1 / 17FILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks at CPAC in WashingtonFILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference annual meeting at National Harbor near Washington, U.S., March 1, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File PhotoBy Yasmeen Abutaleb and Joseph Tanfani
Under the direction of two secretaries recommended by Pence, the Department of Health and Human Services has moved to slash funds from teen pregnancy-prevention programs, curb abortion both in the United States and abroad and strip civil protections for transgender patients. “There has never been anything like it,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, said of her working relationship with Pence. “The policy I believe can’t get done without Vice President Pence and his team.”
The shift has generated legal challenges, and chunks of the agenda are bottlenecked in the courts. Recently, a federal judge in Washington State blocked new rules meant to cut funding from facilities offering abortion. “One of the benefits of Trump’s Twitter approach is it creates headlines, and that’s what it’s intended to do, and underneath those headlines, everyone else in the administration can go about peacefully doing their job,” said David McIntosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth and a longtime Pence friend. HHS has “released several very important, significant regulations that changed the nature of Obamacare, of healthcare, with very little coverage in the press.
One senior HHS official told Reuters the agency is correcting the course set by the Obama administration on the government’s role in enforcing LGBT rights and whether providers have to perform abortions. “Our rights to religious freedom have too long been treated as a second-class right compared to others and it’s time for that to change,” said Roger Severino, director of the agency’s Civil Rights Division.
The vice president’s allies and former aides are salted throughout the administration, carrying out significant shifts in federal health insurance programs. One change cheered by the religious right made it easier for employers to not cover contraception. Three times, he introduced bills to bar HHS from funding Planned Parenthood. His efforts failed, but won him fierce loyalty among anti-abortion activists.
Health care for the masses reduces all medical costs in the long run because illnesses can be treated early for a better health outcome for all which in turn saves money and tax dollars.
He’s an extra right Christian lunatic. Extremist
Religious Freedom does not include the right to inflict your beliefs on others or the right to redefine your vocational responsibilities to the detriment of others.
Exactly
It's the new inquisition.
I guess need to stop sending aid to Israel because abortions are legal and covered by gov healthcare! On a serious note these religious zealots disgust me!
Conservative agenda seems to be less jobs, less money, dirty water, dirty air, failing infrastructure, sick people, poor people, debt, forced births, more racism, failing education system, failing country.
Leading evangelical scholar Mark Noll writes “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn’t one.” Nearly all of the evangelical leadership have politicized religion; just as Madison and Jefferson said.
Conservative Agenda is ChristianSharia rebranded. These creepy cult followers who protect child molesters and rapists really need to be forced out of politics.
And the American people tossed aside
Pence's agenda should not be simplified by calling it conservative. It's an evangelical neo-con agenda and there is a huge difference.
“Extremist” would be a better alternative to conservative.
Extremist, Pence is an EXTREMIST. Homophobic too.
It’s not conservative. It’s a far right wing theological agenda that has no goddamn place in our government.
Death cult death cult
He is one scary white walker.
Gleefully eliminating from society and legislating the deaths of women and lgbtq people is not conservative, it is mass murder adjacent