By Jennie Sekanics
Correspondent
Just moments before the government shut down, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D Mass.) zoomed in on the issues that supposedly forbade Republicans from continuing funding for the federal government.
According to The New York Times, Republicans have confirmed that their main issue was with the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and the funding it demanded. However, Warren suggested that there may be an underlying reason for their decision to revolt against the initiated law.
According to The Washington Post, the Affordable Care Act requires that businesses with over 50 employees provide healthcare, ensure that insurance companies do not discriminate based on preexisting conditions and grant women the access to birth control. This last notion, Warren claimed, is the real reason for the Republican tantrum.
“Republicans have decided that the single most important issue facing our nation is to change the law so that employers can deny women access to birth control coverage … in the year 2013,” Warren said in her speech, “not the year 1913 — the year 2013.”
In the world of 2013, females, by the U.S. law, have rights including the ability to obtain contraception without fear of extreme costs. Warren asked how it is fair that such high costs in the past have led women to make choices about their bodies based on money rather than health.
Warren stated that Republicans would rather shut down the government and tank the economy than ensure female’s access to birth control.
“We have lived in that world and we are not going back. Not ever,” she said, refusing to revert to old policies. She added that although these shutdown threats may continue, they will not change the concrete reality of American democracy. “The Affordable Care Act is the law of the land,” she said, implying that the law is here to stay.
Warren believes the government shut down is nothing more than the Republicans holding the government hostage since they have failed to maintain their outdated policies. It seems that as long as Warren is passionately fighting in the Senate, she will make certain that women are granted their right to birth control refusing the Republicans from prevailing.
