And the American Taliban strikes again, this time in Wisconsin:
The Republican led Wisconsin assembly voted to ban private insurance coverage for abortions and mandate abstinence-only sex education classes Wednesday morning, according to The Green Bay Post Gazette.
The Assembly voted 61-34 Tuesday evening to ban abortion coverage from a health insurance exchange set up by the Affordable Care Act in 2014. The federal law allows states the option to prohibit abortion coverage under the exchange, set up primarily by individuals and small businesses to buy health insurance coverage. Plans offered in the exchange would only cover abortions under the terms of the Hyde Amendment (rape, incest or when the health of the mother is at risk).
Rep. Donna Seidel (D) chastised Republicans for not focusing on the economy and creating jobs, feeling Wisconsin’s residents would be disappointment with the assembly’s focus.
“They feel let down,” Seidel said. “And what are we doing in these last hours to get that important work done? We are arguing about advancing an extreme social agenda that is nothing about that.”
RH Reality Check’s Andy Kopsa described the vote would “eliminate coverage for abortion services in Wisconsin even when individual citizens are using their own dollars to purchase private insurance.”
These people are fanatics, this is a war on women, and they’ll keep passing these laws enforcing their religious beliefs on the rest of us until you get up off your butt and throw the bums out of office.
The best part of the story from the Green Bay Post Gazette is the following:
The Wisconsin Assembly passed bills limiting insurance coverage for abortions and requiring schools to teach abstinence during a late-night session that lasted until Wednesday morning as they pushed to tie up pending legislation.
The Legislature was poised to adjourn Thursday without passing its two highest priorities coming into the year: a mining bill to help create hundreds of jobs in northern Wisconsin and a measure pumping money into venture capital to help spur new business creation.
Panty-sniffing religious scolding and slut-shaming apparently takes precedence over jobs.
Tone In DC
John, great post.
I think Walker’s minions have truly been huffing 1000% more glue than the CDC guidelines allow.
MTiffany
Thank you so very much, Bart Stupak.
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
The good citizens of Wisconsin put these people into office. Maybe they should stop.
beltane
Not only do these deviants hate women, but they also hate the type men who are capable of enjoying a mutually satisfying sexual relationship with women. It’s all spousal rape and self-hating masochism with these freaks.
zombie rotten mcdonald
the number of jobs that the mining bill would create is vastly overstated. Unless you want to count the inevitable environmental remediation jobs that will be necessary to repair the damage it would allow. this fella: http://thepoliticalenvironment.blogspot.com/ has tons of good posts about it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
American Taliban? Damned right. These fuckers are shoving their theology down the throat of everyone out there, all the while screaming that they are being oppressed.
The problem is that the people they claim are oppressing them are the very people that they themselves are oppressing. I am sick and tired of religion trying to take control of our country and dictate the way we live by what their gawd or Jeebus says. Fuck them, fuck the Republicans and fuck their god-bothering ways.
If they want to shove their religion in my face then they better get ready for my fist in theirs.
Mark K
Maybe its time to conjure up a anti-Joe McCarthy who holds trials to expose all these clearly anti-American (and so many are, like Joe, authoritarian Catholics) fascists.
“Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the fascist Tea Party?” “The Oathkeepers” or “Opus Dei”?
leinie
Idaho wants some of that limited government action, too:
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/03/14/2034700/idaho-senate-panel-oks-abortion.html
Can’t let Virginia and Texas get all the lovely lady-shaming action!
Mark S.
They are creating jobs: paying people to tell teenagers not to have sex.
Catsy
It helps when you realize that actions like this are the desperate flailing of a party and movement that knows it has thoroughly screwed the pooch and is trying to grab as much as they can before sliding into the dustbin of history.
They know Americans aren’t buying what they’re selling. They know their candidates suck and that whoever runs is going to lose to Obama. And they know that they’re going to get destroyed downticket.
This is the hysterical desperation of a cornered, doomed animal. It makes them more dangerous in the short term because they don’t think they have anything left to lose by twisting all the dials to 11, but it doesn’t make them any less doomed.
Chris
@Mark K:
I’ve fantasized here before of what might have happened if FDR had exploited World War Two politically in the same way McCarthy, the John Birch Society and all the rest exploited the Cold War. You know, turn it into a partisan hammer, accuse every Republican in sight of being a fascist agent, hold committee hearings to determine who is and isn’t a fascist, demagogue the shit out of it with talk of “a list of card-carrying fascists,” “are you know or have you ever been a member of a fascist organization?” and all the rest. (It’s not like they wouldn’t have had lots of material to work with, too).
Democrats don’t roll that way, I know…
JGabriel
Raw Story:
What the hell are these people thinking?
I know they’re the representatives of the Crazy 27%, but even Republicans must know that most races require a 50% majority to win. How long do they think they can get away with pissing off women and independents over medieval bullshit like this?
I just don’t get it.
There are things which are stupid, but take a little thought to work out how and why. And then there are things which are blatantly, obviously, stupid at first glance and all further inspection. I cannot fathom people who choose the latter and make it a point of pride.
.
beltane
These conservative men are about as masculine as as someone’s elderly spinster aunt shrieking about the evils of sex. Tea Party, indeed.
I blame all the estrogen in dairy and meat products. These wingnuts are neither male nor female but something else entirely.
Ralphie;
Sometimes I’m ashamed to say I live in the once great State of Wisconsin.
"Fair and Balanced" Dave
@Chris:
The trouble with that line of thinking is that the right-wing religious nuts and hard-core bigots were Democrats at that time (e.g., Strom Thurmond) and they only started switching to the GOP following passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
gnomedad
The God’s Own Party bender continues …
leinie
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
This. So sick of it. GET OUT OF MY UTERUS AND MY SEX LIFE AND MY REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE. Go work on creating some freaking jobs and stopping a war with Iran and fund some scientific research cuz HELLO Peak Oil, and do something fucking USEFUL for once in your fucked up careers.
jl
If I read the extract, and the link, correctly, the bill would mean no insurance coverage for abortions even when the life of the mother is in danger.
Even if the life of the mother is in danger?
Did I read that correctly?
If so, these people are ‘objectively’ (one of my favorite ex Trotskyite/neocon words) in favor of killing and maiming women and children. Period.
RK
If it were men who got pregnant, abortion would be a universal religious rite–a special sacrifice to god the holy men would call it–and free with a $50 purchase at Home Depot.
redshirt
Seems awfully convenient these laws and the like are springing up in so many different states. Just like the previous wave of union busting laws from the newly elected Teabaggers.
Hmm.
Ben Franklin
The Tealiban sure is intent on locking up the Women’s vote.
Just the ads on this will suck a huge hole in Dem Superpac cash.
Carnacki
I remember having a discussion with an old friend that led to the only argument in our 40 years of knowing each other. She’s an old-school Republican who believes in limited government and wishes the GOP would stay out of social issues, but votes GOP anyway. I was asking her why when she is pro-choice and pro-gay and she thought since progress was being made on those anyway, it didn’t matter that she voted for Republicans opposed to them as long as she was supporting those who would give her tax cuts. I told her their stated goal was Roe, but their real goal was Griswold. She told me that I was insane to believe the Republicans would go after contraception. I’ve resisted the urge to say, “Told you so” but I hope she remembers
makewi
Since abortion is the one thing that truly defines the left, this just seems mean spirited.
The Bearded Blogger
@Odie Hugh Manatee: What’s the angle though? From where I’m standing it seems like a losing strategy all around. I fail to see the self-interested rationale…
@JGabriel: On that, on a recent poll, guess what percentage of people approve of Rush Limbaugh?
Ralphie;
Republicans have no memory.
PeakVT
It’s so kind of Wisconsin Republicans to give Wisconsin women yet another reason to turn out for Walker’s recall election.
Cluttered Mind
I have a modest proposal. Provide no health care of any kind for Republicans, and use the money saved to provide 100% coverage for Democrats.
jl
There is an important link at the bottom of the Raw Story post. Looks like 15 states have similar policies restricting insurance coverage for abortion. Two (2) do not even have an exception for endangerment to life of women.
Not sure I can read table at the bottom of the Guttmacher pdf correctly, and will have to read article to find out which two.
Amazing.
They are pushing policies that will kill and maim women for no reason at all except partisan base rousing, and viciousness. And other policies what will do nothing except get women and children killed and maimed.
But this is not about the difficulties of near rich, and not good for hippy punching, so not much about this multi state push in our worthless news media.
Covering it might force rich hacks to say something vaguely mean about one side, so I guess they cannot cover it.
gnomedad
OT: As far as I can tell, most wingers think Coulter and Palin are both teh hawt, so I’m making me popcorn and watching some ‘splodin’ heads.
Ann Coulter: GOP has a ‘problem with charlatans’ like Sarah Palin
Violet
@beltane:
And if they’re not that, they’re deeply in-the-closet gay men who keep hoping if they punish women enough, it might turn them straight. Or something. Their minds are so warped by hiding their true selves for so long, it’s impossible to figure out how they think.
leinie
@Carnacki: You know, my still-registered-republican-thinks-they-are-fucking-nuts husband apologized to me a couple of weeks ago. I had told him THREE YEARS AGO that they were going after contraception, that they didn’t really care about the baybeez but about controlling women. At the time, he rolled his eyes at me, but now, he agrees and apologizes for doubting me.
JGabriel
@The Bearded Blogger:
Heh, 26%. I know, because I posted that same statistic earlier today.
.
pseudonymous in nc
@redshirt:
Yes. It’s almost as if those laws arrive in state capitol buildings fully formed, having been drafted and faxed in by (in this case) Charmaine Yeastinfection’s AUL.
The Bearded Blogger
@Carnacki: I hope this election effaces the selfish socially liberal republican phenomenon.
@makewi: Yes, from the Diggers to Proudhon to Marx to Saccon and Vanzetti to Roosevelt it’s been all about the foetus.
Please enlighten us some more.
RedKitten
Seriously, I am going to head down there with a fucking blowtorch, and join AsianGrrl and her rusty pitchfork, and start hurting people if this SHIT DOES NOT STOP.
Mark K
Chris, great point. When my son worked part time for the local public library a couple years ago, one of the requirements was for him to go down to the courthouse and swear that “He was not a member of the communist party”
“Did they ask you if you were a member of a fascist party?” I asked.
“No, just communist” he said.
Weird, huh?
gbear
Don’t be so sure that that mining bill is a good bill to pass to create jobs. If it’s anything like the mining bill that got voted down earlier (and IIRC) it would allow mining companies to dump their waste directly into rivers and streams with no regulation. I’m not sure what’s in this next mining bill, but the one before it was horrid.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
“American Taliban”? I call them “Talibaptists”. And I think I should warn you that Charles Lane in the Washington Post today wrote a stern op-ed about how he’s had quite enough of sundry rubes talking about the “War on Women”, thank you. So if you don’t grovel straightaway for offending his delicate feelings, well, you might make him sad. And we wouldn’t want that.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@RK:
Ummm, no. There would be abortion kiosks all over the place and advertising similar to that of Bachelor Chow on Futurama. The waiting rooms would be equipped with a big screen TV with ESPN on it, along with well padded recliners and free beer being served by topless office assistants.
Post-op pain meds would be limitless and they would be given a note from the doc stating that they need three months to recover (paid) before returning to work.
Oh, and it would be covered by insurance, free beer, ESPN and all. No copay necessary.
Jennifer
Panty-sniffing religious scolding and slut-shaming apparently takes precedence over jobs.
Yeah, but…jobs is hard.
I suggested over at roy’s that we should set up a SNARK SuperPAC for the purpose of scaring the shit out of men under 40 with a bunch of ads about how Republicans want to make it nearly impossible for them to get laid. “Vote as if your sex life depended on it! Because…it does.” I thought Marvin Gaye, tweaked to Let’s NOT Get It On would make for good background music for the ad. Make it funny – run them on Comedy Central, MTV, etc.
Cluttered Mind
Maybe we should take Newt Gingrich up on his plan for a moon base and relocate the 27% there.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@makewi: Actually, I’d say our dislike of you is pretty unifying as well.
Then there’s taking care of the poor, wanting people to be treated equal, and wanting women to be in charge of their uteruses (uteri?).
Redshift
@The Bearded Blogger:
As with all these hot-button issues it’s numbers vs. voter intensity. They can win on them if the supporters are highly motivated single-issue voters and the voters on our side aren’t. I suspect they may have miscalculated the motivation level of the opposition this time, but there have been plenty of issues in the past where you would think that would be the case, and it hasn’t been. We won’t know until November (except for Wisconsin, which gets to find out sooner.)
Chris
@JGabriel:
Twenty SIX percent? Wow, a lower approval rating than Alan Keyes. Impressive… most impressive.
jl
@leinie: I suggest you make sure he knows a full apology includes voting against the murderous party that backs this stuff.
But congratulations that he saw the light.
If I am in a vengeful mood, I will be distributing a lot of ‘I told you so’s’ as I see various moderate and independent minded fence sitters in my family as the rest of the year rolls by.
Berial
No sex ed. No birth control. Pregnant? No abortion. Have a kid? Stay home. No income? No assistance. #GOPplanforwomen
Stole the above from twitter.
Zam
Oh yea I would have loved to have that mine. Destroying the northern tourist industry would just be great.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@The Bearded Blogger:
Republicans and rationale are at opposite ends of the pole, all that matters to them is the Bible and carrying on their Crusade. No need for anything complicated like reason or rationale, not in their white and black world view.
The Bible says it is so it must be so. The end.
Zifnab
How do you like your stupid insurance mandate now, you stupid loser Democrats? You’re so stupid!
/Republican
Chris
@Mark K:
It would’ve made some kind of sense back during the Cold War, but that was over twenty years ago.
Their ever-increasing obsession with communism’s made even weirder by the fact that nothing of the kind’s existed outside of Cuba and North Korea for practically a generation.
Redshift
@Cluttered Mind: Like the “B” Ark, but for the mean-spirited population…
asiangrrlMN
@RedKitten: Right there with you, sister. I’m fucking tired of this bullshit. As I said in another thread, we at #ABLC have been tracking all the various bills across the country (please twit me at @asiangrrlMN if you read of more bills like this), and ABL started http://www.TeamUterati.com as a way to have all the info in one place.
We are really trying to keep track of all this, and yes, I believe it’s a concerted effort to pass as many bills as possible before the next election.
The Bearded Blogger
@Redshift: You’re probably right, but then the’ve miscalculated badly. They’re giving otherwise apathetic or republican women voters a reason to vote democratic this year.
I guess the past couple of weeks have been just too good to be a progressive. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Yankee Buzzard
Wisconsin. 50th among the states in job growth the last twelve months. Just sayin’
leinie
@jl: Oh, he voted for Obama last time, and will this time, despite his dissatisfaction with civil liberties, continued faith based inititives, and coddling of the 1%. He’s not happy with Obama, but he knows these other fucksticks are a nightmare.
He’s independent now, just hasn’t changed the registration. If he hadn’t had class last week, he would have used it to get into their closed Republican caucus and messed with them a bit. He’s come far from the Reagan worshipping, Rush Limbaugh listening redneck he used to be. :)
RedKitten
@asiangrrlMN: Awesome. Will definitely link and tweet. This is beyond disgusting.
JGabriel
Odie Hugh Manatee:
And Rush Limbaugh’s birthplace is their, or at least Rick Santorum’s, Mecca:
.
leinie
@asiangrrlMN:
They block the twitter here at work, so I can’t tweet it til later, but did you see my link above to the Idaho Statesman story on the Idaho Senate committee approving forced ultrasound, so it goes to the full Senate now? Vote was split along party lines – all Rs for, all Ds (all 2 of them, Rs have an UNBELIEVABLE majority in this state) against.
Daaling
Hey Cole,
Do you and Kos have some sort of firebagger reciprocal agreement where you mention American Taliban and do link backs and he mentions, oh I don’t know, pet calendars and link backs?
asiangrrlMN
@RedKitten: ::terrorist uterus jab::
@leinie: Just read it. Now I need to poke my eyes out with my rusty pitchfork™. How fucking condescending to say that women need to know what’s happening when they’re pregnant – by other women! I bookmarked it. Thanks.
@jl: Hey, you. How you be?
jl
@leinie: Thanks. Glad you are connected a person who can see reality and not too scared or bigoted to change his mind when he sees the evidence.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@JGabriel:
Now that’s just nuts, which fits pRick Sanctimorium like a glove. Here’s another great line from pRick… I heard that pRick told a crowd down south that ‘we were civil before 1965’. Well isn’t that a special year for him to note while down south speaking to conservatives.
Why use a dog whistle when you can use air raid sirens?
Chuck Butcher
I’m about real tired of the excuse given in these states that “so-and-so” didn’t campaign on … fill in the fucking blank. They’ve been saying this shit for decades and you didn’t get it when you pulled the “R” lever? Kiss my ass.
The middle some of you are so goddam hot to gut things to please turned their backs on the basis of what the fuck? Not nice clear leftish policies, they didn’t see the difference that they’re getting now because you’re always so fucking concerned to not look like a DFH.
So now the “austerity budget” deal is sinking? See, just didn’t give them enough…
Gus
I must say I am surprised. I’m sure the mining operations in question will irrevocably pollute thousands of acres of Wisconsin forest land. Sounds like something Republicans would love.
JG
Free market! Free market! Free market…
Oh, except when I don’t like what you’d like to buy. Or if it involves ladyparts.
And truly the most motivated voters based on all of this should be men who like to get laid. Because with no birth control and no abortions, you ain’t gettin’ any.
Cluttered Mind
@asiangrrlMN: I think the prevailing idea among wingnuts is that if you’re pregnant and want an abortion, you must be mentally deficient and thus unable to make an informed decision.
Tony J
@makewi:
FTFY
trollhattan
@JGabriel:
And this is why I can’t write fiction. Real life tops the loopiest shite I could ever invent.
The good news–ten years after he’s dirt farming, Rush will be remembered about as much as father Coughlin. Let’s get on that, Rush!
Comrade Dread
So the government fails at everything it does, but we want it to teach abstinence-only sex education. Therefore, I can only conclude that conservatives really want a bunch of horny teens out there screwing.
qwerty42
Wisconsin Lawmaker to victims of spousal abuse: Remember the good times.
No, really. You may not believe this, but the guy is a Republican.
I cannot believe this is coming from Wisconsin.
Ben Franklin
@Chuck Butcher:
Three cheers for Tealiban ‘austerity only’ fiscal policy slamming into the Keynesian ‘Wall’. That petri dish should be enough for anyone who believes in science.
Now watch, as they double-down.
Cluttered Mind
@Comrade Dread: Judging from the population growth trends in the states, their plan appears to have been to outbreed the liberals for quite some time now.
trollhattan
@makewi:
Somebody forgot, “control of the means of production and control of the distribution of goods.”
You’re welcome.
Ben Cisco
They are providing one service though: reminding everybody that the Talivangelicals need to be rooted out at the state/local level. And anyone that doesn’t think it’s a war: THEY DO!
Comrade Dread
@Cluttered Mind: But what confuses me is that they also want to put prayer into school and teach creationism in class, so holding on to their premise that government fails at everything it does, they must also secretly want to breed a generation of atheists who believe in Evolution.
Frankensteinbeck
@leinie:
Contraception’s always been on the list. Heck, I knew that, and I don’t think this is motivated by a desire to control women. It’s motivated by a desire to enforce their culture on everyone else, combined with an utter callousness for whoever that hurts. Except themselves, and even then they’re good at lying to themselves about whether they get hurt.
Attacking contraception, like openly (rather than in disguise) attacking Medicare, is political poison. That’s the only reason they haven’t done it for the last 30 years. Now they’re too batshit to care about political consequences. Maybe Stuck’s right, and they realize that they never will get a chance again and there’s no reason not to go for broke.
EriktheRed
They know the days of them having control are getting short, so they’re trying to cram in as much of the wingnut agenda as possible.
Cluttered Mind
@Comrade Dread: You’re forgetting that they also want to eliminate the Department of Education and all public schools. So yes, they want prayer and creationism in schools, but they also want the schools to be run by the Koch brothers and not the Government.
makewi
Abortions will have to be paid out of pocket. Truly the end is upon us.
Chuck Butcher
@Ben Franklin:
There is a 26% or so floor to utter and complete insane stupidity, unfortunately there is another 14-20% of don’t pay attention tribal votes who say they’re independents.
Then there is the don’t pay attention 20% everybody wants. Democrats piss on their agenda to try to get them, GOPers just don’t say theirs loudly and what that bunch sees is very little effective difference so they’ll flip real easily as they did in ’10. There is a concerted effort to not push at or otherwise distress this group and that means not giving them clear alternatives and full information. Because the two Parties react differently, the GOP doesn’t say it loud and proud to them and the Democrats become those folks by default.
If the GOPers have gotten them to pay attention, then they’ve overplayed their hand. Democrats could make a clear hard fight of it, the opportunity presents itself – don’t bet anything you care about on it.
RedKitten
@makewi: makewi, don’t be such an asshat. In case you haven’t been paying attention, in many cases, abortions are medically necessary in order to save the mother’s life.
So if insurance won’t cover it, there will now be some women who are put in the position of having to choose bankruptcy or death, simply because they were unlucky enough to have a pregnancy go bad.
kideni
Don’t even get me started on the retrograde anti-woman legislation these creeps have been shoving out. It would take hours.
As for the mining bill, yeah, what others here have said. The number of jobs it would create has been vastly overstated (sometimes they said 700, other times they said 2,000; many of the jobs would have gone to people from out of state because it’s not the sort of mining anyone here has experience doing). The mining company that wrote the bill has actually been backing away from the project since last summer, since the price of iron has dropped significantly, but having the legislation fail gave them a chance to pout.
The worst part, to my mind, was the environmental damage that this mine would have caused, had it ever gone through. The waters that the mine waste would flow into provide the ground water for the people who live in the area, and they feed Lake Superior, which takes a hundred years to recover from a major pollution event (by comparison, Lake Erie, which is smaller and much shallower, takes only about ten years).
It would have destroyed the Bad River Chippewa, since the pollution from the mine would have gone down to their wild rice fields, which are an essential part of their culture. The tribes were never consulted about the mine, and the Republicans dismissed them when they raised concerns (one of the legislators said something along the lines of sure, a lot of groups wanted to be consulted, but there’s just not enough time). They really don’t seem to understand the concept of tribal sovereignty and that these things get tied up in federal court for years. They don’t seem to remember that Wisconsin has had some major cases regarding tribal sovereignty in the last 25 years or so, and the tribes have won.
Cluttered Mind
@RedKitten: That’s kind of irrelevant I think. If you’re pro-choice, that means you support choice whether it’s a woman who needs an abortion to save her life or a woman in her third trimester who had a change of heart. Both deserve the same funding from the same sources. Once you start putting caveats on the right to choose or saying “It’s okay in this circumstance but not others”, things get complicated way too fast. I highly doubt I’m telling you anything you don’t already know or believe, just saying that Makewi isn’t worth engaging like that. If someone is going to start arguing about abortions, their mind will never be changed by tossing out facts like medical necessities. Remember the whole thing about “forcible rape”? You can’t give these people an inch or they’ll take a mile.
RedKitten
True. It just irks me when anti-choice asshats don’t even ACKNOWLEDGE that those cases exist.
Comrade Dread
@cluttered mind
Can’t wait to see the coursework:
BIO 24: Dinosaurs: If God didn’t want us to burn fossil fuels, he wouldn’t have made the big lizards. Sponsored by Exxon-Mobil
AP ECON 10: Theft, Fraud, and Lies: How to succeed in today’s financial market aka It’s only stealing if you’re poor. Sponsored by Goldman-Sachs
James E. Powell
@PeakVT:
The question is, do Wisconsin women, or at least a majority of the Wisconsin women who will be voting, feel that this anti-abortion measure is an attack on them? Do they disagree with it strongly enough that they will vote to recall the governor and sundry Republican senators? Will they, finally and at long last, vote Democratic in by huge margins and in huge numbers?
I ask this because the right-wingers don’t pass laws like this simply because they want the results. These measures are what put them in power and, in their calculation, it will keep them in power. Will it work again?
Catsy
@makewi:
This pristine example of bad faith mendacity in the wild should be sufficient for anyone who still harbored any lingering delusions about whether or not makewi has anything of value to say on this subject.
YellowJournalism
I would like to add that when a woman chooses to have an abortion, then IMO it becomes a medical necessity. Listening to these assholes, they make it seem like women treat abortion like one would treat scheduling an oil change.
trex
@Makewi
Not if you planning on picking up the tab for every single one. Otherwise it’s hundreds of dollars that many people don’t have to spare. And as we’ve seen recently, each of these moves is but a step forward upon the path to Gilead, or backwards to Puritan times. Even the right-wing organizations dreaming up all this retrograde legislation make no secret of the fact they are using incrementalism to achieve their ultimate goals of stripping Americans of their reproductive rights. They want birth control and abortion to be non-existent; forced births for the accidentally pregnant; police investigations of miscarriages; and life in prison or death sentences for anyone involved in an abortion.
Why would you play dumb and pretend otherwise? Because it’s fun to troll?
makewi
@trex:
The flip side of this argument is that a cavalier attitude towards abortion leads is further down the road where life is devalued.
To be fair, I feel this legislation is a huge overreach on the part of government. If the insurance company wishes to cover abortion, and the private citizen wishes to purchase the insurance then that is their business and the government should not interfere at all.
Ruckus
@leinie:
You do realize that you two are asking for a lot don’t you?
How do you argue with an idiot?
You Don’t. They are like cockroaches. They don’t think, they don’t reason, they…
You live with them, you move or you defeat them. Choose one.
BTW the first choice is not working
trex
@Makewi
If anything there is a much stronger case to be made for an inverse relationship between anti-abortion sentiments and valuing human life, whether you look horizontally across societies or vertically into the past. By western standards, clearly there is less value placed on human life in the Middle East, Africa, and South America – areas where abortion is generally forbidden by religion and/or religously-derived laws – than here in the United States where abortion has been legal for forty years. In these areas the use of lethal violence to resolve one’s personal or social agenda is common and less likely to be subject to judicial review. Children are drawn into militias and cartels as expendables and have even been used as cannon fodder in war. Clearly we in the United States value life by orders of magnitude more than in these areas, where this kind of behavior is considered despicable.
Likewise, the further you go backwards into American history prior to Roe v. Wade the less individual life was valued, despite abortion being illegal: lynchings were common and celebrated; individuals and communities resorted to vigilantism and violence over everything from property rights to feuds over missing cows; people were routinely worked to death in mines and factories and no provisions made for their widow and offspring, some of whom went hungry and perished. Go back far enough and children were hooked to coal carts and forced to work ten and twelve hours a day in mines, and orphans were left to fend like dogs under bridges. Of course, all of these things are illegal now because we value individual human life more now AFTER Roe v. Wade than we did then.
The anti-abortionist will of course attack this argument and claim that all of these trends are mere random correlation and nothing more. I would argue that it’s not random correlation, as the trends are too regular, nor is it causation per se, but rather constellation, which is to say: there is a constellation of values around greater and more refined human rights, one of which is the right to self-direction and another the right of women to be treated as equals with men, which, when enshrined and executed by a society are on the one hand a sign of its social and spiritual maturity and on the other produce a net positive effect by cultivating awareness of the dignity of the individual.
And that’s not to say that the attitude of the individual towards the potential life that is the fetus falls outside the penumbra of the effect of these rights, as a respect for all living things including plants and animals is a sign of spiritual maturity. However the rights and consideration of the living must always trump consideration for potential life. The acorn is not the tree. The law has always recognized this principle as have all three Religions of the Book, who going back four thousand years have taught it – that is, until about forty years ago, when some Christian sects abandoned their own theology on the subject in order to become involved in the culture war and expand their fight against “modernism.”
As I’m pretty sure has been posted here before, the “godless” European countries all have lower and in some cases FAR lower rates of abortion, even though it is legal. At the same time they have arguably the most refined concepts of human rights, place a great deal more emphasis on the care of the individual in society, and have cultures that are no where near as violent as ours.
So, “the flip side of this argument [being that] cavalier attitude towards abortion leads is further down the road where life is devalued” is patently and demonstrably false. It is an emotional argument that flies in the face of facts and history, and in my opinion, a dishonest proxy for a general reactionary attitude on the part of many who propose it.
shortstop
Awesome comment, trex.
Bulworth
There they go again. Democrats and their over-regulation of business. Oh wait…