The Two Abortion Wars: A Highly Intrusive Federal Bill
Published: January 29, 2011
The Smith bill also would take certain restrictions on federal financing for abortions that now must be renewed every year and make them permanent. It would allow federal financing of abortions in cases of “forcible” rape but not statutory or coerced rape, and in cases where a woman is in danger of death from her pregnancy but not of other serious health damage. It would free states from having to provide abortions in such emergency cases.
A separate Republican bill would deny federal funds for family planning services to any organization that provides abortions. It is aimed primarily at Planned Parenthood’s hundreds of health centers, which also provide many other valuable services. No federal money is used for the abortions. This is a reckless effort to cripple an irreplaceable organization out of pure politics.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/opinion/30sun1.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211
Cassi Creek: Once again the GOP\teavangelists have shown us what they really want to do during this legislative session. Despite all the claims that jobs are the top priority, despite all the claims that tax cuts for the rich will magically cause jobs to spring from nowhere, we find that when the “symbolic” attack on health care reform is opened, the next target becomes abortion.
Jobs, say every poll, are the primary concern of most Americans. Making enough money to feed and house one’s self and one’s family is of far greater concern than is helping the theocratic right intrude into everyone else’s life.
Roe v. Wade is the Christian right’s perpetual target, along with birth control education, and “defending “marriage” from the depredations of the “godless socialists perverts.” While the bill of Rights prohibits any state religion being established, the Christian right has decided that the “establishment clause” does not apply to Christianity.
The teavangelists plan to make abortion so difficult that it will essentially become impossible to perform in the U.S. In order to do this they are willing to force women to gestate and deliver fetuses that are the result of incest, the result of rape, and that are so genetically damaged as to be either non-viable after delivery or that will require extreme levels of medical support from the instant of delivery until they die. The GOPer\teavangelists are constantly citing the sanctity of all life and their demands that government intrusion into private lives be eliminated. Yet they demand a state that intrudes into the most personal of decisions – to have or not have children because of the dictates of an equally intrusive agency, Christianity.
Michelle Bachman, Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, and the entire teabagger demagoguery mob spread rumors about secret camps built by the Democrats for the re-education and indoctrination of citizens. Perhaps they should pause and consider the possibility that there will be, instead, breeding camp where women who do not wish to carry or deliver fetuses will be interned for attempting to terminate a pregnancy. Given the denial of women’s rights to choose to reproduce or to not reproduce by the GOPers\teavangelists, I am far more concerned that we may see such breeding camps throughout the nation, beginning in the red states.
What will not happen, regardless of how many women are forced to carry and deliver unwanted children is any government program to house, feed, educate, and otherwise support the unwanted children of parents who can not now afford them. Nor will there be any factual birth control information provided by schools or community-based groups.
The GOPers\teavangelists wail about a generation of throw-away children. They seem unable to understand that they are the force creating more and more of the unwanted.
I do not object to federal funding for abortion, I support it for many reasons. I do oppose and will continue to oppose fertility treatments being paid for by any governmental agency. Given the huge number of children available for adoption along with the religious right’s insistence that even more be added to the pool of unfortunates, there is no justification for any insurance plan, private of public funded to cover fertility treatments.
Abortion is a poor solution to many societal problems but it must always be available to women who choose it. The distance from prohibition to breeding camps is much shorter than we wish to admit. There is still a huge portion of the Christian fundamentalist world that views women only as a continual source of new little fundamentalist males.
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