When Roger West first launched the progressive political blog "News From The Other Side" in May 2010, he could hardly have predicted the impact that his venture would have on the media and political debate. As the New Media emerged as a counterbalance to established media sources, Roger wrote his copious blogs about national politics, the tea party movement, mid-term elections, and the failings of the radical right to the vanguard of the New Media movement. Roger West's efforts as a leading blogger have tremendous reach. NFTOS has led the effort to bring accountability to mainstream media sources such as FOX NEWS, Breitbart's "Big Journalism.
Roger's breadth of experience, engaging style, and cultivation of loyal readership - over 92 million visitors - give him unique insight into the past, present, and future of the New Media and political rhetoric that exists in our society today.
What we are against:
Radical Right Wing Agendas
Incompetent Establishment
Donald J. Trump
Corporate Malfeasence
We are for:
Global and Econmoic Security
Social and Economic Justice
Media Accountability
THE RESISTANCE
In a significant escalation of the birth control wars, a federal judge held on Monday that employers who object to contraception can refuse to include birth control coverage in their employees’ health plan — even if their objection to birth control has nothing whatsoever to do with religion.
Judge Richard Leon is a George W. Bush appointee with a history of handing down conservative opinions. His opinion in March for Life v. Burwell is no exception. In it, Leon holds that the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, an anti-abortion group which claims to be non-religious, may refuse to comply with federal rules requiring employers to include certain forms of contraception, even though their objections to birth control are entirely secular.
Leon’s reasoning on this issue is, frankly, hard to follow. It is even more difficult to summarize in writing. In essence, however, Leon appears to object to the government’s decision to exempt churches and other inherently religious organizations from the birth control rules without also extending this exemption to secular employers because such a rule discriminates against secular employers.
In an apparent attempt to work around this Supreme Court decision, Leon digs up two obscure sentences published by the federal government which note that “houses of worship and their integrated auxiliaries that object to contraceptive coverage on religious grounds are more likely than other employers” to employ people who share the same view. From this statement, however, Leon deduces that the government’s real purpose in exempting certain religious employers from the birth control rules was actually to protect “a moral philosophy about the sanctity of life.” It is an extraordinary leap of logic that, even if it did reach a sound conclusion, does not obviously lead to Leon’s ultimate legal conclusion that a religious exemption must come packaged with benefits to secular entities. And yet Leon reaches this conclusion, regardless.
A separate section of Leon’s opinion sides with two March for Life employees who claim that they should be allowed to purchase an employer-provided plan that does not offer birth control coverage because they have religious objection to “participating in a health insurance plan that covers” certain forms of contraception. In a post-Hobby Lobby world, this is not a frivolous claim — although it is far from a slam dunk. In any event, the appropriate remedy if these two plaintiffs ultimately prevail is to grant them — and only them — the right to purchase a plan that does not otherwise comply with federal law.
Leon’s first conclusion that secular employers may exempt themselves from a federal rule they wish not to follow, however, goes far beyond what the Supreme Court said in Hobby Lobby.
RADICAL CONSERVATIVE MEN RULE AGAINST WOMEN AT WORK
Justice Ginsburg has some problems with the Hobby Lobby 5-4 decision. Some excerpts from her dissent via Mother Jones:
"Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community."
"Any decision to use contraceptives made by a woman covered under Hobby Lobby’s or Conestoga’s plan will not be propelled by the Government, it will be the woman’s autonomous choice, informed by the physician she consults."
"It bears note in this regard that the cost of an IUD is nearly equivalent to a month’s full-time pay for workers earning the minimum wage."
"Approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be 'perceived as favoring one religion over another,' the very 'risk the [Constitution's] Establishment Clause was designed to preclude."
In other words, your boss has more of a right to free exercise of his religion than you have because, well, money!
Voting has consequences, screw who is POTUS, they only have 8 years to screw the pooch, their selections of Supreme Beings, can have generational effects, as these folks stay until they rot, which can be decades.
The damage done today is a major setback for women, let alone ACA.
For-profit companies have religious rights, and those rights trump the rights of women who work for them. ~ Justice Alito
Quoting Col. Nathan R. Jessup in a few good men: "all you did was weaken a country, that's all you did. You put people's lives in danger. Sweet dreams, son.....................
Providing women with access to no-cost contraception doesn't spur them to make riskier sexual choices, according to a large study published in the Obstetrics & Gynecology journal this week. The researchers who collected the data noted that their results should dispel social conservatives’ fears that the risk of pregnancy is “the only thing standing between women and promiscuity.”
The study is part of the ongoing Contraceptive CHOICE project, a research initiative at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis that has been tracking nearly 10,000 low-income women of reproductive age for several years. The women participating in the project received an FDA-approved contraceptive of their choice at no additional cost to them.
In 2012, the researchers confirmed that this policy — which simulates the Obamacare provision that extends birth control coverage without a co-pay — effectively helped lower these women’s rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion. Then, the researchers conducted a follow-up investigation into other aspects of the participants’ sexual behavior, surveying them about their number of sexual partners and the frequency of sexual intercourse during the year after they received their free birth control.
Most of the women did report that they were having sex more frequently — but they were doing it safely. The majority of participants, 70 percent, reported that there was no difference in the number of their sexual partners. The women who did report an increase were most likely to have gone from zero sexual activity to a sole sexual partner. There also weren't any increased rates of sexually transmitted infections among the group that got no-cost contraception.
“Increasing access to no-cost contraceptives doesn't translate into riskier sexual behavior,” Jeffrey Peipert, the study’s senior author, explained. “It’s not the contraception that drives their sexual behavior.”
Indeed, even among the women who indicated that they wanted to start using birth control specifically so they could become sexually active, more than 45 percent had not actually started having sex after a year of using contraception.
groups like the right-wing Family Research Council, which argues that it’s important to restrict access to contraception to dissuade teens from having sex. Nonetheless, the debate over Obamacare’s birth control provision has largely centered on this myth about female sexuality. Particularly after Sandra Fluke testified in favor of the policy, conservatives were quick to bash her for being a “slut” who wanted the government to finance her promiscuous sex life. Two years later, Republican lawmakers are still repeating this line of reasoning.
Thanks to deeply ingrained societal attitudes toward women — who are expected to remain pure, and who are often punished for displaying their sexuality — this attitude extends to other areas of sexual health, too. Many Americans are uncomfortable with the HPV vaccine, effective long-lasting forms of birth control, and comprehensive sex education because they believe these resources could somehow encourage girls to become sexually active.
Between 2008 and 2011, the national abortion rate declined by 13 percent, according to a new report from the Guttmacher Institute that will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health journal. That puts 2011′s abortion rate at 16.9 abortions per every 1,000 women of reproductive age, the lowest rate recorded since Roe v. Wade legalized the procedure in 1973.
The anti-choice community celebrated the news, claiming that an increasing number of women are choosing to carry their pregnancies to term. “This is a post-sonogram generation,” Charmaine Yoest, the president of the conservative Americans United for Lifegroup that helps push state-level abortion restrictions, told the Washington Post. “There is increased awareness throughout our culture of the moral weight of the unborn baby. And that’s a good thing.”
“It shows that women are rejecting the idea of abortion as the answer to an unexpected pregnancy,” Carol Tobias, the president of the National Right to Life Committee, agreed.
In fact, that perspective doesn't actually align with the research in this area. Previous studies have found that sonograms don’t actually change women’s minds about having an abortion. And the Guttmacher’s new report concludes that the abortion rate isn't declining because fewer women are choosing abortion in favor of giving birth to a child; rather, it’s because fewer women are getting pregnant in the first place.
“The decline in abortions coincided with a steep national drop in overall pregnancy and birth rates,” Rachel Jones, the lead author of Guttmacher’s study, explained in a statement accompanying the new report. “Contraceptive use improved during this period, as more women and couples were using highly effective, long-acting reversible contraceptive methods, such as the IUD. Moreover, the recent recession led many women and couples to want to avoid or delay pregnancy and childbearing.”
It’s also important to note that a drop in abortions shouldn't necessarily be considered a positive thing, depending on the circumstances. As states have imposed an increasing number of harsh state-level restrictions on the procedure, many women — especially economically disadvantaged individuals and communities of color — have struggled to exercise their right to choose. Many of those women end up giving birth not because they didn’t want an abortion, but because they simply could not access one. For instance, harsh anti-abortion laws in Texas are projected to result in 22,000 women losing access to safe and legal abortion this year alone.
The Guttmacher Institute, which tracks state-level attacks on abortion, is well aware of this reality. Since the bulk of the wave of new abortion restrictions were enacted after 2011, the group’s most recent report didn't find a clear connection between harsh state laws and declining abortion rates. But, according to the researchers, “this does not mean these laws are not problematic.”
“Increased regulation of abortion contributes to the stigmatization of abortion and of the women who obtain one, and can create a climate of fear and hostility even in states where such regulations are not imposed,” the study’s authors conclude. “Because state legislatures continued to debate and enact more restrictive abortion measures throughout 2011, 2012 and 2013, future research will need to examine whether and to what extent these laws affect abortion incidence and access to services.”
Other aspects of reproductive health care have shifted since 2011, too. Obamacare’s contraceptive coverage officially took effect, which has helped expand U.S. women’s access to affordable birth control. But Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards was quick to note that this birth control provision has also been under attack, something that could jeopardize the current downward trend in unintended pregnancy rates.
“This report comes just as some politicians and corporations are trying to make it harder for women to get birth control by chipping away at the historic benefit in the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance plans to cover birth control without a co-pay,” Richards said in a statement, referring to several legal challenges against Obamacare that are currently up before the Supreme Court.
Who knew? Who knew just how many radical GOPers resided in the state of Virginia?
Virginia has had its share of lunatics this week oozing from the annuls of the slimy cesspool that is the Virginia GOP. Mark Obenshain, E.W. Jackson [ my personal favorite VA American Talibaner] and now, yet another believer - that pasty white old fashioned neocons - should have the right to be in women's vagina.
American Taliban of Virginia Treasurer Bob FitzSimmonds, a former aide to and “very close friend” of gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli II (R),toldVirginia blogger Ben Tribbett that he is “not a big fan of contraception, frankly.”
At last weekend’s state party convention, Tribbett asked FitzSimmon whether he supported the distribution of emergency contraception on college campuses. “I’m not a big fan of contraception, frankly,” the Republican Party official explained. “I think there are some issues, we’re giving morning-after pills to 12-year-olds, and pretty soon I guess we’ll hand them out to babies, I don’t know.”
FitzSimmonds also told Tribbett that sex education has caused the spread of sexually transmitted diseases: “I believe that we don’t recognize the causal effect between the type of sex education that we’ve been giving and the spread of STDs. We focus on things like abortion, cause it’s a big pressure thing. I go into schools 15-20 times a year, I run a non-profit that goes into schools and talks to kids about sex. They’re all abortion and HIV. HIV’s kind of hard to catch. Abortion happens if you get pregnant. But we’re on the track for 50 percent of the American people to have Herpes by the time these kids are my age. And that is a profound — not only health but sociological crisis facing this country.”
FitzSimmonds posted on his Facebook page shortly after last November’s election, “When Obama is 90 years old and he dies and goes to Hell, he is going to say ‘This is all Bush’s fault.’”
Ladies of Virginia and the United States, how you can vote for these overreaching Neanderthal-ish thugs is beyond me. Most women that we speak to are amazed at just how far Virginia's version of the American Taliban will go with the probing of women's vagina's. If your not on-board, then should these radical right wing nut jobs gain the offices they seek, then you truly get what you deserve!
Congratulations Bob FitzSimmonds, on memorial day weekend, you become the third Virginian [GOP version] this week - to be today's worst person in the world.
Oklahoma already prevents women from using their insurance plans to help cover abortion services, but Republicans aren’t stopping there. One state lawmaker wants to continue stripping insurance coverage for reproductive health services, advancing a measure that would allow employers to refuse to cover birth control for any reason — based solely on the fact that one of his constituents believes it “poisons women’s bodies.”
Under State Sen. Clark Jolley (R)’s measure, “no employer shall be required to provide or pay for any benefit or service related to abortion or contraception through the provision of health insurance to his or her employees.” According to the Tulsa World, Jolley’s inspiration for his bill came from one of his male constituents who is morally opposed to birth control, and wanted to find a small group insurance plan for himself and his family that didn’t include coverage for those services:
Jolley said the measure is the result of a request from a constituent, Dr. Dominic Pedulla, an Oklahoma City cardiologist who describes himself as a natural family planning medical consultant and women’s health researcher. [...]
Women are worse off with contraception because it suppresses and disables who they are, Pedulla said.
“Part of their identity is the potential to be a mother,” Pedulla said. “They are being asked to suppress and radically contradict part of their own identity, and if that wasn’t bad enough, they are being asked to poison their bodies.”
The bill has already cleared a Senate Health committee and now makes it way to Oklahoma’s full Senate. It is unlikely that either Jolley and Pedulla themselves rely on insurance coverage for hormonal contraceptive services — but if the measure becomes law, the two men could limit the health insurance options for the nearly two million women who live in Oklahoma.
Of course, contraception does not actually poison women. The FDA approved the first oral birth control pill in 1960, and that type of contraception is so safe that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends making it available without a prescription, as it is in most other countries around the world. Furthermore, considering that over 99 percent of women of reproductive age have used some form of birth control, the Oklahoma women who rely on insurance coverage for their contraception would likely disagree with Pedulla’s assertion that it “suppresses and radically contradicts part of their own identity.”
In reality, access to affordable birth control is a critical economic issue for women. When women have control over their reproductive choices, it allows them to achieve economic goals like completing their education, becoming financially independent, or keeping a job. But birth control can carry high out-of-pocket costs, and over half of young women say they haven’t used their contraceptive method as directed because of cost prohibitions. Nonetheless, Republican lawmakers haverepeatedly pushed measures to allow employers to drop coverage for birth control.
Might I remind readers of two things; we ask that all tea baggers breed responsibly, and that the best form of birth control is looking at congressional GOPers discussing birth control!
A Woman Is Kicked Off Flight For Wearing A Pro-Choice T-Shirt
A woman was not allowed to board her connecting flight Tuesday because she was wearing a pro-choice shirt that was too offensive, according to American Airlines.
The woman emailed Jodi Jacobson, editor-in-chief of RH Reality Check, recounting the experience:
Right before we were set to land the flight attendant from first class approaches me and asks if I had a connecting flight? We were running a bit behind schedule, so I figured I was being asked this to be sure I would make my connecting flight. She then proceeded to tell me that I needed to speak with the captain before disembarking the plane and that the shirt I was wearing was offensive.
The shirt was gray with the wording, “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d fuck a senator.”
I must also mention that when I boarded the plane, I was one of the first groups to board (did not pass by many folks). I was wearing my shawl just loosely around my neck and upon sitting down in my seat the lady next to me, who was already seated, praised me for wearing the shirt.
The shirt’s words are actually lifted from asign used by Oklahoma state Sen. Judy McIntyre (D) at a pro-choice rally. McIntyre told critics who found her sign offensive that “I would hope they would have that same passion about how offensive it is for the Republican Party of Oklahoma to ramrod, because they have the votes to do so, bills that are offensive to women and take away the rights of women.”
American Airlines has an exceptionally strict dress policy, according to CNN. It says that “it can refuse to transport you, or may remove you from your flight for reasons including ‘being clothed in a manner that would cause discomfort or offense to other passengers.’”
Arizona Senate Committee Endorses ‘Tell Your Boss Why You’re On The Pill’ Bill
Arizona has taken up yet another draconian law for women’s health – this time replicating but broadening the federal push to let employers deny women access to birth control. The bill stipulates that, unless a woman brings in a note proving she is not using it to avoid getting pregnant, an employer can deny birth control to any woman in the workplace.
By a vote of 6-2, an Arizona State Senate Judiciary committee yesterday endorsed the measure:
Arizona House Bill 2625, authored by Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, would permit employers to ask their employees for proof of medical prescription if they seek contraceptives for non-reproductive purposes, such as hormone control or acne treatment. “I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs… My whole legislation is about our First Amendment rights and freedom of religion.”
The argument that providing birth control violates the First Amendment is bogus, debunked by a twenty year-old opinion by conservative Supreme Court Justice Scalia.
Needless to say, many women do not feel comfortable turning over their medical records to their employers, even if they do have a condition that qualifies them under Lesko’s proposed law. Especially since, as an at-will employment state, an Arizona employer would likely be able to fire a woman if they saw anything in her gynecological history that he (or, yes, she) didn’t like. But, under the proposed law, a boss could fire the woman if the woman didn’t turn it over, too.
Aside from the obvious health benefits that lead some women to use birth control, contraceptive use has helped shrink the gender pay gap; it even benefits the economy as a whole.
Arizona is yet another red state willing to push the envelop with regards to a womens perogative to their own bodies.
First, a bill that gives immunity to doctors who lie to couples about the results of their prenatal tests in order to prevent them from getting an abortion. Now, a bill that would give your boss the green light to fire you for using birth control. You think I am kidding? I wish. For a decade now, Arizona insurance companies have been required to provide coverage for contraception just like other prescriptions. But, because they saw an opening to score some political points, some politicians there are suddenly moving to take that coverage away from women and their families.
And we aren’t talking here just about exemptions for religiously affiliated employers like Catholic hospitals and universities. We are talking about authorizing secular, for-profit employers to deny a woman coverage for birth control if the employer doesn’t believe that she and her partner should be allowed to have sex without getting pregnant. Yup, that’s right. If theowner of the Taco Bell where you work opposes birth control, Arizona legislators want to give him a legal right to deny you insurance coverage for your pills.
Sadly, that isn’t even the half of it. You may want to sit down for this one. Arizona legislators know that whether or not her insurance covers it, a woman may get the prescription she needs to prevent an unintended pregnancy. They want to give her boss the right to control that too. The bill they are pushing would not only allow employers to take the insurance coverage away, but it would also make it easier for an employer who finds out that his employee uses birth control to fire her. You heard me right . . . to fire her. And I thought Rush Limbaugh’s comments were as low as you could go on this one.
After the shock value settled in [It took me 2 hours to get my ability to write this blog] - In a not-so-round-about way, women in AZ can be fired for having sex but not wanting to conceive. Hmmmmmm. WTF is wrong with this picture readers?
Welcome to fascism at its best:
" When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross"(Sinclair Lewis in the 1930s).
Readers, everyone needs to remember that indignation at stupidity changes nothing -- unless you can vote them out of office. Register! Vote! Register others! Drive people to the polling places! Offer to babysit! Get these radical misfits out office immediately!
As the suffragettes used to say -- "DEEDS NOT WORDS."
Limbaugh: Student Denied Spot At Contraception Hearing Says "She Must Be Paid To Have Sex," So She's A "Slut" And "Prostitute"
Female law student Sandra Fluke, who was prevented from testifying at Darrell Issa’s anti-birth control hearing recently, spoke to a Democrat-sponsored hearing last week about the importance of reproductive health care for women, and the cost of contraception coverage.
Her testimony has provoked some shockingly ugly hatred from Reich-wingers, but Rush "the drugster" Limbaugh, the true leader of bigotry and hate - takes it another step into the gutter today, calling Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute.”
The Drugster:
What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.
She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps.
The johns, that's right. We would be the johns -- no! We're not the johns. Well -- yeah, that's right. Pimp's not the right word.
OK, so, she's not a slut. She's round-heeled. I take it back.
As ThinkProgress points out, Fluke was actually going to testify “about a friend who is a lesbian and needed birth control for non-sexual medical reasons," so not only is the drugster wrong on all accounts - he is still remains a pungent, vile, nasty ball of lard.
The drugster is a racist pig, and a sterling representative of the modern radical teapublican.
There is little problem with this pig doing his daily dose of Negro bashing, Gay bashing, Women bashing, Indian bashing, Liberal bashing, Environmentalist bashing, or the raw unbridled hatred he expresses three hours a day toward President Obama, for after all, that hatred is what conservatives are most about. Neither is there much problem in him disallowing the airing of any opposition to anything he says; totalitarian fascism is also so indicative of the conservative mindset that he should not be castigated for just doing his job. But Rush goes beyond the standard fare of hate directed at the enemies of conservatives - the loathsome do-gooders and the dreaded others - by delving into a realm of sleaze and unfairness seldom witnessed outside the pages of the American Spectator.
Often is the case with teapublicants - facts are often manipulate to suit their audience, or better yet, completely ignored. Take POTUS' birth control stance - "Most of Obama's "Controversial" birth control rule was law during Bush years."
Radical teabaggers have been livid over POTUS' administration rule requiring employers to offer birth control to its employees, when in fact most firms already had to do it!
Teapublicants and conservatives make it really, really difficult for us to avoid focusing on their lapses in intelligence. And with a conga-line of top shelf teapublicans front and center for the 2012 presidential nomination, we're being treated to more examples of buffoonery from these people.
In the last six or seven months alone, there are enough examples of teapublicants botching very basic ideas and facts to fill volumes of "Bushism" style novelty calendars.
What teapublicants once wanted is no longer on the table, for they now have turned coat and backtracked, an ideology they envision, a time when horses were the only transportation mode, where men owned slaves, and when rope was a high fashioned type of belt that held ones pants up.
First let me say the comment in the video about Rachael and her parents not using contraceptives, totally putrid, but this is the "conservatives" we come to know and love. Second, as always, if it isn't teapublican, its got to be "unconstitutional"! How many times have we heard this theme from camp teabag? These facts are indeed the answer as to why CPAC 2012 is lobbing hate grenades towards Maddow. But often is case, facts frequently offend the less intelligent. And yes teapublicants, your very existence is why the scientific community created contraceptives - for there is no life guard at the gene pool, so please remember to breed responsibly.
As reported by "motherjones":
President Barack Obama's decision to require most employers to cover birth control and insurers to offer it at no cost has created a firestorm of controversy. But the central mandate—that most employers have to cover preventative care for women—has been law for over a decade. This point has been completely lost in the current controversy, as Republican presidential candidates and social conservatives claim that Obama has launched a war on religious liberty and the Catholic Church.
Despite the longstanding precedent, "no one screamed" until now, said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law expert at George Washington University.
In December 2000, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that companies that provided prescription drugs to their employees but didn't provide birth control were in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on the basis of sex. That opinion, which the George W. Bush administration did nothing to alter or withdraw when it took office the next month, is still in effect today—and because it relies on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it applies to all employers with 15 or more employees. Employers that don't offer prescription coverage or don't offer insurance at all are exempt, because they treat men and women equally—but under the EEOC's interpretation of the law, you can't offer other preventative care coverage without offering birth control coverage, too.
"It was, we thought at the time, a fairly straightforward application of Title VII principles," a top former EEOC official who was involved in the decision told Mother Jones. "All of these plans covered Viagra immediately, without thinking, and they were still declining to cover prescription contraceptives. It's a little bit jaw-dropping to see what is going on now…There was some press at the time but we issued guidances that were far, far more controversial."
After the EEOC opinion was approved in 2000, reproductive rights groups and employees who wanted birth control access sued employers that refused to comply. The next year, in Erickson v. Bartell Drug Co., a federal court agreed with the EEOC's reasoning. Reproductive rights groups and others used that decision as leverage to force other companies to settle lawsuits and agree to change their insurance plans to include birth control. Some subsequent court decisions echoed Erickson, and some went the other way, but the rule (absent a Supreme Court decision) remained, and over the following decade, the percentage of employer-based plans offering contraceptive coverage tripled to 90 percent.
"We have used [the EEOC ruling] many times in negotiating with various employers," says Judy Waxman, the vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center. "It has been in active use all this time. [President Obama's] policy is only new in the sense that it covers employers with less than 15 employees and with no copay for the individual. The basic rule has been in place since 2000."
Not even religious employers were exempt from the impact of the EEOC decision. Although Title VII allows religious institutions to discriminate on religious grounds, it doesn't allow them to discriminate on the basis of sex—the kind of discrimination at issue in the EEOC ruling. DePaul University, the largest Roman Catholic university in America, added birth control coverage to its plans after receiving an EEOC complaint several years ago. (DePaul officials did not respond to a request for comment.)
As recently as last year, the EEOC was moderating a dispute between the administrators of Belmont Abbey, a Catholic institution in North Carolina, and several of its employees who had their birth control coverage withdrawn after administrators realized it was being offered. The Weekly Standard opined on the issue in 2009—more proof that religious employers were being asked to cover contraception far before the Obama administration issued its new rule on January 20 of this year.
"The current freakout," Judy Waxman says, is largely occurring because the EEOC policy "isn't as widely known…and it hasn't been uniformly enforced." But it's still unclear whether Obama's Health and Human Services department will enforce the new rule any more harshly than the old one. The administration has already given organizations a year-long grace period to comply. Asked to explain how the agency would make employers do what it wanted, an HHS official said that it would "enforce this the same way we enforce everything else in the law."
But it is important to remember that those who are most loudly criticizing the President and his policies are those whose policies and ideology created the economic mess he inherited.
There's a spectrum of anti-intellectualism on the right, and that's a fact. The teapublicants spectrum of ignorance runs the gamut.
Categories or levels of unlettered teapublicants:
Genuinely Smart but Wrong,
Deliberately Ignorant,
Un- or Mis-educated,
Incompetent and Incapable,
Genuinely Stupid.
For teapublicants, education and intellectualism is the enemy of their wafer-thin bumper-sticker marketing strategy, and in so doing they deny their base facts - which has become a matter of survival for the teapublican party.
Teapublicants are welcome to act like idiots as a means of pandering to their dumbass base. Just leave the rest of us alone. America needs more intelligence, and I don't think we can afford to wait for the reich-wing to catch up to speed.
Facts are, 97 percent of catholic women use contraceptives. The 2004 John Jay Report was based on a study of 10,667 sexual abuse allegations against 4,392 priests accused of engaging in sexual abuse of a minor between 1950 and 2002. One priest even abused 200 deaf boys.
This church has no right to telling anyone what to use and what not to use, and for the Holier than thou conservative jumping this band wagon, I say two things to you:
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ~ Mohandas Gandhi,
I respect those who oppose contraception and thus embrace the alternatives, overpopulation and starvation.
During the time of publication of this blog, BREAKING NEWS from the White House is that POTUS will re-align his administrations rule on contraceptives. Stay tuned!
UPDATE: 2/10/2012 13:07
POTUS Speaks:
"No woman’s health should depend on who she is or where she works or how much money she makes. Every woman should be in control of the decisions that affect her own health. Period." -President Obama
I find fault with all the right wing media outlets - based on the fact they just can't tell the truth. For instance, after POTUS' speech today (noon EST) regarding the backlash from teabaggers and catholic pedophiles alike - these media muckrakers are saying that POTUS "walked back" his contraceptive mandate. That is just not true.
Nothing was actually changed if you read the mandate and comprehend what the President has said. What he did was clarify that women's health care coverage will continue to be affordable to ALL women regardless of catholic church opposition. He actually, used intelligence and tactful demeanor, and told the pedophilia catholic church and radical teapublicants to kiss his Presidential posterior!
Fox Host: Free Birth Control Is Liberal Conspiracy To ‘Eradicate The Poor’
You have got to be kidding right?!?!?!
Greg Gutfeld Faux News
Public health officials and women’s rights groups are cheering therecent recommendation of the Institute of Medicine that “health insurers should pay for a range of services for women at no cost, including birth control, counseling on sexually transmitted diseases, and AIDS screening.”
But unsurprisingly, many on the right immediately lashed out at the decision, denouncing it as “feminist pork” ortantamount to government-sponsoredabortion. Some particularly vile reactions came from Fox News, where host Greg Gutfeld said eliminating birth control co-pays was part of a much more sinister leftist plot:
GUTFELD: If you’re talking about free birth control, who’s going to use free birth control? The people who can’t afford it. So the left has figured out a way to eradicate the poor, and it’s by eradicating the poor!
On another Fox Newssegment, the contributor and host decided that birth control wasn’t necessary if women would “just stop having irresponsible sex.” Fox News’ America’s Newsroom’s Heather Childers discussed the IOM recommendation with Sandy Rios, president of Family-PAC Federal. Rios personally attacked a female physician who supported the decision as “a disgrace to our gender.” She then proposed that women don’t really need birth control, saying, “Let women stop having irresponsible sex - Let’s stop making excuses and providing a way to get women out of trouble when they should be responsible in their behavior.”
Childers quickly agreed that it’s “not too much to ask for everyone to stop having irresponsible sex.”
In the U.S., 15.3 million women use hormonal birth control, which is one of the most frequently-prescribed medications in America. Rios’ accusation is ironic given that most women think they are behaving responsibly precisely by using birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But Fox News apparently believes those 15.3 million just need to stop sleeping around.
Contraception improves women’s health and reduces the need for abortions, but the cost is often prohibitive for low-income women. The IOM’s ruling opens the door for government-subsidized birth control, which a recent national poll found 78 percent of Americans support.
We here at NFTOS are never amazed of the chatter that comes from Faux News, but even this rheotric is over the top.
