Hillary Clinton’s recent public health crisis has a number of Republican politicians weighing in on her ability to serve. However, many Twitter users noted that this amount of attention to women’s health is rarely seen from the GOP.
You can fool some of the people all the time or all of the people some of the time, but you can never fool Twitter. For example, Virginia State Senator Dick Black – who, yes, is actually a state senator and not a 15-year-old’s parody account, tweeted, “There is clearly something wrong with #HillarysHealth.”
Senator Black is, like many politicians, an expert on women’s bodies, which is why in 2015, he voted to defund Planned Parenthood, which provides healthcare to at least one in five women in their lifetimes, according to the nonprofit organization. In 2003, he enacted a bill that prevented underage women from receiving abortions without their parents’ consent. He also questioned whether spousal rape was real in 2002, when he said spousal rape laws create an “enormous fear of the damage to [the husband’s] reputation.”
There’s also US Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, who claims Clinton is “mentally impaired.”
This champion of public health also voted for HR 1797 in 2013 to require that women lose the ability to terminate their pregnancies past 20 weeks. Certain brain function tests are not done until after the 20th week, meaning that the bill effectively required that women give birth to fetuses with no brain function. He also voted to defund Planned Parenthood.
Texas is also home to the highest maternal mortality rates in the industrialized world, according to the Boston University School of Public Health. They also found that the ailments were “seemingly preventable.”
This is all very relevant, because the increasing number of bills that the Republican Party pushes in the name of protecting women’s health is actually doing the opposite. For example, in 2004, Ohio voted to change the requirements on the abortion pill requiring that doctors administer the pill using outdated FDA requirements. To be clear, only a few states required this and the majority allowed doctors to prescribe dosages in their patient’s best interests.
A study from the Public Library of Science found that in the time that has passed, complications from abortions increased in Ohio. In the period following the law, women were three times more likely to need additional medical assistance and had significantly more side effects than in the past.
This brings us to the big question: does this mean that Republicans will have an about-face and suddenly support women’s health and stop defunding the services that provide? If you believe Twitter, then the answer is no.
Source Article from https://www.sott.net/article/328176-GOPs-revolutionary-new-focus-on-womens-health
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