Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty, (rafflaw), Guest Blogger
I don’t think Barry Goldwater would recognize Conservatism or his Republican Party if he was alive today. Conservatism used to mean belief in safe and sound economic spending and freedom for all from governments getting too large and too restrictive on personal freedoms. Recently we have seen Republicans offer up a brand new and dangerous definition of rape in an attempt to restrict abortions and to restrict government money being used to pay for them. Now we are seeing another Republican attempt to restrict the use of contraceptives under the guise of ending the alleged use of Federal funds to pay for abortions.
A recent article outlined the legislation proposed by Rep. Mike Spence of Indiana to eliminate the entire $327 million dollar budget for Title X. Title X is a program that provides funding for women’s health and family planning costs. “The measure would eliminate all $327 million in funding for Title X, a family planning program that began 40 years ago under President Richard Nixon. And while Planned Parenthood receives millions of dollars from the program, Title X funds cannot be used for abortion services. The money is to be used for noncontroversial family planning services, mostly for low-income families.”
Rep. Spence and his fellow Republicans are trying to defund Planned Parenthood because it receives millions from Title X funds to assist women in their family planning and health matters. In order to try to end abortions without testing the strength of Roe v. Wade in the courts, the sponsors and backers of this bill don’t care if low-income women suffer by not getting the health care that they so desperately need. Many of these same legislators also backed the repeal of the Affordable Health Care act which would also assist low-income women get affordable health care.
The proposed legislation would end all monies from Title X and the effects of those funds drying up could be catastrophic for women. “The pro-abortion-rights group NARAL said the legislation would lead to more unwanted pregnancies by cutting funding for contraceptives. “The new anti-choice House leadership now wants to take away birth control and cancer screenings from millions of American women and men,” said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL. “While these politicians attack abortion coverage from every angle, they now want to deny funding for birth control, even though that’s the best way to prevent unintended pregnancy. Americans will not stand for this blatant hypocrisy.” ‘
Is it just me or do I detect a pattern here? What do these mostly male Republicans have against women? I was thinking of writing an article asking when America will have its own “Egyptian” moment, but maybe I should ask when will American Women have their “Egyptian” moment?
Source: Raw Story
Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty, (rafflaw), Guest Blogger
BBB:
I misread, my apologies.
BBB:
I agree that an embryo or a fetus is indeed human life. Anyone that says otherwise is short on gray matter.
I also think education is the way to go. If women could see a sonogram I imagine more of them would not have the abortion and put the child up for adoption.
BBB,
As you know, Roe was based on the holding in Griswold. And while Griswold is a jurisprudential mess, it did have the right outcome albeit based on the wrong idea.
The rights of the individual within the social compact are paramount. Your argument that advances in science that will eventually make a fertilized egg a ‘viable human’ ignores the boundaries set forth within the social compact. Without the first trimester DMZ, so to speak, your policy necessitates the exercise of power over an individual’s right of self ownership and determination. That is tyranny per se.
I’ve seen you make this argument before. Argumentum ad absurdum?
You tell me:
Morpheus: What is real. How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. This is the world that you know. The world as it was at the end of the twentieth century. It exists now only as part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You’ve been living in a dream world, Neo. This is the world as it exists today…. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. We have only bits and pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.
Neo: AI? You mean artificial intelligence?
Morpheus: A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun. Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate it seems is not without a sense of irony. The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTU’s of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion the machines have found all the energy they would ever need. There are fields, endless fields, where human beings are no longer born, we are grown. For the longest time I wouldn’t believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.
Neo: No. I don’t believe it. It’s not possible.
Morpheus: I didn’t say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.
“I think the reason conservatives want all these babies to be born is that they simply like the idea of birth. That’s why so many of them have been born again. They can’t get enough of it.” (george Carlin)
…and don’t forget these guys: http://www.adopting.org/adoptions/when-is-it-baby-selling-2.html
yup, there’s LOTS of $$$$ to made off of babies and the mothers who can not keep them….
Chan L.
Let me correct you on a few points.
1. I never said I wanted to change the law as it currently stands. It is the holding of the Court in Roe v Wade that established a variable that would change with viability.
2. Though I defend unborn life, I don’t tell other people what they can or cannot do. I educate them. I let them know that contrary to the bullshit they are fed by the pro-choice crowd, the unborn fetus is, as an established fact of science (much better established than that of climate change caused by society), that an unborn fetus is human (the DNA is human) and it is life (biological life).
An unborn fetus is a potential person, but it is an active human life.
“I’m sure they’re posting for peanuts so if I respond they get to write back, make a little more “egg” money … I’m a softie that way …”
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people get paid for this?
They get PAID for being assholes???? Well, isn’t that the magic bus….
Who ever started the scientific criteria of life drivel…. they forgot it includes the ability to maintain homeostasis…which I can assure you a 23 week old fetus can not do. As science advances, the ability to mechanically aid the potential and actual viability of that wee group of cells also changes. What doesn’t change, is who will be paying for it….and the potential for extraordinary and catastrophic illness increases in an inverse relationship to that man altered point of viability. There is no better chooser in life than nature. A woman has a biological imperative that only she knows…and the conditions necessary for her to reproduce are based on both internal AND external factors. The abusive environment lauded by the right wing is not conducive to either children OR other, fully viable, currently here, natural and necessary things.
poo head
BBB:
“People of your ilk rely on ignorance and the sale of false claims. When there is no other life involved, I couldn’t give two shits what a woman does with her body.”
That’s funny because it appears that the pro-unborn/anti-once-it’s-born certainly doesn’t shy away from ignorance and the sale of false claims. Now, let me see, where did I see some of the bullshit the anti-once-it’s-born are pushing. Now, mind you, this is just a sampling of information that is available. Should you require more information to be spelled out for you, just let me know:
http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-nyc-considers-making-crisis-pregnancy-centers-come-clean/
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v25n1/abortion-black-genocide.html
People of YOUR ilk rely on fear, violence, and lies, sport.
MY body, MY decision, not YOURS, not GOVERNMENTS.
BBB:
it does go to individual rights. And they are right about an embryo being potential life. Abortion is an act of horror during the later term, I don’t see how anyone could put scissors in the back of the skull of a baby human. .
And I agree with you that human life begins at conception but you don’t sacrifice the actual for the potential. And it pains me to say that. But to make abortion illegal is not the purview of the state. It is for ones individual morality to determine the best course of action for their life.
I would certainly council any of my peers to have the child and put it up for adoption but it is not my place to tell a 20 year old woman what she should and shouldn’t do.
Morality and decency have been so distorted.
“Republican Lawmakers Face Grassroots Pressure Over ‘War On Contraception’” (from Elaine’s post)
Want to bet these guys are going to turn tail and run from this war …
“Politicians who campaigned on the promise of focusing on jobs and the economy need to be held accountable if, at the first possible opportunity, they join with John Boehner to launch a full-fledged war on contraception,” NARAL President Nancy Keenan said.
The Orange Man is going to have trouble keeping his “Rhythm Method Brigade” in formation.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF5emI_vnbA&w=480&h=390]
Blouise & Buddha:
Many thanks for the good cheer and willingness to share 😉
I feel better!
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Elaine M:
Thanks for the HuffPo article. I just made a donation to NARAL!
rafflaw,
“You moved the goal posts when you tried to create a new definition of viability.”
Support your claim with a quoted comment.
Viability has changed since Roe. Surfactant, along with improved prenatal and neonatal care are responsible.
The preferred method of change is by educating the public. It’s working too.
http://www.oregonlive.com/hovde/index.ssf/2009/05/poll_shows_more_people_identif.html
“The Gallup Poll that found 51 percent of American adults now call themselves pro-life rather than pro-choice on the issue of abortion.”
You’re losing the battle. One would think that if you had a valid argument you’d be able to gain support. Instead you are losing support for you position.
People of your ilk rely on ignorance and the sale of false claims. When there is no other life involved, I couldn’t give two shits what a woman does with her body.
Blouise,
Sadly, they are standard issue Snickerdoodles but quite tasty nonetheless.
Look behind the curtain ➡ Buddha is pulling the strings
From Huffington Post (2/14/2011)
Republican Lawmakers Face Grassroots Pressure Over ‘War On Contraception’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/14/republican-war-on-contraception_n_822843.html
EXCERPT:
WASHINGTON — Women’s-rights activists are taking the fight to preserve family-planning funding outside the Beltway, calling on grassroots activists to pressure their representatives into maintaining the Title X program.
Enacted in 1970 as part of the Public Health Service Act, the family-planning program was designed to focus on low-income Americans. The preventive-health services it provides include information and access to contraception, earning the ire of social conservatives.
Though there is no mention of Title X in President Barack Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2012, Republicans have placed a high priority on cutting the $317 million the program received in FY 2011 appropriations, which would effectively eliminate it. The stopgap budget proposal the GOP released last week includes no money for the program, and Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) has introduced separate legislation to “deny Title X funds to Planned Parenthood or any other abortion provider.”
The abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America launched a campaign on Monday to mobilize activists in six districts where abortion-rights advocates lost to “anti- or mixed-choice representatives” in November’s midterm elections. The campaign targets Republican Reps. Charlie Bass (N.H.), Robert Dold (Ill.), Chris Gibson (N.Y.), Richard Hanna (N.Y), Nan Hayworth (N.Y) and Steve Stivers (Ohio).
NARAL is also stepping up pressure on longer-serving members, including Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski (Ill.) and Republican Reps. Judy Biggert (Ill.), Charlie Dent (Penn.), Mary Bono Mack (Calif.), Rodney Frelinghuysen (N.J), Leonard Lance (N.J), and Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.).
“And where is your alleged ‘moderate’ representative on this?” reads the email going out to activists in Stivers’ district. “We don’t know. Rep. Stivers has said nothing of this proposed cut, and it’s very possible that he could choose to vote for an anti-choice budget that decimates family planning.”
“Politicians who campaigned on the promise of focusing on jobs and the economy need to be held accountable if, at the first possible opportunity, they join with John Boehner to launch a full-fledged war on contraception,” NARAL President Nancy Keenan said. “It is the height of hypocrisy for anti-choice politicians to seek to abolish a program that helps prevent unintended pregnancy and thus reduce the need for abortion. How many jobs will be generated by eliminating women’s access to birth control?”
Buddha Is Laughing
1, February 14, 2011 at 5:47 pm
Since Blouise is bringing the tea, I’ll share my cookies.
They are quite good.
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The “special” ones, I hope … Stamford Liberal deserves a real pick-me-up
my but you are a salty bunch.
Buddha, may I say your greenness is like the grass of the Pompous as the cows wander and deficate delivering nourishment and vitality to so many of us who watch you blow viate in the wind.
I remain your humble servant,
PC
Tautology is having a temper tantrum 😥
Since Blouise is bringing the tea, I’ll share my cookies.
They are quite good.