Gov. Granholm Goes Wild With Her Claims Of A War On Women

What an utterly disgusting and intellectually dishonest person Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is. She has taken to Politico to decry the "war on women" being carried out by evil Republicans. Granholm claims that Virginia's decision to require pre-abortion ultra-sounds, the defunding by some states of Planned Parenthood, and Rush's crass description of Sandra Fluke add up to an all out Republican War on "women's rights." Her arguments are disingenuous at best - and she omits any mention of the elephant in the room, Obama's HHS mandate that all employers fund free contraception and abortion plan B pills for all female employees.

Granholm first attacks Virginia's recent passage of a law requiring women to view an abdominal ultrasound before undergoing abortions. The sole purpose of the law is to insure that the women opting to undergo an abortion understand that they will be destroying a human life. For Granholm, this is exhibit one in the evil Republican "war on women." A 10 minute ultrasound hardly seems to be a "war on women," but to Granholm, who is apparently an advocate of abortion on demand without any moral considerations, any state action that would require nothing more than a woman face the morality of her actions is both "demeaning" and "unnecessary."

Granholm's next argument is that any state that acts to defund Planned Parenthood of our tax dollars is likewise conducting a war on "women's health." Granholm neglects to mention the fact that Planned Parenthood is a radical left wing organization pushing a far left social agenda of sex without physical consequence or moral considerations. Granholm likewise neglects to mention that Planned Parenthood, even though it receives vast tax dollars, is also our nation's largest provider of abortion services. They do so under the canard that the money used to provide abortions is separate and apart from taxpayer funding.

What is really going on is that the Obama administration shares the goals of Planned Parenthood and is intent on that organization receiving our tax dollars funneled through the states via Title X. Two recent examples paint this clearly. When New Hampshire voted to remove Planned Parenthood from the list of eligible recipients for Title X funds, the Obama Administration actually stepped in and gave a $1 million dollar no-bid contract with Planned Parenthood of New England. When Texas voted to provide Title X funds only to organizations that do not provide abortions, the Obama administration took the step of withholding all Title X funds for women's health from the state. What this dust up is about is not a war on women's health, it is a war being waged by the left to insure that one of their most sacred cows, one that fully pushes their social agenda, Planned Parenthood, continues to get fat on tax payer dollars. Yet Granholm, ignoring all of this, claims that this focus on Planned Parenthood amounts to "sexual McCarthyism." The reality is that this is Granholm and the Obama administration Komenizing the states that refuse to fund Planned Parenthood.

Lastly, Granholm claims:

Rush Limbaugh did more than insult a law student with his diatribe about Sandra Fluke; his words revealed a mind-set about women. Republicans have been chanting that they want to “take our country back.” Sure they do … back in time. Back to the good old days when women didn’t have the opportunities for personal and professional advancement that they do now.

What a disingenous ass this woman is. Not a single word has been mentioned by any Republican of reducing women's opportunities in any profession in any way. Not a single Republican has advanced the proposition that contraception should not be available to women under Title X. So how can Granholm make this outrageous charge?

Republicans are doing this by waging a war against contraceptive choice. Not just abortion, but birth control in general — the very thing that set women free to pursue equality in the first place. Studies have shown that since women have had access to the pill and family planning measures, they have made huge gains in both wages and in careers that were dominated by men. Which is why we’re seeing an outpouring of outrage from women. The legislation being advanced threatens those gains.

Granholm's last argument is cause and effect - that only access to the pill has made women able to succeed in the job market. That is ridiculous. The great societal change that began with "first wave feminism," then WWII with women working outside the home and finally the 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act, are what have allowed women to achieve parity with men in the workforce. Without those changes, every pill in the world would be meaningless. Granholm's argument is akin to saying that because dew forms on the grass at about the time the sun rises, that one causes the other.

As to her other argument, how can Granholm possibly portray anything that anyone on the right has done as an attack on "contraceptive choice." If her problem is with limiting funding of Planned Parenthood, which it implicitly is, the only way that argument could be valid is if there were no other organizations that could meet the requirements of Title X - and that is an absurdity.

Granholm, like virtually all on the left, is an intellectually dishonest person. The only war going on here is the HHS mandate, which is a war on the First Amendment religious rights of all Americans, not merely the Catholic Church. It is a deeply cynical, election year war being waged by Obama to reduce religion in the public square and to create the illusion that he is championing "women's rights" against evil Republicans. Yet the HHS mandate is the one issue Granholm manages to ignore. That alone tells you all you need to know about this piece of partisan excreta.

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