Rep. Barbara Comstock – the closer (of governments)

barbaraComstock

Northern Virginia’s Congressperson, Barbara Comstock (R-VA), doesn’t care so much about breast cancer, or a woman’s constitutional right of privacy and choosing when and whether to have a child – not as much as Barbara cares to impose her religious belief on everyone else — that a “person” exists at the moment of conception.

Barbara was ready to close down the government based on this superstitious belief.

Barbara believes no woman should have an abortion any time after that elusive indeterminate moment when conception has occurred. That’s the only way you can understand her public statement that Roe v Wade should be reversed.

Barbara is free to practice her religious belief but not in disregard of the constitution and laws that she swore to uphold that permit abortion. But she looks for her openings to squeeze and restrict a woman’s right of choice even while Roe remains the law of the land.

In 2012, when Barbara was in the General Assembly, she voted for a bill to require women to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds before having an abortion; she sought to discourage abortions.

In May 2015, Barbara voted in the U.S. Congress to limit abortions to 20 weeks and no later, trying to limit Roe (and Roe’s progeny, particularly Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey), permitting abortions after 20 weeks.

Barbara’s supporters often hint or say that Congress is spending money to pay for abortions and taxpayers should not have to support what they oppose. Really? Taxpayers pay for all sorts of things in a democracy that some support and others don’t.

Anyhow, that’s not how this works when it involves abortion. The “Hyde Amendment” bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortion unless the pregnancy arises from incest, rape or to save the life of a mother. Barbara says she supports these exceptions even as she looks for ways to hem in these exceptions almost to invisibility with burdensome conditions.

In July, Barbara refused funds to screen women from breast cancer because the Planned Parenthood Federation of America performs that function, cancer screenings, and would receive some of the funds for cancer screenings.

Planned Parenthood has been demonized by deliberate distortions of how a woman may lawfully donate fetal cells.

We are familiar with other patients donating organs or tissue, for instance, a kidney. Others donate, in anticipation of their death, organs or tissue; and, the cost necessary to transfer the organ or tissue is often reimbursed.

In the case of fetuses, a woman may make the decision after abortion, to donate organs, tissues or cells; but that decision may generate no profit to Planned Parenthood, and no profit has been generated.

Researchers across the nation use organs, fetal tissue, cells and cell lines to save lives. One use of tissue and cells is to save children from dying following bone marrow transplants. Barbara would rather compromise a child’s viability because of her fetus fetish.

Only about a week ago, Barbara supported a bill to freeze federal funding to Planned Parenthood while investigating those affiliates who have fulfilled a woman’s wishes to donate the cells of an aborted fetus for research. This is an effort to deny health care services by Planned Parenthood to 25,000 Virginians, and many others across the nation.

Barbara said she was against closing down the government – provided that the President didn’t veto her bill zeroing out funding for Planned Parenthood.

Barbara should win a chutzpah award for taking a bow for co-sponsoring back pay for federal workers while transparently supporting her colleagues’ effort to close the government, making back pay for federal employees necessary.

Speaker Boehner’s resignation saved us from her efforts to shut down the government.

Next year, we must shut down Barbara.