Catholic Bishops' Allies Dominate Hearing on Sweeping Anti-Choice Bill

[theHandpuppet]

http://truth-out.org/news/item/21176-catholic-bishops-allies-dominate-hearing-on-sweeping-anti-choice-bill
Catholic Bishops' Allies Dominate Hearing on Sweeping Anti-Choice Bill
Sunday, 12 January 2014 12:46
By Adele M Stan, RH Reality Check | Report

For the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), it was a good day in the U.S. House of Representatives, when the all-male Subcommittee on the Constitution gave the bishops’ current top lobbyist and former anti-choice spokesperson the chance to express their support on Thursday for a sweeping anti-abortion bill that would, among other obstructionist measures, single out for tax penalties women who exercised their Constitutional right to end a pregnancy.

Because Republicans have a majority in the House, Subcommittee Chairman Trent Franks (R-AZ), was able to use his prerogative to choose two witnesses while the Democrats were left with one. Presenting testimony in favor of HR 7, dubbed the No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Act, were Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the USCCB’S Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, and Helen M. Alvaré, professor of law at George Mason University, and former spokesperson for the same USCCB secretariat.

Susan Wood, associate professor of health policy at George Washington University, testified in opposition to the bill. Wood is a former official of the Federal Drug Administration who resigned in protest in 2005 over what she saw as political interference in the approval process for the emergency contraception drug Plan B One-Step.

Forbidden to testify, despite the request of ranking member Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), was Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents the District of Columbia in the House. Because HR 7 would permanently bar the district from using revenue collected through local, not federal, taxes to fund abortions for poor women (an option that remains open to the states), Norton had asked to address the committee for five minutes. Instead, she was left to sit in the audience while the men on the committee argued over whether House rules permit her testimony.... MORE

[warrant46]

1. Let's hear what the guy from Argentina has to say about this ?

Crickets---

[theHandpuppet]

3. You mean like this?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/pope-francis-denounces-abortion-as-horrific-9058040.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Huh?

Posted in the wrong thread, perhaps? Or did you get the wrong country?

[warrant46]

5. Thanks corrected

Sorry Brazil

[Bluenorthwest]

6. Francis is from Argentina, where he was a strident and loud anti choice activist

when he was not too busy being a strident and loud opponent of equal rights for gay people.

[warrant46]

7. I know that--- he has put on a new mask to fool the sheep

Same stench though

[antiquie]

2. War tax resistors got jail,

why is this different?

[SidDithers]

8. Surely Pope Photo-Op doesn't support this stance...

Right?

Sid

[theHandpuppet]

11. Hater!

Isn't that the standard response?

[Bluenorthwest]

9. Where are the folks who defend the anti choice and anti gay dogmas of Francis and company now?

They sure get quiet when we speak of news rather than photo ops.

[theHandpuppet]

10. Yep...

When we speak of real legislation that affects the lives of millions of women and LGBTs, including poor women, those crickets are deafening.

[Bluenorthwest]

12. I'd be ashamed to go so silent if I was a promoter of Francis and Company, fair weather boosters

who are too craven to step forward and own this, claim it, defend it as their own, for it is their own. They are the engine that empowers the leadership to do such great harm to others. They do not like it when the facts are on the table instead of press releases from the anti choice, anti gay group.

[theHandpuppet]

13. And those powers extend globally...

...to oppress women and LGBTs, to lobby for laws banning abortion, contraception, gay adoption, gay marriage, et al. From the town hall to the UN -- well-funded, organized efforts to pass laws that oppress and discriminate (too many that fly under the radar, too). As was pointed out in the article that began this thread, the issues of reproduction rights and poverty are so intertwined that one would really have to twist themselves into a pretzel to rationalize this B.S. There's a mighty fine line between compartmentalization and outright denial.

[Arugula Latte]

15. Yeah, it's pretty telling.

[theHandpuppet]

14. Kicking

For the afternoon crowd.

[Arugula Latte]

16. Absolutely disgusting. Fuck these medieval anti-women thugs

and their destructive, malevolent church.

[jwirr]

17. No matter what the good old boys in the Catholic Church are saying - the women have the last

word. And it is between them and their doctors.

[Dawson Leery]

18. So far, the current Pope is a new window dressing. Things are not changing.

There is a reason why people leave this church on a regular basis, especially in the first world nations.

[theHandpuppet]

19. Kicking

Because people should know just who is lobbying the halls of Congress against the rights of women.