As we look to the national front, it appears that the aptly tagged “war on women” is starting in full swing again.  Scott Walker has thrown his hat into the presidential ring and what better way to start out than to make his mandatory pledge to hate women.  As reported by TPM, Walker thinks that requiring women to undergo an ultra sound is “just a cool thing“.

Of course Walker openly admits that the required procedure would be to shame women into changing their minds about terminating their pregnancy, mostly based on the fictitious idea that a fetus is in fact equivalent to a fully term, birthed baby, “We just knew if we signed that law, if we provided the information, that more people if they saw that unborn child would make a decision to protect and keep the life of that unborn child,” Walker said.  Again, Walker has no problem with using state force to coerce a woman in a decision that if they were “liberty minded” as the GOP recently seems to claim they are, would be between the woman and her doctor and not the state.

Also, its important to note that Walker completely overlooks the controversy sparked by some state GOP legislators, particularly in Virginia, who proposed that women considering abortions be forced to undergo a vaginal ultrasound.  Thanks to the statesman in Virginia when the word “ultrasound” is mixed with “vaginal” and especially “state mandated” the hair on the back of the necks of most women begins to rise.  The vaginal ultrasound reminds one that legislators have no problem with state sanctioned rape and its apparent that Walker has no problem with state sanctioned shaming either.

Oh but wait hold the presses, we have found information from our friends in Wisconsin via Blue Cheddar that Walker did in fact support a bill for forced “transvaginal” ultrasounds, then known as SB 206 in Wisconsin in 2013.

But, its not just Walker that’s stepped up to show his chivalry towards the ladees.  While some GOP pols like to focus on what ladees do with their ladyee parts, Jeb keeps it simple and focuses on how we ladees live our lives.  Such as in Jeb Bush’s statement about women and “traditional marriage’ recently.  Bush refers to the gay marriage issue up front but his position on shaming single mothers and pressuring them to stay in abusive or otherwise unacceptable marriages, or we suspect, using her magic powers to keep a wondering man home says,

If we want to create a right to rise society, where people – particularly children born in poverty, if we want to have them have a chance…we have to restore committed, loving family life with a mom and dad loving their children with their heart and soul.

How can you not get behind that? At least the “committed, loving family life” part.  Just that Jeb has a very narrow view of marital relationships and of relationships in general.  Lack of exposure to how regular people live their lives seems a problem that runs in the Bush family and may contribute to his 19th century views.

But what about women and children who did all they could but were abandoned or had to leave the household with just the shirts on their backs to escape abuse?  Back in 1994 during the halcyon days of welfare reform when all a good candidate had to do was commit to some good old slut shaming, Jeb was reported to have not missed the opportunity himself:

During his 1994 run, he made welfare a main issue in his campaign, vowing to get tough on recipients of public assistance–even if it meant, he said at one point, having the state take away the children of parents who were too lazy to find a job. At event after event, Jeb talked about the welfare mom who, given all the various freebies available to her like Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Medicaid and so forth, was pulling down an extravagant $15,000 a year in benefits.
Source: America’s Next Bush, by S.V. Date, p. 13 , Feb 15, 2007
and another reports:

His appearances became revival meetings.and as he went from country club to country club telling stories about [welfare fraud] to his all-white audiences they would shake their heads along with him, conjuring up their own image of what the lazy welfare mother looked like, and the color of her skin.” During his campaign Bush openly espoused a conservative “constrain the beast” philosophy toward government. He proposed to dismantle the State Department of Education and to refuse federal money for welfare. He would have forced mothers and children off welfare after 2 years, with no provision for job training or child care beyond the small amount available at the time.”Source: Aggressive Conservatism in Florida, by Robert Crew, p. ÿ6 , Dec 11, 2009

Then there’s the re-entry of Republican Rick Santorum, from Pennsylvania.  Rick made himself famous in last election bids for his seeming endless obsession with people’s sexual habits.  So much that his name even became related to a not-so-sexy part of a sex act.  His extreme views on abortion — that any termination of a pregnancy is murder are well publicized.  See On the Issues for a good summary of where all the candidates stand on issues that effect women’s liberty and future, from reproductive rights to assistance in times of poverty.

And then there’s the media.  The conservative internet news onslaught on Planned Parenthood.  Look up keywords “Planned Parenthood News” what comes up? On one of our users computers (and possibly because of doing research on conservative politicians?), what did come up were reams of christian-fundie propaganda against planned parenthood.  One of the most outrageous:

On the top of the list is a story from a site called “mrc Newsbusters” that has the tagline “Exposing and Combatting Liberal Media Bias” about a teen actress that testified about how planned parenthood saved her from an unplanned pregnancy.  The story goes on but ends with a paragraph stating:

Just for disclosure, the words “teaches” and “instructing” linked back to other supposedly damning proofs that PP is up to no good.  We’re not interested in linking the site seeing as how this story alone pretty much sums up their breathless projection.

Also, warriors can’t be warriors unless they also attack the young and no better proof of this applies than this very recent story of a young teen girl punished by having her honor society distinction removed because of her “inappropriate dress” in school year book pictures.  She had on a strappy sun dress.  So the school thought it appropriate to shame her and also remove her earned reward for her diligence toward her studies.  The message to girls with this kind of prioritizing? ‘Your value lies in how you look.’ and most importantly, that her subordination to male authority is more important than her intellectual achievement or her own future.   Stories like these rise up all too often, this girl’s is not an isolated case.  Couple that with cuts across the nation in state legislators of domestic violence funding and restrictions on sex education and you have a mixed bag of multi-faceted attacks on women’s personal sovereignty.

We urge our readers to visit the real Planned Parenthood US Newsroom site for real information on the continued full-fledge attack on women’s rights or visit Planned Parenthood Local for news on the New Hampshire front.  Keep on top of the rhetoric against women’s rights because its coming on strong already and most likely will only grow as the election heats up.