A fellow blogger E sent me a link about yet another bizarre and terrifying development in the psychiatric unraveling of Arizona:
After I did some breathing exercises to prevent myself from throwing up, I continued reading the article and came upon the following quote from the egregiously stupid proponent of this barbaric measure:
Further, Lesko states, with a straight face, that this bill is necessary because “we live in America; we don’t live in the Soviet Union.”
I have a newsflash for the brainless, uneducated Lesko. In the Soviet Union, contraception was not available to regular people. (Except, of course, for the party apparatchiks who traveled overseas and purchased contraceptives there.) Oral contraceptives were not manufactured. Neither were the intra-uterine devices, hormonal patches, or anything of the kind. Condoms were impossible to come by.
The Soviet women’s bodies were policed in a way very similar to the one Lesko and her group of rabid maniacs propose to introduce in Arizona. Women were routinely subjected to forced gynecological exams. If unmarried women were found not to be virgins during such exams, they were publicly shamed and persecuted. Unmarried mothers were lepers in the Soviet society. People who were suspected of marital infidelity were subjected to mock trials at the workplace where bosses and colleagues publicly denounced them for being dirty whores and dirty bastards.
The very idea that an individual’s body belongs to the society, the collective, the group, or the government was the foundation of the Soviet society. It is not surprising that Lesko mentioned the USSR when defending her vile plan. Because the Soviet Union is precisely what she wants to recreate in Arizona.
Clarissa's Blog 
In order not to become like the USSR, we have to become more like the USSR.
In order to save women, we have to kill them.
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Thanks for sharing this article with so much more articulate thoughts than I ever could manage. It took me 3 tries to read the damn thing, it was so repulsive! I still haven’t managed to form a coherent sentence about how disgusted I am. I can not BELIEVE that people would even consider that. On the plus side, the article suggests the bill probably won’t go anywhere, but seriously, don’t lawmakers have better things to do with their time than make up awful, demeaning, worthless bills that waste everyone’s time, energy, and brian-power to defeat?
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Anything can happen in Arizona which is becoming a very scary place. I’m seriously wondering if there are some poisonous substances in the water or the air because things are getting too bizarre.
I don’t think this bill will pass (or stay in place for long if it does) but something very bad is happening to the people there. The climate, maybe? I don’t know, but the entire state had turned irrational.
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… the entire state had turned irrational.
This is not entirely true. There are approximately a dozen or so of us left with our heads not wedged up our asses. 😉
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“This is not entirely true. There are approximately a dozen or so of us left with our heads not wedged up our asses.”
– You are in Arizona?? Oy. Stay strong, friend.
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I wouldn’t say the entire state is irrational — 78% of us believe in publicly funded family planning. It’s some of those legislators who are irrational — and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they will be voted out soon.
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This is good news, indeed. I hope that reason wins in Arizona!
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(If not, I am teaching my dogs to poop in irrational politicians’ shoes. Gotta have a backup plan.) 😉
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*stares*
Really, this takes the cake. Once Republicans could be counted on to at least know history. I’m thinking all those Republicans must be dead. I can’t find Debbie Lesko’s date of birth anywhere, but the first thing she says about herself on her bio page is that she’s a “happily married mother of three children” and since women like that don’t call their adult children “children” I’m assuming all the kids are still minors, so she must be in her thirties. (Since she seems to be some sort of fundamentalist Christian — one of her other big deals seems to be the so-called “war on Christmas” — I assume that like a lot of fundie wives she started spawning early.) Anyway, say she’s 35. That would mean she was born in 1977, which would mean she was twelve when the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989 and fourteen when the USSR was formally dissolved in 1991. That would make her old enough to know what was going on. If she’s only thirty (and she doesn’t look like she’s that young — in fact, she looks older than 35, I was being kind) she would have been too young for the whole collapse of the Soviet Union end of the Cold War thing to have any effect. Then again, I was only eleven when we pulled out of Vietnam and I remember the occasion quite clearly and my childhood was very affected by that war.
So I don’t know. I mean, she got into politics, but the people I knew in high school who were into politics were also into history and took Political Science courses in college and in general were not dumbasses who would think that birth control being part of a health insurance plan makes us like the Soviet Union.
Then again, there is the possibility she is being misquoted or what she said was misconstrued somehow. I do know she is backtracking somewhat or at least on her Facebook page she’s saying all this bill does is give employers the option to opt out of a health plan including birth control coverage if they have some religious reason, and she said something about how “hardly any employers will opt out.” I don’t know, though — this sounds like another unnecessary kneejerk response to the quite bizarre hysteria that has for some reason formed around the idea of birth control. Suddenly all these people are saying things like “I don’t want to pay for these women to have sex” when in fact not one cent is being taken out of anyone’s pocket, unless you count the fact that everyone who has health insurance is paying into a pool that is supposed to cover everyone, and thus there will be things covered that not everyone will need. I mean, I could say I don’t want to pay for some women’s Surprise!Pregnancy and maternity leave and new mouth to feed because birth control wasn’t covered by her insurance plan and she couldn’t afford to pay for it. So who’s with me on throwing all those baby mammas and their brats out into the streets? So yeah, the “I don’t want to pay” thing cuts both ways. (In other words, I wonder how much maternity leave Ms. Lesko got for her three kids.)
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I sincerely pity the children if this unhinged, self-hating, sex-deprived, resentful and fanatical Lesko person. We just heard one bit of wisdom from this unstable fanatic but imagine those poor kids who are exposed to her toxicity often.
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This is an excellent post.
Have a look at this:
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/archive/2012/03/15
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I really appreciate the perspective you bring.having lived in the former USSR. I fail to understand why many American conservatives state they want less government, yet they come up with these asinine bills that put government right into the private lives of women.
Maybe women need to declare themselves to be banks or corporations in order to get these lunatics off their bodies?
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“I fail to understand why many American conservatives state they want less government, yet they come up with these asinine bills that put government right into the private lives of women.”
– This is what I find so mind-boggling!! I have started saying to people, “Oh, you are a Republican! I’m not because I’m against the Big Government.”
“Maybe women need to declare themselves to be banks or corporations in order to get these lunatics off their bodies?”
– Exactly!
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