AZ GOP vice-hair calls for sterilizing poor women: If you want a baby, get a job
I am right wing and a Republican. Several left wing sites were reporting this story.
If it’s true, it’s strange and hypocritical. Although I am right wing and socially conservative, I do not agree with the habit of other right wingers and conservative Christians who place too much emphasis on family and marriage.
I’m rather puzzled when any right winger speaks out against helping families or single mothers, as this man has done.
Much of the time, right wingers complain about how single women are having abortions, or they complain about how many women are delaying childbearing or choosing to skip motherhood altogether, or they complain about how secularists and liberals are destroying marriage and the traditional family.
I don’t see how a party can on the one hand, say they support those things, but then turn around and want to punish or shame women who get pregnant prior to marriage but rather than have an abortion, decide to keep and raise the baby? That doesn’t make any sense to me, and I am a right wing Republican myself.
This politician’s views also work against the standard Republican or conservative Christian belief that a woman’s only, or most high calling in life, is to be a wife and mother.
You can’t be consistent by saying on one hand you’re deeply disturbed that women are choosing NOT to be mothers and wish they would chose to be mothers, and also arguing that women were created by God to do nothing but pop babies out (that’s supposedly their “highest calling or role in life”), then turn around and say you want to sterilize women so that they cannot be mothers and have babies.
(Link): AZ GOP vice-chair calls for sterilizing poor women: If you want a baby, get a job
by Travis Gettys
Sept 12, 2014
The recalled Arizona senate president who proposed the state’s controversial anti-immigration law said he could fix public assistance programs by forcibly sterilizing women who receive aid and by requiring drug tests for all recipients.
“You put me in charge of Medicaid, the first thing I’d do is get Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations,” said Russell Pearce on his weekly talk radio program. Then we’ll test recipients for drugs and alcohol, and if you want to [reproduce] or use drugs or alcohol, then get a job.”
He suggested drastic cuts to food assistance for needy families, (Link): reported Phoenix New Times, and he urged strict limits items that could be purchased what little help was available.
…“No cash for Ding Dongs and Ho Hos, you’d only get money for 15-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and powdered milk – all the powdered milk you can haul away,” Pearce said. “If you want a steak or frozen pizza, then you’d have to get a job.”
He also suggested Spartan accommodations and strict rules for anyone who received government housing assistance.
“Ever live in a military barracks?” he said. “You’ll maintain your property in a clean, good state of repair, and your home will be subjected to an inspection at any time, possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or an X-Box 360, then get a job.”
Despite his apparent endorsement of draconian policies, Pearce insisted he favored a small-government solution to poverty.
(Link): AZ Republican Wants to Sterilize Poor Women: ‘If You Want to Reproduce, Get a Job!’
(Link): Arizona Republican Advises Sterilizing Women On Welfare
Edit. Sept 23, 2014:
(Link): Russell Pearce’s resignation isn’t enough for protestors
(Link): Top Arizona GOPer Russell Pearce resigns after sterilization comments
The far-right former lawmaker who helped push Arizona’s “papers please” immigration law has resigned as a top official with the state GOP after making comments about sterilizing poor women.
Russell Pearce, a former state senator, resigned as the party’s first vice chair late Sunday, the Arizona Republican Party announced.
On Saturday, the state Democratic Party highlighted comments Pearce made recently on his radio show. Discussing the state’s public assistance programs, Pearce declared:
“You put me in charge of Medicaid, the first thing I’d do is get Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations…Then we’ll test recipients for drugs and alcohol, and if you want to [reproduce] or use drugs or alcohol, then get a job.”
The comments were quickly repudiated by Republican candidates for several statewide offices.
Related posts:
OFF SITE:
(Link): It’s come to this: Planned Parenthood now attacking GOP plans to expand access to birth control
THIS BLOG:
(Link): Why Are Conservatives Forcing Mothers From Their Kids? by M. Walther
(Link): Former Democrat Mayor Dennis Doyle Arrested for Possession of Child Porn During Term in Office
(Link): Family Research Center (Christian group) thinks people (including the Nuclear Family) should be cut off food stamps
(Link): Judges who Force Insane, Negligent Women, or Addicts to Get Abortions or Undergo Sterilization – Also: Court Ordered Male Sterilization – Being A Parent Does Not Make A Person More Godly, Mature, or Responsible
(Link): Are Marriage and Family A Woman’s Highest Calling? by Marcia Wolf – and other links that address the Christian fallacy that a woman’s most godly or only proper role is as wife and mother
(Link): Southern Baptists Pushing Early Marriage, Baby Making – Iranians Pushing Mandatory Motherhood – When Christians Sound Like Muslims
(Link): Baby Making Fixation at Christianity Today Magazine Online – Shaming Women For Not Procreating, or For Delaying Motherhood, or For Limiting the Number of Children
(Link): Editorial at Christianity Today Actually Suggests that It Takes Motherhood To Make A Woman Become Mature / Also: Homeless Mother Stays In Hotel Room and Makes Her Toddlers Sleep on the Street
(Link): Conservatives and Christians Fretting About U.S. Population Decline – We Must “Out-breed” Opponents Christian Host Says
(Link): Fox News Channel Guest Encourages Female Host To Quit, Get Married, Have Babies – Look, I’m Right Wing, But Also A Never-Married Woman, and I Find This Obnoxious
(Link): Christian School Fires Single Woman For Having PreMarital Sex But Offers Her Job to Her Single Boyfriend Who They Know Had PreMarital Sex Too (and similar news stories – Re Christian Employers and Sex)
(Link): Republicans And Women: Single Women Vote Democratic Because They Wish They Were Married, Pundit Says
(Link): Women in Sao Paulo Must Provide Proof of Virginity to Be Hired as Teachers
Christian Pundit 
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