GOP State Governments: Stopping Contraception and Women's Health - GOP making Medical Decisions for poor women.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/where-right-wing-radicalism-festering-while-nation-watches-presidential-race-there-are?akid=14058.294211.aNP3Vg&rd=1&src=newsletter1052471&t=8

As it has been for years now, the No. 1 priority for Republican state legislatures is making sex as fraught and unsafe an experience as possible for women, especially low-income women. As I reported earlier last week, Florida passed a massive bill that will cut off access to both birth control and abortion, by reducing funding and passing medically unnecessary restrictions to make it simply too expensive to offer affordable care to women, especially through Planned Parenthood.

Now Indiana’s Legislature has passed a bill that forces women to give birth if a doctor has detected a fetal abnormality. Which, yes, would mean that a pregnant woman who contracts Zika would lose her right to abortion, while a woman with a healthy pregnancy would retain her right to say no to giving birth. Even some Republicans balked at the sadistic pleasure their colleagues take in the idea of forcing women to give birth to children who will suffer, die or be too much for women to care for.

“Today is a perfect example of a bunch of middle-aged guys sitting in this room making decisions about what we think is best for women,” state Rep. Sean Eberhart, a Republican, said. He voted no on the advice of his wife.

The breathless obsession with making sure all those sex-having women pay has completely enthralled state legislatures across the country. Oklahoma state Sen. Nathan Dahm is pushing a bill that would strip any doctor who performs an abortion of his or her medical license.  His colleague, state Sen. Joseph Silk, went one further, authoring a bill that would charge anyone who performs an abortionof murder. Both bills have come out of committee, though Senate Republicans are holding the murder bill from a vote right now. Hopefully they’ll keep it that way, because they look like a bunch of yahoos.

In Iowa, state Sen. Jake Chapman is trying to make abortion a “hate crime.” This is no doubt based on right-wing propaganda that argues that women get abortions because they have irrational bigotry toward embryos and not because of mundane things like they want to control when and how they have children.

And, of course, you have the Planned Parenthood defunding orgies. On top of Florida, the legislatures in Missouri, Virginia and Arizona all took steps to cut Planned Parenthood patients off from getting affordable checkups and contraception.