Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
I have written a number of posts for the Turley blog about The GOP’s war on women and proposed extreme anti-woman legislation which has been sponsored by members of the Republican party (here, here, here, here, here, and here). In a piece for Mother Jones, Stephanie Mencimer said that Paul Ryan has a “long history as a culture warrior”—and that people are taking “a fresh look” at it since Mitt Romney named Ryan as his running mate. I thought I’d do some investigating of my own to find out more about the Wisconsin “culture warrior’s” position on women’s issues.
According to Laura Bassett, Rep. Ryan “voted to defund federal family planning programs, authored a budget that dismantles Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, all of which disproportionately aid and employ women, and voted multiple times to prevent women in the military from using their own money to pay for abortions at military hospitals.”
Sylvia Casablanca, a medical doctor and holistic psychotherapist, wonders if Ryan will now “head the conservative war on women.” Casablanca wrote in a VOXXI article that Ryan “sounds, thinks, acts, so much like Rick Santorum!” She added that both men have spent much of their public lives “battling the things that matter most to women.” She continued, “He [Ryan] has been opposing contraception, eulogizing women who quit successful careers to be stay-at-home moms (like their own wives have done), and vowing to defund Planned Parenthood and repeal the Affordable Care Act. And, Ryan voted against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.”
Casablanca feels that Ryan’s stance on the issues mentioned above are “zilch” compared to his “support of a federal ban on abortion in all circumstances, including incest and rape.”
In her Mother Jones article, Mencimer also wrote the following:
What isn’t so well known about Ryan’s record, though, is that one piece of legislation he supported is so extreme that it would have turned Romney’s children into criminals.
The Sanctity of Human Life Act, which Ryan co-sponsored, would have enshrined the notion that life begins at fertilization in federal law, thus criminalizing in vitro fertilization—the process of creating an embryo outside of a woman’s womb. In IVF, doctors typically create multiple embryos and then only implant the healthiest ones in the woman. Some of them stick and become babies, and some don’t. The embryos that don’t make it to the womb are either frozen for later use or destroyed. The Sanctity of Human Life Act, if passed, would make all those embryos “people” in the legal sense, so if they aren’t used or don’t become babies after being implanted, they would essentially become murder victims under the law.
H.R. 212: Sanctity of Human Life/Personhood Bill
Sponsor’s Summary: To provide that human life shall be deemed to begin with fertilization.
Excerpt from the text of H. R. 212:
SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.
For purposes of this Act:
(1) FERTILIZATION- The term ‘fertilization’ means the process of a human spermatozoan penetrating the cell membrane of a human oocyte to create a human zygote, a one-celled human embryo, which is a new unique human being.
(2) CLONING- The term ‘cloning’ means the process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, that combines an enucleated egg and the nucleus of a somatic cell to make a human embryo.
(3) HUMAN; HUMAN BEING- The terms ‘human’ and ‘human being’ include each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, beginning with the earliest stage of development, created by the process of fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent.
Link to MSNBC Hardball Video: Revisiting Ryan’s extreme pro-life positions: Chris Matthews talks with Kate Michaelman, former head of NARAL, and Politico’s Maggie Haberman about Paul Ryan’s extreme pro-life stance, and his support for a federal ‘personhood’ law.
In addition, Rep. Ryan is a cosponsor of some other “extreme” anti-woman legislation that has been introduced in Congress. To wit:
H.R. 3805: Ultrasound Informed Consent Act
Sponsor’s Summary: To ensure that women seeking an abortion receive an ultrasound and the opportunity to review the ultrasound before giving informed consent to receive an abortion.
H.R. 3: No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act
Open Congress Summary: This bill would make permanent and expand the Hyde amendment restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortions. It seeks to prohibit even indirect funding streams that may potentially come in contact with abortion services. For example, it would deny tax credits to companies that offer health plans that cover abortions and it would block anybody with insurance that covers abortions from receiving federal subsidies or medical cost tax deductions, even if the abortion portion is paid separately with personal funds. Women who use tax-free Medical Savings Accounts would have to pay taxes on the costs of abortions.
H.R. 358: Protect Life Act aka “Let Women Die” Bill
Open Congress Summary: Amends the new health care law so that no federal money could be applied to health insurance plans that cover elective abortions, even if the abortion coverage is paid for entirely with private funds. It also states that a federal agency can not force a health care provider that accepts Medicare or Medicaid to provide abortion services, even in cases when the mother’s life is endangered.
From Human Rights Watch:
US: House Vote Puts Women at Risk
Bill Would Permit Hospitals to Let Women in Need of Care Die
(Washington, DC) – The United States House of Representatives approved a bill on October 13, 2011, that would put women’s lives at risk, Human Rights Watch said today. The bill, if it becomes law, would reverse longstanding federal policy requiring hospitals to provide life-saving care regardless of expense, Human Rights Watch said.
The Protect Life Act, HR 358, would amend the healthcare reform law to grant hospitals far-reaching powers to deny patients abortion care, without any exception for emergency situations. US law currently requires hospitals receiving federal funds to provide emergency care to anyone in need up to the point at which they can be stabilized or transferred, if the original hospital is incapable of providing the care they need.
“The misnamed Protect Life Act is about allowing women to die if they need an emergency abortion,” said Meghan Rhoad, women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It is a vicious attack on women’s rights and on the most basic right to life.”
The Paul Ryan Vision: Ban Abortion, Defund Contraception, Outlaw In Vitro Fertilization
What do you think about Paul Ryan’s position on women’s issues?
SOURCES
Paul Ryan: the ‘Personhood’ Crocodile? (Huffington Post)
Paul Ryan Sponsored Fetal Personhood Bill, Opposes Family Planning Funds (Huffington Post)
Paul Ryan, new head of the Republican war on women? (VOXXI)
Bill Press: The Paul Ryan-Mitt Romney ticket: trouble for GOP (Newsday)
Sandra Fluke: 8 Points on Ryan’s Voting Record on Women’s Issues (Politic365)
Rep. Paul Ryan Supported the “Let Women Die” Bill (Blog for Choice)
How Did Your Representative Vote on the “Let Women Die” Bill? (Blog for Choice)
See How Your Lawmaker Voted on the “Let Women Die” Bill, H.R.358 (Prochoice America)
Sandra Fluke: Paul Ryan on women’s issues — so bad it’s unbelievable … but true (Lean Forward/MSNBC)
Five Reasons Why Paul Ryan Is Bad For Women’s Health (Think Progress)
The Paul Ryan Vision of America: Ban Abortion, Defund Contraception, Outlaw In Vitro Fertilization (Democracy Now)
List of Bills Sponsored and Cosponsored by Paul Ryan (Open Congress)
Who is Paul Ryan?
If you believe Republican Party mythology, he’s a Rand-ian messiah who will save America from socialism
By David Sirota
8/17/12
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/17/who_is_paul_ryan/
Excerpt:
Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan admires Ayn Rand, and if you believe Republican Party mythology, Ryan is a messianic John Galt who will save America from a secret socialist conspiracy. Thus, in Rand fashion, it’s worth asking: Who is Paul Ryan?
The answer is simple: The GOP’s presumptive vice-presidential nominee is the 21st century’s flesh-and-blood embodiment of political deception and media obfuscation.
Purporting to be a small-government budget hawk, Ryan publicly decries corporate welfare and says he wants “to get Washington out of the business of picking winners and losers.” This has generated press coverage promoting Ryan as a great fiscal conservative. Yet, written out of the story is the fact that Ryan is a Huge Government Republican who voted for — and in some cases, still defends — the biggest examples of corporate welfare in American history.
Ryan, you see, was the Huge Government Republican who backed this era’s massive corporate bailouts — the one that picked politically connected companies as winners and taxpayers as losers. He was the Huge Government Republican who regularly voted for profligate war spending bills — the ones that blew a gaping hole in the federal budget. And he is the Huge Government Republican now using his committee chairmanship to oppose serious cuts to the deficit-exploding corporate welfare still embedded in the bloated Pentagon budget.
Similarly, Ryan claims to be, and is billed in the press as, a libertarian-inspired acolyte of Rand — a man who supposedly values freedom and limited government. But as a Huge Government Republican, he has consistently voted to expand the surveillance state, endorse warrantless wiretapping and permit indefinite detention. Oh, and in contradiction to Rand’s writings, he has also pushed to use the power of Huge Government to end a woman’s right to choose an abortion.
Like so many Republicans, Ryan genuflects to the private sector and insinuates that the government is not a job creator. It’s funny coming from a guy who has spent most of his adult life as a federal employee and whose family’s construction company brags of building its fortune off government highway contracts.
Ryan labels himself an opponent of “crony capitalism” and is often promoted by reporters as someone who can help Mitt Romney thwart the Washington insiders who corrupt our politics. Somehow, we are expected to ignore the fact that Ryan has spent the vast majority of his adult life in Washington; that his wife served as a top pharmaceutical and oil lobbyist in Washington; and that, as Newsweek reported in 2011, he tried to insert special provisions into federal law that would boost his personal oil investment portfolio.
Ryan: Women’s Health Exception Rendered Abortion Ban ‘Virtually Meaningless’
By Zack Beauchamp
Aug 22, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/08/22/726411/ryan-womens-health-exception-rendered-abortion-ban-virtually-meaningless/
Excerpt;
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) opposed an exception to a so-called “partial birth abortion” ban when the procedure was necessary to save the mother’s life, according to a 2000 floor speech on the issue. Claiming the women’s health exception included in the bill was “wide enough to drive a mack truck through,” Ryan argued uncompromisingly for it to be removed:
This is not a political issue, this is a human issue. And let me just say this — to all of my colleagues who are about to vote on this issue, on the motion to recommit — the health exception is a loophole wide enough to drive a mack truck through it. The health exception would render this ban virtually meaningless. […] [H]undreds of OB/GYNs have told us that this is not medically necessary.
Contra Ryan’s claim that the procedure (also known as “intact dilatation and extraction,” or D&E) could never be medically necessary, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists held that D&E reduced the risk of “catastrophic hemorrhage and life-threatening infection” and that “[t]hese safety advantages are widely recognized by experts in the field of women’s health, authoritative medical texts, peer-reviewed studies, and the nation’s leading medical schools.” As such, the American Medical Association, which believes D&E would be employed for health reasons in only a very small number of cases, said that “the physician must…retain the discretion” to use D&E if a particular woman’s health needs demand it.
Nuns On The Bus Tour Stops In New York To Protest ‘Devastating Romney-Ryan Budget’
By Travis Waldron
Aug 22, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/08/22/730941/nuns-on-the-bus-tour-stops-in-new-york-to-protest-devastating-romney-ryan-budget/
Otteray,
A storm’s a brewin’ down there in Miami. I think God is unhappy with the Republican platform!
GOP Approves ‘Most Conservative Platform In Modern History’
By Aviva Shen on Aug 22, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/08/22/723241/gop-approves-most-conservative-platform-in-modern-history/
I see the heavy weather associated with tropical storm Isaac is headed in the general direction of Miami. I hate the Republicans did not take advantage of south Florida’s famous sunny weather and rent an open stadium for their convention. While I wish no harm to come to the good citizens of Miami and environs, perhaps the fates will be kind enough to cause the roof of the convention center to develop several large leaks during the proceedings as the storm passes over.
Paul Ryan’s Irish Problem
Mitt Romney’s running mate is making the same economic mistakes that hurt his forefathers in the Great Famine, writes author John Kelly
by John Kelly
Aug 18, 2012
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/18/paul-ryan-s-irish-problem.html
Excerpt:
Paul Ryan and his siblings are proud of their Irish famine-to-fortune history. They trace their paternal lineage to Ryan’s great-great grandfather, James Ryan, who fled the famine in Ireland for America in 1851, just after the worst of the catastrophe was over. But there’s something wrong with that scenario, and it is this: Ryan’s high-profile economic philosophy is the very same one that hurt, not helped, his forebears during the famine—and hurt them badly.
he Irish famine, widely regarded as the worst natural disaster of the 19th century, began when, between 1845 and 1850, repeated crop failures reduced the population of Ireland by a third. But crop failure wasn’t what caused the worst of it: a government economic philosophy called “Moralism” and speeches made in Parliament that are almost word-for-word like Ryan’s own speeches about his Republican budget are what made the famine catastrophic, causing needless deaths.
Charles Trevelyan, the British official who oversaw famine relief, was so intent on rooting out the “cankerworm of government dependency” from the character of hungry peasants that he ordered relief food be sold rather than given away. That decision was the single-most devastating one, increasing famine deaths multifold—and unnecessarily.
The words Paul Ryan used, last March, to introduce the Republican budget that eviscerates Medicare and other “entitlements,” had, to my famine-trained ears, an eerie echo to Trevelyan’s. Ryan declared that America was at an “insidious moral tipping point,” adding that “the president is accelerating this.” He went on to say that a capacious safety net “lulls able-bodied people”—I paused at the slightly archaic turn of phrase—“into lives of complacency and dependency, which drains them of their very will and incentive to make the most of their lives. It’s demeaning.” Far better for the American character for the poor to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” Ah, yes, those bootstraps again.
Tom Morello: ‘Paul Ryan Is the Embodiment of the Machine Our Music Rages Against’
By Tom Morello
August 16, 2012
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tom-morello-paul-ryan-is-the-embodiment-of-the-machine-our-music-rages-against-20120816
Excerpt:
Paul Ryan’s love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn’t understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn’t understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.
Ryan claims that he likes Rage’s sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don’t care for Paul Ryan’s sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.
I wonder what Ryan’s favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of “F*ck the Police”? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!
Don’t mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta “rage” in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he’s not raging against is the privileged elite he’s groveling in front of for campaign contributions.
You see, the super rich must rationalize having more than they could ever spend while millions of children in the U.S. go to bed hungry every night. So, when they look themselves in the mirror, they convince themselves that “Those people are undeserving. They’re . . . lesser.” Some of these guys on the extreme right are more cynical than Paul Ryan, but he seems to really believe in this stuff. This unbridled rage against those who have the least is a cornerstone of the Romney-Ryan ticket.
Tina Dupuy: Paul Ryan more like Michelle Bachmann than Sarah Palin
8/22/12
http://www.baxterbulletin.com/article/20120823/OPINION/308230011
Excerpt:
If the 1980s Michael J. Fox sit-com character — the beloved Reagan-idolizing Alex P. Keaton — were a self-hating public employee who cherry-picked all the worst parts of Ayn Rand, the Bible and the Heritage Foundation’s reading room, he’d be Paul Ryan. Quirky, young and clearly trying to fill a larger man’s suit — the rightest of Republicans love Paul Ryan.
Well, they kind of love him. Both Paul Ryan and Michele Bachmann are guilty pleasures for Republicans. They like listening to them beat up on President Obama and spout their cheery condemnations of liberalism, but they don’t want to admit it too loudly lest they get stuck defending all their ideas. Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll but now she’s not even invited to introduce anyone, let alone speak, at the upcoming Republican National Convention.
Obama tried to campaign against the Ryan Budget plan this past spring since the House GOP voted for it, but that was declared out-of-bounds. Now? It’s in play and Republican politicians are not thrilled about explaining their vote to give future senior citizens coupons for chemotherapy.
Bachmann and Ryan also share the distinction of being ineffective lawmakers. According to ThatsMyCongress.com, in her nearly six years in office “Bachmann has passed three rhetorical bills with no force of law, and one amendment that asks an Inspector General to conduct inspections.” Paul Ryan has been an incumbent for twice that time and has introduced only two bills that have become law: One renaming a post office in his hometown, the other changing how arrows are taxed (how very 21st century).
Bachmann at least gets to distance herself from the Republican Congressional blank check given to the big-spending Bush administration. Under Ryan’s allegedly hawkish eye, his party started two unpaid-for wars, cut taxes during said wars, grew the government, exploded the national debt and then bailed out unregulated banks with taxpayer money. Paul Ryan voted yes for all of it and doesn’t ask for a correction when he’s called a small-government conservative.
Both Bachmann and Ryan also are at the extreme end of the spectrum when it comes to gay rights and reproductive freedoms. They both consistently have voted for any anti-abortion/anti-contraception bills that came before them. Ditto with expanding martial rights to same-sex couples. Ryan, with all his libertarian billing, has voted to take away liberties from his fellow citizens. He is the government he’s warned us about: Freedom is for corporations, and regulations are for our private lives.
If Ryan is now the Republican mainstream, Bachmann is now the Republican mainstream. If Ryan is getting the full embrace of his party, Bachmann should be getting that same welcome into the fray.
Or, in the case of Republicans in 2012, the fringe.
Desperate Measures: Paul Ryan Tries To Revive the “Death Panel” Canard
by Jesse Singal
Aug 23, 2012
Ryan tries to muddy the waters before seniors learn too much about his Medicare plan, writes Jesse Singal.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/23/desperate-measures-paul-ryan-tries-to-revive-the-death-panel-canard.html
Excerpt:
If a recent comment from Paul Ryan is any indication, we’ve cycled back to the ugly idea that marred much of the debate over President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
Ryan, the presumptive Republican vice-presidential candidate, told an audience at Florida’s largest retirement development that Obama’s health care law “puts a board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of Medicare who are required to cut Medicare in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors.”
It’s a wonkier variation of Sarah Palin’s 2009 assault, which she’s returned to since, on Obama’s “death panels,” which was in turn echoed by Michelle Bachmann’s claim last fall that “15 political appointees will make all the major health-care decisions for over 300 million Americans.” She continued: “I don’t want 15 political appointees to make a health-care decision for a beautiful, fragile 85-year-old woman who should be making her own decision.”
Of course, it’s not true.
So why is the Romney campaign bringing back this bogus vision of faceless technocrats cruelly snatching life from helpless seniors (along with the equally bogus idea that Obama will have “robbed” more than $700 billion from Medicare)? It has a lot to do with seniors, many of whom are learning about Ryan’s plans for the program—and Ryan himself—for the first time after Romney picked the Wisconsin House member as his running mate last month . According to a Pew poll released this week, only 30 percent of people have heard “a lot” about his plan, and 29 percent have heard nothing about it at all.
But that poll and others show that the more people do hear about Ryan’s Medicare reform plan (not to mention the rest of his budget), the less they like it. And while Republicans stress that Ryan’s proposed Medicare changes wouldn’t impact current seniors or anyone entering the system in the next decade, and that even after the change seniors could choose between something like the current system and vouchers, the CBO agrees with Democratic claims that the Ryan plan would place a greater burden on Medicare enrollees.
While we fight Ryan, let us not forget that others are fighting elsewhere against the domination of women. Not solely our of our empathy, but as a way of supporting our own struggle through contemplating what they have achieved. It is their money which finamces
the Grameen bank in Bagla Desh, and their board members who keep it faithful to its mission.
The Bangla Desh government has other plans. Read the NYTimes article.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/an-attack-on-grameen-bank-and-the-cause-of-women/
Elaine,
You called me out to prove my assertions. That I agree is needed.
But first I ask you to do the careful re-read and report on what you see NOW.
That was my original suggestion. What I wrote was a summry of a drama. Not a court reporter’s account. Nor meant to be taken as such. The words used spoke clearly as to the intend use. OK?
A summation of impressions should be read as such, not as a bloe-by-blow video of the reality which passed. Get it? So take it as a dramatization done to make one point.
Cool off and re-read. That was what my intent was.
Seems, as a matter of fact, that I was given that advice by another person when I took offense at what I thought you had written once upon a time. My re-reading, with another mindset, showed that the other person was correct and I then apologized to you.
Hoope you remember it. It was an important lesson to me. We all see threatening figures in the dark, when we feel we have been attacked.
As for riding on your previous wins, I do feel you have a tendency to feel that prior performance has some value in judging your evidence or statements made on the current issue. Am I mistaken? Perhaps. I’m not and never will be perfect. It was not meant to arouse your anger but your reflection. You are the only judge there of importance. I can’t change you, only you can if you think it is worthwhile. I would not want the responsibility, nor would I have the hubris to even think I had the right to suggest you change. Only letting you know what I feel I see. Between friend, it was meant as a helpful “just so you know”.
Yur position is unassailable in my eyes, But you can’t reckon that others are aware of your past deeds, nor do they necessarily feel your rep has any relevance with regard to the current discussion.
For what it is worth.
Of course, getting into others quarrels is not to be recommended. In this case it was meant as a peace mediation. I failed miserably at that. Don’t see many trying, one more carefully than I.
To both you and Shano, go and read Nick’s words. Don’t let his vernacular persona keep you from seeing the real person behind his words.
And Nick, words should be used with care. And especially when you seek to make an effect. Take my dramatization as an example of what not to do. They might meke more effect than you reckoned. Some here are sensitive, me too BTW. This is a tea-sipping place some here have told me. And immoderate language disturbs them. Consider yourself in church here.
Personally I appreciate reports from reality, with a small amount of how it smells there. Whew, what a stench.
Elaine, how can you tell? It would be like the difference between getting blown up by a 450 pound bomb versus a 500 pound bomb. They are both so far out in cuckoo land that they cannot even see Russia from their front porch.
I hope they both keep talking…..and talking….and talking. Maybe somebody in the MSM will finally notice.
rafflaw,
I think Ryan may be more of an extremist that Todd Akin.
Great link Elaine. Ryan can’t hide from his extremist voting record!
Ryan backed more than one ‘forcible rape’ abortion bill
By NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/22/13416844-ryan-backed-more-than-one-forcible-rape-abortion-bill?lite
Gyges,
Bron and I have had many disagreements over issues discussed on this blog. I can’t recall a time when he insulted my intelligence or used vulgar language.
Nick,
“Gyges, Lighten up, “shove up the ass” is part of the vernacular. You’re playing victim. ”
The fact that it’s part of the vernacular is exactly the problem I’m trying to address.
I’m not a victim here, I’m a guy who’s trying to make the world a little less of a crappy place. Right now, the way I’m doing that is by trying to get you (and others) to think about the effects your words may have.
You want to keep on using the phrase, be my guest.Just know that if I see you doing it, I’ll keep calling you out on the fact that you think it’s o.k. to equate rape with victory.
Bron,
I meant to say, good on you for being willing to look at that phrase from a different point of view. We may disagree about a lot of things, but I do think you’re a genuinely good guy.
I have not read all the posts but in reading the last bunch that have come through, I reminded of the inability to see past one’s own views when the issue of abortion comes up. I am right. You are wrong. period. It is just this seems to have become more personal.
Nick,
Just because something is part of the vernacular–doesn’t mean it’s not inappropriate. You got all hot and bothered because you perceived that I “talked down” to you. You often play the victim. That seems to be part of your modus operandi. You like to dish it out–but you sure can’t take it.