10/24/12
Top 6 Reasons Your Heart & Genitals Want You to Vote for Obama

We know we may be preaching to the choir here, but just in case you need some more encouragement to register to vote (state-by-state deadlines start dropping in October!), to volunteer your time to the Obama campaign, and to actually vote on November 6th, 2012, here you go:

1.
Romney represents the Republican Party, and the Republican Party Platform wants to control your body. It calls for a ban on abortion, without any exceptions, not even for rape, incest, or the life of the woman (not just the health of the woman, but the life!). It supports parents needing to consent to treatment for their children “involving pregnancy, contraceptives and abortion” — because telling your father who knocked you up is going to go down real well. It supports mandatory waiting periods when it comes to abortions, which put an undue burden on women who have to travel far to receive medical help but can’t afford to take off time from work. It supports abstinence-only education (the effectiveness of which has been so debunked) and opposes “school-based clinics that provide referrals, counseling, and related services for abortion and contraception” — what happened to knowledge being power?  And they don’t support embryonic stem cell research (sorry, Parkinsons and cancer, looks like you’re going to be with us a little while longer).
Romney has taken a lot of positions on abortions — the most recent, as far as we can tell, is that he is anti-abortion except in cases of rape, incest, the life and health of the mother. But then a spokesman for the campaign came out and said he actually doesn’t believe in health exceptions. And we’re not sure if by rape he means “all rape” or just “legitimate rape,” which doesn’t include all that touchy-feely rape like date rape or married rape. Who knows what he believes? We’re not sure he actually has a real opinion on these matters. Better just pray you don’t get raped, or if you do get raped, that your magic vagina powers prevent a pregnancy from taking place.
2.
Romney has said he believes life begins at conception and would be for a Personhood Amendment, which would not only ban abortions, but could ban IUDs, emergency contraception, other hormonal forms of birth control, and in vitro fertilization. Think about that for a second: a married couple of three who do not want to have any more children, don’t want to use hormonal forms of birth control for health reasons, and don’t want to use condoms for obvious reasons, would not be allowed to use a safe, non-hormonal IUD, one the most effective, least expensive, longest lasting forms of birth control out there — one that’s been around for decades!
3.
Romney wants to overturn Obamacare, which means your birth control would no longer be covered by insurance, unfairly putting the majority of the financial burden around family planning back on women. Oh, and here are just a few of the other preventative services that would be taken away from women: testing for HPV, screenings for HIV, counseling for STIs, breastfeeding support and supplies, and help for domestic abuse.
4.
Romney has said he will “get rid of” Planned Parenthood, meaning he would defund it. That would mean a huge percentage of the whopping five million people who rely on Planned Parenthood every year for vital, affordable health care — like mammograms and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, other preventive care, and, yes, safe legal abortions — would be kicked to the curb, many of them left to forgo any kind of health care since they can’t afford it. Even if you’ve never been to Planned Parenthood, there’s a good chance you might someday, since 1 in 5 women eventually use their services. That is, if they’re still around…
5.
Romney signed the National Organization for Marriage pledge (you know, the one those two bright lightbulbs, Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum, signed), affirming that he will support a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, and nominate judges who are not sympathetic to LGBT issues. He’s even gone so far as to say he opposes not only gay marriage but civil unions too: “Well, I would rather have neither, to tell you the truth.” Even if you’re not gay, you know someone who is — and they’re probably cooler than you; they deserve to have the same American rights as you.
6.
The next president will have a good chance of appointing new Supreme Court Justices — should any of the current ones either retire or kick the bucket (four of them are in their 70s). Romney has said that he would call on the court to overturn Roe v. Wade (read: make abortion illegal) and appoint justices like John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence “Pubic Hair on My Coke” Thomas, Antonin Scalia — all of whom are extremely conservative. Some interesting factoids: The ethically-challenged Thomas has not asked a single questions from the bench in the past 6 years! And Scalia recently said that the Roe decision was wrong and that the court’s subsequent decisions on abortion based on people’s fundamental rights like privacy are “utterly idiotic.”
Run, don’t walk, to register to vote!:


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