link: MoveOn.org Political Action: Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP's War on Women

MoveOn.org Political Action: Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP's War on Women

Generally, I try to keep politics off my blogs. I'm not all that involved or informed about them (I generally let like-minded people tell me when I need to be worried about something, rather than trying to find the time and the patience to sort through it on my own), and I don't like when people cram politics down the blogs I read. So I will keep this at a minimum, but I think it's something that's worthwhile.

Look at this list:

- "1) Republicans not only want to reduce women's access to abortion care, they're actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven't yet. Shocker.

2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to "accuser." But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain "victims."

3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that couldmake it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)

4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids.

5) In Congress, Republicans have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.

6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids' preschool program. Why? No need, they said.Women should really be home with the kids, not out working.

7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.

8) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.

9) Congress just voted for a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.

10) And if that wasn't enough, Republicans are pushing toeliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can't make this stuff up)."

I mean, it's all written as part of a petition, so it's slanted toward alarmism, but even if these things aren't pointed, the very fact that they exist in such widespread profusion indicates a fundamental problem with the Republican mindset: women, old people and kids don't matter. Taking care of the society doesn't matter. Bolstering education and access and health don't matter. So what does matter?

This is... well, if I take the writerly stance and extrapolate it into a novel, this is easily the start of a social apocalypse. Next comes segregation of the rich in enclaves that eat up all the resources, then riots and highwaymen, then mass murders and cleansings. Children who grow up without knowing how things used to be will be easy pickings for extremists of all sorts. The well-educated and better informed leave the country and set up in more stable, socially-minded countries. Everything crumbles. How is this better? How is starting something like this justifiable? If this isn't the point of the things on that list, what is?

So sign the petition, and spark a counter movement that stops this crap before it gets out of hand and we're living in a lawless wasteland. Or even just a cruel place where the poor die off and no one gets any help from the government that was meant to protect them.