Republican Rep. Darrell Issa chaired a hearing on Capitol Hill today on religious freedom and the new mandate that health insurers cover contraception. 

As the hearing got under way,  an argument broke out over Democrats could add a female witness to the all-male panel.

“Where are the women?” the minority Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., asked early in the hearing.

She criticized the Republican committee chairman, Rep. Darrel Issa, for wanting to “roll back the fundamental rights of women to a time when the government thought what happens in the bedroom is their business.”

“We will not be forced back to that primitive era,” she said.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There were NO women invited to testify. NONE.

Among witnesses invited to attend the hearing, by Rep. Issa, “was a representative of the Catholic bishops, who oppose the Obama administration “accommodation” on birth-control coverage” and ”many other men of other religions.”  

Not invited, complained Democrats, were representatives from the Catholic Health Association, which is run by a woman and actually runs the Catholic hospitals, nor Catholic Charities, both of which said Friday they supported the president’s plan.

Seriously… This isn’t about religious freedom. We all know that… It’s all about the Republican War on Women. Keep them home, in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant!

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi chastised the “House committee examining the Obama administration’s contraception rule that included an all-male panel of witnesses.”

“Imagine having a panel on women’s health and they don’t have any women on the panel,” she told reporters Thursday. “Duh.”

It appears that a majority Republican men are still not at all education about women’s health,
as we also witnessed today in an interview with Rick Santorum supporter, Foster Friess. Friess is the “single largest donor to the super PAC supporting Rick Santorum’s presidential bid.” 

His comments “shocked MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell in an interview” today when he “suggested a novel approach to contraception.” 

[...] the 71 year old Wyoming multi-millionaire offered this retort when Mitchell pressed him about whether he agreed with Santorum’s stance on contraception.

“Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives,” Friess said. “The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

Friess was also quoted as saying “Who cares?” when Andrea Mitchell “pressed Friess again on Santorum’s position on contraception.”

Keep the little woman down… Stand behind your “religion” and keep the little woman down. Makes me sick… 2012, and we”re still fighting for our rights!