Bachmann Perry Overdrive!

In Monday’s CNN Tea Party Debate, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry squared off on Perry’s use of an executive order as Governor of Texas. Bachmann, as a mother of 3 daughters, said requiring little girls to get the HPV vaccine was unacceptable. Rick Perry said he supported it because he is opposed to cancer.

As the debate unfolded further, we began to ask the question: Since when do either of these candidates care about giving women a choice about a health care decision?

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After a 26 year career in Texas politics, Rick Perry touts an A+ rating with Texans for Life. “Gov. Perry is proudly pro-life and successfully championed strong pro-life legislation in Texas including parental consent, this year’s sonogram bill and a budget that significantly defunds abortions in Texas,” said Perry’s spokesperson this August. “The governor has long supported overturning Roe v. Wade, and would support amending the U.S. Constitution, with the backing of Congress and the states, to protect innocent life.”

The controversial “sonogram bill” was struck down by a federal court judge who said portions of the bill weren’t legal. This summer, Governor Perry spoke to an anti-choice convention on Roe v. Wade saying he believed it to be a “shameful footnote in our nation's history books.”

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is just as bad. Earlier this summer, Bachmann called Planned Parenthood “a criminal operation” at the Faith and Freedom Conference. “We’re giving money to corrupt groups like Planned Parenthood,” an organization that she said is “committing crimes and enabling young, minor girls.”

She went even further in 2009 when she said “school based health clinics” were really just “sex clinics” for children. Speaking on the House floor Bachmann said, “Does that mean that someone's 13 year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus that night? Mom and dad are never the wiser.”

Bachmann believes in a Constitutional Amendment to ban abortion, she voted to defund Planned Parenthood; she opposed equal pay for women calling it a “job killer;” she voted against a federal Family Leave bill; she opposes paid parental leave for federal employees; she voted to abolish Medicare; and and supported republican efforts to redefine rape.

These are just some of the things Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann have done for women. Choice only extends so far as opting out of a vaccination. With these candidates, the idea of liberty and freedom has a footnote saying it “doesn’t apply to women seeking abortions” or anything else for that matter.

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