In light of recent events on the presidential campaign trail, I'd like to reintroduce former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to a politician for whom attacking contraception is an all-too usual topic—his name is Mitt Romney.
Gov. Romney, who has taken a commanding lead in polls, seemed flabbergasted to be asked a question at Saturday's GOP presidential debate about the right to contraception. He called it "an unusual topic," and said that he "can't imagine a state banning contraception."
An unusual topic? I wish I could say it was. Even though 98 percent of American women use birth control at some point in their lives, attacking the right to contraception has become anything but unusual for anti-choice politicians, including Romney.
Let's take a moment to review the facts. As governor, Romney vetoed a bill giving rape survivors information about and timely access to emergency contraception. Fortunately, the Massachusetts state legislature voted to override Romney's veto.
Romney also recently proposed eliminating Title X, the federal family-planning program that provides millions of Americans with contraception and other basic care.
(After voters in Mississippi rejected such an amendment, Romney tried to pretend he hadn't taken such an extreme and outrageous position just a month earlier.)
If this weren't evidence enough of his hostility to birth control, Romney also selected Robert Bork to serve as the top judicial adviser to his campaign.
Robert Bork is most known as the far-right judge who was rejected by a bipartisan majority of senators from serving on the U.S. Supreme Court because of his extreme views against civil rights, equal protection for women under the Constitution, a woman's right to choose, and even the right to use birth control.
You get the picture: when it comes to women's right to birth control, Gov. Romney is far outside the American mainstream. Unfortunately, many anti-choice politicians throughout the nation share his misguided priorities.
NPR and The New York Times have reported on how—possibly for the first time in decades—opposition to birth control has become an acceptable position for candidates in the Republican primaries.
And it's not limited to politicians at the national level: last summer, New Hampshire's Executive Council voted to reject a contract with Planned Parenthood, forcing the state's six clinics to stop providing birth control.
One New Hampshire councilor, Raymond Wieczorek, summed up his thoughts on women who use contraception: "If they want to have a good time, why not let them pay for it?"
Fortunately, New Hampshire has a pro-choice senator, Jeanne Shaheen, who worked with the Obama administration to secure federal funding to keep the health centers open.
And when states from Indiana to Texas tried to limit low-income women's access to birth control, the Obama administration said, "Not so fast."
President Obama's landmark health-care law also makes no-cost birth control possible for most American women. (One in three women currently struggles with the high cost of birth control.)
Gov. Romney says the health-care law—including the no-cost birth-control policy—"must be repealed."
Maybe Gov. Romney "can't imagine a state banning contraception." But he should know that his own positions would put birth control out of reach for millions of American women.
No, birth control is not "an unusual topic." Women's right to contraception is very much at stake in this election—and that's because anti-choice politicians like Romney have made a point of attacking it.
Paid for by NARAL Pro-Choice America, www.ProChoiceAmerica.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
Follow Nancy Keenan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/NARAL
Jamin Raskin: Mitt Romney's Constitutional Advisor, Robert Bork, Continues the War on Women's Rights
 |
 |
|
| 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 |
It is regressive to the extreme.
The right to purchase contraceptives has been guaranteed for over 40 years since the Griswold case. Well before Griswold all states either reversed any legislation banning them or they effectively didn’t enforce them. Although Judge Bork questioned the reasoning of this decision (since it was an invented right by the Court), Bork never advocated making them illegal and I’ve never seen Romney weigh in on the Griswold case. However, Ms. Keenan’s specific complaints with Romney seem to be that he doesn’t support legislation (e.g. Title X, Obamacare etc.) that promotes birth control. Failing to promote is not the same as banning. If Obamacare were repealed tomorrow, any woman covered under “no-cost” (there is no such thing as a no cost birth control, there is only cost shifting) birth control, would still be able to purchase birth control legally on her own. She would just have to purchase it out of her own pocket. The federal government absolutely has no business subsidizing a purchase that is totally an optional purchase, this just amounts to shifting the cost from those that use it to those that don’t.
The question simply is, does the State have some obligation to provide another free good to society. In this case, perhaps...we're all better off if people who can't afford children, don't have children.
That said...the fault of unplanned births, reckless procreation, and illegitimate children lie with those who have sex without caution. It's not the State's fault.
Perhaps Bill and Melinda Gates can pay of this...
You have a few choices, whoever you are:
1. Abstain
2. Pay for birth control, and use it.
3. Live with the costs of your mistakes...which could mean the continued cycle of poverty.
If you're struggling buying a $1 condom, then perhaps you should get your head out of the sand...
Now if the problem is with SUBSIDIZING contraception (and the sex lives of Americans), that's not really the government's role now is it? So go forth and boink, just pay for it yourself cheapo!
January 10, 2012
UFO Hyperbole Press
Rick Santorum, seeking to capitalize on his recent near win in Iowa and to characterize his main rival as a big business, secular Mormonist, pledged today, that if elected, he would introduce and promote legislation in Congress for what he called a new "Defense of the Ovary Act" (or DOVA). Stating that every ovum is an unrealized life and child deserving of the full protection of the US Constitution, Mr. Santorum thanked women for bearing The Curse on behalf of all Mankind and said that each barren egg deserves nothing less than at least symbolic mourning of an unconceptualized being. "Some aprostrate Christians (and Mormons), Mr. Santorum elaborated (though declining to further identify, which left many in the audience wondering if he was referencing adherents to Judaism or gays, or both, or maybe lapsed Christian men, or just those who had the operation; Muslims belonging to Satan of course) ” would like to see these beings, these gift of G-d, frozen for experimentation and flushed down the toilet. Not ever on my watch!”
Dubbed "Room in the Womb" by women's groups and their leftist Democratic socialist puppets (controlled by 'George Soros and The New Elders of Zion', a Jewish investment and rap group), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that it would pass "over my dead body", to which Newt Gingrich opined, that from the looks of him, ought not to be overly long.
But why let the facts get in the way of a good rant?
I think we have a right to be concerned when religion tries squeeze his control over people and rights that aren't theirs to control.