Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) took to task a Missouri lawmaker who drafted a resolution calling for the state’s congressional delegation to push for a full repeal of Obamacare with “manly firmness.”
“I don’t think you prove your manhood by kicking folks off their health coverage and once again letting insurance companies discriminate against women and sick people,” McCaskill said in a Tuesday statement.
Republican state Rep. Mike Moon, the lawmaker who introduced the resolution, said he didn’t mean to insult women, according to the Columbia Tribune. He said he took the phrase “manly firmness” from the Declaration of Independence’s grievances with King George III.
“It is just like going to war,” Moon said. “You want a soldier to fight like a man. If a woman is in the trenches, you want them to fight like a man, too.”
McCaskill was not entirely satisfied with Moon’s explanation.
“It probably just is not a very effective way to communicate with a wide swath of people,” she told TPM Tuesday afternoon. “Using a phrase like ‘manly firmness’ is probably not gonna — he said it was a historic reference, well he’s referring to a point in time when women were chattels and didn’t have the right to vote. I think we can update our vocabulary.”
Sahil Kapur contributed reporting.
This post has been updated.