Kansas state senator Mary Pilcher-Cook is often on the cutting edge of conservative ideology. Her commitment to religious conservative values has garnered her some friends, with Governor Brownback recently praising her conservative bonafides.
www.kansas.com/...
In response, Hawley, Brownback’s press secretary, said: “President Wagle has decided to work with moderates and Democrats to attack conservatives like Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook (R-Shawnee) and Sam Brownback because she is frustrated with them for blocking her efforts to expand Obamacare and raise income taxes, and she knows the media will reward her with positive coverage for doing so.”
Today, the senator who has spent her time on social issues — whether it was trying to make IVF and surrogacy illegal, or proposing that teaching sex education should come with a jail sentence, her stance on the social issues was never in doubt.
Today in the Kansas senate, Mary Pilcher-Cook went to the next level. In her attack on an amendment proposed by Marci Francisco (D-Lawrence), the Shawnee senator came forward with an astonish charge: any government funding or supplemental funding through community health centers of long term birth control (IUDs as an example) is, in fact, eugenics.
In her statement on the floor regarding the use of federal funds in health centers for long term birth control, Pilcher-Cook made this statement:
“I think it’s government treading on very dangerous territory,” Pilcher-Cook said. “Because government should not be in the authoritative position of being discriminatory by promoting contraception. These long-acting contraceptions are being recommended by HHS (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) to target the poor and minority populations. And in the ’30s and ’40s, our country firmly and finally rejected eugenics. Let’s not bring it back.”
The implication that health centers will “push” these methods primarily on poor and minority women promotes a strange, but widespread, conspiracy theory that even a Republican government cannot contain a plot to eliminate minority groups through access to birth control. Provide them title X funding which can be used for supplementing the cost of long term birth control, and suddenly, even a Republican government turns into — by her terms — some sort of World War II inspired goon squad intent on doing great harm to minorities to control gene pool.
Senator Pilcher-Cook will face a Democratic opponent in the fall, Vicki Hiatt.
Full disclosure: like numerous Democratic candidates, I work for and help represent Democratic candidates statewide. The work above is not promoted by her campaign, nor does it speak for her campaign.
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