First off, technically the left isn’t trying to restrict access to birth control pills. But if they’re allowed to use the dishonest mental gymnastics of equating “access” to mean “forcing someone else to buy something for you” then I can take a few liberties with my post’s title to garnish some click bait. But that doesn’t mean that the title is deceptive, either. In the words of the once-great Damien Sandow, allow me to beg your indulgence…
Recently the none too leftist publication, The National Review, made the conservative case for making birth control pills an over the counter drug, as several Republicans running for the Senate have adopted this position.
Senate nominees Cory Gardner (Colorado), Ed Gillespie (Virginia), Mike McFadden (Minnesota), and Thom Tillis (North Carolina), in addition to some Republican House candidates, are calling for the Food and Drug Administration to reclassify a number of hormonal contraceptives as over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, making them accessible without a prescription. They’re not the first Republicans to call for deregulating the market: Former HHS and state health official and governor Bobby Jindal (Louisiana) endorsed the idea in 2012.
Hormonal birth control has been around for a long time, and while it has some dangers, they aren’t going to be addressed by hauling women in for a perfunctory, often uninformative doctor’s visit. Over-the-counter availability is a market-based approach to medicine, and it drives down the cost of drugs substantially. The pro-life movement has had some unease about birth control as evidence has appeared that it can, in some instances, destroy an embryo, ending a human life. But requiring a prescription is no way to address that concern.
Kudos for the Republicans for trying something radical like becoming champions of using market forces to drive down costs and with it, increase the availability of a good. Granted, this is mainly in reaction to how effective the left has been at convincing women that birth control should be the main concern that they should be thinking about (as opposed to trivialities, like jobs, the economy, energy, etc). But hey, it’s good to see the party doing the right thing for kind of wrong reasons as opposed to its recent history of doing the stupid thing for the wrong reasons. While I found this idea interesting, it wasn’t the idea, but rather the reaction of the radical left that prompted this post.
In The Nation’s newsletter that I subscribe to one of their headlines that caught my eye was an article by Zoe Carpenter called, Don’t Fall for the GOP’s Over-the-Counter Contraception Racket. There were too many ridiculous claims in the article for me to address, but I thought that one excellent point was
None of these people were championing the proposal before their campaigns.
I think that this is a fair point to contest. Politicians making claims that may or not be true to appeal to an audience is the nature of the beast. If I’m hearing a candidate take up some new position that only came into existence when campaign season started then I think some hard questions as to what will happen after the election are fair game. Unfortunately that sentence I cited is about the only bit of sense in Carpenter’s article – most of it centers around the fact that leftists can’t grasp why anyone would disagree with them over abortion, mandates, etc. And National review did a good job of pointing out the other side of the coin:
The Left’s response to this political development continues its cynical treatment of this issue. Liberal-leaning doctors’ groups and abortion advocates such as Planned Parenthood supported proposals like the ones Republicans are touting now . . . until Republicans started touting them.
Let’s back up a bit and look at what the actual objective is here – it is maximizing access to oral contraceptives for women by making the product as inexpensive as possible. At the end of the day that end goal should be all that matters. But Carpenter still opposes it
Nor is making contraception available without a prescription an alternative to the birth control mandate (or, needless to say, the entire healthcare law).
I understand the left’s position that this doesn’t address coverage for abortions, the Obamacare mandates, etc. But why wouldn’t the left at least support making birth control pills cheaper? If this issue were about access, a better response would have been something along the lines of “While we applaud Republicans finally coming around to the need for women’s access to contraception, we still disagree with their unwillingness to support…”. But they didn’t. Why? Very simply, it’s about control. As I wrote a while back about how lost in all of the birth control pill controversy was why condom use wasn’t being mentioned:
They’re cheap. In the left’s efforts to get the public to accept sacrificing any freedom over their health care decisions, having expensive medical needs are necessary to show why average citizens need them.
Condoms are easily accessible. The evil, capitalist system has crated a product that is so cheap and easy to purchase that it would be difficult for the government to swoop in and take over their distribution, thus the need to force solutions that are easier to control.
As I’ve always argued, however much leftism claims to be about helping people, at the end of the day it’s about controlling them. One of Carpenter’s last point is
When conservatives fight to empower women to make decisions about their own bodies in all cases, regardless of income, then maybe we’ll take them seriously.
Or maybe when the radical left stops defining empowerment as dependence on government and stops fighting anything that could weaken that dependence, then maybe we’ll take them seriously.
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Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
I heard an excellent montage of Obama declaring all the public disasters that will ensue if sequestration (HIS idea, by the way) was allowed to go into effect and cut 10% OF THE GROWTH of federal spending. Of course, in the end, no one even noticed.
It was going along SO unnoticed that the administration had to go to extra lengths to MAKE the cuts painful. They needlessly closed parks and memorials, even spending money they supposedly no longer had to cordon off and barricade open air malls.
The message that was supposed to have been transmitted was that without the federal government providing everything for us, we would flounder and be lost. This is so much NOT the case that artificial pain had to be manufactured.
Now they oppose OTC birth control and it becoming even cheaper than it already is… all because it would no longer be THEIR honor to make it available and, as such, be the benevolent benefactor we should keep funding and nourishing.
One day, the majority will simply wake up.
As opposed to the GOP who’d really wants to restrict access to birth control?
Apparently it hasn’t occurred to the author that “jobs” and “the economy”, as they relate to a family’s economic concerns, are the key reasons why birth control is such an important issue to families (not just women). Perhaps the author isn’t aware that many families have two working parents and literally can’t afford an unplanned pregnancy (America isn’t a particularly generous country when it comes to parental leave for childbirth.) Affordable access to birth control is an important factor in family planning. But of course I’m talking about the majority of women in America for whom this is a concern, not the right wing cartoon of the unemployed wanton just looking to to have a good time while wasting your hard earned tax dollars.
And people claim conservatives just can’t stop betraying their ignorance about the concerns of women. Heaven knows why.
@This+one:
Restrict it how? By refusing to let women buy their birth control pills with other people’s money?
I can’t believe that any intelligent woman allows the left to reduce her to no more than the sum of her reproductive body parts.
@Tom:
And apparently it has not occurred to Democrats that women can better afford birth control if they are working and not just looking for work.
With all the preventative treatments that are available to women at extremely low cost, why should any pregnancy be “unplanned?”
An employer is responsible for paying an employee for the work that employee does. An employer should not be responsible for a woman’s choice to have a baby.
Affordable access to health care is readily available. And if birth control pills require a physician’s Rx, there are clinics for women that charge on a sliding scale. No money? No charge. How much better can you get than free?
But then, the left’s ideal woman was Sandra Fluke, who whined how she couldn’t afford $9.00 a month for oral contraceptives while going to one of the most expensive universities in the nation or flitting off on a European holiday with her boyfriend. Perhaps she should have asked her boyfriend to pay the $9.00 a month since he was reaping the benefits of her promiscuity.
@retire05:
I’m impressed by how many sentences you managed to write before resorting to slut shaming. Kudos to you for finally getting to the reactionary heart of the matter. A woman who controls her reproductive destiny is a women who is going to have endure the judgment of reactionaries. I think most of them think it’s a fair trade off. What isn’t a fair trade off is reactionaries sticking their noses into peoples’ bedrooms or impacting peoples’ lives through atrocities like Hobby Lobby. This is why any woman with an ounce of self respect should consider carefully supporting a party or platform that treats women like human incubators and milk machines.
@Bill: Check this post from the archives on the park closures.
@Tom: Doesn’t a woman who has a job control her destiny, and not just reproductive? It’s the radical left who thinks that women are incapable of thinking beyond their lady parts while only men are capable of voting based on issues like the economy, foreign policy, energy, etc.
@Tom:
I’m surprised at how many women are willing to give their most precious commodity away to men who think they are nothing more than a receptacle for the man’s sexual desires. Your body is your most precious property. Why should you just wantonly allow someone to use it?
How about a woman telling a man she is not going to share her body with him until he proves that he is worthy?
Oh, the standard leftist comment about Hobby Lobby. Perhaps you should stop listening to Nancy Pelosi. Hobby Lobby provides birth control, dozens of methods. They just don’t supply those that create abortion. And the SCOTUS agreed with them.
There is no party that treats women like human incubators and milk machines. I warrant if you took a poll of all the absentee fathers you would find most of them vote Democrat. Personal responsibility is not part of the DNC credo. So who’s abusing women, Tom?
You’re not making much sense, Bill. Birth Control is as a health care issue. Its access and coverage are important health care considerations for any woman who can bear children. It’s ludicrous for you to mock that concern as somehow less important than “jobs”, as if a woman is incapable of having an opinion on multiple topics. Considering how much traction reactionaries get out of complaining about the drag on taxpayers’ coffers posed by the mythical single welfare mother and her hungry brood, it’s certainly puzzling to see similar moral outrage regarding the responsible application of preventative measures. The commonality of these seemingly incongruous complaints, of course, is patriarchy. You didn’t think your flimsy reasoning could hide the heart of matter?
@retire05:
I imagine most women believe it’s their choice alone what they do with their “most precious commodity”, as much as you’d love to turn that choice over to the Church or Ted Cruz. It really is amazing how you can’t move beyond the slut lens. You are aware that a higher percentage of married women use birth control than single? This is going to be a tough one for you: can you think of a non-slut reason why a working wife and mother might require birth control?
@retire05 #4:
“I can’t believe that any intelligent woman allows the left to reduce her to no more than the sum of her reproductive body parts.”
I can’t believe that any intelligent woman allows the Republican Party to tell her what she can and cannot do with her reproductive body parts.
The party that wants smaller government also wants to keep that government busy in your pants and watching under the sheets, telling folks precisely who can stick what where, and when you have to keep what your body produces.
“I’m surprised at how many women are willing to give their most precious commodity away to men who think they are nothing more than a receptacle for the man’s sexual desires.”
Your #8 comment above reveals just how deep your contempt for women really runs. Like most Republicans, you see women as property incapable of making their own decisions, and you think that the most valuable thing a woman has to offer is access to her genitalia. Not that you see men in any better light. In fact, the whole world would be way better off if we just did away with governments altogether and made Retire05 GOD. Then she could smite the sodomites and the fornicators and the abortionists and the environmentalists and the liberals and the Muslims and the Marxists and and and… where would it end.
@retire05: Wow — this post really rolled over the rock and stirred up the trollie’s panties!
you should quit feeding them – you ARE wasting your time — in regards to the trolls: you should go back to the top of this post and take the comment re ‘stupid’ more seriously!
@retire05: ” By refusing to let women buy their birth control pills with other people’s money?”
I guess you don’t understand the concept of insurance.
@Tom:
It certainly is a health care issue. However, it is not a “war on women” issue. As we have seen with the Hobby Lobby case, for the left it is not simply a “providing birth control” issue but a “do exactly what the government tells you to do how the government tells you to do it” issue.
Now, wait just a second… on the one hand, you are telling us taxpayers (the money behind all this governmental generosity and good will) that what a woman does with her body is none of our business (absolutely correct) while at the same time, telling us taxpayers (the money behind all this governmental generosity and good will) that it is our duty to pay for the means to prevent births developing from this lack of interest or for whatever other consequences might occur. Which is it?
If we taxpayers (the money behind all this governmental generosity and good will) are to foot the bill, we taxpayers (the money behind all this governmental generosity and good will) get to call the shots (so to speak). It would be pretty economically stupid to simply provide the cash means for individuals to do whatever they wish and then obligate ourselves to pay all the expenses. Either we control the outcome or the individual undertakes the personal responsibility. Anything else (as we have seen) is a recipe for disaster.
@George+Wells:
Like Tom, you get it backwards. Republicans are not telling women to do ANYTHING with their body parts. We are telling them we are not picking up the tab BECAUSE it is none of our business. Further, we are doing whatever is possible to make that tab for the private individual as painless as is possible. What the left is insisting on is maintaining control of the birth control (and keeping the costs high) so the individual will HAVE to come to the government for aid.
Are you intentionally missing the point? You on the left want to make this all about “reproductive rights” and have them controlled by the government. We on the right believe it is none of our business and want to be out of it.
@Budvarakbar:
@Bill:
The left is trying to make birth control a “war on women” issue because they are flailing in the polls. And they know it. But history is not on their side.
I remember the days of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. I also remember the days of young women dressed in t-shirts that said “A Woman Needs A Man Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle.” But then the Feminazis continued to tell women that they had a right to subscribe to the free love philosophy and it was women’s rights to be just as big sluts as a lot of men were and there would be nothing to come of that except “liberation.” What did Steinem care? She’s gay. What did Friedan know? She lived in a physically abusive marriage her entire life. Not exactly two standard bearers for the average woman.
And what came out of all that free love? Remember when night clubs were called “meat markets?” There was a reason for that. Men cruised those clubs looking for cheap sex. For the cost of a couple of drinks and a few smooth words, women flopped in bed with guys they barely knew. And the reward? Often it was a growing belly and an absentee lover who hardly remembered the woman’s name and threw her phone number away the following morning. “I promise I will love you in the morning” became a running (not so funny) joke.
The sexual revolution caused men to view women in a different light. The meat market shoppers no longer had the respect for women that had been in existence for generations. If a woman got pregnant by an irresponsible slug, so what, the slug thought. She knew what she was doing. Not his problem. Couple of hundred bucks, a trip to an abortion mill and he was off the hook for a cost that was often cheaper than a prostitute. That is, if she could even find him. And if she could, it was not unusual for him to just hang up on her after telling her “It’s not my problem.”
And what has come of 40+ years of free love and “liberation?” Just take a look at the unwed mother statistics. I know someone who worked for years for Support Kids. It is a group that will go after dead beat dads and back child support. Day after day she told me of women who came into the office to try to get child support from the baby daddies. Some with two, three kids. Did they know who the baby daddies were? Many times not. Only knew his first name but not where he lived, where he worked or even what his phone number was. Often these women would name multiple men, all who had to be contacted and court ordered to take DNA tests to prove paternity. After six years, she quit the job because it was so depressing.
I believe in equal pay for equal work. But when the left talks about women making less than men in the same position (as the women who work at the White House do) they don’t talk about how women miss more work than men due to family and children (which tells you that women are STILL the primary care givers), or often work part time once their children enter school. All factors considered, women have just about closed the gap on salaries.
Ask any man if he cares how many men his girl friend/wife has slept with before him. Most men do not want a woman who has been extremely promiscuous before she enters into a relationship/marriage with him. There are those men who will claim they don’t care, but they do. You can’t tell me that those men are not thinking “How do I stack up against her former lovers? Will she find someone she thinks is better in bed?” I can tell you that women share the same thoughts.
If women want to subscribe to the free love movement, they need to accept responsibility for their own actions, and that includes paying for their birth control, and not wanting the taxpayer to pick up the tab. Same for married women. They need to pay for their birth control, or get their husbands to pay for it. After all, men are the ones who benefit the most from such lax sexual norms. Obviously, Sandra Fluke’s boyfriend could afford to take her on a European jaunt, but not the $9.00 a month for oral contraceptives. That is called misplaced priorities.
Ironic, isn’t it, that women who now declare themselves remaining chaste until marriage are ridiculed as being out of step with the rest of the feminine movement.
@Bill #13:
“You on the left want to make this all about “reproductive rights” and have them controlled by the government. We on the right believe it is none of our business and want to be out of it.”
Wrong on both counts. The “left” PRECISELY DOESN’T want reproductive rights to be controlled by the government. A woman should have autonomy over her own body – INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO TERMINATE HER OWN LIFE – and the government should have no say in the matter. Republicans do NOT believe that a woman’s reproductive rights are “none of our business.” Republicans do NOT believe that a woman has a right to choose. Not suicide, not abortion, and in the extremes of the evangelical base, not contraception either. They do everything that they can to EXPEND government into people’s bedrooms. “Small government”, indeed.
“Further, we are doing whatever is possible to make that tab for the private individual as painless as is possible.”
How? Buy cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood? By obstructing access to abortion clinics and forcing their closure under the laughable guise of protecting women’s safety? You have NO trouble saying that with a straight face?
@Bill: You said:
Thus my post #12!
Republicans do NOT believe that a woman has a right to
choosekill an unborn child. Not suicide, not preventable by any government agency if the person is determined, not abortion, and in the extremes of the evangelical base, not contraception either. They do everything that they can to EXPEND government into people’s bedrooms while those who demand privacy in their bedrooms also demand that the government apply approval to what they do in their bedrooms.The left wants you out of their bedrooms until they don’t. Then they sue you, cost you your business and livelihood and feel good about themselves.
@retire05:
The government as PIMP!
@retire05 #14:
I basically agree with your assessment of the consequences of sexual liberation. There were prices that had to be paid for less restrictive, more casual sexual behavior, and these may be found in the cost of the AIDS epidemic, as well as the cost of the increasing prevalence of other STD’s. Changing mores also meant a drop in the marriage rate and a corresponding increase in the unwed birth rate, and an increase in the percentage of women who smoke and drink heavily. But not all of the effects of those changing mores were negative. There has been an increase in the proportion of women in the workplace (including the military) and women are now approaching pay-parity with men in occupations from which they were previously excluded. They also now enjoy a more equitable cornucopia of legal rights than they previously had. The days of keeping your “property” at home barefoot and pregnant are gone.
“If women want to subscribe to the free love movement, they need to accept responsibility for their own actions, and that includes paying for their birth control, and not wanting the taxpayer to pick up the tab.”
This sounds nice on the surface, but I wonder at the hidden discrimination that it implies. Note:
“If MEN want to subscribe to the freedom-to-smoke movement, they need to accept responsibility for their own actions, and that includes paying for their lung transplants, and not wanting the taxpayer to pick up the tab.”
“They need to pay for their birth control.”
Why just birth control? Why not everything. What is the government’s interest in paying the costs of smoking ($billions) but not birth control?
@retire05 #17:
“Republicans do NOT believe that a woman has a right to choose kill an unborn child. Not suicide, not preventable by any government agency if the person is determined, not abortion, and in the extremes of the evangelical base, not contraception either. They do everything that they can to EXPEND government into people’s bedrooms”
We are in total agreement.
I’m not sure that I understand your defense of the government’s expansion into people’s bedrooms, but I accept your concession of it.
It would be so much easier if Republicans really DID agree to smaller government. But they never will. They will ALWAYS want to control who people have sex with, who people choose to marry, which God people choose to worship and how often. Why do you suppose that Republicans are so meddlesome in other people’s private affairs?
@George+Wells:
So, let me get this straight; you feel the left is all about granting independence by paying for everything but Republicans want to control aspects of women’s lives by NOT paying for anything? And that the fact that a woman does not go and get an abortion because Republicans refuse to fund them makes that the Republican’s fault? Really?!? That would be like it’s YOUR fault I don’t have a new car because you would not pay for it.
For all the varying degrees in which those who oppose abortion oppose it (personally, I only object to it as a means of birth control, a supremely selfish and cruel thing to do), what I absolutely object to is ME having to pay for it. This is the same attitude I took with my kids; “this is my advice and if you get yourself in trouble by IGNORING that advice, good luck with all that.”
As to birth control, again with Hobby Lobby, we saw a wide variety of birth control measures covered, but the left insists on forcing everyone to cover EVERYTHING, even if it is morally (yes, some have morals) objectionable and repugnant. Again, abortion is not birth control, it is an emergency procedure but you on the left simply want it because you want it.
This is leading to the same conditions as with the legalized pot agenda; we have homeless people and many on public assistance acquiring pot with subsidies or even DEMANDING THEIR SHARE OF POT AS A RIGHT! The fact is, if drug use has made you homeless, you made your bed. If you like being homeless so you can use drugs and not have to worry about maintaining a job, you made your bed. If you want to be on public assistance AND use drugs (since you have so much free time on your hands), sorry, not on our nickel. The same goes with “reproductive rights”. Use some personal responsibility and you will make life a lot easier on yourself.
@Bill #21:
I’ll ask you the same question that I asked retire05, who said:
““If women want to subscribe to the free love movement, they need to accept responsibility for their own actions, and that includes paying for their birth control, and not wanting the taxpayer to pick up the tab.”
I responded to her with:
“This sounds nice on the surface, but I wonder at the hidden discrimination that it implies. Note:
“If MEN want to subscribe to the freedom-to-smoke movement, they need to accept responsibility for their own actions, and that includes paying for their lung transplants, and not wanting the taxpayer to pick up the tab.”
Smoking is an entirely unproductive and wasteful habit that also has serious implications for persons exposed to the pollution that smoking creates. Yet the insurance premiums that you and I pay subsidizes the costs that smokers incur – raising our rates. Some of our taxes also pay for the same costs.
There is no cost-benefit side to the smoking equation. On the other hand, there IS a cost-benefit derived from birth control and abortion, and I find it odd that THIS cost, not the cost of smoking, is the cost that you object to paying. WHY?
@George+Wells:
Remind me again who wants the taxpayer to be paying for everyone’s health care?
There are insurance plans that provide discounts for NOT smoking.
However, to use your example, if the government provided free cigarettes and the promise of health care to cure whatever problems bad behavior created, would more or less people smoke? If, on the other hand, it was the individual’s responsibility to provide the smokes and, rather than encouraging smoking, the government partnered with celebrity icons to reduce the appeal of smoking coupled with an educational program designed to show all the hazards of smoking and the clear message that one smokes at one’s OWN RISK, would there be more or less smoking? The answer to that example is pretty clear, since it has already been employed and accomplished.
Rewarding and excusing bad behavior will not reduce it and I am not willing to blindly pay for the consequences. Liberals not only feel obligated to pay (or force someone else to pay) for bad behavior, they go out of their way to encourage it.
George, those who smoke have been well aware of the risks attached to the habit. Even some health insurance companies refuse to insure those who smoke, and if they do, it is at highly elevated premiums. And good luck getting a lung transplant if you are on Medicair.
Drug users are also being denied health insurance or given it at highly elevated premiums.
So why should the taxpayers be responsible for personal decisions?
Get back to me when the federal government gives the tobacco industry A HALF BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR like it does Planned Parenthood that claims it doesn’t have the money to bring its clinics up to out patient surgical standards.
@Bill:
Huh? How is exactly is advocating for birth control to be covered by insurance a “do exactly what the government tells you to do how the government tells you to do it” issue? The list of medications or items that are or aren’t covered by insurance is endless. To use a much more trivial example, there are many men who advocate for ED drugs to be covered by insurance. Does this mean those men are advocating for government to tell everyone what do? Here you are trying to put a rational economic face on an argument that is, at its root, just contemptuous reactionary feedback to women regarding their ownership of their reproductive health choices – and even that house of cards is doomed to failure. There is no medical or fiscal argument you can muster to explain why birth control shouldn’t be covered. Just from a fiscal standpoint, the cost of unplanned pregnancies to society, to employers and to families dwarfs the cost of birth control: ” Lower-bound, mean and upper-bound estimates of the annual cost of unintended pregnancy are, respectively, $9.6 billion, $11.3 billion and $12.6 billion. Corresponding estimates of the savings that would accrue to taxpayers by preventing unintended pregnancies are $4.7 billion, $5.6 billion and $6.2 billion.”
The author of this post takes something that is both sound public policy and good for women’s health and uses it as an opportunity to scold women for being simple-minded drones who can only think about one thing to the exclusion of ” jobs, the economy, energy, etc”. And that easy-going contempt is just underscored in the comments by the requisite slut shaming of Retire5. That seems to be the Right Wing blog formula, I’ve noticed. Write something with a thin veneer of a rational argument, but with a heavy dose of baiting for the comments section to run with it. It’s a marvel you’re still confused as to why any woman would consider reactionaries who equate the use of birth control with immoral promiscuity to be threat to her personal liberty.
@Tom:
And conveniently you ignore that I apply slut standards to both men and women. Why is that?
If you want health insurance that covers contraception, buy it. It’s available. If you want health insurance that covers ED drugs, buy it. It is available. You also have a choice of examining a companies health insurance coverage before you accept a job. Ask the recruiter if the company covers your needs.
I don’t think I should be required to pay for your smoking habit, or your drug habit, and I certainly don’t want to pay for you getting laid and the consequences of that action.
@retire05:
That’s a really impressive re-writing of the last forty years as told through the prism of your 19th century antebellum Christian reactionarism. Your hatred for contemporary society and the freedom women now have to choose their own destiny is truly hair-raising. And to think you unironically claimed above that liberals were manufacturing this “war on women”. Your inflexible belief in women’s divinely-dictated subservient station in life is the “war on women”. And women would be wise to fear it. We don’t have to look overseas to witness a reactionary vision for women. We can look at the plight of the 13 year old child bride on Warren Jeffers compound. We don’t have to imagine your idealized world.
@retire05: Please quit feeding the trolls!
@Tom:
Women are not free, Tom. They have been shackled to a ’60’s-’70’s belief that wonton sexual activity was tied to liberation. But the costs are real as we see in the number of babies being aborted and the number of children being raised with absentee fathers. Saddling women with the results of that philosophy empowers women how?
Au contraire. The “war on women” is a ruse. You are just too dense to see it.
Warren Jeffs is where he needs to be. Locked up so that he can never harm another human being.
How hypocritical of you, as a man, to assume you have the right to speak for women. You don’t. But if you want to contribute to more equality in the workplace for women, call the White House and tell the Obama administration to pay women on the same scale they pay men.
@Budvarakbar:
The trolls are here because they are such insecure people who need love and have nothing better to do with their lives. 🙂
@retire05:
So women were better off as chattel? You have no data to prove your charge that women are more sexually promiscuous. None. That’s just you seeing things though the lens of your tired culture war tropes.
Good point. And who killed the Paycheck Fairness Act?
Says the person who literally spends every waking hour on this site.
@Tom:
And when were women ever considered “chattel” in the last two hundred years in America?
Just another left wing cause built on a lie. And a lawsuit.
As usual, you’re a liar. But hey, feel free to track my posts here. It will give you something to do besides run your mouth.
@retire05:
The truth, it stings. To be fair, I shouldn’t have written “literally”. I really don’t know for certain that you’ve found a way to bring your computer into the shower yet so as to not miss anything.
@retire05 #25:
“So why should the taxpayers be responsible for personal decisions?”
How about paying for the increased medical costs of obese people? Insurance companies don’t drop folks when they get fat, do they? But when I developed type 2 diabetes at age 50 AND WEIGHT 155 POUNDS, Anthem Blue Cross dropped me like a hot potato. (Well, not exactly – they dropped me after one year after the diagnosis, claiming in the next year that I had a “pre-existing condition.”) But back to the porkers. Most of them got that way from voluntarily eating too much. Very few have the fabled “glandular problems.” Health insurance companies shouldn’t be allowed to pick and choose which human imperfections and which human choices they want to indemnify.
“Get back to me when the federal government gives the tobacco industry A HALF BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR like it does Planned Parenthood that claims it doesn’t have the money to bring its clinics up to out patient surgical standards.”
First, the tobacco industry doesn’t NEED any Federal money, does it? It ALREADY makes $billions in profits from producing and selling an addictive drug, and the industry creates no benefit to society other than keeping its pushers employed.
Planned Parenthood provides a range of services to families, and is limited in that service by the funds it receives. As you point out, the need exceeds the funding, or else PP would be able to meet the out-patient standards that Republicans are happily using to close them down.
The one point that no lefty seems to address is what “right” that didn’t exist before Obamacare is being taken away here?
@Brother Bob#36:
Your “lefties” are pointing out to you that ObamaCare is TRYING to fix an Insurance Industry Scam that has been ALLOWED to be pushed upon the American public by state regulators. Those regulators have given the insurance industry exclusivity by disallowing competition across state lines and by allowing all sorts of conditions under which the insurance companies may change rates at will or cancel policies all-to-gether.
The non-transportability of policies, the invention of pre-existing condition exclusions, and the artificial limits imposed upon various benefits are features of pre-Affordable Care that the Act sought to correct.
The “right” that is not yet secure is the right of the public to buy insurance that actually means something. Before the ACA, that right was largely subverted by the insurance industry and its lobbyists.
@Brother Bob:
Who wrote that a “right” was being taken away? The issue at hand (as I can parse your not very coherent post) is your claim that dim-witted women/DNC pawns are worrying their little heads over employer attempts by religious extremists and coattailers to deny converge for birth control. That isn’t a “rights” issue, it’s a right or wrong issue. And arguably a discrimination issue.
And since you brought up Obamacare, more people have health insurance and health care costs are at historically low rates. How much does that upset you?
@George+Wells:
Between the flourishing of gay marriage and increased access to health care for those who desperately need it thanks to the ACA, it almost seems like the far right is running out of groups to effectively demonize and bully.
Oh jeez, I forgot about black people.
@Tom #39:
“Oh jeez, I forgot about black people.”
Well, I gave you the benefit of the doubt, since this thread’s subject was the women issue.
As long as cops have guns and young black males run free, well, connect the dots.
I have no doubt that every such tragedy has multiple causes. Although there is bountiful good will and common sense on both sides of the race issue, there is also more than enough bad mojo to keep the body bags coming and the streets full of angry protesters well into the dark night. A very sad celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
@George+Wells:
And there has been many attempts to address that dynamic. And they will always meet on deaf ears in certain quarters. Extremists on both sides will always point the finger in the same direction every time. None of that changes abundant anecdotal and factual statistical evidence that black parents have good reason not to sleep well at night.
@Tom #41:
If you place this issue in the context of Darwinism (that is, consider “survival of the fittest” in the sense of the prospect for success in any group’s quest for survival on an evolutionary scale) I think that you have an explanation for the intransigence that ALL of these “differences” issues have. We are ALL programmed to like that which is most similar to us and to dislike that which is different. The more different, the more disliked. Red heads are different, and we tease them for that, but Blacks are way more different… TOO different.
Same thing with homosexuality. Some of the “Opponents” of SSM have argued that other opponents should stop being polite and really go after the “ick” factor, reminding people of the specific and VERY different sexual practices of homosexuals. Retire05 does this with her continual references to “sodomy”, a correct but largely archaic term.
People who are afraid will always seek the comfort of sameness and fight that which is different, never fully appreciating the benefits of diversity.
@George+Wells:
I’m sure it is comforting for you to know you have seen where the future is going. 61% of young Republicans favor same-sex marriage And likewise Retire5 must realize on some level that she’s fighting a losing battle. But inevitability won’t stop her from causing maximum pain and damage regardless.
@Tom:
I may be. But how do you think I cause anyone pain? I do not hang them, hunt them down in the dark of night, or sue them for frivolous reasons. In spite of people like you, Tom, I am still free to hold whatever belief I choose.
@Tom:
Well, actually, FEWER people have insurance, since 6 million were kicked off their policies and only 7 million were signed up, many of whom not even covered as they have not yet qualified or paid. The forecast is a cost of $1.8 trillion and 30 million still uninsured. Cost’s going DOWN? Really?
If you have a point to make about whether or not Democrats use and abuse women for political purposes, I suggest you stick to that…. defending Obamacare is pretty much a lost cause.
Hmmm…. no, that’s not it.
@Bill:
Okay, Bill, why don’t you enlighten us as to why women overwhelmingly vote Democrat. Extra credit if you can do it without some crass generalization insulting women. Good luck.
Edit: 67% of single women voted for Obama in 2012. The challenge for FA: explain this without using words “stupid” or “slut”.
@etire05 #44:
“I may be (fighting a losing battle against same-sex marriage). But how do you think I cause anyone pain?”
How about the nasty insults? Do you think that they make the people whom you direct them at feel GOOD?
Anyone who has lost a friend to AIDS is doubly pained when you call gay people “sodomites” and chide them for having their “widdle feelings hurt.” Although some words my be historically or technically correct, their use is impolite and hinders efforts to bridge differences. Your use of harsh terms and expressions of disgust serves no useful purpose other than to give voice to your “hurt-child” reaction to the success that the “marriage equality” effort has made.
@Tom #43:
“I’m sure it is comforting for you to know you have seen where the future is going. 61% of young Republicans favor same-sex marriage.”
“Comforting” is an understatement. “Overwhelmed” plus “ecstatic” gets closer.
The challenge I face now is one that I am unprepared for. After sitting for so many years on the losing side of this issue, I don’t really know how to dress in the winning colors. What tact displays the best sportsmanship?
I want to jump up and down and sing loudly and ring big bells, but there is a proper and dignified way to accept victory without peeing on the other side. I try to emulate a Christian grace, and I seek to accommodate some of the fears the other side has regarding religious protections.
What I seem to get in return is an interesting assortment of the early stages of conflict resolution: some are stuck in the “denial” stage (“there is no such thing as “gay marriage”) while others shift between “averse recognition” (of the fact) and “resignation” (with a generous portion of anger mixed in).
What I work toward is “coping,” “adaptation,” “integration” and “acceptance”. I doubt that any of us can make it to the “acceptance” stage without going through the earlier, more painful steps.
@George+Wells:
Perhaps it never occurred to you that I don’t lob insults at those who do not bring it on themselves, like you do?
Why do you think I have never lost friends to AIDS? I have, gay friends, who didn’t shove their life’s choices down everyone else’s throat. People who really just wanted to live their lives, privately, without making a crusade out of it.
I’ll tell you what is impolite and hinders efforts to bridge differences; suing those who have a different opinion than radical gay activists, denying them their livelihood, their businesses, their jobs and their financial security.
My use of terms that you consider “harsh” and “expressions of disgust” are historically, and legally, correct. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg. If you are upset because I don’t subscribe to your cultural Marxism, so be it. I really don’t care since I have absolutely no respect for you, hence my harsh words toward you and your single issue agenda.
You need to accept it is not gays, per se, that I don’t like. It is you I don’t like.
@retire05 #49:
“You need to accept it is not gays, per se, that I don’t like. It is you I don’t like.”
Once a tiresome again, you seek to reduce another conversation to an explanation of why you PERSONALLY dislike someone.
The only gay people you “like” are the ones who stay quietly imprisoned in the closet of your choice.
Sorry, but I’ve been there, and I KNOW that it isn’t a pretty place. When in there, you have to lie to everyone ALL THE TIME. You can NEVER tell the truth. You can never be yourself.
Yeah, I’m going to go back in there again just to make you happy. Thank you very much.
“I’ll tell you what is impolite and hinders efforts to bridge differences; suing those who have a different opinion than radical gay activists, denying them their livelihood, their businesses, their jobs and their financial security.”
Having been backed into a wall by those of you who would deny us our constitutionally guaranteed equal rights, what did you expect us to do?
I watched for over fifty years as absolutely nothing was done for gay people. Nobody cared. Why? Because we were almost to a man (or woman) content to stay in our little closets, telling our little lies, not rocking the heterosexual boat. Asking nicely if it was time yet…
Did you not even know we were there? Did you think you didn’t have any responsibility to tear down our Biblically inspired prisons of guilt? Thanks for NOT helping, Republican Party, but our freedom would never have happened if it hadn’t have been for those “militant” gays you despise so much.
No thanks to you, either.
What gays have gained, they gained IN SPITE of you.