More Republican stupidity: the GOP continues its war on women:— Digby nails it:

‘How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives? How does that stimulate the economy?’ House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said of the provision, according to Reuters.”

Boehner is such a slimy little worm. The original brouhaha was about the fact that family planning didn’t “create jobs” which was the intent of the stimulus package. It became a big joke (“hehehe, he said stimulate…”) and so the Democrats removed it from the bill to shut up the stupid Republicans.

Now they’re implying that it was removed because of moral objections on the part of “America” which doesn’t want the government paying for birth control and “the abortion industry,” which I’m assuming is Planned Parenthood. (That was, of course, ridiculous because contraceptives are a product like anything else which requires humans to manufacture and distribute them.)

Boehner concludes:

Now we learn that Washington Democrats’ government takeover of health care dramatically expands taxpayer funding of contraceptives and the abortion industry. First Democrats removed this controversial provision from the ‘stimulus’ and then they hid it in their government takeover of health care, hoping the American people wouldn’t notice.

If anyone ever wondered whether the right is sincere in its concern for fetuses as opposed to the sexual behavior of women, this would seem to spell it out pretty clearly. Boehner is calling provisions for birth control “controversial” and the only thing he can mean by this in this context is that he thinks Americans believe women shouldn’t have sex if they don’t want to bear children. (“Just keep your legs closed, girl, and you won’t have a problem.”)Otherwise, it would be “uncontroversial” that a health care bill would provide for family planning and those who care about preventing abortion would be supportive since it would result in fewer unplanned pregnancies. (But then we know that isn’t what the religion industrial complex is all about, don’t we?)