Garbage

I got home last night after having a couple drinks and almost four hours of amazing conversation with really empowered women. And I started streaming the DNC on CSPAN and who should come on but Sandra Fluke.
And she was preaching it. (For the full speech click here.) Here was my favorite part:

In that America, your new president could be a man who stands by when a public figure tries to silence a private citizen with hateful slurs. Who won't stand up to the slurs, or to any of the extreme, bigoted voices in his own party. It would be an America in which you have a new vice president who co-sponsored a bill that would allow pregnant women to die preventable deaths in our emergency rooms. An America in which states humiliate women by forcing us to endure invasive ultrasounds we don't want and our doctors say we don't need. An America in which access to birth control is controlled by people who will never use it; in which politicians redefine rape so survivors are victimized all over again; in which someone decides which domestic violence victims deserve help, and which don't. We know what this America would look like. In a few short months, it's the America we could be. But it's not the America we should be. It's not who we are.
We've also seen another future we could choose. First of all, we'd have the right to choose. It's an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance; in which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer screenings that could save our lives; in which we decide when to start our families. An America in which our president, when he hears a young woman has been verbally attacked, thinks of his daughters—not his delegates or donors—and stands with all women. And strangers come together, reach out and lift her up. And then, instead of trying to silence her, you invite me here—and give me a microphone—to amplify our voice. That's the difference.

Guess which paragraph is about our President? (HINT: It is the second).

I was so hype I couldn't keep off the Facebook with it and I made my status "Sandra Fluke at the DNC-get it girl! Speak the truth, the GOP is all about a war on women." To which my cousin (who is actually a really nice guy) responded: Garbage.

I was really disturbed, ya know? How was any one capable of denying that the GOP had some sort of vendetta against vaginas?

So here, with out further ado, without Google, just off the top of my head, the crazy shit the GOP has done and said recently that would suggest to me that they are kinda assholes and kinda waging a legislative war on our freedoms:

-Remember like two weeks ago when Todd Aiken said that if a woman is legitimately raped she can't get pregnant cause a lady's body has a way to shut that whole thing down.
-And remember when Mike Huckabeee said that rape babies could grow up to be good people so we have to protect them from abortion.
-Or when that guy in PA compared rape babies to having a baby out of wedlock. I guarantee one is more fun than the other. (Not rape).
-Or when that woman who was an Republican party chair in AK said that women who are raped should be happy to get pregnant because it is a blessing.
-Before all this VP nod stuff, Paul Ryan introduced a bill to redefine rape as forcible rape when talking about which abortions medicaid will pay for....because...you know...some rape isn't forcible...? Dafuk?
-Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut for testifying before Congress about the benefit of insurance companies providing birth control. Remember when Mitt Romney said that wasn't the word he would use? I think he prefers whore.
-What about when that rich GOP funder said that women could keep aspirin between their knees as birth control?
-How bout the Michigan House where two women were BANNED from speaking on the floor for saying the word vagina during a debate on legislation having to do with abortion.
-Remember when the house held a hearing on contraception and all their 'experts' were white men?
-Gov. Bob McDonnel of VA would like all women seeking abortions to have transvaginal ultrasounds. Yea, they want to probe our vaginas for being wanton sluts and getting pregnant.
-24 hour waiting periods for getting an abortion, mandatory prolife counseling during which politicians have forced doctors to share with women factually incorrect data about abortions and the associated health risks.
-How about the constant effort to demonize and defund Planned Parenthood? Planned Parenthood-that provides birth control, STD checks, AIDS tests, Cancer screenings and basic pap smears. Abortions make up three percent of their services and the Federal aide to Planned Parenthood takes up something like 0.02 percent of the budget.
-Defunding welfare programs and food stamps is hot on the GOP list - these are benefits that overwhelmingly support single mothers and their children. Oh-they are coming for WIC too.
-Defunding Medicare and gutting Medicaid which - again - overwhelmingly support women.
-The refusal to support the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act - cause, you know, that sounds super sketchy....
-There is a woman right here in Indiana that tried to kill herself and because she was pregnant at the time they arrested her. But not until she got out of the hospital.

That was just off the top of my head as I sat here eating dinner. So, is there a war on women?