February 2011

• The Susan B. Anthony List is launching a "14-stop grassroots tour and $200,000 ad campaign buy" as part of its effort to de-fund Planned Parenthood.
• Clarence Thomas thinks that criticism of him threatens to undermine the Supreme Court as an institution.  Of course, some might say that Thomas' own conflict of interest is already doing that.
• At times like this, it is a good thing we have prophets like Cindy Jacobs around to help us understand what is happening in the Middle East.
• Robert Peters, President of Morality in Media, is very upset about all the profanity in "The King's Speech."
• Finally, Steve Hotze and Texans for Sensible Immigration Policy has released a video on the need to Republicans to embrace immigration reform:

James Dobson decided to "commemorate Black History Month" on his radio program by dedicating today's program to discussing William Wilberforce ... and to do so by explicitly linking the Religious Right's fight against Planned Parenthood to Wilberforce's fight against the slave trade:

Dobson: Into that world comes a young William Wilberforce - a young Parliamentarian - who saw this [the slave trade] and said this is evil, this is wrong, I will do what I can to fight it.

In some ways, it's very similar to our situation here with regard to abortion because that's a multi-million dollar industry. You know the money that even our own Congress gives to Planned Parenthood is reminiscent of the evil that was expressed in that day because other Parliament members didn't want to touch that very lucrative business. And so here you've got Wilberforce standing up and saying "this is wrong" and he was vilified and attacked and discredited and marginalized. It sounds kind of familiar to what happens to pro-life people today.

I have to say that I am getting increasingly fed up with hearing from conservative Christian biblical literalists today about how they are supposedly the ideological and moral heirs to the abolitionist movement because such claims are laughable. 

In the last few months, I have read several books about the role of religion and the Bible in the fight over slavery, including "Noah's Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery," "Religion and the Antebellum Debate over Slavery," "The Civil War as a Theological Crisis," and "When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War" ... and I just want to highlight a few passages from this latter book which demonstrates how proslavery advocates relied heavily on the Bible to justify the legitimacy of the institution of slavery:

Most ministers who galvanized southern moral support for slaveholding denied that they were "proslavery." The moniker fits nonetheless. These men repeatedly insisted that good Christians could hold slaves, that slaveholding was moral, and that virtuous acts could result in one's becoming a slaveholder ... Good slaveholders, they maintained, gave the institution its character - that is, goodness. As moral individuals, they were more powerful than institutions. This formulation allowed proslavery spokesmen to denounce the historically evil institution of slavery while defending southern practices: slaveholders in the evil form of slavery were bad men; the southerners were good, and the source their wealth therefore untainted. Good - and especially evangelical - slaveholders supposedly redeemed the institution of slavery.

...

Southerners thought abolitionists either did not understand the Bible or did not know God''s will, and they suspected them of perverting both. From the southern perspective the Bible offered an ideal source of vindication. If the Bible explicitly ordained slaveholding, as southern churchmen were sure it did, then to condemn slaveholding outright as a sin was to insult God's Word and betray His Will ... Most defenders of slavery believed that God had "put" slaves into their hands. The Divine purpose, they thought, was that the master train slaves for "self-dependence and self-government."

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) today sat down with Kaiser Health News to discuss her proposal to repeal and replace the health care reform law. However, Ellmers was unable to name a single policy alternative to the reform law.

The Tea Party-favorite recently defended her decision to take a taxpayer-subsidized health care plan because she said that her $174,000 annual salary is too little to live on in Washington DC, and also opposes mandatory coverage for maternity care and pre-existing conditions.

Ellmers, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Health and Technology, was unable to muster a single specific policy proposal when asked, even though she insists that Republicans have “plenty of solutions.” She also told Kaiser that she wants to reconsider the reform law’s change to allow young dependents to stay on their parent’s plan until they are 26 years old, and also falsely claims that the reform law represents a “government takeover of health care,” as the plan actually preserves the private health care insurance system:

Q. You voted to repeal the health care law in the House, but that effort has stalled in the Senate. Do you think the American people are going to get tired of continuing to debate health care, especially if they want to see more movement on jobs and the economy?

A. I am sure it will be going to the Supreme Court and will be shot down as unconstitutional. I don't think the American people are going to get tired of it because they see that this is a massive takeover of government in health care and every other aspect of their lives.

Q. If the health care law is repealed, do you think that people might get frustrated with not having some of the consumer protections such as children covered up until the age of 26 or help for seniors in the doughnut hole?

A. There again, we need to put in place patient-centered reforms. I don't know that children need to be covered all the way up until age 26. But it has to be in the free market. The problem is we are losing the ability to make choices. That is your choice and this is the problem. We are losing the ability to make choices.

Q. There has been some criticism that Republicans don't have a unified alternative. What is your strategy moving forward?

A. No. See, that is completely untrue. That is the rhetoric. We have plenty of solutions.

Q. Like what, specifically?

A. We have got to get the Obama plan out of the way. Again, we have already voted to repeal. We are working on the provision to get rid of the 1099 (reporting requirement for business purchases). There are plenty of other aspects of the health care bill that fall apart when one piece of the puzzle is taken out, so this is what we are doing. We are moving forward on this whether or not the Democrats and the Senate or the president are coming along.

I think we have made our message very clear. I think the American people hear that message. Overwhelmingly, the American people want this health care situation addressed. They want it addressed in the free market. The want it addressed where they can make their decisions for their own families and not have the president and the government make it for them.

During his successful congressional campaign last year, now-Congressman Raul Labrador (R-ID) used his opposition to abortion-rights as a wedge issue to criticize his opponent, who was the most conservative Democrat in the House. The freshman congressman recently joined his conservative colleagues by voting in favor of the Pence amendment to defund the women’s health organization Planned Parenthood. ABC’s Boise affiliate KIVI reports:

Freshman Boise congressman, Raul Labrador says the abortion debate just about splits this country in half, but GOP lawmakers argues all Idahoans agree on one part. "They don't want the federal government to be abortions. There's so much money going to Planned Parenthood. And it's impossible for us to know where they're going. They claim they are not funding any abortion with that money, but that's the main business they do," argues Labrador.

…

Planned Parenthood believes Congress is attempting to take away the reproductive rights of women. However, Congressman Labrador takes exception to that. The freshman republican, states, "I don't think Planned Parenthood speaks for women. If they want to provide services, they can continue to do so. We're not closing their shop, we're just saying no more federal funding." The Senate is expected to vote on the resolution this coming week.

However, Labrador is indisputably wrong when he said that abortion is Planned Parenthood’s “the main business.”

Abortion services account for just three percent of the group’s services, with the vast majority going towards contraception, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, immunizations, and screenings for breast and cervical cancer. Such services especially help women without health insurance, with Planned Parenthood clinics sometimes acting as the only women’s health service providers in many regions.

Labrador also incorrectly describes the federal government’s role in providing abortion services, as the 35-year old Hyde Amendment prohibits federal taxpayer funding abortion care except in the cases of rape and incest, or when the woman’s life is at risk.

The freshman Congressman’s erroneous statements reflect the collaboration of Religious Right and Republican leaders to dishonestly smear Planned Parenthood.