Why liberals make the case abortion is a healthcare issue for women is something that for many years has alluded me. While women certainly should have control over their own bodies and their reproductive capacity abortion is only a healthcare issue when a partial or full term pregnancy threatens the continued life of the mother. Therefore abortion should not be considered generally as a heath care issue. Only when the life of the women is endangered by pregnancy does it become a true healthcare issue.
Abortion up to the time of fetus viability should remain an option for all women. However, once a fetus is viable (able to survive outside the womb with life support) the same rules with respect to the right to life should apply exactly as it does to post birth humanoids. To not recognize and acknowledge that abortion is a life ending procedure is to be callous while denying reality in the same breath. There should be limitations on when abortions can be performed when the life of the women is not threatened.
Roe-v-Wade was a landmark decision that recognized a women's right to control her body and her reproductive rights; and, it was a right and justified decision. When an unwanted pregnancy happens, either because of failure of the chosen birth control method, the failure to use any birth control method, or rape, ending the pregnancy as soon as possible is both reasonable and rational.
If you're wondering why this topic was chosen for a post topic it's certainly understandable; especially as this writer is not a traveler in the liberal/progressive sphere and is, if you will, generally more conservative or traditional. With Planned Parenthood under attack by religious conservatives and many republicans, with the goal of defunding the organization, this topic just seemed a natural one at this time.
Planned Parenthood has served a useful purpose for nearly 100 years. For the federal government to consider defunding the organization and very likely ending the service and good it has performed for almost a century is insanity at it's worst. Driven by blind religious conviction, political considerations, and the lust for power, those advocating for defunding of Planed Parenthood because of recent concerns over harvesting fetal organs are, quite possibly using this issue to also make another run at overturning Roe-v-Wade.
Considering that human life has value (as well as rights), and, considering that a women's reproductive rights are also important, does it not make sense that intelligent and rationally thinking folks of all views on this issue set in place policy and law that best accomplishes the primary and major concerns of all parties? Those who are either unwilling of unable to compromise are the ones who have no place at the table as they are the ones with the inability to see life or considerations beyond their own narrow sphere of knowledge or understanding.
If the purpose of harvesting the organs of aborted fetuses is to further scientific medical knowledge it is, in this writers humble opinion, a good thing. If the harvested organs directly or indirectly results in saving a life, improving the quality of life, or prolonging the life of another then what may I ask is the problem? Having asked the question here then is the answer. When such harvesting of fetal organs becomes a pathway to financially enriching the lives of research scientists, medical doctors, or organizations that are funded by the publics money it is unethical and wrong.
As of yet there has been no convincing evidence to substantiate the defunding of Planed Parenthood based on the recent furor grip the right.
In Maine, we have found something almost as rare as a 3-legged Sasquatch. It's a Republican who wants to expand the Affordable Care Act.
Maine Senate Majority Leader Rep. Garrett Mason authored a bill that would force insurance companies to pay for fertility treatments. Which sounds, for a Republican, almost sympathetic: you have a couple trying desperately to have a child, and finally reach the point where their only solution is medical treatment that would cost thousands of dollars that they just can't afford. And Maine wants to make their lives just a little bit better.
Except for one thing: it includes a morals clause. The original language of LD 943, An Act to Provide Access to Infertility Treatment, has the following provisions:
A. The covered individual must be married;
B. The covered individual's infertility may not be the result of a sexually transmitted disease
And once again, the "small government Republicans" want to ensure that they can get the government to intervene in women's personal lives. Because everybody deserves the chance to have children, unless they're a slut. Because god knows that if they had an STD, they must have proven that they're unfit parents, right?
Now, Mason has said that he's open to removing the provisions. "I'm totally willing to do something that fits Maine better, and that is why we have the committee process."
Which is probably best. It's good that he's willing to remove these ignorant nanny-state provisions. I mean, it totally shows what a completely unthinking, small-minded, judgmental, moralistic fucknozzle Garrett Mason was to include them in the first place, but still. It's nice that he's willing to put them aside.
Because in its original form, this bill would lose the first time it went before the Supreme Court, which should have been obvious to anyone with the brain power of an Eastern White Pine (the State Tree of Maine).
It's good to know that rape victims who received an STD from their attacker might have had a good chance of being declared "unfit parents" in Maine, thanks to this simpering, slack-jawed, puffy-faced used car salesman.
I'm a little curious whether, if a couple has a divorce midway through treatment for infertility, would they be on the hook for the entire bill? Or just for the portion of the infertility treatment that came after the divorce was finalized? And would there be a "statute of limitations" for divorce? How long would the new parents need to stay married before the state wouldn't arrest them?
This bill has, at least, one area where it isn't discriminatory. Maine has recognized same-sex marriage since 2012. So at least it would be easier for lesbian couples to get pregnant.
Are ya uncomfortable showering at the gym? Asked Rick Santorum of
students at a "Students for Life" rally last month. Apparently he
thought they should be, because there might be 'Liberals' in the shower
and you know they can't stop talking about abortion rights and saying
uncomfortable things. Of course Students for Life aren't lifetime
students nor are they particularly interested in preserving life in
general - only that of unbaptized embryos. But hey, Students for Imaginary Biblical Commandments is too long for people whose lips move when they read.
And
those are Rick's people. People who somehow see a point in his idiotic
jabberwocky. But even those people can't be expected to focus very long,
and so the pretense that liberals will follow you into the shower down at the YMCA to
discuss reproductive rights until you're uncomfortable is more likely
than that Rick's little village people will likely follow you anywhere and everywhere
to blather about not showering with Liberals.
It's all
about youth and beauty says Rick, incomprehensibly, but it's also all
about a culture of death that needs sparks and someone to rebel. If
that makes any kind of sense to you, I don't want you or Rick in my
shower. Particularly if you love people the way Rick and his
chosen claim to. Rick thinks his flock is very much like the liberals who
broke away from England, even though he's a Conservative and he thinks
conservatives did away with slavery and that's why we had to rebel.
Sorry If I'm making your stomach rebel.
Oh hell,
it's impossible to make sense of any of that passionately meaningless
garbage about -- about whatever it is he's blathering about, about what
'the left' has done to America in recent times. Those are basically
meaningless things he says, even when he says they aren't, but don't
look for anything more than the barking of dogs at a Santorum giggle
gallery, because people who think it's OK to kill children and people
who are so retarded and mentally ill they don't know right from wrong,
are people who don't get to gurgle and gobble and gargle about anyone's
right to remain alive even when that "someone" isn't a someone. I
doubt his audience needs a coherent or factual argument anyway.
They're mostly looking for a comfortable venue to express their
righteous contempt and those things only get in the way of the
self-esteem they think they acquire from being a "conservative" at best.
You need to hear it,
because it's none too early, with the Republicans beginning their
campaign of meaningless babble and emotional idiocy and self-righteous
lies. This idiot intends to run for president again and he will have
followers again and this expression of the worst, most retrograde
manifestation of human meanness and stupidity will always be with us.
Lyin' Bill. He earns his title every day. What's he lyin' about now
you might ask? Why, he's telling us that a Texas women can get an
abortion at any time -- simply because of a sprained hand for instance.
“You can just kill the baby, or the fetus, however you want to describe
it, any time you want for any reason, you know,
women’s health, that’s any reason at all.”
Sure,
we all know that women are hypochondriacs, prone to hysteria and likely
to be faking things like they fake orgasms and I'm sure Bill has
experience there. God makes sure women don't die in childbirth anyway,
just like he makes sure they don't get pregnant when they get raped. So
if a woman wants to terminate a pregnancy, we can be sure it's because
she doesn't want to cancel a hair dresser appointment or something
equally as important. Why we ever let them vote, I don't know.
In
one of those bilious exchanges that Fox is famous for, O'Reilly and
Kirsten Powers went back and forth ratcheting up the lies:
Lyin' Bill: “In New York here, there’s a proposal, ‘I don’t want any limitations on anything!' It’s crazy.”
Powers: “The current status quo in Texas that these people
are fighting for, who are fighting the bill, is to be able to abort your
baby up until the third trimester.”
Lyin' Bill: “Yeah! For any reason! Women’s health! ‘Hey! Look I sprained my hand!"
Powers: “Yeah. For any reason. For any reason. Yeah.”
Of
course no one of integrity, no one who gives a rancid shit about the
truth or human rights or anything but his stinking faith believes this
garbage. Very, very few late term abortions are ever performed and even
fewer of that "partial birth" procedure they'd love to tell you happens
all the time. Such things are done with dead fetuses, fetuses with no
brain and the like, but Fox has never stumbled over a fact so far. Nor,
for all their ranting, whooping and hollering, all their pusillanimous
persiflage about how Liberals are trashing the constitution have they
ever really seen the law as anything but a nuisance and impediment to
"freedom" and something that can be and should be ignored by any state
with or without public support.
No, there should be
no regulation of anything but women and if God didn't bother to ban
abortion, well then the Great State a' Texas is gonna take care of it
for him, now all y'all have a nice day, y'hear?
You have to feel sorry for David Dewhurst. It has to be rough to be the lieutenant governor under Rick Perry - I mean, Dewhurst is no Rhodes scholar himself, but when you're second fiddle to a brain-damaged chimp, you must spend a lot of nights curled around a bottle of cheap whiskey, rocking yourself and sobbing uncontrollably.
I mean, he was in charge of the Texas Senate as they tried to ban abortion, and he failed. Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, filibustered for over 12 hours, until they were able to take her off the stage with three challenges: two of them, that she didn't stay on topic, involved her talking about Planned Parenthood and invasive sonograms - both of which are directly involved with abortion. So, bullshit right there.
Then, forgetting that the world was watching, they held a vote after the Senate was required to close down, and tried to fake the record. But the public wouldn't let them get away with that, either, and the vote was declared null and void.
So Dewhurst, being a good'ol'boy from Texas, felt he had to talk tough to hide the fact that he was beaten up by a girl wearing pink sneakers. The sad part is, he isn't very good at it.
Apparently, having witnesses when you try to cheat and break the rules is now called "Obama-style, mob-rule politics" - which I suppose you can understand, considering the back-room nature of traditional Texas politics.
But I think the best part of Dewhurst's sad little rant is what he chose as a battle cry.
Come and Take It!
Why does that sound like a bottom, kneeling in bed and calling to his top? Somebody needs to give Dewhurst some lessons in looking macho before he embarrasses himself further.
You know, the GOP keeps trying to claim that they don't have a "War on Women." They claim that they respect women (even though the womenfolk can't be trusted to make decisions regarding their own bodies). But then they'll stumble, and somebody like GOP candidate Todd Akin will try to claim that rape is not a reason that abortion should be kept legal, because, after all, nobody gets pregnant that way.
"First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy from rape) is really rare," Akin told KTVI-TV in a clip posted to YouTube by the Democratic super PAC American Bridge. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
Or you get somebody like, say, Trent Franks (R-AZ), who, after ten years in the House of Representatives, should know better.
Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), whose measure banning abortions after 20 weeks was being considered in the House Judiciary Committee, argued against a Democratic amendment to make exceptions for rape and incest by suggesting that pregnancy from rape is rare.
"Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject — because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low," Franks said.
Franks continued: "But when you make that exception, there’s usually a requirement to report the rape within 48 hours. And in this case that's impossible because this is in the sixth month of gestation. And that's what completely negates and vitiates the purpose for such an amendment."
Now, let's ignore the fact that The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who make it their business to know such things, report that ten to fifteen thousand abortions due to rape occur each year, which makes statements like that "medically inaccurate, offensive, and dangerous." And we can ignore that particular piece of data because, after all, facts don't matter to this crowd.
Instead, let's all try and remember a wonderful little bit of information dug up by Tim Townsend and Blythe Bernhard for the St Louis Post-Dispatch following Akin's comments.
While U.S. Rep. Todd Akin cited only "doctors" as his source of information about the rarity of pregnancy resulting from rape, it is two pages, from Mecklenburg's 1972 article, "The Indications for Induced Abortion: A Physician's Perspective," that have influenced two generations of anti-abortion activists hoping to build a medical case to ban all abortions without exception...
In supporting his claim about trauma and ovulation, Mecklenburg cited experiments conducted in Nazi death camps.
The Nazis tested this hypothesis "by selecting women who were about to ovulate and sending them to the gas chambers, only to bring them back after their realistic mock-killing, to see what the effect this had on their ovulatory patterns. An extremely high percentage of these women did not ovulate."
Finally, Mecklenburg said it was likely that the rapists — because of "frequent masturbation" — were unlikely to be fertile themselves.
(I just threw in that last line as a bonus.)
So, are we clear on this? The GOP is trying to claim that there is no such thing as rape-babies, because the Nazis said there weren't. They are now basing their arguments on unscientific and inhumane experiments performed by Nazi doctors in death camps
Do you know how happy that one little fact makes me? I don't have to call the GOP racist, fascist, or Nazis! They're doing it to themselves!
All men may soon be required to report their orgasms to law enforcement, according to new legislation proposed by A.L.I.C.E., a women’s advocacy group. The reason is because male sexual behavior has been linked to an alarming rise in violent crime against women, and officials must be empowered to act. Crimes like forcible rape, indecent exposure, offensive facial humiliation, and discriminatory new legislation sponsored by jerk-off Republicans. If male lawmakers reserve the right to investigate female sexuality for any alleged crime, then women deserve an equal opportunity under law to investigate men, according to an A.L.I.C.E. spokesperson. Here is a case in point: Virginia’s newly nominated candidate for state attorney general, Senator Mark Obenshain (R), introduced a fetal death bill that requires women to report any miscarriage or stillbirth to police within 24 hours or risk imprisonment. Obershain’s bill was motivated by the case of Nina Buckhalter, a woman who tested positive for methamphetamine use after giving birth to a stillborn infant. A Mississippi grand jury indicted Buckhalter for manslaughter, claiming she killed her baby due to “culpable negligence.” Virginia Attorney General and candidate for governor, Kenneth Cuccinelli (R), co-sponsored a fetal personhood bill that confers the right to life “vested in each born and preborn [sic] human being from the moment of inception.” According to abortion rights advocates, if states are allowed to jail women for stillbirths and miscarriages, fetal personhood laws will serve as a pretext for banning abortion and contraception. Furthermore, over zealous prosecutors may persecute women for any alleged lapse in pre-natal care - alcohol consumption, smoking, excessive exercise, failure to follow medical advice, or simply having a bad attitude (although the donor of her hapless haploids may drink to excess in the privacy of his castle until stumble-down drunk - with impunity.) In concept, fetal death and fetal personhood bills deprive women of their own legal personhood, since these laws confer a special status to the fetus at the expense of the mother. That is why it is important to level the playing field by placing all male sexual behavior under similar scrutiny. Pending legislation proposed by A.L.I.C.E. will grant new powers of law enforcement, including the right to conduct a mandatory cystoscopic exam through the barrel of a Bushmaster performed by a female urologist with an itchy trigger finger. Next story: Bush League Republicans play baseball with flaccid bats.
I hesitate to write about this, since everyone and his horse will
undoubtedly pick up on the latest Republican hilarity. It's an easy
target, but it says so much about what the Republican party has been
party to: the degradation of truth, logic, decency and freedom. Yes, we
have another Republican telling us that women probably can't get pregnant from being raped.
Denial,
as I've been saying ad nauseam, is the flip side of belief and every
belief requires a denial. Denial of what you know to be true, is
hypocrisy and to avoid hypocrisy, too many Republicans will defend what
they know to be false and tell themselves it's heroic; tell themselves
that lies are not lies if they're useful in defending the faith. Some of
what one needs to defend in order to gain party support is immoral,
indecent, mean-spirited and nasty too. Much of it is just a series of
damned lies, but that's another story.
There's just no
truth to the idea that God or biology protect a rape victim from
pregnancy but the creed demands that one oppose terminating a pregnancy,
whether unwanted or repellant or dangerous, so you -- forgive my
technical jargon -- have to make shit up in order to defend the
belief and deny the truth, be it incontrovertible truth about evolution,
cosmology, geology, economics, law, mathematics or history. In many
cases, being a Republican requires that you park not only your brains,
but your honesty, your decency in the alley behind the GOP bar next to
the dumpster, lest any of the clergy see it.
I won't deny
that I take a certain satisfaction in presenting this one small,
relatively unimportant demonstration of the mental processes that
produce and direct the American Opera Buffo. I delight in airing their
dirty laundry, not because I like the rancid smell of batshit, but
because it's time to burn it and bury the ashes. It has been time
forever.
One of the reasons that the Republicans couldn't win the election in 2012 was that they were continuing to appeal only to the white male demographic.
They didn't bother worrying about hispanic vote: look at their reaction to the Dream Act. Or their "walls, razor wire and armed guards" view of immigration policy. Or the continued push toward "English-only" legislation.
They didn't give a tanned damn about the black vote: check out their full-throated support of George Zimmerman, who apparently felt threatened by the existence of skinny teenagers armed with Skittles. For that matter, note the dog-whistles (and occasional open racism) distributed through their attacks on our first black president.
And going into the home stretch of the election, the GOP seemed to double down on their "War on Women," with lawmakers talking about "legitimate rape" and trying to make it harder for a woman to get a legal medical procedure, than it is for a convicted felon to buy military-grade hardware.
Full disclosure: I am not a big fan of the term "War on Women," but I'm at a loss what else to call it. The opposite of "Women's Lib" would be "Women's Enslavement," but that's a bit hyperbolic, so I'm not going to even touch it. In fact, "War on Anything" is pretty well over-used, because they can be such a convenient shorthand. Will some linguistics major please look into this for me?
In regards to the GOP policy toward women, they have a radical portion of their party who keeps trying to turn back the clock to a mythical Fifties, where the blacks and hispanics were all happy in their low-paying jobs, and the few women in the work force (the ones who weren't staying at home baking) were available to be chased around the desk playing hard-but-not-impossible-to-get.
See, in their views, a Woman's Purpose (subtitle: "Assigned To Her By God") is to be forever in a subservient role, helping Her Man, cleaning, cooking, and procreating. If she gets a job, she's still expected to get home in time to get the kids from daycare and cook dinner. And this is pretty obvious by how they try to legislate.
Hell, at least blacks were considered three-fifths of a person. In some quarters, women are lucky to get that much appreciation today, especially in in the paycheck.
(And I'm not saying that the melanin-enhanced peoples have it much better; I'm just trying to make a rhetorical point here...)
And one of the things they want to avoid is even the possibility that a woman will have control of her own genitals.
Simple logic and actual scientific studies have shown that adequate sex education and access to contraception both decrease abortions (and we even have the actual examples of places like Denmark, where abortion is available, but almost unheard of), but we still have the insane cognitive dissonance of opposition to abortion, and contraception, matched up with support for abstinence-only education.
Which brings us to my own (adopted) state of New Mexico.
Now, I'll admit that I have little or no use for Huffington Post. There are a number of reasons for this, but I'm going to give them credit for one thing: they were the first news outlet to break this one.
A Republican lawmaker in New Mexico introduced a bill on Wednesday that would legally require victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term in order to use the fetus as evidence for a sexual assault trial.
House Bill 206, introduced by state Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R), would charge a rape victim who ended her pregnancy with a third-degree felony for "tampering with evidence."
Now, since Huffpo broke the story, it's been picked up by other news groups, and the public outcry against this brain-meltingly obvious idiocy has made Representative Brown very sad. She's now trying to explain to everybody how she was being "misrepresented."
Rep. Cathrynn Brown, a Republican from Carlsbad, said Thursday she will revise the bill, which she said was intended to target perpetrators of rape or incest who try to cover their tracks by forcing their victims to have abortions...
Although the clause regarding intent would seem to preclude rape victims from being charged, several critics read the bill as possibly including them. Brown said she will clarify the language to remove any ambiguity.
Yeah, but while that may be the way she tried to sell it (and I'll give a tip of my hat to Ted for pointing it out to me)... well, in her defense, she's an idiot. Just how often, exactly, does a rapist drag a woman to a doctor to abort his rape-baby?
Because, yeah, the way she was selling this to her friends and supporters probably sounded just like that. The version on her own website has been undergoing daily changes since it went up, but has been warm and friendly to the poor beleaguered victim since day one. But the one that was introduced to the state legislature had some... well, let's just call them "inconsistencies" from the story Ms Brown has been trying to sell.
See, here's how it was presented:
AN ACT
RELATING TO CRIMINAL LAW; SPECIFYING PROCURING OF AN ABORTION AS TAMPERING WITH EVIDENCE IN CASES OF CRIMINAL SEXUAL PENETRATION OR INCEST.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO:
SECTION 1. Section 30-22-5 NMSA 1978 (being Laws 1963, Chapter 303, Section 22-5, as amended) is amended to read:
"30-22-5. TAMPERING WITH EVIDENCE.--
A. Tampering with evidence consists of destroying, changing, hiding, placing or fabricating any physical evidence with intent to prevent the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of any person or to throw suspicion of the commission of a crime upon another.
B. Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime.
C. Whoever commits tampering with evidence shall be punished as follows:
It then goes on to explain, if you're curious, what crimes will be added (or applied) to everybody involved, with no question about who it is (the rapist, the victim, or the doctor). And that's it. Short, sweet and stupid.
So, if you get raped, and then you get an abortion, you go to jail. It's a simple equation.
"Ah," but the calm, rational side of you explains, "it's right there in the bill! You have to have 'the intent to prevent the apprehension' of the rapist! Obviously, a victim isn't going to do that, right?"
Well, aside from the fact that "calm" and "rational" can rarely be applied to the anti-abortion lobby, let's consider for a minute. There's a term that needs to be applied here: "Thought crime." It's illegal to get an abortion that might tamper with evidence. Unless you can prove that you hadn't intended to tamper with evidence. You have to prove what you'd been thinking about.
"But... but... but..." your calm, rational side sputters, not yet willing to give up. "That isn't true! The state has to prove that you were planning to tamper with evidence!"
No, afraid not. The state has to prove that you did tamper with evidence, and then show that you might have still harbored feelings for the rapist. (Not hard to do, if it's, say, your dad, or some guy you haven't actively attacked with a knife...) After all, you got the abortion. They can prove that happened.
A woman still gets blamed for getting raped if she dresses "too provocatively" or goes to the wrong part of town. We tell women how to avoid getting raped; we don't tell men "don't rape."
We just assume that the natural state of man is "rapist." Since he's going to try to have sex regardless of any other factors, it's her job to avoid getting in that position.
If you then factor in the concept of "Stockholm Syndrome," please try to explain where this won't go wrong. Women already get accused of fabricating rape charges because they had sex, but then had "second thoughts" the next day.
Our society has some seriously messed-up priorities when it comes to rape.
_____________
Update (1/28/2013): So, I just corrected the formatting in the text of the bill. I tried to show it the way it was presented on the legislative website (with paragraph B underlined and the rest of it) and just managed to make it invisible. So now it's just shown as text, because some people shouldn't be allowed to use HTML.
No, this isn't about Joni Mitchell and I'm not going to talk about bows and flows of angel hair, just about stunning hypocrisy. How many
ice cream castles have been built upon the idea that a fertilized human
egg cell is a human being possessed of human rights? It would be
hypocritical enow that those rights are allowed by Church doctrine to
foetuses when they have been so often denied to adults by religious
authorities, but that's not what this is about. It's about, as I said,
hypocrisy; about arguing both sides when needed to avoid guilt, or at
least to avoid prosecution and penalty.
Catholic
Health Initiatives, with assets estimated at around 15 billion dollars,
operates a chain of hospitals and as a response to a wrongful death
suit involving twin foetuses who died before birth, their attorneys
argued that in cases of wrongful death, the term “person” only applies
to individuals born alive, and not to those who die in utero, says Raw Story today.
Perhaps that will be a precedent that
plagues them in future when they try to argue otherwise according to
Roman Catholic doctrine regarding abortion and birth control, but
looking at this cloudy argument from both sides now is pretty
entertaining, don't you think? And of course we remember all the adages
telling us that when they argue principle, what they mean is money.
I've worked various election campaigns, and phone-banking is one of the most depressing, soul-grinding things you can do. Important, but sweet baby Jesus, you get to hear from all the losers, idiots and, worse, the one-issue voters.
Yes, they're out there. We could be emerging from the rubble of a GOP-led recession, the challenger could be saber-rattling for a third war in the Middle East and trying to set up robber barons for another Gilded Age, and you'd still have people on the phones listening to babbling lunatics explain how they could never vote for the Negro Abortionist.
Well, if there's people out there fixating on one subject, let's look at that subject for a moment, shall we?
(If you know anybody doing phone-banking in these waning days of the campaign, feel free to share this with them. You don't even need to give me credit for it. I'll be honest. It won't help: one-issue voters are not changing their minds, regardless of how many facts you run past them. But, well... at least you'll feel better.)
Barack Obama has been reliably pro-choice his entire career. This is not under dispute. But despite what many on the right like to claim, he is not a "radical abortionist."
While he did vote against bills to prevent "sex-selection" abortion and various bills which claimed to protect infants born alive due to failed abortions, but not due to some radical agenda. All were introduced by radical anti-abortionists, and all were so general that they could be twisted by political activists to begin the process of making all abortions illegal. Plus, the "failed abortion" acts were redundant even before they were written: Illinois law already protects an aborted fetus which turns out to be born alive.
But if you think that a vote for Romney is a "pro-life" vote, then, I'm sorry, but you're an idiot.
Because the truth of the matter is, nobody (probably not even Mitt Romney) knows what Romney's personal feelings are on abortion. Just looking at the evidence, his political advisers have determined that it would be best for his campaign if he was pro-life. But the people who know him give the impression that he isn't so much "pro-choice" as "uncaring." This isn't really a subject he feels like addressing.
But there's nothing here that qualifies as evidence. So, to determine the truth, we have to look at his record, and consider what Mitt Romney has actually done.
That, however, is also a mistake. Because the only conclusion to be drawn from history is that Mittens will say anything and do anything if he believes it is politically expedient.
In 1994, debating Teddy Kennedy, Romney said that he supported Roe vs Wade. Kennedy responded "I am pro-choice. My opponent is multiple choice," leading Romney to tell a heartwarming story of a close relative named Ann Keenan.
"I have my own beliefs, and those beliefs are very dear to me. One of them is that I do not impose my beliefs on other people. Many, many years ago, I had a dear, close family relative that was very close to me who passed away from an illegal abortion. It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that."
Look it up. While you do, keep in mind that one joke he made there, that he will "not impose (his) beliefs on other people." (It'll seem funnier later.)
In 2002, debating gubernatorial opponent Shannon O'Brien, he added "I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose. I am not going to change our pro-choice laws in Massachusetts in any way. I am not going to make any changes which would make it more difficult for a woman to make that choice herself."
But in 2005, as governor, Romney vetoed a law which would ease access to emergency contraception. He explained through an Op-Ed in the Boston Globe, where he said he was "pro-life" and opposed any "judicial mandate" that dictated a nationwide abortion law, arguing instead that the issue should be left up to the states.
"I believe that abortion is the wrong choice except in cases of incest, rape, and to save the life of the mother," Romney wrote. "I believe that the states, through the democratic process, should determine their own abortion laws and not have them dictated by judicial mandate."
Romney said he would uphold his campaign promise not to change Massachusetts' abortion laws, even though that campaign pledge was preceded by Romney's statement that he would "protect a woman's right to chose."
Then, during his first presidential bid in 2007, Romney explained that he had "changed my mind" on abortion while serving his one term as Massachusetts governor, and that "we should overturn Roe v. Wade and return these issues to the states." He also said he would be "delighted" to sign a bill as president that would outlaw abortion, if there "was such a consensus in this country that we said we don't want to have abortion in this country at all, period."
(He even had a cute little explanation, about how Reagan and both Bushes had started out pro-choice, and changed to become pro-life. Like so many of Romney's stories, it was a lie. But even though he was called out on it, he used it again a few years later.)
Still with me?
From 2005 to 2011, Romney consistently said that he was "pro-life" and believes abortion should be legal only in the case "of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother." That may be the longest stretch he ever went without reversing himself.
During the Republican primary last year, Romney expanded that view to explain how he believed he should cut all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, reverse Roe v. Wade "because it is bad law and bad medicine," and end funding for any international aid program that "promotes or performs abortions on women around the world."
But remember: he won't force his beliefs on other people.
He wrote it out for us in a National Review Op-Ed in June 2011. "If I have the opportunity to serve as our nation's next president, I commit to doing everything in my power to cultivate, promote, and support a culture of life in America." Apparently, one of his advisers thought he needed to take a hard right tack.
Having said repeatedly that abortion laws should be left up to the states, in October 2011 he went on Fox "News" and told Mike Huckabee that he "absolutely" supports a Constitutional amendment banning abortion.
But now, less than two months after accepting the GOP nomination, Romney is casually trying to amble back toward the center on his abortion stance, telling the Des Moines Register last month that he would not make abortion legislation part of his agenda. "There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda." (It comes about 14 minutes into the audio of the interview.)
Funny, because in his National Review Op-Ed, he named three specific pieces of legislation he supported: "I support the Hyde Amendment, which broadly bars the use of federal funds for abortions... I will reinstate the Mexico City Policy (to bar foreign aid from abortion providers)... I will advocate for and support a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect unborn children..."
But hell, his friends, family and coworkers are just as confused about Romney's position as Romney is. After he spoke to the Des Moines Register, Romney's spokesperson, Andrea Saul was quick to contradict her candidate, saying "Mitt Romney is proudly pro-life and will be a pro-life president."
On the other hand, his sister Jane, back in August (you remember August, right? Her brother was "severely conservative" back then...), said that any fear that Romney would restrict abortion was "conjured," and that "it's not his focus."
At a "Women for Mitt" event held in conjunction with the Republican National Convention in Tampa, she said "He's not going to be touching any of that... Mitt's much more in the middle" than even the GOP platform (which supports several anti-abortion initiatives and a "Right to Life" amendment with no exceptions for rape or incest).
Romney's surrogate, former Senator Norm Coleman, seems to agree with Jane, saying in Ohio last week, "President Bush was president for eight years, Roe v. Wade wasn't reversed. He had two Supreme Court picks, Roe v. Wade wasn't reversed. It's not going to be reversed."
And then we have that last debate with Obama, where Romney went even further left, saying Obama was "totally wrong" about him wanting to shut down Planned Parenthood.
Of course, he was also trying to blame gun violence on single mothers (presumably women who had escaped his binders), so perhaps he was just having an off night.
It's funny, isn't it? Romney's positions on abortion seem to change whenever there's an election nearby, and what position would be most popular with the people voting in that election. That's kind of weird. You have to wonder - is he a vacillating bag of douche, or a cynical, calculating fucknozzle?
Personally, I vote for the second one.
You might want to read this article outlining the new CBS Pittsburgh Interview with Paul Ryan. Brief as it is, it's quite revealing as a portrait of a man desperate to avoid engaging with or even acknowledging the implications of his own ideas. Any sentient protein-based life form can see that there is no daylight between Paul Ryan and Todd Akin when it comes to refusing federal funding of abortion in cases of rape and incest. This is very important stuff. I think that for too long, even feminist discourse has tended to trivialize the issue at hand – it isn't simply about "choice" in some consumerist "which product should I buy?" sense, it's about the stripping away of a fundamental right: the right of women to control their own destiny, at least to the extent any of us can do that And if you can't do that, what the hell can you do?
In spite of the homey manner and the jeans on a fellow like Rep. Ryan, there's precious little daylight between the American Fruitcake Right and the Taliban when it comes to attitudes towards female integrity, autonomy and equality. Read the article – in it you hear an anxious young man confronted with the abominable language initially included in a bill he cosponsored: "forcible rape" (aka "legitimate rape" in case you're compiling a lexicon of the stupid-idiot-imbecile things Republicans say), the sheer arrogance and oblivious madness of which he tries to quell by repeating the new post-Akin-debacle mantra, "Rape is rape. Rape is rape, period. End of story." Nice try, asshole, but you're on record as an Akin man.
The Romney campaign has really stepped in it regarding this all-important issue of female equality and autonomy. Governor Romney, in his usual wanna-be slickster way, is trying to sidle away from what every sane person knows is his actual position, but he can't: he's got Paul Ryan, who's been legislatively "palling around" with American Taliban types like Todd Akin, and of course he has the GOP platform itself, which seems to have been borrowed from the overseas Taliban. (Perhaps the Taliban should file a copyright infringement suit over the pro-life extremist plank of the Republican Party. I suspect lawyers would find whole paragraphs lifted verbatim from that odious outfit's Great Book of Hating Perfidious, Whorish Womankind. Okay, I made the title up – but you get the idea.) Even Mitt, an ethical and ideational Houdini if ever such was, can't get out of this one: his and his running mate's stated, in-print or on-video ideas speak against the two like wicked deeds on the Day of Judgment.
Finally, what I find awesomely arrogant about Ryan's interview is the segment where he dismisses any attempt on the Democrats' part to – well, you know, distract women from the real issues of the day: “And I don’t think they’re going to take the bait of all these distractions that the President is trying to throw at them,” says the candidate as quoted in the linked article. Obviously, women's rights don't count in the Republican book as among those real issues. No, they're just a cheap diversionary tactic to keep us from realizing that B. Hussein Obama is a Kenyan communo-fascist who swore an oath over chicken-blood to destroy the Great Satan from within. And I think we can all agree, that's the only thing we should be considering as loyal Amurcans come election day. At least those of us who can still vote – you know, WHITE MEN.
Gallup released a poll this week that has the Religious Right (and, these days, is there any other kind?) screaming in glee. Because it seems to say that America has started hating abortion. A record low 41% of Americans now identify as pro-choice.
But the chronically brilliant John Fugelsang looked at the numbers, and that isn't what it says at all.
And yes, this is the same John Fugelsang who has permanently linked Mitt Romney to the Etch-a-Sketch, for his attempts to rewrite his past positions on just about every subject.
This message from The Progress Report arrived in my email box earlier today. It offers a clear warning to women (and to the men who love and support the women in their lives) about the stakes this year:
The language of the bill stipulates that a woman would have to show her medical records to her employer in order to even be considered for contraceptive coverage. If a woman were using the pill for one of its intended purposes, an employer could choose to stop insuring her, citing “moral objections,” and the woman would have to pay out of pocket for her contraceptive expenses. If an employer finds that the woman has a medical reason to be taking contraceptives (this means the employer would learn of the woman’s ovarian cysts, early menopause, or any number of other medical issues), he can choose to insure her. But if the findings aren’t to his liking, the woman can be dropped.
IT’S HAPPENING EVERYWHERE: In Mississippi, the legislature is looking at legislation that would effectively close the only abortion clinic in the entire state. Kansas is supporting an anti-abortion measure that would cause the Kansas University Medical Center to lose its accreditation. Wisconsin has banned private health insurers from offering abortion coverage. In Idaho, a similar bill would force women to go to crisis pregnancy centers if they wanted an abortion. And Idaho also - along with nine other states - has passed a bill that requires women to have an ultrasound before an abortion.
Contrary to GOP claims, the controversy surrounding health insurance coverage for contraceptives has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on religious freedom. Let us be perfectly clear what the U.S. Constitution states:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion …”
It means church leaders have NO RIGHT to impose church doctrine on citizens, on the followers of other denominations, on citizens of no religious affiliation, or to enlist the aid of government to enforce church doctrine even on their own parishioners. Please note: 97% of Catholic women use contraceptives - thus going against the teachings of their Church. In exercising their freedom to chose whatever healthcare options they deem best for themselves, women deserve legal protection from ecclesiastical overreach and abuse:
The religious freedom argument is a foil used by radical clerics
and social conservatives to bully government into acting as
Enforcer and Inquisitor on their behalf.
Simply stated, this argument represents a direct assault on the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution. Yet, the GOP, in pandering for votes, is all too ready and willing to sellout your rights to the Inquisition. Worst of all, the GOP wants to empower your employer with the right to pry into your medical records, your private affairs, and your bedroom in the name of religious freedom - and dictate what medical treatment can be prescribed by your doctor. Furthermore, the GOP wants to empower THE STATE to pry into your uterus with ultrasound probes - sanctioned by laws that are tantamount to sexual abuse.
Amina, a 16-year-old girl from Larache in northern Morocco, who was forced to marry her rapist, chose to put an end to her life by swallowing rat poison last Saturday. According to al-Masa'a [ar], Amina was raped by a man ten years older than her when she was barely 15. And to preserve what is called “family honour”, Amina's marriage to her rapist, was arranged. A judge approved the marriage.
According to the same newspaper, Amina took the rat poison while she was in her husband's (rapist's) house. When he noticed that her health was deteriorating, he rushed her to her family's home. On the way he did not stop beating her, said Amina to her family, a few hours before her death.
Meanwhile, the American Taliban - radical social conservatives aided and abetted by the Republican Party including former GOP candidate Michele Bachmann, and candidates Gingrich and Santorum - are determined to outlaw all forms of abortion with no exceptions for incest or rape. Only the moist heartless, despotic authoritarians - who stick their noses into everyone's business - find any merit in further victimizing victims by heaping more shame and pain upon them. In short, the GOP has morphed itself into a party of voyeurs, sadists, and born-again rapists.
Here is Bill Posey's voting record on issues of vital concern to women:
Voted AGAINST the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (HR-11)
Voted AGAINST extending the Children’s Health Insurance Program (HR-2)
Voted AGAINST food safety regulations (HR-2749)
Voted AGAINST expansion of anti-hate crimes bill (HR-1913)
Voted AGAINST the Infant Mortality Pilot Program (HR-3470)
Voted AGAINST Planned Parenthood (H-amdt-95)
Voted AGAINST stopgap disaster relief (HR-2608)
Voted YES to authorize the pre-abortion ultrasound requirement (HR-2400)
For years, Republicans have been hellbent on turning back the clock of civilization; turning back hard-won labor laws; turning back the struggles of Suffragettes; turning back civil rights and voting rights; turning an impoverished middle class into an underclass; and turning America yet again into a "half-savage country."
The headlines are grim. Darkness is descending on America … falling on hills, plains, and deserts; falling on farms, villages and cities; falling on the living and dishonoring the dead.
Well, it's been a week or two, and the American public, with their beagle-puppy attention span, can no longer remember the little tiff between Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen Foundation.
(For those of you slipping into a CNN-induced haze, Karen Handel resigned as Senior Vice President for Public Policy of the Susan G Komen Foundation; she was widely accepted as being responsible for Komen deciding to defund Planned Parenthood.)
Being a Republican, Handel is, of course, wandering around trying to play the victim card, because martyrdom is the default strategy of the Right. Fortunately, the previously-mentioned attention span problem has pushed her deep into the sidelines where she belongs.
We can all agree that this is a challenging and deeply unsettling situation for all involved in the fight against breast cancer. However, Komen’s decision to change its granting strategy and exit the controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood and its grants was fully vetted by every appropriate level within the organization. At the November Board meeting, the Board received a detailed review of the new model and related criteria. As you will recall, the Board specifically discussed various issues, including the need to protect our mission by ensuring we were not distracted or negatively affected by any other organization’s real or perceived challenges. No objections were made to moving forward.
I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it. I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve. However, the decision to update our granting model was made before I joined Komen, and the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization. Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology.
Just so you know, there are a bunch of huge lies in those two little paragraphs. Let's consider two of them.
"the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization"
Really? Has it, now?
Komen founder Nancy Brinker published Promise Me in 2010, a memoir about starting the Susan G. Komen Foundation because of a deathbed promise to her eponymous sister.
In the book, she discusses how the Curves workout chain withdrew their support to Komen in 2004 due to Komen's grants to Planned Parenthood centers. Brinker is clear about why they refused to buckle to Curves' pressure:
"The grants in question supplied breast health counseling, screening, and treatment to rural women, poor women, Native American women, many women of color who were underserved--if served at all--in areas where Planned Parenthood facilities were often the only infrastructure available. Though it meant losing corporate money from Curves, we were not about to turn our backs on these women."
And despite Handel trying to claim that it was Foundation policy and she was just trying to enforce it, the people she worked with don't agree: it was entirely her doing, she came up with the excuse needed to defund, and she was the primary motivator pushing it through.
Now, despite her attempts to claim that she resigned in the face of a hostile "liberal media" (and, holy crap, do I wish that there was such a thing as a "liberal media"), considering the big picture, I'm personally willing to say that she didn't really resign, so much as she was forced out; at the very least, she put in her resignation before she would have been fired.
Why do I suggest this? (And let's be honest - I'm not "suggesting" it, I'm coming right out and saying it.) Because she wasn't very good at her job. She, in fact, failed badly, just a few months after being hired.
Remember, the job she was hired for was Senior Vice President for Public Policy.
Put aside your politics. Your personal feelings on "freedom of choice" vs. "abortion" don't make a bit of difference to the following argument. If anything, they get in the way. Suppress them for just a minute.
The evidence shows that she was the person pushing the policy to immediately stop funding Planned Parenthood. And that, by itself, is a blatantly stupid policy: when dealing with a group who hires as many lawyers as Planned Parenthood does, one truth should hold sway over every other consideration: if you publicly promise to give them money, you damned well follow through on that promise!
Lawyers love stuff like that. They can't even stand straight from the law-boner it gives them.
So, bad policy. From the Senior Vice President for Public Policy.
Second, and more important, "Senior Vice President for Public Policy" is an extremely fancy, extremely well-paid PR position. She's managing the public face of this charitable empire: the policies she sets up and advocates define how people see the Susan G. Komen Foundation. And when they end up looking like political hacks instead of public health advocates, somebody isn't doing their job.
Like, maybe, somebody in charge of Public Policy.
So, in the end, Ms Handel will probably get a book deal out of it, and a paying gig at Fox "News" whenever the subject of abortion comes up.
More importantly, what we have to do is keep an eye on the Susan G. Komen Foundation during the next round of grants. Because if they try to quietly stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood in the shadow of all this, that will tell us something about them, won't it?
Congratulations, sir! Thank you for standing up for the rights of unborn Americans everywhere. Or at least in Alabama.
Trying to amend both the legal code and the Constitution of the Great State of Alabama to define the word "person" as: "any human being from the moment of fertilization or the functional equivalent thereof" is a bold move, and would certainly make abortion illegal immediately.
I would like to point out a few difficulties that you'll be facing on the long road ahead of you, though. For one thing, the Census is certainly going to be more difficult, as all of the formerly-ignored blastocyst-Americans will need to be counted as well. And if we just rely on self-reporting, we will already be under-counting a huge number of Alabama citizens, as women aren't always immediately aware that they are pregnant.
So you'll need to think about that. Fortunately, you have just under a decade to consider the problem.
Furthermore, you will have to develop a completely new arm of the Alabama Department of Public Safety, to investigate all of the millions of new charges of murder that will have to be filed every year. After all, having declared them to be persons, they have rights, and their deaths must be investigated, right? And the mothers must at least be charged with manslaughter; that's the law.
I suppose that a mandatory pregnancy test for every post-pubescent woman is a possibility, but those tests are not extremely reliable, and a positive result would have to be verified. And all this takes us awfully close to the area of government-sponsored healthcare, which must be destroyed - after all, we know that Jesus would support allowing the poor to die in the streets if they couldn't afford a doctor.
You did take into account the fact that two-thirds of all fertilized eggs fail to implant in the mother's womb, right? And if you allow this newly-legalized human life to be simply flushed away, you are just as guilty as the murderous woman who refused to allow the child berth in her womb!
That is really a tricky question when you think about it. If life does begin at conception, wouldn't Heaven be filled wall-to-wall with little floating fetuses? But then again, since they were never baptized and never accepted Jesus into their unformed hearts, they would have gone straight to Hell, where their little unborn souls could simply be used as fuel for the furnaces. This would be very efficient, and exactly the way that a loving God would have designed the system.
I suppose that it's possible that you were unaware of this dirty little secret of human pregnancy. After all, Alabama's educational system does rank about forty-fifth among the fifty states, and as a graduate of the University of Alabama, this does place you at a disadvantage.
But I'm sure that you aren't adding billions of dollars to the Alabama deficit simply because you're stubbornly, pig-ignorantly arrogant, but simply because you love Alabama so much.
Thank you for your time, A Concerned Citizen _______________
Update: So, it seems that Rep. Merrill, in the true spirit of Republican governance, doesn't really want to talk to people who aren't donating money to him.
Despite what it says on his webpage, the email address john@tuscaloosagop.org gets rejected immediately. Now, if you look into it a little, the link on his webpage actually opens up an email to ohn@tuscaloosagop.org (no "j"). And that email address actually makes it into the Tuscaloosa GOP servers before being rejected as nonexistent.
I suppose I could have printed it out and mailed it. After all, he provides both his work address and his office at the Statehouse (and his home address, for the love of Bacchus!) on his webpage. But that would take, you know, time and money and stuff. Instead, I sent it to every Democratic member of the Health Committee, who are currently considering both of Merrill's bills.
You know, when I think of Indiana, a little neon sign in my head never immediately started blinking "small-minded idiots" before now.
I mean, yeah, despite the name of your state, you fucked over the Native Americans living there, with various groups of Europeans alternately arming rival tribes so that they could pretty much wipe each other out before you pushed them off their land. But we were doing that all over the country, right?
Indiana has big chunks of the history we learned in school (well, you know, those of us who learned things in school, anyway): splitting off from the Northwest Territory, Tecumseh, the War of 1812, George Rogers Clark, William Henry Harrison - you can't avoid Indiana if you're studying the history of this country.
But it's weird. You, as a state, have this weird love of taking control of people's bodies away from them. It's like some kind of weird compulsion: "You are cattle! You will breed when and where we tell you! Und Indiana vill grow strong!!"
I mean, crap! What the hell is wrong with you people?
In 1907, Governor Frank Hanly, a good Republican, made Indiana the first state to practice eugenics when he signed the Compulsory Sterilization Law “to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists.”
The next governor, who was apparently less of a fan of fascism, stopped it two years later, and the law was found unconstitutional when it finally made it to the Indiana Supreme Court 14 years later! (the wheels of "justice" don't exactly spin quickly in the Hoosier state).
This flourishing of freedom and American values apparently made the people of Indiana cranky, because six years later, they pushed through an almost identical bill, which applied to "inmates of state institutions, who are insane, idiotic, imbecile, feebleminded, and epileptic, and who by the laws of heredity are the probable potential parents of socially inadequate offspring likewise afflicted." A law which stayed in effect in Indiana until 1974.
Despite their efforts to breed die Herrenrasse clear up to the Disco Era, Dan Quayle was still born in Indianapolis. Which tells you just how effective these policies actually are.
And now they're at it again. Republicans in Indiana have introduced a bill to make abortions illegal after 20 weeks. And when state Rep. Gail Riecken (D-Of Course) introduced an amendment to exempt "women who became pregnant due to rape or incest, or women for whom pregnancy threatens their life or could cause serious and irreversible physical harm," it was voted down 42 to 54.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Your baby is going to kill you? Tough shit. Hope you got a will." Interesting definition of Right to Life.
Apparently, according to state Rep. Eric Turner (R-Fuck You), this amendment would give women a "giant loophole" and they would just lie about getting raped. Or, presumably, dying.
(So, Eric Turner is a big supporter of incestuous families - I wonder what that says about his home life?)
I mean, there's really no excuse for this. Indiana ranks as the thirteenth smartest state, which... you know... top third, right? Good solid B average. And you've got Notre Dame... OK, admittedly a bad choice, being a Catholic university and all. But there's still Purdue! You've got education in your state! Why are you trying to go back to the dark ages?
But more than that, why is it that crazy people tend to rise to the top in Indiana? I mean, Michael Jackson, who single-handedly set out to destroy pop music forever, was born and raised in Gary, Indiana.
John Dillinger, gangster, bank robber, and legendary cocksman, was born in Indianapolis. Ten years later and 50 miles southwest, Jimmy Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, and we still don't know where that fucker ended up.
There's just something about Indiana that makes crazy people end up getting into positions of power.
Like Carlos F. Lam, the Indiana prosecutor who ended up resigning after his advice to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker became public: Lam suggested Walker should fake an attack on himself to "discredit the unions." (To his credit, how was he to know that Walker had already discarded that idea because it might have backfired on him?)
And then, just because Indiana lawmakers hadn't embarrassed themselves enough, we get to find out about Ms. Bei Bei Shuai.
The facts of this case are heartbreaking. On December 23, 2010, Shuai, a 34-year-old pregnant woman who was suffering from a major depressive disorder, attempted to take her own life. Friends found her in time and persuaded her to get help. Six days later, Shuai underwent cesarean surgery and delivered a premature newborn girl who, tragically, died four days later.
On March 14, 2011, Shuai was arrested, jailed, and charged with murder and attempted feticide...
The state is misconstruing the criminal laws in this case in such a way that any pregnant woman could be prosecuted for doing (or attempting) anything that may put her health at risk, regardless of the outcome of her pregnancy.
That's right: according to the ways the laws are being applied here, the state of Indiana believes that any pregnant woman who smokes or lives with a smoker, who works long hours on her feet, who is overweight, who doesn't exercise, or who fails to get regular prenatal care, is a felon.
We need a new word for this crime. I'd like to suggest "Indianacide."
So, we're opposed to big government. Unless we're allowed to use it to monitor every action of every pregnant woman in the state? Is that how this works?
But hey, say what you want about Indiana, at least the trains run on time, right?
So, I'm at work clearing out my email the other day, and I find a piece of spam; somebody else's copy is here, if anybody cares. Although theirs was apparently addressed directly to them, and mine started out "Dear Pro-Life Friend" (which is two - two - two lies in one).
Now, I have no idea how they got my work email address - I'm fastidious about not using it for anything but business. They've got rules about that sort of thing. Nonetheless, it turns up on somebody's mailing list every so often. And since they'd gone to the trouble of tracking me down, it seemed only right that I should respond to it. ________________
Dear Ms Musgrave,
I realize that you probably didn’t actually write the fundraising letter I received, but it has a facsimile of your signature on it, so you get the blame.
I also realize that you seem to refer to yourself as “Congresswoman.” Well, I’m sorry, but you aren’t one anymore. And as far as I’m concerned, six years representing Colorado (where I’ve never lived) doesn’t entitle you to a lifetime honorific. I realize that it’s a sign of respect to refer to former Congressfolk by their title, but respect, really, has to be earned (and let’s not go there).
Plus, this is America: we threw off the yoke of our aristocracy a couple of hundred years ago. So, for any number of reasons, I think you should probably drop the title.
I also apologize for my delay in responding, but I’m not clear how you got my work email address, but, since I do, in fact, have a job, I have to access this from home, in my own time, to respond. Rules, y’know.
Now, let’s start with the fact that you’re being a spokesmodel for the Susan B. Anthony List, which has misappropriated the name of a staunch feminist and claimed that she was pro-life. Since there are no writings or speeches that can be reliably attributed to her regarding abortion, it’s a bit of an unfounded leap to decide Ms Anthony’s politics for her, isn’t it?
(Of course, I guess that “unfounded leaps” are a specialty of yours. For example, your support for “abstinence only” education, as if AO actually works: you should ask Bristol Palin how it worked out for her. Or your apparent belief that a woman without a functioning brain, like Terri Schiavo, still qualifies as “alive” in any functional sense of the word.)
Now, I understand that you can’t seem to stop your knees from jerking wildly whenever anyone mentions abortion, but your effort to defund Planned Parenthood seems a little bit excessive.
After all, over 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services go to preventative healthcare for low-income women, like STD treatment, Pap tests, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and other healthcare that they wouldn’t be getting otherwise.
The most telling argument would have to be that, without the birth control that they offer low-income women, these women would be more likely to get pregnant, which would lead to more abortions. So, by trying to defund Planned Parenthood, you are probably causing more abortions than you’d be preventing.
On the other hand, you’ve never been a big advocate for birth control, have you? Aside from being openly opposed to allowing "Plan B" emergency contraceptive to be available when needed, you actually had the gall to insert an amendment into the "Runaway, Homeless, and Missing Children Protection Act" making it a crime to allow runaways access to contraception - after all, it's right there in the Bible. "Honor thy father and mother." So if they're rude enough to run away from home, they deserve to get pregnant, don't they?
Ms Musgrave, you're a short-sighted, partisan fool who doesn't bother to consider the repercussions of her actions. Isn't it time to leave the public eye, and maybe go hide in a cave and wait for the Rapture?
_________________
Editor’s note: By the way, we all need to stand up for Planned Parenthood.
Well, our noble GOP congresscritters are certainly showing their idiot colors since they reconvened this month.
See, in their continuing efforts to do anything except get jobs for American workers, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced a bill, which currently has 174 cosponsors, called the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" which Rep Boehner (R-Sunkist) has called "one of our highest legislative priorities."
Because, you know, fuck the two to five million people who haven't had a job in over two years and no longer qualify for government relief (oh, and by the way, these are people who employers won't even look at any more). Those bastards'll be dead soon enough. And even if they survive, they aren't gonna vote, right?
So this New Jersey nimrod threw his antiabortion bill together without paying attention to a couple of little details. Fortunately, Nick Baumann from Mother Jones Magazine took the time to poke it with a stick, and discovered that it's kind of an abortion all on its own.
Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to "forcible rape." This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion. (Smith's spokesman did not respond to a call and an email requesting comment.)
Given that the bill also would forbid the use of tax benefits to pay for abortions, that 13-year-old's parents wouldn't be allowed to use money from a tax-exempt health savings account (HSA) to pay for the procedure. They also wouldn't be able to deduct the cost of the abortion or the cost of any insurance that paid for it as a medical expense.
...Since 1976, federal law has prohibited the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, and when the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman. But since last year, the anti-abortion side has become far more aggressive in challenging this compromise. They have been pushing to outlaw tax deductions for insurance plans that cover abortion, even if the abortion coverage is never used.
(...)
Other types of rapes that would no longer be covered by the exemption include rapes in which the woman was drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, and many date rapes... As for the incest exception, the bill would only allow federally funded abortions if the woman is under 18.
Yeah, well, even a compromise like that might get killed at the local level. The Arkansas Senate passed a bill to prohibit federal funding for abortions offered through an insurance exchange except where the life of the mother is at risk.
The bill's sponsor, Republican Senator Cecile Bledsoe, ignored calls to amend the bill to cover rape and incest.
Sweet Jesus Christ on a telephone poll, it's now officially time for all satirists to hang it up. Reality has just made it redundant to say things like "Well, in Arkansas, if you outlaw incest and rape, the state just disappears."
I don't know where to go after that. Except to ask if anybody's bothered to trace the family trees of Cecile and her "husband" James, just to see if it takes two generations before they intertwine, or three.
But hey, let's ignore every other problem in the country, and get back to making abortion illegal again! (Ignore that woman behind the curtain with the coat hanger!)
I'm just curious, though. Could somebody please check this list of co-sponsors, and see just how many ran on "the gub'mint is stickin' their nose inta' our lives too dang much!" It might be interesting to see them try to reconcile those two positions.
You know, sometimes, your junkmail can provide hours of fun. Or at least brief moments of humor.
For example, I get emails from a group calling themselves "Americans for Life," a particularly humorless bunch of irony-deprived pedants (or at least one pedant – I have no evidence that there’s anybody in this group except for Jonathan Ball, the purported author of all these emails).
Anyway, today’s message from Mr Ball is a fascinating note entitled
The Depravity of Planned Parenthood
Now, think about that statement for just a second. Apparently, family planning is depraved; you should never take control of your own life or responsibility for your breeding habits – God wants you to breed like dogs in heat, dropping a litter of puppies every year.
And to be honest, in the end, that's exactly what they believe. Why do you think that so many fundie families involve eight or ten kids?
Dear Bill,
As Christmas approaches, I find myself full of joy and appreciation of the many blessings God has bestowed upon me and my family.
He always starts off friendly, but it invariably goes downhill quickly.
But an email I received recently has greatly upset me.
An Americans for Life supporter informed me recently of Planned Parenthood’s Christmas campaign, “Choice on Earth.”
Well, it’s a cute marketing campaign. Why does this upset you? Because their PR people are better than yours? (And yes, the semi-random use of underlining is entirely a stylistic choice on his part. It’s like “Underscore Tourette’s” or something.)
You see, this Christianity-mocking campaign hopes to spread their message of "choice" by seeking donations to make abortion more available in 2011.
In years past, Planned Parenthood even sold “Choice on Earth” Christmas cards and t-shirts as a fundraising gimmick.
This has left me deeply disturbed.
Aw, Jonny, I think you’re giving entirely too much credit to this email - I'm thinking you were disturbed wa-a-ay before this.
The Abortion Lobby would have you and I believe that the best choice for poor, unwed teenage mothers is to end the life of their child rather than facing hardship.
That it is better for these unborn children to be killed than face a rough childhood.
Well... yes, actually. Don’t you want people to live by the words of the Bible?
“And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 4:2-3)
Oh, sorry, was that rude?
However, you and I have to look no further than the birth of Christ, the very reason for the celebration of Christmas, to see why every child, no matter the parent’s situation, deserves a chance at life.
You see, Mary was young and unwed at the time of her pregnancy. She was forced to give birth to Jesus in a stable and use a feeding trough as a cradle. This was far from ideal.
How could a child born into such a situation ever grow up to be anything worthwhile?
It’s a fascinating argument. Of course, one counter position might be that in April of 1889, a child was born to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl. But that might be considered an unreasonable attitude. Plus, it's in direct violation of Godwin’s Law, and I'm already in trouble with the Internet Police. So we’ll just terminate that thought; let it die a’borning, so to speak.
Ball goes on for a while after that, yammering about the sanctity of life (something rarely found in nature, but we’ll move on), and then to his main point (and again, it’s underlined, just because he can).
Planned Parenthood must be defunded to force the closure of as many abortion clinics as possible.
Which openly ignores the fact that only three percent of Planned Parenthood’s annual budget covers abortion; the other 97% goes toward other health and reproductive needs for poor and underserved citizens. But that might be too much honesty for Mr Ball to handle.
And then, of course, he begs a lot; there are three separate links to donate money to this fine organization scattered through the last four paragraphs. Really nothing new - these guys are rarely known for their imagination.
