Some Blunt Words

The Conservative War Against Women

For organizations which argue that if we just had more gays... or women... or African-Americans (you pick the group) everything would be so much better (at least for that group), I say, look at the Senate vote on the Blunt Amendment yesterday. Blunt's Amendment was meant to deny women access to contraceptives. There are 10 Democratic women and 5 Republican women in the Senate. All the Democratic women (plus one Republican, Maine's Olympia Snowe, who just announced she's retiring) voted against it. But all the other Republican women-- Kelly Ayotte (NH), Susan Collins (ME) Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) and Lisa Murkowski (AK)-- voted with the right-wing boys-- including shameful Democrats Ben Nelson, Joe Manchin and Bob Casey.

When EMILY's List dredged up and endorsed a woman, Nikki Tinker, against a male congressman in Memphis, Steve Cohen, they screwed up totally. Cohen is so much better on every issue important to women and to working class families than Tinker that it was scandalous. And when Tinker ran an anti-Semitic campaign against Cohen, EMILY's List-- fearing their Jewish donors would get pissed off-- withdrew the endorsement... on election day, after the damage was done. Similarly they just picked a rich, pro-business flake, Stacey Lawsen, over potentially the best congressman in our lifetimes-- Norman Solomon. They never learn.


We need more women in Congress and throughout our political system-- but more progressive women, not unqualified idiots that EMILY's List digs up because they happen to be women. David Dreier is 100% gay but what does he do for the LGBT community? Spits in its face every opportunity he gets. His voting record on gay issues is a zero. He voted against the LGBT community every single time a rollcall on one of their issues came up. And it isn't even like he's trying to fool someone into thinking he's not gay the way fearful closet cases like Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Aaron Schock (R-IL), Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Adrian Smith (R-NE) do. Everyone in DC already knows Dreier is gay. He doesn't talk about it publicly, but he doesn't deny it either and when Hastert tried making him Minority Leader, the far right of his party-- particularly Blunt from yesterday's Blunt Amendment-- started screaming they're not being lead by some (you can imagine)! But as for the gay community, they're much better off with a straight ally-- take José Serrano from the Bronx-- who is operating out of progressive principles and values not because of identity group politics. And back to Memphis... do you think that city's overwhelmingly African-American population was better off with a corrupt, conservative corporate hack like Harold Ford, Jr. than they are with a stalwart progressive white guy, Steve Cohen? Nope; Ford was looking out for the banksters and for whomever would give him a schmeer; Ford is diligently super-serving his constituents.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent out a press release on Blunt's Amendment that probably would have been similar to one sent out by a male secretary. It's about the right policy, not the gender. Half the Cabinet should be women and half the Congress should be women and half the Supreme Court should be women-- give or take-- and the next president should be a woman but I'll take a progressive man over a conservative woman any day. Sebelius' statement, while we're on the topic:

Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services reported that over 20 million American women in private health insurance plans have already gained access to at least one free preventive service because of the health care law. Without financial barriers like co-pays and deductibles, women are better able to access potentially life-saving services, and cancers are caught earlier, chronic diseases are managed and hospitalizations are prevented.

A proposal being considered in the Senate this week would allow employers that have no religious affiliation to exclude coverage of any health service, no matter how important, in the health plan they offer to their workers. This proposal isn't limited to contraception nor is it limited to any preventive service. Any employer could restrict access to any service they say they object to. This is dangerous and wrong.

The Obama administration believes that decisions about medical care should be made by a woman and her doctor, not a woman and her boss. We encourage the Senate to reject this cynical attempt to roll back decades of progress in women’s health.

Now a woman (or a man) who thinks the way Darcy Burner thinks... that's the kind of candidate, regardless of gender (but I'm glad she's a woman) deserves to be supported-- and you can do that right here. Here, in part, is what she wrote after the Senate beat back Blunt's amendment yesterday:

Thankfully the amendment didn't pass, but it reflects a disturbing Republican worldview that women's control over their own pregnancy is a luxury. That is, to be blunt, outrageously obnoxious.

The fact is, thousands of women's lives are saved every year by treatment to prevent or end pregnancy, and many millions more have dramatically improved quality of life because they can decide whether and when to get pregnant. I understand how important that is, because I am one of those women.

My husband Mike and I tried very early in our marriage to have children. But while I was pregnant with our daughter Deirdre, I developed a life-threatening infection; only prompt medical care and nearly a week of hospitalization saved me. Our daughter was born prematurely and died while we held her.

When nearly a decade later I became pregnant again with our son Henry, that pregnancy too was life-threatening. I was on strict bed rest for twenty weeks. We finished the pregnancy in January 2003 with fluid filling my liver and lungs, my life in clear danger-– and Henry was early, but we were eventually able to bring him home from the hospital healthy and thriving. I lost count of how many things went wrong during that pregnancy. It seemed like every two weeks I was having another conversation with my doctor about how much I was willing to risk. I’m glad the story has a happy ending, but the idea that some politician thinks they have more standing to make such decisions than I do is patently absurd.

For me, pregnancy is life-threatening. And it isn’t just me: the maternal mortality rate in the U.S. is 8.8 deaths for every 100,000 pregnancies. Every year people lose wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers to pregnancies gone wrong. The costs of childrearing are high, as well. Women are entitled to decide for themselves whether they want to take such risks, whether to bear such costs, and it’s offensive that Republican politicians have the gall to claim that women have no standing to make decisions about their own bodies and health if their bosses or random politicians disagree.

No politician is entitled to make those decisions for any women. No employer is entitled to make those decisions for any woman. And it’s long past time that women’s healthcare stopped being a political football.

Now you know a little more about why Blue America supports her with such enthusiasm. It's not her gender per se; it's her mind.