by Damozel | I am supporting Obama for president now, so don't start on me if you're one of his supporters, but I'm nevertheless filled with pride that Hillary---my choice for the nomination---is justifying my faith in her. She has (in her words) 'sound[ed] the alarm' regarding the Department of Health and Human Service's pending regulations that will redefine common forms of contraception as 'abortion.' What's in a name?:
These proposed regulations set to be released next week will allow healthcare providers to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it. (HuffPost)
That's bad. That's very, very bad. The ramifications are serious, both for those who think it’s not the
government’s business to impose its current ideology on health care
issues such as availability of contraception to the poor or who are already grumbling about all the women on welfare who expect taxpayers to pay for their children’s basic necessities.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is poised to put in place new barriers to accessing common forms of contraception like birth control pills, emergency contraception and IUDs by labeling them "abortion."...
These rules pose a serious threat to providers and uninsured and low-income Americans seeking care. They could prevent providers of federally-funded family planning services, like Medicaid and Title X, from guaranteeing their patients access to the full range of comprehensive family planning services. They'll also build significant barriers to counseling, education, contraception and preventive health services for those who need it most: low-income and uninsured women and men.
The regulations could even invalidate state laws that currently ensure access to contraception for many Americans. (HuffPost)
Via Melissa McEwan, this clip from her press conference:
"This is a gratuitous, unnecessary insult to the women of the United States of America. … It is an end-run around the rights of women to make choices about our own health, and we are not going to stand for it. … We will fight you every step of the way." (via Shakesville)
Women everywhere have cause to be grateful to her for speaking out on this issue.(Echidne: 'The best contraceptive...[a]ccording to the abstinence folks is probably an aspirin firmly held between the woman's knees.') Taylor Marsh says:
Senator Clinton keeps fighting for us. Her post at RH Reality Check, which is cross-posted over at Huffington Post, hits it out of the park.
Lauren at Feministe gets in a dig at Clinton while praising her for taking a stand---'No doubt Clinton’s relatively new vocalization in favor of reproductive health rights has something to do with her massive campaign debt'*, but includes this small-print disclaimer '*To be fair, Clinton’s record on reproductive rights is as good as, if not better than, Obama’s, but I can’t recall her being this outspoken on the issues in recent history.' But, as she says re: Clinton's stand on this, 'I'll take it.' Thanks, Lauren at Feministe!
Yes, and check out Digby's post here about father/daughter purity balls.
It's that phony Village provincialism running amok again spreading patronizing, anti-intellectual drivel that allows these elites to wallow in salt of the earth moral superiority that they do not personally possess but take credit for by writing glowing paeans to primitivism and barbarity that nobody but a few fundamentalist weirdos actually believe in. And it isn't harmless.
I hope the Obama campaign will very quickly weigh in on this issue as well—it will help vitiate my feelings of concern about how very mistaken he was about the current law in his recent statements about late term abortions. I know he’s off spreading goodwill and educating himself about the war, but this is really going to have an impact on women and families—including all those low income families on the South Side of Chicago.
RECENT POSTINGS:
Taxpayers Lose Money on FBI Contracts: Incompetence, Complicity or Lack of Concern?
The Difference Between Obama & McCain on Iraq: When Can Withdrawals Begin?
Comments