One of my colleagues, Dan Burns over at Minnesota Progressive Project (disclaimer, I also write for them) wrote an interesting piece today on the MN GOP assault on Planned Parenthood.
You can read it here - and I suggest you do. Not only preventive health care for women would be adversely affected; PP provides health care services for men as well. That men receive care is something that I suspect few MN GOP members or supporters know.
I felt my comment to the Dan Burns piece merited a repeat here as a separate post:
Republicans hate sex, and want to stamp it out. That explains their
position on not only Planned Parenthood regarding abortion, but also
their anti-contraception position.
If that means to stop people having sex, you have to let them get
sick in their ‘lady parts’ and die, fine with Republicans, so long as
that sick-suffer-and-die and/or go bankrupt with medical bills stuff
only happens to women. In the apparent thinking of the right, human
beings are men, male is the default basic setting or version, and women
are an aberration. That is what is suggested by the continued funding
of boner pills and prostate care, etc. for men remaining in place would
show.
Of course, very few Republicans appear to know that men are also provided services at planned parenthood.
It is what was clearly the intent of Republican mega-donor Foster
Friess believed when he suggested an aspirin between women’s knees was
all the contraception you required — just DON’T HAVE SEX. Sex and
gender scare the right, even as it makes raging hypocrites of them.
I would go so far as to argue that at least a part of the antagonism
on the right for Hispanics (legal or otherwise) is that they have a
higher birthrate than other ethnic groups — certainly higher than the
white Right. That must mean they are having S-E-X!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A desire to eradicate sex, and a hate and fear attitude for sex also
goes a long way towards explaining the right wing antipathy towards any
gender issue, particularly trans in bathrooms, gay marriage, any LGBT
protections including from bullying, and a part of the right’s
resistance to hate crime law.
Guns and gun violence are fine with the right, but NO SEX or SEXUALITY.
I would argue that the right is incapable of engaging in sane risk
assessment, and so long as they have this hate-on for human sex and
sexuality, they won’t appropriately consider health risks any more than
they do other risks. That reflects a truly f*cked set of priorities and values.
It puts the ultimate hypocrisy to claiming to be the pro-family and family values party. It is just one more way in which the right cannot govern effectively or wisely.