Our weekly edition is a nationally syndicated one-hour digest of the best of our daily coverage.

Audio Stream | Podcast | Mp3 Download

This week on Uprising:

* GOP’s War on Women Out of Step With General Population
* Utah Considers Law Criminalizing Photography of Farms, Aimed at Animal Rights Activism
* Venerated Physician & Activist Dr. Quentin Young Urges ‘Single-Payer Healthcare

* * *

GOP’s War on Women Out of Step With General Population

A new poll by the New York Times has revealed that 67 percent of Catholic voters support the federal mandate for health insurance plans to cover the full cost of birth control – only 25 percent of Catholic voters oppose it. In fact, studies show that 99 percent of American women and 98 percent of Catholic American women have used some form of contraception at one time or another during their lives. Yet, conservative voices have slammed President Obama on his recent compromise with the Catholic Church over providing contraception coverage to its employees. In fact, this week, two religious institutions: the Catholic Ava Maria University, and the evangelical Geneva College have filed lawsuits against the Obama administration over the ruling. Meanwhile, Obama himself has been boosted by the controversy, particularly among women voters: a Pew Research Center poll puts his support among women at 59 percent.

Republican frontrunner for the GOP Presidential nomination, Rick Santorum, has become the right’s strongest spokesman during this latest culture war, saying recently that female contraception “is a license to do things in the sexual realm that counter how things are supposed to be.” Santorum has also said that women who are raped should merely “make the best out of the situation.” Additionally, Santorum’s prominent financial supporter, Foster Friess, recently generated his own controversy when he said on an MSNBC interview, “[b]ack in my days they used Bayer Aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees.”

Further revealing GOP attitudes toward women and women’s rights, a recent Congressional hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on contraception featured an all male panel of witnesses. The Committee, chaired by California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, refused to allow a female student who was set to testify on the consequences of denied contraception. The all-male panel generated a national outcry, reflecting the liberal views of the general population. The contraception coverage controversy comes on the heels of the Susan G Komen’s decision to revoke Planned Parenthood’s funding, before they capitulated to an outraged public and rescinded their decision.

GUEST: Nancy L Cohen, historian, author, and contributor to The Huffington Post, author of Delirium: How the Sexual Counterrevolution is Polarizing America

Utah Considers Law Criminalizing Photography of Farms, Aimed at Animal Rights Activism

The Utah state House may soon consider a law that would make it a crime to take a picture of a farm, while on the property, without consent from the farmer. The legislation is aimed at animal right activists who covertly film and photograph animals that live in conditions the activists find objectionable, and who make these images available to the public as part of policy campaigns. Hidden camera footage of situations like cows being dragged to slaughter and chickens packed into cages so tightly they cannot sit down have become a common educational tool of animal rights groups. Even mainstream news channels use the shocking footage when covering debates around animal cruelty and farming practices. A spokesman for PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, told the Utah Desert News that criminalizing undercover photography and filming would prevent vital information from reaching the public. A backer of the Utah bill, State Representative John Mathis, believes farmers need protection from the activists he labels “animal rights terrorists.” Mathis drafted the legislation, HB187 to criminalize videos and photos taken without a farmer’s permission as “agricultural operation interference.” A first offense would bring a misdemeanor charge, and the second would become a third-degree felony, which journalist and author Will Potter says puts it on par with assaulting a police officer. Will Potter is the author of Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege, in which he chronicles the ways in which environmental activists and others are increasingly being branded as domestic terrorists.

GUEST: Will Potter is an award-winning independent journalist based in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege.

Visit www.GreenIsTheNewRed.com for more information.

Venerated Physician & Activist Dr. Quentin Young Urges ‘Single-Payer Healthcare’

Fifty medical doctors, in a bipartisan effort, recently filed a brief with the United States Supreme Court to argue that the individual mandate at the heart of the 2010 healthcare reform bill is unconstitutional. The doctors and two non-profit groups are not right wing critics of Obama, but advocates of what’s called “a single payer healthcare” system. Dr. Margaret Flowers, who is also an activist and member of Occupy DC, said the Affordable Care Act and individual mandate requiring all Americans to carry insurance, “[f]unnels more wealth to insurance companies that deny and restrict care.” Joe Jarvis, a doctor from Utah, a Republican and a single payer advocate said he’s opposed to the Affordable Care Act because, “It’s a propping up of the private insurance business model. What they’re trying to do is force us to buy, in most cases, poor quality health benefits.”

Single payer healthcare has been a hot topic since the great healthcare debates of 2009 and 2010, but the organization, Physicians for a National Health Program, has advocated for a single payer system since 1987. The National Coordinator for the program is Dr. Quentin Young.

Being one of the founding members of the group is only one of many distinctions in Dr. Young’s storied career. Dr. Quentin Young was a founding member of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in 1964 and volunteered to provide medical care to civil rights protesters in Mississippi during Freedom Summer. He was a personal physician to Martin Luther King Jr and helped the Black Panthers and the Young Lords set up medical clinics in their communities. Dr. Young also provided medical care to protesters injured by police at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago where 23,000 police officers were dispatched to quell protests. He is a personal friend of President Barack Obama with whom he disagrees on the need for single payer healthcare.

GUEST: Dr. Quentin Young, National Coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program

Visit www.pnhp.org for more information.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“A right delayed is a right denied.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.