Please, demean me some more
(This item for those who don’t read much in the feminist blogs. Better late than never.)
Bush has given us a new asshat, and put him in charge of $283 million in annual family-planning grants which, according to HHS, are “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons.”
Dr. Eric Keroack, the new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, is also the medical director of A Woman’s Concern, a “crisis center” whose goal is to talk women out of abortions and into abstinence. And then there’s this:
From the Washington Post:
The Keroack appointment angered many family-planning advocates, who noted that A Woman’s Concern supports sexual abstinence until marriage, opposes contraception and does not distribute information promoting birth control at its six centers in eastern Massachusetts.
“A Woman’s Concern is persuaded that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness,” the group’s Web site says.
Think about that one for awhile.
Oh yeah, I’ve been demeaned. But not by access to contraception; by sanctimonious pharmacists who tried to shame me out of filling my prescriptions. And that was when I was able to pay for them or go somewhere else. This man will be in charge of services–services including patient education and counseling, breast and pelvic exams, pregnancy diagnosis and counseling, and screenings for cervical cancer, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV–for those who need them the most and can afford them the least. I guess poor women are supposed to “just say no” to loving relationships. “Pursuit of happiness” is only for those who can afford a dozen kids.
This appointment doesn’t require Senate confirmation. He’ll take office in less that two weeks.
More enlightening reading at Pandagon, Feministing, and Tennesseee Guerilla Women.
November 25th, 2006 at 9:56 am
[...] I See Invisible People has more on the subject of Keroack, with links to some feminist blogging on this subject. [...]
December 13th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
I don’t think that “elite culture” really differentiates between middle class and poor people. It is a problem faced in the past by democrats and republicans, but at this point many of the moderate republicans have already fled and only a few optomists are still there trying to mend their party, the one that was in the 1800’s on the northern side of the conflict. (The Washington Post did a good analysis of the diminishing moderates in their party after the 2006 elections, culminating with 9 of the 20 most moderates republicans who took a centrist position between liberal and conservative voting records, and lost their jobs in November.)
Today GOP strategists seem to be trying to play towards the cynicism of independant voters who are rather disgusted by the “he said she said” atmosphere and are able to differentiate themselves from it as they are ussually richer then average. The point we so often forget in the race to differentiate ourselves through college, graduate school and better jobs, is that upper middle class people are a social class and manipulateable as well, its become part of a sick cycle but many cynics demand spin in the election cycles so as to predict how poorer people will vote and judge when it is useful to pile onto any sort of “landslide.” The cynics who gave up on democracy are still persuadable but that would require work. Howard Dean seems more interested in working for his job then many of his predecessors or maybe he is just a better communicator. There is more interest in dialogue on the part of everyone these days.
The appointment of Dr. Eric Keroack is the same kind of, look-at-me-my-view-has-been-marginalized, crap you see with the holocaust denial in Iran. Anne Applebaum made some good comments in an article in the Washington Post: “If the West is going to shelter Iranian disidents then Iran will shelter David Duke. If the west pretends to support freedom of speech, so will Iran.” Dictators are not stupid and neither are interest groups. We should expect more revisionist history as we learn how to deal with everyone elses problems too, there is a lot of wealth and influence being distributed now from global trade and internal politics and not all of it goes to the usual suspects, there is money in predicting how others will vote and delivering it. Whatever his approval ratings are today, Bush will leave office after he has been there for 8 years.