The Holy Men of Choice

A new Republican House elected on a platform of jobs, jobs and a stronger economy have been anything but – instead the priority is to undue Obama’s legislation and to take away the right’s of women everywhere. Among the first proposals was HR3 which sought to redefine rape as well as limit access through private insurance companies.

Next up is HR358, inappropriately named “Protect Life Act,” that would allow doctors to make the choice of whether to perform an abortion to save a woman’s life or not. No joke. Via Jill at Feministe:

In other words, it gives doctors the green light to let pregnant women die if they have a life-threatening condition and need an emergency abortion. We know that women’s lives have been saved by abortion (and that some number of people don’t approve of the whole life-saving thing). It’s not surprising that a few religious blow-hards think it’s better for women to die instead of receiving therapeutic abortions, but to encode the view that you don’t have to save a pregnant woman’s life into federal law? That is truly sick — and shockingly cruel, even for the usual “pro-life” suspects who regularly use their ideology as a tool to punish women.

The choice is up to the doctor:

a) perform life saving medical procedure to save patient’s life.

b) refuse to do the procedure and let the woman die.

Oh and the fetus wouldn’t have any chance either if the doctor choose b.

But the real issue here is not the potential life inside of a woman.  It is about taking right’s away from women in general and poor women specifically.  It is the poor women with limited access to private health insurance who typically rely entitlement programs to get their necessary health care.  These are the women being attacked by hypocritical men at the top of the Republican Party. Think it is something else?  It’s not:

That $327M for family planning? That would be the entire Title X program–which gives clinics, such as Planned Parenthood, federal funds to provide basic health care like  contraception, STD treatment, and cancer screenings. Funds that are explicitly prohibited from going towards abortion care. Funds that help prevent many unintended pregnancies each year. Funds that save the taxpayers $4 down the road for every $1 spent. Funds that provide much-need primary and preventive to millions of women and men in a health care system riddled with gaps.

All of this harkens back to the day when wives had to receive their husband’s permission just to get birth control.  Take a second to imagine that.

As a man you have sole control of the partnership’s reproductive choices? Republicans are out to take women’s rights away.  This is not a policy argument about being pro-choice or pro-life.  These combined efforts would do nothing to lower the rates of unwanted pregnancies or abortions (legal one’s sure).  It is a fight against the sovereignty a woman has over herself.  I don’t want these rights to be taken away from my legal partner.  I want her to have the final say so over her body.  I guess that is the difference between me and these Republican leaders. I actually want my partner to make her own choices.

Now the party of smaller government is demanding to get into a woman’s body and her doctor’s office to make the decision for her while simultaneously trying to restrict access to ever other form of reproductive care.  Truly disgusting.