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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