It takes a special woman
In an act of unimaginable bad taste, Katherine Kersten wrote — and the Strib published — another horrifying screed against women on the anniversary of the passage of women’s sufferage. The hed for this one, on the ‘net at least, is Weaponizing the well-being of women.
It’s a pity she didn’t write it earlier, because she would have undoubtedly joined the poisonous pantheon of pundits and others awarded prizes by Ellen Goodman in her op-ed Throwing some Humble Pies on Women’s Equality Day. She might have joined with luminaries such as Rush Limbaugh, Foster Friess, Rick Santorum, former Congressional staffer Jay Thompson (he left his mark way up the tree, by the way), and the late entrant and prize winner, Todd “the Clod” Akin.
Katie hits a couple of the issues that were prize winners: contraception and pay equity.
Obama supporters are trying to convince women that Republican efforts to exempt employers who object on grounds of conscience — a tiny fraction — will somehow threaten access to contraception, which is cheap and widely available. For Obama, a “right” to free contraception trumps employers’ right to freedom of religion.
It isn’t so cheap, and Katie and her pals want to make it not-so-available. Combined with the forced child-birth initiatives so popular among Republican around the country, it is just a part of the re-institution of slavery described by MNO here in June.
Pay differentials can be explained, says Kersten, by the fact that women choose to have children. Chew on that one, kids, in view of Katie’s remarks about contraception.
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