The Republican war on women

One can’t fail to notice that the majority of outrage over the Obama administration’s advocacy for women’s reproductive health services is being expressed by men. Mostly conservative Republican men. Men who never had to endure the agony of gynecological health problems or the extreme pain of childbirth. This was the panel of “experts” convened by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to debate whether all women deserve to have guaranteed access to this health care.

You’ll notice, they’re all men, with key witnesses being priests, sworn to celibacy, who want to dictate reproductive rights for everyone. And, not only did Rep. Issa refuse to let this woman testify to her personal suffering caused by denial of this health care benefit, he had the nerve to compare himself to Martin Luther King.

Meanwhile, last week in Virgina, the state Legislature passed a bill forcing women to pay for a medically unnecessary test where they will be subjected to a vaginal probing that under any other circumstances would fit the legal definition of forcible rape, before they’re allowed to obtain a legal medical procedure. The doctors required to do this procedure will not be allowed to claim a conscience objection to refuse to abet this state government mandate even though it violates the sworn oath of ethics they take when they’re certified to practice medicine.

Yet Republicans are demanding the denial of needed health care in the first instance and advocate for the forced adminstration of unneeded invasive procedures in the second. I guess some liberties are more important than others, at least to conservative Republican men.