunk our lives in the same basket. Okay, forgive the mixed metaphor, I’ll let the candidates speak for themselves as they have all done so eloquently this week:
Newt Gingrich upped his attacks against President Obama on Sunday over his administration’s requirement that some religious hospitals offer co-pay-free birth control under the new health care law.
Gingrich’s comments come after a week of outrage from the Catholic Church and his fellow GOP presidential candidates over the policy.
“This is a tremendous infringement of religious liberty,” Newt Gingrich said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Every time you turn around the secular government is shrinking the rights of religious institutions in America.”
And then there is this gem from Santorum making the absolutely false, debunked a gazillion times, connection between abortion and cancer,
“I don’t believe that breast cancer research is advanced by funding an organization where you’ve seen ties to cancer and abortion,” he added. “So, I don’t think it’s a particularly healthy way of contributing money to further cause of breast cancer, but that’s for a private organization like Susan B. Komen to make that decision.”
Romney also decided to jump on the anti-Planned Parenthood wagon,
“I also feel that the government should cut off funding to Planned Parenthood,” the former Massachusetts governor added. “Look, the idea that we’re subsidizing an institution which is providing abortion, in my view, is wrong. Planned Parenthood ought to stand on their own feet, and should not get government subsidy.”
Of course he doesn’t want the government to provide those services either. But the win in the right wing misogynist hate fest goes to Ron Paul for coining the baffling phrase, “honest rape”,
In an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan, Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul was asked whether or not victims of rape should have access to abortion services. He said that while he believes that life begins at the moment of conception, the issue is too complex for him to give an answer that will “satisfy everyone.”
In an interview from Las Vegas on Piers Morgan Tonight, Morgan asked whether as a man with daughters and granddaughters, Rep. Paul (R-TX) thinks that abortion is warranted if a woman has been impregnated by a rapist.
“If it’s an honest rape,” Paul replied, “that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen.” He claimed, however, that if a woman is “seven months pregnant” and says that she was raped, “It’s a little bit of a different story.”
Okay, all of the above is revolting, but they are all Republican candidates, so ixnay on the surprise but here is the one that makes me spitting mad:
A top adviser to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign suggested on Tuesday that the administration was open to working with Catholic hospitals and universities over their objections to providing birth control services to women.
That the political dialog has reached a point where a Democratic President running for re-election feels he can sell out women with the same impunity that Republicans candidates assert, women’s lives are in deep peril.
After several days of unrelenting fury (much of it from long-time loyal supporters) that has severely damaged their credibility as our boobs’ best friend, Komen For The Cure has reconsidered its decision regarding funding Planned Parenthood (albeit with a statement that definitely leaves significant wiggle room). In the wake of what may well be the worst case of accidental re-branding ever by the organization that pinkified the world and took cause branding to epic proportions, we need to take a hard look at Komen’s very unhealthy advocacy and re-examine what if any role they should play in supporting women’s health.
