No shock here

Bush thinks women should have more options when it comes to reproductive choice – that’s what he said in the second debate. So why is his team taking them away?

From today’s NYTimes:

“Tucked into the $388 billion budget measure just approved by the House and Senate is a sweeping provision that has nothing to do with the task Congress had at hand - providing money for the government. In essence, it tells health care companies, hospitals and insurance companies they are free to ignore Roe v. Wade and state and local laws and regulations currently on the books to make certain that women's access to reproductive health services includes access to abortion.”
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/23/opinion/23tue2.html)

I’m being disingenuous here, of course. I know he doesn’t think women should have more options. And I know exactly what his team is up to. Fewer choices for women, not more.

Moving the clock on women’s rights back.

And, as Mouse Words (http://mousewords.blogspot.com/2004/11/under-guise-of-protecting-family-we.html#comments) and Infinite Stitch (http://stitch.blogs.com/the_infinite_stitch/2004/11/gop_we_want_mor.html#comments), among others, have pointed out, trying to cram every family in America into the same Fundamentalist mold –

And why?

Because the Christian Right (or, more specifically, I suspect, certain Christian Right White Males) are terrified of the Other – of anyone who is not precisely, exactly like them.

Unfortunately, as reading their websites makes clear, this includes their own wives, daughters, and minor children.

It’s the same terror that caused the Victorians to build the workhouses, the same phobia that makes certain Right Wing politicians babble about orphanages and welfare mothers having crack babies, it’s never pretty, and it’s totally irrational, and it really shouldn’t be shaping our public policy.