I’ve long believed, as do so many others, that the forced birther movement, which claims to be about “saving lives”, is little more than a subterfuge for their real aim: controlling women. Why else would they go after contraception time and time again? Why else would they want to defund Planned Parenthood that prevents more unwanted pregnancies and abortions than the ones they perform?
Now we have definitive proof from Colorado Republicans.
Colorado has had a program running since 2009 that helps poor women get long-term, reversible contraceptives. The results were clear. Teen pregnancies dropped a whopping 40% and the number of abortions dropped 35% between 2009 and 2012.
So naturally Republicans voted to end it this week. An all-male Senate panel, the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, voted 3-2 to kill the program.
Dr. Larry Wolk, executive director and chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, attended the hearing about the bill to end the program and brought with him an award the program had won:
Republicans on a Colorado Senate committee Wednesday killed an effort to set aside money for a birth-control program that provides intrauterine devices, or IUDs, to low-income, young women.Without funding, the program could be crippled, coming as a blow just a day after the state received a prestigious award in Washington, D.C. for the program. The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association presented the award to Colorado on Tuesday for having the premiere public-health access program in the country.
Dr. Larry Wolk, executive director and chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, brought the award with him to the hearing, just before the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee killed the bill on a 3-2 party-line vote.
By and large, Republicans don’t care about how many abortions are performed in this country. What they care about is making sure that women are not in control of their own reproductive lives.
Well, poor women, anyway. You can be sure that the daughters, wives, girlfriends, and mistresses of well-off men won’t ever have to deliver an unwanted baby. Of that you can be sure.
[Graphic by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog.]
