Several years ago, then-Gov. Rick Perry conducted a fabled interview with The Texas Tribune in which Perry defended the state’s stress on abstinence-only sex education while his interviewer pointed out that Texas had one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country.
“I’m just going to tell you from my own personal life. Abstinence works,” Perry retorted.
Does Texas traditionally decide state policy based on politicians’ sexual history? If so, that’s terrifying.
“We should not have this interference, especially from men who don’t conceive and don’t have babies,” Barbara DeVane, a lobbyist for the National Organization for Women, said after the Senate Health Policy Committee approved the bill. “They are for de-regulation of everything except women’s decisions about their own health.”
Author Lynn M. Paltrow writes for Political Research Associates: “It is likely that most people in the U.S., whether they identify as “pro-life” or “pro-choice,” don’t want to see any woman locked up for having an abortion (including the more than 60 percent of women who have abortions who are already mothers). Perhaps this is why anti-abortion organizations work so hard to deny the predictable and inevitable consequences of their efforts: women being locked up.”
Amanda Marcotte writes for Reality Check: “There’s also a deeper irony in this story. Harris felt entitled to say “no thank you” to raising two little girls, after he had asked for them, overruled people’s reported objections to adopting them, and finalized the adoption—all because he and his wife realized after the fact that they were in over their heads. But while he reserved the ability to say “no” to parenthood after making all these commitments, he wants to begrudge women who are saying “no” responsibly, by doing it before they have a baby and before someone else has come to depend on them, of the same right. This isn’t even “abortion for me and not for thee.” Harris, as a mighty patriarch, wants to put his personal comfort before the needs of actual human beings who require care, all while demanding that women sacrifice their own wellbeing for people that don’t even exist yet.”
NOW calls on every member of Congress to end the “War on Women” and support policies to ensure that every woman’s health insurance policy — whether she is insured through Medicaid, an employer-based plan or a state exchange — fully covers the entire range of reproductive health care services, including abortion and birth control.
Tell the Senate to vote No on the SAVE America Act.