Reproductive rights affected by mid-term elections

The outlook is grim. The halls of Congress are filled with anti-choicers. There are 49 new members of the House and seven Senators - plus 10 governorships that went from pro-choice to anti-choice.

The editor-in-chief of the awesome blog RH Reality Check, Jodi Jacobson, sums it up :

The election did not, in my reading of polls, votes and analyses, represent an anti-choice mandate, an anti–health reform mandate, nor an anti-environment mandate. But don’t worry, that won’t stop anti-choice, anti–health care, climate-change-denialist politicians from “creating” said mandates both in their rhetoric and in their actions. …

[ H]ere is my prediction:  We will see almost immediately a range of efforts to focus on restricting reproductive and sexual health and rights. A House of Representatives led by the Republicans and Tea Partiers will give full reign to the likes of Congressmen Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Mike Pence (R-Ind.), and Joe Pitts (R-Penn.) to constantly push for restrictions on women’s rights in U.S. international policy. They will try to pass a law codifying a global gag rule , try to reinforce and strengthen abstinence-only until marriage funding in U.S. global AIDS funding.

As of this publishing time, locally, in the 6th District race for state represenative, incumbent John Driscoll has yet to give in to challenger John Ahern who held the seat until 2008 after suffering defeat by 74 votes. It was that year Ahern faced ethics charges after he bullied a group of teens visiting him from Planned Parenthood , repeatedly asking “I need to find out how many unborn babies were killed by Planned Parenthood.”

His stance hasn’t changed and he still opposes abortions in cases of incest and rape. Watch this video interview between Ahern and Driscoll on abortion where he also dismisses global warming as cyclical . (Can’t wait for that global cooling dude.) Does it feel like the clock turned back?

But the focus will be on the economy and that doesn’t mean the anti-choice lobby can refrain from its old tricks.  A lot of gloaters claimed they “took the power back” after the mid-terms. For a while, that seemed so nebulous. Now, it’s clear that could include taking away a women’s right to choose, sound-family planning, and reproductive health-programs. Jacobsen concludes:

There will be grandstanding on and efforts to eliminate the non-existent funding of abortion in health reform and there will immediately be pressure not to include contraceptive coverage as preventive care in the regulations to be written by the Department of Health and Human Services.  Senator-elect Rand Paul is chomping at the bit to introduce legislation conferring rights on fertilized eggs at the national level, and he will have lots of support among the right-wing contingent in the Senate and perhaps little push-back from the relatively weak Democratic leadership that is there now.  And much time will be spent trying to repeal health reform, if not wholesale, than those things such as mandated coverage for children with pre-existing conditions that cause a health care executive or two to take a few million less in compensation from their stiil-exhorbitant profits and cry foul for “business productivity.”

These and other efforts, having nothing to do with the election, but will nonetheless most likely be a large part of the result.