It seems that when it comes to women, the GOP just can’t control themselves. This time, it’s Mike Huckabee.
According to the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake, Huckabee said at a meeting of the Republican National Committee, “Democrats tell women ‘they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them with a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government.’”
What is wrong with these guys (and they are almost all guys)? Somebody needs to tell them not to mention women and birth control in the same conversation. They don’t get the subtleties and they don’t understand women’s perspectives.
Let’s look closely at what he said. It sounds like Huckabee believes that if you can’t afford birth control, you should have the willpower to abstain from sex. That’s gonna work out real well. You know, because every child is planned.
But another big problem is that Huckabee thinks birth control is just about sex. Women see birth control as part of their health and economic well being. Women are the ones at risk when they get pregnant, not fathers. For them, pregnancy comes with a risk of everything from morning sickness to miscarriage to even death. And the time lost from work and impact of a child can be enormous, including putting women who are already struggling financially into poverty.
Until Republicans start to understand that birth control is about more than sex, their disconnect with women voters will continue. Now, Governor McCrory, about that forced ultra-sound…
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
well ,
maybe uncle sugar will stop paying for your penis pump and your viagra cause that’s only for sex and u can’t control yourselves????
Given the job situation for males of peak sexual age, they’re gonna need the gov’t to pay for those things… This entire “War on women” conversation (revival) is to distract us from the job and ACA situations.
Of course it is more than sex. It’s party of the liberal religion (I used that term long before Ann Coulter). Saying that the GOP will take away their birth control is akin to saying to men that the liberals are gonna take away their man-parts, and probably just as truthful. But truth is the first casualty of politics.
Let me restate — the Dems think that women are pure emotional beings and they can scare them into voting with unsubstantiated lies and the promise of “Free” $8 birth control pills. Dunno about you, but I think there is a risk of treating any woman like she doesn’t have a brain.
If you knew how condescending you sounded, you would better understand why the GOP is losing women by double digits. Women are worried that the GOP will take away their birth control. It’s that they KNOW that Republicans oppose requiring insurance companies to cover it.
If you realize… but you do, which is why you write like you do. My attempt was to be condescending — to the attitude that women need the help of a national law to get their birth control. I don’t know of a single GOP person who doesn’t think highly of birth control, and probably at least half would support a motion to make The Pill available OTC. But for some reason your side scares the hell outta them that if their $8/mo isn’t covered then they can’t get it.
BTW, I should mention that I’m both unemployed and uninsured due to your side’s “reforms” of health care. I know, I know, I “did it wrong”, correct? After calls to THREE Senators, one Rep, the ACA hotline as well as 2 health insurance companies, I can’t possibly be doing it right. And just because I once sold the stuff, worked for a medical billing software company, and bought my own plans for several years can’t mean that I know what I’m doing either — the fact remains that you believe I’m doing it wrong.
So instead of scaring women about birth control, how about covering the millions left unemployed by this economy who draw unemployment (or maybe have now fallen off) but yet made too much money while working to get a subsidy? You know, actually get ACA to do the thing your side said it would do?