The Republican War on Women: Small Government Party Uses Big Hammer on D.C. Law

This is the twenty-seventh in a series of articles on the subjects of women, abortion rights and the Republican Party. 

Republicans continue to say they don’t have to change their core principles, they only have to change the language they use to get their message out.  One perception they want to alter is the idea that they are running a “war on women”.  Looking at the news over the past few years, I’d say the Republican Party has a long way to go on this subject.

• Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky): “Talk about a manufactured issue.  There is no issue.” 
• RNC Chairman Reince Priebus:  “It’s a fiction.” 

The U.S. House Battles the People of D.C. 

The facts and commentary:  In 2014 the District of Columbia passed a little something called the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act.  The Act was created to "amend the Human Rights Act of 1977 to ensure that individuals are protected from discrimination by an employer or employment agency based on an individual's or dependent's reproductive health decision making."

In other words, it prohibited an employer from firing a women--single or married--for using birth control, the firing of a man if his wife is using birth control and the firing of either parent if their teenage daughter is using birth control.

On Thursday evening, at 9:00 PM, the U.S. House of Representatives began a debate on the Act and by the end of the evening, 225 Republicans had voted to over-turn it.

During the debate, those in the House gallery without a press pass, (and just how many members of the press were around when this late night session was called?), were forced to give up all electronic devices and were prohibited from taking written notes.  Unless you were spending your Thursday watching C-Span, this action would have gone completely undocumented.  If I were a cynic, I'd be thinking John Boehner's House was trying to hide something.

Anti-abortion groups had approached House members and encouraged them to overturn the D.C. law, wrongfully claiming that it forces employers to cover abortion in their health policies.  This is untrue, the law requires coverage for birth control only.  If a single woman or a husband and wife want abortion coverage, it must be purchased as a separate rider--it is not an employer provided benefit.

Of course,these Republican lawmakers couldn't be bothered with the truth when they saw a chance to keep women barefoot and pregnant, all under cover of pandering to their support of religious freedom.

• Let me digress for a moment and ask you to think about this: the GOP, the party that wants to be known for "small government;" the same party that advocates for state rights, voted overwhelmingly to use their "big government" sledgehammer in order to deny the people of the District of Columbia the right to govern themselves. For now, Washington's Republicans seem content with keeping just the citizens of D.C. under their congressional thumb, but how long before the Kochs come whining about an environmental law they don't like that was passed in your state? 

Back on issue: what these Republicans have done is create a situation where an employer like Chick-fil-A is free to fire the married man they employ as their manager when they find out he has purchased birth control for his wife, leaving his family with no income and forcing them onto public assistance.  And then Republicans can point their fingers at him and call him a lazy, unmotivated moocher.  It's a Republican win-win!

The lack of GOP logic on this issue has been well documented:  

• No birth control = more unwanted pregnancies = more abortions--which Republicans want to eliminate completely. 
• No abortion services  = more unwanted children = more need for child care--which Republicans want to defund, 
• No childcare = more mothers forced to drop out of the workforce to care for unwanted children = more people on welfare--which Republicans want to defund in order to force people back into the workforce where there will be no child care for the children these women didn't want in the first place and who could have been prevented if women had only been given access to birth control.

The Republican Party has become a rabid animal, whose foaming at the mouth madness has driven it to a frenzy of biting at its own tail. The only thing that will satisfy it is finding another vagina to punish, and if that vagina belongs to a poor woman, more the better.

The  disease  action now moves to the Senate. where Mitch McConnell will finally have his chance to join the delirium.

The Republican War on Women is "fiction?"

WHAT YOU DO SPEAKS SO LOUDLY
THAT I CANNOT HEAR WHAT YOU SAY.