KEITH OLBERMANN: In the same week that a would-be Republican Senate nominee from New York said if Roe v. Wade were to be repealed, almost nobody would notice, the right seems to have been knocked off its feet by how many people noticed lesser GOP assaults on woman's access to reproductive health care.
In our third story on the "Countdown" — Senate Majority Leader Reid announcing today that the "Conscience Clause" amendment, proposed by Missouri Republican Senator Roy Blount — which would allow any employer to deny health services to its employees because of moral objections — will come up for a vote in the Senate on Thursday.
This comes on the heels of fervent opposition by religiously-affiliated charities to the idea of employee contraception coverage, arguing that it violated their religious freedom, but Senate Democrats are not going down without a fight here.
Senator Patty Murray described the amendment as, "Extreme. It's dangerous and it puts employers smack between women and their health care and politics between women and their health care."
And much like Virginia, where the contentious trans-vaginal ultrasound bill was amended to be a sort of trans-abdominal ultrasound bill, following public protests and media scrutiny. That state senate passed it today on a party-line vote.
In Alabama, the outrage over another invasive ultrasound bill lasted a fortnight before its sponsor, a state senator named Scofield, announced he would water down his bill, SB12, which in its own, original language would also require a physician to "display the ultrasound images so that the pregnant woman may view them."
But the bill goes even further. It allows "the father of the unborn child who was the subject of the abortion, or the grandparent of an unborn child, may maintain an action against the person who performed the abortion in knowing or reckless violation of this act for actual and punitive damages." It might be legal, but you can sue.
Let's bring in Laura Bassett, political reporter for The Huffington Post. Thanks for your time tonight.
LAURA BASSETT: Thanks for having me.
OLBERMANN: About Blount first. If it stands no chance, I would assume, of being enacted in a Democratic Senate, I assume also that it would still be iffy in a Republican-controlled House. What's its purpose?
BASSETT: I think it's purpose, at this point, is to galvanize voters. You know, everybody's in campaign mode right now, and Republicans are fired up about this. Democrats are also fired up about this, and it is getting people, you know, into politics who otherwise wouldn't necessarily be.
And I think that Republicans are courting the Catholic vote right now, and a lot of people criticized Obama's health-care mandate — his birth control mandate — saying that employers had to cover contraception for their employees, and so this is a way of saying, you know, nobody has to cover health care for anyone.
Unfortunately, that — the problem that Democrats have with it is that it takes the decision away from the woman. Why is the employer's conscience mattering more than the women's conscience, I think, is the question that everybody's asking.
OLBERMANN: In politics 2012 everything is a dog whistle, but my question is, which is which here? Is the idea of "Obama is curtailing religious freedom," is that the dog whistle for "Here is a way to whittle down abortion and women's health and reproductive-health issues," or is it the other way around?
BASSETT: I think that women's health right now is being — the argument is being reframed as an argument about religious freedom, and they've had I don't know how many hearings in the House at this point on religious freedom that are actually, specifically, about this birth control amendment and contraception coverage, and they say — the Republicans say — over and over, "This is not about women's health. This is about religious freedom." Unfortunately, the intention has a consequence which is that, you know, millions of women would lose contraceptive coverage. So it is, in fact, about women's health.
OLBERMANN: The pushbacks — and they're slight in Alabama and Virginia, they're not obviously significant in a real sense, and in Virginia something that might be a bit of a shell game in terms of terminology — but is there any sense that the entire Susan G. Koman/Planned Parenthood debacle was a tipping point here? That something as occurred in the last six weeks in which a lot of women, and probably a lot of men — who did not see this as an all-or-nothing fight from the far right — suddenly woke up and said, "They really are trying to —" I mean, the only stage left would be to repeal women's rights to vote.
BASSETT: Absolutely. I think this has just lit a fire under the women's rights movement. A lot of these bills have been around for a long time. You know, this ultrasound bill has been considered in lots of other states prior to Virginia, and it's been considered in Virginia in previous years. And even with the birth control mandate people are making a big deal out of, you know, that's been law in New Hampshire for 12 years, and nobody noticed.
I think this Susan G. Koman de-funding Planned Parenthood brought in a lot of people that otherwise weren't paying attention to politics, and now people are fired up and any fight against women's health is going to be — you know, they are going to fight back.
OLBERMANN: What do we understand about what the Republican politicians in Alabama and Virginia had to have heard to get them to pull back, at least in this — you know, somewhat technical and gynecological description of what the ultrasounds had to be?
BASSETT: You know, the Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia said that he didn't realize that the ultrasound was going to be a trans-vaginal ultrasound.
OLBERMANN: Uh-huh.
BASSETT: And then, when he learned that the procedure was going to be invasive, he then changed his support for it. I don't think that's really the case because a senator — who is also a doctor — in Virginia, stood up and gave a detailed description of what the ultrasound was going to be, and they still passed the bill.
I think what happened was that the bill made Virginia a laughingstock, you know. It made its rounds on the late-night comedy circuits. Jon Stewart took it on, and I think Republicans started to see what it was and become a little embarrassed that they had, you know, become such a joke.
OLBERMANN: Laura Bassett, of The Huffington Post, great thanks for your insight and your time tonight.
BASSETT: Thanks for having me.
