Congressman Erik Paulsen Should Get Thrown Out

Erik Paulsen should get thrown out of the House of Representative in 2012 voting!
by Charlie Leck

My Congressman – that is, the man who represents me in the U.S. House of Representatives – voted recently to approve “an anti-choice bill that would significantly restrict women’s access to abortion services and even ‘redefine rape.’ The final vote was 251-175."

I don’t think you must be a woman to be irate about the House passing this bill. Here’s the part of the bill that really gets to me: This bill would make sure all federal funds are denied for an abortion EVEN in a case involving incest and/or statutory rape!

There’s little chance that this outlandish bill will make it to the floor of the Senate and we have the word of the President that he would veto it if it ever reached him.

Why in the hell did my Congressman, Erik Paulsen, ever vote for this bill?

How did Erik Paulsen ever get elected?
The answer to this question is pretty easy. In the last two elections the Democrats in this congressional district have sent the wrong candidate up against him. It isn’t that they were bad guys. They certainly weren’t. Either one of them – both of them – would have made solid, smart and progressive representatives. They were just guys who couldn’t win and it was obvious to most seasoned political observers from the very beginning of their campaigns.

We had a couple of chances in this district to pit good, progressive women against Paulsen. The stats show that this is a woman’s district. Women vote strongly here and they don’t vote along party lines. Women have won big here in all sorts of state, county and local elections.

Three years ago, in the campaign against Paulsen, I contributed significantly and worked as a volunteer for the Democratic candidate even though I believed from the beginning that he couldn’t win. In the last election, I took a pass.

My advice to the party for the 2012 election is that they find a really good, moderate, energetic and bright woman who wants the seat. This district will rally behind her. She’ll have plenty to campaign on and against, especially in the light of this most recent vote by Paulsen.

And, I believe she can get elected.

Here’s how CREDO describes the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" or H.R. 3.

(It) goes far beyond any other anti-choice measure that has been proposed in the House, including the Stupak Amendment that passed the House last year.

H.R. 3 would sharply reduce access to safe, legal abortions for women in this country by virtually eliminating insurance coverage for abortions. The redefinition of rape could be used to block women who were victims of incest involving statutory rape from using Medicaid to pay for an abortion. And in some cases, the bill would force women who were sexually assaulted into the hellish scenario of proving to IRS agents that they were victims of "forcible rape" or incest.

Let's be clear about what the anti-choice supporters of H.R. 3 want. They want to "redefine rape." They want to make it impossible for low-income women to have access to abortion services. They want to force women whose pregnancy is causing major health risks short of death (such as blindness) to go through with the pregnancy. And they want to eliminate insurance coverage for abortion in order to make reproductive care unaffordable for women.

If Erik Paulsen is your congressman or if your congressperson supported this bill, write to him/her and register your displeasure. [click here to send a message to Congressman Erik Paulsen]

You might find this Mother Jones article very interesting: “The GOP’s Stealth Plan to Redefine Rape.”

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