The Republican March In North Dakota To Have Tyrannical Government Control of Women's Bodies

The Republican March In North Dakota To Have Tyrannical Government Control of Women's Bodies

On Tuesday afternoon, North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) signed into law three different abortion restrictions — HB 1305, HB 1456, and SB 2305 — that women’s health advocates say will effectively ban abortion in the state. The extreme legislation that has received the most media attention is HB 1456, an unconstitutional “fetal heartbeat” ban that would outlaw abortions after just six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even realize they’re pregnant. But when it comes to the new laws’ concrete effect on the lives of women in North Dakota, a lesser-known piece of legislation may actually pose an even bigger threat to reproductive rights.

North Dakota women will feel the immediate impact of SB 2305, which indirectly targets abortion access by over-regulating abortion providers — a popular anti-choice tactic known as the Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP. Abortion opponents push TRAP laws with the ultimate goal of forcing abortion clinics to close their doors.

TRAP laws are cleverly framed in terms of ensuring women’s safety, but they’re actually incredibly effective methods of cutting off access to reproductive care at health clinics. That’s why Tammi Kromenaker, the director of North Dakota’s last remaining abortion clinic, told RH Reality Check that SB 2305 could actually represent the most serious threat to women’s abortion services in the state:

    “We definitely see the TRAP bill as the one that will end abortion in the state,” Tammi Kromenaker, the director of Red River Women’s Clinic (RRWC), told RH Reality Check. RRWC is the only abortion clinic in North Dakota. “The other bills aren’t really a threat right now, but this one could close us.” [...]

    These bills have drawn attention away from the true threat to RRWC: Under the new TRAP bill, abortion providers would be forced to obtain hospital admitting privileges. But at least one of the two local hospitals won’t offer those privileges to the clinic — because the quality of care at RRWC is so high that the clinic doesn’t need them.

    Lawmakers proposed the bill under the guise of “women’s safety,” but Kromenaker points out that her clinic’s safety record is actually better than the average clinic safety records, showing that the “need” for the bill was completely fabricated. “This bill is intended to impose an impossible to meet requirement,” she said. “There is no other goal but to shut us down.”

North Dakota’s new six-week ban will likely be tied up in court for going much too far to undermine the constitutional protections in Roe v. Wade, which guarantees the right to first-trimester abortion services. And an even more radical “personhood” amendment, which could ban all abortions altogether if voters approve it on the 2014 November ballot, will face similar legal challenges if it becomes law. On the other hand, SB 2305 could force the Red River Women’s Clinic to close its doors relatively quickly — just like similar legislation has done to health clinics in other states.

Conservatives have some very creepy ideas about rights, children and women. As long as someone is a possible person, a clump of cells, they're all for the protection of that abstraction - going so far as to have the government make personal health care choices for individuals and their families. On the other hand they actively despise women, hate the idea of helping children with health care or education. And they're happy to use government to make sure that corporations have more power then women or children. Whatever values Republicans have, they're not patriotic American values. 

Conservatives Who Think That Women Should Have Fewer Rights Than Men May Cost Republicans Victory, But Save America From A Radical Agenda

Conservatives Who Think That Women Should Have Fewer Rights Than Men May Cost Republicans Victory, But Save America From A Radical Agenda

What if misogyny ends up costing Republicans the Senate? Judging by the polls in the final days before the election, this is not a crazy proposition — especially if “gaffes” on abortion, rape and contraception are equated by the electorate with extremism, repelling even ideologically sympathetic voters.

Just look at Indiana, a state that is choosing between two “pro-life” candidates, one of whom is a Democrat who has voted for House Republicans’ most restrictive legislation on reproductive rights. Still, Joe Donnelly managed to avoid doing what Richard Mourdock did – getting famous for talking insensitively about rape. They’ve been tied or within inches of each other for weeks, but as of today, the first post-rape-comment poll, Mourdock is down 11 points. Meanwhile, Mourdock’s rape-talking fellow traveler in Missouri, Senate candidate Todd Akin, is locked in a race that was never supposed to be competitive, and a cash infusion may come too late to save him. And in Connecticut and Massachusetts, both abortion and contraception have been used to pummel relatively moderate Republicans with the ever-rightward agenda of the national party, and for that reason and more, it’s looking like Democrats will prevail.

This is about more than the so-called gender gap, though women do tend to vote disproportionately to our share in the population and historically favor Democrats. And it’s about more than “pro-life” and “pro-choice,” where, at least as far as those fuzzy words go, the former has a slight edge in polling. When abortion conversations turn to rape, exceptions for which are broadly, if inconsistently, supported by voters, they also suddenly become about a broader callousness and indifference to suffering, one that jibes with messaging about slashing Medicare and Medicaid. Voters drifting away from Mourdock would probably never use the word “misogyny,” but as I’ve said, as the Republican agenda on sex and reproduction gets explained in full, we’re hearing very little about compassion for fetal life and a lot about women having sex.

Pro-choice activists have been saying this for years, but didn’t get much credence until elected Republicans gave a larger platform for marginal and largely discredited views — rape victims can’t get pregnant (Akin); exceptions to save a woman’s life are never needed (Rep. Joe Walsh); consensual sex, and getting pregnant from it, is as shameful as rape (GOP Senate candidate Tom Smith, who hasn’t been able to close the deal in Pennsylvania). The same goes for defunding Planned Parenthood and repealing Obamacare, or at the very least getting rid of the birth control coverage in it — these days, virtually uncontested across Republicans in office or running for it. That may work well in a House race, but it’s proving a tougher sell statewide — and, judging by Romney’s ads soft-pedaling his stances on abortion and contraception, nationally as well.

If you want to know where this all came from or where it’s going, check out Emily Bazelon’s profile of the Americans United for Life president in the New York  Times magazine. AUL has been as influential as any group in crafting the state-level abortion restrictions and rhetoric around them, taking the murky anti-choice rhetoric and mainstreaming it in a palatable and reasonable-sounding way. Yoest “believes that embryos have legal rights and opposes birth control, like the IUD, that she thinks ‘has life-ending properties.’” (She can think that, but it doesn’t make it medically accurate.) She refuses to discuss a study showing that the abortion rate drops dramatically when you make long-acting reversible birth control — like the IUD — free to women who want it, mimicking Obamacare’s full coverage under insurance. And yet she knows that when you talk about birth control and abortion as connected to women’s reproductive and sexual autonomy, the anti-choice side loses. She said as much on PBS, Bazelon notes: ““It’s really a red herring that the abortion lobby likes to bring up by conflating abortion and birth control … Because that would be, frankly, carrying water for the other side to allow them to redefine the issue in that way.”

Instead of outright repealing the 19th Amendment( guaranteeing women the right to vote) and other progressive legislation that have leveled the playing field over the years in one fail swoop, Republicans have been pretty successful in chipping away at the rights of women to be full citizens. And Mittens is no friend to more than have the country. He thinks conservatives and big government should control women,Top 6 Lies Romney Has Told Women in an Election Season Full of Whoppers, Mitt has assembled a binder full of bs on issues that matter to more than half the population

Republicans are resorting to some weird extortion to get the vote, The GOP Will Destroy America If We Reelect Obama, So We Must Let the GOP Win

Mitt Romney Endorsed Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock (R-IN) Who Calls Calls Rape Pregnancies A ‘Gift From God’

Mitt Romney Endorsed Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock (R-IN) Who Calls Calls Rape Pregnancies A ‘Gift From God’

NEW ALBANY, Indiana — At a debate this evening with his Democratic opponent Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock claimed that raped women should be forced to carry their rapist’s baby to term because their forced pregnancy is a “gift from God”:

    I believe life begins at conception. The only exception I have for to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother. I struggled with myself for a long time but I came to realize life is that gift from God, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape. It is something that God intended to happen.



Throughout his campaign, Mourdock has left no doubt that he believes in a sacred right to life that begins at conception and ends at birth. Earlier this year, Mourdock mocked the very idea that Social Security and Medicare — programs that millions of seniors depend on to save their lives — are even constitutional.

Update

In his post-debate press conference, Mourdock repeatedly asserted that he believes “God creates life” but, seemingly contradicting his own remarks from the debate, said God does not “pre-ordain[] rape.”

“What I said was, in answering the question form my position of faith, I said I believe that God creates life. I believe that as wholly and as fully as I can believe it. That God creates life,” Mourdock said. “Are you trying to suggest that somehow I think that God pre-ordained rape? No, I don’t think that. That’s sick. Twisted. That’s not even close to what I said. What I said is that God creates life.”

Mourdock did, however, re-assert his belief that abortion should be illegal even for victims of rape and incest.

“I’ve said that consistently,” Mourdock said. “I’ve said that for a long, long time.”

Watch his post-debate comments:

Update

Earlier this week, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney starred in an ad calling upon Indiana voters to “join me in supporting Richard Mourdock for U.S. Senate.” This is the first time this election that Romney cut such an ad for a fellow Republican candidate.

So voting for Mitt Romney or  Richard Mourdock (R-IN) is not too different from voting for Islamic fundamentalists who believe that men and their interpretation of what God wants should be the culture and law that America lives under. Conservatives in Iran and Indiana seems to think that women are only three-fifths a person and thus should not have the same rights as men.

Conservative Media Pundits Help Romney Hide His Opposition To The Successful Auto Rescue. Romney's editorial attacking the rescue of the American auto industry might be too widely known for even the well oiled Republican propaganda machine to cover-up.

The ultra radical conservative Koch brothers and an assortment of wacky right-wing think tanks are determined to destroy Social Security because they believe it is part of a communist plot to take over America.