Time to Go on Offense

Free, safe abortion on demand. No restrictions, no delays, no questions. Free, safe abortion on demand.

Enough with this defensive shit.

The Nation:

But the Komen reversal, like the defeat of Mississippi’s Fetal Personhood Amendment this past fall, while sweet, was ultimately a defensive victory. The campaign succeeded not in advancing reproductive healthcare but in preventing a loss of such services. It was fueled not by an ambitious vision but by outrage ....

SNIP


No one outside feminist health listservs even questions the Hyde Amendment anymore. After President Obama enshrined the principle of Hyde in his landmark healthcare law in 2009—the price he had to pay for the support of anti-choice Democrats—women’s rights groups tried to jump-start a campaign to repeal Hyde; but they haven’t managed to do more than lob a few petitions in Congress’s direction. Notwithstanding the impressive power of online feminists on display in the Komen fight, pro-choicers lack the votes in Congress to make advances. According to NARAL, staunch anti-choicers outnumber pro-choicers 46-40 in the Senate; in the House, the split favors anti-choicers 246-155. In many state legislatures the picture is similarly bleak, paving the way for legislation like the anti-choice bill that passed the Virginia legislature while the Komen furor raged; it requires that women seeking abortions undergo an ultrasound and be offered the chance to view the image or listen to the fetal heartbeat before proceeding.

After Republicans swept into Congress in 2010 promising to focus on the nation’s economic health, they turned around and focused instead on women’s health—undermining it, that is. Pro-choicers have fought furiously, with some success, to block their attempts to roll back hard-won rights. If the grassroots energy that brought Komen in line can work similar magic on Congress—by electing pro-choice candidates and keeping up the pressure after the election—then real progress might actually be possible.

And it's going to have start in the states.

Digby:

These are from the Washington Post, via Mike Konzcal:




The left map shows laws restricting abortion in 2011. The light blue is some changes, medium blue is substantial changes, dark blue is major changes. The map on the right has Democratic control of government in blue, GOP control of government in red and yellow indicates divided government. The correlation is obvious.

In 2011, states passed 92 laws restricting abortion access, more than double the restrictions passed in any other year.

This all launched into high gear after the allegedly libertarian Tea Party election of 2010. If one believes that the Supreme Court is influenced by changes in the states in these matters, one can only assume that they are seeing those changes on the map as well.