Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Trump & GOP: Attacking Women, their Health, and Reproductive Help (All Over Again)

Trump wants to control or stop the monthly pill cycle
(He is a total menace to all women)

Main post follows this my earlier general background on birth control – now again back in the news: Basically Republicans hate birth control. Most will say it’s their “religious belief and thus their right to prevent a women from getting employer provided health care which includes birth control” (e.g., birth control services w/o a co-pay that the ACA-Obamacare allows).

Ergo: They believe that they are stopping a woman from “killing a baby” by even preventing the natural birth process to commence, or some other silly ass illogic like NOT killing a baby.  

FYI for Mr. and Mrs. GOP (but mostly Mr.): There is no baby to be killed by preventing a pregnancy, so what do birth control pills do? 

BTW: Most if not all employer-provided health care provides Viagra and penile implants and such for men with ED, and usually at no cost to them. Fair right? Yeah, sure.

More specifically: Birth control pills for example prevent pregnancy through several mechanisms, mainly by stopping ovulation. If no egg is released, there is nothing to be fertilized by sperm, and the woman cannot get pregnant. 

Specifically, synthetic estrogen in the pill works to: Stop the pituitary gland from producing follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) in order to prevent ovulation, and to support the uterine lining (endometrium) to prevent breakthrough bleeding mid-cycle. 

Meanwhile, synthetic progestin works to:

§  Stop the pituitary gland from producing LH in order to prevent egg release.
§  Make the uterine lining inhospitable to a fertilized egg.
§  Partially limit the sperm's ability to fertilize the egg.
§  Thicken the cervical mucus to hinder sperm movement (although this effect may not be key to preventing pregnancy).

Other benefits from birth control:

§  It can help cut the risk of developing ovarian cancer by 50% according to many studies.
§  It they can shield against pelvic inflammatory disease (called PID) by doctors; PID is a sexually-transmitted infection of the female reproductive organs.
§  They can help prevent polycystic ovary syndrome (POS) which includes an irregular period cycle and excess body hair.
§  Contraceptives helps regulate your levels so your body releases eggs on time and sticks to a regular menstrual cycle and blocks POS from developing.

Now this updated and more current story from Salon (August 28, 2019) and with this headline:

Why are Republicans taking away birth control? Because they don't want women to have it.

Forget the excuses for ending Planned Parenthood's grants (recent actions and attempts) — the real goal has always been to take away birth control from women.

A few key points:

The GOP goal should seem obvious, but apparently it is not.

Every time Republicans find some new avenue to take away birth control, there is always some elaborate excuse — dutifully repeated by the mainstream media as fact — for why they don't want to take away your birth control, but simply have to for some other reason that is always, they claim, not about birth control. 

Birth control is never the target, they swear. It's always just the unfortunate collateral damage of some fight over, they swear, something else.

Don't buy that GOP line. The reason Republicans keep taking away birth control is because Republicans want to take away your birth control. 

They hate the power it gives women, especially young women and low-income women.

Neat quote by H. L. Mencken:Conservatives are modern Puritans; they are driven by the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”


Recall that Title X is a program that covers a lot of reproductive health care — though, importantly, not abortion — and it was mainly set up in 1970 to help low-income women who don't qualify for Medicaid to obtain low-cost birth control.

But the anti-choice activists who control the Republican Party don't like that this program provides birth control to women who need it. So they are finding ways to slash away at the program until it can no longer accomplish the goal it was set up to accomplish.

The right’s cover story this time is about abortion.

The Trump administration passed a new DHS rule terminating Title X funding for any clinic that offers abortion referrals to patients who might need one. Planned Parenthood, along with any other clinic that follows responsible health care practices, is now facing the loss of this extremely important source of contraception funding.

GOP conservatives frame this as an effort to reduce the abortion rate.
Well, that makes about as much sense as saying taking away measles vaccines from clinics that also treat measles cases.

My earlier post vis-à-vis Title X takeaway effort here.

Fact: Contraception is the only effective way to prevent abortion, and I would add: Ladies, only have sex with a man who has a vasectomy and thus is “firing blanks” as it were.

FYI: More than 500,000 men in the U.S. each year choose vasectomy 
for their role in birth control.         

Three more facts from very reputable sources:

§  Preaching abstinence instead of providing contraception doesn't work. As has been true since the beginning of time, people keep having sex.

Continue the original Salon article at the link – good story for sure.

My 2 cent summary: Again the GOP right and now apparently with Trump on board are back on the attack of women.

This is in a word is pathetic and hopefully every concerned woman in America will react and vote them out of office when their terms are up *starting in 2020 I would add.

Thanks for stopping by.

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