Sex Week Thursday Night Is Mark Kirk Night

For years, Mark Kirk ran in the IL-10 as a pro-choice candidate. Now, after voting for limiting a woman's constitutional right to chose while voting against the health care a pregnant woman needs, he doesn't discuss the issue. Kirk's seeming flip on choice prompted Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, to respond:

Rep. Kirk is clearly abandoning the moderate positions that afforded him re-election to the House in favor of radically conservative views that he hopes will bolster support for his Senate campaign.

NARAL now opposes Kirk and he's lost the endorsement of Planned Parenthood.

I never thought Kirk was really pro-choice. It was just an expedient view to take in IL-10. Once its usefulness disappeared, Kirk's support disappeared.

Kirk never cared about women or their children, having voted against equal pay for women, twice, and having voted against feeding poor children, referring to the food stamp program as "pork". Kirk's stand against health care reform includes a stand against choice, pregnancy and healthy birth and other women's health issues because he would deny all but wealthy women access to health care. Take a look at my blast for the past post about republican birth control. Even if you're anti-choice, Kirk and his fellow republicans are not the candidates for you because they'd deny a woman the choice of having a healthy baby.

Now that Kirk's Iraq and financial deregulation policies have really hurt women and children, Kirk says mentioning his role in all of it is simply a distraction. However, Kirk has no answers for women or children. His campaign site says absolutely  nothing whatsoever about women or children. He has no answers for women too poor to afford birth control. He has no answers to women and children suffering from insecurity and unemployment other than to continue to support tax cuts for billionaires, end the economic stimulus and continue to allow Wall Street robber baron campaign contributors to get away with fraud.

In contrast to Mark Kirk, note that Alexi Giannoulias' site has an entire page devoted to women's rights. In fact, Giannoulias began his career with a commitment to choice and women's equal pay rights and he hasn't change that position one iota. Giannoulias also supports the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). CEDAW is an international women's rights treaty that helps women protect their property rights, stop and redress systemic sexual violence, and increase their representation in the public and private sectors. The treaty has been signed by every industrialized nation except the United States and Mark Kirk has been fine with that for his entire time in Congress. Mark Kirk wouldn't even answer the candidate questionnaire that asked the question.

Kirk offers nothing to women. He doesn't even acknowledge the issues anymore because the extremists on the far right wouldn't approve.