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Vice President Mike Pence took the rare step of breaking a tie in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, casting the deciding vote to roll back protections for reproductive health funds.

Using the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to repeal recently minted regulations, senators killed a rule intended to keep federal grants flowing to clinics that provide contraception and other services in states that want to block the funding.

The rule was enacted in the final weeks of former President Barack Obama's administration, giving lawmakers the opening to nullify it under the review law.

In recent years states such as Texas have kept some healthcare providers from receiving the grants as part of the country's longstanding fight over abortion.

It was the second time on Thursday that Pence used his role as the chamber's president to end a deadlock. He was called to the capitol earlier to carry the resolution through a procedural vote.

Saying the rule usurps states' rights, Republicans argued local lawmakers should decide how healthcare money is distributed.

Their main concern is that federal money is being used to provide abortions, although the grants are specifically barred from funding those procedures. Republicans, including President Donald Trump, generally oppose abortion.

"This regulation is an unnecessary restriction on states that know their residents’ own needs best," said Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Democrats said the resolution was an attack on women's health, contending the rollback will make it harder for low-income and rural women to obtain screenings for cancer and other diseases, as well as contraception.

Most resolutions killing recent Obama-era regulations have sailed through the Republican-controlled Congress. They need to win only simple majorities in both chambers to go to the president for signing.

The congressional review law was used only once successfully until this year. The family-planning resolution marked the 13th time it has been deployed effectively since the beginning of February, as well as the first time a resolution has come within a hair's breadth of failing.

"Republicans didn't listen to us," said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the senior Democrat on the health committee. "They didn't listen to women across the country who made it clear that restricting women's access to the full range of reproductive care is unacceptable."

The nonprofit Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions and many other health and contraception services, receives some of the federal funding.

Noting the recent collapse of the Republican healthcare bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said Thursday's votes were close because "people are sick and tired of politicians making it even harder for them to access healthcare."

 

http://www.reuters.com/article...ortion-idUSKBN1712NY

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Mike Pence once supported the use of federal funding to treat people "seeking to change their sexual behavior."

 

Which is essentially the same thing.   Also..

Although he didn’t say so outright, the position has been widely interpreted as signaling Pence’s support for “gay conversion” therapy, which seeks to “cure” patients of being attracted to members of the same sex.

According to the American Psychological Association, electric shocks were one of the techniques used to address homosexuality through “aversion therapy” prior to the group’s decision in 1973 to stop classifying it as a mental disorder. By the time Pence made his statement regarding the Ryan White CARE Act, that group and several others, including the American Psychiatric Association, had rejected the practice:

 

He never used the words "conversion therapy" but let's call a spade a spade, that is exactly what he meant.

So if someone "is seeking to change" and wants financial support to do so, it is not commendable to support it, right? However, if they wanted money to spew their evil rhetoric to the world, portray painting of Jesus made with urine, or show artwork that highlights the LGT agenda, it should be supported? And then we should also plan to support medical procedures used primarily as birth control following conception, and you want the Republicans out of your bedroom?  When the Liberals stop bringing their bedroom issues out in the public and asking the rest of us to fund them I will begin to take them seriously.

Good point teyates, they shouldn't bring their bedroom into the public!  I know so many times you have been discriminated against for being a heterosexual.  And I know you have never made it known you were such!  I am here to commend you for keeping your heterosexuality under wraps!  Bravo!

teyates posted:

So if someone "is seeking to change" and wants financial support to do so, it is not commendable to support it, right? However, if they wanted money to spew their evil rhetoric to the world, portray painting of Jesus made with urine, or show artwork that highlights the LGT agenda, it should be supported? And then we should also plan to support medical procedures used primarily as birth control following conception, and you want the Republicans out of your bedroom?  When the Liberals stop bringing their bedroom issues out in the public and asking the rest of us to fund them I will begin to take them seriously.

A recent meta-analysis of 25 international population-based studies that measured suicidal behavior in LGB adolescents and/or adults (variously defined) concluded that the lifetime prevalence of suicide attempt in gay/bisexual males was about four times that of comparable heterosexual males (King et al., 2008). Based on the relatively small number of studies in this meta-analysis that included substantial numbers of women, lesbian/bisexual women were found to have lifetime suicide attempt rates almost twice those of heterosexual women. Overall, LGB adolescents and adults were also more than twice as likely as comparable heterosexual persons to report a suicide attempt in the past 12 months.

---------------

Suicide has always been a concern which drives the need to convert
to a hetero life style.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662085/

MonkeysUncleByMarriage posted:

The point is, if someone is so driven down and beaten back by religious indoctrination that they feel they should change their sexuality, they should be given an opportunity to sit down with a mental health professional who can explain that is not a "choice" and they are not a bad person for feeling the way they feel.  Offering them a chance to "convert" to heterosexuality only serves to further their negative feelings and enforce the stigma laid out by 2000 year old dogma.

I wasn't thinking religion but just the fact of the stress point
of the LBGT crowd. Those conversion rates aren't very high
anyway when the relapse rate is added.

 

MonkeysUncleByMarriage posted:

The point is, if someone is so driven down and beaten back by religious indoctrination that they feel they should change their sexuality, they should be given an opportunity to sit down with a mental health professional who can explain that is not a "choice" and they are not a bad person for feeling the way they feel.  Offering them a chance to "convert" to heterosexuality only serves to further their negative feelings and enforce the stigma laid out by 2000 year old dogma.

So you want the taxpayer to fund projects to provide this type of counseling, yet you oppose counseling at the abortion clinic?  Like I said, keep your bedroom issues out of the courthouse and tax office. I don't go around telling you my sexual persuasion, how do you know I am a heterosexual? Id on't care what you do in your bedroom, nor should you care about what I do. At the same time it should not be mandated to teach anything other than basic human anatomy and function in the high school classroom.  The LGT agenda has become not caustic that you have people out on the streets wearing giant hats made to look like private parts.

teyates posted:

 

MonkeysUncleByMarriage posted:

The point is, if someone is so driven down and beaten back by religious indoctrination that they feel they should change their sexuality, they should be given an opportunity to sit down with a mental health professional who can explain that is not a "choice" and they are not a bad person for feeling the way they feel.  Offering them a chance to "convert" to heterosexuality only serves to further their negative feelings and enforce the stigma laid out by 2000 year old dogma.

So you want the taxpayer to fund projects to provide this type of counseling, yet you oppose counseling at the abortion clinic?  Like I said, keep your bedroom issues out of the courthouse and tax office. I don't go around telling you my sexual persuasion, how do you know I am a heterosexual? Id on't care what you do in your bedroom, nor should you care about what I do. At the same time it should not be mandated to teach anything other than basic human anatomy and function in the high school classroom.  The LGT agenda has become not caustic that you have people out on the streets wearing giant hats made to look like private parts.

you may wanna google exactly what the purpose of the 'hat project'. it's about women's rights. i didn't see any mention of the "LGT agenda'. that's one of those rt. wingnut talking points you people like to throw around.  you'd call it 'alternative facts'.

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