4 States Where Right-Wingers Are Promoting Shocking Measures to Keep Women Barefoot and Pregnant

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/activism/154197/4_states_where_right-wingers_are_promoting_shocking_measures_to_keep_women_barefoot_and_pregnant/

It's been an exhausting few weeks for reproductive rights supporters. Most recently, we've been treated to a new round of a battle over birth control, as the debate over whether employees at religiously affiliated institutions should be required to receive insurance that covers birth control without a co-payment -- a right employees of all other U.S. companies will have under the Obama administration's new healthcare law -- rages on in Washington.

Many of us can't believe we're having a conversation, let alone a full-blown debate, about this issue in the year 2012, but here we are, watching women get shut out of this week's hearing on the subject, listening to men wax poetic about the "good old days" when low-cost birth control meant holding an aspirin between one's knees and enduring childish rants from a cabal of overly powerful Catholic bishops who, in the astute words of Jon Stewart, have "confused the war on...religion with not always getting everything [they] want."

But attention-grabbing as the anti-birth control crusade may be, it is not the only regressive, anti-woman, anti-science battle being waged in this country. In fact, right-wing politicians are attempting to roll back reproductive rights across the nation. One year ago, we reported on a number of state-level reproductive rights battles. Today we check in with many of those states (plus some new ones), only to find that the war on women has not let up at all and abortion bans being introduced to legislatures are getting more scary, more intrusive, more punitive and in some cases, gaining more traction.

[TheMastersNemesis]

1. Given The Chance They Will Criminalize Contraceptives For Women

Given the chance every GOP politician down to dog catcher and their religious allies would pass a constitutional amendment tomorrow morning banning all family planning. And it would specifically target women.

If you think that the debate is about rolling back contraception, think again. It is about ending it once and for all. It is about criminalizing it like Prohibition criminalized using alcohol.

In their eyes they believe they have the upper hand in ending womens' reproductive rights. And they will double down in many sneaky ways to make sure they pass anticontraception laws and force women to comply.

Men on the other had are exempt in that they can still get their viagra or cialus.

The question is what will supportive men and women do about it? Petitions won't really work because THEY DON'T CARE.

[Justice wanted]

2. They won't crimialize it because PHRAMA lobbyists won't let that happen BUT they will make

women suffer as much as possible.

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. I Would Not Be Too Sure About That

[Justice wanted]

4. Contraception is a HUGE industry. Pharma may not want to give up that money.

[Frances]

5. Pharma may be willing to give up contraception

if they get a Repub in the White House who will let them rob the people in other ways

[Justice wanted]

6. possible.

[midnight]

7. The greatest distraction they could come up with so few will notice the continued ripping

off of our U.S. treasury... While most reasonable people become involved in what appears as out right crazy.....
It takes the heat off of the multitude of unemployed at a time when congress grew more wealthy via insider trading, and G.E. pays nothing in taxes and the poor need to live in austerity. Their should be another discussion going on here, but this one will be a win win for the boys club...

[onestepforward]

8. Texas should be on this list.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/02/18/3744858/texas-abortion-law-sparks-anger.html#storylink=cpy

DALLAS — Some pregnant women avert their eyes. Others shed tears or simply tune out the abortion doctors as they describe the fetus and offer them a chance to hear the heartbeat and view the image.

These are the varied reactions seen in clinics across Texas since the state recently began enforcing perhaps the most stringent abortion law in the country. Among other things, the law requires that women seeking abortions hear their doctors describe the fetus' development during a sonogram and then wait 24 hours before undergoing the procedure.
-snip-

The portion of the law requiring the sonogram and a 24-hour wait went into effect in the fall, but the remaining requirements - describing the fetus and offering patients to see an image and hear the heartbeat - were tied up in litigation until an appeals court ruled last month they could be enforced.
-snip-