NORTH ADAMS, Mass. -- U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren drew applause at a campaign rally at an Eagles lodge here when she knocked U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., for supporting what she characterized as limitations on access to birth-control services.
Under a measure co-sponsored by Brown and introduced by Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, said Warren, "Any woman who is denied health-care coverage to cover contraception . . . is just out in the cold. She's got no protection anywhere. That's wrong."
Listen to a 29-minute audio clip Warren speaking at the Eagles lodge on Friday, Feb. 18, 2012. The typing sound is because the microphone is mounted on a computer keyboard. But most of her talk is still quite audible. The section about contraception begins at about 26 minutes. Click on the carat to the left of the bar below to launch the stream, or download the MP3 podcast for offline listening.
"What got me into this race, was people who said, 'If you do this, Lizzy, you'll not be alone.'" said Warren. "I'm hear to collect on that promise."
Mayor Daniel Alcombrite, state Rep. Gailanne Carridi, D-North Adams, and state Sen. Benjamin Downing, D-Pittsfield, introduced Warren to a crowd of approximately 250 people. Alcombright -- a former officer of a locally owned bank -- said he was supporting Warren in part because she had taken on predatory lenders." The remark drew sustained applause.
In her talK -- similar to one she gave in Pittsfield several months ago -- Warren recountered what she characterizes as a middle-class upbringing in the Midwest, with older brothers who joined the military and a life that included babysitting and other work starting at age 9.
She said she has spent 30 years as an academic researcher and law-school professor studying the economic plight of the middle class, which she said is fading in America because of government policies. "I worry that my story is a story that is embedded in time," she said. Warren's view is that policy changes can revive the middle class, rather than helping people "who have already made it," as she put it. "We know how to do this," she says. It's a matter of policy change, she added. "What kind of a country are we trying to build?" she asked. "Are we going to say, 'I've got mine?' "
She said the challenge was not a question of economics, or finance, but one of balance.
Perhaps the largest applause of the evening was when Warren excoriated her presumptive general-election opponent, U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., for his support of a measure introduced by Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt which would Warren said would limit womens' access to birth-control services.
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