At least he didn’t say “gift from God”

Why are we even thinking about new federal restrictions on abortion when we have so many broader and more urgent issues to deal with? You don’t need an explanation beyond “It was an Arizona House Republican’s idea.” It’s as obvious an occurrence as legislation from a California Senate Democrat that would pour more subsidies into electric cars. I guess Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) is not one to be original, because not only has he written this bill, he defended its original version this way, before the House Rules Committee changed it:

. . . my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject — because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.

“. . . the incidence of rape . . . are very low?” Subject-verb agreement. Learn it, live it. (In fairness, I can’t tell if this is Franks’s mistake or that of the Washington Post copy desk.)

Anyway, the purpose of the bill is, essentially, to outlaw abortion after the point at which the fetus can feel pain. That apparently is after 22 weeks of pregnancy, although based on my cursory research, actual medical professionals have varied opinions on that and might even tell you that the point of pain differs for every fetus. The original bill would only have made an exception for saving the mother’s life; the House Rules changes add exceptions for rape and incest of a minor, if those crimes have been reported expediently.

I do want to emphasize that the woman seeking the abortion would not be subject to prosecution if the law were violated, just the doctor who performed it. Also, the removal of a stillborn fetus would not count as an abortion. So this legislation isn’t nearly as dumb as it could be, when you think about the history of abortion legislation in America and abroad. What is as dumb as it could be is the fact that Franks is bothering with abortion legislation at all, when he should be well aware that the overall optics are, in every sense, terrible.

This is my ideal alternative to abortion, which nobody who isn’t professionally researching the idea seems to care about. (To shorten the bioethics debate, I would say that I’d only want it used for women who would otherwise have sought an abortion.) And since nobody in Congress cares about it, let’s stick to things they’ll understand: This bill isn’t going anywhere, and I don’t just mean the Senate. This bill is a good way to get some money flowing from pro-life and pro-choice groups, but it won’t accomplish much else. Nobody else wants to think about it, because the topic is exhausting.

Unfortunately, news watchers have been put into a position where they have to think about it, just because it’s made headlines. You’ll find that most of them consider rape and incest equally acceptable exceptions, and would likely have expected those in the bill in all of its versions. That they weren’t reflects poorly on Franks and his party, and I don’t care if he’s unconcerned with that matter.

Whose life is it anyway?

With every addition to a presidential race comes a replenishment of the abortion debate, and the addition of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to the GOP ticket is no exception. I would normally try to avoid bringing it up myself, but Ryan’s position on abortion is one that must be addressed, if only as a corrective for those who might aim to hold a meaningful White House position (yeah, I went there), or if he is genuinely worried about his standing with women. Because if he doesn’t rethink two of the bills he co-sponsored relating to abortion, it might not get much better.

The first bill would define human life as beginning at the moment of fertilization, rather than the moment of conception, which in my opinion is a shaky enough definition as it is. The second . . . well, I’ll just pull the quote for you:

Another would let hospitals decline to perform abortions, based on religious conviction, even if the life of the pregnant woman is at stake.

You know, because he’s pro-life and all.

In the long run, this probably won’t mean more than a few extra million in donations from the usual pro-life suspects. Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), who will have actual policy-making authority – unless the Senate is deadlocked 50-50, in which case Ryan, as president of the Senate, could cast a deciding vote – believes in exceptions not only for risks to the mother’s life, but in the cases of rape and incest. Their campaign spokespeople have been responding to attacks on his position by reminding voters how bad President Obama’s economic policies have been for women, which is a pretty good tactic. That’s how we can say “consistent” and “Romney” in the same sentence.

But you can bet Ryan isn’t the only office-holder who believes this stuff. A federal definition of human life, without any evident consultation with anyone who has ever studied medicine or biology, is as far from “limited government” as you can get. Those same people who have studied medicine will remind you that every doctor swears to do no harm; declining to perform an abortion that could save the mother’s life, however rare such an event is, is doing her harm. If you’re not willing to check your personal beliefs at the ER door, don’t be a doctor.

Nobody needs to paint Ryan’s positions as a war on women. They’re a war on the act of leaving medical decisions to the professionals – I don’t define people who refuse to perform medical procedures on religious or other non-medical grounds as “professionals” – and the patients. And they want this guy and people like him to reform Medicare? His approach doesn’t bode well for that end.

Just put a cork in it already

Can you believe this goddamn contraception rule is still a story? I honestly thought it would have flamed out by Friday. But that’s what happens when Republicans don’t realize they’ve been manipulated into such a ridiculous debate by their biggest opponent. Indeed, President Obama has performed an excellent bait-and-switch; the ease with which he found a “compromise” is enough to convince me that it was his plan all along.

The compromise is that instead of requiring religious employers themselves to cover contraceptives in employees’ health plans, the onus would be placed on the insurance companies, and the employers would not have to offer it for free, as they would have been under the previous rule. That’s not good enough for Catholic lobby groups or a number of high-profile Republicans, who point out that they’d still be paying for the health plan. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) went further, hoping to accommodate “conscientious objection” to birth control, even for non-religious employers.

I’ll start with Blunt, just to get him out of the way: No. No. No. No. And more no. That is absurd. By that logic, almost any form of workplace discrimination could be justified in the name of religion. It may not be an establishment of a state religion, but it does place it above civil law outside of explicitly religious settings, which is absolutely intolerable. Stop yourself before you explode from your own hot air.

Now, back to the stuff that’s worth more than one paragraph (barely). The GOP has already lost in the court of public opinion. Actual Catholics appear to have outgrown the church’s positions on bedroom issues; it’s the establishment who decides which positions are politically beneficial to those who can’t look past them. The idea that Obama is violating religious freedom is a more sensible sound bite, but if his first plan went ahead, it doesn’t sound like the people at the heart of this rule would care.

Politically, this is the first way the Republicans have lost: not seeing the forest for the large and fruitful (read: with money) trees, if you will. The second way is staying hooked on this issue and seemingly forgetting that this election, and the future of the Republican Party, was supposed to be based on an improvement on Democratic economics. In fact, the third way they’ve lost is economically. Birth control is cheaper for everyone than an unwanted baby.

So at this point they have a choice. They can continue on with this pathetic crusade and look like some sort of MoveOn.org caricature. Or they can get back to what all Americans want to hear. And they’d better do it soon; their time to be reasonable again is running out quickly.

Cliff Stearns vs. the 3%

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL). A lot of you have been following the ongoing story about the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation’s decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood (which has since been reversed, sort of), and his name might have come up in the articles you read. That’s because he was the one who decided to probe Planned Parenthood, believing they might have used some government funds to pay for abortions, which is illegal, and Komen’s new rule was to bar funds from going to organizations under investigation by the U.S. government.

If anything, Komen said it all when it backtracked on its earlier announcement:

Komen said it will now amend its new funding criteria to “ensure that politics has no place in our grant process.” The guidelines will make clear that a group under investigation will be disqualified only if the probe is “criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.”

According to Planned Parenthood’s own literature, abortions only comprise 3% of the services they provide throughout the year; the others include contraception, screenings for women’s cancers, pregnancy and STD testing, sex education, voluntary sterilizations and treatment for menopause. For Stearns or anyone else to prove that they are understating this number, they would have to conduct an audit to which all of Planned Parenthood’s 820 affiliates would be subject. And even then, there would only be one reason to bother with this: to prove that he really doesn’t like abortion.

Well, fine. I don’t begrudge anyone’s pro-life position as long as they don’t shove them down anyone else’s throat. That’s exactly what Stearns is doing by going on this jihad against Planned Parenthood. The organization is not required to submit its financial statements to the government just to prove that no taxpayer money ever covered an abortion. By raising this specter, he is putting necessary health services for women on the chopping block. That so many Americans saw through this clearly enough to raise $3 million for Planned Parenthood shows how well that worked.

The point is this: The majority of Americans want their elected officials to do things that matter, and only a sliver of them put defunding abortions above jobs, housing and the deficit. If Stearns is one of those people, he’s wasting his time and that of Florida’s 6th congressional district holding his seat.

Sebelius and Obama’s Plan F

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and, by extension, President Obama. They’ve caught a lot of heat from the left from their decision to keep girls 17 and under from buying the morning-after pill, or Plan B, over the counter. They haven’t been able to salve those burns with approving nods from the social right, which is quite fascinating. Perhaps they’re starting to develop a disdain for political pandering equal to mine, which is all this decision seems like, as it flies in the face of the science coming from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where the actual scientists are.

Sebelius’s main argument was that girls younger than 17 might not be able to understand the labeling or usage instructions on the box, putting their health at risk. I would remind her that this is why we continue to have live human beings manning the counters at pharmacies, instead of automated check-outs. They’re there to explain the medication. And should a girl be too shy to ask in public, she can always go on teh intarwebz. There’s also her contention that a young girl could simply pick up a box when she spots it next to the gum, where it never is. Clearly she thinks all teenage girls are illiterate and/or just plain stupid.

As for Obama? “I will say this, as the father of two young daughters: I think it is important for us to make sure that, you know, we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine.” He means this, basically. How many times do I have to tell you people that emotions don’t make good policy?

All this decision will do is make parents feel slightly better about not educating their daughters about the importance of protection, not to mention not having sex before you’re prepared for the implications. (And how long will that last before they become grandparents at 45?) If you don’t teach them, don’t come crying to the government when they learn the hard way. Sebelius and Obama could have at least insulated themselves against the onslaught of criticism by including exemptions for rape or incest. Those aren’t evident here.

Next: Obese children will now be forbidden to buy chocolate without a prescription, which may tempt them when they spot it next to the broccoli shelf. Prescriptions will be provided by phys ed teachers. If you don’t have one, eat your damn broccoli.

All “DeMint-ed” jokes have been exhausted

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and his contribution to the congressional Republican crusade against abortion. Of course, nowadays they’re too chickenshit to say they’re trying to take away abortion rights themselves, only that they want to make sure taxpayers don’t have to pay for it. Short of forcibly removing Medicare checks from the hands of abortion providers, they’ve done about everything they could, within constitutional limits, to that end. DeMint’s solution? Screw the limits.

His amendment to a recent appropriations bill “would bar discussion of abortion via telemedicine, the practice in which a doctor and patient communicate remotely, via, for example, satellite, video-conference or the Internet.” This would specifically include discussions in which the doctor advises the patient to take RU-486, “the abortion pill,” a frequent occurrence when the two parties cannot be in the same room together. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) proposed a similar amendment in the House, on these grounds:

Doctors at Planned Parenthood have been using telemedicine conferencing to prescribe RU 486, commonly known as the abortion drug. These doctors are not present when the woman takes the drug and have never had any personal contact with the woman. The presence of this drug has led to more taking of human life.

I would remind both of these men that the woman is aware of this phenomenon, yet still considers herself capable of making the decision. But feminist-tinted appeals have never worked in this debate. Instead, let’s count how many amendments to the Constitution this violates:

• 1st: It would restrict the right of a doctor to voice his or her medical judgment when it is distasteful to those who oppose abortion.
• 4th: Enforcement of such a law would likely constitute an illegal search.
• 9th: The Constitution does not enumerate the right of the federal government to make such a law, therefore it is retained by the people.

What won’t these people ignore on the off chance that one penny of federal money will expedite someone’s abortion process? Any court would call this amendment an absolute mess. It is nothing short of sickening to see duly elected lawmakers allow personal social conservatism to override across-the-board legal conservatism. They can’t have both.

Disposal Day #78: It’s ‘borting in America

STORY #1: This Nixon isn’t a crook

Kudos to Gov. Jay Nixon (D-MO) for allowing what may be the least offensive state-level abortion law I’ve heard yet to go forward. (He didn’t sign it, which is allowed by the Missouri Constitution after 45 days; perhaps he didn’t want it to look like an endorsement?) The law would allow doctors to determine the point of viability of a fetus, after which point abortion would only be allowed if the woman’s life or a “major bodily function” were at risk. General health would no longer be an exception.

I call this the least offensive law, compared to others, because it restricts late-term abortions to the ones that would face the least opposition from the pro-life lobby, while opening up the most defensible abortions for the pro-choice lobby. In addition, Nixon doesn’t expect the punitive fines and license removals to be enforced much. I don’t expect Article I, Section 15 of the Missouri Constitution to permit that.

STORY #2: Just a heartbeat away

Meanwhile, in Ohio, a similar law was passed by the state Senate. That’s not the one we’re going to discuss here. On Wednesday, the state House passed another bill that would forbid abortions from being conducted after a doctor detected a heartbeat in the fetus. As of that day, the Senate had not decided when they were going to take up that bill. Is that because even they find it hard to swallow? Good for them.

The reason I prefer allowing doctors to determine the point of viability is because they know; unless everyone in the Ohio legislature has a medical background, I see no reason for any restrictions to be more arbitrary than that. Considering only 1% of abortions occur even after 21 weeks, I’d say the state has limited them enough. They’re never going to get anywhere if they waste their time coming up with new limits.

STORY #3: Meanwhile, across town . . .

Finally, in New York City, the constitutionality of a law requiring crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) to give a full rundown of their offerings (and the lack thereof) is now in question. Backers say CPCs have duped pregnant women into thinking they’ll get genuine medical care; opponents say the law “coerces speech.” They have a point, but if CPCs really are dead against this, I would remind them of the possibility of many dubious false advertising lawsuits. They could just make the law irrelevant.

Riders on the shutdown storm

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). I’m only naming him because he was the first person to be quoted in favor of a rider tacked onto the budget bill that would have defunded Planned Parenthood for a year; I’m sure others were involved in pushing for it. Had the argument carried on any further, the government would have shut down, but the crisis managed to be averted for at least a week.

Yesterday, I recommended that neither party attach policy riders to the budget bill. Any matter that would normally merit separate legislation has no place in a budget debate when a shutdown is on the line. The Republicans still managed to attach 40 to 50 of them, also mentioned yesterday. This one prolonged the discussions far longer than was necessary, with no consensus achieved on whether it was really about fiscal responsibility, or an ideologically-driven attack on the organization.

From a PR perspective, recessions are a golden opportunity for conservatives of all stripes. The social ones have the chance to go after their biggest shibboleths using the disgruntled taxpayer as a shield, and the fiscal ones have a hard time arguing with that. Jordan and Co. are obviously well aware of this, even if they’re not convincing social liberals, who have the tendency to prize their cause above fiscal responsibility or just appear that way.

So I can’t say for certain which of the two is uppermost in Jordan’s mind; it really could be either one. Of course, anyone who suggests that there isn’t the slighest element of social conservatism to this is deluded. The fact of the matter is that, legally, no federal funds can be used for abortions, which only represent 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services, so this rider is redundant. And as Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) cleverly pointed out on Twitter, they’d be defunding contraception in the process.

My biggest problem is that abortion, again, was the cause. Both parties make it so much bigger than it has to be, with nobody in the middle suggesting that it’s just none of the government’s business. If we must be hours away from a shutdown, could it be for a good reason next time? Like barring members of Congress from getting paid during a shutdown when soldiers can’t?

Abortion legislation: It’s baaaaaack . . .

Did you know that somewhere in America, every time abortion is addressed by a sitting member of Congress, a puppy dies? OK, that’s probably not true, but it’s the only way I can think of to get them to shut up about it. Yes, it’s back again, this time in the form of a House bill introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), that would essentially bar any federal money from ever touching an abortion, including through private health insurance plans.

That’s really all you need to know about it. It’s in the name: “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act.” (Catchy!) No money through Medicaid or federal tax credits will be used for abortions except in very extenuating circumstances, thankfully including the health of the mother. As much as I am skeptical of certain federal funding, the restrictions on private insurance represent intrusion on that level that Republicans generally oppose.

This isn’t the only bill to deal with abortion; a second one, co-sponsored by Reps. Joe Pitts (R-PA) and Dan Lipinski (D-IL), would apply it specifically to last year’s health care reform legislation. Smith’s would apply the changes to . . . um, everything. They’re so serious about keeping federal money from abortions that they’ll try it twice! At once!

A number of commentators have wondered what Section 309 of the bill means by “forcible rape.” Specifically, does it exclude statutory rape? Does it exclude intercourse with a person who could not give informed consent, but still didn’t put up a fight? (I say, if you need them to be unable to give informed consent, it counts as using force.) If Smith agrees with me that the word “rape” should not apply to consensual sex with a minor of sound mind and body, he should be willing to fight for that law to be changed before pushing this one.

I suppose one could argue that House Republicans aren’t completely wasting their time; after all, doing so would reduce federal spending and be politically popular (for them), right? Not good enough. They have spent the better part of the week demanding a “real” job creation plan from the White House, following a State of the Union address that, in my opinion, supplied just that. Yet by bothering at all with this bill, they are sending the message that coming up with an alternative is secondary to culture war.

If Republican voters have intended to keep their money where their mouths are, they will demand a rethink of the party’s priorities. I don’t expect this to happen with so much red meat on the table. Shame on them all.

If it ain’t broke, don’t replace it

Except when basic human rights are at the core of the argument – and I mean the rights of humans who have already been born; we can all agree on that – national debates over social issues are, in the grand scheme of politics, major wastes of time. You generally see people shifting their focus to those only when they’ve lost elsewhere. In fact, social issues may prove to be the quickest source of victory for liberals and Democrats. So why do the Concerned Women for America (CWA) want conservatives to bother?

A memo from the group’s CEO, Penny Nance, to Republican leaders was sent as a response to a similar memo sent from GOProud, a gay conservative group, in conjunction with the leaders of 15 Tea Party groups. Their memo urged Republican leaders to avoid social issues and keep their eyes on what’s worked. Any observer will agree that fiscal conservatism was louder than social conservatism this year.

Nance and Co. aren’t so sure. Her memo points out that 52 established pro-lifers were elected, “an unprecedented statement that voters . . . want a more conservative, pro-life legislature moving forward.” Certainly being pro-life doesn’t hurt when you’re a Republican, unless you’re running in a blue district that elected you by a hair.

She also asks which of CWA’s principal 2010 issues – “support for the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, eliminating taxpayer dollars from funding embryonic stem cell research, or defunding Planned Parenthood” – GOProud “ha[s] a problem with.” Probably none. But is Nance herself aware of what she just said? “No Taxpayer Funding.” “Eliminating taxpayer dollars.” “Defunding.” They’re speaking the same language. She’s just playing up different parts of the sentence. She’s not talking about banning abortion and stem cell research, just not having to pay for it.

The only way I can think of resolving this dispute is for someone to commission a poll of Republican voters, asking them to rank their top three priorities when they chose their candidate this year. I can almost guarantee that “support of lower taxes and restraint in government spending” will rank at least one place above “opposition to abortion and stem cell research.” That’s just the way it’s gone for them this time around.

But Nance need not be too worried. Avoiding discussions of social issues doesn’t necessarily mean not having any opinions of them, least of all unfavorable ones. The worst that can happen is that she’ll have to wait before her agenda takes precedence.