This is why we vote Democratic

The legal business that repug Matt Bevin spent four years trying - illegally and unconstitutionally - to destroy is free to provide medical services to women, thanks to our new Democratic governor.

Don't you ever try to tell me that there's no difference between the parties.

From the Courier:

Planned Parenthood now has permission to provide abortions at its clinic in downtown Louisville, making it the second facility in Kentucky to offer the procedure at a time when providers in some states are closing clinics under pressure from anti-abortion laws.

The decision by the administration of Gov. Andy Beshear was hailed by Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky as a victory for women’s health and reproductive rights, saying the decision allows it to provide “­a full range of reproductive health care.”

“This week, Kentucky went from one abortion provider to two, which is a significant win for reproductive health care in the state,” said Chris Charbonneau, Planned Parenthood’s CEO for Kentucky and Indiana. “All people in Kentucky deserve to make their own pregnancy decisions and to have access to safe and legal abortion.”

But the decision is sure to infuriate abortion opponents, including Republicans in the legislature who have pushed through more than half a dozen bills to limit or ban abortion in the past three years, though some have been blocked by court challenges.

Just this week, Kentucky abortion opponents rallied outside a federal courthouse in Cincinnati, where judges with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on whether a 2018 Kentucky law to restrict abortions is constitutional.

SNIP

The decision to grant the approval follows a four-year fight by Planned Parenthood with former Gov. Matt Bevin, an anti-abortion Republican whose administration had twice denied it a license to provide abortions.

But in January, the administration of Beshear — a Democrat who supports the right to abortion — rescinded that denial and announced that officials would allow Planned Parenthood to pursue approval. Beshear took office Dec. 10.

Only One Thing Will Stop Bevin's War on Women

Everybody getting the fuck out November 5 to VOTE.

From the Courier:

The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services has denied an abortion license for Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky.

The pro-choice group announced the decision in a release late Friday night.

“While Governor Bevin is once again on the wrong side of history, we will continue to fight this decision and the slew of unpopular decisions that take away reproductive health care and abortion access in the Commonwealth," PPINK CEO Chris Charbonneau said in a statement. "This decision shows the true motive, which is to purposefully place undue burdens on pregnant Kentuckians. Shame on Gov. Bevin and CHFS Secretary Adam Meier.”

The release went on to say that "Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) has once again weaponized a regulatory process to deny an abortion facility license to Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky (PPINK). ...

"... CHFS continues to refuse to comply with the court’s orders — its decision today is a blatant attempt to take the ongoing proceedings outside of the courts and bypass the authority of U.S. District Court Judge Greg Stivers. CHFS’s baseless denial of PPINK’s license will not stand."

Stivers previously ordered the state to expedite its review of the license Planned Parenthood was seeking to provide abortions at its Louisville clinic and report back to him no later than Aug.19 with a decision.

For now, EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville remains as the only abortion clinic in Kentucky.

Matt Bevin: Women Are Sub-Human Incubators

Because that's what you really mean when you deny women bodily autonomy.  When you insist that they endure forced birth.  When you mandate that their doctors rape them with foreign objects.  Not Missouri: Kentucky.

From the Propaganda Office (corrections in italics):

Gov. Matt Bevin's legal team this week fuiled a response opposing EMW Women's Surgical Center's petition for rehearing in a recent federal court case that resulted in a major pro-life anti-woman victory for the Commonwealth woman-hating freakazoids.

In contrast, Attorney General Andy Beshear refused to say anything in defense of the law, arguing simply that he should not have to be involved refused to defend a blatantly un-constitutional law that violates women's 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the law, and women's human rights to bodily autonomy.

In April, the anti-woman freakazoids on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of House Bill 2 (2017). HB 2 requires an abortion provider to provide mothers with an ultrasound and a description of what it depicts, as well as the opportunity to hear the fetal heartbeat, before she chooses to terminate her pregnancy. force a hard plastic untrasound wand into a woman's body against her will.


The Louisville abortion clinic is asking the Court to rehear the case en banc (before the entire bench) in a desperate attempt to undermine the Kentucky law, which passed with the support of more than 87 percent of state legislators. courageous move to protect the last place in the entire Commonwealth where women can receive health care that respects them as women and as human beings.

The Americans who respect a woman's bodily autonomy - consistently 60 to 80 percent of the population - are going to have to stop pretending that there is some kind of compromise or middle ground with the wingnut freakazoids on the issue of female bodily autonomy.

To do that, we are going to have to stop mealy-mouthing on abortion and start saying - no, screaming - flat out that:

• The multi-celled object that grows inside a uterus is not a baby, a child, a precious or unborn anything.  Until it can breathe air outside the uterus, it most closely resembles a tumor.
  
• Until it does breathe air outside the uterus, it is, indeed, a part of the woman's body.
   
• Like a tumor, it steals food and energy from the woman's body, weakening and debilitating her, and subjecting her to high risk of injury and death if she undergoes forced birth.
  
• Only the woman is qualified to decide whether to take that risk or quickly,  easily and safely remove the tumor.
  
• Therefore, abortion is nobody's fucking business.
  
• Women will not have civil or human rights in this country until we have Abortion on Demand.
  
• That means no restrictions, no bullshit requirements, no questions asked.
  
• That means federally-funded abortion clinics on every fucking street corner in America and fuck you if you don't like it, it's none of your fucking business.

They're not coming for just Roe vs. Wade.  Griswold vs. Connecticut (right to contraception) is just a stepping stone.  They're gonna steamroll over Brown vs. Board (unsegretated schools.) They won't be satisfied until they've repealed the Equal Protection of the 14th Amendment.

Because only then will only rich, white, straight, conservative, christian, republican men have any rights in the country that won't be America any more.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

One:  Nothing inside a woman's body that is not outside that body and breathing air is a baby, a child, an infant, a precious life, an unborn fucking anything.

Two:  It's a clump of cells, a fetus, a tumor, and none of your fucking business.

Three: Until a single legislative body in the United States of America passes a single fucking law regulating anything a man does with his own body, no legislative body in the United States of America has any right to pass a single fucking law regulating anything a woman does with her own body.

Four:  It is none of your fucking business.

Five: Abortion is a simple, safe, effective medical procedure, and none of your fucking business.

Six: Abortion. On. Demand.  Free of Charge. No Questions Asked.  No Requirements. Available to Everyone, 24-7, on Every Fucking Street Corner in America.

Seven: Because it is None of Your Fucking Business.

Eight: Questioning, much less challenging, the above facts, should result in felony charges of Violating Civil Rights, International Human Rights Violations and Felony Conspiracy to Enslave Female Citizens.

Nine:  Attempts to restrict a woman's bodily autonomy have nothing to do with pregnancy, abortion, childbirth, babies, children, or morality.  They are about denying civil and human rights to women.  They are about restricting civil and human rights to white, straight, xian, rich, conservative, repug  men.

Ten: The rest of us are subhuman, fit only for slavery.

Disagree?  Fuck off and die in a fire.

Still think making abortions illegal will lead to a child-happy paradise?  Yeah, you're a moron.

Who Gets Real Rights

Wonkette commenter divegirl:

Support the Black Women Who Are Protecting Abortion

Everywhere you look for the Real Resistance, the fight on the ground to protect women's reproductive rights, Black Women are in the vanguard.  It's way past time white women stepped the fuck up and supported them in the best way white women can: with MONEY.

Crooks and Liars:

Winstead is co-creator of The Daily Show, and (to me) even more importantly, is founder of Lady Parts Justice League. As the sole white woman on Joy's panel discussion of the simultaneously psychotic and pathetic Republican march towards eliminating the protections of Roe v. Wade, Winstead offered the following advice to people wondering how they can help.

I've been to every single one of these [states,] I've been to Alabama four times, Georgia twice, Mississippi five times, Kentucky twice. the activists on the ground, and this is super important to realize, is that the activists on the ground are doing incredible work and a lot of this work legislatively, the abortion funds helping poor women are run by tremendously bad-@ss, if I can, women of color. So when these things happen, when people are like, "What can I do, what can I do?" the first thing you can do is just Google that state and find out where their abortion fund is, find out where those reproductive justice organizations are on the ground and donate to them first. Support them first.

Do we hear that, white ladies? Black women are already ON THIS. They have already mobilized, and have been for YEARS. Because white people did this to Black women FIRST. We have been for centuries. Name me a moment - just a MOMENT in American history when Black women had total control over their reproductive lives. I'll wait. (No, I won't — I have things to do.) White women are so blown away by the Handmaid's Tale, and meanwhile Black women are saying, "We've been living this for centuries."

It's Not About the Fetus

Down with Tyranny:

Trumpie "judge" orders KY doctors to rape their patients with foreign object

Penetrating a woman with a transvaginal ultrasound wand against her will is rape.  And that's before we get to the requirement of lying.

And of course this asshole is one of the wingnut freakazoid fanatics Mitch McConnell has been forcing through the Senate against the will of the people.

Straight-up authoritarian torture.

From the Courier:

A federal appeals panel has upheld a 2017 Kentucky law requiring doctors who perform abortions to first perform an ultrasound and attempt to show and describe the image to the patient, as well as play an audible heartbeat of the fetus.

In a 2-1 vote, with Judge John Bush writing for the majority, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday struck down a lower court ruling that said the law known as House Bill 2 was unconstitutional because it violates the free speech rights of physicians.

Bush, in his opinion, rejected the opponents' argument that forcing the physician to perform an ultrasound that may not be necessary and describe in detail the results to the patient is a violation of free speech rights.

"We hold that HB 2 provides relevant information," Bush wrote. "The information conveyed by an ultrasound image, its description and the audible beating fetal heart gives a patient a greater knowledge of the unborn life inside her. This also inherently provides the patient with more knowledge about the effect of an abortion procedure: it shows her what or whom she is consenting to terminate."

Bush, of Louisville, was appointed by President Donald Trump.

But in a blistering dissent, Judge Bernice Bouie Donald, a Tennessee native appointed to the appeals court by former President Barack Obama, said she found the reasoning to be deeply flawed and a setback for the freedom of physicians and their patients.

More: Attorneys general across the US taking sides in Kentucky abortion case

"I am gravely concerned with the precedent the majority creates today," she said. "Its decision opens the floodgates to states in this Circuit to manipulate doctor-patient discourse solely for ideological reasons."

She added: "HB 2 is a restriction on speech that has no basis in the practice of medicine."

Gov. "What women?  They're just incubators" Bevin hailed the decision, of course, as "victory for life." Because the only lives that matter are white, straight, freakazoid, rich, repug men.

Protecting Babies

Via Juanita Jean:

Lege Declares KY Women Sub-Human

UPDATE Below.

From the Herald:

Within minutes after the Kentucky Senate approved a bill Wednesday that restricts abortions, the American Civil Liberties Union said it will file a lawsuit against it on behalf of the only remaining abortion provider in the state.

The Senate gave final passage to House Bill 5 on a 32-4 vote and sent it to Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.

Bevin indicated on social media that he will sign it into law. “Bring it!” said Bevin. “Kentucky will always fight for life... Always!”

But never for the life of actual adult, living, breathing women.  To Bevin, tumors have rights, but women are just incubators.  

As for actual living, breathing children, Bevin has stripped away their healthcare in his Medicaid destruction, condemned them to death by freezing waiting for school buses, and accused their teachers of abandoning them to rapists and molesters.

The bill would take effect immediately upon his signature.

It basically bars a woman from having an abortion if she decided to have one because of a fetal diagnosis. It also would ban abortions based on the sex, race, national origin or ancestry of the fetus.

After the Senate vote, the ACLU said in a release it will file a lawsuit on behalf of EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville, the only licensed center in Kentucky offering abortion services.

“Decisions about whether to end a pregnancy must be made by the woman and her family. But this law takes the decision away from them and hands it over to politicians,” Brigitte Amiri, deputy director with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a release.

“Kentucky women must be able to have private conversations with their health care providers and must be able to decide whether to have an abortion. We see this legislation for exactly what it is — part of a campaign to prevent a woman from obtaining an abortion if she needs one — and we won’t stand for it.”

Heather Gatnarek, staff attorney at the ACLU of Kentucky, said passage of the bill “represents a thinly veiled effort of the Kentucky General Assembly to advance their anti-abortion agenda under the guise of an anti-discrimination bill.

“This law will do nothing to improve the lives of Kentuckians with disabilities. In fact, a number of bills that would have addressed health care, housing and updated anti-discrimination protections were not even given a hearing of this legislation session.”

Crystal Staley, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Andy Beshear, who is a Democratic candidate for governor this year, said Wednesday night Beshear “thinks this legislative session was an opportunity to come together and get things done on jobs, the opioid crisis and protecting access to health car

“Unfortunately, we have instead seen the legislature focus on issues that divide us. A challenge to this legislation has already been announced and he believes the challenge will be successful in court.”

18 Kentucky "Democrats" voted for this abomination. Haven't confirmed names yet, but when I do I will post them.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article227668719.html#story

This isn't about "life," it ain't about women's health and it sure as fuck ain't about helping children, who by the way, don't exist in any uterus.

UPDATE: The companion "fetal heartbeat" bill that outlaws abortion in Kentucky, has been blocked by a federal judge.  Give ALL your monies to the ACLU of Kentucky right now.  It is the only thing protecting civilization from Bevin the Hun right now.

Alabama "judge" gives excised tumor right to sue doctor

You read that right.  A dangerous* clump of cells and a non-consensual sperm donor have more rights over a woman's body than the woman herself.

Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist:

This is the logical bottom of the slippery slope created when the government says a clump of cells is a person: A judge is allowing an Alabama man and an embryo to sue the people that made it possible for a girl he impregnated to get an abortion. It’s the first time an embryo has ever been treated as a human being with legal rights in a court of law.

The lawsuit is over the “wrongful death” of the embryo (wrongly called a “fetus” in some articles and really wrongly called a “baby” in others). Ryan Magers (below) says he wanted the 16-year-old high schooler he impregnated to have “Baby Roe” (even though it’s not a baby and it doesn’t deserve a name), but she decided against it. 

Magers and The Embryo are now suing the Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives in Huntsville as well as a(n unknown) pharmaceutical company that made the abortion pill taken by the girl. 

Rather than toss out the absurd lawsuit altogether, Madison County Probate Judge Frank Barger gave it the green light to move forward with Magers representing the embryo’s “estate.”

Seriously, you gotta see what this guy looks like.

That means a six-week-old embryo — a clump of cells the size of a pea — is now legally going after the people who “killed” it.

Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, tweeted Tuesday that the Alabama lawsuit is a “very scary case.” It asserts that a woman’s rights are “third in line,” after the rights of a man who impregnates her and the fetus she aborts, she said.

None of this is surprising, because it’s precisely what anti-abortion legislators were hoping for when they passed the state’s “personhood” law. They want this case to be challenged so they can keep appealing until Brett Kavanaugh can force women to give birth whenever an unemployed teenager pressures them into sex. Jill Filipovic explains the potential ripple effects this case could have:

A “pro-life” victory here would give free rein to men like Ryan Magers, who allegedly coerced his teenage girlfriend into sex, allowing them even more control over those same girls’ reproductive lives and, by extension, their futures. A great many women and girls have sex with men who are abusive, controlling, or simply not men who they want to be tied to for the rest of their lives. A “pro-life” victory here would give any man jurisdiction over any woman with whom he has had sex.

In this case, the girl was pressured into sex (though her family is not calling it rape) and chose to end the pregnancy early. A judge now thinks that’s all it takes for an embryo to sue an abortion clinic.

Magers, by impregnating a girl who didn’t want his baby, now has the power to shut down methods of abortion for women everywhere, a move that would force many of them to resort to unsafe and illegal actions to procure something that’s a routine procedure in most other parts of the developed world.

Congratulations, “pro-lifers.” Your dream of ruining women’s lives is inching closer.

* the death rate for abortions is 0.6 in 100,000.  The death rate for failing to excise that tumor and suffering pregnancy is 8.8 in 100,000 - 10 times more dangerous than abortion. 

How have your Repug state legislators ruined your life today?

We were warned.  The late, great, lamented Molly Ivins warned us. When it comes to daily life, it's our state legislators who have the most control over what we can do and whether we can do it safely.

Take Kentucky's General Assembly.  Please.

Since repugs took over the state house in 2016 for full control of the legislative and executive branches, they have been systematically dismantling the structures of civilization Kentucky progressives have managed to erect.

• slashing already minimal benefits for the poor, sick and disabled.

• denying the humanity of vagina-havers and condemning them to a slow, painful death of sepsis after an illegal abortion or a lifetime of forced birth. 

• canceling all state incentives for renewable energy and slapping a giant annual tax on the owners of electric cars.

• eliminating all background checks, training and permit fees for concealed carry.  Now you can get shot and killed for failing to genuflect to the Pumpkin Traitor anytime, anywhere in the Commonwealth. 

• exempting the governor and legislators from being subject to the courts, in case any dogooding libs try to sue their motherfucking asses for all of that unconstitutional bullshit.

and, of course, the coup de grace:

• hiding from the public all records of how and why legislators are fucking us over.

Kentucky repugs did this.  But Kentucky Democrats are letting them do it.  All of this and much, much worse.

"Prove It"

Robyn Pennachia with yet another knock-you-back jeremiad against malignant stupidity that gets people killed, concluding:

How many times do we have to learn the lesson that there are consequences to just letting people have their stupid beliefs? Damage to the environment, measles outbreaks, idiots showing up to pizza parlors with assault rifles, assholes assaulting immigrants because they think all immigrants are murderers, people opposing social welfare programs because of weird lies they have been told about the kind of people who use those programs, people opposing affirmative action while screaming about "quotas," which for the love of god have been illegal in this country since 1978 -- not to mention Fox news anchors spreading listeria, probably, because they don't believe in germs and therefore do not wash their hands. 

There are far too many problems in this country that could be solved with a simple "prove it."

Abortion By Mail Is Here

And just in fucking time.  Details below, but first,  KY AG Andy Beshear again warns the repug state legislature that they are freakazoid misogynist assholes violating the state and U.S. Constitutions.

Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear sent the legislature’s top two leaders a letter Thursday informing them that he thinks a bill in this year’s General Assembly that would ban abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected is unconstitutional.

Not that they give a shit.  They have been passing unconstitutional forced-birth bills since literally the day after Roe was decided 46 years ago."

All together now:  It's impossible to abort a "baby," "child," "innocent life" or "preborn" anything, because they do not exist inside a woman's uterus.  Inside a uterus is a mass of cells that is none of your fucking business. 

Maybe clinics have a sign outside:  "No children were harmed in the performance of this abortion."

But the ridiculous "heartbeat" bill is not the only forced-birth bill in the KY lege.  From Senator Reggie Thomas:

Senate Bill 50, which passed 30-6, would require that the dispensing of certain prescriptions be reported to Vital Statistics. The report on these drugs, which can be used to induce abortion, would be made available on the cabinet’s website. With so many important health issues facing Kentuckians, I do not understand why we want to use our scarce resources in this manner. These drugs are used for many procedures other than abortion. They are used to dilate a woman’s cervix to insert an IUD to prevent pregnancy; they are used to facilitate a miscarriage, and they are used to accelerate childbirth.  I opposed this bill.  

Fear not, however.  Abortion by mail is here.


From the Washington Monthly:

Contrary to what Sen. Susan Collins would have you believe, the addition of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court means that it is only a matter of time before Roe v. Wade is overturned and the legality of women’s access to abortion is left to the states. That was made obvious by the support Kavanaugh got from court evangelicals and other anti-abortion activists. Conservatives might not go there immediately, opting instead to continue to chip away at the ruling. But there is no doubt about where this is all headed.

As that reality sets in, it is important to keep in mind that a lot has changed since Roe v. Wade was decided back in 1973. The idea that its demise will return this country to the days of back alley and bloody coat hanger abortions is something that should be soundly rejected, because science has provided us with alternatives. That’s why I found this report from Olga Khazan to be extremely important.

For years, an organization called Women on Web has given women a way to perform their own medication-induced abortions at home. The organization would, remotely, do online consultations, fill prescriptions, and ship pills that trigger miscarriages to women who live in countries where abortion is illegal. Several studies have shown that the service is safe.

For American women who’ve wanted pills, though, there’s been one major problem: Women on Web wouldn’t ship to the United States. American women could (and do) instead search online for abortion pills, but some of the medicines and pharmacies they’ve found have been less than reliable. Now Women on Web’s founder, a doctor named Rebecca Gomperts, has launched a new service that she says is just as safe as Women on Web, and it does ship to the United States. The cost is $95, but the website says the service will try to help women who can’t pay.

Just like Women on Web, the new service, Aid Access, will screen women for their eligibility to take the pills—they should not be more than nine weeks pregnant—through an online process. (If the pills are taken later, they are less likely to work.) Gomperts will herself fill each woman’s prescription for misoprostol and mifepristone, which together are about 97 percent effective in causing an abortion within the first trimester and already account for a third of all abortions in the United States. She then sends the prescriptions to an Indian pharmacy she trusts, and it ships the pills to women at their homes in the United States.

Need legal help because your woman-hating state legislature has made self-abortion a crime?  An abortion legal hotline is here for you.

Think Progress:

Purvi Patel was sentenced to 20 years in prison for allegedly terminating her own pregnancy with medication she ordered online. By the time the Indiana Court of Appeals overturned the feticide conviction in 2016, Patel had been incarcerated for three years.

Patel is one of at least 20 people who was arrested or investigated for a self-induced abortion since 1973.

“We don’t want anybody else to have to suffer that fate,” said Jill Adams, chief strategist of the Self-Induced Abortion (SIA) Legal Team.

The growing hostility to abortion rights could mean an uptick in arrests, and so lawyers with the SIA Legal Team formally launched a free, confidential helpline and website on Tuesday to help anyone who’s criminalized for “self-managing,” or performing an abortion themselves.

 I'm giving the last word to Robyn Pennachia at Wonkette, whose posts on the forced birth motherfuckers are treasures to be read in full and passed on to everyone.

These statements are not made out of a belief that would happen, or concern for babies who might not get to experience the joy of taking one breath at birth and then dying from their crushed lungs. They are made out of a desire to paint women and their doctors and those who support abortion as horrible, cruel and selfish monsters who kill simply for the joy of killing, like so many lady Ted Bundys -- and they're willing to put parents through hell in order to make that point.

 Oh, yeah, one more thing. Andy Beshear is running to beat Gov. Women Are Incubators Bevin.

Catlick Pieces of Shit From KY Show Their Racist Asses in D.C.

UPDATE Below.

Yeah, tell me again what a positive force in the world is religion. 

From Crooks and Liars:

So yesterday this happened at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. MAGA-wearing prep school boys taunting a Native Elder is pretty much symbolic of this entire disgusting era of Trump.

(Also the continuation of 500 years of Catlick abuse of Native people worldwide.)

Shameful.

Details are unclear, but it appears that an entire class from a private, all male boys school (Covington Catholic High School in Covington, Kentucky) were the culprits. Apparently they were bussed in to attend the March for Life event, the same thing the Pences attended.

Source: Indian Country Today

Native Twitter has gone ablaze as a Native American elder singing the AIM Song in Washington DC during the Indigenous Peoples March was ridiculed, taunted and mocked by a group of non-Native youth.

The video, which was posted by YouTube account holder KC NOLAND, was also screen captured and shared on other social media accounts with views shortly gaining tens of thousands of views.

The elder is Nathan Phillips, an Omaha elder who is also a Vietnam Veteran and former director of the Native Youth Alliance. He is also a keeper of a sacred pipe and holds an annual ceremony honoring Native American veterans in the Arlington National Cemetery.

 Click over to watch the disgusting videos.

UPDATE: Apologies and expulsions, my ass.  This is nowhere near enough.

“the behavior is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.”

Are you FUCKING kidding me?  Those kids were there for the "March for Life."  You know, the one that advocates forced birth because uterine tumors are more important than the adult women who want to be free of them. The school took them there to teach them that women are just incubators.  Not really fully human.

Just like the Native they abused.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/article224806590.html#storylink=cpy

Repug Policy

Down with Tyranny:

Repugs/ Freakazoids Employ Lies, Mythology in Latest Abortion Case

There has never, in the millenia-long history of abortion, been a baby killed. Not a child, not an infant, not an "innocent life."  All of those things - babies, children, infants, "innocent life" have the same characteristic in common: they breathe air.  Tissue that is removed from a woman's body does not breathe air.  It is not "alive." It is not a human being.  It is tissue rejected by its biological host, also known as a "woman," an adult human being who does breathe air.

But those scientific facts get in the way of freakazoids and conservatards exercising control over women's bodies, denying them bodily autonomy and the humanity of sexual freedom.

So they lie, and make up stories, and cite fiction composed by bronze-age desert goatfuckers, and appeal to the myth of an invisible wizard in the sky.

From the Herald:

Attorneys for Kentucky's socially conservative governor and the state's only abortion clinic opened their latest legal fight Tuesday, this time over a lawsuit challenging a new state law aimed at a common second-trimester procedure to end pregnancies.

Anti-abortion activists gathered outside the federal courthouse and inside the courtroom as the trial began over the law that its critics, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, say would amount to an impediment for women seeking abortions in their second trimester.

During opening statements, an attorney for the clinic told the judge that the law is unconstitutional because it would "all but eliminate" abortions for women past the 14th week of pregnancy. ACLU attorney Alexa Kolbi-Molinas said the procedure targeted by the state law is "safe and medically proven," and she accused the state's lawyers of "demonizing" the method with inflammatory rhetoric.

Steve Pitt, lead attorney for Republican Gov. Matt Bevin's legal team, described the procedure as "brutal, gruesome and inhumane" that results in a fetus being torn apart "limb by limb." He stressed the need to protect the weak, adding: "There are none so weak as an unborn child."

Nope.  There is no such thing as an "unborn child."  If it is a child, it is already born and breathing oxygen.  If it is not born, it is not breathing oxygen and is therefore not a child.

Late-term abortions are not brutal, not gruesome and not inhumane.  They do not tear a fetus limb from limb.  They extract dying, non-viable tissue that will never, under any circumstances, live to breathe oxygen, much less become a human being. 


Second-trimester abortions alleviate the tragedy of a desired pregnancy turned toxic because of birth defects. Forcing a woman to carry a dead or dying fetus for months simply to please the fetus-fetishists is what is cruel, brutal, gruesome and inhumane.

These vicious motherfuckers must be defeated, sent back to their medieval madrassas with their tails between their legs.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/article221578385.html#storylink=cpy

 

KY Abortion Rights Activists Ready to Fight Gilead

It's an underground railroad for women barred from basic health care, and with Rapey McLiarFace now on the Supreme Court, it's going to be working overtime.

Think Progress:

Kentucky pro-choice activists have prepared for the day when the court rules against them and makes abortion inaccessible — a possibility the country at large is now reckoning with since Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement last week.

Kentucky’s last remaining abortion clinic is only open right now because a federal judge issued a (final) order in September and blocked the state from revoking EMW Women’s Surgical Center’s license.

“We have a contingency in place,” said Kentucky Health Justice Network’s Marcie Crim ...  if, let’s say, Roe v. Wade is overturned in a post-Kennedy court.

If a person can’t access abortion services in the state, Kentucky Health Justice Network will drive or fly them to where they can get one. They already drive people to Granite City, Illinois — a five hour car ride from Lexington where one abortion clinic recently closed. When Gov. Matt Bevin (R) successfully shut down the Lexington abortion clinic in January 2017, requests for her group’s services had “gone through the roof,” said Crim. They also drive people to Chicago, Illinois, Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. for the procedure.

In May 2018 alone, the grassroots abortion fund helped 78 people get the procedure. Activists drove 45 people to nearby clinics or gave them a gas credit card. They also paid for 33 people’s abortion services because insurance wouldn’t cover it under state law restricting coverage; for a handful of those people, they also provided child care and lodging because Kentucky requires that a pregnant person wait at least 24 hours after mandatory counseling to get an abortion, thus turning an hours-long procedure into a two day event. 

The contingency plan works for a hobbled or vanished Roe. The latter is a real concern since Kentucky lawmakers have made it clear that they’ll ban abortion to the maximum extent allowed under the Supreme Court. If Roe is overturned, Kentucky Health Justice Network will need to hire more than the 60 volunteers they currently staff or have them work overtime. It means they’ll need more people to donate money. It might mean having to turn people away. And for Kentuckians who need the procedure, it means a lot of hard choices. 

Thanks to the Kentucky Health Justice Network, one of the choices does not have to be an illegal, back-alley abortion likely to kill the woman.  Support their work or ask for help here.

This is Happening Because Only Men Have Bodily Autonomy

Digby:

The problem is that when it comes to women's bodily autonomy, the law is inadequate to defend it and society is muddled and confused, at best. Anti-abortion arguments pit the life of a woman against a potential life that is growing within her own body and refuses to even accept that her life, her decision, can take precedence even in the earliest stages. A woman's right to control her body and her reproduction must come second.  With rape, unless she can prove that she was raped or otherwise assaulted, her knowledge of what happened cannot be given any more weight than the evidence she can bring to the table. Her bodily integrity can, therefore, be violated without consequence.

I don't have all the answers to these complicated questions. But I do know that it's long past time we recognized that our system and frankly, our way of thinking, is inadequately serving half the human population. I don't want innocent men to be accused or punished for crimes they did not commit. (Again, being denied a promotion to the Supreme Court, particularly after pitching a tantrum worthy of a 5 year old on national TV is not such a situation. And false accusations are very rare.)

But until we deal with this inequity in our legal system and society at large, what we now have cannot be called justice in any real sense of the word.

.

Paid for Abortion

Down with Tyranny: