How can you be "pro-life" and be opposed to women's health?

Women like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are simply the shiny baubles that Republican males use as props in an effort to hide their very real feeling that women are nothing -- not human, not worth anything, just vessels for popping out babies (preferably white babies, in order to keep the Marauding Brown Hordes from taking over).

Because despite an intractable unemployment rate, crumbling infrastructure, and international crises, the first priority of this Republican House of Representatives is to make sure the dirty sluts are punished for not keeping their legs closed by being forced to bear the fruits of their sin. And they're doing it all under the mantle of "fiscal responsibility":

Invoking the mantra of fiscal restraint that has dominated House action since lawmakers reconvened last month, Republicans began committee work this week on two bills that would greatly expand restrictions on financing for and access to abortions. Another bill, one that would cut off federal dollars to women’s health care clinics that offer abortions, is expected to surface later this year.

Over and over, Democrats said that by bringing up the abortion issue now, Republicans were going back on their word to focus on the budget.

Yet the bills that have surfaced on the House floor this year have been fiscal in nature, including the repeal of the health care law, which was later rejected by the Senate, and some measures designed to cut spending.

“Republicans are focused on creating a better environment for economic growth and job creation,” said Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner, “and that is reflected in the legislation the House is passing,”

Not sure how denying women whose only access to medical care is through clinics creates jobs, Mr. Boehner. You got some 'splainin' to do there.

One bill, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” would eliminate tax breaks for private employers who provide health coverage if their plans offer abortion services, and would forbid women who use a flexible spending plan to use pre-tax dollars for abortions. Those restrictions would go well beyond current law prohibiting the use of federal money for abortion services.

The bill, sponsored by Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey, has drawn fire over language that undercuts a longstanding exemption on the ban on using federal money for abortions in the case of rape or incest; the measure narrows the definition of rape to “forcible rape,” a term that his office has never defined. Democratic lawmakers and others repeatedly hammered on the term, saying it suggested that victims of statutory rape and other crimes could not get abortions paid for with federal money.

While Mr. Smith’s staff said last week that the term "forcible rape" would be removed from the bill, the staff of RepresentativeJerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, said that language remained intact as of Tuesday.

Another bill, sponsored by Mr. Pitts, addresses the health care overhaul head-on by prohibiting Americans who receive insurance through state exchanges from purchasing abortion coverage, even with their own money. The bill is essentially a resurrection of a provision in the House version of the health care law but was not in the Senate version.

The bill would also permit hospitals to refuse abortions to women, even in emergency situations, if such care would offend the conscience of the health care providers.

Imagine a woman with an ectopic pregnancy that's ready to burst. She arrives at the hospital, and some wingnut doctor who thinks removing an ectopic pregnancy is an abortion and an offense against God decides that his religious beliefs prevent him from performing the procedure to remove it. It's entirely likely that this woman will die on the floor of the emergency room because a doctor, whose job is to provide care, decided his so-called "pro-life" beliefs prevented him from saving an actual, real-life woman. Imagine any pregnancy gone wrong -- and it does happen -- and the woman is allowed to die on the hospital steps because of such doctors.

Why are women's lives and women's health always expendable to Republicans? Why is it that the only life they care about is fetal life -- but after said fetus is born, it's on its own? No paid maternity leave for mothers. No health care services for the poor. No food or medical care for babies who were beloved by Republicans as long as they were attached to what these Republicans believe is a worthless vessel by an umbilical cord, but as soon as they're breathing on their own, and especially if their pigmentation is unsuitable to Republican goals, they're on their own.

MOST of what family planning clinics do is provide basic health care for women and contraceptives -- you know, birth control designed to PREVENT unwanted pregnancies. But no, Republicans and their frothing, idiotic wingnut minions think that this is off-limits too -- no sacrifice is too great for their worship of the fetus.

Why is it that forty years after Roe, we're still fighting this battle -- and losing? And when are Democrats going to find their fucking balls and stop compromising on the backs of American women? Or do they too think women are nothing but vessels?

The other Jill who isn't Cookie Jill or me also weighs in, and has waited until she stopped wanting to put a fist through a wall to do it so she's far more coherent than I am on this.