If there was ever any doubt in the past, the Republican Party is affirming its commitment to a full-blown War on Women, and they don’t seem the least bit concerned about the negative consequences of their deceitful and destructive actions.
Last week a video was released by a group of anti-abortion activists seeking to malign Planned Parenthood. The video purported to show a Planned Parenthood official discussing the harvesting and sale of fetal tissue. However, it didn’t take long for the video to be repudiated as a fraud that was heavily edited to distort the context. The organization that made the video was also shown to be associated with prior attempts to falsely malign women’s health care groups.
Notwithstanding the now obvious misrepresentations in the video, Republican members of Congress are already drafting legislation to defund Planned Parenthood. They have zero evidence that Planned Parenthood did anything illegal or unethical, but that is not stopping them from grabbing their pitchforks and igniting their torches.
This is reminiscent of the shameful conduct of the GOP Congress a few years ago when a similar video smear job by convicted criminal James O’Keefe resulted in the demise of ACORN, an organization that provided much needed assistance to low income Americans. O’Keefe was later proven to have deceitfully edited his videos and he lost a $100,000 lawsuit for defamation against a former ACORN official. But the damage had already been done and ACORN was gone before the truth was fully revealed.
Should the lying propagandists get their way in this attack on Planned Parenthood the results could be even more destructive. For one thing, defunding Planned Parenthood would have almost no effect on the abortion rate at all. That’s because abortion services amount to a mere 3% of Planned Parenthood’s work. So the services that would suffer from the denial of funds would primarily be those related to cancer screening and prevention, contraception, and STD testing and treatment. Those services comprise up to 85% of Planned Parenthood’s work.
Therefore, the consequences of denying funding would be an increase in unwanted or unplanned pregnancies, something that the anti-abortion activists profess to be against. What’s more, there would be more women suffering from undiagnosed or untreated illnesses.
There can be no other conclusion then that the Republicans in Congress are deliberating trying to advance legislation that will do demonstrable harm to the women in America. Yet the GOP complains when they are portrayed as engaging in a War On Women. But what else can you call it? Women are well aware of the antagonistic behavior of Republican lawmakers, which is why they generally favor Democrats at the polls. And things like this renewed effort to financially strangle a charitable enterprise upon which they rely is not likely to put the GOP in a better light with America’s women voters or the men in their lives.
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The GOP seems to be committing electoral suicide with their racist agenda aimed at African-Americans and Latinos. Likewise they are not making friends in the senior community by threatening Social Security and Medicare. And young people are decidedly turned off by their opposition to marriage equality, education funding, and student debt relief. Add to that the country’s female voters and there is little left of the electorate to support the Republicans but their base of Teabaggers, evangelicals, and wealthy corporations and individuals. Good luck with that, Republicans.
“…full-blown war on women…”
Lie.
Correction: the 21st century “conservative movement” is waging a war on human civilization, not just women. When was the last time these noxious reactionaries devoted their energies toward something that benefited the Greater Good? I still remember when they declared Culture War on the 75% (give or take) of Americans that don’t agree with their Ideology of Hate. They may hold a lot of power now, but time is not on their side. This boil on the ass of our society needs to be lanced, asap.
the (R) party hasn’t done anything positive for this country since they were liberals.
conservatives are sick in the head.
“electoral suicide” – nope… all those VoterID laws to help with that, they not too worried.
Also, from a article or two I have seen it took this group having two “workers” in PP office for nearly 2 years to get this video. How in the world if the PP was doing so much illegal selling, would they have not been able to get this video a lot sooner? Within a month or two??? This video and group is doing this so those states that have not put in super strict laws to close down PP offices can do “investigations” into them. Costing more time and money that can be helping woman and their health. As PP has stated, it is the woman signing paperwork to have the tissue used for scientific research to do at least some good out of it. These Anti-Choice (not pro-life) people, if they are so worried about abortions and want to stop them, then start a list to take the medical bills and child from the woman going in for abortions. It’s just them yelling and interfering with others rights, then if a child does become born, they walk away and don’t want to help. Just yell about being on “food stamps” and “leeching off government” because the mother could not afford to have a kid but still had it.
GOP – the ones yelling about “personal responsibility” … but the first ones to interfere into everyone’s life.
Linking Media Matters is pretty worthless. One of their writers has just slammed Ann Romney for (gasp!) writing a book about how she’s dealing with MS.
Really? First you comment that the so-called “Republican War on Women” is a lie — which it isn’t, as clearly shown in this article and in numerous others — then you comment about a Media Matters writer slamming Ann Romney. No link to any article (my cursory search on MM found nothing) and no support – just like always.
Why don’t you take your bile to Farce Nation where it belongs, Scott. I don’t even know why you waste your (and our) time commenting on this site.
http://www.twitchy.com/2015/07/19/got-it-great-despite-her-illness-oliver-willis-attacks-ann-romney-for-writing-a-book-about-her-struggle-with-ms/
You made this too easy.
Bile? That’s all that Mark traffics in. He never proves anything except that his site is full of hate and filth.
Sounds like Mr. Willis is an idiot. He’s a Media Matters contributor? Your link isn’t even to the MM website. If Willis is with MM, he’ll get tagged by MM. If a FoxPod made similar comments about a Democrat, he’ll get a medal and a prime time show.
You’re using one example to offset dozens from the Right (and demonstrably provable by a number of sources, not the least of which is Fox’s own website)? You’re easily satisfied, Scott. We’re all human – we make stupid comments sometimes. Sometimes we actually apologize, something we rarely get from FoxPods. Yeah, we know about Hannity’s recent defense – and no, we don’t believe it either.
So, my question to you remains: Why don’t you return to Farce Nation where you obviously prefer the company? You want a “site [] full of hate and filth,” you should get that from the Farce Nationalists in about five and a half minutes (and the delay is only there because Win7 is retarded).
Scott’s schtick is to point out “lies” as he calls them … on what functions primarily as an opinion blog. Either doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of an opinion, believing his own to be The Absolute Truth, or he is just being very disingenuous in pointing out “lies” on here while willfully ignoring the many obvious lies uttered by right-wingers every day. I tend to believe the latter.
In other words, effectively, Scott is either using Bill O’Reilly’s method or Rush Limbaugh’s method. Good to know.