Democrats and their supporters in the media are leaning into an election-year fear-mongering campaign about Republican "bans" on reproductive rights. In their redefinition, any limitation on abortion throughout pregnancy, even in the third trimester, is a "ban." Even more disingenuous, Democrats have also accused Republicans of threatening birth control and, most recently, IVF. Welcome to the political silly season. Both parties have people on their fringes who take extreme positions, but that doesn't make it the party's position or long-term objective. And both parties have political consultants who know how to misconstrue the intention behind certain pieces of legislation When the Left claims that Republicans threaten access to contraception, it points to Republican opposition to mandates and bills that force some people (employers, taxpayers) to pay for other people's contraception.
"There's no evidence that Republicans want to ban or restrict access to birth control."
SENATE REPUBLICANS BLOCK MARKEY EFFORT TO PASS HIS LEGISLATION TO PROTECT RIGHT TO CONTRACEPTION
Justice Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization"which overturned Roe v. Wade"in which he urged the Supreme Court to "reconsider" its substantive due process precedents, including Griswold.
en.wikipedia.org
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects the liberty of married couples to use contraceptives without government restriction.
www.rollingstone.com
On Thursday, right-wing activist Chris Rufo " the man largely responsible for engineering widespread conservative moral panic about "critical race theory" and so-called "woke" politics " responded to an X, formerly Twitter, post from writer Michael Shermer highlighting Republican opposition to contraception. Shermer's post quoted a 2023 video from the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, that said "conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose, and ending recreational sex and senseless use of birth control pills."
Rufo didn't see the issue. "So what?" he wrote. "The pill causes health problems for many women. Recreational sex' is a large part of the reason we have so many single-mother households, which drives poverty, crime, and dysfunction. The point of sex is to create children"this is natural, normal, and good."
"The birth control pharmaceutical propaganda has been so successful that women think their only options are to dose themselves with cancer-causing hormones, or have 50 babies or have multiple abortions," The Daily Wire's Candace Owens wrote earlier this month.
www.rollingstone.com
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)
In the top spot is current GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, who " as Rolling Stone's Tessa Stuart reported " has engaged in a lengthy campaign against birth control both in Congress and outside of it. Johnson has argued (incorrectly) that certain kinds of birth control actually are methods of abortion. "The morning after pill, as we know, is an abortifacient," he said last month.
RFK Jr's VP Pick Is a Fervent Critic of IVF: 'One of the Biggest Lies' About Women's Fertility
www.mediaite.com
Meanwhile, according to actual science and not just Jeff's vibes:
States with more restrictive abortion policy climate have higher total maternal mortality
sph.tulane.edu
Republican policy is bad for women. Period.
Here's the thing: No state"and no federal legislation"has targeted IVF in an attempt to ban the practice. There are pending so-called "personhood" bills in 13 states, which would recognize embryos as people, as would the federal Life at Conception Act, which just over half of Republicans in Congress support. But it's unlikely that such state-level legislation will pass without including exceptions for IVF, as the Senate version of the federal bill does. Furthermore, many Republicans, from presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump to Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who has sponsored the Right to Try IVF Act, have made their support for IVF clear.
When Tammy Duckworth recently brought a bill to the floor to prot IVF nationwide, guess what happened?:
DESPITE CLAIMING TO SUPPORT IVF, SENATE REPUBLICANS BLOCK DUCKWORTH BILL TO PROTECT IVF ACCESS NATIONWIDE
This happened just to day:
Senate Democrats' attempt to protect IVF in Kansas voted down
kansasreflector.com
Once "personhood" bills are passed on the state level, Republicans will push to pass one on a federal level. Who in their right mind thinks that people who don't want to allow abortion in the case of rape and ------ are going to carve out expections in personhood bills for embryos created through IVF? The anti-abortion actiivists controlling the Republican party are by and large anti-abortion purists. As they themselves proclaim, they believe in the sanctity of all human life. They also believe, again by their own admission, it is their moral duty to save this country by turning their beliefs in the law of the land that all Americans must follow. That is the reality, not a myth. American women and the people who love them ignore that at all of our own peril.
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