Our party has made it clear to the religious right that there will be NO payments for abortion in ANY plan for health care reform. Gee, you would think that would satisfy them.
No, it doesn't. The more we give in on any issue, the more they demand on other issues.
Groups are pushing hard in at least 24 states to make sure that insurance does not cover birth control prescriptions.
They continue to push for laws that will restrict rights of women based on their religious views, they continue to scream that we must not cave on DOMA and DADT which seriously harm the rights of gays.
And we let them do it. Our party has often adopted the rhetoric of the religious right, making it sound like the only good American is a Christian American. It angers me, though I was raised Southern Baptist. Hubby and I are proud recovering Southern Baptists....we learned the hard way that these groups will impose every belief of theirs on our nation. And when we cave, they go the next step.
The 'egg-as-person' crusade is driving big money to anti-choice groups.In just five short years, the primary movers and shakers in the absolutist anti-abortion/anti-choice movement seeking to promote the “personhood” of zygotes (the single cell that forms after a sperm fertilizes an egg) have amassed nearly $58 million in tax-deductible contributions for their cause.
Even the lead up to one of the worst economic periods in U.S. history has barely registered a blip in the group's collective money-drawing power according to an examination of IRS and state campaign finance records conducted for RH Reality Check. Four out of the five groups are raising more cash than ever with sophisticated fundraising operations, flush investment portfolios, and robust revenue-generating activities.
This isn't your grandma’s church bake sale by any stretch of the imagination.
American Life League
The fundraising champ among the five organizations profiled for this article is the American Life League (ALL), an ultra-conservative Catholic tax-exempt charity that describes itself as "supporting the social welfare of persons born and unborn." Its founder Judie Brown is better known as the "grandmother of the modern anti-choice movement" who popularized aggressive clinic blockades and sidewalk "counseling" tactics to harass health care providers and clinic patients beginning in the 1980s."
Evangelical and fundamentalist groups are also pushing their anti-choice, anti-gay agenda.
Colorado is just one of the many states feeling their push. Florida is also on the agenda this year. They don't just want to make sure that insurance does not cover birth control....they want to ban it entirely if they can.
From the Rocky Mountain Independent:
Personhood amendment readies for Round 2If at first you don’t succeed — even by a 3-1 margin — try, try again. That is the sentiment from the folks who tried last fall to get Colorado voters to declare that life begins at conception.
Now the group is back, or at least trying to come back. This month, the Colorado Secretary of State’s title board approved wording for a new question for the 2010 ballot. The proposed measure, assuming it gets the necessary petitions to put it on the ballot, is virtually identical to Amendment 48, which 73 percent of Colorado voters defeated last fall.
That trouncing isn’t putting a damper on the folks at Personhood Colorado or its new national group, Personhood USA, which is pushing similar measures in 29 other states, said Keith Mason, who’s heading the effort in Colorado and nationwide.
“The difference in the strategy of the campaign will be to be a bit more upfront with what we expect the language will do and what this campaign’s all about, which is protecting human life,” Mason said. “Last time, some of the issues were skirted a bit, but we plan not to do that again.”
They don't care if they fail, they will just be back next year. When they get through making sure insurance doesn't pay for birth control, no telling what is next.
And the battle is starting in Florida as well. Looks like this amendment would ban contraception altogether.
Would proposed amendment make birth control illegal in Florida?The "Personhood Amendment" that conservative activists are filing today in Tallahassee would add language to the state constitution that defines someone as a "person," regardless of age or health status, "from the beginning of the biological development of that human being."
Pat McEwen of Palm Bay is one of two leaders of the loose collection of activists, collectively known as Personhood Florida.
"In the original Florida Constitution in 1885, they gave Floridians the right to enjoy and defend life," she said. "This amendment defends the unborn, and it also gives older people like me – a retired college professor – the right to make my own decisions and not have someone override it."
And guess what. Through the years their battle against abortion has succeeded...they just never gave up. Now they are after contraception. Not just through the insurance path, but through training and putting in place pharmacists who will not fill prescriptions for it.
Now our Democrats have made clear there WILL be a conscience clause in the health care reform bill. The only reason for a conscience clause is to soothe the ruffled feathers of the religious right.
The more sinister potential of the original bill could have expanded far beyond reproductive services, Esman said. “If you were anti-gay, you didn’t have to treat gay people. If you were a white supremacist and worked at a doctor’s office you could refuse to make appointments for people who are non-white.” It was by raising concerns of broader threats of the legislation that the ACLU was able to build a diverse coalition to work on the bill.
.....Still, conscience clauses are becoming an increasingly popular mode of anti-choice legislation, and not all states will result in the kind of compromise reached in Louisiana. Arizona’s bill combines a conscience clause, allowing pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency contraception, with a 24-hour waiting period for abortions. The bill also increases penalties (from one year of prison to two years) for physicians that perform the already-illegal late abortion procedures erroneously and misleadingly termed "partial-birth abortions."
They have won every battle in the field of choice. We need to fight harder against this minority that wants religion to control our government and our consciences and choices.
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