The Real “War on Women”

By Carol Tobias, NRLC President

Editor’s note. This appears in the latest National Right to Life News. If you are not a subscriber, please call us at 202-626-8828.

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According to the “mainstream” media and prominent Democrat leaders like President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, there is a cultural “war on women” taking place in America. It’s a great slogan ginned up to motivate the President’s liberal supporters. Women are being victimized, but not in the way the media is portraying it. Let’s take a look at three areas important in this so-called “war.”

Planned Parenthood

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is the largest abortion provider in the country. It has an annual budget of more than $1 billion. Roughly 46% of that comes from government (federal, state, and local) health service grants and reimbursements.

Many people don’t like the fact that tax dollars are given to an organization that kills unborn babies. About this time last year, several states and the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to cut off, or reduce, tax dollars that go to abortion-promoting organizations like PPFA. This quickly became known as the “war on women.” Why? Because PPFA affiliates perform abortions (which are only done on women) and they advertise breast cancer screenings (again—women only), but PPFA doesn’t do mammograms; it refers women to someplace else for the procedure.

All the Republican presidential candidates have stated that they oppose tax funding of PPFA. When Mitt Romney expressed his opposition to tax funding by saying that he would get rid of Planned Parenthood (meaning, federal funding of Planned Parenthood), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee immediately sent an e-mail to its supporters and raised more than $218,000 to hold Republicans “accountable for their War on Women.”

In 2010, more than 9 out of 10 PPFA’s services going specifically to pregnant women were abortion. Roughly half of those abortions are performed on unborn girls. That’s the real war on women.

Ultrasound

About half of the states have some type of legislation dealing with ultrasound and abortion. Three states have laws that require an ultrasound be performed before the abortion and that the screen must be positioned so that the woman can see the screen if she wants to.

The ultrasound laws are among many pro-life laws that have been adopted by state legislatures in recent years. Apparently, abortion proponents decided they need to stop this pro-life advance and declared war on ultrasound legislation.

In March, when Virginia passed legislation requiring an ultrasound before an abortion is performed, the outcry from abortion supporters and the media was loud and intense. Their battle cry was that we should not be forcing women to undergo this horrible, degrading procedure. (They were referring to the ultrasound, not the abortion.) They even went so far as to compare one type of ultrasound to “rape.”

A woman seeking an abortion is about to make an irreversible life-or-death decision. She should be given all medically relevant information before the abortion is performed, including letting her see an ultrasound of her unborn child.

Our opponents are afraid that if she sees her baby, she’ll change her mind. They want to rush the pregnant woman into the abortion facility and rush her through the abortion procedure before she can change her mind. That’s the real war on women.

ObamaCare

The Obama Administration is mandating that religious institutions (not just Catholic ones) provide their employees with health plans that cover FDA-approved contraceptives and sterilization procedures. When various churches objected, the Obama Administration and Democrat leaders like Pelosi turned the debate into a battle over whether women would have access to birth control. Thus, another battle in the “war on women.”

Some main points are getting lost in this “battle.”

1. Religious freedom is under attack—the government is forcing institutions and individuals to provide something to which they have a moral objection. All Americans, whether or not they have religious leanings, should be concerned that constitutional rights, such as religious freedom, can be so easily dismissed by this administration.

2. The Obama Administration won’t stop with birth control—ObamaCare establishes a new section that deals with “Preventive Health Services.” Under this section, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) may mandate that most health plans cover any service “with respect to women” that constitutes “preventive care.”

President Obama, through HHS, has declared that contraceptives are now a mandated “preventive care” service. What is to stop the administration from adding abortion to the list of preventive services that must be provided? After all, abortion prevents childbirth.

Although this third point doesn’t directly address the “war on women,” we need to consider the ramifications:

3. The government should not tell insurance companies which services to provide based on cost. Insurance companies are being told that providing birth control to employees of religious institutions really doesn’t amount to spending money, because birth control is cheaper than childbirth. That position should send chills down the spine of everyone who receives any kind of medical service.

Birth control is cheaper than prenatal care and birth. So is abortion. A wheelchair is cheaper than a knee or hip replacement. A lethal injection is cheaper than kidney dialysis or an organ transplant. Does that mean the government should mandate that insurance companies provide the wheelchair or the injection free of charge?

The Administration has also released a rule to implement a new ObamaCare program of massive federal subsidies for health plans that cover abortion on demand (see story, page 1). How many more unborn girls will die because of this plan? That’s the real war on women.

The “war on women” is a political ploy to silence anyone who opposes the Obama agenda and to motivate his restless base. The voters will decide this fall if the ploy worked. I’m confident that pro-lifers will do everything possible to protect women and the unborn babies from the real war on women.

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