MILLER: Listen, Sarah, I have to ask you. This Newsweek cover. First off, I have two thoughts on this. To me it seems blatantly sexist and secondly I’m just glad they didn’t decide to do it with Hillary during the primaries. But your thoughts on it. You a little POed at this? I mean this was for another magazine, right?

PALIN: Yeah, yeah, it was for a health and fitness profile where I could tout the great outdoors of Alaska in Runner’s World months ago. And yeah, Newsweek. That was really snarky and cheesy and quite indicative though too, Dennis, of the state of journalism today. I think it stinks.

Listen here:

As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, it is conventional wisdom on the right that conservative women get harsher treatment than liberal women. But Miller’s hypocritical comments and Palin’s lack of concern with them, give weight to those who argue that Palin and her conservative followers have a selective perception of social bias.

“Women in particular may lose a great deal of clout in decision making,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). “We don’t know how far government will go in this bureaucracy,” she added, noting that they “want to empower women” and “want to have all the data on the table so individuals can make the best decision they can.”

On MSNBC this afternoon, Dr. Nancy Snyderman took Blackburn to task for getting the “public health message lost in the politics.” “Now, there’s nothing that came out of this panel recommending rationing,” said Snyderman. “Just a prudent use of screening tests.” When Blackburn tried to claim that the guidelines meant “bureaucrats deciding what they’re going to allow,” Snyderman pointed out that Blackburn was acting as a “bureaucrat” standing between patients and “the best possible evidence”:

BLACKBURN: It is troubling also that another of our colleagues has said many times, we. And that we means bureaucrats deciding what they’re going to allow.

SNYDERMAN: But you’re one of those bureaucrats. You’re my bureaucrat!

BLACKBURN: But I’m not, no. And you see, I don’t think a bureaucrat should be between a patient and a doctor. See, I don’t want to be that bureaucrat.

SNYDERMAN: Excuse me, I think that’s exactly where you are right now.

Watch it:

As the Washington Independent’s Mike Lillis notes, the concern of the congresswomen about rationed mammograms is especially ironic considering that they oppose legislation that “would require insurance companies that cover diagnostic mammograms also to cover routine, annual breast cancer screenings for all women 40 and older.”

Their provision would restore a program called Title V, which, since the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, has allocated a yearly $50 million in grants to abstinence-only education programs. Obama let the program lapse in June, leaving some abstinence-only groups in dire straits. So in September, Sen. Orrin Hatch offered an amendment to restore Title V via heath-care reform, which (much to the outrage of liberal groups) just squeaked through the Senate Finance Committee with a 12–11 vote. A similar amendment, offered in the House by Rep. Terry Lee from Nebraska, died in committee.

If the Senate language survives reconciliation, the Title V program will be extended through 2014. This will not, however, bring abstinence funding back to the levels of the past decade. In 2008, Title V grants accounted for just under 25 percent of the federal abstinence budget (the rest of the budget came from other abstinence-only funding sources not restored in the Senate bill, including Community Based Abstinence Education Grants and the Adolescent Family Life Act).

Funding for comprehensive sex education is also in the bill. Sec. 2953 also provides “$75 million per year through FY2014 for Personal Responsibility Education grants to States for programs to educate adolescents on both abstinence and contraception for prevention of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.”

The GOP senators who sided with defense contractors at the expense of women — such as John Thune (SD) — have been facing an intense backlash. David Vitter (LA) refused to give a rape victim a straight answer when she confronted him about his vote, claiming that he is “absolutely supportive of any [rape] case like that being prosecuted criminally to the full extent of the law.”

Politico reports that Republicans are now scratching their heads at why the public is so incensed about their “no” votes:

Privately, GOP sources acknowledge that they failed to anticipate the political consequences of a “no” vote on the amendment. And several aides said that Republicans are engaged in an internal blame game about why they agreed to a roll-call vote on the measure, rather than a simple voice vote that would have allowed the opposing senators to duck criticism.

As BarbinMD writes, “Seriously? They voted against an amendment that was prompted by the brutal gang-rape of a young woman by her co-workers while she was working for a company under contract for the United States government, after which she was locked in a shipping container without food or water, threatened if she left to seek medical treatment, and was then prevented from bringing criminal charges against her assailants. And they failed to anticipate the political consequences?”

Thune is also claiming that Franken doesn’t really care about Jones and other rape victims whose employers have blocked them from seeking justice; he and other Democrats just wanted to “create a vote which they could use to attack Republicans.”

So basically, the only lesson they learned is that next time, they have to hide their votes when they decide to screw over women’s rights. That way, they can support their allies in the contracting business and the public will never find out.

Conservatives are pressing forward with an effort to use health reform as a backdoor legislative effort to ban abortion coverage in the Exchange — and limit abortion services in existing employer-sponsored plans. However, an analysis of disclosure forms of right-wing organizations and lawmakers reveals that many anti-choice conservative leaders may provide insurance plans with elective abortions to their employees.

For instance, Newt Gingrich, like the RNC, has said he would like to outlaw abortions. According to IRS disclosure forms, Gingrich’s 527 attack organization American Solutions for Winning the Future provides health coverage to its employees through CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield. According to its website, standard Carefirst Blue Cross Blue Shield policies cover elective abortions unless the employer specifically opts out.

House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), another staunch opponent of reproductive rights, also provides Carefirst Blue Cross Blue Shield coverage to his campaign employees.

Both Gingrich and Cantor’s office have not responded to calls from ThinkProgress inquiring if either employer has canceled elective abortion coverage on their insurance coverage.

Yesterday, ThinkProgress interviewed Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (OH), one of the Democratic women who faced this treatment. Kilroy said unequivocally that the GOP’s actions were “sexist” and it would be “nice” if they apologized. She pointed to recent GOP comments about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — that it’s time to “put her in her place” — and said that’s exactly what Price and the other Republicans were doing on Saturday:

KILROY: [T]hree male members of Congress got up and started shouting down — trying to shout down the Democratic women. I thought it was loud, I thought it was rude, I thought it was disrespectful, and I thought it was sexist. [...]

Well, when you engage in loud, rude, and boorish behavior, my mother would have said they should apologize. I don’t expect an apology, but that would be nice to have that. But you know, you’re seeing this sexist behavior going on.

You heard recently comments — from the Republican side of the aisle, some of my Republican colleagues over there — saying Speaker Pelosi should be put in her place, and I think that’s what they thought they were doing with the Democratic women. And it’s simply outrageous to me to have women being treated like that on the floor of the House.

Listen here:

Yesterday on a Center for American Progress Action Fund conference call, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz said that Republicans have been essentially giving a “back-of-the-hand treatment to women,” pointing out that on Friday, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) “actually compared women to smokers and suggested women, like smokers, have to pay more for insurance just by the accident of our ability to get pregnant.”

Transcript:

KILROY: It wasn’t just me they were shouting down; it was every Democratic woman that got up to speak, to ask for unanimous consent to extend and revise the remarks in support of the Democratic health care bill. And each woman was giving a very short, one-sentence statement about why it was important for women — all the different aspects of the bill, why it was important for the women.

Apparently that message was too hard for Republican members of Congress to take because three male members of Congress got up and started shouting down — trying to shout down the Democratic women. I thought it was loud, I thought it was rude, I thought it was disrespectful, and I thought it was sexist.

TP: Why do you think they’re doing that? What were they so afraid of, that you were saying?

KILROY: Apparently since there’s a lack of a viable alternative coming from the other side of the aisle, they wanted to delay the Democratic bill from being voted on. They were engaged in a stalling tactic. But in particular, they were wanting to change the dialogue from how this bill helps women to a discussion on Republican tactics and parliamentary procedure and how long there is for debate and various points of order, or just shouting, “I object! I object! I object! I object!” to drown out the message that this bill — House bill 3962 — substantially will benefit the women of this country.

And instead of a celebratory moment by all of this who were lined up to speak — as women, to women, about why this bill would help them, but not give a long speech, just give a one-sentence statement as is permitted under House rules and then ask permission to revise and extend your remarks — to turn that into a contentious moment. So instead of talking about health care for women, we’re talking about the Republican tactics.

TP: So, did any of them come up to you afterward and apologize? Or do you think any of them should apologize?

KILROY: Well, when you engage in loud, rude, and boorish behavior, my mother would have said they should apologize. I don’t expect an apology, but that would be nice to have that. But you know, you’re seeing this sexist behavior going on.

You heard recently comments — from the Republican side of the aisle, some of my Republican colleagues over there — saying Speaker Pelosi should be put in her place, and I think that’s what they thought they were doing with the Democratic women. And it’s simply outrageous to me to have women being treated like that on the floor of the House. And the rules clearly say we can get up, give a simple sentence about why we’re supporting the bill, and ask to revise and extend. They were simply shouting that down.

Today on CNN, FreedomWorks head Dick Armey defended the industry’s discriminatory practices by saying that if you have diabetes because you “eat like a pig,” you don’t deserve coverage:

ARMEY: But now, they [government officials] come along and they say, irrespective of the fact they’ve gone 20, 30, 40 years of their adult life without ever having bought insurance prior to getting a liver inflammation due to their excessive drinking habits or diabetes because they eat like a pig, you must now insure them.

But at what point do we allow the government to order people that you must sell your product to this person or that person, irrespective of any good judgment? We saw what happened in housing when they ordered banks to make loans to people who weren’t qualified. Are we now going to have the same destructive influences in health care because we’re going to order doctors to provide services and so forth?

Watch it:

In reality, these pre-existing conditions that can disqualify people from receiving health insurance often have nothing to do with unhealthy lifestyle choices — and they disproportionately target women. Some pre-existing conditions are having a Caesarean-section pregnancy, being a victim of domestic violence, or being a victim of rape. Most individual health insurance markets don’t even cover maternity care. Other pre-existing conditions that insurers have used to either deny people outright or charge exorbitant fees for coverage include being an expectant father, having acne, or being a police officer.

Many Republicans, like Armey, seem unable to grasp that denial based on pre-existing conditions is discriminatory. Last week, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) said that insurers are justified in charging women more than men because we’re “all different.” He then compared a woman to a “smoker” and a man to a “non-smoker” to argue that insurers should be allowed to discriminate.

Armey also recently told the New York Times that the “largest empirical problem we have in health care today is too many people are too overinsured.” (He’s wrong.)

Transcript:

ROBERTS: Back on this idea of mandates that you talk about. Those mandates really are to guarantee certain levels of coverage, are they not? Like, you can’t be denied if you’ve got a pre-existing condition or if you’re pregnant. It also requires minimum standards for such things as mental health care. And there are a lot of mandates across the government on many industries, but that’s never called socialism.

ARMEY: OK. Well, let me just say, if the government said to the insurance company, no matter how many accidents, wrecks, drunken driving convictions they’ve had in the past and whatever is the condition of their record of driving habits, you must insure them, you would say that’s unreasonable.

But now, they come along and they say, irrespective of the fact they’ve gone 20, 30, 40 years of their adult life without ever having bought insurance prior to getting a liver inflammation due to their excessive drinking habits or diabetes because they eat like a pig, you must now insure them.

But at what point do we allow the government to order people that you must sell your product to this person or that person, irrespective of any good judgment? We saw what happened in housing when they ordered banks to make loans to people who weren’t qualified. Are we now going to have the same destructive influences in health care because we’re going to order doctors to provide services and so forth?

And the fact of the matter is, the government running somebody else’s business can very quickly become the diminution of the whole industry. And I promise this, about what the House passed the other night goes through, you will destroy medical innovation in America, you’ll destroy the incentive for it.

We are the nation of discovery, creation, and innovation in health care. The rest of the world copies us. If we don’t do it, it won’t be done, and it won’t be done under this plan.

In the House Rules Committee the Friday before the vote, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), who is also the chief recruiter for Republican House campaigns in 2010, justified the practice of insurance companies discriminating against women by comparing gender differences to smokers and non-smokers. The next day — on Saturday morning — Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) and several of his GOP colleagues shouted down congresswomen making 1-minute speeches on the importance of health reform for women. Wasserman Schultz denounced the interruption tactics and Sessions’ comparison of women to smokers as the “Republicans’ back of the hand treatment to women”:

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: I’m pleased to have an opportunity to express and underscore my concerns of essentially what amounts to the Republicans’ back of the hand treatment to women, issues that are important to women, particularly women’s health. We already have had a clear sense that Republicans were opposed to our efforts to advance women’s health interests. Now we know we know they’re opposed to letting women voice opinions on health care as well. [...] My colleague Pete Sessions actually compared women to smokers and suggested women, like smokers, have to pay more for insurance just by the accident of our ability to get pregnant.

Listen here:

Indeed, asked by a witness why should a woman pay more for a man for health insurance premiums, the supposedly pro-life Sessions scoffed:

SESSION: We’re all different. Why should a smoker pay more than a non-smoker.

Watch it:

Insurance companies employ a variety of discriminatory practices towards women. In many states, insurance companies consider rape, previous pregnancies, a c-section, and domestic violence as preexisting conditions. President Obama’s health reform proposals, including the bill passed by the House on Saturday, will end all denials of care based on preexisting conditions and ban gender discrimination for premiums.

Shagah Zakerion, one of the organizers of the rally to protest House Bill 1595, said many of her fellow students at the University of Oklahoma were unaware the measure had passed until it drew criticism in the national media.

“We didn’t even know the bill was going through our Legislature let alone that it had already passed,” said Zakerion, a senior from Tulsa, before the rally, which attracted about 100 people. “We need to stop this stuff before it turns into law, and we need to build a coalition of Oklahomans that are not only for reproductive justice but also for progressive issues.

“There are people here, and there are youth here who aren’t going to sit back and let legislation like this get passed again,” she said.

In an interview with ThinkProgress, Oklahoma state Rep. Jeannie McDaniel (D), an outspoken opponent of the legislation, lamented the anti-woman atmosphere in the state legislature. “Each of the successive five years, there has been a bill introduced in the Oklahoma legislature regarding women’s reproductive rights,” she said, adding, “Each year, it creeps a little more toward taking away women’s freedoms, more restrictions between the doctors.”

- Ryan Watkins

Last month, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts if companies “restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.” Although the amendment passed, 30 Republican senators voted against it.

One of the Republicans singled out for especially harsh criticism following the vote was Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), who has a track record of siding against women’s rights. The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein reports that at a town hall meeting this past weekend, a constituent confronted Vitter about his vote. The woman, a rape victim, demanded that he explain why he opposed Franken’s amendment. Vitter refused to give her a straight answer:

WOMAN: It meant everything to me that I was able to put the person who attacked me [behind bars]. And what allowed me to do that was our judicial process. I showed up in court every day to make sure that happen

VITTER: And I’m absolutely supportive of any case like that being prosecuted criminally to the full extent of the law. [...]

WOMAN: But how can you support [a law] that tells a rape victim that she does not have the right to defend herself?

VITTER: Ma’am The language in question did not say that in any way shape or form.

WOMAN: But it is unconstitutional to have a law that says a woman does not have a right to defend herself.

Vitter then tried to deflect blame to the Obama administration, saying that it was also against the amendment. When the woman replied, “But I’m not asking Obama. I’m asking you,” Vitter retorted, “Do you think he’s in favor in rape?” Watch it:

Vitter’s criticism of the Obama administration isn’t quite correct. “While the Obama Defense Department raised concerns about the reach of the Franken amendment,” notes Stein, “the White House itself said it supported ‘the intent’ and was working to make sure it was ‘enforceable.’”

A less-noticed — but still significant — part of the bill would ensure that insurers in the individual market would no longer treat domestic violence as a pre-existing condition:

A health insurance issuer offering health insurance coverage in the individual market may not, on the basis of domestic violence, impose any preexisting condition exclusion (as defined in section 2701(b)(1)(A)) with respect to such coverage.

Eight states currently allow insurers to reject women who have survived domestic abuse for coverage. As the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim has explained:

Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you’re more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.

In human terms, it’s a second punishment for a victim of domestic violence.

This provision is part of the bill’s larger ban on pre-existing conditions, which stipulates that insurers cannot discriminate based on “health status, medical condition, claims experience, receipt of health care, medical history, genetic information, evidence of insurability, disability, or source of injury (including conditions arising out of acts of domestic violence) or any similar factors.”

In 2006, Senate Democrats on the Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee tried to end domestic violence as a pre-existing condition, but lost in a 10-10 vote. All the “nay” votes were Republicans. Women currently pay up to 50 percent more for health insurance than a man would shell out for the same coverage, and most individual health insurance markets don’t cover maternity care.

The inclusion of a ban on domestic violence being treated as a pre-existing condition fulfills a promise Pelosi made earlier this month. “Think of this,” Pelosi told reporters. “You’ve survived domestic violence, and now you are discriminated [against] in the insurance market because you have a pre-existing medical condition. Well, that will all be gone.”

“These materials contain hate messages, glorify violence against abortion doctors who provide constitutionally protected medical services, and instruct on means of violence, including bombing, of abortion clinics,” said Lee Thompson, an attorney for the Tiller family, in a letter sent to eBay on Tuesday and approved by Tiller’s widow, Jeanne Tiller. “We urge you to deny access to the resources of eBay for this reprehensible and vile ‘auction.’”

The decision by eBay followed a week of increasing national criticism. Anti-choice activists organized the auction to help fund Roeder’s defense, and items being donated included “an Army of God manual, a prison cookbook compiled by a woman doing time for abortion clinic bombings and arsons, and several autographed drawings submitted by Roeder.”

– Ryan Watkins

In recent weeks, the law has been generating attention nationwide. On Monday, ThinkProgress spoke to Oklahoma state Rep. Jeannie McDaniel (D), an outspoken opponent of HR 1595, which was sponsored by two male lawmakers — Sen. Todd Lamb (R) and Rep. Dan Sullivan (R). McDaniel stressed that this bill is part of a pattern by the Oklahoma legislature to take away power from women:

McDANIEL: I’ve served five sessions, and I have one more term to go before I’m up for reelection. Each of the successive five years, there has been a bill introduced in the Oklahoma legislature regarding women’s reproductive rights. … Each year, it creeps a little more toward taking away women’s freedoms, more restrictions between the doctors. [...]

TP: So how did this get passed?

McDANIEL: Well, in our state, we have a very strong feeling that women aren’t capable of making reproductive decisions when it comes to terminating a pregnancy. It’s a very strong effort pro-life. And while I don’t advocate abortion, certainly, I understand the Supreme Court gives us the right to have availability to that service, and I do believe that women have the right to make the choice and to make healthy choices.

In the interview, McDaniel stressed that not only is the bill trying to intimidate women from receiving reproductive care, but it’s intended to discourage doctors from providing the services in the first place. Physicians are required to fill out the survey — even if they work at a private institution — and if they don’t, they will face sanctions. “I think what we’re doing is we’re driving them out of the services completely to providing women’s health care,” said McDaniel. Listen to excerpts of the interview here:

One of the recent bills McDaniel mentioned that takes away women’s reproductive choices was legislation that would have required a woman to submit to an ultrasound and hear descriptions of the fetus’s heart, limbs, and internal organs before receiving an abortion. The law said that the woman would be allowed to “avert her eyes.” However, a judge struck down the law, saying it “violated a clause in the State Constitution requiring that bills deal with only one subject.” The Center for Reproductive Rights is now challenging the new abortion law on the same grounds. On Monday, the court postponed activation of the law until Dec. 4 as part of the legal challenge. The state attorney general had requested the delay in order to have “more time to respond.”

As Megan Carpentier notes, “Making abortion illegal or difficult to obtain doesn’t reduce its prevalence in a country. It simply increases the health risks to the women who seek them anyway. The only proven way to stop women from having abortions is to help them make their own choices about when to become pregnant.”

Unfortunately, if the court doesn’t overturn this law, there may not be a legislative fix coming anytime soon. McDaniel said that she’s sure there aren’t the votes right now to repeal the law right now. “I think it’s an education process, and I think the more educated a constituency is, or people in a state are, that they will realize that access to affordable reproductive health care is the key,” McDaniel replied.

Transcript:

McDANIEL: Well, to start out with, I’ve served five sessions, and I have one more term to go before I’m up for reelection. Each of the successive five years, there has been a bill introduced in the Oklahoma legislature regarding women’s reproductive rights. And it’s just sort of middle-of-the-way with parental permission, then it was — just one thing after another. Ultrasounds.

Each year, it creeps a little more toward taking away women’s freedoms, more restrictions between the doctors, and what we’ve seen is, more and more, the legislation has really been aimed at the physicians providing the reproductive services, i.e. this survey is really a requirement of the physicians to fill it out and send it in to the health department. So I view it as more encroachment on women’s privacy regarding their health care between them and their physicians.

TP: So how did this get passed?

McDANIEL: Well, in our state, we have a very strong feeling that women aren’t capable of making reproductive decisions when it comes to terminating a pregnancy. It’s a very strong effort pro-life. And while I don’t advocate abortion, certainly, I understand the Supreme Court gives us the right to have availability to that service, and I do believe that women have the right to make the choice and to make healthy choices. I’ve really tried to be a voice of reason to say, “Look, with the more restrictions you put on, you really limit women’s choices to make healthy decisions, whether it’s even to find adoption opportunities, prenatal care.”

I’m afraid with all of these hurdles they’re putting in women’s way, they’re actually moving women away from making smart, healthy choices, because women may turn to using the RU-486 drug and simply say, “I’m not going to these clinics, I’m not going in for reproductive services,” and take it into their own hands. And that’s what saddens me. [...]

TP: Do you have a legislative strategy at all going forward? Is there something that you think you can do?

McDANIEL: I think it’s an education process, and I think the more educated a constituency is, or people in a state are, that they will realize that access to affordable reproductive health care is the key. Ending unintended pregnancies would be my goal. My goal would be idealistic — never to have to have people face the consequence of an unintended pregnancy. Certainly we will probably continue to have pregnancies that may have that outcome, and that’s again, between a woman, her physician, her family, and her faith. But my goal would be to have everyone educated enough, and access to reproductive services, to where they can make a healthy decision about their pregnancies, and not have to make sad or bad choices.

TP: If the court, for example, rules that this law is constitutional, do you think there would be enough support to repeal it at all, or do you think for now it would be set?

McDANIEL: Absolutely not, Amanda, no, it would not. The further we go from Roe v. Wade — I think young women today have grown up in a very different environment than I did. I can barely remember, in the early 60s, that not all women even had access to the birth control pill or reproductive services because it was restricted to married women only.

I think women today don’t realize what it was like to not have a voice. I don’t think many today would think it was right if you wanted a tubal ligation to have to get your husband’s permission, but that’s still the case in many places and certainly many hospitals, especially faith-based hospitals.

So I don’t think — I think it’s different, and I don’t want to compare myself — because I’m 60 — to a young woman today who’s 21 or 25. But what I would ask them is, “Is it the state’s business what transpires between you and your physician?” And what troubles me about the survey is the fact that it asks very personal questions about your income, your education, your own lifestyle, your health, and I’m not sure that’s something I would want posted about myself on the Internet, with or without the name. I think these are very personal questions. I just don’t think it’s part of government responsibility to be in these.

And I might point out that these aren’t just people who are using state aid, to have these procedures done. These are people in hospitals, in private clinics — this is for anyone who undergoes these services. So if you would, let’s say, have a pregnancy that was terminated naturally — a miscarriage, what we use to call it today, they call them “spontaneous abortions” — you’re subject to these questions as well. It’s not just women having abortions; it’s any pregnancy that was terminated and someone goes in for a procedure.

And the physician, as I understand it, is required to fill out this survey. And what you might note, in it, there are sanctions for physicians, I believe, who fail to do this. So I think it’s same as the ultrasound bill last year. It’s putting more and more responsibility and sanctions on physicians, and I think what we’re doing is we’re driving them out of the services completely to providing women’s health care.

On Sunday, Republican strategist Mary Matalin defended Beck’s public persona by saying that he was connecting with “maligned mothers.”

It’s really sad that they really don’t understand how inappropriate that is. I’m in my place. I’m the speaker of the House — the first woman speaker of the House. And I’m in my place because the House of Representatives voted me there.

Pelosi added that she hadn’t heard sexist language like what was in the NRCC press release in “decades.” Watch it:

– Ryan Watkins

1. Date of abortion
2. County in which abortion performed
3. Age of mother
4. Marital status of mother
(married, divorced, separated, widowed, or never married)
5. Race of mother
6. Years of education of mother
(specify highest year completed)
7. State or foreign country of residence of mother
8. Total number of previous pregnancies of the mother
Live Births
Miscarriages
Induced Abortions

Although the questionnaire does not ask for name, address, or “any information specifically identifying the patient,” as Feminists for Choice points out, these eight questions could easily be used to identify a woman in a small community. “They’re really just trying to frighten women out of having abortions,” Keri Parks, director of external affairs at Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma, said. The Center for Reproductive Rights is challenging the law, arguing that “it violates the Oklahoma Constitution because it ‘covers more than one subject’ — a challenge that previously worked to strike down an abortion ultrasound law.”

Yesterday, radio host Thom Hartmann probed Derbyshire about the suffrage issue, and Derbyshire re-affirmed his view that “of course” he believes women should have the right to vote. But, he explained, they shouldn’t exercise that right because it is “bad for conservatism” and therefore “bad for society”:

HARTMANN: Do you believe that women should be allowed to vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, of course I do.

HARTMANN: Why then is the title called “The Case Against Female Suffrage”?

DERBYSHIRE: Because it is a case against female suffrage. [...]

HARTMANN: Did you not say to, for example, my colleague Alan Colmes that women should not be allowed to vote, that it would be a better country anyway if women were not allowed to vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Well, you know, my mentor Paul Buckley used to say, he who say a must say b. And the logic of that chapter, that chapter five in my book, rests on the proposition that women voting is bad for conservatism, and as a conservative, of course, I think that’s bad for society.

HARTMANN: So therefore if women were not allowed to vote it would be a better country in your opinion?

DERBYSHIRE: I think as a hypothetical I think that’s arguable, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Listen here:

While Derbyshire may think that gender equity is “bad for society,” the fact is that the countries that rank the highest in the World Economic Forum’s gender gap index — meaning they have the most gender equality — tend to also rank the highest on the U.N.’s Human Development Index. While it’s possible that women’s suffrage is “bad for conservatism,” maybe it’s conservatism — not women’s suffrage — that is “bad for society.”

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.” Speaking on the Senate floor yesterday, Franken said:

The constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law … And today, defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts do deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court. … The victims of rape and discrimination deserve their day in court [and] Congress plainly has the constitutional power to make that happen.

Watch Franken’s speech:

On the Senate floor, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) spoke against the amendment, calling it “a political attack directed at Halliburton.” Franken responded, “This amendment does not single out a single contractor. This amendment would defund any contractor that refuses to give a victim of rape their day in court.”

In the end, Franken won the debate. His amendment passed by a 68-30 vote, earning the support of 10 Republican senators including that of newly-minted Florida Sen. George LeMieux. “He did what a senator should do, which was he was working it,” LeMieux said in praise of Franken. “He was working for his amendment.”

Appearing with Franken after the vote, an elated Jones expressed her deep appreciation. “It means the world to me,” she said of the amendment’s passage. “It means that every tear shed to go public and repeat my story over and over again to make a difference for other women was worth it.”

“What is the case against female suffrage?” Colmes asked. “The conservative case against it is that women lean hard to the left,” Derbyshire responded nonsensically. “They want someone to nurture, they want someone to help raise their kids, and if men aren’t inclined to do it — and in the present days, they’re not much — then they’d like the state to do it for them.”

Colmes then pressed Derbyshire on whether women should have the right to vote. “Ah…” Derbyshire sighed, attempting to dodge the question initially. “I’m not putting forward a political program here,” he said. But then Derbyshire slowly began to open up:

DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.

COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Probably. Don’t you think so?

COLMES: No, I do not think so whatsoever.

DERBYSHIRE: Come on Alan. Come clean here [laughing].

COLMES: We would be a better country? John Derbyshire making the statement, we would be a better country if women did not vote.

DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, probably.

Derbyshire reasoned that we “got along like that for 130 years.” Colmes countered by asking if he also wants to bring back slavery. No, Derbyshire responded, “I’m in favor of freedom personally.” Colmes noted that freedom didn’t extend to women’s right to vote, however. Derbyshire said, “Well, they didn’t and we got along ok.” Listen here:

Later in the interview, Derbyshire said there’s also a case to be made for repealing the 1964 Civil Rights Act because you “shouldn’t try to force people to be good.”