You know... How the fuck have we gotten into a debate on birth control?

[Ohio Joe]

Birth control... You have got to be shitting me... How fucking insane have the repugs become that they are going after birth control... Un-Fucking-Believable. They simply will not be happy until women are property.

[jsmirman]

1. I admit that Rachel's "they have a conscious plan to move everyone right"

has left me completely unsettled.

I truly believed that progress and time were their enemies and that I would live to have the last laugh.

It's the first time I've actually been worried that they may have an end-around to subvert the process.

It's a reminder that it's up to us to say fuck that.

[msongs]

2. cuz repubs want to control the agenda to avoid their failed economic policies? nt

[newspeak]

30. bingo!!!

it's a deflection--they don't want to seriously talk about the economy. Because their plan, being the great free market, deregulating corporate whores that they are; don't want you to see that their ideas are the same that got us into this mess. Yep, little boot's grand plan, let my friends police themselves and don't tax the rich (because ya'll know that they are the job creators).

So, they have to appeal to their evangelical, low information base. Just make social issues as a focal point. Their diversion tactic works well for their base. For the rest of us, they just piss us off more.

[seeviewonder]

3. Because birth control debate creates jobs!!! n/t

[NightOwwl]

4. The old standards

abortion and homosexuality are wearing thin? They're scraping the bottom of the barrel on the social issues now.

They know they have nothing when it comes to actual constructive policies.

[Walk away]

5. For the past 2 years Teabaggie pols have been chipping away at women's health rights....

then the GOTP decided to challenge the Affordable Care Act by calling it an assault against freedom of religion. The President brilliantly called their bluff by figuring out a compromise that even the Catholics liked but the GOTP was in it for the win and decided to keep going down the road to loserville.
The End!

[Luminous Animal]

13. At least 20 years ago I (and other older feminists) started warning young women

that this is their future. We were soundly dismissed and mocked by those young women. And 15 years or so ago when we would bring the subject up on the old Michael Moore discussion board, we were dismissed and mocked.

This has been going on far longer than 2 years.

[niyad]

17. you and I, and many, many others, have been warning about this for many years.

anybody who has been watching the reichwing fundies has known this. their hatred of contraception wasn't as blatantly out in the open as it is now--but it has been there in their writings, and in subtle things that many ignored.

for many years, many of us have worried that "the handmaid's tale" was about one vote away. day by day, state by state, woman-hating piece of legislation by piece, this world is being created.

[Walk away]

19. I agree but the Blunt bill had nothing to do with birth control pills except...

that they were used as an excuse to bring down The Affordable Care Act by claiming that it was against religious freedom.
The fundies and the GOTP pols on the state and local levels are rabid anti-women's rights but these ass holes who are running Congress and the senior Puke Senators are after bigger game. The are looking to kill Obama Care before November 2012. They want to take away ALL Americans rights to health care.

[Walk away]

28. I was just making a point about the teabaggers and their war on women. They didn't exist...

as a demi-party until three years ago and they hadn't used an incredibly effective base to elect thousands of ultra conservatives on the local, state and federal level.
That is why, in the past two years, so many anti women laws have been passed nation wide.

[spanone]

6. it's hard to believe. america has a broken system of government. plain & simple.

repubs have nothing....they have no plan for the economy other than slashing taxes and lowering corporate tax rates, so they turn on women.

[virgogal]

7. I think it's a Catholic thing more than a Republican thing.

[niyad]

18. sorry, but if you have been watching the christian reichwing fundies, they have been after

contraception, for many, many years. their aim is complete control of the people they hate--women.

[Historic NY]

8. I don't think they removed the "chattle" clause from their lexicon...

in their 13th century minds

[MichiganVote]

9. Yup. Like asking if we really did go to the moon. BC has improved lives.

Unlike the GOP.

[Jennicut]

10. No one ever accused the Repubs of being bright.

If I was a Republican the last thing in the world I would be concentrating on is social issues in this election. I mean, it is 2012. No one in their 40's, 30's and 20's cares about birth control since it has been pretty damn legal for all of those age groups for a really long time.

[Kurmudgeon]

15. I still think whoever is the GOP nominee this year, is just a book marker.

However, I do have a bad feeling that the mid term elections and 2016 are going to make 2000 look like a walk in the park.
Be ready for it and those of you who think the right may take your voting privileges, you're right, they will.
It's already happened before.
Seriously, don't let them take your representation. Be vigilant. Register, vote, be SURE your vote was counted.
Be also ready for them to attempt to purge voter rolls as well.
And if right wing retakes the Presidency and Congress, I fear their next misadventure will make Iraq and 9/11 look like child's play.

[2ndAmForComputers]

22. They'll try to reverse Roe vs. Wade, the little, pathetic, despicable anti-woman bigots.

That seems to be every extremist right-winger's hard-on nowadays - women's rights.

[pokerfan]

11. I listen to BBC World Service

and it's frankly embarrassing to here them cover it at the top of every hour.

In a close, 51-48 vote, the U.S. Senate has defeated the so-called Blunt amendment to the transportation bill. The measure would have allowed employers to refuse health care services on religious or moral grounds, an objection to the Obama administration’s controversial birth control health coverage policy.

The world must think we're nuts.

[PDJane]

12. No, it's not a Catholic thing.

Last edited Mon Mar 5, 2012, 12:13 AM - Edit history (1)

I've been around long enough to remember Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly started a great deal of this crap; she was a Presbyterian.

It started as a backlash against the so-called sexual revolution...imagine, all those young people having fun without worrying about getting pregnant. People like Schlafly, who is, by the by, well educated, decided that women should get back to the kitchen and fulfill their destiny. (No-one has pointed out that someone was watching her kids and kitchen while she was busy telling other women to go back to the home. Apparently, she's one of the chosen ones.)

Now, women have jobs and children and work twice as hard....and have found that they can do so without men in the house. Now, men are wondering what use they have and are worrying that they will lose their supremacy.......so it's back to the kitchen for you.

[Luminous Animal]

14. Did you read Susan Faludi's 'Backlash'...

a very good book that was a harbinger of things to come.

[PDJane]

34. Yes.

Among other things.

[Fozzledick]

16. From the Republican viewpoint, it's a perfect trifecta!

It lets them be against women, sex, and healthcare all in one shot!

[Loudly]

20. Because Griswold v. Connecticut is unacceptable settled law.

It underpins Roe and undermines so-called State's Rights in matters such as family planning.

More conservatives on the Court will enable a great unraveling.

[emmadoggy]

21. I have been asking myself the exact same question.

Truly a WTF situation.

I am spitting mad over the whole fucking thing.

[JDPriestly]

23. This seems like a no-lose for Obama.

But making a deal of this is a way to try to attract the many guilt-ridden Catholics who use birth control and to bind to the republicans very conservative Evangelicals who might be tempted to vote for Obama based on their economic interests.

This issue has distracted from the economic issues raised by the Occupiers. It won't last long, however.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

26. Because the spin doctors on our side asked themselves...

What can we do that would make the republicans shit themselves in public and then roll in it for weeks on end?

Masterful.

[GoCubsGo]

27. Mostly, they hate that President Obama supports it.

So naturally, they oppose it. That's what this is all about in the grand scheme of things. I can't completely blame this on their war on women, although that is also part of it. These birth control regulations are already the law in several states, and they didn't utter even a peep about them when they controlled both houses of Congress and the White House and could do something about it. Nor, have they done anything to reverse the fact that many businesses already cover contraception for their employees. They didn't care about it until the Catholic bishops brought attention to the issue with their hissy fit over the new mandate in "Obamacare".

The reason they are still dragging out this debate is to distract us from the fact that every last one of the candidates they are running to replace President Obama is either batshit crazy, or just flatly unlikeable for all the reasons people detest Mitt Rmoney. They also want to distract people from the fact that the economy is improving despite the fact that they have been obstructing everything the President has tried to do. They have no plans to help the people of this country, and everything they have been doing over the past three years shows that they don't give a shit about us. More and more people are onto them now, and they know it. This is more desperation than an intended assault on women's rights. The latter is just icing on the cake.

[Generic Other]

29. The Right claims we started it

which is ridiculous. Santorum started this shitestorm and it is indiscriminately splattering everyone. Aside from the Duggars and other mostly anachronistic overbreeders, he has managed to insult all of the women in America who have largely been responsible for practicing family planning in this country for more than a century. I suspect that most women are better informed about choices because they are the ones making the choices. Men range from the naive to the indifferent on this subject. Women talk to gynecologists, read the literature, make the decisions, and bear the consequences.

Santorum the dumbest we don't need no birth control (or education) sort of dude the rightwing could possibly find to represent their backward views has no idea what a normal woman does or thinks because he would make most normal women run screaming in horror after a quick round of speed dating. Good good grief!

But he lead this shitestorm of a conversation. The response he's getting is the sort most men who have ever encountered it on a personal level with a woman live to regret.

[IcyPeas]

31. I still want to know what republican women really think

I can't believe they agree with this birth control thing. I wish they would come out of their bubble and say enough's enough.

[Lex]

32. The Republicans have miscalculated badly on this particular topic

I think so anyway. There are a couple women in my bookclub who are Republicans and at my bookclub meeting yesterday the birth control topic came up--and they are appalled by the Republican line on this topic right now. Not sure they will vote for Obama, but I wonder if they'll vote for President at all in November. One said she'd just leave the Presidential box unchecked on the ballot.

Anecdotal, but probably quite a few women feel this way who might otherwise vote R.

[OhioChick]

33. They needed to create a distraction from the economy/jobs, as they have no ideas n/t