Crippling fear of female sexuality: What’s really behind the GOP’s Planned Parenthood witch hunt

Crippling fear of female sexuality: What’s really behind the GOP’s Planned Parenthood witch hunt

by Sean Illing at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/30/crippling_fear_of_female_sexuality_whats_really_behind_the_gops_planned_parenthood_witch_hunt/

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And here’s an inconvenient truth: According to the Congressional Budget Office, defunding Planned Parenthood would actually cost the government a net $130 million over a decade, largely due to the spike in government spending required to meet the health needs of women whose services would be disrupted.

If Republicans were honest, they’d admit that their real obsession is sex. The sordid and religiously-motivated angst over sex and the female body is what’s animating all of this. As Amanda Marcotte noted, the bizarre (and woefully uninformed) focus on mammograms yesterday was telling in this respect:

This obsession with mammograms belies the real agenda here, which has nothing to do with ‘fetal body parts’ or even abortion, but with delegitimizing health care that exists so that people, particularly women, can have healthy and safe sex lives. The implication was clear: Mammograms are real health care, and all those other services—contraception, STI testing and treatment, Pap smears—are not. After all, virgins can get breast cancer, but you aren’t going to get the clap or an unintended pregnancy if you don’t have sex.

It’s hard to quibble with this observation; everything about the GOP’s orientation to women and sex confirms it. And even on the abortion front, when you consider how little respect for life beyond the womb these people have as well as their indifference to policies that actually reduce abortions, it’s seems clear enough what all this is about.

There is good news, however. Odious as this hearing was, it will only help the Democratic Party. It shows how cocooned the GOP really is. This party has a problem with women and this is how they choose to spend their time? Outside conservative echo chambers, there’s a country full of people – especially women – who object to everything they saw and heard yesterday, who acknowledge the law, and who, above all, respect the right of women to control their own bodies.



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