(WOMENSENEWS) — Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan for the GOP ticket has women’s rights activists ringing alarm bells.
“Congressman Ryan has one of the worst records in congress on women’s issues,” said Tanya Atkinson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin in a press statement on Saturday, the day Romney selected a politician known for his strong hostility to reproductive rights.
The National Right to Life Committee has scored Ryan’s voting record 100 percent since 1999, Jezebel reported. Ryan’s anti-choice stance includes denying abortion even in cases of rape, incest or when a mother’s life is at risk, according to Politico.
Ryan also voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and consistently votes against lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender rights such as allowing gay couples to adopt, as noted by Feministing.
Jezebel writer Anna Breslaw characterized Ryan as an “extreme fiscal conservative.” His budget proposal outraged 14 nuns, who launched a bus tour in response to what they saw as the “immorality of lowering taxes for the wealthy while attacking the poor,” as reported by Women’s eNews’ correspondent Samantha Kimmey.
The potential impact on women of Ryan’s budget plan to cut social safety net programs such as child care and Medicare was also noted by the Daily Beast. That round-up of Ryan’s positions on women’s issues included a look at his opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and his role as co-sponsor of the Sanctity of Human Life Act, a ‘personhood’ bill that declared that life begins with fertilization.
Sadiya Ansari is a Pakistani-Canadian freelance journalist, currently reporting from New York.
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Here are a few other facts you left out about Paul Ryan. He is a practicing Catholic who loves and adores his wife and three children. Clinton economic adviser Erskine Bowles admitted that Paul Ryan was the smartest man he ever met, and knows the economy inside and out. He is a health nut, who leads both Republican and Democratic congressman in workouts every morning, and he only has a 6% body fat. Since he joined the Republican ticket two days ago, the focus has been on issues affecting our nation, instead of how many tax returns are publicly reported. He has a higher favorability rating, than either Obama, Biden, or Romney. He comes from a Democratic district, that voted for him by a 70% margin. He is in short, exactly what our country needs, in these horrible economic times.
His 6% body fat and healthy life-style don’t make up for scrutinizing something he should have no say in- a woman’s body. He cannot make a judgement about a woman’s perspective or her body when he probably doesn’t understand it. Yay he has 3 kids. Yay he leads Dems and Reps in workouts. That doesn’t say anything about his right to rule on women’s bodies. They are focusing on economic issues because if that ever came up they would get slaughtered- especially now with the Akin comment crisis.