<div dir="ltr"><div class=""><h1 class=""><font face="georgia, serif" size="2">Sorry, Ted Cruz: Women Don’t Want Your ‘Rubbers’</font></h1>
<h2 class=""><font face="georgia, serif" size="2">Trying to combat the notion of a GOP “war on women,” Cruz explains the backwards thinking that’s behind it. </font></h2>
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<h2><font face="georgia, serif" size="2">By <a class="" href="http://www.thenation.com/authors/joan-walsh/" style="font-weight:normal">Joan Walsh</a><span style="font-weight:normal"> The Nation, Dec. 2, 2015</span></font></h2>
<h4 class=""><font face="georgia, serif"><span class="" style="font-weight:normal">S</span><span style="font-weight:normal">enator Ted Cruz seems a little
overexcited about his latest surge in the surreal Republican primary
campaign. He’s now running second in Iowa, just behind Donald Trump, and
</span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/02/donald-trump-and-hillary-clinton-endure-as-ben-carson-recedes-poll-says/" style="font-weight:normal">he’s tied with Ben Carson for third</a><span style="font-weight:normal">
in the latest Quinnipiac poll. Just this week, a giddy Cruz smacked his
closest rival, Senator Marco Rubio, as a junior neocon, insulted Donald
Trump by insisting he has no chance at the GOP nomination, and Monday
night </span><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/30/politics/ted-cruz-condoms-iowa/index.html?sr=twCNN120115ted-cruz-condoms-iowa1238AMVODtopPhoto&linkId=19187559" style="font-weight:normal">he threw a haymaker at Democrats</a><span style="font-weight:normal"> for talking “nonsense” about a “war on women.”</span><br></font></h4></div></div>
<div id="ad-halfpage-196112-0"><div style="border:0pt none" id="google_ads_iframe_/1004953/tn_politics_government_ros_halfpage_1_0__container__"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif">Democrats should thank the over-confident arch-conservative: With
goofy talk about “rubbers” that came straight out of the 1950s, Cruz
perfectly explained the backwards thinking about women that gets
imperfectly telegraphed in “war on women” sloganeering.</span><br></div></div><p><font face="georgia, serif">Asked a question about contraception at an Iowa town-hall
meeting, Cruz stepped into the batter’s box and swung at what he
considered a nice, fat pitch. He was ready.
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">“I have never met anybody, any conservative who wants to ban
contraceptives,” he began, calling the notion a “made-up, nonsense
example.” He’d have been better off just stopping there, but he couldn’t
help himself.
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">“Last I checked, we don’t have a rubber shortage in America. When
I was in college we had a machine in the bathroom, you put 50 cents in
and voila! So yes, anyone who wants contraceptives can access them, but
it’s an utterly made-up nonsense issue.”
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">Having worked himself up, Cruz then accused other Republicans of not being man enough to take on the “nonsense issue.”
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">“When the war on women came up, Republicans would curl up in a
ball, they’d say, ‘Don’t hurt me.’ Jiminy Cricket!” Not Ted Cruz: When
Hillary Clinton comes at him, he’s ready. The former senator and
secretary of state can’t run on her record, he claims.
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">“So what do you do? You go, ‘Ah, ha! Condom police. I’m gonna
make up a completely made up threat and try to scare a bunch of folks
into thinking someone’s going to steal their birth control.’ What
nonsense.”
</font></p>
<p><font face="georgia, serif">
Cruz thinks a woman’s reproductive "choice" involves asking a man to buy a 50-cent rubber in the men’s room
<a target="_blank" class="" href="http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Cruz+thinks+a+woman%E2%80%99s+reproductive+%22choice%22+involves+asking+a+man+to+buy+a+50-cent+rubber+in+the+men%E2%80%99s+room%20http://www.thenation.com/article/sorry-ted-cruz-women-dont-want-your-rubbers/"></a>
</font></p>
<p><font face="georgia, serif">But Ted Cruz is going to fight that nonsense.
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">Where do I begin? Jiminy Cricket?
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">First of all, Cruz really didn’t listen to the question he was
asked, or else he didn’t care about it. The woman in the audience wanted
to know what the GOP would do about “making contraception available to
women who want to control their own bodies.”
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">Buying “rubbers” from a machine in the men’s room isn’t the
answer; it’s the opposite of an answer, since it explicitly leaves
contraception in the hands of men. Some historians cite the invention of
“the pill” as the single most influential advance in the liberation of
women. A woman, herself, could control her own fertility; she didn’t
have to rely on a man buying “rubbers” from a machine. But somehow Cruz
didn’t talk about oral contraception, or any other kind, besides
“rubbers.”
</font></p>
<div class=""><p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif">While Cruz claims Republicans can assure women they don’t want to
“steal their birth control,” they do want to make them pay for it again.
The contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act requires insurance
companies to cover birth control without a co-pay. The GOP wants to
repeal the entire ACA, but the party is particularly opposed to the
contraceptive mandate. Cruz has called it “illegal,” and he supports
broadening provisions that let corporations claim a moral exemption.</span><br></p></div><p><font face="georgia, serif">That wouldn’t legally count as “stealing their birth control,”
but it might feel like it to a lot of working- and middle-class women.
Generic oral contraceptives are fairly affordable, but some women have
health needs that require them to take newer, more expensive brands that
can run more than $50 a month. Other women have to rely on implants or
injections that cost more than $1,000 a year.
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">But that’s not the only way Cruz’s policies threaten women’s
access to birth control. He supports “personhood” legislation, which
could make illegal certain forms of contraception. He falsely claims
that the oral contraceptive Plan B is an abortion drug, and opposes its
coverage. He supports <a href="http://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2313">a bill that would overturn a Washington D.C. law</a>
prohibiting employers from using “religious freedom” arguments to fire
women for using birth control, seeking in vitro fertilization or having
an abortion.
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">To sum up: Cruz has worked very hard to make sure that women’s
reproductive choices come down to asking a man to buy a 50-cent rubber
in the men’s room on his way home.
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">In his zeal to combat the notion of a “war on women,” the junior
Texas senator instead helped Democrats open a new front: Republicans are
clearly trying to recreate the America of the 1950s, where women rely
on men to decide if and when to start families. Cruz has always seemed
straight out of the ’50s himself. It’s not just his eerie physical
resemblance to Senator Joseph McCarthy; he looks like he was born
middle-aged, from another, earlier era. It’s hard to imagine him buying
“rubbers” in the men’s room in college, and I regret that he made me
try.
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">And “Jiminy Cricket?” Who under the age of 80 says that? But I digress.
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">With all due respect to Senator Sanders, please allow this
feminist a moment to imagine Cruz pulling out his “rubbers” line in a
general-election debate with Clinton. I can hear her laughter now.
</font></p><p><font face="georgia, serif">Before that, though, all of the Democratic candidates should be
mocking the cocky right-winger for his notion of contraceptive “choice”
everywhere they go. And thanking him for making explicit the terms of
the “war on women.” Jiminy Cricket, this could be fun. </font></p><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><font face="georgia, serif">-- <br></font><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div> <div style="height:auto;width:auto"> <div> <div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><div><font face="georgia, serif">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. <br><br>-Greek proverb</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br>
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not
in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it
without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your
own understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
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