The House has voted to block federal aid to Planned Parenthood. The Senate is unlikely to agree, but the battle lines are drawn. Remember how the elections were all about unemployment? Well, the Republicans have forgotten all about that. They are into forced birthism, full throttle.
Something new happened in the house. Two women stood up and talked back:
The battle over cutting Title X funding, which provides $317 million dollars to family planning service providers including Planned Parenthood got personal yesterday when California Representative Jackie Speier (D) took an incredibly courageous tact in the House of Representatives debate.You can watch Speier's speech:
In a serious turn for the you-go-girl, Speier stepped to the mic and apologized for deviating from her planned remarks, because the remarks of “the gentleman from New Jersey” who preceded her at the podium, Rep Christopher Smith (R) had “put her stomach in knots.”
And then she laid the smack down. Speier told the House of her own abortion in no uncertain terms, relating how a complicated (but wanted) pregnancy led her to make the heartbreaking decision for the procedure. “I lost a baby. But for you to stand on this floor and to suggest, as you have, that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought is preposterous.”
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Another Power Woman in last night’s heated debate was Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin. When Rep. Paul Brown of Georgia argued that because most clinics are in ethnic neighborhoods “more black babies are killed” by Planned Parenthood, she countered, “I know all about black babies. I’ve had three of them. I had the first one at the ripe old age of 18.” Moore also said that Republican policy has long had “utter contempt for poor women and poor children.”