As families across Connecticut struggle to find work and make ends meet, it is both disappointing and alarming to see some lawmakers returning to the culture wars of the past and trying to restrict access to health care for women across this country.
The bills introduced by Representatives Mike Pence and Christopher Smith take an unprecedented step of blocking women's access to the reproductive health care they need and have a right to -- and I will strongly oppose them. These bills seek to overturn years of long-standing legal doctrine and, even worse, they endanger the health of women in this country by attempting to end insurance coverage -- including private coverage -- for all abortions. We cannot allow women's health to be jeopardized by limiting the options that they and their doctors have when it comes to their reproductive health care.
While I and many of my colleagues have focused our energy on fostering economic growth and creating jobs, some members of Congress have made it a top priority to move legislation that would take away the choices women have about their health care. It has long been my belief that in matters of women's health, there are no better people to decide what is best than a woman and her doctor. These efforts to eliminate choices for women and put private decisions in the hands of politicians must be rejected.
The bills introduced by Representatives Pence and Smith are likely to pass in the House, but I can promise that I will work with my colleagues in the Senate to block such legislation in the Senate and protect the rights of women in Connecticut and across the country.
It is troubling to see these lawmakers who champion limited government in every other circumstance become the champions of government overreach when it comes to a woman's choice over her medical options and her providers of basic reproductive health care. This misguided effort to defund the trusted health care providers on whom women rely would leave millions without access to basic preventive health care, including cancer screenings, breast exams, and family planning.
Women in Connecticut and across the country deserve nothing less than unfettered access to their trusted health care providers and vital health care services.
As Connecticut's Attorney General, I have always been a steadfast supporter of a woman's right to choose and to have access to quality, affordable reproductive health care, and I will continue to do so in the United States Senate. Just this week, Senator Gillibrand and I sent a letter to our colleagues urging them to stop these dangerous bills. On Tuesday, there will be hearings in the House on this legislation, but by acting swiftly we can combat these reckless proposals aimed at curbing the rights of women everywhere.
Women have the right to liberty. You aren't entitled to use their bodies without consent, and neither is anyone else.
The economy needs to be addressed. We do not need to reinvent the draconian wheel for women's health care. Where is the democracy that we brag so much about? Where is the democracy we try to bring to other countries at the expense of our own military? In a democracy, a woman has the right to choose what to do with her own body. If you do not agree with abortion, please, feel free not to have one but do not make that choice for someone else. Should health insurance cover it? If it is a health issue, why not? Why do we constantly believe our own opinions should be made in to a law at the expense of others?
Many women thank you for your sensibility Mr. Blumenthal.
It is usually also a white christian male who is also against abortion when there is over 80% of those abortions had by those christian wives and daughters of these white christian men.
If Woman do not get reproductive healthcare then I say men can no longer can get that little blue pill either. It stops working to bad for you!!!!!!
Now as to who is writing these so called bills they are men and not woman. These same men are also in the process of writing another one written by Men again is to take out birth control on healthcare.
So tell me how are woman to prevent further abortions if they do not have access to birth control to prevent them from getting pregnant in the first place. You take out birth control we should also take our your little blue pills.
Again if you are a man and it is not your wife our child it is none of your business. I never have nor will I ever have a need for an abortion but i will fight for those who need that CHOICE
It's not taxes that are forcing both spouses to work. (Although I'd like to see the citizens pay less and the corportations pay more). But, you probably don't want to hear the reality so I won't waste my time explaining it,
And, taxes are not "through the roof". They may feel that way but they aren't.
I'm dumbfounded that anyone could possibly think that lowering taxes AGAIN, cutting needed services and infrastructure AGAIN, and putting the burden of what should be considered the "common good" on the individual worker AGAIN, is the solution for a freeze in REAL wages and earnings that has been going on since the mid-1970s.
BTW, the Reagan economy tactic of forcing parents to be dual-income families has more to do with opening a massive pipeline of workers who could be paid 1/3 to 1/2 as much to perform the same work as those traditionally performing the jobs up till then, than making it about two incomes. This tactic was a significant contribution to the goal of stifling real wage increases and building today's obscene income inequities between the haves (the R base) and the have-nots (now including the former middle class).
And to donwallace, your assertion re "Dem leadership" is a complete lie, look up tax rates under DDE.
How about the selfish people who want more house and car than they can get with one job?
The fact of the matter is that we need a high tax rate on the uppermost income brackets not because that will give us large tax revenues, but because that results in a strong middle class which is better for the WHOLE country!
I have not seen any of this new batch of people championing limited government in the case of personal freedom - I do see them championing limited government in the case of the government trying to keep businesses from destroying our air and water and other regulations that make sense to most un-brainwashed people ---- how quickly people forget( BP come to mind?)
and, you might take note that I think that regulations to prevent business from harming people and/or the environment are extremely important -- businesses are amoral and it is important to keep that in mind
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Consuming unwilling flesh when nobody can see it, however, is still morally and ethically wrong.
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with this reply:
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So, you believe that human pregnancy is a morally and ethically wrong act
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was he:
a) Being deliberately obtuse? Trying to make readers forget what I actually said and replace it with something distracting.
b) Skimming? He didn't bother to understand my post before responding to it?
c) He reasons like a child. To a child an act is, in and of itself, either good or bad. A good act is always good and a bad one always bad. So he can't differentiate between me saying "its bad in these circumstances" and saying "it's bad".
Now in the adult world consent is incredibly important. Consent is the line that stands between sex and rape. Consent is the difference between giving and stealing. Between visiting and trespassing. The world is full of acts that are cool with consent and crimes without it.
There is nothing remotely unusual about lack of consent making something immoral/unethical.
Which is why it is so puzzling to me when adults suddenly act baffled by the concept. You mean something can be OK if I have the other person's permission but not OK if I don't? What a concept!
Prove it. Seriously. I want some real evidence. Because this is blatantly false. Roe v. Wade specifically prohibits abortions after viability unless to save the life or health of the mother. You would also need to find a provider qualified and willing to perform the procedure as well. This just isn't happening all willy-nilly like the anti-choice side likes to proclaim.
"Ever notice that a person (felon) who kills a woman who is pregnant will often be charged with killing the unborn child. But if a doctor aborts the child, and we call it a fetus (instead of a child) everything think is okay and legal. What's up with that?"
The primary issues here are viability and consent. I would like to see case evidence of a criminal being charged with an additional homicide for a pregnancy prior to viability. Additionally, what a woman CHOOSES to do with her body is the issue here. A criminal ending her wanted pregnancy WITHOUT her consent IS A CRIME. I know this "women making decisions about their bodies" concept can be a little tricky at first, but think on it...
They spend a lot of time looking for precedent ... which means they reviewed the history of abortion law in great detail.Their take on it doesn't jive with yours.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZO.html
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When most criminal abortion laws were first enacted, the procedure was a hazardous one for the woman. --- Thus, it has been argued that a State's real concern in enacting a criminal abortion law was to protect the pregnant woman, that is, to restrain her from submitting to a procedure that placed her life in serious jeopardy.
Modern medical techniques have altered this situation. --- Consequently, any interest of the State in protecting the woman from an inherently hazardous procedure, except when it would be equally dangerous for her to forgo it, has largely disappeared.
The few state courts called upon to interpret their laws in the late 19th and early 20th centuries did focus on the State's interest in protecting the woman's health, rather than in preserving the embryo and fetus. Proponents of this view point out that in many States --- the pregnant woman herself could not be prosecuted for self-abortion or for cooperating in an abortion performed upon her by another.
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You can't claim that laws which could not prosecute self-abortion were aimed at protecting the fetus. They were clearly aimed at protecting the mother.
I for one am glad that you are one of the few politicians out there whose top priority is the liberty and the welfare of Americans regardless of their ethnicity and gender.
I will however miss you as Connecticut's attorney general. You did some wonderful work there; yours will be a difficult act to follow.
Consuming unwilling flesh when nobody can see it, however, is still morally and ethically wrong. And fetus-me has precisely the right that adult-me has to do so.
Which is to say none at all, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason.
Either Spartacus didn't read it or he thinks there is no difference between sex and non-violent rape ( rape using drugs, or non-physical coercion like the threat of firing you if you don't put out ).
And there isn't really if you don't consider consent to be meaningful. Same physical act.
Just with consent it is the expression of love between two people and without consent it is a soul-destroying act of profound violation.
Consent is frequently the only difference between something that is legal and something that is a horrible crime. As such it is tremendously important when determining the ethicality of a given act.
For example, if all you know is that I'm standing over an unconscious man with a scalpel, and that I have a degree in medicine and am licensed to practice cosmetic surgery ... then you can't tell if I'm committing a crime or not just by looking.
You have to know whether he wants a new nose or not. If he didn't consent to my improvements I'm committing a crime.
15.2 per thousand women