The Lie That the GOP/Conservatives Support Family Values

America's last place ranking in maternity leave

One hears constant blather from self-labeled "family values" organizations and, of course, the Republicans about how strongly they support family values.  The claim, like just about everything else the utter, is a lie.  There definition of family values means vilifying gays and single mothers and doing all in their power to eliminate social programs that might actually help support families so that greed driven bigots can keep their money to themselves much like the wealthy condemned by Christ in the Gospels.  Perhaps equally shocking is the fact that 163 other countries have forms of paid maternity leave to support motherhood while the USA has no such program.  The "pro-live" fetus worshipers talk constantly about valuing life, but once children are born, these hypocrites don't give a damn about these newborn and young children.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality.  Here are highlights:

Politicians talk about family values but do almost nothing to help families. They talk about parental responsibility but do almost nothing to help parents. They talk about self-sufficiency but do precious little to make self-sufficiency a reality for those who must struggle hardest to achieve it.

For all these reasons, it was exciting last week to see Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut introduce the FAMILY Act, the acronym standing for their Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act. The bill would provide partial income for up to 12 weeks of leave for new parents and for other family demands, such as care for a sick family member, including a domestic partner.

How far behind the rest of the world is our country on this quintessential family values matter? The Post’s Amy Joyce cited a Harvard University study in 2004 noting that of 168 countries it examined, 163 had some form of paid maternity leave. We weren’t one of the 163. Joyce observed that “the U.S. is on par with places like Papua New Guinea and Swaziland when it comes to paid family leave.”

Premiums would range from about $72 to $227 a year, depending on a person’s income. The maximum benefit is capped at $4,000 a month. They expect the average monthly benefit to be less than half that.

There is nothing revolutionary about this proposal. It builds on the existing (and highly popular) Family and Medical Leave Act, which requires unpaid leave and was enacted two decades ago. It is modest in comparison with leave policies in other well-off countries.

Yet in light of Congress’s dismal record since the Republican takeover of the House in 2010, it would be revolutionary to see any law passed that empowered individuals and families to ease their everyday difficulties.

At a time when the political news is dominated by a debate between do-little conservatism and do-nothing conservatism — which is to say, between a right-tilting Republican establishment and the radical tea party — Gillibrand’s package includes building blocks for a broader counter-vision inspired by the idea of an Empowering Government.  

[S]urely a country that honors the devotion of family members to each other should want to make it at least a little easier for them to do their jobs.

The GOP's War on Maternity Coverage

The Republican Party claims to be pro-life and to support "family values" yet one aspect of its war against the Affordable Health Care Act is the requirement that health care policies include maternity coverage.  To me, it's yet another example of GOP hypocrisy much akin to the rabid "pro-life" crowd that love fetuses until they are born after which they don't give a damn about poor children.  It's one reason I hold these people in open contempt.  They don't practice what they preach and while they claim to be concerned about the unborn, all concern evaporates once children are born.  The same holds true with this opposition to maternity coverage which would help improve the odds that children are born healthy.  Here are highlights from a Washington Post column that looks at this GOP/Christofascist hypocrisy:

If you’re a conservative strongly opposed to abortion, shouldn’t you want to give all the help you can to women who want to bring their children into the world? In particular, wouldn’t you hope they’d get the proper medical attention during and after their pregnancy?

This would seem a safe assumption, which is why it ought to be astonishing that conservatives are positively obsessed with trashing the Affordable Care Act’s regulation requiring insurance policies to include maternity coverage.

[C]ritics of Obamacare apparently think there is something particularly odious when a person who might not have a baby pays premiums to assist someone who does. It’s true that men cannot have babies, although it is worth mentioning that they do play a rather important role in their creation. In any event, it is hardly very radical to argue that society is better off when kids are born healthy to healthy moms.

Yet the conservatives’ ire over this issue knows no bounds.   “And so what if a health policy lacks maternity care?” wrote Deroy Murdoch on National Review’s Web site , the italics on that impatient “so what” being his. “Not all women want to bear more children — or any children at all. . . . And how about lesbians who do not want kids, and are highly unlikely to become pregnant accidentally?” It’s touching, actually, to see such concern for lesbians in a conservative publication.

On “Fox News Sunday” this month, host Chris Wallace was very worked up as he pressed Zeke Emanuel, a former health-care adviser to President Obama, over how unfair it is that a single woman with a 24-year-old son would be forced to pay for such coverage.

Who knew that supporting motherhood was suddenly controversial?

All of which ought to present members of the right-to-life movement with a challenge. In the name of consistency, they need to break with their conservative allies and insist that maternity coverage be included in all health-care plans. Shouldn’t those who want to prevent abortion be in the forefront of making the case that a woman will be far more likely to choose to have her baby if she knows that both she and her child will get regular medical attention?

For too many politicians on the right, what they say about abortion is at odds with what they say about so many other issues. They speak with great concern and compassion for the unborn, and I respect that.
[C]onservatives would make abortion illegal and leave it at that. Thus we have the spectacle in Texas of right-wing politicians trying to make it as difficult as possible for a woman to obtain an abortion while proudly blocking the state’s participation in the expansion of Medicaid to cover the near-poor. Does it serve the cause of life to keep more than 1.8 million Texans from getting health insurance? 

If health coverage — yes, including maternity care — isn’t a right-to-life issue, I don’t know what is. 

Greed, hypocrisy and indifference towards others - if not open hatred - are key attributes of today's GOP and its supporters among the "godly Christian" folk.