Don't you just hate it when Senate Republicans add to the sense that women's health rights are being attacked? Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski
sure does:
“I think [these incidents] are just adding to this sense that women’s health rights are being attacked — that in 2012 we’re having a conversation about whether or not contraception should be allowed,” Murkowski told TPM. “I think most thought that we were done with those discussions decades ago. So it’s been kind of an interesting week for women’s health issues.”
She's talking, of course, about the Blunt amendment that sought to protect employers from having to ... um ... do absolutely nothing whatsoever, other than exist in a country in which women have affordable access to basic health care. Sure, she may be a Republican, but she's a woman first, damn it, and she cares more about fighting for women's health rights than toeing the party line. That's why, before the vote last week, she
said, "We’ve got way too much else to be doing."
And after the vote, she told her hometown newspaper:
"I have always said if you don't like abortion the best way to deal with it is to not have unwanted pregnancies in the first place," she said. "How do you do that? It's through contraception." [...]
"You know, I don't adhere to all of the tenets of my faith. I'm a Republican, I don't adhere to all of the principles that come out of my party," she said. "I'm also not hesitant to question when I think that my church, my religion, is not current."
Those are some strong words from Sen. Murkowski. Which is why she was one of the few Republicans to cross party lines and vote against the Blunt amendment, right?
Wrong.
Despite expressing concerns before the vote, and blasting her own party for its attack on women's rights after the vote, at the moment when she had her opportunity to actually do something about it, Sen. Murkowski did just when any good Republican woman would do—she kept her yap shut and did her part to help wage the war on women.
As Joan reported earlier this week, she's awful sorry about that now:
"I have never had a vote I've taken where I have felt that I let down more people that believed in me," she said.
In fact, she's so awful sorry that if she had to do it over again, she'd vote no. Isn't that noble of her? If only she'd realized what a mistake it was
before she voted. Like, you know, when she was criticizing it before she voted.
This is why the myth of Republican feminism is exactly that—a myth. Because even when they know women's rights are under attack, they still side with their party, instead of with women.