GOP Really Hates Women

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The GOP really hates women so much that they have been barely able to focus on little else at times. They managed to stop the District of Columbia from using its own money to assist poor women in obtaining the procedure by attaching a rider to the continuing resolution to fund the government throwing Democrats the bone of removing the rider that would have defunded Planned Parenthood.

Tonight Think Progress reports the House passed H.R. 3 which proposes some of the most radical and draconian restrictions on women’s rights:

– Redefinition Of Rape:

The bill sponsor Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) faced serious backlash after he tried to narrow the definition rape to “forcible rape.” By narrowing the rape and incest exception in the Hyde Amendment, Smith sought to prevent the following situations from consideration: Women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults.

Smith promised to remove the language and while it is not technically in the bill, Mother Jones reports that House Republicans used “a sly legislative maneuver” to insert a “backdoor reintroduction” of redefinition language. Essentially, if the bill is challenged in court, judges will look at the congressional committee report to determine intent. The committee report for H.R. 3 says the bill will “not allow the Federal Government to subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape” – thus excluding statutory rape-related abortions from Medicaid coverage.

Tax Increase On Women And Small Businesses:

H.R. 3 prevents women from using “itemized medical deductions, certain tax-advantaged health care accounts or tax credits included in last year’s health care law to pay for abortions or for health insurance plans that cover abortion.” In doing so, the bill forces women and small businesses that provide health insurance that covers abortion to pay more in taxes than they would otherwise.

– Rape Audits:

Because H.R. 3 bans using tax credits or deductions to pay for abortions or insurance, a woman who used such a benefit would have to prove, if audited, that her abortion “fell under the rape/incest/life-of-the-mother exception, or that the health insurance she had purchased did not cover abortions.” Essentially, the bill turns Internal Revenue Service agents into “abortion cops” who would force women to give “contemporaneous written documentation” that it was “incest, or rape, or [her] life was in danger” that compelled an abortion.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called this bill the “most comprehensive and radical assault on women’s health in our lifetime” and the president has already said that he would veto this bill if it made it to his desk which is doubtful since the Senate would never pass it. That doesn’t mean they won’t try to attach it to the Debt Limit Compromise. As David Dayen reports Rep. Trent Franks R-AZ) has already proposed just that with the blessing of House Speaker John Boehner:

   The decision to put the measure on the floor is giving new hope to some social conservatives who want their issues swept up into the debt limit debate.

   Rep. Trent Franks, an anti-abortion advocate, said that House Republicans “have some leverage” to get the Democratically controlled Senate to take up the legislation, similar to the way House Republicans forced an amendment onto the continuing resolution that would defund federal funding for Planned Parenthood. As part of a larger agreement on the final CR, Senate leaders agreed to hold a separate vote on the Planned Parenthood amendment […]

   While Franks, a two-term lawmaker from Arizona, acknowledged that a balanced budget amendment may be better suited to be part of a compromise debt limit vote, he still has hope for a Senate vote on an anti-abortion bill.

   Franks isn’t alone in hoping that H.R. 3 is part of the discussion on the debt ceiling extension.

   “What we use the debt limit to leverage is really up to the leaders, [but] I would think this would be one of the bills that we could be asking for,” said Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.), an ardent anti-abortion supporter.

I really despise these people.

4 comments

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    • TMC on May 7, 2011 at 15:39
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  1. If men got raped and pregnant then abortion would be guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Instead it’s used against 0.6 people. Slaves were counted as 3/5ths of a person; women are paid as 3/5ths of a person. They tend to rise in the corporate planet as 3/5ths of a person – at best.

    It’s a patriarchical world. Women will get the short end of the stick until until we’re all seen as equal. And I don’t see that on the horizon for this lifetime. We’re going one step forward, two steps back whenever the wingnuts get a taste of power.

    Maybe forced sterilization for wingnuts may move us in the direction of a long term solution. What a vile thought.

  2. – first – I’m a 51 year old white guy, so, I stay away from telling those who are different what their lives are like – I don’t know.

    I’ve lived in Boston or Seattle for 29 of the last 31 years, and I stumbled into working on pro-choice candidate campaigns when I was 26 in ’86 and cooking and looking for dating avenues outside the cooking business.

    Planned Parenthood & NARAL & whatever seem to suffer from the SAME problem the veal pen Democratic organizations suffer from – the financial backbone of upper middle cla$$ professionals and managers are NOT people who play hardball against selfish pricks – and selfish pricks are what the fucks like rove et al, and they will do ANYTHING to win.

    PERIOD. IF someone doesn’t like what I say cuz it ain’t fucking wrapped in kennedy school 400 pages tomes of analysis, well —

    that is why you lose!

    EXCEPT for brainwashed bible thumpers, no one and no FEMALE over 13 should EVER vote for or support these selfish pricks – but – the professional / managerial cla$$ keeps hiring political gurus & messaging gurus & marketing gurus that are just like them – diversity is about skin color and religion,

    when THE PROBLEM is that the messages ain’t getting outta the leafy neighborhoods of the upper middle class.

    wanna beat those selfish pricks ?

    find something they want, and take it from them. make their lives MORE miserable than they make yours. they ONLY understand eye for an eye.

    rmm.

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