Give Us a Break, Speaker Boehner
How's this for chutzpah?
John Boehner, the anti-choice speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and mastermind behind the War on Women, went on the House floor today to say...there is no War on Women:
And now, now we are going to have a fight over women's health. Give me a break. This is the latest plank in the so-called War on Women. Entirely created, entirely created by my colleagues across the aisle for political gain.
So, Mr. Speaker, I guess we all just imagined the last 16 months. I guess we all just imagined that:
- The U.S. House of Representatives held more choice-related votes in 2011 than in any year since 2000.
- The House voted to defund Planned Parenthood and eliminate the Title X family-planning program. And Mitt Romney has vowed to do both of these things should he ever reach the White House.
- Anti-choice lawmakers pushed the Blunt amendment, which could have allowed employers and corporations to block their employees from getting insurance coverage of birth control. Every Republican senator but one voted for this measure--and Gov. Romney voiced his support for it.
- They held a House committee hearing with an all-male panel attacking birth control.
- At the state level, these politicians enacted twice as many anti-choice laws in 2011 as they did in the previous year.
And I guess we imagined it when you said the "rape-audits" bill, which manipulates the tax code to advance anti-choice policies and could spur the IRS to audit rape and incest survivors who choose abortion care, was one of your "highest legislative priorities"?
Speaker Boehner, you can't deny a War on Women that you started.
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What war on women?, the GOP keeps asking? Bueller? Bueller?
Here! This war:
- redefinition of rape (attempted in Georgia)
- repeal of child labor laws (passed in Maine)
- repeal of minimum wage
- the effort to make contraception unaffordable
- the redefinition of life itself (beginning now before conception)
- cutting of aid for pregnant women
- the relentless cutting of funds for education
- reduce Medicaid and health care for women
- cut Head Start, by $1 billion.
- cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood
- in Congress, Republicans have introduced a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life (this is no joke!)
- 31 GOP'rs voted against protecting women from violence
- proposing single mothers should not get welfare unless they work (Romney).
So, how does Mr. Romney suggest a single mother should go to work every day, when Head Start and daycare programs are not available, because Republicans axed them? What is she supposed to do with that three-year old? Lock it into a doggy crate, like Seamus?
51% of voters are women. Women! Vote, as long as you still can!
My sense about what is going on in this country and the world is that the main problem we are facing is overpopulation, and this problem is either causing or exacerbating every other problem we are currently dealing with.
Now it seems as if the conservatives want to return women to the days of barefoot, pregnant, and with as little power over their individual lives as possible. Didn't we already go through this phase of growing up? And didn't they learn anything?
Here is how I deal with the abortion issue. Noted economist Sylvia Cordwood was quoted in the Reader's Digest some time ago as saying "My opinion is something that is true for me personally. My conviction is something that is true for everyone - in my opinion."
When a person has a belief that can not be scientifically and definitively proven, what they have is an opinion, and not a fact. The problems begin with all people who have chosen to believe
that their opinions are facts, especially if it happens to be connected to a conviction they hold.
As I understand it, all right-to-lifers believe that life, or ensoulment, takes place at conception. To my knowledge, that has never been scientifically proven, and so that is not a fact, it is an opinon.
I have read, and I support the idea that life, or ensoulment, takes place at birth. The difference between me and them is that I am aware that this is an opinion.
I support the right of everyone to have their own opinion. However, I do not support the right of anyone to call their opinion a fact, when it has not been proven as such.
I'm sure the abortion foes would resent, and perhaps even hate having to live their lives, and make their choices according to the dictates of my opinion, if it were to become law. I would have the same problem if their opinion became law, and I were forced to live my life and make my decisions according to the dictates of their opinion.
That is why I believe this choice should be left up to the individuals involved.
The problem I have with most aboriton foes is that they presume to know what God wants or doesn't want. That appears to be an arrogant and dangerous delusion, and one which I find is generally supported by their peer group. One of the symptoms of their delusion is that, because it is a conviction, they are very sincere in their approach to dealing with other people.
The fact that they are very sincere, still does not change their opinion into a fact.
If someone were to scientifically prove that life, or ensoulment, began at conception, I'd be willing to change my mind. The problem with most zealots is that they rarely, if ever, are able to say "I might be wrong," so changing their mind is usually not an option. And, as a teacher friend of mine once told me, "If you can't change your mind, what can you change.?
As I once wrote in a song long ago, "all their friends think the same, so they think they've won."
Hey, Speaker Bonehead, if a fetus is so valuable that it's worth more than its mother, it's worth more than you. You want a break? Give THEM a break, fool!