February 2012 has been quite a revealing month regarding women’s health. When the Susan B. Komen Foundation decided to rescind their annual $650,000 grant to Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening program, thousands upon thousands of Americans reacted with their voices and wallets, donating more than $3 million to Planned Parenthood’s preventative services to cover the lost cash.
Realizing they’d created a public relations catastrophe, Komen quickly reversed course and reinstated the Planned Parenthood funding.
The following week, controversy erupted over the contraception coverage mandate in the Healthcare Law, with the Catholic Church insisting it would not pay for a woman to obtain prescription birth control. The Obama Administration responded by exempting the birth control requirement for religious institutions, instead requiring that companies insuring women under those plans provide contraception at no cost to the insured.
Reacting to these assaults on women’s health, NJ Senator Loretta Weinberg told NJTV that what happened on the national stage is a replay of Governor Christie’s unilateral decision to defund women’s health programs in 2010.
“The Governor took out $7.5 Million dollars that was earmarked for women’s health out of the budget – just stripped it right out of the budget. We passed putting it back into the budget and the governor vetoed that and no Republican would vote to override the governor’s veto.”
Decrying this politicization of women’s health issues, Weinberg called on her Senate colleagues from across the aisle to stand up to Christie and his quest for national office, and fight back against the ongoing assault on women’s reproductive health:
“There is this mindset that has taken place in the Republican party from the ultra right wing, and one of the places that they seem to be aiming is at women… I don’t have a problem with the people who have a deep seated philosophic belief and are being consistent in their votes but I do have a problem with the people who I know don’t believe in this but are capitulating to whatever the Governor perceives to be necessary for his whatever his national political aspirations …”
Weinberg reminded voters that the Legislature’s job is to represent their constituents, and not cave into demands that fly in the face of their own, long-held positions:
“The Governor demands a lot of loyalty and as I’ve often said, the only way you have dictatorships is if people enable him.”
We say Senator Weinberg is absolutely right. Our elected representatives have one – and only one – loyalty, and that is to the people they represent. Capitulating to the extreme right on women’s reproductive health means abandoning the will of the majority in order to satisfy Chris Christie’s desire to be a palatable candidate to far right voters who don’t live in NJ -- but who ardently believe they have every right to tell a Jersey Girl what she may and may not do with her reproductive life.
We say denying women the access and funding necessary to make personal health care choices is an assault on their intelligence, their independence and their lives.
We say NJ loses when our Governor believes his power is so great he can and should decide what sort of health care women want and need.
We say it’s time for the Republicans in Trenton to stand up to the Governor and stop his ongoing, unilateral assault on moderate NJ views, and agree with Senator Weinberg’s warning that a dictator isn’t born, but is easily created when legislators abandon their own integrity for the sake of political expedience and power.
What do you say?
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