Rep. Michele Bachmann lashed out at First Lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday over her promotion of breastfeeding, particularly among black women, to curb obesity. On Laura Ingraham’s radio show, Bachmann said that Obama’s campaign — and an IRS change that makes breast pumps tax deductible — constituted a “nanny state” and that it was part of her “hard left agenda.”
Minnesota Republicans have offered four identical bills that would ban state funding for abortion services in both the House and Senate. The DFL and reproductive rights groups are taking them to task for focusing heavily on social issues and curtailing the ability of low income women to receive an abortion. Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley, predicted that the bills were likely an attempt to challenge a Minnesota Supreme Court decision that upheld the right of Minnesotans on public assistance to receive abortion services.
Two weeks ago, Republican leadership in the Minnesota Senate introduced a bill to ban state funding for abortion, and on Monday, two more bills with identical language were introduced in the Senate and another in the Minnesota House.
Reps. John Kline and Michele Bachmann are cosponsors of a bill that would allow faith-based hospitals and health care clinics to deny women emergency abortions, pro-choice advocates say. The Protect Life Act would prevent private health insurance policies offered in the health exchanges set up by last year’s health care reform from paying for abortion. It also OKs a “conscience clause” which allows religious people to deny care for women seeking an abortion.
Rep. Michele Bachmann threw her support behind an anti-abortion activist on Thursday who made undercover videos of a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Jersey. Bachmann said the video, and the fact that Planned Parenthood offers abortion as part of its services, should result in a ban on federal grants for the reproductive health chain.
A bill that would ban taxpayer funding to clinics that perform abortions — and caused significant controversy over the definition of rape — has been changed by the bill’s author, Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey. The bill is sponsored by Republican Reps. Michele Bachmann, Chip Cravaack and John Kline, as well as DFL Rep. Collin Peterson, among many others. The bill sought to provide exception for incest and “forcible rape,” which opponents said would not cover statutory rape or instances where force could not be proven.
Rep. Michele Bachmann renewed her call to defund Planned Parenthood in an article penned for Human Events, a conservative publication, over the weekend. After the last time she made such a plea — in December — she helped Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota raise $3,000 from supporters. Bachmann, along with fellow Republican Reps. John Kline and Chip Cravaack, are cosponsors of a bill recently introduced in the U.S. House to deny federal family planning funds to Planned Parenthood.
Members of the Republican leadership in the Minnesota Senate have introduced legislation to ban state funding for abortions, just weeks after saying that creating jobs and fixing the budget deficit would be the party’s top priorities. The bill was offered on the eve of Minnesota Citizens Concerned For Life’s (MCCL) March for Life at the State Capitol grounds.
With the new Legislature sworn into session on Tuesday, one new official is coming under scrutiny for opinions he’s shared in the letters pages of local newspapers. Republican Glenn Gruenhagen, elected to the Minnesota House in November to represent Glencoe after Rep. Laura Brod retired, has been assigned to the Health and Human Services Committee. His controversial public statements about welfare, anal sex, abortion and alcoholism — areas the committee oversees — could make for interesting political theater in the months ahead.
A bill authored by Rep. Betty McCollum to prevent child marriage abroad was defeated in the House late last week by Republicans who said the bill might fund abortion. The International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act passed the Senate unanimously early last week without Republican objection. McCollum called the GOP’s efforts to kill the bill “blatant phony arguments.”
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