Moderate? No Moderates here when we are talking Women's Rights

by Gary Berg-Cross

The Ohio House recently voted to strip Planned Parenthood of $1.3 million in funding and, sent the bill to Ohio Gov. John Kasich to sign into law. 

On Sunday, John Kasich he did just that - signed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood in Ohio.  He has Conservative support:

Asked if signing this bill will help with Kasich's conservative credentials, Senate President Keith Faber, R-Celina, said ‘he has a long track record of being pro-life.’"

But he did draw condemnation from..... well Democrats, but also women. And there was more context from the Psychological slip-of-the-tongue realm.

Speaking about his early days running for office in the Ohio Legislature, Kasich also referred to women "who left their kitchens" to help him.

Recalling the roots of his early days of campaigning, while at a town hall at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia,  he rhetorically asked "How did I get elected?” His answer may be shrouded in memory of when America was Great - 

"Nobody was -- I didn't have anybody for me. We just got an army of people, who, and many women, who left their kitchens to go out and go door to door and to put yard signs up for me. All the way back, when, you know, things were different." and a question from a town hall attendee who brought up his comment about “kitchens.”

Yes it was different then.  Neither of these played well with the many women who have more to do than kitchen work and appreciate Planned Parenthood.

Women are aware of the bigger picture as brought to life in Jill Lepore's (Harvard College Professor) Feb. 1 New Yorker article called “Baby Doe.”

It starts out like a punch in the gut:

'Last June, a woman walking her dog on Deer Island, in Boston Harbor, came across a black plastic garbage bag on the beach. Inside was a very little girl, dead. The woman called for help and collapsed in tears. Police searched the island; divers searched the water; a medical examiner collected the body. The little girl had dark eyes and pale skin and long brown hair. She weighed thirty pounds. She was wearing white-and-black polka-dot pants. She was wrapped in a zebra-striped fleece blanket. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said that no child matching her description had been reported missing. “Someone has to know who this child is,” an official there said. But for a very long time no one did.'

Child abuse, child neglect, child death, and the cradle-to-prison pipeline driven by poverty are all ingredients in this US reality. And especially in the US, where short of refugees, a larger percentage of people are living in poverty than in any of the developed countries of western Europe. 

But here we have Kasich and the various Republican funders, ultraconservatives,  Tea Partyers and 1 percenters who remain dedicated to defund Planned Parenthood in a political year that wants to Make America Great Again. What's Great about limiting access to contraception, or  clamping down on a women’s rights of conscience?  

Some consider Kasich a moderate.  This suggests a frightening accomodation to the rightward drift.  Or is propelled by ignorance and anger? 
It's just too far Right to be right.

For more see 
 JILL LEPORE's Birthright: What’s next for Planned Parenthood?

Edd Doerr recommends a Gail Collins column in the 9/19 NY Times:

The Fight for Unplanned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood! Government shutdown!

Anti-abortion politicians are in an uproar over videos that supposedly show Planned Parenthood representatives negotiating on prices for tissue from aborted fetuses. Carly Fiorina was passionate about the subject in this week’s Republican debate. Nothing she said was accurate, but nobody’s perfect.

The House Judiciary Committee has been investigating the matter with lawyerly precision, starting with a hearing titled: “Planned Parenthood Exposed: Examining the Horrific Abortion Practices at the Nation’s Largest Abortion Provider.” In a further effort to offer balance and perspective, the committee did not invite Planned Parenthood to testify.

(Coming soon: The House Committee on Energy and Commerce prepares to welcome Pope Francis with a hearing on “Papal Fallibility: Why He’s Totally, Completely and Utterly Off Base About Global Warming.”)

Planned Parenthood gets about $500 million a year from the federal government, mainly in reimbursements for treating Medicaid patients. Now the House Freedom Caucus, which specializes in threatening to shut down the government, has announced that its members won’t vote for any spending bill unless the money is eliminated.

At Wednesday’s debate, Jeb Bush issued a popular Republican call for transferring the money to other “community-based organizations” that provide women’s health services. “That’s the way you do this is you improve the condition for people,” he said. As only Jeb Bush can.

You may recall that Bush made a similar suggestion earlier in the campaign, in which he added — to his lasting regret — “although I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues.”

“I misspoke,” the former governor of Florida said later. Well, that does seem to happen a lot. But do you think it was really a slip of the tongue? Or are there other services Planned Parenthood provides that Bush would be happy to get rid of as well? He did once write a book that tackled the subject of how to reduce abortions without ever mentioning the word “contraception.”

This leads us to an important question about the Planned Parenthood debate: Are the people who want to put it out of business just opposed to the abortions (which don’t receive federal funds), or are they against family planning, period?

“I’m telling you, it’s family planning,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a phone interview. “They decided that was their target long ago.”

Let’s look at the even larger question: Can Congress really just move the Planned Parenthood money to other health care providers? Besides family planning services, Planned Parenthood offers everything from breast exams to screening for sexually transmitted infections. Many of its patients live in poor or rural areas without a lot of other options.

Another move-the-money presidential candidate is Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana — he’s the one issuing round-the-clock insults to Donald Trump in the desperate hope of attracting a little attention.

Jindal cut off $730,000 in Medicaid reimbursements to his state’s two Planned Parenthood clinics, even though neither offers abortion services. They do, however, provide thousands of women with health care, including screening for sexually transmitted infections — a terrible problem in some parts of the state.

No big deal. When the issue went to court, Jindal’s administration provided a list of more than 2,000 other places where Planned Parenthood’s patients could get care.

“It strikes me as extremely odd that you have a dermatologist, an audiologist, a dentist who are billing for family planning services,” responded the judge.

Whoops. It appeared that the list-makers had overestimated a tad, and the number of alternate providers was actually more like 29. None of which had the capacity to take on a flood of additional patients.

When Planned Parenthood leaves town, bad things follow. Ask the county in Indiana that drove out its clinic, which happened to be the only place in the area that offered H.I.V. testing. That was in 2013; in March the governor announced a “public health emergency” due to the spike in H.I.V. cases.

Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University, studied what happened when Texas blocked Planned Parenthood grants and tried to move the money to other providers. Even when there were other clinics in an area, she said, “they were overbooked with their own patients. What happened in Texas was the amount of family planning services dropped. And the next thing that happened, of course, was that unplanned pregnancies began to rise.”

If an elected official wants to try to drive Planned Parenthood out of business, there are two honest options: Announce that first you’re going to invest a ton of new taxpayer money in creating real substitutes, or shrug your shoulders and tell the world that you’re fine with cutting off health services to some of your neediest constituents.

If you get heat, you can always say you misspoke.

BTW, The Unplanned Parenthood Clinic is South Park's abortion clinic first seen in the Season Two episode, "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut". The second time was in Season Five episode, "Kenny Dies".

THE TIDE OF HISTORY FLOWS LEFT

By James A. Haught (provided by Edd Doerr) 

Tribune News Service (TNS)

One of my history-minded friends has a long-range political view summed up
in three words: Liberals always win. Complex social struggles may take
centuries or decades, he says, but they eventually bring victory for human
rights, more democratic liberties and other progressive goals.

Look how long it took to end slavery. Generations of agitation and the
horrible Civil War finally brought triumph for liberal abolitionists and
defeat for conservative slavery supporters.

Look how long it took for women to gain the right to vote. In the end,
liberal suffragettes prevailed, conservative opponents lost.

Look at the long battle to give couples the right to practice birth control.

Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was jailed eight times for the
crime of mentioning sex - but she eventually transformed U.S. society. A
Supreme Court victory in 1965 struck down contraceptive bans for married
couples, and a follow-up victory in 1972 struck them down for unwed ones.
Liberals won, conservatives lost.

The same pattern applies to the struggle for Social Security pensions for
retirees - and unemployment compensation for the jobless - and equality for
blacks - and Medicare and Medicaid - and equality for women - and food
stamps for needy families - and expanded health insurance under the
Affordable Care Act - and equality for gays - etc. These stormy social
conflicts ended the same way: Liberals always win. Conservatives always
lose.

Of course, history doesn't move in a clear, predictable manner. Germany was
advanced and modern - yet it sank into the horrors of Nazism. Other setbacks
occur. But the overall tide of civilization flows in a progressive
direction.

In his landmark book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature," Harvard
psychologist Steven Pinker concludes that all sorts of human evils - war,
genocide, murder, rape, torture, dueling, wife-bashing, attacks on
minorities, etc. - have faded enormously from the Western world.
International warfare has virtually vanished. Pursuit of such humane goals
lies at the heart of the liberal agenda.

When I first became a news reporter in the 1950s, conservative Bible Belt
morality was enforced by laws. It was a crime for stores to open on the
Sabbath. It was a crime to look at the equivalent of a Playboy magazine, or
to read a sexy book. (Our mayor once sent cops to raid bookstores selling
"Peyton Place.")

Back then, it was a felony to be gay, and those who were caught were sent to
prison under old sodomy laws. Back then, it was a felony for a desperate
girl to end a pregnancy. It was illegal for an unmarried couple to share a
bedroom. Divorce or unwed pregnancy was an unmentionable disgrace. Jews
weren't allowed into Christian-only country clubs. Public schools had
mandatory teacher-led prayer. It was a crime to buy a cocktail or a lottery
ticket.

That world disappeared, decade after decade. The culture slowly evolved.
Sunday "blue laws" were undone. Teacher-led prayers were banned.

Gay sex
became legal. Liquor clubs were approved. Abortion became legal. State
governments became lottery operators. Censorship ended. Other conservative
taboos gradually disappeared.

Within my lifetime, morality flip-flopped. Conservative thou-shalt-nots lost
their grip on society. Liberals won - yet it happened so gradually that
hardly anyone noticed.

For several decades, the strongest indicator of politics was church
membership. White evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney. People
who don't attend worship voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. The latter
became the largest group in the Democratic Party base.

Today, survey after survey finds American church membership fading, while
the young generation ignores religion. Sociologists think the secular trend
is unstoppable. People who say their faith is "none" already comprise
one-fourth of the adult population - 56 million Americans - and they seem
destined someday to be the largest segment. The social tide is flowing away
from conservative fundamentalism and its Puritanical agenda.

All these factors support my friend's maxim that liberals always win. The
progressive worldview is called humanism - trying to make life better for
all people - and it's a powerful current. In 1960, John F. Kennedy said in a
famed speech:

"If by a 'liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone
who welcomes new ideas without rigid reaction, someone who cares about the
welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their
jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties - .then I'm proud to say
that I'm a liberal."

Amid all the chaos and confusion of daily life, through a thousand
contradictory barrages, the struggle for a safer, fairer, more secure, more
humane world never ceases. Thank heaven for progressive victories that keep
on prevailing.
---
ABOUT THE WRITER:  James A. Haught is editor of West Virginia's largest
newspaper, The Charleston Gazette.  Readers may reach him by email at
haughtwvgazette.com or phone at 304-348-5199.
This essay is available to Tribune News Service subscribers. Tribune did not
subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer
and do not necessarily represent the views of Tribune or its editors.
---
C2015 James A. Haught
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency - Aug. 1, 2015

In addition to the info at the  end of the piece, Haught is also a fellow
columnist for Free Inquiry. -- Edd)

Behind the Scenes in the Attack on Planned Parenthood

By Gary Berg-Cross

Edd Doerr, Explicit Atheist and others have discussed the “brou ha ha” around HHS mandated regulations on birth control and the claim of a religious exemption for Catholic institutions based on conscience. Some conservative pols have characterized that struggle as another front of the war on religion, while many see it as an attack on vulnerable, often poor women, ever a silenced majority.

I find it interesting that while this has been going on we’ve seen an attack on Planned Parenthood and its funding. Activists had been applying political pressure on Komen for years to not support health care provider Planned Parenthood because it offers abortion. An example was the deceptive Video ‘Sting’ attacking Planned Parenthood which as called a “Dishonest Hit Job is Part of Religious Right’s Campaign to Deny Women Access to Reproductive Health Care” by People for the American Way.

The anti-abortion crowd found a vehicle for their attach by getting some leverage on the Komen Foundation. Karen Handel, a Republican who once ran for governor of Georgia on a platform calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood, seems to have been at the center of that effort. During her campaign for office she wrote when she pledged to eliminate all state funds for breast and cervical cancer screening to the group if she were elected governor:

“[S]ince I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood,”

After failing to become governor in a tea-party like campaign. Handle became senior Vice President (for public policy) of the Susan G. Komen charity almost a year ago and seems to have continued her campaign. According to the Huffington Post Komen insiders say Handel got defunding on the agenda and spent months pushing a plan to shift the organization's grant strategy and collaborate on a bit of a witch hunt. Emails reveal that handle was the prime instigator and argued that Komen could just say that the change is policy came about because Planned Parenthood was under investigation no one can blame us for being political HuffPo has internal emails. This lead Komen’s apparently passive and narrow thing Board to cut off funding for 17 of the 19 Planned Parenthood affiliates in December.

This is surprisingg to many but an examination of Komen leaders by Mother Jones and others shows them to be consistently conservative and opposed to Planned Parenthood. Founder and CEO Nancy G. Brinker ,who is the face we largely see in TV defending the action, served under George W. Bush as chief protocol officer for the U.S. She later served as ambassador to Hungary. Reports have noted that both she and her now late husband, Norman, have been major Republican donors.

Another member of Komen’s Advocacy Alliance Board is Jane Abraham. She is the General Chairman of the anti-choice and anti-science Susan B. Anthony List. She seems pretty political since she is on its Political Action Committee. One of Abraham roles has been as a leader to establish what they call “crisis pregnancy clinics”. These are designed to prevent any abortions. What they do is mislead women about their health and reproductive rights. Want to know another interesting connection. Abraham works with Maureen Scalia, well known wife of Supreme Court Justice Antony Scalia.

And there are other interesting political and perhaps religious connections. Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush pops up. I’ve been surprised and disappointed to see him and Ralph Reed on CNN as “political” commentators. It seems that discredited, conservative voices have vampire like abilities. Ari, a prominent right-wing pundit of Pinocchio level lying fame who some identify with political Chabatists, was apparently quietly involved in hiring Handel, and making the interviews of prospective candidates discuss how to handle controversy about Komen’s relationship with Planned Parenthood. Fleischer views on Planned Parenthood are documented in his book, Taking Heat. He criticized it as a partisan, ideological organization that receives undeserved positive coverage in the press. Such things seem like fuel for tea party activists, who act like bullies and are the real promoters of culture war with hot button issues that divide people. And of course Ari was available to discuss how to give Komen positive press and shield it from backlash. One hand washed another in conservative political circles.

But all that has failed and Handle has resigned. Sensible things can happened when people pay close attention to a scandal and what it reveals. And part of what it reveals is a confluence of influence makers who get leadership roles in institutions with good missions and sterling reputations. This allows work behind the scenes on conservative, often hybrid religious-political agendas. This is an old story. Some might remember how the Red Cross provided a leg up on the political career of some Republican chairman going back to Elizabeth Dole and Bernadine P. Healy, M.D. More recently Bonnie McElveen-Hunter was head of American Red Cross. She has a nice resume. Before that job she was ambassador to Finland, and before that worked for Eliz Dole's presidential bid!

The Democratic Underground argues that such things were rewards for her:

“financial support of the Bush campaign. McElveen-Hunter was reported to be one of just 15 people who raised more than $1 million for Bush's presidential run. She headed Bush's effort to raise money from women, a campaign called "W is for Women."

She personally gave $102,750 to Republican candidates and party committees during the campaign, including $100,000 in soft money to the Republican National Committee. She also contributed $5,000 to the Bush-Cheney recount effort.”

None may dare call it a conspiracy, but it does show a bit of how the system and money work and how organizations collaborate to accomplish their agenda. Such top down, power elite control occasionally get frustrated by energetic, truly grassroots responses. OWS comes to mind here, but in this case it had come from women and progressive activists who have found a voice and shone a light on a wicked brew of politics and power pushing its agenda hidden away from view. It's perhaps another episode in the struggle with reactionary forces that insist on looking back rather than ahead for wisdom.