Poor women's health under attack.

 I personally don't have a stake in the abortion fight. I am, after all, a man.

I suspect, though, that if men could get pregnant there would be drive through abortion clinics on damn near every corner. They would be more popular than McDonald's.

I guess  you can tell that I am pro-choice, and I definitely don't like to get personal with a woman's body unless she asks me to. This is not  the case with right-wingnut men, they love to tell women what to do with their bodies.

Today the GOP voted to allow states to defund Planned Parenthood, which, to right-wingnuts, is a somewhat of a dirty word. They despise Planned Parenthood, because to them it represents abortion on demand and women taking control of their own bodies.

Sadly, as is the case with so many other things, they are wrong about what that organization does.

Panned Parenthood offers so much more to women (especially poor ones) than just abortions. Numerous poor women and women of color depend on Planned Parenthood to provide them with basic healthcare and preventive screening for illnesses. But the right-wingnuts in Washington do not care, because poor women can't afford lobbyist.

The vote was close, and it took Mike Pence (the guy right out of central casting to play a Nazi soldier) to cast the deciding vote to block access to reproductive health services for poor women.

This is the same Mike Pence, by the way, who recently said that he will not dine alone with another women if his wife is not present.  He also said that he will not go anywhere that alcohol is being served without his wife present.  I am just going to leave that one out there..... no wait, I can't.

"This rule will, without question, stop women from excelling in the workplace that is the White House. As Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery wrote in a Twitter thread: 

“If Pence won’t eat with a woman alone, how could a woman be Chief of Staff, or lawyer, campaign manager, or… Would Pence dine with Ivanka? Or KellyAnne? Or are they too relegated to second class citizens. For that matter, how would he ever even interview a woman. With a chaperone? It means that female reporters, also, would be cut out of his information flow, now and in the past.”

So how do we get over the monumental hill of sexism in the workplace? As Elsesser told The Atlantic, it’s simple, just normalize it.  “If you always saw men and women meeting together for dinner, people wouldn’t see it as suspicious,” she said."

 Or maybe the guy just can't trust himself. I mean we all know how those right-wing men roll.

Anyway, it was Pence who cast the deciding/dividing vote in the senate today, and I am sure that his wife of over 30 years was not by his side when he voted to ruin the lives of millions of other women.

*Pic from plannedparenthood.org.