Crazy House GOPers Tank Funding Bill – Over Birth Control!

Lots of people (including me) said when the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade was issued that fanatical religious conservatives would stop with abortion. It was clear there are “Justices”, lower federal (and state) judges and plenty of elected GOPers who want to overturn the right to obtain prescription birth control. It too often gets overlooked but it took SCOTUS to allow first married women, and eventually single women to obtain prescription birth control nationwide. Since both The Pill and IUDs prevent embryos from attaching to the uterine wall and initiating actual pregnancy the “life begins at conception” crowd has considered their use “infanticide.”

You’d think that after getting their butts handed to them AGAIN on Tuesday in multiple states on abortion because most Americans (by a strong majority) believe in abortion and reproductive rights conservatives would hit the pause button on their “right to life” CRUSADE. Ah, but we now have one of the most fanatical of the fanatics as the new Speaker of the House. He’s got a tall order in front of him to keep the govt. from shutting down just in time for the holidays.

Alas, as Raw Story reports this morning he pulled a funding bill (instead of a CR the House is still trying to pass separate appropriations bills) that had been cluttered up with a hundred amendments. Among them was an amendment to block a DC law that prevents employers from discriminating against women who use prescription birth control.

Now, Congress screwing with DC just because they can and conservatives in particular using it as a punching bad to please voters back home is nothing new. However we are facing another conservative caused shutdown and at a time when they know it will hurt them next year. Some of the swing district GOPers are tired of this crap:

Rep. Max Miller (R- OH) called it “embarrassing” and “incredibly upsetting” that House GOP leadership had to pull the final passage of the funding bill, reported CNN’s Annie Grayer. He went on to bash his colleagues for hyper-partisan amendments to bills that must pass to keep the government open.

Johnson is in quite the spot. He’s facing the same problem McCarthy did in that a single member can call for a vote to remove him as Speaker. He’s also got fellow fanatics who are butt-hurt over voters in purple Virginia and RED Ohio and Kentucky to knock off dictating to women (and their partners) what they can or more accurately do when it comes to their choices about their reproductive rights. So they are lashing out and I for one wouldn’t be surprised if they throw a full-on toddler tantrum and shut the House down again if Johnson doesn’t get them their way. The contraception amendment is the best they could come up with on short notice but don’t think because the bill was pulled this will go away.

As for Speaker Johnson it’s not like he (and his wife) doesn’t have a long and sordid history of being exactly in favor of this type of thing. So he is as I said suddenly between a rock and a hard place because personally he wants what the other fanatics want. And would have signed on to the birth control amendment in the blink of an eye when nobody knew who he was. Now however, even a weak-asshat like him knows the consequences of allowing another shutdown. And that preventing one by doing what McCarthy did and cutting a deal will have his fellow “Christian” fanatics calling for his head and his tenure as Speaker will be measured in “Scaramuccis.”

For the moment he’s trying to hide where he stands. And has clearly stood in the past:

In an interview Sunday, Johnson was asked by Fox’s Shannon Bream about some of his extreme opinions and bills regarding birth control.

“I really don’t remember any of those measures,” he told her.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure that in the Old Testament there’s something about Moses and some list on stone tablets. And one of the items saying DON’T LIE!” Oh, that’s right. The Ten Commandments. That thing that Johnson and fellow “Christian” fanatics want plastered in every public space, every schoolroom, you name it.

Keep an eye on this. Incredible as it seems the angry reaction of the forced birth crowd to Tuesdays election results could wind up shutting down the government.