Women Are Running Away From Republicans
A new poll of battleground states out yesterday underscores the political consequences of the GOP’s all-out war on women and their health care.
The poll’s key findings:
- Among all registered voters, the president leads Mitt Romney 51 percent to 42 percent after trailing Romney by 2 points in the same poll last month.
- Among women under 50, the president leads Romney by a more than 2:1 margin. Romney’s support among this group of women has dropped 14 points in the last month and is down to just 30 percent, while the president’s support has ticked by an even larger margin.
Another set of polls out late last week also showed the president with huge margins among women in the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
A quick glance at the Republican policy agenda for women shows why it’s not particularly hard to understand why women might be abandoning the GOP in droves.
When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives last year, one of the first things they did was to pass a set of extreme bills hostile to women’s rights, including the “redefine rape” bill and the notorious “let women die” bill. More recently, of course, Republicans have broadened their assault to include a war on basic, affordable access to birth control and other important health services.
As we’ve documented, all of the Republican candidates are openly and unabashedly hostile to women’s health care needs, but here’s a refresher on some of the leading contender for the Republican nomination’s most outrageous attacks on women’s health care.
Mitt Romney’s TOP FIVE Attacks on Women’s Health Care
1. He’s going to ‘get rid of’ Planned Parenthood. In his most blatant attack on basic women’s services, Romney made this claim: “Planned Parenthood, we’re going to get rid of that.” Of course, as a Presidential candidate Romney surely knows that Planned Parenthood provides essential medical services, primarily to low-income women, including mammograms and pap smears, as well as important family planning services. Romney has pledged to defund Title X, a program that provides family planning services.
2. Romney supports the Blunt Amendment which would allow employers to deny health insurance coverage on the basis of moral objections — a rule aimed at allowing employers to opt out of providing any benefits that they personally object for more or less any reason, including contraceptive coverage. This rule would essentially put your boss in your bedroom — and in between you and your doctor. But as governor of Massachusetts, Romney required all health care providers– including Catholic hospitals — to offer emergency contraception to rape victims.
3. Romney is fighting a covert battle against contraception, even if he is doing his best not to call it that. While Romney used to be firmly pro-choice and pro-contraceptives, he has positioned himself in the campaign to be a fighter for morality, saying that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) imposes a “secular vision on America” by requiring employers to provide contraceptives in their insurance coverage. He is also misleading the public on what the ACA will do for women.
4. Romney failed to condemn Rush Limbaugh’s characterization of Sandra Fluke as a “slut.” Romney said “it’s not the language I would have used,” but refused to go any further in condemning Limbaugh’s attacks on the Georgetown Law student who testified in support of the ACA’s contraceptive rule. In not standing up for basic women’s rights, Romney’s complacency is as good as consent.
5. Romney supports restricting access to abortions. He has called Roe v. Wade “one of the darkest moments in Supreme Court history.” He’s even said that he’d support state constitutional amendments to define life at conception, which would effectively outlaw abortions under any circumstance.
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