Saturday, February 16, 2013

GOP ‘Savior’ Marco Rubio Falls Back On The Same Old Anti-Woman Policies

In an interview on Thursday with conservative magazine Newsmax, Tea Party standard-bearer and so-called ‘savior’ of the Republican party Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) revealed that he will become a cosponsor of the “Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act.” The bill is a concerted effort to prevent girls in dangerous family situations from going across state lines to receive abortions.

Familiarly known as “the Grandmother Incarceration Act,” CIANA bills have come up in Congress several times in recent years. Nearly every iteration of the legislation would prevent even a victim of rape or incest from getting a ride to an abortion clinic beyond state lines from her grandmother or older sibling, if she is under the age of 18. Instead, the girl would be forced to inform her parents or legal guardian, and be required to have them present.

While the bill has not yet been introduced, previous versions of the text would even apply the requirements to girls who require a medically necessary, potentially lifesaving abortion.

The fact that Rubio will serve as a co-sponsor on the legislation reveals a lot about the supposed new face of the Republican party. The policy, like many of Rubio’s policy choices, is actually an old trick from the Grand Old Party, not some new approach to Republican ideals. And it falls in line with Rubio’s party’s, and the Senator’s own, recent anti-woman efforts:

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: Rubio voted against the Violence Against Women Act because it allocated money to rape victims.

MINIMUM WAGE: He won’t support a minimum wage, despite its huge benefits for women.

BIRTH CONTROL: The senator introduced a bill that would have prevented millions of women from accessing birth control.

PAY EQUITY: He called a bill to promote pay equity between men and women “nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers.”

With his post-State of the Union rebuttal, Rubio signed up to be the face of a Republican party that is working hard to win over women and people of color, the groups that cost Republicans the election last time around. But with Rubio’s history of anti-woman policies, and now his renewed commitment to co-sponsor more of the same, he may just on the vanguard of a new Republican path back to the same Republican problems.

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