For voters who care about women’s health – i.e. the vast majority of Massachusetts voters – it is telling and deeply troubling to see Senator Mitch McConnell step into the U.S. Senate race. Senator McConnell has led his party’s efforts on Capitol Hill to turn back the clock on women. He has voted against equal pay for women and supports private companies who want to deny women health insurance coverage for birth control. Now, he’s counting on Gomez to join his regime and be another vote against women’s health.
Gomez claims he will stand up to his own party when it comes to some issues, but he continues to dodge questions about women’s health and keep voters in the dark. Voters don’t want to play guessing games – we already did that for two years with Scott Brown.
Voters want a leader they can trust to stand up for women. That leader will be Ed Markey.
As a U.S. Representative, Congressman Markey has received a 100 percent rating from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund for his votes against legislation that would have restricted access to safe and legal abortion, and for his votes in support of comprehensive sex education, birth control access, and funding for Planned Parenthood.
Congressman Markey supported the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the single biggest advancement in women’s health in a generation, which Gabriel Gomez would vote to repeal. During the congressional debate on the ACA, Congressman Markey also opposed the Stupak-Pitts amendment that would have effectively banned health coverage of abortion in the new health insurance marketplaces. How Gomez would vote on a measure like the Stupak amendment is yet another question he has refused to answer.
We are proud to stand with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund to support Congressman Ed Markey for U.S. Senate – a vocal and consistent leader for women’s health.
NARAL http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/elections/2013/ma-sen-special.html
and supports the “dilation and extraction” procedure.
http://www.progressivemass.com/2013/02/05/compare-candidates-ed-markey-and-stephen-lynch/
I wish Ed was a bit more moderate on abortion, I am against federal funding and D&E for example, but I trust him on these issues far more than Gomez. I honestly so not think he knows it cares about these issues and trie to please everyone with a Romney-esque equivocation. Equivocation is not leadership, and while I disagree with Ed on subsets on this issue, I broadly favor choice, more access to reproductive healthcare, equal pay, and a host of policies had has a record of defending. Gomez gives us rhetoric instead of a record, and unconvincing rhetoric at that.
Back in April, Markey was asked about the trial of Kermit Gosnell….Ed Markey said at the interview, he was unaware of the trial, knew nothing.
Philadelphia (CNN) — A Philadelphia abortion provider who killed babies by cutting their spinal cords with scissors was found guilty of first-degree murder on Monday, also found guilty of 21 counts of abortion of the unborn, 24 weeks or older, PA has a law no abortion after 24 weeks, unless health of mother is at stake.”
Why hasn’t anyone on BMG written a post on this verdict, be interested if your opinions on the subject matter have changed, ever so slightly? I hope Markey works on lowering that voting record with Planned Parenthood, and get into the mainstream.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/13/justice/pennsylvania-abortion-doctor-trial
or impossible to get, this will happen all the time, and it continues to happen today in countries all over the world that have made abortion illegal. So obviously, the solution is to make all contraception illegal and make it nearly impossible for children to be adopted. That is just the kind of brilliant brain excrement we have come to expect from the Republican Party.
this site is not Blue Pennsylvania Group, nor is it round-up-of-right-wing-talking-points-from-around-the-nation.com
Ted Turber go all right-wing all of a sudden.
Excuse me, Markey’s votes in D.C. only impacts Massachusetts? News from other parts of the country not allowed? Instead, why don’t you voice your opinion on the guilty verdict. Guess you disagree with the PA law, don’t you?
Don’t rise to the bait.
If you favor something to the extreme end, own it and be proud or modify. I would like those to toot the horns of 100% voting for NARAL defend some of what Kermit did. I believe there can be balance on the issue.
I will not!
On the merits I generally don’t have a problem with aborting a pregnancy at about the halfway point of gestation.
Voters want a leader they can trust to stand up for dilation and extraction. That leader will be Ed Markey.
I only make a point here because I’m tired of the divisiveness. It appears that because Gomez is hedging a bit, somehow he’s anti-women. You don’t like him, you like Markey, you don’t like his positions (or illumination thereof). Great. Post Warren/Brown it appears that anti-women is the new race card.
I don’t see that.Note that I am not anti-abortion, or even anti-killing.
We are blasting people from the sky across the planet and killing their children along with them. Great. The President has my full support.
We are sending troops to other countries and killing children as collateral damage. Fine. I support our government.
Right to die. Have at it. I might even go for euthanasia in some circumstances.
Death Penalty- I am starting to hedge on this one, because I don’t trust law enforcement. Guilty murderers should fry though.
But here we have pulling live babies from wombs and killing them. That’s making even me a little squeamish, and apparently not being in support of that is somehow anti-women. I just read up on the NARAL site about this and I know they go into deformities, life of the mother, etc. but clearly that Gosnell guy found a market for the “couldn’t get around to this earlier” crowd. We all agree he’s a monster. A monster with willing customers.
The babies he killed, or fetuses as some prefer to call them, we’re not deformed, nor the mom’s life in danger. Yet, people insist Democrats allow A-Z abortions, from week 1 to Week 40. That’s the standard, MG, for 100% NARAL support. No limits, what-so-ever. People who posted on this thread, don’t even believe Scott Peterson killed his son, instead, he killed a “fetus”. To receive 100% score, you had to vote against the Laci Peterson Bill.
The dilation and extraction method is a gruesome procedure. The doctor rips apart the baby, sorry, I mean fetus, limb by limb. IMO, and I’m not against all abortions, but after a certain time, it should not be allowed. Otherwise, you shouldn’t have an issue with Gosnell.
It’s totally disingenuous to argue that Ed Markey, NARAL, or PP support Gosnell or his actions. Even more disingenuous to argue that those that support late term abortion rights with health exceptions, support federal funding, or opposed the Laci Petersen law support killing babies.
For the record I disagree with Ed and those organizations on those three issues, but I respectfully disagree with their opinions, and in no way are those three things related to the Gosnell case. We are talking about leaving poor vulnerable women (nice of you to blame them in your post btw) on the operating table to die, practicing without a liscense, and getting unpaid interns to perform gruesome and medically unsound abortions. The entire Crux of the pro choice platform is safe, legal and rare. Gosnell performed unsafely, illegally, and frequently. Moreover, PA has a tough abortion law it failed to enforce in a poor minority community. The anti-Roe argument assumes that overturning Roe pushes a button that stops all abortions. It doesn’t. Women will still get them either way. It’s better they get them in a hospital than have a back alley abortion, and Gosnells face is next to “back alley abortionist” in the dictionary.
So next thread or post I read about the NRA or conservatives who resist further gun laws or oppose any ban on sem-automatic weapons, I won’t read comments like this, from you.
” I can’t stress this enough, we are totally right to call the GOP cowards, child murderer enablers, and terrorist sympathizers”.
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2013/04/child-murder-supporters-win-a-round-in-senate/
Ed Markey is pro-choice, as am I, to prevent Kermit Gosnells from running black market abortion schemes and ensuring any woman can get access to safe and legal medical care. Totally different from voting to allow criminals and terrorists to purchase guns. We both made mean partisan attacks, this is true, the difference is mine have facts on my side.
If the government gives money to organizations that do abortions, it’s funding abortions.
If ALL abortions are legal, then late term abortions are great.
If Markey is 100% supported by organizations that think the D&E procedure is super important, then he is in favor of the procedure.
I don’t think that most women are in favor of the D&E and/or think it’s on the front line of women’s issues.
I could be wrong. We have careless disregard for babies in other countries so maybe we don’t care about them here, and it’s not that important.
just like the Republican Dominated House of Representatives. Typical.
Are you anti-choice sir or are you trying to argue that Ed Markey is an extremist on choice compared to Gomez who you find more moderate? If abortion is your only voting issue clearly Gomez is a terrible candidate to. Do you believe all life begins at conception and the government should ban all abortion and contraception? If your answer is no, congratulations you are pro-choice my friend, it’s just a question of degree. When it was clear the “pro-life” movement favored purity over nuance and pragmatism I knew I didn’t want to be a part of it. I oppose late term abortions, support Laci’s law and oppose federal funding. Otherwise I am pretty much in agreement with Ed on this issue and he has had a much longer and far more consistent record on this issue than Gomez does or Lynch did before.
You’re correct. You, me, jconway, danfromwaltham, AND Ed Markey should shut up about women’s reproductive rights, just like Gomez has done.
jconway- If you read earlier, I am fine with all forms of government sanctioned killing. I think I was clear on that. This one thing however (D&E) I find makes me uncomfortable, so I’m guessing it might make others uncomfortable also. From all appearances, it does not make Rep Markey uncomfortable, in fact he apparently thinks there is nothing wrong with it.
I get you don’t like it. That’s not the point. The original poster drew the line in the sand. D&E/Ed Markey good, Gomez the issue dodger, bad.
He thinks, as a matter of law, the decision should be between a woman and her doctor. His personal view, or mine, or yours, has nothing to do with it.
Why do people on this thread keep assigning opinions to me. I’m not the one under discussion here. As far as I can tell the original poster said because Gomez had avoided questions about certain issues involving women, that he was anti-women. I am making the point that it appears in orderto be 100% pro-woman, that some people think you need to support the D&E procedure.
Markey has a 100% rating. That means he answered a questionnaire that asked if he supported D&E with an affirmative.
What is so hard to get about that? My personal view isn’t important, and actually he’s going to win anyway so his is not as well. I only take issue with the fact that this specific procedure (and if you read above it’s not government sanctioned killing in general that I have an issue with) seems to be a test of some sort. I just don’t get that.
How is it a test? Because it’s on the organization’s list to get a 100% score? You seem to be the one making a big deal out of Markey’s “100%” score. The fact that he has a 100% score was mentioned only in passing in the post.
But support for that procedure being legally available is not the only reason PP and NARAL support Ed Markey. I’m pretty sure that if he voiced some reservation about D & E but otherwise held the same positions, these same groups would heartily endorse him over Gomez, who won’t even say what his positions are on the Blunt and Stupak amendments and who said last night he’d be fine voting for a fifth Supreme Court Justice to overturn Roe v. Wade.
My earlier point was that you can’t conclude Markey has no reservations about the procedure at all, just because he believes that, as a matter of law, we should leave the choice to a woman. It’s possible not to like something but to acknowledge that your private views shouldn’t determine the law. I lost three family members to guns violence and I hate guns. All of them. I’m not suddenly “comfortable with guns” just because I’m not calling for a total ban on handguns.
The Hyde Amendment makes sure of that.
In fact, in 1993, Congress rewrote the Hyde Amendment to include Medicaid funding for abortions in cases where the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. So, the present version of the Hyde Amendment requires coverage of abortion in cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment.
More over, in 13 states judges interpreting their state constitutions have declared broad and independent protection for reproductive choice and have ordered nondiscriminatory public funding of abortion (AK, AZ, CA, CT, IL, MA, MN, MT, NJ, NM, OR, VT, and WV)
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
No, it isn’t.
I’ve been talking about this case WAY before the right wing media decided to make a federal case out of it. For the record,the man is a monster and his actions would be heinously criminal for a variety of reasons outside of his violations of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act. An act a Republican,Tom Ridge, almost picked as McCain’s VP, failed to enforce. An act that was NOT enforced since this was someone serving a minority community. But he left pregnant women on the operating table to die, he killed several babies long after they were born, NOBODY is arguing that what he did or practiced should be legal or normalized, and certainly not Ed Markey. So this entire case is completely irrelevant to the discussion, thanks for trying, and feel free to come back next time with actual arguments about actual policies actual candidates are proposing for Massachusetts.
Up until 2002, this was Massachusetts. Contraception was not covered as a medication. It wasn’t even a matter of a stiff co-payment – it was simply not allowed on health insurance plans (although it had at least been decriminalized for unmarried women). You paid out of pocket, or hoped for the best. This is back when I gave money to PP, to help finance contraception for those who could not afford it, banned as it was by the super-majority of Democrats here in Massachusetts. Before they became a money laundering mechanism for the Democratic Party.
So where was Ed Markey then? He did nothing for women as a state rep. In fact, I think he even voted against decriminalization back in 1973. He did nothing in Congress to end unequal coverage for women.
So you want me to get excited about Gomez doing nothing? When he’s just following the congressman’s example?
Uh, porcupine, can I remind you that 1973 was FORTY years ago? A large segment of today’s legislators, candidates, voters, and workers weren’t even born then. On another thread this week, you invoked the ghost of Ted Kennedy in a discussion of the much-needed Cape Wind project.
Whatever Ed Markey did forty years ago, his record and leadership on contraception and choice has been consistent, impeccable, and effective in preserving both for the several decades he has served us well in Congress.
While Mr. Gomez is turning handsprings to avoid specific answers to ANY questions about his position on these issues, he is happily accepting funding from national GOP leaders who are CURRENTLY doing all in their power to reverse the progress women have made for the last 40 years.
If Mr. Gomez were to follow Ed Markey’s example, he would have immediately announced his opposition to the Blunt bill, the Stupak amendment, and the rest of the TODAY’s GOP program to gut women’s rights. He would be far more formidable opponent.
That, however, is NOT what he did.
is concerned. Noted and logged.