from News Hounds:
Dana Perino Says If You Can Afford Shoes You Can Afford Birth ControlReported by Priscilla - July 29, 2011
There is a right wing trope that says that poor people shouldn't have things like refrigerators and flat screen TV's. (Seriously, Stephen Colbert lampooned Fox News' Stuart Varney pushing this compassionate conservatism). According to the I've got mine so screw you crowd, low income folks should be living in Dickensian squalor in order to have any credibility as being poor. Last week, "The Five" had a discussion about the Institute of Medicine recommendations that health care plans, in the new health care law, cover contraception with no co-payments. This ignited a firestorm in the crowd that doesn't want to pay for who they think are slutty girls gone wild but has no problem paying for wars and tax breaks for the Koch brothers. But rather than taking this approach to the issue, Dana Perino (who can, I suspect, afford birth control co-payments) took the "undeserving poor" Stuart Varney tack. The issue of providing free contraception is a serious and important one; but it was not treated as such in this discussion which shows, once again, that Fox News is in the Praetorian Guard of the right wing's war on women.
The oh, so preppy Perino reported that HHS asked if
"we should give free birth control to people. That women wouldn't have to pay co-pays when they go to the doctors. I might be for that, if I didn't see a lot of people out there able to buy a new pair of shoes. We have to be able to make some choices here." She then tossed to former altar boy and jokster (or is it joker?) Greg Gutfeld who has said that population control is a "big fat joke." He made the bizarre observation that "the left has figured out a way to eradicate the poor by eradicating the poor." (Gutfeld obviously hasn't figured out that if poor people have fewer children, they will get out of poverty. So if this is "eradication," it's a problem, how?). When Beckel said that poor women can't afford to have a lot of children, the oh, so Westchester (or is it Westport...) Perino asked how we should define poor. She also asked who is in that category that can't get free birth control right now. (Dana needs to get out beyond the gated community where she could meet women who work in low wage jobs but make too much to qualify for Medicaid. Also, she should realize that if she gets dumped by hubby and Fox News and is left as a poor single woman without children, she doesn't qualify for anything free unless she files for SSI.) ...........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.newshounds.us/2011/07/29/dana_perino_says_if_you_can_afford_shoes_you_can_afford_birth_control.php