Friday, June 28, 2013

This is what life getting better looks like for women - especially number 8, below

Republicans HATE legislation that helps women who are raped; they opposed, bitterly, the Violence Against Women Act last time around because helping women in situations of domestic violence and abuse gets them away from overwhelmingly mostly male abusers.  Prominent right wing figures have actually made the appalling argument that removing women from abusive situations is a threat to traditional marriage and families, that instead women should stay and be abused rather than leave, rather than divorce, even if they are seriously injured, even if they are killed as a result.

Among right wing evangelicals, there have been instances where churches have in fact enabled pedophiles and domestic abusers, punishing women and impeding them from reporting dangerous crimes, in order to support and perpetuate the dominion, the dominance, of men in the church and in the home.

We have seen right wing politicians, most notably our own member of Congress from Minnesota, promote factually false claims about the Human Papillomavirus vaccine, while assailing 'Obamacare', as well as promoting other factually inaccurate claims about Obamacare.  By factually inaccurate statements, what I really mean is deliberate lying.

We have seen the right oppose the full and free use of contraceptives and related counseling, in an effort to push limited religious belief on those who do not hold those beliefs.  Women who lack control of their reproductive choices are more vulnerable, more dependent, and less free than women who have those choices.  The right believes that when women have fewer choices, that it supports a traditional family, where men are dominant.  That goes hand in hand with the right repealing legislation which made it illegal to discriminate against women, and to pay women substantially LESS than men for doing the same job.

Good, inexpensive health care and health insurance, like Obamacare, means women have more control over their economic lives, as well as more autonomy over their own bodies.  Conservatives would rather see women dying from lack of breast cancer and other reproductive cancers, than see women receive that coverage under Obamacare.  That is evident from their efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, promoting factually inaccurate claims about abortion services.

The right has also been a strong promoter of ignorance only sex education, under the misleading title of abstinence only sex education.  They don't want men OR women to have medically accurate information on which to base their life decisions, and have REQUIRED that medically inaccurate information be provided in schools.  Right wing politicians have even required that medically inaccurate information be provided to women who are pregnant, even if it means a woman will die because of it.  So of course, the right HATES Obamacare for providing affordable AND accurate medical information and medical care that will save the lives of women.  THAT does not conform to their ideology.

Just this past week or two, in the state of Texas, we have seen conservatives who should know better, including in one case an OB/GYN, speaking in their state legislature, make claims about women and reproductive health that were factually inaccurate.  The OB/GYN made factually false claims about fetal pain and pleasure to justify an unconstitutional abortion law.  A female member of the Texas legislature made an incredibly badly informed and factually inaccurate statements asserting that rape kits properly used in an emergency room were the same as having an abortion, that the use of a rape kit "cleaned a woman out" --- (you know 'down there').

This is the same party of conservatives that in another state, in addressing reproductive regulation, insisted that the use of the technically correct anatomical term for a part of a woman's body, 'vagina', was inappropriate and vulgar in a debate in their state legislature.  So of course, FACTUALLY ACCURATE information, which would include words like VAGINA, in information provided to women in conjunction with their health care under Obamacare offends conservatives.

It goes without saying that any medically accurate information on gender and sexual orientation that does not conform to the religious right and other conservative ignorance and bigotry that is provided as part of health care counseling under Obamacare deeply offends those ignorant conservatives.  It is likely to reduce the deaths from suicide of those who are transgender, gay, lesbian or bi-sexual, or even a-sexual; conservatives would rather see those people dead, or so miserable that being dead is preferable to their lives, than see these people provided with health care services.  That would also include counseling to get out of physically, emotionally, or psychologically abusive relationships. Conservatives HATE that.

So, it is no surprise that conservatives no doubt HATE that these things are now fully covered under Obamacare, or that poor people who were previously dying at obscene rates from lack of health care, due to things like pre-existing conditions or the decision of employers not to make health insurance available to them, are now fully covered by Obamacare.

Better in the minds of conservatives that these people DIE, than benefit from an insurance program named for the first black president as an insult.  Better in the minds of conservatives that people suffer, than reduce heath care costs, and improve care, because of their ideological ignorance and prejudice about what is constitutionally valid.

This is what life getting better looks like for women, and for a lot of men and for a lot of children too.  It makes us all safer, and it makes us all more free, in the real definition of liberty, which is quite different from the conservative use of the words freedom and liberty.

The graphic below illustrates one more example of conservatives on the wrong side of an issue, and on the wrong side of history.

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