Planned Parenthood combines two things that conservatives hate [View all]

[phantom power]

at Planned Parenthood hoax video was apparently some kind of bat signal sent out to conservatives to indicate that it’s time for a free-for-all: That no lie, no matter how outrageous or easily debunked, is totally on the table now, so long as it’s about Planned Parenthood. That much is evident when you read this piece at Media Matters about how Bill O’Reilly and Andrea Tantaros worked themselves into an absolute frenzy of bullshit over this. It was so bad that it is actually easier to pull out the not-false statements than the false ones, except that all you would get is blank space, since nothing they said had any relation to the truth.

...

And I do think this is lying, and not an honest mistake. That information is out there. I believe, very strongly, that Tantaros and O’Reilly know full well that Planned Parenthood is primarily a source of contraception for low income women—and that is why they hate it. Planned Parenthood combines two things that conservatives hate: 1) It provides services that allow low income people to live better lives and improve their economic opportunities.* 2) It promotes the idea that women should be able to have sex on their own terms.

Allowing women to have sex on their own terms is threatening because it really disrupts the system that keeps men in power over women in personal relationships. It’s not just that it makes it harder to trap a woman with pregnancy, though that is part of it. But it’s more that, as long as unwanted childbearing is a threat hanging over women’s head, it injects a major power imbalance into sexual relationships. The woman has to live with the “consequences” for having sex, but the man can walk away. So that helps keep up cultural norms that make women placating and submissive. But the more that women can have sex on their own terms without fear of unintended childbearing, the more leverage they have in relationships with men. Is he a domineering dick? Well, good thing you didn’t have kids with him! Just walk away. You can experiment, date around more, just generally live your life.

It also, needless to say, removes a lot of men’s economic power over women. Now that women can complete college and get a career going before having kids, they compete with men on more equal footing. All those women sneering about reproductive rights on Fox News are, I guarantee it, pure hypocrites on this front. I doubt very much that Andrea Tantaros is a virgin, but she certainly seems to think that your opportunities to work and get an education should be ruined by having a normal, healthy sexuality in the way opportunities were not.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/the-attack-on-planned-parenthood-is-more-about-contraception-than-abortion/