Thursday, January 23, 2014

Mike Huckabee: Giving Women Birth Control Coverage Assumes They Can’t Control Their Sex Drives

BY AVIVA SHEN/Think Progress
Former Arkansas Governor and Fox News commentator Mike Huckabee (R) asserted Wednesday that Democrats are telling women “they cannot control their libido” by offering no-copay contraception through the Affordable Care Act. He made the comments during a luncheon at the Republican National Convention, which is actively trying to dispel the party’s anti-woman image.
During his speech, Huckabee also likened Obamacare’s expanded contraception coverage to a sugar daddy. Democrats want women to think “they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government,” he said. Republicans, by contrast, want to “empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.”
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While these comments have sparked fresh outrage, the former governor has been blithely offending women for most of his career. In the past, he’s speculated that women have trouble multitasking during their periods and passionately supported former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) after the failed Senate candidate claimed victims of “legitimate rape” can’t get pregnant. He has also specifically endorsed the belief that “wives graciously submit to their husband’s sacrificial leadership.”

GOP strategists have worked hard since the 2012 election to keep Republicans from alienating female voters by holding training sessions and advising candidates to simply avoid talking about rape. But offensive comments by prominent Republicans keep thwarting these efforts. On Wednesday alone, one GOP congressman running for re-election argued that wives should “voluntarily submit” to their husbands, while another Congressional candidatedropped out in the midst of a firestorm over his justification of marital rape.

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