Republicans Hate Women

You may remember that Indiana was pulling their contributions to Planned Parenthood and that this would eliminate primary healthcare for approximately 10,000 low income women in the state. Planned Parenthood was continuing to provide services using donations to pay for them, but starting today has had to make large cutbacks in Indiana.  Rachel Maddow had a good segment on this tonight.  The Indiana action is clearly against federal medicaid laws so it may be pulled back after a judge rules, but until then, the Republicans are denying health care to its citizens.  I believe that President Obama should cut all Medicaid funding to the state of Indiana. That will hurt people, but it is also about the only way to stop these idiots from more of these actions. My understanding is that since the federal Medicaid administrator has already found this illegal, the administration could cut off funds immediately.  Every time someone calls them on their actions, the republicans back down, but they won’t back down if no one calls them. Governor Mitch Daniels makes the wall of shame for his part in this.

Ryan Fattman (I’ll bypass the obvious jokes), state GOP Rep. from Massachusetts thinks undocumented women who are raped should be afraid to talk to the police.

My though is that is someone is here illegally, they should be afraid to come forward. If you do it the right way, you don’t have to be concerned about these things.

Fattman is in favor of the new federal immigration program (Secure Communities Program) that would have police turn undocumented rape victims directly over to the government for deportation.

So, kudos to Obama for allowing this type of assinine program to come forward. There’s been plenty of studies showing that the best way to reduce crime in immigrant neighborhoods is to build trust between the authorities and the community.  I guess the president thinks that he can capture the Hispanic vote no matter what.

I also have been reading about a Chicago area DA who is charging a women with illegal recording because she tried to report a policeman groping her and internal affairs wouldn’t file the report. So to me the logical extension of this type of law is that a few bad apple policemen and employers will start raping and stealing from people and threaten them with deportation if they resist.  I know this is probably happening anyway, but no need to help these guys out. 

Anyone care to wager on the odds of Fattman hiring an illegal maid for a bit of rape?

The state of Indiana has passed a law making changes to Indiana Medicaid, including banning funding to Planned Parenthood.  As we know, very little of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion related (3% from the Planned Parenthood 2008-9 annual report), so the effect of this change is to deny basic healthcare services to many women.  In fact, according to the Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood and other family planning centers are the primary or even exclusive sources of health care for many women.

The Obama administration is pushing back. HHS sent a letter to Indiana informing them that their plan will improperly bar beneficiaries from receiving services.  Specifically, Medicaid Administrator Donald M. Berwick wrote, “Medicaid programs may not exclude qualified health care providers from providing services that are funded under the program because of a provider’s scope of practice.” If Indiana chooses to continue down this path, then the federal government could conceivable cut off all Medicaid funding to Indiana.

Obama has shown time after time that he is not willing to stand firm on any issues and is always looking to find a compromise, but my fervent desire is that he will decide to use this case to break that pattern.  I know that many people will be harmed if Medicaid is shut down temporarily in Indiana, but every time he caves in to these right wing wackoes, many other people are harmed and the wackoes are encouraged to come up with even more harmful plans.  This is a heartless numbers game of picking your stands where they do the least harm. In this particular case, Obama can stand firm against a bad idea and limit the damage to one state.  He should be able to sell it as yet another republican attack on Medicaid since that is exactly what this is. 

Indiana has 60 days to appeal, but so far they haven’t shown much interest in changing their law. We will monitor this one over the summer and update it as new changes occur.

A republican from Kansas (where else) who thinks that rape is pretty much like a flat tire. We should just plan ahead and carry a spare.  Here’s the exact quote:

DeGraaf: We do need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?

Bollier: And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with a pregnancy”

DeGraaf: I have spare tire on my car. I also have life insurance. I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for.

This was part of a debate on further limiting abortion rights in Kansas. If I understand it correctly, DeGraaf and his cronies want to ban insurance companies from covering any abortions. So that kind of makes his comment about having life insurance a complete load of crap.