MoveOn.org released a new national ad today, calling out Republicans for their recent nosedive into the field of women’s health and reproductive rights.
In the video, women quote GOP big wigs, like presidential candidate Rick Santorum ("A woman impregnated thorough rape should accept that horribly created gift") and temporarily ad-free radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh ("If we're going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch"). It hits these figures on their extreme viewpoints on women.
A MoveOn official told HuffPo the clip "is being released to coincide with GOP primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, two states looking to enact new measures attacking women's basic rights."
The debate over contraceptives has become an unexpected wedge issue in the 1960 2012 presidential campaign, and Democrats and progressives are looking to capitalize on it with female voters.
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This is a very effective ad that gets to the heart of the issues facing women through the words of those who would threaten our health, economic security, and life itself. The ad expresses clearly what so many of us feel.
I am 63. I remember words like these from my teens and early 20s. I thought by now I would never hear them again. This war against women, a war on our ability to control our fertility, is an assault on our dignity, our hopes for economic parity, and in these times, for many even our and our family's economic survival,
This ad also makes clear the radical efforts of these GOP legislators to humiliate women and to instill anew the idea of women who use contraceptives or find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy as sexually out of control - in need of the controlling hand of men and government.
Further, many of the GOP legislators and Presidential candidates believe if the pregnancy threatens the woman's life or health, the decision of whether to save her life should not reside with her or her family. Rather it is the business of the state. So much for smaller government that gets out of our lives.
This is well done. It will have an impact on women and the men who truly care about them.
I am 61 and your words really resonate with me. I couldn't have said it better.
Atlanta if your 63 you may remember women resorting to using a coat hanger to abort a pregnancy or the back alley abortionists I even heard of a young woman so desperate she tried jumping off a chair many times ,thinking it would cause her to abort.These are the times republicans want to take women back to.Back to the future if they get their way.
Would you please stop using the word "war" so excessively and thoughtlessly?
I quote from a great blog post that I found, "Could it be time to stop using the War Metaphor? The war on this, the war on that – it’s often silly, it’s usually excessive, and when you get right down to it it’s almost always inappropriate. (...) Using the phraseology of war where war is not occurring diminishes both the evils of war and the sufferings of those who are sent to fight actual wars."
When the republicon's stop waging war on women, we will stop using the metaphor. I don't know what's happening in Germany, but this is a sampling of the American RW War on Women.
If people aren't mass murdered with actual weapons, then it's not a war. Period. What's going on in the USA can be called a heavy dispute about women's rights or a fight for women's rights, but not a "war on women". USA - the land of exaggerations. Apparently, a lot of people from the USA are so war-obsessed that they even falsely dub things "war" just so that they can say they fight yet another war. If foreign troops did to your country what your troops did and do to other countries, then you would know how cruel war actually is and not use the term so inappropriately.
Dorthea in Germany: We fought several wars to be able to say what we like when we like in any manner we choose. The metaphor is well known here, as in "the stupid war on drugs". We love our metaphors and we are just not as precise and neat and regimented about things as you Germans. But it's American politics and metaphors are useful.
Metaphors are only useful when they are suitable. Otherwise, they distort reality. It's pretty obvious that a lot of people in the USA don't care much about accuracy. That's why there is so much misinformation circulating. Even your politicians spread lies and engage in fear mongering in order to get votes, money and whatnot. Only in the USA people believe nonsense such as that public health insurance leads to forced euthanasia by the state. The problem is that not being precise can cost people's lives. Statements like "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction." or "Iran plans to build nuclear weapons." led or could lead to a preemptive war and the death of thousands of innocent people. Inaccuracy has usually negative and sometimes serious consequences.
Along the same line as Lawrence’s comment about the media’s refusal to apply the specific word “lie” to Republicans as they re-write the truth: Why have we not correctly labeled the Republican agenda for what it truly is---PERVERSION.
Republicans have been more commonly found to be involved in personal sexual scandals than Democrats. It’s clear that from their perspective, since THEY are sexually irresponsible, then everyone else must be, too. Everyone else , therefore, must be punished… It’s the perversion of hypocrisy to sit in judgment of others when the “judge” is even more of a sinner than the judged.
So focused upon irresponsible sex are they, conservatives refuse to address the fact that they will be shortening the life spans of those who rely on contraception to improve their own health and lifestyle. Faced with the legitimate argument that making women’s health care illegal is to condemn many families to unnecessary suffering, Republicans always justify their perverted thinking by stubbornly returning to their fantasies that it’s all ONLY about those relative few who they may actually be able to produce as examples of irresponsibility.
However, the radical Right’s effort to deny women’s reproductive health care is only the “tip of the iceberg” of the entire national health care issue. If they succeed against the nation’s women, it’s predictable that they won’t stop there. They’ll pave the way for the insurance industry to refuse health care to all (for myriad manufactured excuses). Now we’re seeing the perversion of their money-driven greed.
To worship a material thing---a fertilized egg---is idolatry. This kind of perversion ignores the fact that the egg is nothing more than the beginning of a process in which other events must then occur---or there will NOT be a viable human life. If you introduce eggs, flour, sugar, etc. into a bowl, that doesn’t automatically make it a cake---no matter how much I may insist otherwise! The fertilized human embryo is a parasite, and a woman’s womb can be---and naturally so---a hostile environment, yet we make no claim that God is an abortionist, should the egg never implant and be naturally discarded.
The most serious perversion of all is the political Right’s steadfast attitude that anyone who might disagree with them is an Antichrist. God doesn’t love/favor only them.
When Jesus attempted to set folks straight by announcing that He is the fulfillment of Holy Scripture, His proclamation was lost on them, even as it is now. Jesus effectively dismissed THE WORLD’s interpretation of the Old Testament. Yet today’s Republicans are constantly citing the Old Testament as their source for justifying their shameful bigotry toward their fellow human being.
From my perspective, then, Evangelical Christians are calling Jesus Christ a liar… …and treating Him as such…
Jesus told His disciples to provide EVERYONE with the choice of whether they’d follow Him. He very decidedly directed His disciples to move on and look for converts elsewhere if His Message wasn’t received or was rejected (Matthew 10:14). He would very definitely disapprove of the modern Evangelical Christians’ efforts to FORCE others to bend to the Christian belief system---because WHOSE God then, should be incorporated into our governmental policies? As man-made philosophy, religions are so easily corrupted.
Our Founding Fathers knew the danger of allowing any church a toehold in government decisions. It’s tragic that Evangelical Christians fail to recognize that, historically, religions corrupt governments. Religions will continue to corrupt any government that gives them the opportunity. There must be no opportunity given in the United States…
An observation about the terminology of the “war on women”: It’s an accurate usage. While the first definitions given in the dictionary are about armed conflict, latter definitions pertain to the “serious struggle between people” to “combat, end or eradicate” something. The Republican effort to reduce women to idiots who might be incapable of making their own decisions is, indeed, a war on them!
this is BS and MSNBC knows it. recent pollls have shown this garbage about GOP war on women is what it is..political BS and has no effect on their vote with this contraceptive hogwash. Ed schultz calles a right wing woman a slut and gets a slap on the back but did that start a war on women from the democrats? absolutly not. all MSNBC does is put their own words in peoples minds and hope it catches on.
Bill, just because you say there is no GOP war on women doesn't mean that the rest of us aren't seeing it and feeling it. True, the GOP is not listening to the reaction of anyone who disagrees with their war and still vote on contraception. I really don't understand their concept of smaller government. As usual they have a very one tracked mind that is out of touch with the US and the rest of the world. The GOP and Evangelicals don't understand science and therefore do everything they can to vote against it...contraception, climate change caused by fossil fuels, even the hemp industry. We're falling behind the rest of the world in solutions because the GOP will not look to the future. Instead they are insistent on preserving the past.
Also when making allegations about say Ed Schultz... please include your reference so we can follow up. Otherwise we should just blow it off like all the other GOP BS.
This was a very effective as about something that is really happening. The GOP is killing themselves...eating their own tail. They have already jumped the shark. It is now all of us against the crazys who are calling themselves the GOP.
Rush is just a big fat pervert. Probably spends most of his free time at porn sites. Guess he will have a lot more "free time" on his hands now too. Do all those right-wing religious nuts really support that creep? He wants to look at porn videos, he said so. So he is just another hypocrite like the majority of that gang of perverts aka GOP. Hey I just gave the acronym a new definition, "Gang Of Perverts" and it's most fitting too. It seems that Rush's true colors are showing now, and he brought that upon himself.
Truthfully as a woman I am sick and tired of hearing all this bs about women's reproductive rights. How in the hell did all the work done over all these years get boiled down to whether a woman can get birth control and annual exams from where ever it is they are wanting them. I just don't get how you can be mulling this over and over when women around the world are still so so far behind us and hurting so damned bad. For christs sakes a 16 y/o rape victim in Moracco was FORCED to marry her rapist by the Islamic court as the rapist would then not have to go to jail. India, women are killed and scared in acid attacks by their husbands and inlaws. WTH is any woman in the USA bitching about her damned birth control costs for. As a woman I am SICKENED by this crap and ashamed to be of the same gender that is so damned whiny...........pull them britches up and be a WOMAN not some sniveling teen that can do without government mommy holding her hand. Your making a good argument that women just can't take care of themselves without someone to do it (or pay for it) for them. Might as well go back to the 40's because now it's just going to be the government taking care of you instead of a husband.