Republicans Just Can’t Help Themselves
While of course the war on women never really went away, Republicans have been slightly quieter in recent weeks about their attacks on women, women’s health care, and equal rights in the workplace. Well, House Republicans just launched another big offensive in their war on women’s health.
Here’s the rundown.
House Republicans are currently working on annual spending bills and the one for the Labor Department, Department of Health and Human Services, and Education Department is a parade of horribles. With regard to the war on women specifically, it:
- Defunds Planned Parenthood
- Completely eliminates the Title X family planning program
- Puts your boss in your bedroom, allowing your employer to deny you insurance coverage for contraception or any other service your boss objects to for any reason at all
- Slashes funding for evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention
- Wastes $20 MILLION on abstinence-only education
- Permanently expands so-called conscience protections that allow health care providers to refuse to perform, participate in, provide coverage of, pay for, refer for, and train in the performance of abortions
- Prohibits the implementation of Obamacare for one year, which includes numerous benefits for women
- Blocks a proposed rule limiting the number of home health care workers — 90 percent of whom are women — who can be exempted from the minimum wage
The bill is also chock full of attacks on workers, students, and others.
Republicans have tried almost all of these unpopular attacks on women before — and they failed. But it appears that they just can’t help themselves when it comes to going after women, their health care, and their rights. Remember last year when they almost shut down the entire federal government just to defund Planned Parenthood?
In addition to these latest attacks, Senate Republicans also recently blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act. Meanwhile, House Republicans continue to refuse to take up the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act that passed the Senate on an overwhelming basis. Instead, they are insisting on a watered-down version that would leave immigrants, LGBT people, Native Americans, and others without protection.
IN ONE SENTENCE: If Republicans don’t want to be accused of waging a war on women, then it’s time for them to stop their attacks on women.
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