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.

.

The Easy Path to Gun Control

It just may come to this.

Another beauty from Noah:

The United States of Misogyny

Via LGM:

WATB Freakazoids Demand Women Stand on Heads and Stack Greasy BBs to Get Birth Control

Seriously, if Slow Anthony fails to see the vicious arrogance in this response, then we might as well give up and welcome our new Dominionist overlords.

From TPM:

The court's surprise order asked for briefing on alternative workarounds for how "contraceptive coverage may be obtained by petitioners’ employees through petitioners’ insurance companies, but in a way that does not require any involvement of petitioners beyond their own decision to provide health insurance without contraceptive coverage to their employees.” The order also outlined an example scenario in which an employer would inform its insurer from the get-go not to include contraceptives in the plan's coverage and then insurer would notify the employee that contraceptive coverage was being offered to her cost-free, outside of the employer plan.

The challengers, in a brief filed Tuesday, pushed back at that suggestion, arguing that the accommodation would still need to amount to "a separate plan, with a separate enrollment process, a separate insurance card, and a separate payment source, and offered to eligible individuals through a separate communication."

They said that the plans would need to be "truly separate contraceptive-only policies," that would also be available for employees with church plans or self-insured plans to enroll in. The crux of their argument was that the employees would need to opt in to coverage, rather then requiring employers to opt out.

"Again, these separate plans could take the form of individual insurance policies or group health plans sponsored by the government," the brief said. "But either way, the insurance companies could separately contact petitioners’ employees and give them the option of enrolling in the separate, contraceptive-only policy." 

The example scenario the challengers' brief offered was that insurance cards would bear a phone number -- akin to credit card activation codes -- that female employees could call to enroll in a second, contraceptive-only plan.

But the challengers didn't stop there.

They also said that they would prefer that the insurer not even inform the employees that they would need to get coverage through a separate program, lest it give "the appearance that the coverage is available only as a result of the employment relationship with the employer." 

Instead, the challengers argued, it would be better if the government or healthcare providers informed women they would need to enroll in a separate plan.

Furthermore, they stressed that the religious organizations did not "endorse such an approach as a policy matter," nor would they endorse the previous alternatives they offered, which mostly came down to the government providing the contraceptive coverage on its own, either directly or by funding outside programs.

As my dear sainted Irish mother would say: "Do you want egg in your beer, too?"

How Abortion Saves Lives

One life that could have been saved by abortion, and another that may still be.

First, a Louisville teen so denied the facts about sexuality, contraception and abortion that she gave birth in a toilet and was so terrified someone would find out that she killed the infant.

Matthew Glowicki at the Courier:

The teenage mother who police say killed her newborn girl last summer told police in an interview she gave birth to the child unexpectedly and then smothered her.

Visiting her grandmother who was ill at Jewish Hospital on July 22, then-15-year-old Jasmine Wade felt something in her stomach. She went to the bathroom, sat on the toilet and gave a slight push, she said.

“Something just came out, and I had looked down and … it was a baby,” she tells them and begins to cry.

She picked her up and held the child in her hands.

“I didn’t believe it was happening,” she told the two Louisville Metro Police detectives interviewing her from her hospital bed later that day, as detailed in police evidence recently filed in Jefferson Circuit Court by prosecutors.

SNIP

 

“Why did u kill her” the friend asked.

“I had to. i had no choice.”

Precisely.  Governor Lying Coward closed the only place in Kentucky that offered education, contraception and early abortion to low-income teenage girls. Planned Parenthood would have saved her by helping her avoid pregnancy or by ending it by removing a microscopic clump of cells.

Instead, we have a dead infant and and might-as-well-be-dead-teenager, who will be spending the rest of her life in prison.

Meanwhile, a Kentucky woman with a much-wanted and cherished pregnancy is faced with the likelihood of giving birth to a microcephalic "infant," which has no chance at a remotely human life.

From the Herald:

The Kentucky Department of Health says it has confirmed the state's third case of the Zika virus in a pregnant woman.

A statement from the agency on Friday said the woman, who is from the Louisville area, tested positive for the disease after traveling to Central America in recent months. She has recovered from the illness.

The mosquito-borne virus, which is spreading in Latin America and the Caribbean, normally causes only mild symptoms.

Health officials are investigating whether there is a link between Zika infections in pregnant women and a rare birth defect called microcephaly, in which babies are born with abnormally small heads.

That means profound permanent retardation rendering them unable to ever feed, clothe or clean themselves, much less communicate.

Unless that woman has private insurance and a rational, non-freakazoid doctor, she's in for a lifetime nightmare.

The kind that Indiana Governor Steve Pence is forcing on the doomed women of his state.

Republican Gov. Mike Pence has signed a bill making Indiana the second state to ban abortions because of fetal genetic abnormalities such as Down syndrome.

Yes, there is an alternative to these horrors.  Encourage more new doctors like this one, who is determined to fulfill her Hippocratic Oath by providing abortions.

We live in a country where roughly half of all pregnancies are unplanned, so there are, unsurprisingly, many women who become pregnant and choose not to give birth. We know that about one in three women will have an abortion by age 45. Is this number, as some have argued, too high? In the 1990s, the Clinton administration popularized the notion that abortion ought to be "safe, legal, and rare." I understand this sentiment, but I think this misses the point. There are a great number of ways to reduce abortion rates. Some of which, as I would argue we have seen in the past couple of decades, do not promote the health and reproductive autonomy of women.

 

Moreover, insisting single-mindedly that abortion should be "rare" further stigmatizes the one in three women who will make this decision. From a public health perspective, the end-all objective should not be to reduce abortion rates, but instead to further empower more women to make informed reproductive choices.

This may seem like a trivial distinction, but it is the difference between an agenda that conforms women's health to socially accepted standards and an agenda that truly promotes the health of women.

KY Senate Repugs Find Another Way to Kill the Bitches

Because cancer screenings just make them think their lives might have value, and we know where that leads.

And of course they cited the fake abortion videos and of course they lied about Planned Parenthood so hard their tongues caught on fire.

John Cheves at the Herald:

A Senate committee overwhelmingly approved a bill Thursday intended to end state funding for family planning and women’s health services at Planned Parenthood clinics in Lexington and Louisville, which this fiscal year totaled $331,309.

Republican Sen. Max Wise of Campbellsville, sponsor of Senate Bill 7, said he was moved to act by “Planned Parenthood’s notorious history as an abortion provider.” None of Kentucky’s Planned Parenthood clinics provide abortions. But Wise’s bill seeks to block funding to clinics that offer abortion “referrals” or “counseling,” as Planned Parenthood does in the state.

SNIP
SB 7 proceeds to the Republican-led Senate, which is expected to pass it. The Democratic-led House traditionally has blocked bills that would restrict women’s access to abortion. House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, said Thursday that he has not reviewed Wise’s bill or a similar bill filed by House Republicans, so he had no comment.

Critics warned Thursday that Wise’s bill could imperil the $5.6 million the federal government gives to Kentucky annually in “Title X funds” for family planning and women’s health services at local health departments and other health clinics. The two Planned Parenthood clinics in Lexington and Louisville share in that funding.

Federal law requires that pregnant women served by Title X funds have the opportunity to hear medical information about abortion, including the “risks and benefits.” Other Title X services include birth control, pregnancy testing and counseling, examinations for sexually transmitted diseases and breast and cervical cancer screening.

Cutting Title X programs for low-income women to spite Planned Parenthood would lead to more unintended pregnancies in Kentucky, among many other health problems, said Derek Selznick, director of the Kentucky ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project.

“Essentially, they want to take away funds that prevent 6,000 abortions a year,” Selznick said.

Ashlee Bergin, a Louisville obstetrician-gynecologist, told the Senate committee that SB 7 is “bad medicine.”

“The legislature must not interfere with the doctor-patient relationship by dictating what health care information can be shared,” Bergin said. “My patients must be able to make medical decisions with knowledge of all options, and based on what’s right for themselves and their families.”

Hating Planned Parenthood Because It Keeps Women Out of Poverty

And women who are not chained by poverty are not slaves to the corporatocracy or theocracy.

Bryce Covert at The Nation:

Already forgotten in the aftermath of the San Bernardino shootings is a more persistent terrorist threat to average Americans: right-wing extremists. Robert Lewis Dear, who shot and killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, has since pleaded guilty to being a “warrior for the babies.” His actions follow a long tradition of violence against abortion providers. That violence is increasing: The number of clinics reporting threats and targeted intimidation has increased from about 25 percent to more than 50 percent since 2010.

Dear’s terrorism hasn’t affected the GOP’s congressional crusade against the women’s-healthcare provider, however. Immediately after the shooting, Senate Republicans said they would proceed with efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, which currently receives about $500 million from the federal government. About 80 percent of Planned Parenthood’s clients are low-income (which is measured as being at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty line).

Unintended pregnancies among poor women have been increasing, while those among well-off women are falling.

What terrorists like Dear and Republicans in Congress want is basically the same: to shut down Planned Parenthood and deny women access to abortions. If they got their wish, it would serve only to make poor women poorer and increase the number of unintended pregnancies.

SNIP

Shutting down Planned Parenthood wouldn’t just affect access to abortion, of course. The group provides many other services to low-income women. Poor women are more likely to have sex without birth control—and access to affordable contraception would shrink further without the existence of Planned Parenthood. Among 491 counties with Planned Parenthood clinics, 103 have no other place where low-income patients can obtain affordable contraception.

Access to reproductive healthcare is certainly about women’s right to bodily autonomy. But doing away with that right also comes with devastating economic consequences, especially for those already at the bottom. Eliminating Planned Parenthood would create a vicious cycle of impoverishment and unwanted pregnancies for the most vulnerable women among us.

KY Repugs File Bill to Kill Women and Bankrupt the State

As the same bills in Texas and Louisiana have proven. And if you haven't voted yet, be sure this is a bill Jack Conway would veto but Matt Bevin would sign with bells on.

 

John Cheves:

A dozen Republicans in the Kentucky House have pre-filed a bill for the 2016 General Assembly to end state funding for women's health services at Planned Parenthood clinics in Lexington and Louisville, which this fiscal year totaled $331,309.

The bill's primary sponsor, Rep. Lynn Bechler, R-Marion, said he and his colleagues oppose abortion and were upset by disputed undercover videos of Planned Parenthood employees in other states discussing the distribution of aborted fetal tissue to researchers. None of Kentucky's Planned Parenthood clinics performs abortions, but the bill would block funding to health clinics that offer abortion "referrals" or "consulting," and the Kentucky clinics do that.

SNIP

The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services said the money at stake comes from a $5.4 million federal grant for Title X family planning and related health services for low-income or uninsured patients — mostly, but not entirely, women. The state forwards the money to county health departments to cover birth control, pregnancy testing and counseling, examinations for sexually transmitted diseases, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and other health care. By federal law, Title X funds cannot pay for abortions.

The health departments in Fayette and Jefferson counties have contracts with local Planned Parenthood clinics to help provide Title X services using the money, said Jill Midkiff, a spokeswoman for the cabinet.

Eliminating funding that pays for women's health services is unfair to the clinics' patients and counterproductive for people who say they oppose abortion, said Betty Cockrum, president of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky. Last year, the Lexington clinic helped 1,345 patients, and the Louisville clinic helped 3,378, Cockrum said.

"If you unplug birth control for 5,000 patients, it's going to have a big impact. There's no doubt that the rate of abortion is driven by the rate of unintended pregnancies," Cockrum said. "We're very clear that it would be taking public health policy in the wrong direction for the state of Kentucky and its residents."

But stupidity and cruelty in the name of an invisible sky wizard is more important than health care or money wasted on lawsuits.

A Con-Con Will Harm Democracy, Not Heal It

I wonder if Cenk Uygur, D.R. Tucker and the other Article 5 lovers would be so quick to dismiss the doubters if there were a better-than-even chance that a Constitutional Convention would be high-jacked by fanatics determined to restore black male slavery, rather than just female reproductive slavery.
 

Popeyfrankie Not Catlick Piece of Shit. He's Far Worse

He knows exactly what he's doing: undermining America's secular constitutional government and giving aid and comfort to the freakazoids who want to destroy it and replace it with Dominionist theocracy that will make the Taliban look like Unitarians.

But I wonder if he realizes that under a freakazoid Dominionist regime, catlicks will be first against the wall.

Ed Kilgore at Political Animal:

So the Vatican is confirming that Pope Francis had a private meeting with Kim Davis and her husband, and did not dispute reports from her attorneys that the Supreme Pontiff gave the embattled Kentucky County Clerk a blessing, an admonition to “stay strong,” and rosaries for her Catholic parents. This is in addition to the earlier evidence Francis supplied to reporters of his agreement with Davis’ claim that government officials can claim a “conscientious objection” to laws that trouble their consciences.

What’s most interesting to me about these events is that the Pope is going out of his way to express solidarity with an apparent apostate (it’s possible she was never a Catholic before her fairly recent conversion to an exotic pentecostal faith community, but unlikely if her parents are part of the One True Church) who’s been divorced three times. No wonder conservative Catholics accuse Francis of doctrinal laxity.

I guess homophobia covers a multitude of sins.

Is that the deal popeyfrankie made with the murdering bastards in the Curia?  Let me throw the plutocrats and poisoners out of the temple, and I'll let you burn the homos and the women at the stake.

It Harms Only Non-Rich Non-Men, So Who Gives a Fuck

Between the adulation for popeyfrankie still refusing to value adult women over blastocysts and government shutdown to force national de-funding of women's healthcare, if Saudia Arabia is going to remain the global leader of anti-woman laws, it's going to have to up its game.

Kevin Drum:

Molly Redden writes (Sept. 11) that the war on women is largely over, and women have lost:

This is what 2015 looks like: Abortion providers struggle against overwhelming odds to stay open, while women "turn themselves into pretzels" to get to them, as one researcher put it. Activists have been calling it the "war on women." But the onslaught of new abortion restrictions has been so successful, so strategically designed, and so well coordinated that the war in many places has essentially been lost.

Most abortions today involve some combination of endless wait, interminable journey, military-level coordination, and lots of money. Roe v. Wade was supposed to put an end to women crossing state lines for their abortions. But while reporting this story, I learned of women who drove from Kentucky to New Jersey, or flew from Texas to Washington, DC, because it was the only way they could have the procedure. Even where laws can't quite make it impossible for abortion clinics to stay open—they are closing down at a rate of 1.5 every single week—they can make it exhausting to operate one. In every corner of America, four years of unrelenting assaults on reproductive rights have transformed all facets of giving an abortion or getting one—possibly for good.

The whole piece is worth reading, but I just want to add one comment. This is the least original comment possible, but here it is: it's really only poor women in red states who have lost this war. Prosperous women in red states can easily purchase a quiet flight to a nearby Sodom if they need an abortion. And most women in blue states still have reasonable access to abortions.

That's why this tidal wave of new abortion restrictions hasn't gotten more attention than it has. If it were happening in blue states, there would be a revolt. If it were inconveniencing affluent women in red states, there would be a revolt. But poor women in Republican-controlled flyover country? Plenty of people care about them—but not enough to mount a revolt. And of course, poor women themselves have no political power of their own. As it is so often, the lesson here is that you can get away with almost anything, as long as you do it to poor people who are far away.

Sarah Erdreich at TPM wonders why no one is talking about forcing freakazoid pharmacists and nurses and doctors and hospitals who deny women reproductive health care to do their fucking jobs or resign.

The law that Kim Davis is so hellbent on defying does nothing more or less than give people equal rights. It provides men and women with a measure of autonomy and choice that had been unfairly denied them for generations. And in this, Davis’s crusade is a perfect parallel to the story of refusal clauses, which also came about because a law gave women autonomy and choice, and some people thought that was wrong. Constraining an individual’s choice in their healthcare decisions due to someone else’s objections is as nonsensical as telling a couple that they can’t get married because some stranger believes they shouldn’t. For too long, refusal clauses have allowed unnecessary outside interference in women’s reproductive healthcare. The same thing must not be allowed to happen in the wake of the landmark Obergefell ruling.

You Owe Planned Parenthood

All of you, men and women. I know who you are.  Back in the 1970s, when I was in high school, Planned Parenthood meant your girlfriend could get The Pill for free and without her parents finding out.  Planned Parenthood meant you could find out privately that that burning sensation was treatable, not fatal.

And after 1973, Planned Parenthood meant that you didn't have to get married and get a job to pay for a kid instead of going to college and fulfilling your dreams.


So Pay Up.  Pay with your money or pay with your voice.  Stand with the organization that was there when you needed it.  Stand with the organization that stood with you when no one else would.

Katha Pollitt:

 B.J. Isaacson-Jones, who ran an abortion clinic in St. Louis for many years, wrote “An Open Letter to 21 Million Women” in 1988, 15 years after Roe. This year, Roe turns 42, and it’s truer today than ever. It appears in full below.

Where are you?
For over 16 years we have provided
you with choices
Painful choices
I remember—
I sometimes cried with you.
Choices, nevertheless, when you were desperate.

Remember how we protected your privacy
and treated you with dignity and respect
when you
were famous
had been brought to us in shackles
with an armed guard, or
were terrified
that you would run into
one of your students?
I remember each of you.

Our clinic was firebombed.
Do you recall?
Exhausted and terrified we had
been up all night.
We rerouted you to another clinic
because you wanted an abortion that day.
Where are you?

Priding ourselves on providing abortions for
those who cannot pay, we have spent millions
of dollars that we never really
had caring for you. We wanted
to give a choice.
I also gave you cab fare and
money for dinner from my own pocket.
Have you forgotten?

I remember you cried and asked me how
you could carry this pregnancy to term when
you were abusing the children you had,
were having an affair,
tested positive for AIDS,
could not handle another,
were raped by your mother’s boyfriend,
pregnant by your father and
shocked and torn apart when
your very much wanted and loved
fetus was found to be
severely deformed.
Your mother picketed our clinic
regularly. We brought you in after dark.
Have you mustered the courage
to tell her that you are pro-choice?

You are.
Aren’t you?

I recall shielding your shaking body, guiding you
and you husband through the picket lines.
They screamed adoption, not abortion!
You wondered how you could explain your
choice to your young children.
You broke our hearts.

You had just celebrated your twelfth birthday
when you came to us. You clutched
your teddy bear, sucked your thumb
and cried out for your mom who asked
you why you had gotten yourself pregnant.
You replied that you just wanted to be grown.
You’re twenty today.
Where are you?

I pretend I don’t know you in the market,
at social gatherings and on the street.
I told you I would.
After your procedure you told me that you would
fight for reproductive choices (parenthood,
adoption, and abortion) for your mother, daughters,
and grandchildren. You will . . . won’t you?

I have no regrets. I care about
each and every one of you and
treasure all that you’ve taught me.
But I’m angry. I can’t do this alone.
I’m not asking you to speak about your abortion, but
You need to speak out and you need to speak
out now. Where are you?

No, Your Religious Delusions Do Not Trump the Law, Science, Medicine, Other People's Rights or a Pair of Clubs

And everyone who doesn't understand that doesn't deserve any rights at all. When are we going to start restricting the massive illegality and criminal abuse committed by freakazoids?

Ian Millhiser at Think Progress:

Missouri state Rep. Paul Joseph Wieland (R) does not want his daughters’ health plan to cover birth control — even though two of those daughters are adults. So he and his wife sued the Obama administration. Though this lawsuit was rejected on jurisdictional grounds by a federal trial court, a panel of three appellate judges reinstated the suit on Monday. Should the Wielands ultimately prevail in their effort to deny birth control coverage to their daughters, the decision could have implications far beyond the Wieland family, potentially forcing insurance companies to maintain elaborate records to track many of their customers’ views on religion and sexual morality.

Wieland v. Department of Health and Human Services seeks to expand the Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which allowed many private businesses to ignore federal rules requiring them to include birth control in their employee’s health plans if the business’ owners object to contraception on religious grounds. The Wielands claim that a similar rule should apply in their case. Because they claim that they “cannot provide, fund or in any way be a participant in the provision of health care coverage” that includes birth control “without violating their sincerely-held religious beliefs,” they argue that they should be given a special health plan that does not include contraceptive care.

Are these adult daughters chained in their parents' basement that they cannot get jobs and apartments and buy their own contraception?  Because that's a crime and Wieland should be in prison.

But the daughters are just an excuse to make it impossible for anyone in the U.S. to get any kind of health care the Wielands and their freakazoid friends don't like.

The Wielands’ legal theory, moreover, could stretch far beyond families led by parents who object to contraception.

[I]magine a plaintiff who doesn’t just object to their daughters having birth control — they object to anyone having birth control. The nature of health insurance is that all of an insurance plan’s participants pay into a pool of money than any other participants can draw money out of when they need medical care. So even if a particular plaintiff’s own insurance doesn’t cover contraception, they would still be paying into a pool of money that other people could draw upon to pay for coverage that the plaintiff might object to. Moreover, while the insurance company might try to solve this problem by “walling off” the plaintiff’s premiums so that they could not be spent on contraceptive care, this would impose additional administrative costs on the insurer, and money is fungible. The only truly reliable way to ensure that a given insurance customer’s premiums are not used in a way that helps some woman, somewhere in the country to obtain birth control is to forbid the insurance plan from offering contraceptive coverage to anyone.

That might be an acceptable outcome for Paul and Teresa Wieland, but it would be a truly extraordinary expansion of American religious liberty law. A law intended to give religious objectors personal exemptions to laws they oppose would instead permit those objectors to impose their beliefs on thousands — potentially even millions — of individuals who do not share those beliefs.

Anti-Woman Freakazoids Are Domestic Terrorists

What else do you call bombing clinics and murdering doctors?  

 

From Crooks and Liars:

Drexel law professor David S. Cohen was on radio with me to discuss his book Living in the Crosshairs that studies abortion providers and those who harass them.

Cohen interviewed nearly 90 people in 35 states and concluded that those who attack centers like Planned Parenthood should be considered domestic terrorists.

Alan and Cohen discussed why this harassment is currently on the rise and why extremists justify using violence even though they say they are pro-life,

AynRandy Says Your Boss Should Control Your Sex Life

But only if you are the female variety of subhuman. Because of course letting employers fire a male worker for, say, taking Viagara, would be unkonstitushonul.

Digby:

Employers are the real victims

At least according to these wingnuts who are all in favor of allowing employers to fire women for using birth control or having abortions. In this case, it's supposedly because it might violate their "religious freedom" to prohibit them from passing moral judgement on the private lives of their employees.  Rand Paul, the avatar of liberty, is on board.  But you knew he would be. What conservatives and libertarians truly care about the owners of property's freedom to do any damned thing they want with what they own. Individual human freedom is always secondary. Unless you're an owner you're just out of luck.

They've had to accept that outright slavery isn't going to go over in this modern age.  So, using this fatuous religious freedom argument, they are constructing a legal regime to protect the rights of employers to simply treat their employees like slaves with the only protection for the worker being their "freedom" to starve. Women, having the burden of gestating the human race are particularly problematic. After all, it's not as if the owners get to keep the offspring and put them to work like the good old days.

And anyway a man owns his castle and his business and his freedom to run that castle and business is what's at issue. That's what liberty is all about. All these non-owners clamoring for "rights" are simply trying to enslave the slaveowner.  The slaveowners just want to be free.

Wake Up! Pro-Abortion Forces Are Out-Numbered and Out-Maneuvered

One day very soon we're going to look around and see nothing but fucking Gilead. These motherfuckers have to be stopped now.

Molly Redden at Mother Jones:

Meanwhile, in the time it took for Oregon to abandon this bill, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, and West Virginia passed 10 new abortion and reproductive rights restrictions. What happened in Oregon shows just how much reproductive rights advocates are playing catch-up, even in states that appear friendly to their agenda.

What We Need Is A Dick Tax

From a Nation reader:

Point 5, “Men,” in Katha Pollitt’s list is the key. The pro-life movement’s male supporters know they will never, ever have to face the hard choices faced by a woman with an unwanted pregnancy. We can’t change that, but we can change that men get off scot-free.

Until such time as it is shown that women can make themselves pregnant, I propose we institute a universal “dick tax.” (Think of it as honoring Nixon and Cheney.) The dick tax would be a flat fee of $100 annually for every US male over the age of 14. Dick tax avoiders would be excluded from all government benefits, as well as driver’s licenses, hunting and fishing licenses, concealed-carry permits, etc. Such a tax would raise some $15 billion a year and could be used to support women with prenatal care, childcare and education. Men who could prove they are incapable of impregnating someone would be exempt.

Haydon Rochester Jr.
onancock, va.

Vessels Have No Rights

We're about an inch away from Gilead.

Digby, citing the New York Times:

Anti-abortion measures pose a risk to all pregnant women, including those who want to be pregnant.

Such laws are increasingly being used as the basis for arresting women who have no intention of ending a pregnancy and for preventing women from making their own decisions about how they will give birth.

How does this play out? Based on the belief that he had an obligation to give a fetus a chance for life, a judge in Washington, D.C., ordered a critically ill 27-year-old woman who was 26 weeks pregnant to undergo a cesarean section, which he understood might kill her. Neither the woman nor her baby survived.

In Iowa, a pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs was reported to the police after seeking help at a hospital. She was arrested for “attempted fetal homicide.”

In Utah, a woman gave birth to twins; one was stillborn. Health care providers believed that the stillbirth was the result of the woman’s decision to delay having a cesarean. She was arrested on charges of fetal homicide.

In Louisiana, a woman who went to the hospital for unexplained vaginal bleeding was locked up for over a year on charges of second-degree murder before medical records revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at 11 to 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Florida has had a number of such cases. In one, a woman was held prisoner at a hospital to prevent her from going home while she appeared to be experiencing a miscarriage. She was forced to undergo a cesarean. Neither the detention nor the surgery prevented the pregnancy loss, but they did keep this mother from caring for her two small children at home. While a state court later found the detention unlawful, the opinion suggested that if the hospital had taken her prisoner later in her pregnancy, its actions might have been permissible.

In another case, a woman who had been in labor at home was picked up by a sheriff, strapped down in the back of an ambulance, taken to a hospital, and forced to have a cesarean she did not want. When this mother later protested what had happened, a court concluded that the woman’s personal constitutional rights “clearly did not outweigh the interests of the State of Florida in preserving the life of the unborn child.”

Anti-abortion reasoning has also provided the justification for arresting pregnant women who experience depression and have attempted suicide. A 22-year-old in South Carolina who was eight months pregnant attempted suicide by jumping out a window. She survived despite suffering severe injuries. Because she lost the pregnancy, she was arrested and jailed for the crime of homicide by child abuse.

There is no way to escape the logic that if you assume that a blastocyst is a full human being with all the rights conferred by "personhood" then this is a possible consequence.

No, it probably won't happen every time a woman miscarries. But it could happen. And it could be you or your daughter or your best friend or your wife.

The risk of pregnancy is going up and up and up in this country.

Study: Real Sex Ed Helps Kids Postpone Sex

Yeah, I know, what else is new.  But now there's data.

Think Progress:

Comprehensive sex ed classes that emphasize healthy relationships and family involvement can encourage more middle school students to put off having sex, according to the results from a new study published in the Journal of School Health. The results have big implications for school districts that are trying to decide what type of health classes to offer to kids in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades.

The three-year study was conducted by researchers at the Wellesley Centers for Women, who wanted to figure out whether Get Real — a comprehensive sex ed program developed by Planned Parenthood — has an impact on middle schoolers’ sexual behavior. In order to do that, the researchers tracked a group of racially and economically diverse kids at 24 different schools in the Boston area, half of which implemented Get Real and half of which continued with their existing sex ed programs. Kids were periodically surveyed about their sexual activity.

The results were “quite strong,” according to the lead researchers on the project. The study found that 16 percent fewer boys and 15 percent fewer girls became sexually active by the end of eighth grade after participating in Get Real, compared to the kids who didn’t participate in that curriculum.

It’s particularly significant that Get Real helped both girls and boys delay sex. The previous research into other sex ed programs has been mixed, and hasn’t been able to demonstrate such clear results for both genders.

 Or as Wonkette puts it:

Wow, it’s almost as if having open and honest conversations with kids about sex and its consequences leads kids to be more knowledgeable and responsible and to make exactly the kinds of choices that the very people who oppose real sex ed say they should make. Weird!

And you thought Planned Parenthood just built multi-billion dollar abortionplexes, huh? (No, you didn’t really think that because you are not A Idiot. Or Rep. John Fleming. But we repeat ourselves.)

We assume this study will lead all the conservatives who want to shut down Planned Parenthood and defund real sex ed to rethink their strategy and perhaps support this program. We also expect to see pigs fly by our window any second now …

Persons

ummagumma.co:


(Source: azspot, via redakota)