Rick Perry’s Vasectomy: The Governor's Reliance on What He Denies to His Fellow Texans

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/09/11/rick-perry-vasectomy-governors-reliance-what-denies-fellow-texans-0

In theory, Perry, whose persona is that of a swaggering alpha-male, could help popularize this method, making clear that “real men” have vasectomies. Just as the late First Lady Betty Ford’s openness about her breast cancer spurred many women to undergo mammograms, Perry’s public endorsement could increase the popularity of vasectomies.

But that of course won’t happen. Perry’s choice of a vasectomy serves to highlight a mean-spiritedness toward the contraceptive options of his fellow Texans who don’t have family members who are surgeons. As governor, he presides over a state in which 25 percent of adult men have no health insurance, the highest rate in the country (the U.S. average is 16 percent). A vasectomy can cost up to one thousand dollars at some clinics, and doubtless more at others. Uninsured Texans who want a vasectomy would no doubt be unable to pay out of pocket for it given the low wages for which the Texas economy has become infamous.

Moreover, Perry has led an attack on family planning services used by low-income Texas women. He recently signed a budget bill reducing the state’s family planning funding from $111 million to just $37 million. Following the playbook of the religious right in other states, Perry and the Texas state legislature have moved to defund Planned Parenthood clinics, the largest state to do so. To gain a sense of the magnitude of these cuts, in just one Texas affiliate—Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region— some 4,000 patients will lose access to birth control services, as well as breast and cervical screenings, and HIV tests.

It’s too late for Rick Perry to compete with the other Republican presidential candidates in the “robust childbearing” department. Perhaps some of the most fervent Christian conservatives will fault his vasectomy as it violates the biblical junction to “be fruitful and multiply.” But in his relentless attacks on contraception, and of course, abortion and comprehensive sex education, Perry is doing all he can to reassure his base that many of his fellow Texans will not have the same opportunity to control their childbearing as the Perry family had.

http://my.firedoglake.com/rhrealitycheck/2011/09/12/rick-perry%E2%80%99s-vasectomy-the-governors-reliance-on-what-he-denies-to-his-fellow-texans/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/Bruni-adrift-in-iowa-tired-rituals-in-tough-times.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/msjimmied/rick-perry-ben-bernanke_n_929311_103305425.html

Cheap, considering the cost of inadvertently fathering a child that you have to support.

Heck, most fathers-in-law would probably do it for free.




Oh...you want a qualified medical doctor to perform it? Yeah, good luck with that.

Did he have to skulk into a back alley to have his tubes yanked with a coat hanger? Guess that would have been way too fair, but it should be an option in those states where "pro life" is imposed only on women.


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in which he was clearly in the shallow end.