Republican Senate Nominee Touts Birth Control Support, Downplays Anti-Woman Record In New Ad
Cory Gardner has been working hard to convince voters he’s shed his extreme anti-woman past.
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CREDIT: AP
Republican Senate nominee Cory Gardner (R-CO) has been working hard to shed his extreme right-wing past in recent months, adopting several new policy stances to appeal to the more moderate Coloradan electorate. A new ad released Tuesday touts his support for over-the-counter birth control access and suggests Gardner is even more pro-contraception than his Democratic opponent.
“What’s the difference between me and Mark Udall on contraception? I believe the pill ought to be available over the counter, round the clock, without a prescription — cheaper and easier, for you,” Gardner says in the ad. “Mark Udall’s plan is different. He wants to keep government bureaucrats between you and your healthcare plan. That means more politics, and more profits for drug companies. My plan means more rights, more freedom, and more control for you — and that’s a big difference.”
Watch it:
Udall has pointed out that while over-the-counter birth control is a good idea to expand access, it must still be covered by insurance. Some experts say the new Republican push to move it over the counter is an attempt to undercut Obamacare’s contraception coverage guarantee.
Gardner first announced his support for over-the-counter access in a Denver Post op-ed in June, in an apparent attempt to set himself apart from “too many Republicans [who] are afraid to break the mold.” In a similar vein, his campaign released an ad Monday in which Gardner, a climate change denier, uses a wind farm as a backdrop to express his support for alternative energy sources.
But Gardner’s extreme right-wing record has been hard to shake. He’s had to disavow his support for the Colorado “personhood” measures that would have banned abortion and some forms of contraception. As a member of Congress, he voted against measures to require insurance companies to cover birth control and to allow pharmacists to prescribe emergency contraception. He’s also stood against a bill to help poor women on Medicaid to get birth control.
Republican candidates all over the country are trying to dispel the party’s anti-woman image, through training sessions on how to avoid offensive statements, PR firms. In Colorado, Republicans even held a woman-specific forum with the dubious theme of “The Dating Game.” The Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision has also complicated Republicans’ pitch to women voters. A majority of female voters say they won’t vote for candidates who back Hobby Lobby in their quest to drop coverage for contraception. More than half of Colorado women opposed the ruling.
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Scientists Find ‘Alarming’ Amount Of Arsenic In Groundwater Near Texas Fracking Sites
After testing 100 water wells atop one of the largest natural gas reserves in the U.S., researchers found that nearly 30 percent contain levels of arsenic above the limit considered safe.
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A drilling rig is seen near Kennedy, Texas, Wednesday, May 9, 2012.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Eric Gay
After testing 100 water wells atop one of the largest natural gas reserves in the U.S., scientists at the University of Texas have found that nearly 30 percent of them contain levels of arsenic above the limit considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
Twenty-nine groundwater sites within 1.8 miles of active natural gas drilling had unusually high levels of heavy metals, including arsenic, the study found. And while it’s not conclusive that the contamination is because of fracking, the team of 11 biochemists say their findings provide further evidence that could link the controversial natural gas drilling technique to groundwater pollution.
“I can’t say we have a smoking gun. We don’t want the public to take away from this that we have pegged fracking as the cause of these issues,” Brian Fontenot, the paper’s lead author, told ProPublica. “But we have shown that these issues do occur in close relation, geographically, to natural gas extraction.”
The EPA classifies arsenic as a carcinogen, and warns that long-term exposure to it can cause cancer, cardiovascular disease, immunological disorders, diabetes and other medical issues.
Hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as fracking, is a controversial yet popular technique used to stimulate natural gas wells underground. To do this, companies inject a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals miles-deep into subsurface rock. The high-pressure brine effectively cracks or “fractures” the rock, making gas easier to extract.
The technique is especially popular on the Barnett Shale, a rich source of natural gas located in the Fort Worth Basin. The Barnett Shale is one of two huge active shale plays in Texas, along with the Eagle Ford shale, and together they hold more than 90 trillion cubic feet of unproven, technically recoverable gas. The two shale deposits also represent one of the biggest energy booms in America.
That boom started about 10 years ago, and the University of Texas researchers compared their results with previous water tests conducted before that boom. What they found was what researcher Zacariah Hildenbrand called an “alarming” increase in the amount of arsenic and other heavy metals in 30 percent of the groundwater wells within 1.8 miles of gas drilling sites.
“This is indirect evidence that drilling does affect the water,” Hildenbrand said.
The researchers’ theory about how fracking may have caused the arsenic pollution is that the technique caused increased vibration underground, shaking rusty pipes in the nearby water wells. That rust could contain arsenic, the researchers said. “We’re not saying that [fracking companies have] injected arsenic into these wells,” Fontenot said.
Industry leaders have doubted this theory, telling The Denton Record-Chronicle that vibrations from drilling could never reach shallow water wells because of how deep gas wells are drilled. “If they’re talking about drills shaking [rust] free, that’s a little farfetched,” said Alex Mills, president of Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. “I’ve never heard or even came close to hearing that hydraulic fracturing is so vicious, so earth-shattering to shake loose rust from water wells.”
While it seems that little research has been done on whether drilling itself can cause earth-shattering vibrations, emerging research has shown that fracking can cause the earth to shake. Scientists increasingly believe that the fracking-related process of injecting water underground is causing man-made earthquakes — not only in Texas, but across the country. The large amount of water injected into the ground can change the state of stress on existing fault lines to the point of failure, scientists believe.
The natural gas drilling industry maintains that fracking is safe and doesn’t impact human health. But there has been a lack of conclusive scientific research to support or deny that claim. Preliminary, albeit inconclusive research has shown that fracking could cause health problems in expectant mothers or birth defects in unborn babies living near wells, but scientists largely agree that more research needs to be done as oil and gas production booms across the country.
The University of Texas researchers agree. “We think that the strongest argument we can say is that this needs more research,” Fontenot said.
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