Well after more than 7 years of moaning and pissing the GOP, as well as their morose leader, are attempting, for the second time, to push the AHCA (American Healthcare Act) through Congress to repeal and replace President Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA). Their purported intent is to cut what they feel are unnecessary and frivolous services currently mandated to Americans under Obamacare while restating some conditions the GOP felt were too liberal to be applied as "essential" women's health care options.
The position of women in American social programs, including health care cost, is under assault by the Right-Wing-Nut-Jobs (RWNJ) of the GOP. Lead by the erratic, So-called Ruler of the United States (SCROTUS aka Donald Trump) it appears the direction and the ultimate fate of women in the 21st century is to be regulated back to the dark ages when women were not only viewed as second-class citizens but, were also seen as the gender who, in and of themselves, had no social value to the Christian-based extremism that has once again unpacked their bags on Capital Hill.
The American woman has fought long and hard since the early 1900's to change the patriarchal guidelines that had become the expected "gold standard" for acceptable behavior of women, sisters, wives, and daughters in America. Women made strides in that century which catapulted them from character actors on the sidelines to starring actors with equal billing to their co-stars (men).
Before the creation of the ACA under President Obama women were still subjected to health care options and alternatives that left a lot to be desired. It seemed women always paid higher premiums because our health care directives were decided behind closed doors by a room full of men who only gave lip-service to women's health care to appease the societal pressure they felt exploded from the bowels of the "pesky" woman's liberation movement of the 1960's.
With this new-found voice woman in America through protest, voice, votes and Supreme Court decisions carved out a unique position in America's health care doctrine to support their well-being and safety. Reproductive rights, health care, pregnancy and mental health issues became a woman's decision based on their individual needs unique to the place and time they found themselves in life. Women's rights to quality health care were no longer a one size fits all solution, lacking individuality or wiggle room for the ever-changing role women held in society.
Come to find out that under all that pomp and circumstance there still lives the white, entitled, sexist American male that truly believes that women are of no value, really, only put on earth to please men. The kicker is they cite the Bible as to why women are not equals. No, not all men feel this way. Probably the majority of men don't feel that way and view women as equals. But the few assholes who do visualize a women's existence beholden to them, unfortunately, are wearing their big boy britches and have decided females can't play with their toys in their sandbox any longer.
Come to find out that under all that pomp and circumstance there still lives the white, entitled, sexist American male that truly believes that women are of no value, really, only put on earth to please men. The kicker is they cite the Bible as to why women are not equals. No, not all men feel this way. Probably the majority of men don't feel that way and view women as equals. But the few assholes who do visualize a women's existence beholden to them, unfortunately, are wearing their big boy britches and have decided females can't play with their toys in their sandbox any longer.
The insults that are publicly being bantered right in front of the American woman, as if they are invisible and incapable of their own personal health care decisions, has been beyond unacceptable on many levels. The extreme right, under a GOP leader who claimed to "grab a woman by the pussy because he was rich," proceeds forward with gloves off, cherry picking disastrous offerings to women, content in knowing that public opinion has reached a fervor as to not even miss a beat when misogynistic sexism becomes the mainstream mindset towards women's health care choices.
The sexist, all-white, Right-wing-nut GOP, who cloak themselves in the guise of evangelistic saviors while bearing witness to God's true beliefs and desires are meeting behind closed doors once again. As usual, it is a bunch of old cronies who for some reason believe their religious principles and doctrine are the one and only bar of measurement as to what services women should have available to them, especially in family planning and health care.
The women of today have come full circle and now find themselves just about where they started, with laws & attitudes that belittle and diminish their existence. This feeling of going backward is felt all the more deeply because they have tasted the life full of rights allowing control over who they are, what they are and where they want to go in life.
Now SCROTUS, who himself possesses no moral compass, and who has flip-flopped from the stance of a woman's right to choose to thoughts that women should have some kind of consequence for having an abortion, has decided to swing to the far right to join the rest of the GOP's guise of religious principle and conviction. SCROTUS has even gone as far as to sign an EO (Executive Order) supporting the rights for businesses to decline to offer birth control. Citing religious beliefs & doctrine, the good ol' boys have decided that birth control should not be offered to the female worker if the owner of said business has "moral" objections to the concept and intent of birth control. Not just religious objection but merely moral objections as well.
Nothing is ever enough for those zealots who seem to think they are unduly put upon to exist in a world with a government that would allow any type of funding towards birth control and/or the Constitutionally determined right to an abortion. These people aren't content to be exempt from providing family planning/health care services to women in their employment because of the employer's religious beliefs. No, these diehards feel that to offer birth control of any kind, even by employers who have no moral or religious reservations per se, is a violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Somehow it has come down that for women to be offered birth control, by itself, promotes an ideology that the GOP feels causes irrevocable harm to the conscience of everyone umbrellaed under the health care system.
The exemption provided in the ACA was originally geared toward non-profits with religious objections to be exempt from providing any form of birth control for their female employee. That did not mean the women did not receive the essential mandated benefit that was offered under ObamaCare. (The employer had to submit paperwork stating that due to religious beliefs that birth control would not be offered in the employer's heath care packages. But the employers countered saying that they still felt they were directly involved with providing birth control simply because they had to fill out the paperwork submitted to the government. This went to the Supreme Court who remanded it back down to the lower court for decision - a decision that has yet to be rendered.) No, it simply meant the federal government circumvented the employer and paid for the reproductive health care services directly, with the money coming from a federal fund that was paid directly to the provider of such services. This kept the Christian RWNJ's hands clean from the dirty deed of participating in family planning in a direct manner. Now their objection, simply put, wants to eliminate the United States federal government from offering birth control as a mandate within the AHCA stating that by offering birth control the act itself imposes such a substantial burden that it affects their religious freedoms.
Wonderful, so a white, middle-class, Republican zealot who sees any and all opportunities to control the "barefoot & pregnant" ideology to which he clings to with drooling contentment of a hypocrite gets to decide, in essence, not only the sex life, or lack thereof, of his female employees, but actually has his beliefs and religion decide the family planning options of all women with whom he employs.
(Disclaimer: This article did not address the other egregious decisions by the GOP to take away essential benefits such as screening & preventive health care options that maintain a women's health nor did it address the unfair description of pre-existing conditions that could increase health care cost while decreasing health care mandates, especially for women, in regards to breast cancer, pregnancy, maternity & newborn care.)
