On Monday, we gave you some details about the services that are provided by Planned Parenthood — a federally run institution that Mitt Romney would cut support from if elected. We received a letter, and several comments in response to this.
Letter: Voting for a Republican presidency attacks women’s health rights
Re: the Emerald’s election issue article “How a Mitt Romney presidency would affect your sex life,” (Emerald, 10/29/12) one has to wonder at the mental acrobatics required for Republican women to justify voting for a candidate whose policy positions pose a threat to the health of an entire class of American citizens.
The university student quoted in the article, who is a senior family and human services major at the UO, stated that she doesn’t “feel like there is a war on women.” Substituting the word “war” with what the Republican Party is actually engaging in, “a campaign to undermine women’s autonomy to make healthcare decisions for themselves,” is the first step out of this quagmire of muddled thinking. Casting a vote for these “old men” while hoping they “shut up” about decisions in which they ought not have a say, sounds a lot like the wisdom of the three wise monkeys. The student claims “any respectable Republican man with a brain knows what rape is,” but fails to note that evidently there are quite a few Republican men who hold public office in large part thanks to the women who vote for them, who are very unclear about even the most basic facts of reproductive biology.
Concrete threats to American women’s health and welfare can’t be imagined away, and more Republican women will have to consider what impact their decisions at the polls will have on their fellow citizens’ health now and for generations to come.
— Michelle Loew@@http://www.uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/loew/3889@@, University Graduate Teaching Fellow
Comments from dailyemerald.com
Oct. 29, 11:27 a.m.: “Contraception is not a right. If you cant afford contraception, then do not engage in sex. Simple. The federal government has no role to play in providing this type of service for women.” — Pro life
Oct. 29, 1:26 p.m.: “The federal government has no role to play in my sex life or my reproductive organs.” — Female who deserves rights
Oct. 29, 9:28 p.m.: “If men could get pregnant, the availability of birth control would be a nonissue. I don’t know where some people get the idea that their personal feelings about a concept should be applied to everyone else.” — persepective
Oct. 30, 7:57 a.m.: “The unemployment rate for women under President Obama has been dismal. As of September, there were 5,785,000 unemployed women, an increase of 780,000 since the day Barack Obama became president. At that time, unemployed women stood at 5,005,000 and this for women 16 years of age and older. In August, their unemployment rate was 7.9 and it now is 8.0 percent. That is up from 7.0 percent in January of 2009 and has pretty consistently gone up since he took office. Women should take this into consideration when voting in November.” — milt1007