Republicans hate women.
Demonstrating yet again that Republicans prefer waging a war on women than a war on unemployment, the House passed an anti-abortion bill that appropriately has been deemed the “Let Women Die” bill. All House Republicans plus eleven Democrats (!!!??) voted for the bill. (The bill is expected to die in the Senate, but if it doesn’t, President Obama has said he will veto it.)
The bill permits hospitals that receive federal funding to turn away women who seek an abortion even if the procedure is necessary to save the woman’s life:
The GOP-led House of Representatives is voting Thursday on a bill that Republicans say is necessary to keep taxpayer money from funding abortions but that Democrats call “savage” to women and possibly deadly.
The Protect Life Act would bar federal funding for abortions. It would also prohibit women from using tax subsidies acquired through President Obama’s health care reforms to pay for health insurance that covers abortion, except in the cases of rape, incest or risk to the mother’s health. Additionally, the bill would let health care providers refuse to perform an abortion if it violates their personal beliefs.
So if Mary McPreggers heads to her local hospital and that hospital just happens to be run by Doctor Ratched the Pro-life Forced-birth Teabilly Evangelist, the hospital would be within its right to simply push Mary out on to the street and leave her there to die, Hippocratic oath be damned.
Nancy Pelosi called the measure “just appalling” and a “savage” attempt to withhold healthcare for women. She also said, “When the Republicans vote for this bill today, they will be voting to say that women can die on the floor.”
Rep Jackie Speier (D-CA) called the bill “misogynist.”
The bill is both of those things; but more importantly, the bill is also never going to become law — not while President Obama is at the helm of this sinking ship.
Let’s just say I’m glad my uterus is in President Obama’s capable hands.
Wait — that came out all wrong.
Dang, so did that!
Um…
::backs away slowly::
[via Think Progress]
And this, readers, is how low the cynicism reaches in the Republican caucus. They know damn well this will be vetoed. They know damn well that that may never even need doing because it will not, repeat, not make it past the Senate.
It’s something to stir the religious fanatics that make up a good chunk of their base.
If they’d wanted to do something to end abortion they would have done it early on in Bush’s first term, when they had both houses of Congress and the White House.
They didn’t, and for this reason: Their religious nutcase base would have said “We won!” and gone home. They likely would not have bothered with voting any longer because abortion is the one and only thing they care about.
(Yes, there is some crossover with the anti-gay crowd, though it’s not a 100% match.)
Abortion is far too useful to these reptilian scumbags to ever consider eliminating it, it’s far more valuable as an incendiary device.
That’s my take on the whole issue, anyway, and all standard disclaimers apply. You want some non-standard disclaimers, let’s talk.
You know, that’s a really good point.
I have thought this for a long time. If Roe v. Wade were overturned, the GOP would lose a lot of the moral high road they pretend to enjoy and something with which to stir up their base. It’s in their best interest to keep abortion legal so they can attack it like this. It’s such utter bullshit, I can’t even…yeah. They disgust me.
Let’s just say I’m glad my uterus is in President Obama’s capable hands.
You betta watch it, ABL, or Michelle might have to whoop your ass!
I agree with That Guy With the Ponytail, this bill is cynical ploy to appease single-issue anti-abortion voters.
Congress has time for this foolishness, but no time for the jobs bill? Color me disgusted.
Hi, this bill merely returns the state of abortion funding to the status quo prior to the Obama Administration,and to what he even promised last year. Until now, there was zero Federal funding of abortion, and even Obama wrote an Executive Order saying the new health care bill would not fund abortions, This bill merely codifies what Obama promised. Don’t get so frantic over a big nothing.
If the bill only did what you stated, then at the very least, it’s a fucking waste of time. But, that’s not all it does, Vincent. It allows a doctor to refuse to operate on a pregnant woman to save her life if there is a chance the fetus will be lost. That’s ideology pushed to the extreme and a callous disregard for the lives of pregnant women, or rather, a dismissal of them as anything more than breeding cattle.