March 01, 2012 10:54 PM UTC

Blunt Force in the War Against Women

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• by: Konola

The Senate stood up for women this morning, when they voted down the Blunt amendment to the transportation bill. What this amendment was doing in the transportation bill, in the first place, is confusing.

Maybe Washington should consider some of the Sunshine Laws that were passed by legislators in Colorado. At least in Colorado our legislators have to keep bills and amendments to one subject instead of attaching any old prized bit of ideology to an important bill, hoping to fly under the radar.

This amendment would have made it possible for any employer to deny any employee any medical procedure that s/he didn’t like just because s/he didn’t like the procedure. So maybe it would be dialysis, or a hip replacement surgery, or needles and test strips for diabetics. It went way beyond trying to keep the government between a woman and her doctor, which is already several steps too far into totalitarianism.

The sad thing is that it didn’t fail by a huge margin. The final vote was 51 to 48. Even three misguided Democrats voted in favor of this boneheaded proposal: Ben Nelson of Nebraska (who, thankfully,is not sitting for reelection, and hopefully will be replaced by John Kerrey); Robert Casey  of Pennsylvania; and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Getting the bill over the line was the retiring Republican Senator, Olympia Snowe of Main.

Senator Michael Bennet, confused about the same thing that confuses me, asked “How is this conversation relevant to job creation or to infrastructure?”