[Infowarrior] - Very OT: Congress and The Pill

[Richard Forno]

Are rare political item and one that's very off-topic for the list....so apologies to anyone whose dander gets in a huff over it, but I can't pass up the opportunity to comment on this item.  As with the SOPA "hearings" in December today's farcical House hearing on birth control was not only scripted (as most hearings tend to be nowdays) but totally insane in its content, composition, and exclusions.  The level of bias, blatant prejudicial exclusion, dogmatic intransigence, and downright hypocracy on this particular issue, in the Western world, in today's hearing boggles the mind.      Moreover, this is the same Rep Issa who we agreed was taking a more intelligent and rationalised right path with his SOPA alternative last month.    Unreal.

We now return to your regularly scheduled list traffic.

--- rick


Congressional Birth Control Hearing Involves Exactly Zero People Who Have a Uterus
http://jezebel.com/5885672/congressional-birth-control-hearing-involves-exactly-zero-people-who-have-a-uterus

Today on Capitol Hill, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform assembled a panel to discuss the birth control mandate in President Obama's Affordable Care Act. Specifically, whether or not requiring insurers to cover birth control violates religious freedom of people who don't believe in science. The committee, chaired by a male, consisted of eight men who felt personally persecuted by the requirement.

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Generally, listening to a Congressional hearing is listening to a bunch of incredibly annoying lawyers argue with each other, but this one is particularly offensive. It showed the particular brand of contempt, disdain, and dismissiveness with which the right wing and some religious leaders approach women's health. And until the government attempts to force Pfizer to develop morning after bacon or manufacture RU-486 in the shape of communion hosts, it's time for religious men to butt out.


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Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.