The Blunt Amendment Is the Latest Insanity! Women Becoming Female Nothings in America...

Roy Blunt, GOP Senator, has presented an amendment that would allow any company owner in America to pick and choose what health care coverage their employees receive based on religious or even moral grounds. If an employer doesn't believe in contraception, access to contraception will not have to be included in the insurance policies that employees get. If the employer doesn't believe in cancer screenings, they will not be covered, but it doesn't end there. This amendment will allow any business owner to block coverage for ANY and ALL medical treatment to which they have the ever ambiguous "moral" objections. The Republicans are trying to frame this as a freedom of religion issue. It is not! It is a "War on Women" issue, plain and simple.

The GOP and Phyllis Schlafly effectively killed the Equal Rights Amendment just 3 states shy of ratification, but that was not enough for them. They had not completely won their war against women and have decided that the time is now to finish the war, once and for all! Women must be put in their place; women must go back in time and lose any advances that, as a gender, we have fought for and won. Very few younger women know the history of the battles that were waged so that they could enjoy not only reproductive freedom, but the opportunity to work outside the home in an equitable labor market. The women who led the way in these fights for the civil rights of women were persecuted, slandered, threatened and intimidated every step of the way.

This latest assault on the rights of women to access preventive medicine currently being played out in the U.S. Congress is a call to all good "Shariah-style Christians" to come to the aid of their party. It began when Republican members of Congress attempted to redefine rape, as if some rapes are more valid than others... It progressed when Republican members of Congress attempted to defund Planned Parenthood and now, it has evolved to Republicans touting the evils of contraception, adequate prenatal care and even cancer screenings. Despite the facts, which clearly demonstrate that 98% of American women use or have used contraception, the 'Gray Old Party' ignores those facts and pushes ahead with their paternalistic and theocratic views that America must be protected from equal rights for women.

At this point in time, we are inches away from adopting the burqua as acceptable garb for women. While they are not currently proposing the burqua as standard wardrobe for women, every repressive idea that the garment represents is favored by the GOP: Women are property, women are not smart enough to make their own decisions and women must bow to the authority of men.

This effort by the GOP to strip American women of access to birth control is a battle they will lose. American women will NOT go back to being female nothings. The GOP can pretend that it is an issue of religious freedom. Hell! They can pretend it is anything they want to call it, but women will not sit still and they will not back down. Women are not property and they are more than baby-makers. For now, women make up more than half of the voters in this country, and the GOP would be wise to take notice.

We now know, thanks to the intellectual leader and grand poo-bah of the Republican party, Rush Limbaugh, that all women who expect access to preventive healthcare as part of their health insurance benefits are "sluts" or "prostitutes". Limbaugh, who doesn't even comprehend how contracetives work, equates the cost of the pill with how much sex you are having. In spite of his ignorance on the subject, he is GOP resident expert.

One of the most effective ways to silence women has been to call them hateful, demeaning names such as slut, whore, feminazi, etc. The theory has always been that if you are able to belittle or condemn the character of the messenger, you can derail or thwart the message. When women are the intended target of the hatred, the language is geared towards their sexual character. Call into play their 'virtue' or lack of it and suddenly the message is diluted, disrespected and disregarded.

That will not work this time, because we are all "sluts" now! Misogyny will not win this time. The name calling will not deter us. We will not be shamed or humiliated into silence. Not this time!