Legislation

The anti-choice movement has consistently attempted to tar reproductive freedoms as anti-black genocide. Most recently, Rick Santorum said that it was “almost remarkable for a black man” like Obama to support abortion rights, and Terry Heck believes that Obama’s pro-choice position made him a “disgrace” to “his ancestors” like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.

Now, a state legislator in Arizona wants to “criminalize abortions if they’re sought because of race or sex,” reports Cronkite News:

If a state lawmaker has his way, women seeking abortions in Arizona would be required to sign documents saying they’re not terminating a pregnancy because of the fetus’ race or sex.

Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park, is sponsoring two bills that would criminalize abortions if they’re sought because of race or sex. Doctors knowingly performing abortions for those reasons would face Class 3 felony charges.

Michelle Steinberg, an Arizona policy manager for Planned Parenthood, said women should never have to make a case to get an abortion and called the bills demeaning and bizarre.

“This could be a slippery slope in terms of requiring women to disclose why they’re choosing abortion,” she said. “Women should never have to present a case to get an abortion.”

Montenegro didn’t respond to several requests for interviews left with his office and with a spokesman for House Republicans. However, he told Capitol Media Services that abortion clinics are targeting minority areas and that more females are aborted than males.

Steinberg said the fact that minority women seek more abortions stems from other problems.

“This idea that minority women are having abortions at higher rates than white women speaks more to rates of poverty, access to contraception and a lack of sex education,” she said. “This is not racial genocide for God’s sake; this is a real problem that we’re not addressing.”

…

U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, a Republican representing Arizona’s second district, in 2009 sponsored similar legislation: the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act. The bill, which never made it out of committee, would have criminalized abortion because of the “sex, gender, color or race of the child, or the race of a parent.”

Illinois and Pennsylvania have laws prohibiting sex-selection abortions. Several other states, including Georgia, Mississippi, New Jersey, Idaho and Oklahoma have tried to enact legislation that would prevent sex- or race-selection abortions.

…

Roy Spece, a lawyer and professor at the University of Arizona’s law and medical schools who co-authored a book on cases of bioethics and the law, said Montenegro’s bills could move Arizona backward.

“We could return to the era when you have hospital committees who would decide why each specific woman’s reason for having an abortion is sufficient,” he said.

As Kyle notes, Religious Right organizations have launched a coordinated effort to bring down Planned Parenthood just as the House is set to hold hearings on the misleadingly-named “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” H.R. 3, that attempts to end insurance coverage for abortion and even redefine 'rape.' The House may also take-up Rep. Mike Pence’s “Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act,” which would strip funding to Planned Parenthood that goes towards women’s health services.

Republican leaders have had no problems using smears in their drive to pass anti-choice legislation in the past. Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Michele Bachmann falsely claimed that women in Pennsylvania were using federal dollars to pay for abortions as a result of the health care reform law. Bachmann suggested that defunding Planned Parenthood would help solve the country’s budget deficit, and Pence even used the unemployment rate as a reason to end funding to Planned Parenthood.

Rep. Chris Smith, the chief sponsor of H.R.3, and Rep. Joe Pitts, who sponsored the Stupak-Pitts Amendment and is the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Health, both participated in a 2009 Religious Right campaign warning of a “a massive effort to mandate taxpayer-funded abortions” through the health care reform law and blasting Planned Parenthood funding: “Citing the $350 million in taxpayer money handed over to Planned Parenthood, the U.S. abortion industry’s largest business, it warned, ‘Now they want even more!’” And Pitts absurdly claimed on Fox News that the health care reform law would “compel communities who don’t have [abortion] service to provide it.”

That same year, Religious Right leader Gary Bauer called upon activists to attack Planned Parenthood just as James O’Keefe targeted ACORN: “Planned Parenthood deserves the same treatment ACORN is getting and should be stripped of the hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars it receives annually.”

Earlier this week, Smith told Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association that the GOP leadership is solidly behind his bill, and that “Planned Parenthood and the others in the abortion rights movement” who oppose his legislation “are just are trying to poison the waters while they literally poison the child to death.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List is already using Live Action’s video in her demand for Congress to pass anti-choice legislation:

The horror exposed in the video released yesterday was not an isolated incident in the history of a group willing to be a chief ally in the exploitation of women and girls. The unbroken chain of Planned Parenthood's violations is appalling. Yet, this organization insists that it deserves taxpayers' continued support. The moment for taxpayers to reject their compulsory funding of the exploitation of women has arrived. If this organization doesn't shut down its gruesome business altogether, it should at least operate on its own dime. The SBA List and other groups in this coalition are calling upon pro-life America to contact their Representatives and urge them to support the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act. Planned Parenthood must be defunded.

As we have said time and time again, the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer is among the most openly and viciously bigoted Religious Right leaders active today ... but that does not seem to bother any of the Republican leaders who continually appear on his radio program.

Just last week, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker joined Fischer to discuss his anti-choice legislation, and before that it was presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty telling Fischer he'll reinstate Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

This is in addition to past appearances from Sen. Jim Inhofe, Sen. Jim DeMint, Rep. Lamar Smith, Rep. Alan Nunnelee, and Rep. Raul Labrador.

And the pattern continues, as in the last few days Fischer has had two more Republican members on Congress on his program, starting last Friday with Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey who joined Fischer to discuss his anti-choice efforts:

And then on Monday, Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia also joined Fischer to discuss his appearance on Bill Maher and defend his Creationist views:

Bryan Fischer spends the majority of his time viciously attacking gays and Mulsims (and bears) and yet Republican leaders are eager to make time to regularly join him on his radio program.

• PFAW: Federal Judge Strikes Down Health Care Reform Legislation.

 

• Brian Beutler @ TPM: Heavy Hitters Rip Florida Federal Judge's Opinion Striking Health Care Law.

 

• Sarah Posner @ Relgion Dispatches: The Roots of the American Right’s Muslim Brotherhood Panic.

 

• Good As You: CWA To Put Anti-Gay Ad In NH Newspaper.

 

• Steve Benen: Coming to Terms With a Misguided Base.

 

• Alan Colmes: Sharron Angle Now Sharing “Beauty And Makeup Challenges.”

 

• Joe.My.God: Florida House GOP Speaker Seeks To Enforce Gay Adoption Ban.

 

• Tanya Somanader @ Think Progress: Gov. Kasich To Black Lawmaker: ‘I Don’t Need Your People.’

On the heels of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell late last year, Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall declared that he was going to introduce legislation that would ban gays and lesbians from serving in the Virginia National Guard.

Now Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has weighed in, saying that the state can do so ... provided that it is willing to fund the militia entirely on its own:

Virginia would have to establish and fully fund its own independent militia if it wanted to ban gays from its National Guard force, Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli says ...Cuccinelli said he could not give a detailed answer to the question until federal regulations repealing the policy are issued. But regardless of how those regulations are written, he said, Congress pays most the Guard's costs and can yank funding for noncompliance with federal policy.

...

Cuccinelli said in his opinion that the nation's state militias evolved over the years into a "dual enlistment system" in which National Guard members "are both members of the organized militia and a reserve component of the armed forces of the United States."

A key aspect of the system, he said, is that the federal government provides virtually all of the funding. The dual enlistment system and the spending power of Congress "has meant in practice that Congress set the standards and policy for state Guard units," Cuccinelli wrote.

Marshall, for his part, isn't buying Cuccinelli's claim and is accusing him of "making this up for political cover" for Republicans who don't want to be forced to vote on Marshall's anti-gay bill.

In another sign that Rick Santorum is gearing up for a presidential bid, the former Pennsylvania Senator hired two top Republican strategists from Iowa. CNN reports that Nick Ryan and Jill Latham “will serve as advisers to his political action committee, America's Foundation.” Ryan and Latham both originally worked at the Concordia Group, a lobbyist firm that primarily worked to help the ethanol industry. Ryan is also a founder of the American Future Fund (AFF), a shadowy political group that was accused of violating campaign finance law.

The New York Times found the AFF targeted Democrats that were involved in setting federal agriculture policy, a key concern of Ryan’s Concordia Groups clients. The AFF’s political director also worked in the Concordia Group, and the AFF paid Ryan’s firm $300,000 for consulting fees.

But the AFF’s ads were not focused on agriculture, and instead chastised Democrats for their votes for health care reform, clean energy legislation, or for Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House.

In one of the most shameless ads of the election, the AFF attacked Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) for saying that New York’s zoning officials should decide the fate of the planned Park51 Islamic community center as part of its smear against the First Amendment rights of Muslims.

Watch:

Right Wing Watch has been covering the extreme “personhood” movement, which after being overwhelmingly rejected by voters in Colorado, has emerged as a powerful force in Mississippi, where the amendment will be on the 2011 ballot. Now, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker is taking the “personhood” fight to the national level by introducing legislation in the Senate mirroring Mississippi’s personhood initiative.

The “personhood” movement seeks to give legal rights to zygotes and would effectively criminalize abortion, stem-cell research, common forms of birth control and even in vitro fertilization. The once-fringe “personhood” activists were initially renounced by Religious Right organizations as unrealistic and unhelpful to the anti-choice cause, but now groups like the American Family Association and Liberty Counsel along with leading Republican politicians have embraced the Mississippi Personhood campaign led by Les Riley, a radical activist who supports the separatist “Christian Exodus” movement.

Senator Wicker spoke to the AFA’s Director of Issue Analysis and resident bigot Bryan Fischer on Focal Point and pledged to introduce the “Life at Conception Act.” Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) plans to introduce a companion bill in the House.

About two minutes in to the interview, Wicker tells Fischer that “a personhood amendment to the state constitution [will be] voted on very soon in my state, and I’m not the only one who’s seized on to this idea and of course it will be introduced in the House of Representatives also.”

Fischer replies, “In fact we have talked on this program frequently about the personhood amendment, and in fact I believe if I’m not mistaken Senator Wicker, the language in Mississippi’s personhood amendment and in your ‘Life at Conception Act’ are virtually identical in the key paragraphs.” Wicker backs up Fischer’s claim, saying, “That is certainly my understanding, yes sir.”

Watch:

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said that his Republican Study Committee, the ultraconservative group that counts a majority of the GOP caucus as its members, told The Hill that he supports congressional action to reverse Washington DC’s marriage equality law. “I think RSC will push for it, and I’m certainly strongly for it,” the Ohio Republican said, “I don’t know if we’ve made a decision if I’ll do it or let another member do it, but I’m 100 percent for it.” Jordan voted against every major piece of gay-rights legislation and recently announced his boycott of CPAC over the conference’s inclusion of GOProud.

Even though the Republican Study Committee claims to be committed to “a limited and Constitutional role for the federal government” and reducing “government regulations [and the] size of government,” anti-gay attacks apparently take priority over its dedication to federalism and small-government.

The DC Council voted overwhelmingly in favor of marriage equality in 2009, and marriage rights for gays and lesbians went into effect in early 2010. National and local Religious Right groups, led by Bishop Harry Jackson, just last week lost a lawsuit challenging the law.

Bishop Jackson has unsuccessfully demanded a popular referendum to decide the fate of marriage equality in the District, saying that the issue should be left up to DC voters rather than their elected representatives in the Council and going so far as writing to Congress to demand a popular vote on the issue. In Congress, however, DC’s Delegate does not have the right to vote on legislation and was stripped by Republicans of her limited voting powers.

Clearly, given his aggressive stance in support of DC’s voters’ ability to have a say in the matter, Bishop Jackson will come out strongly against Congressman Jordan’s proposal any minute now…

We have mentioned Rick Joyner here a few times before, mainly to point out that he is a member of the Religious Right supergroup known as The Freedom Federation and that several Religious Right leaders -including Janet Porter, Lou Sheldon, Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Cindy Jacobs, Lt.Gen. W.G. "Jerry" Boykin - sit on the board his Oak Initiative.  

In fact, it was for the Oak Initiative that Boykin recorded his video explaining how President Obama intended to use health care reform legislation to create his own private army of Brownshirts.

Joyner has been deepening his ties to the Religious Right in recent months, apparently because he recently received a message from God while visiting Moravian Falls, NC - which is reportedly an open portal to Heaven - in the form of a dream revealing that the foundation of America is literally on fire and that only the Word of God could save it from utter destruction:

Joyner went on to explain that the only thing that can save America is for Christians to become more involved in politics and for our political and governmental leaders to start listening to the "prophetic voices" of people like Joyner: