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Colorado Lawmaker Shocks With Tirade on Babies and AIDS

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Posted on Feb 25, 2009

An effort to screen pregnant women for HIV in order to reduce the spread of the virus among babies didn’t get Colorado state Sen. Dave Schultheis’ vote. In the Republican’s own controversial words, that’s because “[t]his stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part, and I just can’t go there. ... We do things continually to remove the consequences of poor behavior, unacceptable behavior, quite frankly.”

Needless to say, Scultheis’ daft comments have prompted outrage.

State Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry said of the fracas caused by his GOP colleague, “It’s not my job to go around and censor people and tell them what to say.” And for that, he has the thanks of the Democratic Party.

Rocky Mountain News via Political Wire:

Sen. Dave Schultheis, of Colorado Springs, on Wednesday opposed a bill requiring all pregnant women to be tested for HIV, so that if they are infected their babies can be treated to prevent the transfer of the virus.

“This stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part, and I just can’t go there,” he said.

“We do things continually to remove the consequences of poor behavior, unacceptable behavior, quite frankly. I’m not convinced that part of the role of government should be to protect individuals from the negative consequences of their actions.”

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By NAW'lins, February 26, 2009 at 1:09 pm Link to this comment
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The republicans masters want a return to the good old days of the Gilded Age, where the rich went to the hospital to get well, and the poor went there to die.

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By pinko, February 26, 2009 at 7:56 am Link to this comment

Does this surprise anyone?  Republicans are all about death and suffering.  If any kids are born with HIV, oh well, who gives a shit?  Too bad, you little bastard, sorry your momma was a whore.  Don’t complain to me; government is the problem, not the solution.  We can’t afford all this legislative and regulatory overhead for your little ass.

When will it become obvious that we need to literally start dragging right-wingers into the streets?

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By purplewolf, February 25, 2009 at 10:43 pm Link to this comment

By refusing to allow this bill to go through, this repugnant piece of republican refuse(garbage), not only is endangering the health of the fetus(future baby) and the mother, who may not know she is infected, he has also condemned all those who come in contact with these patients, if infected with HIV/AIDS. Any health care worker has the potential of becoming infected by any body fluids of the infected patients. It is in the interest of all people concerned to know if a person is infected instead of ignoring it. If the person is infected, extra precautions can be taken for everyone’s safety.

Are we to go back to the dark ages of medical care when anything contagious that could be passed onto workers were kept from them, even if the disease was curable, often it was left untreated in the patients because of lack of proper medical coverage. Even when Universal Precautions are used in the medical field and used correctly, things still can happen and the health care worker can become infected, so it is better to know up front if a patient has “something” rather than testing workers at various time frames to wait and see if you catch anything.

So if the health care worker does become infected from a patient who has not been screened because of the denial of this bill going through, will these same talking heads in the repub party blame it on the worker as it was God’s will for them to also become infected because they associated with these “infected sinners”?

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