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| This is what the Commonwealth of Virginia would mandate for every woman who seeks an abortion--no matter when she seeks such treatment or for what reasons. |
On my days off I catch up on a lot of reading. This morning I came across comments to articles that my mind linked together. The comments followed articles on the USCCB religious freedom crusade and for me took this crusade to a deeper level. The first comment follows this article at Religion dispatches. The article by Sarah Posner, looks at Republican Representative Issa's stacked deck of a congressional hearing on the HHS insurance mandate. The committee testimony and participants were virtually all male and one and all against covering birth control. Here's the comment from 'wanda':
I left the religious right and the GOP in 1976 because I heard their messages loud and clear! Those messages are: Helping people is hurting them. Hurting people is helping them. Women are baby killers. I've been amazed that middle class Americans haven't listened until now. The GOP hates women with a passion and women who vote for them or legislate for them must be out of their minds.
Keep the bold sentences in mind when reading the next two comments from this NCR article on Cardinal Dolan's response to President Obama's insurance compromise. The article was written by Francis Rocca of Catholic News Services. It generated a great deal of good comment, but these two were two of the best:
It's called 'object rape' —
Submitted by AileenUSA (not verified) on Feb. 15, 2012.
It's called 'object rape' — sexually penetrating a woman against her will with a foreign object — ostensibly to "educate" her. It's actually an attempt to intimidate, humiliate and punish her for seeking an abortion. It's no different than the mindset of a common street rapist toward women.
In addition, there is no exception in this object rape law for women or girls who are already victims of rape, incest, (not even for a female internally injured from the violence of rape whom they will happily violate again) or for a woman or young girl who is seeking to terminate a pregnancy that is literally killing her. Imagine a woman or young girl who has endured a law enforcement rape kit collection, then having to be violated a second time with a foreign object before she can be given pills to prevent a possible pregnancy resulting from that rape. That is now Virginia law which the uber-Catholic governor is eager to sign.
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But the culture warriors believe that the end justifies the means in their unholy war — the worshipful "sacrifice" of denigrating and traumatizing the already born with state mandated rape is the end result of single-issue embryo-fetal idolatry. This is the culture warriors' supposed "right to freedom of religion".
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Aileen is one of my all time favorites at NCR and this might be the hardest hitting comment I've ever read from her. However, the subject she's discussing, Virginia's Personhood bill, deserves this kind of hard hitting commentary. And additionally it perfectly illustrates Wanda's point about our current Republican party. Their core platform does seem to have three foundational beams:
Helping people is hurting them. Hurting people is helping them. Women are baby killers.
I would hope that US citizens see through the verbiage and get to the heart of the matter. The culture wars are about returning to the days where a woman's contribution to the economy was the production of workers. This message can be found all over the Catholic world, from Gotti Tedeschi's (Director of the Vatican Bank) stupid rant about the European need to out birth the Islamic world, to the bishops in the Philippines threatening to excommunicate legislators who vote for the reproductive rights bill, to the USCCB insistence on marriage as only between a man and a woman, at heart of all of this is an atavistic need to get European and Anglo Catholics to have more babies. The only way that happens is to make sure women have no choice about it.
The world doesn't need more babies. The world needs more adults willing to find long term solutions for the babies the world already has. Those solutions are not coming from our bishops or the Republican party--and having written that, I will also admit I have no real faith those solutions will come from another Obama administration. My only hope is that with a second term and no possibility for a third term, President Obama will start acting like the man who promised us the hope for the entire world, but so far has delivered a couple of city blocks.
In addition, there is no exception in this object rape law for women or girls who are already victims of rape, incest, (not even for a female internally injured from the violence of rape whom they will happily violate again) or for a woman or young girl who is seeking to terminate a pregnancy that is literally killing her. Imagine a woman or young girl who has endured a law enforcement rape kit collection, then having to be violated a second time with a foreign object before she can be given pills to prevent a possible pregnancy resulting from that rape. That is now Virginia law which the uber-Catholic governor is eager to sign.
.
But the culture warriors believe that the end justifies the means in their unholy war — the worshipful "sacrifice" of denigrating and traumatizing the already born with state mandated rape is the end result of single-issue embryo-fetal idolatry. This is the culture warriors' supposed "right to freedom of religion".
*************************************************
Aileen is one of my all time favorites at NCR and this might be the hardest hitting comment I've ever read from her. However, the subject she's discussing, Virginia's Personhood bill, deserves this kind of hard hitting commentary. And additionally it perfectly illustrates Wanda's point about our current Republican party. Their core platform does seem to have three foundational beams:
Helping people is hurting them. Hurting people is helping them. Women are baby killers.
I would hope that US citizens see through the verbiage and get to the heart of the matter. The culture wars are about returning to the days where a woman's contribution to the economy was the production of workers. This message can be found all over the Catholic world, from Gotti Tedeschi's (Director of the Vatican Bank) stupid rant about the European need to out birth the Islamic world, to the bishops in the Philippines threatening to excommunicate legislators who vote for the reproductive rights bill, to the USCCB insistence on marriage as only between a man and a woman, at heart of all of this is an atavistic need to get European and Anglo Catholics to have more babies. The only way that happens is to make sure women have no choice about it.
The world doesn't need more babies. The world needs more adults willing to find long term solutions for the babies the world already has. Those solutions are not coming from our bishops or the Republican party--and having written that, I will also admit I have no real faith those solutions will come from another Obama administration. My only hope is that with a second term and no possibility for a third term, President Obama will start acting like the man who promised us the hope for the entire world, but so far has delivered a couple of city blocks.
Personhood bill. A woman who is getting an abortion for whatever reason must now submit to an vaginal ultra-sound, which is an intrusion by the state into her body. By law the Doctor has to order this procedure and she must follow the law. This is to be signed into the law by Virginia's governor, who by the way has made no bones about being available as a VP candidate for the Republican nominee. Who are these people and what is going on? Talk about big government by the party that claims they are the party of small government. How in the world did we end up with this issue front and center when having a job and feeding their families is the concern of most people. Why this attack on women's health? Humanae Vitae allows artificial birth control for medical reasons.