This past Monday the AZ Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on SB1474, the “guns on campus” bill, which would allow concealed weapons to be carried on Arizona college campuses. My dear friend Jennifer Longdon testified against it. She had expected to get 5 minutes to speak but it was shortened to 3 minutes due to the time constraints of so many people showing up to speak on it (mostly against). I watched her abbreviated testimony online and she did great. But she wanted people to know all of what she wanted to say so she posted her complete prepared remarks on her blog. Jen draws upon her considerable personal experience to refute the arguments put forth by the gun lobby and, well, you just have to read it for yourself.

Lots of people did show up to oppose the bill. Jen told me that about 70 people, including law enforcement officers and university and student representatives, signed up in opposition to the bill and 12 in support. I asked her if any business groups or Chambers of Commerce spoke for or against the bill. She said the only input from business was from Raytheon, which asked for a carve-out.

In contrast, business group reps showed up in full force at a Senate Economic Development and Jobs Creation Committee on Wednesday in support of SB1336, a “tort reform” measure that would limit product liability damages. On one level I can understand it: corporate lobbyists have priorities. But on another level I have to ask, once again, why we’re supposed to trust the wise, pragmatic counsel of business leaders to shape policy and select suitable candidates for elective office when said leaders can’t even be bothered to put up the slightest opposition to scary and stupid legislation like allowing guns on college campuses.

Many people, (including our editor) are wondering why the Catholic Church doesn’t just ditch this requirement. They note that most Catholics ignore it, and that most everyone else finds it divisive, or “out-dated.” C’mon! It’s the 21st century, they say! Don’t they SEE that it’s STUPID, they scream.

Here’s the thing, though: the Catholic Church is the world’s biggest and oldest organization. It has buried all of the greatest empires known to man, from the Romans to the Soviets. It has establishments literally all over the world, touching every area of human endeavor. It’s given us some of the world’s greatest thinkers, from Saint Augustine on down to René Girard. When it does things, it usually has a good reason. Everyone has a right to disagree, but it’s not that they’re a bunch of crazy old white dudes who are stuck in the Middle Ages.

So, what’s going on?

The Church teaches that love, marriage, sex, and procreation are all things that belong together. That’s it. But it’s pretty important. And though the Church has been teaching this for 2,000 years, it’s probably never been as salient as today.

The hodgepodge of evidence they marshal to make their case that the Catholic Church is right about contraception being wrong (aside from the aforementioned and logically fallacious appeals to the Church’s longevity and popularity) includes a 1968 papal pronouncement, a 1996 Slate article about unwed mothers, Kim Kardashian’s brief marriage, statistics on cohabitation and births to single mothers, and China’s coercive family planning policies. Their claim also rests on a sanitized view of pre-1960s life that seems to come straight out of black-and-white TV shows and movies, which leads them to babble incoherent ahistorical strawman piffle like this:

Instead of two parents being responsible for the children they conceive, an expectation that was held up by social norms and by the law, we now take it for granted that neither parent is necessarily responsible for their children. Men are now considered to be fulfilling their duties merely by paying court-ordered child-support. That’s a pretty dramatic lowering of standards for “fatherhood.”

Child support laws date back to at least 1910, when the Uniform Desertion and Non-Support Act was adopted. The Act was amended several times later to make it reciprocal between states and strengthen enforcement. Broken families and desertion by one or both parents were problems long before the advent of the Pill and it was necessary for federal and state legal authorities to step in to ensure that children were supported. Some people are either unfit or don’t have the resources to care for their kids and that has always been the case. But it’s clear that Dougherty and Gobry, despite all their sentimental blather about love and families, have a categorically ugly view of humanity. According to them, men have no intrinsic interest in relationships with women other than as sex objects and will abandon their offspring unless they are under intense social pressure (or a shotgun) to get married. Similarly, women are idiots who, armed with contraception and absent the strict guidance of (male) religious leaders, will take their moral cues from Britney Spears.

Yeah, it’s just like we’ve been saying all along. Social conservative opposition to contraception comes from the same place as their opposition to abortion: It is all about their obsession with sex and keeping women in their place. Everything else is window dressing and smokescreens.

It’s ridiculous, but this article in the LA Times about the Supreme Count decision on Clean Elections last summer captures the essence bf the false premises and dishonest motives behind the drive to repeal the program:

Conservative political neophytes like Smith have steadily taken over Arizona politics since voters passed the Clean Elections Act in 1998, a demonstration that the real-world effects of policy can defy partisan stereotypes. Now conservatives are scrambling to come up with new ways to finance challengers to the more centrist Republicans who once dominated state politics.

“That’s something that’s being lost in the reaction to this Supreme Court decision,” said Rudy Espino, a political scientist at Arizona State University. “This decision could actually help Democrats in the next election.”

Espino noted that conservatives — frequently those who favor a tough stance against illegal immigration — have steadily ousted incumbent Republicans in primaries over the years, which are dominated by party activists. Especially in legislative races, the winner of the GOP primary usually wins the election. That’s shifted Arizona’s politics strongly to the right.

“Clean Elections was one of those decisions that is an example of unintended consequences,” Espino said.

That narrative of Clean Elections pushing Arizona Republicans to the right is plausible, to the extent that it requires one to ignore the rest of the country completely. Arizona is one of very few states in the country that has any type of public campaign finances but we’re far from the only state plagued by wild-eyed right wing zealot lawmakers acting weird and introducing harmful bills. I like to use the example of Michele Bachmann, who got all the way from school board to the Minnesota state assembly to Congress to (briefly) being considered as serious Presidential candidate. Bachmann, who is clearly off her rocker, never received a dime of public campaign finance. Senator Steve Smith, referenced in the article, was elected in 2010 when the Tea Party wave swept rabid conservative neophytes in to state legislatures and Congressional seats across the nation. He credits Clean Elections for his victory, which is a true statement, in a sense, since that’s where he got his campaign funding. But you can’t blame Clean Elections for the wingnuttiness of Arizona legislators Frank Antenori, Scott Bundgaard, Lori Klein, Al Melvin, Terri Proud, Amanda Reeve, or Ted Vogt, to name a few, since none of them ran Clean.

Put the blame where it lies: On conservative think tanks, evangelical religious movements, and talk radio and Fox News propagandists. Also on all the self-serving Republican lobbyists and consultants in Arizona who were only too eager to push wedge issues election after election to get the flock to the polls so their big clients could get their tax cuts and deregulation. Pointing the finger and crying “Clean Elections done it!” absolves them of their past responsibility and allows them to pretend they can’t help having to donate to Senator Lori Klein, gun brandishin’ Tea Partier and GOP fundraiser “extraordinaire” now. They’ll wring their hands over the occasional embarrassment of a Birther bill but overall they’ve gotten most of what they want out of the Republican-controlled legislature.

Which is why the argument that getting rid of Clean Elections will help Democrats is simply ludicrous. With the exception of the few districts in which Dem voters are a majority, Democratic candidates in Arizona are usually at a substantial disadvantage against Republicans in traditional fundraising. Make no mistake, that is why business interests are so keen on killing public campaign financing.

“If the whole system went away, both Democrats and Republicans would have to reach out to a broader spectrum of people,” said Glenn Hamer, president of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce. “We would view that as a positive.”

Oh please. Hamer is disingenuously playing the “both sides are equally bad” false equivalence card here. The whackadoodles are on the Republican side and he knows it. He played a part in getting them there since he’s a former executive director of the AZ GOP. And he’s trying to pretend that the elitism at the heart of opposition to Clean Elections is truly populist. Nice try, Chamber of Commerce dude. The argument against Clean Elections is rooted in elitism. The narrative is that political extremism emanates from the working classes, and if you let the riffraff have a crack at elected office everything goes to hell. So it’s best to keep elected offices in the hands of the consultants, lobbyists, and business leaders who are the proper stewards of democracy. For some reason there are journalists, Democratic leaders, and even university professors who buy it.

2. Define “medical emergency” to encompass “significant health risks,” namely only those circumstances in which a pregnant woman’s life or a major, physical bodily function is threatened.

Nebraska passed a similar law last year and this New York Times piece described that ghastly consequences to one Nebraska woman as a result of their 20 week abortion ban:

They permit abortions after 20 weeks only to avert the death or “serious physical impairment of a major bodily function” of the mother. There are no exceptions for rape or incest, none for less dire medical threats or mental health.

Nor, under the laws, is an abortion allowed after 20 weeks when a fetus is discovered to be catastrophically impaired but still living, as is sometimes discovered by routine ultrasounds in midpregnancy.

Last fall, Danielle and Robb Deaver of Grand Island, Neb., found that their state’s new law intruded in a wrenching personal decision. Ms. Deaver, 35, a registered nurse, was pregnant with a daughter in a wanted pregnancy, she said. She and her husband were devastated when her water broke at 22 weeks and her amniotic fluid did not rebuild.

Her doctors said that the lung and limb development of the fetus had stopped, that it had a remote chance of being born alive or able to breathe, and that she faced a chance of serious infection.

In what might have been a routine if painful choice in the past, Ms. Deaver and her husband decided to seek induced labor rather than wait for the fetus to die or emerge. But inducing labor, if it is not to save the life of the fetus, is legally defined as abortion, and doctors and hospital lawyers concluded that the procedure would be illegal under Nebraska’s new law.

After 10 days of frustration and anguish, Ms. Deaver went into labor naturally; the baby died within 15 minutes and Ms. Deaver had to be treated with intravenous antibiotics for an infection that developed.

Ms. Deaver said she got angry only after the grief had settled. “This should have been a private decision, made between me, my husband and my doctor,” she said in a telephone interview.

These arbitrary abortion restrictions spring from the fervid imaginations of social conservatives who believe that women routinely abort late term, viable pregnancies on a whim. SB2838 is riddled with language that patronizes women and treats us like mentally and morally deficient children. In the fantasy world Kimberly Yee inhabits, there are practically never valid health reasons to terminate a pregnancy and she, despite her complete lack of medical credentials, is qualified to substitute her judgment for that of trained health care providers on the medical necessity of the procedure. And such a necessity is practically nonexistent, as far as she’s concerned. A severe fetal deformity is no reason to abort until the woman has gone into a life threatening infection.

Mind you, this will probably be held out as the “moderate” alternative to Sen. Smith’s personhood bill.

Legislature should focus on putting books in schools, not guns
After failing last year, tea party lawmakers again push for guns on campus

STATE CAPITOL, PHOENIX – Democratic Senator Steve Gallardo, along with fellow Democratic legislators, the Coalition to Oppose Guns on Campus and the Arizona Students Association will hold a press conference Monday, Feb. 6 at noon on the House Lawn to show opposition to SB1474, which would allow the carrying of a concealed weapon on public university and college campuses.

The Coalition to Oppose Guns on Campus is comprised of the following groups:

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
Arizonans for Gun Safety
Students Against Guns in Education (SAGE)
Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence in Arizona (including the Arizona Ecumenical Council, Church Women United of Arizona, Health Ministries Association/Faith Community Nurses of Arizona, United Methodist Women of the Desert Southwest Conference)
Graduate and Professional Student Association (ASU)
Graduate and Professional Student Council (UA)
Campaign to Keeps Guns Off Campus

MEDIA CONTACT:
Aaron Latham
Director of Communications and Policy Advisor
Arizona State Senate Democratic Caucus
602-926-4471
alatham@azleg.gov

1. Komen/Planned Parenthood smackdown. Supporters of comprehensive (and that includes reproductive) women’s health care pushed back hard on the Komen Foundation’s ideologically driven decision to pull breast cancer screening grants to low income women from Planned Parenthood and came out the winners. For some good national-level analysis on it, check out the excellent work Amanda Marcotte and Lauren Kelley have done. If you still doubt the extent of the victory, look no further than Arizona’s own Cathi Herrod of the socially conservative Center for Arizona Policy, who is very miffed about what she sees as Komen’s “waffling” and the pro-choice movement’s refusal to back down on women’s health.

Planned Parenthood has activated their base and is in full attack mode. We need to send a positive message to the Komen Foundation and pray they have courage and boldness during this time.

In that same blog post Herrod grouses about the Obama administration standing strong against the attempts of theocratic reactionaries to deny women contraception in private health plans. The moral of the story is that when we fight back, we win. And it hacks off Cathi Herrod, which is always a worthy endeavor.

2. Goldwater Institute exposed. The AZ legislature dropped a spate of bills designed to break public sector unions and cut the pay of teachers and first responders. It’s been described as “Wisconsin on steroids” and already the response is rivaling what happened in Wisconsin with educators, public safety workers, and advocates for working families amassing protests and press events to fight back. The Goldwater Institute was instrumental in drafting the anti-worker legislation, having feted WI Governor Scott Walker back in November at a fundraiser. GI is getting national exposure for this and much of it is not flattering. EJ Montini of the Arizona Republic called foul on both the Legislature and the (unelected) Goldwater Institute, whom he describes as “waging war on children, on sick people, on poor people, on teachers and on unions.” Kudos for the Mother Jones reference, EJ.

The moral of the story here is that the Goldwater Institute, which has presented itself for years as an objective academic organization serving lofty libertarian principles, is being exposed for what it really is – a big business lobbying group pushing ALEC legislation. Like the radical “pro-life” zealots who have finally gone too far by going after breast cancer screenings and birth control, GI has gone too far with this attack on highly regarded public servants.

Arizona progressives, let’s have a toast with the beverage of our choice over the nice victories of the past week and brace ourselves for next week.

Liberals do tend to think that government should maintain a social safety net that keeps people from falling into poverty and provides health care. Conservatives tend to disagree and insist that private charity should take care of the indigent. As I’ve said in previous posts, most liberals think private charity plays a role but it can only fill in the gaps in the social safety net, not be the entire thing. History and current events show that religious institutions can and do provide assistance in the community, but sometimes while enriching themselves substantially along the way.

And it seems that even some secular charities headed by conservatives are so freighted with a political agenda that it detracts in a large way from their mission. When the Susan G. Komen Foundation announced they were pulling grants for breast cancer screening from Planned Parenthood under the flimsy premise of a trumped up Congressional investigation, the response was swift and explosive. The internets not only rained down reams of condemnation upon Komen, they also stirred up a tempest of criticism that presents the organization in a much less flattering light than their carefully crafted public image would have you believe. Daily Kos diarist Betty Pinson is not too impressed with Komen, and for good reason.

Upon calling my GOP senator and speaking with his aide, I was shocked to hear her tell me “Sen.__ can’t sign on as a co-sponsor to the bill because all the breast cancer groups aren’t in agreement on it.” Shocked, I asked her who was opposing it. She told me that Komen opposed the bill. When I asked her why, she explained that Komen felt that treatment for uninsured breast cancer patients should be funded through private donations, like the pink ribbon race. I was speechless, in shock. A phone call to another activist confirmed it was true – Komen was lobbying behind the scenes to kill the bill. A moment later, Sen.__’s aide called me back and begged me not to repeat our conversation to anyone, that she had given me the information by mistake.

Thus my lesson about Komen began in 2000. They spend a lot of money lobbying for a very different agenda.

The bill passed anyway and Bill Clinton, who pushed hard in Congress for its passage, was happy to sign it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the end of Komen (and its founder, Nancy Brinker’s) political maneuvering to stall or kill legislation in Congress and in state legislatures that was supported by other breast cancer advocacy groups.

They fought behind the scenes in my state to prevent the governor from adopting the Treatment Program. They worked for several years to stall or kill the Breast Cancer & Environmental Research Act. In the end, they eviscerated it by removing new funding for environmental research and substituting a panel to review all research on breast cancer & environment. Using private funds, they recently collaborated with the Institute of Medicine to develop said report. Released last December, it sadly detailed the same old arguments that there’s no evidence of links between environmental toxins and that no further research should be done on the subject since everyone has those toxins in their bodies already. Instead they chose to blame breast cancer patients for getting the disease (more here).

In 2009, Komen lobbied behind the scenes to weaken the health care bill (ACA) as it was being debated in Congress. They hired Hadassah Lieberman, wife of Joe, in an effort to convince Joementum to vote against the Public Option. Komen spent over $1 million in 2008 & 2009, on behind the scenes lobbying related to the health care reform bill, so who knows what else was on their agenda.

She goes on to describe Komen’s founder, Nancy Brinker, as a major GOP fundraiser and would-be power broker. Brinker and other conservatives in leadership positions in the Komen organization clearly subscribe to a right wing worldview – emphasizing personal responsibility over corporate accountability, and private charity over public assistance. They are entitled to those views but it’s worth noting that despite all the races and the pink ribbons and the millions Komen has raised to find a cure for breast cancer, no cure is in sight and breast cancer rates continue to climb. That’s not to say it’s their fault but it’s not smashing evidence of their success either. This Komen affair just reinforces my contention that right wing authoritarians are as incompetent and self-serving at running charities as they are at running the government.

They just announced on the news that they’re reinstating the funds to Planned Parenthood. I think PP should turn them down and raise their own funds.

Okay, people, did I not tell you the other day that being vigilant about reproductive justice is important? Personhood has reared its head in Arizona.

2010 was the year Arizona voters lost their damn minds and sent a bunch of reactionary whackaloons to the Arizona Legislature, essentially to show that Kenyan Usurper in the White House what was what. So we lost people like Rebecca Rios, a veteran Dem legislator and a strong advocate for children and the working poor, who had served her constituents and the state well. Pinal County voters sent Senator Rios packing and replaced her with Steve Smith, a businessman and Teabagger neophyte from the city of Maricopa.

It turns out that Senator Smith, in addition to being a simple-minded reactionary who marches in lockstep with Russell Pearce, is a dudebro with a massive preoccupation with what ladies are doing with their ladybusiness. I know. Shocking.

I really have to commend reporter Howie Fischer for asking Smith direct questions and making him go on record about his intentions with this “personhood” bill rather than let him blather about “the sanctity of life” and how much he cares about us delicate, fragile little ladies. Smith certainly tried to pull that paternalistic horsepuckey but couldn’t avoid making it crystal clear what a nasty piece of misogynist work he truly is.

But Smith said he sees a benefit in the legislation regardless of whether it ultimately leads to abortions once again being illegal in Arizona. He said the current informed consent requirements go only so far.

“But when they see what you’re killing is a human being in front of them, I think that’s hopefully just one more stopgate in their mental processing to say, ‘Oh, it’s not just an amalgamation of cells and globs of this and plasma this and blood this,’” he said.

“Mental processing”? WTF? It’s so unbelievably insulting. And creepy.

Smith’s legislation would apply in both cases of surgical and medical abortions, the latter involving the use of RU-486 which induces a woman to miscarry.

Less clear is how a law defining life as beginning at conception might affect the legal use of the “morning-after pill.”

One theory is that the pill, essentially a large dose of hormones, prevents a woman from ovulating. Smith said he subscribes to an alternate theory that the hormones prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus

I never cease to be amazed by how indiscriminately anti-choicers spew out uninformed medical opinions. It’s like they think that a lifelong burning obsession with what ladies are doing with their ladybits somehow bestows a license to practice medicine upon them. And the overwhelming consensus of medical science is that emergency contraception works by suppressing ovulation. You can “subscribe to an alternate theory” that it kills tiny little fertilized egg people all you want to but the doctors and scientists are still right and you are still wrong.

The first-term lawmaker said if it were up to him, all abortions would be illegal. That separates him from several “pro-life” politicians, including Gov. Jan Brewer who said she would allow exceptions, including in cases of rape or incest.

“I guess I’m a purist,” he said. “It’s easy for me as a man to say that because I’ll never be in that situation.”

Yeah, I guess.

Smith said his reasons go back more to his religious beliefs.

“God doesn’t make mistakes,” he said. “I believe that God is still on the throne and that’s happening for a reason, whether we get it or not.”

Just so we’re clear: The theology that guides Smith’s public policy views is that of a God who sits on a throne inflicting rape and incest upon his subjects for reasons known only to Him.

SB 1494 would require a specific mention of depression and related psychological distress as well as the risk of infection, hemorrhage, danger to subsequent pregnancies and infertility.

Smith acknowledged nothing in the law requires a woman to be told about the impacts of carrying a child to term, including how that will affect her life or finances. He said that is justified.

“They’re not going to a childbirth clinic, they’re going to an abortion clinic,” he said. “At an abortion clinic, they should be told the risks of having an abortion, not having the risk of having a child.”

He said any woman interested in the latter information should see a family doctor.

An OB GYN would be the best person to talk to about that. Some of them do abortions too, which would probably blow Steve Smith’s mind if he were aware of that.

The bill does require women to be informed of the “medical risks associated with carrying the child to term compared to undergoing an induced abortion” but that is the extent of the language dealing with that. It doesn’t state what risks of childbirth are to be discussed. The provisions dealing with risks of abortion are more specifically delineated.

(i) DEPRESSION AND RELATED PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS.
(ii) THE RISK OF INFECTION, HEMORRHAGE, DANGER TO SUBSEQUENT PREGNANCIES AND INFERTILITY.
(g) A STATEMENT SETTING FORTH AN ACCURATE RATE OF DEATHS IN WHICH THE ABORTION PROCEDURE WAS A SUBSTANTIAL CONTRIBUTING FACTOR.

A comprehensive study published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology determined that childbirth poses a risk of death to the woman 14 times higher than abortion. Postpartum depression is a very real and debilitating condition that affects a not insignificant percentage of new mothers. There are undoubtedly women in Arizona who don’t have good access to information about abortion, childbirth, or medical procedures in general. so a law intended to inform them should cover all the risks to the extent possible, not just those cherry-picked and distorted by anti-choicers in the hopes of steering women toward certain decisions. Of course, anti-choicers tend to drop their feigned concern for women’s health the second they are confronted with the fact that abortion is safer than childbirth. “Abortion is safer than childbirth? For whom?”, asked the very first comment to the Reuters article I linked. When their b.s. about harmful effects to women is debunked they shift seamlessly back to the fetus, as if that had been what the discussion was about all along. You are never going to get a straight answer out of a rabid anti-choicer because that would require them to admit their movement is based on misogyny and not a concern for “life”.

The aspect of the bill that’s going to get the most attention is the “personhood at conception” part but the rest of it is pretty damned offensive too and I appreciate that Howie Fischer covered it in his report. As far as the personhood thing goes, Smith told Fischer he wants this bill to be the test case for Roe v Wade. We’ll see how far that goes. So far no other legislators have co-sponsored it. Though it’s not a ballot referendum as has been tried (very unsuccessfully) in other states, a “personhood” bill is a risky move in an election year nonetheless. Smith was careful not to target birth control in the language of the bill but it’s bleedingly obvious from his statements that he’s set his sights on that too. If other legislators join him the Democratic campaign ads will write themselves. And it was Smith who introduced last year’s spate of anti-immigrant bills that didn’t end up passing because the “business community” stopped pretending to be neutral and helpless and intervened to stop them. So it’s hard to tell at this point where this thing is going to go. But this is certainly no time to be complacent

Last week, someone prefaced a comment to me thusly. I’ve heard variants of that line for years, mostly from fellow liberals and centrists who think some of us ladies spend too much time dwelling on reproductive justice when there are so many more Important Things^TM we ought to be caring about. Such as the economy. Or the Fiesta Bowl scandal.

I care about reproductive justice for women, a lot. So much so that I devote a lot of time to researching and blogging about it. And it’s about far more than safe, legal abortion, thank you very much. It’s about access to contraception to prevent unplanned pregnancy and also about STD screenings to detect conditions that could lead to infertility or deadly cancers. So I consider it a worthwhile use of my time and energy, thank you very much. I honestly wish I didn’t have to devote any time to this. I wish it were commonly accepted wisdom in this country that women should be able to determine when and whether to have children and that everyone deserves respectful medical care and accurate information about sexual health. But it’s not. The radical right certainly isn’t backing off on their freakish crusade to regulate the ladies. When the Tea Party freshman class took over Congress in 2011, the first thing they did was to try to defund Planned Parenthood. This was after the media assured us that this Tea Party movement was totally driven by anger over excessive government spending and corruption.

Bishop Thomas Olmsted of the Phoenix diocese is having a hissyfit over the health care law’s mandate for private insurance to cover birth control. This makes total sense, if you’re not a crazy sex-obsessed authoritarian, since contraception prevents unplanned pregnancies and saves a lot of money. It’s so sensible that 77% of Americans approve of insurers having to cover contraception. Not that public opinion should be the determinant of these things but public opinion (including that of most Catholics) is clearly on the side of birth control. Yet Olmsted and other extremists who oppose birth control are wielding influence over public policy. Recently the Obama administration overruled the FDA on expanding over-the-counter-access to Plan B. The move drew a lot of criticism from pro-choice groups and it was largely based on wild falsehoods about the Morning After Pill (that it causes abortions and leads to promiscuity). So a medication that reduces the risk of pregnancy after unprotected intercourse, and therefore the risk of needing an abortion, remains less available in order to placate the “pro-life” people. That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

Liberals and moderates who treat reproductive rights like a trivial issue obviously aren’t paying attention to the extent that opposition to them is a central issue in right wing politics. Anxiety and anger over women’s liberation and the sexual revolution have definitely fueled the ascendance of more than a few Republican politicians in Arizona and across the country. For example, Congressman Trent Franks isn’t where he is because of his position on marginal tax rates. He was motivated to go into politics and won primaries for the state legislature and Congress because of his rabid “pro-life” stance. I would argue that this issue has more to do with the GOP going hard to the right and driving out moderates than any other. And 2011 was the year that the movement really came out and admitted they’re after birth control access in addition to legalized abortion.

So yeah, it’s actually important.