What We're Reading This Morning -- March 5
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Good morning all and Happy Monday. Last week was overtaken with the firestorm around Rush Limbaugh’s offensive and over-the- top attacks on Georgetown University Law student Sandra Fluke. This week, we are monitoring the efforts of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Texas Planned Parenthood organizations with their “Don’t Mess with Texas Women” Bus tour in Texas, calling attention to Governor Rick Perry’s cutting off more than 130,000 Texan women from health care over politics. Of course the big political story for the week is expected to be Super Tuesday, the single biggest day of voting in the primary season. We’ll be watching closely. Here’s what we’re reading.
Rollin’ out for Women’s Health in Texas! The Women’s Health Express makes its first stop this afternoon in Brownsville to protest the Texas government’s assault on women’s health. Michelle Goldberg has been on the ground in TX and reports on the impact of Perry’s cuts on women’s health.
Last year, in a move targeting Planned Parenthood, the Texas legislature slashed family-planning funding by two thirds, from $111.5 million to $37.9 million. Now, the state is on the verge of eliminating its Women’s Health Program, which provides reproductive-health care for more than 130,000 poor women who don’t meet Texas’s narrow Medicaid eligibility requirements.
Learn more about the campaign against these actions.
We agree with Ron Paul. Rush is not very apologetic. Though all the Republican candidates commented on the Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke flap, Ron Paul was the only one willing to say what actually needed saying:
“’I don’t think he’s very apologetic, I think he’s doing it because people were taking their advertisements off his program,’ Paul said on CBS’s Face the Nation.”
Getting to the real numbers on the cost of birth control. Part of what’s made the debate over birth control maddening is the inability of conservatives to use actual facts. Jonathan Cohn writes:
“It's great when low-cost generics are available, if one of the ones available is the right method for you. But if we were talking about medication to address high blood pressure or to treat cancer, no one would take seriously this type of argument: ‘You don't need insurance coverage for that medication your doctor recommends. See, there's a different drug on sale at Target. I'm not a doctor, but, hey, it's probably just as good for you.’"
Virginia women arrested for protesting anti-women’s health legislation. Not happy with the “compromise” ultrasound bill, Virginians protested in Richmond yesterday. Despite having a permit, riot police surrounded them and at least 31 were arrested.
“The arrests took place after some protesters, who had marched along nearby streets before entering Capitol Square, refused to leave the south steps of the Capitol. They were, in some cases, carried away by police and taken to a bus parked nearby while other officers held protesters at bay with shields. In the course of two hours, Glen Allen resident Bonnie Ward went from marching with a sign that read, ‘Women: 51%, men: 49%, there is a new majority,’ to being guided into a bus by police.”
