Republican War on Women Alive in My Beloved Bucks County

/

Carversville General StoreYour Anne’s Carversville heart is breaking in two. The house, the land, the people that I love are voting to defund Planned Parenthood. My friends, gym mates, a date or two (most are from New York), my shopkeepers and fruit stand owners are committed to turning back the rights of American women, taking us back to the Fifties with Donna Reed in the kitchen, minding the kids.

For all who believe that I am exaggerating, you must get real. This IS the Republican plan.

The back roads of Carversville, Pa.I was horrified yesterday boarding the Philadelphia-based Planned Parenthood bus to Washington, when I opened my information packet to read that Mike Fitzpatrick, District 8 Republican for Bucks County is determined to defund Planned Parenthood.

I am registered now in District 1, led by pro Planned Parenthood representative Robert Brady.

District 8 has historical flip flop Democratic/Republican election results that reflect that divided nature of its soul. I fear that it’s my friends and neighbors who didn’t turn out to vote in November 2010, based on the numbers.

Defeat Republican War on Women Bucks County US Representative Mike Fitzpatrick

I give the women of Bucks County and America my word that I will work regularly to defeat Republican Mike Fitzpatrick in 2012.  Hearing the utter lies that are told about Planned Parenthood, I will go local in my support of the organization.

Defeating Mike Fitzpatrick will be my personal accomplishment for the half of the people in his district — if not more — who don’t support his attack on Planned Parenthood.

I was not on the invited list to meet with Republican Senator Pat Toomey yesterday. I did meet with Democrat Robert Casey, Jr. staff who supports funding for Planned Parenthood.

Senator Toomey has suggested that a rider to defund Planned Parenthood — a key sticking point in reaching an agreement — was expendable. This statement came last night on MSNBC and is reported just now on The Hill.

“I’d like to defund Planned Parenthood, but I understand that Republicans don’t have complete control of the elected government, “Toomey said on MSNBC. “I think what we should do is cut spending as much as we can, get the policy changes that we can, but move on, because there are other, bigger battles that we are fighting.”

Scarlett Johansson Stands with Planned Parenthood

We all know that Planned Parenthood receives no federal funding for abortions. That is strictly forbidden by the Hyde Amendment. What came as news to me is the fact that only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s entire budget — one supplemented by insurance revenue and private donations — is connected to the legal abortions guaranteed American women by the US Supreme Court.

Important Facts About Planned Parenthood

  • One in five women in the US has visited a Planned Parenthood health center.
  • Planned Parenthood health centers provide health care that helps women prevent an estimated 612,000 unintended pregnancies and 291,000 abortions every year.
  • Planned Parenthood’s local partners in 10 countries serve 1.2 million individuals.
  • Three-quarters (75 percent) of Planned Parenthood health care clients live on the equivalent of $33,000 a year for a family of four.

Every year, Planned Parenthood affiliates provide:

  • contraception to nearly 2.5 million patients
  • more than 1.1 million pregnancy tests
  • nearly one million Pap tests, identifying about 93,000 women at risk of developing cervical cancer.
  • 830,000 breast exams, helping alert patients to possible cancers.
  • nearly 4 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV
  • more than 1.5 million emergency contraception kits
  • education programs to nearly 1.2 million people

Please stand up — for God’s sake stand up before it’s too late for American women. Support Planned Parenthood by not balancing America’s war machine and the lowest tax rates in 50 years federal deficit on the backs of America’s women and specifically America’s poor women.

I had a chat with a Midwestern friend who was also in Washington yesterday to support Planned Parenthood. Her House representative said that American women had better put on boxing gloves, because the war on American women is real and we’re sitting still.

Tea Party members regularly arrive in Congressional offices with demands and untruths about Planned Parenthood, while we women believe logic will prevail.

Between the lines, the message was ‘you ladies (and guys) need to become more aggressive or they will trample you.’

Meeting with Planned Parenthood representatives yesterday, I made it clear that Lisa and I will do everything legal to help the organization. Let’s get real here. Planned Parenthood must maintain a reserved position that sticks to facts and doesn’t get inflamed in the political rhetoric.

Anne of Carversville is not governed by those rules. One of the biggest reasons readers — many of them Republicans and often fiscal Conservatives —  love us is because:

1) we are relentless in our search of facts on both sides of issues, quoting Conservative sources wherever possible and avoiding the media sources that we know our readers don’t trust and

2) I am not afraid to be aggressive and rowdy on behalf of the world’s women, poor and rich.

Men Are Determined to Control Women’s Bodies

Years ago my budding media career was stopped in its tracks by a Buffalo man who heard me speaking on TV, after Roe vs Wade was supported by the Supreme Court. Abortion was legal in America. Soon I received a box containing a pile of rope with the message that the sender was going to use the rope to hang me.

My phone rang at every hour and next came a box filled with bloody, dead animals. The bloody knife was in the box and the note told me this was the knife the sender would use to cut my throat. At this point I went to the police in Williamsville, NY and was under their surveillance for almost a year. My lieutenant was fantastic as the boxes and phone messages kept coming.

Eventually my hunter flew over my windshield on a cold October night, nearly scaring me to death. I put my sports car in gear and floored it, causing him to roll off the hood of my car. When I called the lieutenant, I said ‘I don’t know if he is there or not. I may have killed him. I really don’t know.’

That incident ended by stalking experience but also my interest in speaking about women’s health issues for many years. These mostly men — the self-appointed, metaphorical hired guns of the Vatican — have silenced many women all over America for years.

Personally my white gloves are off and the boxing gloves are on. If I could start an American woman’s political party I would do so. I have many Republican women friends and they do not support the war on women, and neither do their husbands.

In reality fiscally Conservative men, who are liberal on social issues, like me better than Liberal men or the yoga crowd who believe my chakras are out of balance, and I need to spend time learning to surrender to a man.

Surrender Is Not an Option

Do not talk to me about surrender until the war on women is over. I am suspect of any and all tactics coming from Liberal men — whether they are testosterone-infused egocentrics like Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews or the woo woo guys who insist that I stop radiating negative energy into the universe.

I’ve had it, and so have all the women and men who were in Washington.

You know I don’t support crosshairs imagery and military statements in my writing. But if Sarah Palin was translating my message to Mike Fitzpatrick, she would say: ‘Anne of Carversville is gunning for you Mike Fitzpatrick. Your war on America’s women must be stopped dead in its tracks.’

It is my top mission in life to defeat Mike Fitzpatrick, because I refuse to believe my Bucks County friends support this movement against women. But I must ask:

Am I right, Bucks Country or is your beautiful countryside only a dream, a gorgeous seductress that makes love to women’s spirits and then crushes them? I am horrified to be associated with this movement coming in the lands that I love body and soul. Anne

Back roads of Bucks County neaar Carversville