GOP War against contraception

[LiberalLoner]

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/republican-war-birth-control-contraception


The Republican War on Contraception


Not satisfied with restricting abortion rights, the GOP is now coming after your birth control.

—By Nick Baumann


Last year was not a great one for abortion rights. First, congressional Republicans attempted to deny statutory rape victims access to Medicaid-funded abortions (twice). Then GOP-dominated state legislatures pushed record numbers of laws limiting abortion rights, including proposals that could have treated killing abortion providers as "justifiable homicide."

Yet in the past six months, social conservatives have widened their offensive, and their new target is clear: Not satisfied with making it harder to obtain legal abortions, they want to limit access to birth control, too.

"Contraception is under attack in a way it really wasn't in the past few years," says Judy Waxman, the vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center. "In 2004, we could not find any group—the National Right to Life Committee, the Bush campaign, anyone—that would go on the record to say they're opposed to birth control," adds Elizabeth Shipp, the political director for NARAL Pro-Choice America. "We couldn't find them in 2006 either, and in 2008 it was just fringe groups. In 2010, 2011, and this year, it's just exploded."

(The rest of the article is at link shown above.)

[Turbineguy]

1. The GOP sees this election as their last chance

to destroy the US.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. It's not about "religious rights" and "discrimination against religion".

It's about the redistribution of power by taking away the rights of women to fully participate in American society. Women are just as much targets as Muslims, African-Americans, Mexicans, other immigrants, union members, workers generally. There IS a pattern.

[stufl]

3. Well, OK. Women's rights is certainly an issue...But

I think the real issue is that the largest constituency remaining for the Republicans is the religious extremists who want me and everyone else to accept their beliefs. The GOP has alienated just about everyone else.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Elite republicans use religious fundamentalists to neutralize their opposition.

Progressive women are going to slow down or frustrate the goals of the republican party to limit political power to the corporate elite and disenfranchising them with pregnancy is an expected tactic as well as recriminalizing abortion.