Knowing a politician's stance and votes on reproductive rights is the equivalent of hearing them speak after giving them a dose of truth serum.
- It's self-evident that Republican politicians who are “pro-life” (sic, aka forced birthers) are also fiscal conservatives. Yet none of them will acknowledge the fact that it's far, far less expensive for taxpayer dollars to pay to end an unwanted pregnancy instead of the cost to our welfare system to pay for prenatal care, childbirth, childhood education, food stamps, etc. I don't even need to cite figures to prove this because it's so obvious. It's simply proof that they're willing to waste your tax dollars on their own personal agenda (or else they're very, very bad at math).
And what is that agenda?
- The typical forced birther politician rants about government being too big but only wants small government when it comes to taxes and regulating commerce. Big Brother Government is just fine with them when it comes to forcing women to do what that politician wants, regardless of how it affects women, their health, their families, their very lives.
- For many forced birther politicians, it reveals how they feel about women having sex. To them, unwanted pregnancy is punishment for women having sex for any purpose other than making babies.
- In their eyes, women simply don't deserve the sexual autonomy that men have. That often includes even the use of birth control (“every sperm is sacred”).
- Forcing women to carry a non-viable fetus to term even against their doctor's advice, even knowing the suffering and possibly death that would cause? The Texas politician who authored a bill to do just that last month, says suffering is “part of the human condition, since sin entered the world.” Women, sin, suffering = see pregnancy as punishment for women having sex.
- An astonishing number of Republican politicians have inadvertently revealed that they know absolutely nothing about the female reproductive system. Best examples (although there are many): "Women have a way of shutting that whole thing down" and, in Idaho this year, while a doctor was testifying, a lawmaker literally asked a doctor whether a woman could have a remote gynecological exam by swallowing a tiny camera. Yet, these same politicians still feel eminently qualified to pass laws about reproductive health. There's a good reason that the term “gynotician” was coined:
gynotician – a politician who feels he knows better than doctors and women about reproductive health.
- It tells how they feel about forcing their religious views down the throats of the rest of the country. The worst of them would gladly see America become a theocracy but only if it's their religion. If your religion is not theirs, tough. You don't count. Imagine an America where the only way a woman can avoid compulsory motherhood is via strict chastity – so strict that they never "give a man the wrong idea" or otherwise "cause" him to rape her.
(Thanks to Judith Bradford for that last sentence)
Abortion should be on everyone's radar, regardless of whether they're male or female, because of the huge amount it reveals about the inner workings of a politician's mind and how they feel about controlling people and governing. Politicians who are Forced Birthers are the ultimate power mongers and control freaks.