The pill doesn’t cause pregnancy, dirty girls do
by digby
Who says this religious liberty hoo hah couldn’t possibly get any traction? Well, I guess it depends on who you’re talking about:
In a ruling that appears headed toward appeal, a federal judge has ruled that Washington state cannot force pharmacies to sell Plan B or other emergency contraceptives.
The state’s true goal in adopting the rules at issue was not to promote the timely access to medicine, but to suppress religious objections by druggists who believe that such drugs can have an effect tantamount to abortion, U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton said in his ruling Wednesday.
There you have it. Wingnut federal judges (and there are scores of them since Republican presidents have no trouble getting their appointments confirmed while Democratic presidents either appoint conservatives or none at all) are on board, which means that this “out-of-step” strategy doesn’t depend upon public opinion to succeed.
The GOP presidential candidates certainly didn’t back down in their debate last night. Jamelle Bouie writes it up:
Mitt Romney, whose ancestors were driven from the country by the government for their religious beliefs, began the exchange with an attack on the administration’s birth control mandate: “I don’t think we’ve seen in the history of this country the kind of attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious tolerance that we’ve seen under Barack Obama.” Of course, the public disagrees, in survey after survey, a majority of Americans—including Catholics—voice support for the administration’s decision to require birth control coverage from religiously affiliated employers.
Rick Santorum followed Romney up with an extended discussion of the “dangers of contraception,” which he defined as out-of-wedlock births, single-parent homes, and growing poverty. It suffices to say that this was an…odd discussion. By definition, contraception can’t be responsible for out-of-wedlock births, regardless of how much Santorum would like to believe otherwise. To be fair to Santorum, his comments weren’t as bad as Ron Paul’s, who asked his competitors to save their scorn for the women who use the pill, and not the pill itself:
But sort of along the line of the pills creating immorality, I don’t see it that way. I think the immorality creates the problem of wanting to use the pills. So you don’t blame the pills. I think it’s sort of like the argument – conservatives use the argument all the time about guns. Guns don’t kill, criminals kill.
So, in a way, it’s the morality of society that we have to deal with. The pill is there and, you know, it contributes, maybe, but the pills can’t be blamed for the immorality of our society.
Women voters, take note: If you use the pill, you’re immoral, and basically the same as a gun-toting criminal. And while Ron Paul doesn’t stand a chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination, this basic sentiment was shared by each candidate on the stage. Indeed, Romney was sure to clarify that “there was no requirement in Massachusetts for the Catholic Church to provide morning-after pills to rape victims.” Arizona Republicans might be impressed by this, but I’m not sure you can say the same of women who might need those services.
Actually some of those Arizona Republicans are probably women who might need those services too — not that we would know they even exist. CNN only showed three women on the screen all night long: one screen shot of an older woman, one shot of Rick Perry’s wife and the sole female questioner who asked about education policy. That’s it. Three women on the screen during the entire debate.
But why would they? The word “woman” was never uttered, even once, despite long segments devoted to the subjects of birth control and healthcare. The word “mother” and the word “mom” came up one time each, when Mitt Romney talked about his opposition to gay adoptions. But every one of these important, middle aged and old, white men had strong opinions on contraception, the morning after pill, abortion and sexual morality for the other 50% of the human species that was rendered invisible.
In 1991 I was riveted by the Clarence Thomas hearings, appalled as I watched a panel of befuddled white men ignorantly pontificating about the topic of sexual harassment, stunned that I still lived in a world where a lone women could be brought before Cotton Mather’s tribunal and treated as a harlot. It was a revelation to a fairly young woman who had been living under the illusion that those days were long gone. It’s 20 years later and I’m old now. And it hasn’t gotten much better.
In fact, in 2010 the percentage of women in the House decreased from 17 to 16 percent. It was the first time women had a setback in their raw numbers in the last 30 years. (A setback from an unbelievably low number to begin with.) The US is ranked 71st in the world for percentage of women in elective office — behind Pakistan, center of Wahhabi Islam. Only 49 of the 162 active judges currently sitting on the thirteen federal courts of appeal are female, in a field which now graduates more women than men. (President Obama, to his credit, has nominated a lot of women to the bench. They just can’t get confirmed.) And the pay gap has been stagnant for the past decade, after barely edging up in the 1990s.
Watching that display of manly dominance last night, in which these four men staged an obscene assault on women’s rights with no challenge from the moderator or any women even shown on the screen, made me feel very queasy. I realize it’s hard to believe that a major Western democracy could actually go backwards on this — back in 1991 I fervently believed it was impossible. But it certainly is possible. It’s already happened.
Update: First they came for the Girl Scouts …
Update II: Jessica Valenti in The Nation on the GOP’s long war against women.
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