Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson is serving her 13th term representing the 30th Congressional District of Texas. Johnson is widely recognized as one of the most effective legislators in Congress and is credited with originally authoring or co-authoring, sponsoring or co-sponsoring more than 821 bills that were passed by the House and Senate and signed into law by the President.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Congresswoman Johnson Defends Women's Rights to Contraception
Congresswoman Johnson says ‘I’ve never met a man that had the need for birth control’
Following Thursday’s walkout of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the Obama administration's birth-control mandate, which featured a panel made up entirely of men, Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) said the incident demonstrated a lack of perspective on the issue of contraception.
Birth control “is not a male issue, it’s a female issue. I’ve never met a man that had the need for birth control.”
Johnson criticized the Oversight chairman’s choice of witnesses as a group of people who “don’t have a need to even consider these kinds of issues,” saying that the all-male panel demonstrated a “reprehensible disregard for women.”
Johnson was not the first Democratic woman to attack House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) after lawmakers walked out of the hearing. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) told reporters earlier in the day, “Imagine they're having a panel on women's health, and they don't have any women on the panel — duh!"
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