Karen Leiter from the Center for Reproductive Rights explains, in detail, how the Hyde Amendment hurts poor women. Also, the rush of conservative women may not mean more female votes, and how Christine O’Donnell shines a light on the anti-choice movement.

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Sharron Angle opposes maternal coverage

O’Donnell claims the PUMAs

Matthews insinuates women vote for genitals, not policy

Women: not a mindless identity-driven mob

Sarah Palin’s woman problem  

O’Donnell on masturbation

O’Donnell and the ex-gay “ministry”

Yelling makes it true!

Sure you did.

Say what?

On this episode of Reality Cast, Karen Leiter will be on to talk about the Center for Reproductive Rights’ new campaign against the Hyde Amendment.  Also, a segment on why simply nominating women doesn’t mean getting women’s votes and another segment on how Christine O’Donnell can shine light on the anti-choice movement.

It seems that dredging up resentment against women of reproductive age, no matter what they do, is becoming a major talking point in conservative politics as of late.  Sharron Angle gave this speech recently, as an example. 

• mandates *

So now we have conservatives saying it’s wrong to cover contraception and abortion, and then they turn around and say it’s wrong to cover childbirth.  Basically, if you’re a woman between the ages of 15 and 44, everything you do is wrong.  And don’t think you can escape this by being a lesbian.  They’re not particularly fond of extending you rights in that case, either.

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For a long time now, it feels like, with the sole exception of Rachel Maddow, almost no one in the mainstream media has been talking about the role abortion plays in the Tea Party movement.  All the focus has been on the so-called libertarianism of the tea partiers, which seems to mean mainly that they’re spending more time whipping people into a racist frenzy instead of a sexist one.  But there’s no reason to think that the tea partiers don’t think they have to pick.  They can be racist and sexist.  Which is why you’re seeing so many of them, as I noted in my column at Rewire, that support complete abortion bans with no exceptions for rape or incest. 

The media is beginning to wake up a little to this fact, especially since the Republican Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell isn’t just anti-choice, but she spent many years as professional anti-choicer who worked against abortion rights, contraception, and even took strong stands against masturbation, though she admittedly hasn’t said that she’d like to legally ban it.  That we know of.  Yet.  So they’re beginning to admit that Tea Partiers are socially conservative, but we still aren’t getting to the point where the mainstream media admits that this might hurt Tea Party candidates when it comes to getting female votes.  You’re still seeing the silly narrative out there that women are silly little bits who just want to vote for other women instead of voting for the candidates who best represent their interests.

O’Donnell herself has been pushing this narrative.

• tea 1 *

I’m not saying there aren’t PUMAs out there.  I’ve had one or two send me incoherent emails that basically insinuated a) that all women of reproductive age voted for Obama in the primaries instead of Clinton and b) that middle-aged women were going to punish us by taking away our right to abortion.  I believe PUMAs think they speak for some huge mass of women.  But unfortunately, the two or three that emailed me seem to be the sum total of all PUMAs.  They couldn’t sway the vote on a 7 panel committee, they’re so few in number.

But this notion that women are going to see a candidate in a skirt and automatically vote for her no matter what her policy ideas took hold of everyone’s favorite brainless MSNBC sexist, Chris Matthews. 

• tea 2 *

Luckily, this claim that women don’t care about politics but just care about identity politics was put down by Rachel Maddow on her own show. 

• tea 3 *

Rachel’s actually underselling this a bit.  When McCain picked Palin, women were immediately suspicious of her, and the more she campaigned, the further she slipped down in the polls.  And her reputation fell even faster with women than with men.  Which makes sense, if you think about it.  Palin’s two major selling points as a conservative idol have always been that she’s an anti-choice symbol verging on fertility goddess, and that she’s the kind of lady who winks flirtatiously at the audience.  Women are less likely than men to be cool with having their rights under assault or think that it’s particularly charming for a woman to sex it up a little when she’s trying to be taken as a serious candidate. Christine O’Donnell doesn’t flirt with the cameras that I know of, but she still is quickly coming to represent the anti-choice extremism of Tea Party backed candidates, as I’ll cover in the next segment.

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insert interview

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Christine O’Donnell winning the Republican nomination for the Senator from Delaware was truly the moment that it became inescapable for the mainstream media.  They now have no choice but to admit that the Tea Party is not only the same old conservative movement it always was, but that it was all the more interested in social conservatism than ever before.  While talking about sexual health and rights makes most of the media uncomfortable, the fact that O’Donnell spend much of her life as an anti-choice and abstinence-only advocate makes this discussion unavoidable.

What I like about her is not only does she force people to confront the social conservatism of the Tea Party, but she also forces people to confront the fact that opposition to abortion is organized by people with a much, much larger anti-sex agenda than simply forcing the already pregnant to give birth.  O’Donnell has a history of taking a hard line stance against any sexual expression that’s non-procreative.  Any. 

• Christine 1 *

Not the question to ask, if you want to be known as someone with a hint of self-awareness.  But I guess making it clear that you don’t do self-love is more important that making it clear you are self-aware.  This video became a national joke overnight, which was actually kind of frustrating, because it ended up reinforcing the notion that O’Donnell is waaaaaaay out there, when in fact I’d say her attitude is hardly uncommon in the activist anti-choice community.  What needs to be understood is that O’Donnell is actually part of a community and she’s a relatively typical member of it.  And that the organized opposition to abortion isn’t just a single mass of fetus lovers, but is attached to this larger anti-sex agenda. 

It’s an agenda that is anti-gay, by the way, and that’s something else O’Donnell’s been on about, working to support the notion that you can cure someone of homosexuality.

• Christine 2 *

Like most activist anti-choicers, O’Donnell is an opponent of contraception use and spoke out repeatedly about the perceived evils of sex education and contraception use. 

• Christine 3 *

Screaming that condoms don’t work doesn’t make that statement any more true, I’m afraid.  In terms of failure rates, the only method that O’Donnell will accept, which is abstinence, has an extremely high failure rate.  More condom users stick to the plan than abstinence users.  The vast majority of people who use abstinence as a method fail to stick with that plan. Meanwhile, piles of evidence demonstrate that condoms are extremely effective against pregnancy and STDs. 

But then again, maybe O’Donnell doesn’t really care if the things she says are factually true.  She did also say this on “Politically Incorrect”. 

• Christine 4 *

The odds that this happened are really low.  Like asteroid hits the earth tomorrow low.  Which inclines me to believe that Christine O’Donnell is more interested in a good story than the literal truth.  Which is one thing when you’re spinning inspirational stories from a pulpit, though even then I’m wary of it.  But it’s quite another when you’re trying to convince kids not to use condoms. 

The whole thing reminded me of one of my favorite David Cross bits.

• Christine 5 *

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, bad metaphors edition. It’s hard to see what Rush Limbaugh thinks he’s going to gain from this particular sexual metaphor.

• Limbaugh *

I would like to point out that Limbaugh is on his fourth marriage, so it’s not like marriage has especially more staying power in his world than does a drunken hook-up.  Perhaps less, since occasionally drunken hook-ups turn to true love.