IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
ICYMI: Voice of The Southern: Bost, Shimkus vote for a shutdown
The Southern Illinoisan
By The Editorial Board
September 23, 2015
U.S. Reps. Mike Bost and John Shimkus can spin last week’s vote to defund Planned Parenthood within the federal budget however they like. But, in reality, the Republican duo backed yet another government shutdown, a national embarrassment they’ll own come Oct. 1 if the lights go out.
Both Shimkus and Bost claim they supported alternatives for women by voting to dismantle the nation’s largest provider of sexual and reproductive health care. Community health centers are available for Medicaid patients, they say.
The two Republicans are blowing smoke. Their real message is pretty clear: Those heavily edited, highly suspect videos, made by an anti-abortion crusader, are evidence enough to threaten access to health care for millions of American women.
Neither man will tell you that just 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s budget is spent on abortions. They conveniently ignore the fact that no federal dollars have been spent on an abortion for years. They’ll forget to mention that fetal tissue donation is entirely legal and hugely important for medical research. And they’ll brush over the nationwide lack of access to sexual and reproductive health care, particularly in rural and poor
communities. Pap smears, STD tests and breast exams — these are the services Shimkus and Bost would deny American woman for the sake of political expediency.
It should come as no surprise that the architect of the 2013 federal shutdown is engineering the most recent episode of “When Anarchists Govern.” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, duped his House apostles into following his defund Obamacare lead that year. It backfired. Yet, once again, Speaker John Boehner grudgingly allowed Friday’s 241-187 vote to happen. Now, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is planning on fast-tracking the House bill, setting up a vote as early as Thursday. Even if it survived the upper house, President Obama’s veto will prove insurmountable. But many on the GOP right flank say they won’t support any budget that funds Planned Parenthood.
Welcome to another pending shutdown, America, brought to you by demagoguery and the anachronistic belief that women can’t make choices for themselves.
Even Shimkus last week admitted that shutting down the government backfired in 2013. Then he essentially supports another one.
This isn’t about fetal tissue. It’s another extension of the protracted assault on abortion access, which is being fought with state-level restrictions throughout the country.
Abortion remains one of society’s most difficult moral questions. Polls show that even the most liberal Americans often struggle with the abortion question. It concurrently poses economic and ethical dilemmas.
But history proves that abortions will occur whether or not they’re legal. There are too many women with few options and limited resources. Organizations such as Planned Parenthood assure modern, professional medical care.
Frankly, all of the moral and ethical complexities should be left to the individual woman, whose situation is wholly unique and entirely hers. It’s her body. It’s her constitutional right.
Yet again, the U.S. teeters on total dysfunction because a few firebrands prefer scoring political points over actual governance. Last week, the region’s two House members blindly followed their party’s fanatics, supporting a bill that even their own leadership says will never survive.
Bost and Shimkus hoped to claim the moral high ground. In reality, the region’s two House members backed a doomed attack on the freedom of 51 percent of the population to think for themselves.
And, in the process, they might end up owning stock in yet another Republican-driven shutdown.