Women's Rights, Another Negative For Ryan

It goes without saying that in the one short week Paul Ryan has become Romney's V.P. pick, he has become a lightning rod for all the radical views he brings to Romney's table. Turning Medicare into a voucher program, and pushing the privatization of Social Security, are just the tip of the Ryan iceberg. I thought it was particularly cowardly of Mr. Ryan, on his first trip to Florida, to take the stage while hiding behind his 78 year old mothers skirt. To add insult to injury, he did it while standing in front of a sign declaring "Protect and Strengthen Medicare". He stared straight faced at the large audience of seniors and proclaimed, “like a lot of Americans, when I think about Medicare, it’s not just a program. It’s not just a bunch of numbers. It’s what my mom relies on. It’s what my grandma had.” All the while promoting a budget proposal that would eviscerate the very program mom and grandma currently have, it really was something to see.

Medicare aside, Ryan is also no friend of women's rights. He has consistently called for ending federal funding to Planned Parenthood, and voted against a measure to allow women in the military to receive abortions in military hospitals. Ryan has earned a perfect rating from the National Right to Life Committee for his votes during his 14 years in Congress. The National Abortion Rights Action League tallied 59 votes that Ryan took on abortion-related bills. On each measure, he voted against abortion rights. "I'm as pro-life as a person gets," Ryan told The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, in 2010. Shortly after the formal announcement of Ryan's selection on Aug. 11, Obama's team tweeted that Ryan would ban abortions even in cases of rape and incest and had sponsored a bill that would outlaw some forms of birth control. The Democratic campaign emailed female supporters to stress Ryan's record on women's issues, including his vote against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first bill Obama signed when he took office.

So I guess if you are Missouri Republican Senate Candidate Representative Paul Akin, who claimed this weekend that "legitimate rape" victims seldom get pregnant. First I would ask for a definition of "legitimate rape"? but then I would be rest assured no matter what "kind" of rape it was, Romney's V.P. pick would be against an abortion in that case, and that of incest, or regardless of risks to the health of mother.  As the V.P. pick he has backtracked to Romney's view to outlaw all abortions except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother the "official" stance of the Romney-Ryan campaign.

Ryan was also one of several dozen Republican co-sponsors last year of a bill called the Sanctity of Human Life Act. The measure, which never made it to the House floor, would give a fertilized egg the same legal rights as a person. Abortion rights groups say that would effectively outlaw all abortions, as well as some types of contraception and in-vitro fertilization. Efforts to implement such "personhood" laws at state levels have been rejected even in the most conservative settings. Plain and simple, women have no friend in the Romney-Ryan campaign. The sign below says it all.