Send in the Clowns

Don’t bother, they’re here –I cannot let the day go by without commenting on “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama administration trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?” That’s the hearing today chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), which consisted of a bunch of male clergymen complaining that they can’t have women working for them who might be using contraceptives.

Seriously. If you don’t have to pay for it, dudes, what is your problem?

Democrats had requested that a pro-choice woman be heard, and Daryl Issa refused. The hearing was not about birth control, he said. Except that it was about birth control. And all the news stories are calling it a hearing on contraception, and highlighting the fact that first panel consisted of only men. See Ed Kilgore, “When ‘framing’ Goes Horribly Wrong.”

However, it is not true there were no women’s voices heard today. NH Republican Jeanine Notter spoke up to let the panel know that birth control pills cause prostate cancer.

You can’t make this up.

20 thoughts on “Send in the Clowns

  1. After Bush’s selection I promised myself never to laugh at any republican ignorance, but that prostate cancer link almost killed me.

    How is it possible for such people to thrive in this world?

  2. Message to the “Little Ladies:”
    STFU!
    Who needs to hear from you?

    We men-folk know better what you need to, and should do, with your quaint little lady-parts.
    So, Sweetheart, “Get your bisquits in the oven, and your buns in the bed!”

  3. Apparently she misunderstood something about a study that established a (tentative?) statistical correlation between use of oral contraceptives and prostate cancer, at the national level: http://jezebel.com/5859777/are-birth-control-pills-killing-men

    It would be bad enough if she just didn’t understand the difference between correlation and causation, and didn’t know there are other sources of estrogen in the ecosystem.

    But I think at the end of the clip she seems to think that it’s because individual women are somehow passing something to their partners.

    (Actually, I that’s even too generous. I don’t think she’s thinking at all, just letting her lizard brain engage her vocal cords while bypassing the higher cognitive functions.)

  4. I sure hope I don’t get prostate cancer from those years I was on the pill!

    Bunch of troglodytes. Where is Larry Flynt when we need him?

  5. Well… I will grant them that there were religious freedom issues involved. The Catholic Church really does have a stand against contraception, and if the government was completely unwilling to compromise, it would be a danger to religious freedom.

    But the government did compromise. No one will pay for birth control unless they’re willing to do so. (Although I did see one worrisome issue raised at Feministe – how does this affect a dependent daughter?) If the Catholic Church wants to whine that they are still indirectly paying for birth control, well, they can stop offering insurance, and let their employees get insured via the exchanges. Of course, this will make them much less attractive as employers, but, hey, it’s a Moral Principle – didn’t some of the people complaining say they should be willing to die rather than engage in immoral behavior? Having to bump up salaries or other benefits to counter the lack of insurance as paid benefit should be trivial. It’s much nicer than dying, as my Uncle Munchhausen insists, claiming to have personal experience in the matter.

  6. The Catholic Church also really does have a stand regarding hidng pedophilia committed by their priests.

  7. And in VA (Virginia), but could just as easily stand for ‘VAgina’ – from an article by the great Dahlia Lithwick in Slate (I’d link, but my computer is acting weird today):
    “This week, the Virginia state Legislature passed a bill that would require women to have an ultrasound before they may have an abortion. Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced.”

    One guy even said that’s not any sort of an imposition, since her vagina must already have been penetrated in order for her to be pregnant.

    Yes, let’s get government out of our health care, and into women’s vagina’s where it belongs.

    I’d comment further, but all I could manage would be curse words that’d make sailors blush – even the male ones. So, I’ll just leave it at “OY!, THE STUPID – IT BURNS!!!”

    All you can say is – you can’t make sh*t like this up!

  8. My wife reminded me that many young women use “the pill” for things other than just contraception- like regulating difficult cycles, etc.
    There was a boob being interviewed by Andrea Mitchell who lamented that in “his day”, women used Bayer asprin for birth control; they would hold one between their knees !
    How funny is that? Polish jokes, anyone?

    I knew I was onto something when I came up with “the right wing health care package-
    It consists of a bottle of asprin, a roll of duct tape, and a Bible (and a rawhide chew toy).

    The lady is , however, correct about birth control pills causing prostrate cancer.
    You gotta dip’em in creosote and shove a years supply up your ass, but it may indeed cause cancer…….

    I guess some people have forgotten that sex and romance are a natural HEALTHY part of life. All these other people came to be because of sex instead of my mother’s explanation of me coming from “God’s pocket”.

    They are putting on quite a show, and seemed to have forgotten that women in particular, and people with healthy active sex lives (in general) also vote.
    It seems like we’re close to a replay of the Salem witch trials.
    Bring it on, asshats!

  9. Ed,
    Thanks for the link. I especially liked the ad for that amazing cancer killing drink.
    I guess if you find a simple cure for cancer, the way to market it is to tease people into sending their credit card numbers and email addresses, then sock it to ’em.

    Having lost so many friends and family members to cancer, it makes me wonder what IS the main cause; Nuclear testing in the atmosphere in the 50’s thru the 70’s, teflon coatings on cook wear, Shell No-Pest Strips, microwave radiation, stress, GMO foods, additives in tobacco products, chemicals leaching from plastic bottles, air pollution?
    I DO know that people who use store bought toilet paper have a higher incidence of all cancers, heart disease, and diabetes than folks who clean up with spanish moss or bananna leaves……..

  10. I am continually appalled at all the apparently stupid and crazy people making their views heard. The power of the Internet? I hope the rest of the citizens of this country wake up and end the harmful idiocy that is our politics, and especially the Republican Party, these days.

  11. The increasing stupidity on the right frightens me—at some point those yahoos are going to win a national election, and that is a scary as hell prospect.

  12. [I]f the government was completely unwilling to compromise, it would be a danger to religious freedom.

    No, sorry, not anything of the sort. The U.S. Catholic Bishops are pretending there is no distinction between the practice of commerce (the employer/employee relationship), and the practice of faith (the caregiver/patient relationship in a church-based facility). The insurance rule addressed only the former, and did not in any way affect the latter. This pretense that government has no role in protecting employees from religious discrimination by their employers is the real danger to religious freedom.

    It was a turf war, plain and simple. The U.S. Catholic Bishops have lost moral ground over their longstanding (and ongoing) tolerance for the sexual abuse of children, while they continue to harass consenting adults in loving, same-sex relationships, heterosexual couples who wish to prevent conception, and women who want to make private, legal decisions about pregnancy. (These are Catholics and non-Catholics alike, mind.) Let’s also remember, the bishops previously spread other falsehoods about the Health Care Reform Act, so that Catholic nuns who are medical caregivers had to step in and oppose the bishops, in favor of HCR.

    It’s really disappointing to me when otherwise sensible people support the bishops’ continuing lies and gibberish.

  13. That NH nut might have been correct – I would not be surprised at the Pill causing all sorts of problems for men taking it 🙂

  14. Balloon Juice shows a confused NH senator, but he (Manuse) is a fellow Republican and on Notter’s side of the anti-contraception argument. The study is real, but it is on the level of *populations* with high pill use by women have high prostate cancer incidence in men. The authors caution against drawing any conclusions and say not to stop taking your birth control pills. There is a real concern about endocrine-disrupting substances contaminating the water supply via the runoff of all types of human and animal pharmaceuticals and pesticides, etc.

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