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The GOP Healthcare Plan Is 100% A War On Women & Here’s Why

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Good health is one of those things that most people take for granted until they don’t have it. You don’t typically contemplate how often you floss—or don’t—until you have a dentist’s appointment. You don’t appreciate how great breathing is until you’ve got a cold that's so severe you’ve turned into a full mouth-breathing, speaks-in-grunts Neanderthal.

And you don’t recognize how great it is, as an American woman, to be recognized as a living, thinking person with needs and wants of your own, independent of your baby-making abilities until… Wait.

Do American women ever feel that way?


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I was raised in a hugely conservative Christian home. Rush Limbaugh often spit-shouted over the radio in the car on long road trips. I knew the name Neil Boortz before I even understood what anything they were talking about meant.

And, growing up in such a rabidly Republican home, it was natural to me to believe that women were required to fall into the “caregiver” role, that birth control was for whores who couldn’t keep their legs closed until they were married, and that abortion was just evil.

In fact, one of my earliest memories was going to visit a… rather unique… friend of my mother’s by the name of Fay. I hated going to Fay’s house, which was an anti-abortion shrine; a trailer filled with dismembered baby dolls in woven baskets, their plastic limbs covered in red paint. If she ever caught me looking at one of the decapitated dolls too long, she’d tearfully pick it up—literally in tears—and explain the abortion process.

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Though I started questioning all of these beliefs before I even hit double digits and have drastically swung the opposite direction as far as politics go, I want to establish, quite clearly, that I have seen both sides. I understand what the beliefs are and where they stem from.

And being able to consider these beliefs, in detail, since I myself once held them, I still 100% believe that the GOP has taken its fascination (obsession?) with restricting and controlling women and turned it into a fever-frenzied war against them.

Now let me explain why you should feel this way, too.

I was, and still am, a huge Bernie Sanders fan. And one of the ideals that originally attracted me to his following was a really simple one that I’ve believed for years:

“Health care must be recognized as a right, not a privilege. Every man, woman, and child in our country should be able to access the health care they need, regardless of their income.”

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As far as providing universal health care to its people, America is one of only about three developed nations that refuses to do so. And although Obama’s plan was a step in the right direction, the Republicans were never content to let it remain in place.

It was always only somewhat permanent, barely held together by bits of thin legal process, allowances, and erasures of what it was really meant to be. From the start, the Republicans often cried, “We will dismantle Obamacare as soon as we’re able to!”

And it appears as though they started with women’s rights. Just look at the latest:

It should be more than apparent that republicans have drawn a line in the sand … and we women are not included.

If someone throws a ball at you and apologizes, you can chalk it up to an accident. But if you give that ball back and they do it again, and again, and again… somewhere in there, you’re going to think that just maybe they’re doing it on purpose.

According to GOP's new proposed health care plan:

If you’re a poor person, you’re screwed. And if you’re a poor woman, you should just go ahead and pull out your ancient textbooks on feminine care and herb identification, because they literally could not give one less of a sh*t about you. No, really.

Trump is even planning on eliminating grants that protect women in abusive situations.

Did you know that if you’re poor and on Medicaid, the GOP believes you should be forced to find a job within 60 days of giving birth or you’ll lose your coverage?

Did you know that if you get raped and end up pregnant, it will be illegal for your insurance to cover any portion of the abortion?

Even in cases where the mother’s life is at stake?


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Did you know that the new health care bill will allow any health care provider to deny you essential coverage for things like obstetrical or gynecological visits?

According to the GOP, you are not a person; you’re a walking incubator for sperm. And even that’s shaky if you’re not pumping out strapping right-wing boys.

The Republicans might talk a big game, but the only people they are looking out for are the ultra rich, ultra white men who control corporations that pad their pockets with thousands of dollars to make sure they don’t pass laws to raise the minimum wage.

So next time the GOP tries to tell you that they aren’t waging a war against women, just smile, bat your eyelashes coquettishly, and ask them if they plan on keeping the provision in the new bill that will lead to women losing birth control access, well-woman visits, and maternity services.