Rick Santorum is a bottomless cup of repulsive, dangerous and misguided views. He's a radical far-right Republican who, in spite of this seemingly endless primary process, hasn't choked on his own tongue yet -- at least from the point of view of conservative Republicans. The rest of us remember his ridiculous "blah people" remarks from last month, but I imagine his use of a Southern Strategy dog whistle only helped his reputation with primary voters.
Nevertheless, his comparatively chokeless campaign appears to have elevated Santorum to be the latest driver of the GOP clown car even though, at the outset, he was pegged as one of those quadrennial D-list candidates who would drop out of the race before or immediately following Iowa. Instead, he won Iowa along with three more states this week. Who knows how long Santorum's night in the sun will last or whether he's permanently stymied the Romney campaign. It doesn't matter. The fact that he's gained such prominence since being crushed and humiliated in his home (swing) state of Pennsylvania in 2006 is both an indicator of Republican desperation for a solid contender and yet another warning about the increasing radicalization and marginalization of the party.
At no other time has this been more apparent than during this fight over birth control.
Over the weekend, Santorum said, "[I]nterestingly enough, here is what they are forcing them to do -- in an insurance policy, they or forcing them to pay for something that costs just a few dollars. Is that what insurance is for? The foundational idea that we have the government tells you that you have to pay for everything as a business. Things that are not really things you need insurance for, and still forcing on something that is not a critical economic need, when you have an economic distress, where you would need insurance. But forcing them even more to do it for minor expenses."
That's right. Apart from being a jumbled grammatical mess, Santorum said that birth control costs "just a few dollars." It's so inexpensive, in fact, it shouldn't even really require insurance and it's not an "critical economic need." At first glance, I thought Santorum might just be confused. Maybe he's thinking about condoms, which are inexpensive. But Santorum has been demagoguing the birth control issue for many years and he knows what's what.
As though the idea of bargain basement contraception wasn't silly enough, Santorum followed up this nonsense by warning that the president's birth control policy would lead to public beheadings.
The reality is that prescription birth control costs upwards of a thousand dollars per year, in some cases much more. Not that reality matters to a party that's chiefly built around wafer-thin bumper sticker slogans and doing the exact opposite of the president regardless of how cartoonish it makes them look.
But let's take Santorum at his word. Since birth control pills and devices are so cheap, why don't you send your medical bills to Rick Santorum. Seriously. Send a copy with or without redacting your name to:
Rick Santorum for President
PO Box 37
Verona, PA 15147
Include both the cost of your OB/GYN visits and your prescriptions, and don't expect to be reimbursed by the Santorum campaign for obvious reasons. At the very least, however, we can consider such a gesture a retaliatory strike against the ongoing Republican war against women -- a war, by the way, which the Republicans are winning by attrition.
At this point, I could go through the point-by-point case for why access to affordable birth control is crucial for women's health. I could write about the self-evident truth that birth control mitigates the risk of unintended pregnancies and, subsequently, abortions. I could cite all of the other various medical reasons why birth control is prescribed -- from regulating menstrual cycles to preventing ovarian and uterine cysts. I could write endlessly about how anti-abortion Republicans, if they're truly determined to reduce abortions, should be demanding free and universal healthcare for pregnant women who might otherwise need to terminate their pregnancies for financial reasons. I could also remind the Republicans that Americans who object to the use of birth control aren't being forced to use it and that employers aren't being forced to directly finance the purchasing of birth control for their employees.
None of that matters to these paleoconservatives.
They're engaged in a war against women as part of an effort to maintain a ruling elite of white males. That's all that matters. A transformational process within the party has been engaged by zealots who are increasingly out of touch with the mainstream of America. While the Democrats continue to run a plate-spinning act, frantically but admirably representing both the middle, center-left and far-left, the Republicans have desperately lashed themselves to one faction: Rick Santorum's far-right extremist base, and, consequently, they're losing touch with moderates, independents and liberals (obviously). So in order to motivate its remaining voter base, the modern Republican Party has become so virulently anti-woman, anti-minority and anti-compromise that even their sainted hero, Ronald Reagan, would find his party unrecognizable. The white Christian conservative power structure has been painted into a corner and they're freaking out about it.
As Rachel Maddow documented on her show the other night, most of the anti-abortion "life begins at conception" laws being passed by Republican legislatures will also restrict access to birth control since most birth control prevents implantation of a fertilized egg.
With this series of anti-choice and anti-contraception laws on the books in various southern and midwestern states, the Republican Party is hastily constructing an ideological and legislative Berlin Wall around itself.
If you're a woman with reproductive medical needs, you're unwelcome there -- in fact, and without hyperbole, you're being targeted as a potential murderer in red state America.
Unless something happens to reverse this trend toward reproductive and sexual criminalization, America will indeed return to being "half free" with northern states maintaining affordable and accessible healthcare for women, while southern states will continue to subjugate women with archaic, misogynistic laws. Women within these states will have only two lifestyle options: they can either be celibate or they can be married and pregnant. (It's no surprise that Rick Santorum won the endorsement of the Duggar baby factory.) Everyone else will have no choice but to leave, which is precisely the goal, allowing self-defined "morally superior" white Christian men to rule without obstruction within their walled-off conservative throwback utopia.
That is unless there's a serious and immediate retaliation. Women are a demographic majority and can still win this. Send Rick Santorum your medical bills and work against any politician who votes to restrict your access to healthcare -- especially those politicians who seek to criminalize it.
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 |
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| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
Why exactly do you believe that women shouldn't get preventative benefits? Why exactly do you believe that women shouldn't receive preventative medicine not denied her male counterparts?
We aren't demanding that 'YOU PAY FOR OUR LIFE CHOICES. You are asking women to pay for the LIFE CHOICES of old men who don't have sex and pretending that IT'S THE WOMEN who are in the wrong. But it simply isn't true. THEY WOMEN EARN THEIR BENEFITS WITH THEIR LABOR. SO THE QUESTION BECOMES, Why do you think workers don't deserve the benefits for which they work?
You because you're not 'hitting it' (such a lovely term) doesn't mean that you *won't* be paying for it. Got health insurance yourself? It should be obvious to even the dimmest bulb that you're helping to pay for everything every other policy holder does - in the same way that they're going to help pay if something happens to you. I think anyone that rides a motorcycle is taking a ridiculous risk - how about if insurance no longer covers any injuries as a result of a motorcycle accident? Hmm, once you get out of college, no one besides pro athletes needs to play competitive sports - we can eliminate coverage for knee and ankle injuries that happen at those rec league softball games. Hey, I'm thinking we could really lower the cost of insurance by not covering anything that happens as a result of someone's choice!
When that high-risk pregnancy ends up with a delivery in the 6th month, followed by weeks of NICU and specialized care, the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, well, you're paying for them. Think maybe the pills a better idea if you're talking purely financial terms?
Now, would you like to talk about all the ways you could end up paying for it if that mom-to-be *doesn't* have health insurance?
Nobody else wants anything for free, they just want what they're paying for, or access to affordable care. This can and will be done, no matter how many capital letters you type.
Women deserve their opportunity to benefit from human advances in modern medical technology, just as men do..............and they deserve their own personal choice to do so.
As wages stagnated these last two decades the cost of all healthcare, including birth control control increased dramatically. And, while viagra was convered on most medical drug benefit plans, birth control pill and contraception devices were not. This was not always the case. It was in the 90s that insurers began to segregate service they'd cover from those they wouldn't. Not surprisingly the list of uncovered femal services is much longer than the list of uncovered male services.
It's amazed me that this issues was never made headlines.
As healthcare reform advocated for nearly three decades, I often advised co-workers, friends, etc., to send copies of the hospital, doctor, x-ray, lab bills to their elected representatives. Most of "people" who handle their bills and never see a hospital bill charging $20 for a box of tissues and $50 for a plastic bedpan that was never used. These, by the way, are almost always UNCOVERED items. $5 for an aspirin, etc., etc. Charges they say are necessary due to the uninsured, yet where is the support for universal healthcare that would eliminate most of the uninsured?
P.S. An unwanted pregnancy brought to term with the child dependent on the state for support is a thousands times more expensive paying for birth control.
This fight is all about leaving the 'fudge factors' in medical care in order to support an acceptable level of hidden opportunities for corruption, misrepresentation, and other 'money making' opportunities for what Republicans call "job creators", that is, those who prey on other humans to accumulate excessive wealth legally by operating in the the margins of morality.
When Republicans use the word "free". They mean "free" to steal whatever they can at the expense of others...........this includes natural resources (through insider influence of the government), public infrastructure (through privatization), other taxpayer assets, and even the direct assets of you, your relatives, and your friends. They need to 'pull in their belts' and find a way to get along on just a few billion each :-)
I'm holding a hearing in which an all female panel will testify for weekly colonoscopies performed on the male clergy and GOP members who participated in today's hearing. We will also discuss Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell's amendment requiring men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.
I am befuddled, frustrated, aghast at the decades-long war the Republican party has waged on families, students, women, minorities, the environment, etc. Republican positions appear rooted in the last century and seem bizarre, unpredictable, disjointed. But in fact, their positions all have a common thread. They uniformly favor corporations at the expense of people. They camouflage their efforts under hot-button charades, e.g., providing access to birth control is some kind of rights religious infringement (ridiculous), a true cut in defense spending is an attack on patriotism, and Occupy efforts to address the worst income disparity in 80 years is a declaration of class warfare. But I think the most Americans are finally waking up. The Republican party is desperate. Turnout for state primaries is obscenely low, and the candidates are in a race toward hysterical irrelevance.
Are they ever going to eliminate abortion? It's been going on since there were humans, and it will go on as long as there are humans (in back alleys, if not in clean medical environments). Are they ever going to eliminate birth control? It's been a human objective for as long as they have been humans, and the quest will go on for as long as there are humans. Are they ever going to eliminate Government? It's been a key component of all of the advancements of humans since there were humans, or for that matter, any animal forms at all, and it will go on (in one form or another) as long as there are living species that obey the laws of nature as we know it!
Religion itself is an ancient form of Government :-) The only difference between that form, and the 'evolved form' of governance is that the most advanced systems of modern governance rely on facts rather than mysticism to define social rules (& laws).
I wonder how many people know that contraception is used my millions of women for health issues other than to prevent pregnancy?
http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2011/11/15/index.html
The modern Republican is a bad loser, a bully, and a cry-baby.
Viagra is now being used by men as young as 35- 40 at $65 per pill in most cases, enough to pay for a month's supply of birth control, or close to it. Guess V&V coverage is good for religious purposes though? Talk about hypocrites! Darrell Issa is looking for sainthood with his witch hunts. Thanks to the women on the committee it backfired in his face just like all the other attacks he pursues.
those with the money know that the senate and the house and the supreme court is where the action is. now to the lower courts.
the 1%ers are sooooooooo much smarter than most americans. that is how they got to be the 1%ers. they can get a guy and his wife that lives in a trailer, with an old pick up truck, and working for min wage to vote in politicans that are puppets of the 1%ers.
and they can get the middle class to vote repub even as the middle class is being eliminated one by one.
47 million without health care insurance, pre existing medical conditions to deny coverage, on going wars and the gov and even the supreme court on the take says it all about americans level of empathy for others.
still love that capitalism americans? thought so. the 1%ers will make sure that you do. they have that much power over the media and the gov and the educational systems.