Rand Paul: Rights And Liberties For Me... But Not For Thee, Not If You Are Female

Are any women out there thinking Rand Paul might be the presidential candidate for them, based on his emphasis of the often-mentioned "right to be left alone" by the government? If so, you'd better read what Zoë Carpenter at The Nation has to say:

“The right to be left alone is the most cherished of rights,” Kentucky senator and presidential aspirant Rand Paul said over the weekend in San Francisco. He was there to sell himself to the young tech elite as a civil-liberties crusader; the only candidate willing to take an uncompromising stand against government surveillance. He cares so deeply about privacy that he’s planning to filibuster the renewal of parts of the Patriot Act.

"What every woman really needs is
one of my fingers." - Sen. Rand Paul

But the leader of “the leave-me-the-hell-alone coalition” is simultaneously, albeit more quietly, arguing that women should have little privacy in their healthcare decisions. “The government does have some role in our lives,” Paul said at a summit organized by the anti-choice Susan B Anthony List in April, by which he meant making abortion illegal. Paul describes himself as “100 percent pro-life.” Along with all of the other Republican presidential candidates he supports a bill that resurfaced this week in the House that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

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Oh, yes: Rights for him; no rights for you. Women of reproductive age, take note...

Wednesday Morning, 3 4 A.M. — Rmoney Still Doesn't Believe You Should Have Contraceptives As Part Of Your Government-Backed Health Care Plan

Thank you, Messrs. S & G, for an album title that has been meaningful to me more times than I care to count. For an hour or more, I was stuck with no exit from a dream of my Vietnam days, a horrifying variation on an English country house mystery except it was half a world away, with the inhabitants of the house... American GIs like me and an assortment of Asians... being killed off one by one, not in combat but rather murdered horribly by an unknown serial killer, and I was determined to stop the murders. Except... I have no "Vietnam days" in my past. IRL, I never went to Vietnam; I was 4F draft status for good reason. I've never even watched more than a couple of Vietnam war movies, and those under pressure from friends. Uncle Sam never taught me hand-to-hand combat skills, though I had them in this brain-driven movie of a past I never experienced. If anything good came out of my dream, it was that I learned that war is every bit as devastating, horrifying and gut-wrenchingly destructive as I ever imagined... or in this case dreamed. I'm very glad the Vietnam War... the real one as well as the one I dreamed... is behind us. Tomorrow night, I may think twice before taking that very effective OTC cough suppressant before bed... it's lovely not to be kept awake coughing, but not at any price!

So... "tree full of owls" ain't got nothin' on me. I checked my email, the usual assortment of serious political material, utter political crap, Planned Parenthood mailers (I love those, because they tell me that Rmoney hasn't gotten rid of the organization that is life's blood for millions of American women... yet), etc. One of the Planned Parenthood mailers, from the Action Fund, was Executive Vice President Dawn Laguena's take on Rmoney's truly frightening intentions if he becomes president: I'd rather go through that awful dream a dozen times than have even one woman, let alone millions, subjected to the deliberate evisceration of an org on which she depends for health care. Here's Vice President Laguena, from the letter:

Mitt Romney said a lot at tonight's debate that I disagreed with. No surprise there. But I am stunned by this brazen lie:

"I don't believe employers should tell someone whether they can have contraceptive care or not."

I shouldn't be shocked, but I am — I can't believe that Romney would be so dishonest when speaking directly to undecided voters. He has been outspoken in his support for the Blunt amendment, which would give bosses the power to deny women coverage for birth control. And just last month, Paul Ryan was asked about the birth control coverage requirement. His response? "It will be gone. I can guarantee you that."

And tonight Romney went on national television and lied about where he stands. ...

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"I don't believe employers should tell someone whether they can have contraceptive care or not." That's our Mitt!

In a completely different manner of speaking from that of Mr. Rmoney, neither do I: contraception is absolutely middling, mainstream health care, essential to women in career roles or in stay-at-home Mom roles. This is not rocket science. One way and another, women must have contraception available to them, and as for whether the government should order that it be provided, it should, on a simple economic basis if no other. Contraception costs vastly less money than unintended children... the issue here is that children at the wrong time can disrupt the life of a woman and her entire family. A woman, actually a family, but overwhelmingly an individual woman, must be fully empowered to plan when and under what circumstances she bears children. To deny a woman control of that choice is to impose upon her second-class citizenship... actually, second-class humanity. I wish the fundagelicals would think about that when they proclaim their intention to decide for everyone else whether and when to have children. "In Adam's fall, we sinned all..." unless, just maybe, you don't believe there was an Adam, or was ever a commandment from G*d to do whatever fundagelicals tell you.

But contraception has to do with SEX, and Mr. Rmoney knows his base well: they would never have sex, except to procreate... unless of course it's a second Wednesday night in a month with a full moon; see Rule 142857-B. In any case, SEX is bad, or at least SEX is bad when women or gays or non-Christians or unmarried people or anyone not just like the Rmoneys have it. So they feel called by G*d to stop SEX under those circumstances if they possibly can. One would think that as self-proclaimed Perfect Americans, they would have more commitment to personal freedoms. But no. They don't.

"I don't believe employers should tell someone whether they can have contraceptive care or not."

Mitt is a scary guy, never scarier than when he threatens to intervene in your sex life.

Unlike Mittens, I don't believe employers should tell someone... pretty much ever... that they can't have contraception through their employee medical insurance plan.

There has to be a line in the sand. Restrictions on abortion were probably inevitable (if still deeply, perniciously wrong); restrictions on contraception are outside the pale.

Send Mitt home on Nov. 6. Don't he and Ann have some babies to make, or something?

(Jeebus, now it's almost 5:00 A.M. ...)

In Case You Didn't Know...

... let Mother tell you. That would be Mother Jones's David Corn, in his article, "Romney Invested in Medical-Waste Firm That Disposed of Aborted Fetuses, Government Documents Show." Like most non-fundagelical Republicans, Romney is a damned hypocrite on the abortion issue. Be sure to tell your fundie friends and colleagues.

Federal Judge Blocks Draconian MississippiAbortion Law

Reuters has the basics:

(Reuters) - A federal judge on Sunday temporarily blocked Mississippi from enforcing a new law that requires doctors who perform abortions at the state's sole abortion clinic to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

The state law, challenged last week by the Jackson Women's Health Organization, has threatened to make Mississippi the only U.S. state without an abortion clinic. It was set to take effect on Sunday.

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The law signed by Republican Governor Phil Bryant in April requires all doctors performing abortions at a Mississippi clinic to be certified in obstetrics and gynecology, as well as to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

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Mississippi is a state that seems to me never to have learned the outcome of the Civil War, or possibly even the American Revolution, or at least the Constitutional Convention. Mississippi's predilections notwithstanding, federal law on abortion, beginning with Roe v. Wade which established a woman's "fundamental right" (i.e., constitutionally protected right) to an abortion prior to fetus viability, will surely find a state law effectively eliminating access to abortion for the women of an entire state unconstitutional. But as far as I can tell, no minds will be changed, and state legislatures will continue cranking out draconian, unconstitutional anti-abortion laws until the republic falls. We can all hope that won't happen next week.