No Need To Lie
by digby
You need to check out Barbara Boxer stumping for Joe Lieberman and (aside from being arrogant and rude) misrepresenting his stated position on whether publicly funded hospitals should be required to provide emergency contraception to rape victims.
The irony in all this is that Barbara Boxer was the one who led the fight to provide poor women abortions under medicaid in cases of rape or incest back in 1989 when she was a congresswoman:
HOUSE, IN BIG SHIFT, VOTES TO RESTORE AID FOR ABORTIONS
By ROBIN TONER, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: October 12, 1989
In a significant policy reversal long sought by abortion rights advocates, the House of Representatives voted today to allow the Federal Government to pay for abortions for poor women whose pregnancies result from rape or incest.
In a significant policy reversal long sought by abortion rights advocates, the House of Representatives voted today to allow the Federal Government to pay for abortions for poor women whose pregnancies result from rape or incest.
The decision, which came in a 216-to-206 vote, was described by both sides in the bitter abortion debate as a sign of the shifting political landscape since the United States Supreme Court’s decision in July giving states new latitude to restrict abortion.
The measure now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to win approval, reversing an eight-year-old policy.
[…]
Representative Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who led the drive to ease the ban on Federal financing for abortions, said, ”Today we have a historic moment, a change in direction.”
As ebullient abortion rights supporters crowded around her moments after the vote, she said, ”The political momentum is so strong right now that if President Bush vetoed this he would be making a big mistake.”
Now she is covering for Joe Lieberman’s reprehensible position that taxpayers should subsidize illogical religious beliefs which hold that even birth control, much less abortion, is wrong. But then so is NARAL and Planned Parenthood. The pro-choice movement seems to have forgotten what it stands for.
I wouldn’t normally object to Boxer going up to Connecticut to stump for her pal Joe. They are friends and it’s human to want to help out your friends. But it is not necessary for her to lie about his position.
It is indisputable that Lieberman said “In Connecticut, it shouldn’t take more than a short ride to get to another hospital.” When asked about this today, Boxer testily replied, “no that’s not what he said … let me finish, because I read about it… what he said is he believes that the hospital has an obligation to take care of the patient and let’s say there’s a hospital next door … walk … get the patient help, that’s what he meant.”
That is about as lame as anything I’ve ever heard a professional politican say. It is beneath her. And you can bet that if the shoe were on the other foot, Joe Lieberman would sooner join Hezbollah as twist himself into that kind of a pretzel for her. Joe only does such gyrations for his own benefit, never anybody else, and certainly not a liberal from California.
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