What We're Reading This Morning -- March 9
Spread the word
|
|
Happy Friday, all! It’s been quite a week, with continued fallout for Rush Limbaugh, Super Tuesday clarifying the Republican presidential field, and of course the “Women's Health Express” bus tour!
Here’s what we’re reading:
The abortion excuse… If Texas has demonstrated anything, then it’s shown us that anti-choice politicians are willing to go to great lengths, even cutting off health care access to more than 130,000 women, in order to attack Planned Parenthood.
Texas is now planning to shut down a Medicaid program that serves 130,000 women—in the name of preventing Planned Parenthood from getting money for abortions.
These politicians are telling the truth about one thing: they don’t like Planned Parenthood. But it’s simply not true that abortion is what’s at stake here—at least not primarily. The Hyde Amendment, which Congress has been tacking onto Medicaid spending bills for 36 years, already prohibits the spending of federal money on abortion services.
Pressing House Speaker John Boehner to leave birth control alone. All 12 Democratic women senators sent a letter to Speaker Boehner yesterday asking him to back off on contraception.
"Specifically, we are asking that you abandon the promise you have made to bring legislation to the House floor similar to the Blunt amendment ... which would turn the clock back on women's access to health care," the letter, timed to International Women's Day, stated. "Women have had enough."
Indeed, we have.
Idaho fighting mandatory ultrasound legislation. The fight in Virginia might be over for now, but many other states are facing equally damaging legislation. And Idaho is in the middle of their debate now:
“Monica Hopkins, executive director of the ACLU of Idaho, said, ‘Stop using women’s reproductive health as a political campaign tool. … Mandating an invasive procedure for political reasons is the ultimate in government intrusion.’
“Other speakers included a registered nurse, Jennifer Carter, who told the crowd that 11 weeks into a high-risk pregnancy, she underwent a transvaginal ultrasound, the invasive ultrasound procedure used early in pregnancy to get a clear picture of the fetus. ‘It was an uncomfortable procedure, but one that I felt was necessary’ because she and her doctor had made that decision, she said.”
