I thought Mike Huckabee was smarter than this. Obviously, he ignores the figurative speech about War on Women. He would be ok if we didn’t have the slut-shame attempt aimed at Sandra Fluke, aspirin remarks coming from GOP high donors, and countless bills aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood and other centers that receive Title X funding. He would be ok if there weren’t efforts to deny birth control to women going around every corner. He would be OK if literally hundreds of new laws weren’t passed in state legislatures by Republican politicians that restrict reproductive rights, via any hook or crook they could think of.
Huckabee is obviously one of those people who doesn’t understand that all modern reproductive rights are really about economic empowerment for women . Huckabee also needs to understand that women will make these decisions for themselves and that his political party needs to just sit down and shut up on the subject.
He really showed his simpleton side. He has better make other plans for 2016. Regardless of what nice words Huckabee says for his very select audience, the track record of his party simply says otherwise.
He could have made the same point if he’d addressed suppressing the persistent urge to tell us what we think or how we feel. Good GRIEF – why can’t these men get that?
Excellent point, Lyssa. I agree. I am so tired of being told what I think and why I think it.
The old ones also need to realize that the garbage that ran through their heads as young men really shouldn’t be coming out of their mouths as old men, especially if they are politicians.
I will continue to appeal to the GOP men with two words, for self preservation…………………SHUT UP.
Huckabee?
No one cares about him.
He’s trying to generate controversy to get air time.
Why would you say no one cares about him? Plenty of people like and respect him. I used to. Just because you don’t care about him doesn’t mean “no body” cares about him.
They make comments like this and then wonder why they lose elections. Alienating just over half the population is not a winning strategy.
Increasingly, Republican/conservative arguments are becoming insular, strange, and unpalatable to most Americans. They’re in something a bit like a slow death spiral. I don’t say that gleefully – I’m cynical about either party’s ability to govern well. I don’t much care who wins the 2016 election.
But seeing birth control pills being covered by insurance as an issue to make a stand on is, to anyone not rather thoroughly indoctrinated in right-wing thought, silly and bizarre. The fact that someone like Huckabee doesn’t see that is indicative of the growing disconnect between FOX News viewers, and the rest of us.
Back when I was a young woman I had a beach towel that is extremely risqué ….it had a big picture of Uncle Sam on it, pointing a finger, saying “Have your taken your pill today?” I thought I was quite the cat’s meow with that beach towel. I don’t know what my mother though. She was probably horrified that anyone would talk about their contraception publically. Many years later, before she died, I found out how disgusted and pissed off my mother was when she lived in NJ. (well, \she really hated NJ and this just added fuel to the fire) She couldn’t buy contraception in NJ. She had to come back to Virginia to get what she needed. She was 84 or 85 when she told me this story. She sure would have never mentioned such a delicate subject until she was a very old lady.
But she was still pissed, in 2005, 2006. good for her! This was before the days of the Pill and I didn’t ask questions, I just listened. But why is contraception still an issue in 2014? Why shouldn’t it be covered just like any other RX? It’s all part of health and wellness. To have it stand out still as an item to be questioned, some 50 years after Griswald, is just plain stupid.
I don’t give a good rat’s ass what anyone’s religion is. If your religion tells you not to use contraception or not to eat pork or not to drink alcohol or cokes, or not to get a blood transfusion, then don’t. But leave the rest of us alone. It doesn’t make you sacred, holier than the rest of us, or even smarter. It doesn’t put you at the right hand of God. Your religion is not my religion. If cows are sacred to you, it doesn’t mean your can withhold taxes from the Dairy Association. Get over it. Follow your own chosen path. Do not expect me or the rest of America to go down your road.
Birth control is here to stay. Tubal ligations, vasectomies, condoms, lubes tubes and jellies, pills, etc are here to give Americans control over their own reproduction. These things are seen as ordinary and normal and a part of medicine. Huckabee was absurd. He might need to prop up his own libido or be checked for senility. He must have missed the Ted Akin memo.
To be more concise about it, if attacking easy access to birth control is your best idea to make a splash, you might want to rethink your ability to ever actually get elected.
I thought about this when I read an article in WashPost the other day about homeless women and children. There was ONE woman with seven (7) children, supposedly by different fathers who, according to the article) were either unknown or in prison. This means seven little human beings, who most likely won’t have much of a chance for a good, productive life. Except, maybe productive when it comes to making new babies.
Where is Planned Parenthood when we need them?
Some women are their own worst enemies, it seems.
Education seems to be the great equalizer here.
I am still stunned by the Washington Post article that showed 55 million abortions have taken place in the US. That is simply staggering. I spent many years in the military to defend the rights of US citizens, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet right here in the US, the most defenseless group among us is being destroyed at the rate of “only” one million per year according to MH.
To put this in perspective, estimates of the total number killed in Darfur is 300,000. Activists wanted to send US troops to end the killing. In Syria, there were an estimated 2000 casualties in chemical weapons attacks. Obama was ready to take military action.
The War on Women is really a proxy battle for abortion “rights.” I agree that Huckabee made a spectacle of himself. But a Republican platform that everyone can agree with would be to cut abortions in half during the four-year term of the next president.
Even though it pains me to advocate this, spending ought to be increased (for the four-year presidential term) for contraception in an effort to reduce abortions. There should be well-funded studies to investigate whether the availability of contraception really does impact the rate of unwanted pregnancies. The studies should also investigate the demographics of the abortion seeker- was she abandoned? Is she low income? Does she have a job? Does she have a family? Is the abortion being done without the knowledge of the father? These factors are critical in determining the motivations that would allow an effective program to reduce the number of abortions.
Most importantly, programs and financial support should be provided to support women with unwanted pregnancies who agree to carry the babies to term and allow them to be adopted. The window for legal abortion should be narrowed considerably. Even though Roe vs Wade allows abortion, the state is under no obligation to make it easy. Last, all funding to Planned Parenthood should be cut, because it is a grisly abortion mill with a vested interest in pushing women to get abortions.
Kelly has drunk the kool aid. Do you have any idea how many women get birth control, health screenings and other vital services at Planned Parenthood? Do you know how many Planned Parenthood centers do not even provide abortion services? Planned Parenthood is being targeted because of volume. No other reason.
Let’s look at a few basic facts about abortion. 90% of them happen before 12 weeks. Those are not sensient beings like the living people of Dufar or wherever it was you mentioned. The state does have interest after 24 weeks. Is that too early? Are we talking about personal feelings or legal feelings? I think most women feel 24 weeks is too late for an elective abortion.
I perhaps feel the strongest about abortion when fetal anomalies are involved. I don’t think that should ever be tampered with. Elective abortion is another issue and an area where perhaps there could be compromise.
As for your study, that would be an interesting one if it could be done without invading privacy. Unfortunately we are missing a lot of data from when abortion wasn’t legal. Why did women seek abortions? Pregnant teens weren’t the only ones getting abortions. They were getting the dangerous ones. I know several married women who got one from their doctor. The women weren’t poor by any means.
I think that the danger here is allowing emotion to dictate policy. In a wanted pregnancy, that embryo is a baby from the moment the expectant mother knows she is pregnant, or even thinks she is pregnant. In an unwanted, unplanned pregnancy, the fetus is a fetus. Perception becomes reality, in that woman’s mind. And to almost all of us, the closer to term one gets, the more repugnant abortion becomes.
Another fact, many of those ‘late’ abortions are planned, wanted pregnancies where something goes wrong. Often the family is heart-broken and yet that mother has to go through the same barrage of crap, if not worse, to take care of a serious medical problem.
The state is very much under obligation to not deny access and to promote and cause undo burden. Lastly, try to look at Planned Parenthood from at least a neutral point of view.
My comment about “only” was a math one. There is a huge difference in the statistic you threw out when one considers over the given time period vs. in the past year.
One more consideration: not a whole lot of pharmaceutical research has been done in the past 50 years to improve contraception. Perhaps that is another area to look at. Big Pharma could pour billions into this iniative.
Wonder whether my grandmother would have had 10 children,
one every other year, if she had had a Planned Parenthood to consult.
I can tell you Kelly, for a fact, having easy access to contraception is key to preventing abortion. Period. Furthermore, the stupidity of suggesting that only proper women not ruled by their libido’s won’t need birth contorl is the kind of mentality that propagates the effed up idea of “good girls” vs “bad girls”. See, you are prepared for sex, well, you must be a bad girl, so better off being unprepared to shore up your good girl status.
That also goes for boys too. If you plan on using a condom, then you planned for this and fall out of grace.
Talk to Mr. Howler some time about the idiot mentality he grew up with.
Human behavior is not always logical. Your certainty is encouraging, but hard evidence is needed to demonstrate that free contraception really reduces abortion. For example, maybe the people that will not use contraceptives unless they are free tend not to get abortions. I have not seen any legitimate statistics that demonstrate a macro-relationship between contraception and abortion.
Does observation count? If you use reliable contraception, you most likely won’t get pregnant. If you don’t get [pregnant, you won’t have an abortion.
That is not to say that all contraception, regardless of how painstakingly it is used, is 100% reliable.
I think the notion of free is somehow being distorted. How do you means test contraception? Certainly those on Medicaid should have free contraception. Regular insurance, how about $5. Wouldn’t that take away the notion that ‘free’ is somehow bad?
Something that has been lost on so many people is that a month’s worth of pills without insurance is over $50. Then there is the annual doctor’s office and lab work visit that can go up to $300-$400 dollars. If you are on a tight budget, that’s a real deterrent to use contraception.
If you want something permanent then we are talking thousands. Shouldn’t everyyone have access to permanent sterilization? Even semi-permanent solutions like Depro are costly. Most of the people bitching are men. Men seem to not understand some of the costs involved. Women are always ultimately the ones who bear the contraception burden because they are the ones who get pregnant.
Even in more equal marriages, lots of men are chicken to have a vasectomy. I don’t mind talking personal here. Mr. H always said that I had had the children, and the vasectomy was the least he could do when we decided we didn’t want any more kids. He used to bok bok bok at men who got all squeamish about snip snip also. He also mortified me at an office picnic…MY office….by wearing his Vasectomy NOW T-shirt. It was sort of cute but maybe not for the office picnic.
Tonight I somehow slipped in on Huckabee’s channel. He was, of course,
telling how terribly misunderstood he had been with his earlier statements.
It was all the media’s fault that it came out as it did.
Who are the people who sit around clapping for every other sentence, anyway?
Dumbasses?
He wasn’t misunderstood. I listened to every word he said and he very clear what he meant.
The pro-abstinance argument and the pro-contraception argument are not, should not be, and do not have to be mutually exclusive. Kids should be taught the facts of life in a clear manner. If a parent believes in free love, their child should still understand the dangerouis nature of sex. if a parent is sexually conservative, the child should still understand what sex is and how it works to include contraception. Seems to me politics pulls us apart on this stuff, for the gain of the two parties.
Rick, I don’t believe that the two ideas are mutually exclusive either. An armed, informed person is in better control of his or her own life.
Sex is dangerous, most especially to the uninformed.
Is politics pulling us apart, or is religion pulling us apart? Social mores have also kept this issue going to the point of stupid. My parents sure were the don’t do it types (as were most parents in my day) but they didn’t keep me stupid. I wasn’t allowed to see racier movies (which really weren’t all that racy back then) but I wasn’t kept from biological information.
Ah yes, this was Margret Sanger’s whole reason for starting Planned Parenthood… to get rid of the “undesirables”.
Which is why I have always wondered why Planned Parenthood never changed their name or re-branded. She was a known racist and is still held in high regards in most liberal groups. In April of 1932 she wrote about birth control saying… “Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”.
In 1922 she wrote an article about women, morality and birth control. This is a small part of her racist, evil thoughts:
“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
This next quote from something else she wrote in 1922 often reminds me of what some liberals and quite honestly, some on this blog have said in response to someone being against tax payer money paying for abortion of any type:
“Such parents swell the pathetic ranks of the unemployed. Feeble-mindedness perpetuates itself from the ranks of those who are blandly indifferent to their racial responsibilities. And it is largely this type of humanity we are now drawing upon to populate our world for the generations to come. In this orgy of multiplying and replenishing the earth, this type is pari passu multiplying and perpetuating those direst evils in which we must, if civilization is to survive, extirpate by the very roots.”
I often hear the argument… well, you don’t want to pay for abortions but when they are born you don’t want to pay for their welfare. This is exactly Margret Sanger’s argument.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for contraception, even abortion to a point. I just don’t want to pay for it and I think it should be restricted to X number of weeks (X depends on who you are, for me 20 is about the point of no return).
Read some history about those times. Intellectuals in those days wanted to make life better for people. She absolutely was not a known racist.
Those who oppose Planned Parenthood love to disparage her and distort the truth. Don’t be one of those people.
Don’t you think most families would be better off with 2-3 kids instead of 14 kids?
You are taking what Sanger said out of context also, and out of setting. She did not want to exterminate the black race. She wanted to create a situation where children were healthier. Many intellectuals of the day were all into eugenics. Today eugenics is sort of a bad word, however we still practice it in some regards, if you think about it.
You are aware that Sanger was one of 13 or 14 children and she watched her own mother die in childbirth. She felt very strongly about changing life for women. Check out the grave yards of older cemeteries if you ever get a chance. Notice the disproportionate number of women who died early, in their child bearing years. Notice also the number of babies.
I don’t evaluate people in the early part of the 20th century by the same standards I would hold them to nowadays. Times and mores have changed. They were simply people trying to get along in the world they knew. Life could be had, especially for women and even more so for poor women.
My own great-grandmother died fairly early in life. She had just had too many children. Something like 9 or 10. She left a bunch of little ones to raise. It was a very sad situation. She wasn’t poor. I would say she was middle class, certainly not upper class.
Margaret Sanger was not in favor of abortions, just for the record. She was in favor of birth control. The AMA is who got laws changed to make abortions illegal.
You do know that you pay for that lack of contraception many times over, don’t you? I would rather pay for contraception. Its more bang for my buck than for welfare and all the other things associated with unwanted pregnancy and poverty.
I would be glad to sign on with 20 weeks if and only if fetal anomaly allowed as long as needed. Bad things can happen or be discovered anywhere in the gestation period. I think that option should remain with a woman and her doctor.
“Is politics pulling us apart, or is religion pulling us apart?”
People are religious, but pragmatic. If the one political party stopped pretending that we can or might actually revert to 1950’s America, or can stigmatize birth control, then people might not act silly about the issue. They’d quiet down and start coming to terms with the times, as is happening on the gay marriage issue. Not sure how many people in today’s world are actually objecting to it, though. Maybe nobody under 50. I have a sneaking suspicion that you, I, and Mike Huckabee are arguing over yesterday’s battles.
@Peterson
Same old Sanger stroph. Give me a break!
If you don’t want birthcontrol easily and cheaply available,
you should be willing to pay for unwanted babies to make up for it.
I might be snide and ask whether you’ve considered adopting?
@Moon-howler
That’s the way I feel as well.