A guest post from Kelley Bell, courtesy of The Huffington Post:
A firestorm is coming. Can you feel it? The women of this country are fuming, like steam in a pressure cooker the timer is about to go off, and these women are going to explode.
After a long and difficult debate on health care, The Stupak/Pitts Amendment passed The House 240 to 194 with 64 Democrats breaking from the party platform to add an amendment to the bill further restricting legal abortion. The move was underhanded, disgusting and unforgivable to the women in the pro-choice movement because it took the all important health care bill we so desperately need and turned it into a political football. The trick used is called “a poison pill”; an attempt to add inflammatory last minute language to bring down a good bill.
Betrayal. Pure and simple. Sixty percent of the women in this country vote democratic, and do so because they believe in the party platform; a platform that includes comprehensive women’s rights, not as a mere third rail, but as a major tenant of the overall concept of human rights. And these women are pissed.
Gloria Feldt of The Women’s Media Center put it quite succinctly when she said, “I’m seeing the most intense wave of anger building among women voters of all ages since the Senate’s 1991 trashing of Anita Hill culminated in the 1992 ‘Year of the Woman’.”
She’s right about that. The backlash is swelling. Women all over the country are enraged. Comments from around the internet include statements like:
“I say bite ‘em in the ankles”.
“I say you’re aiming way too low.”
“Pitchforks!”
“Let’s make mayhem, against all the opponents of Women’s rights. Throw them in one big lump. It’s what MOVEMENTS do!”
“There’s going to be a firestorm here,” Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) told The Washington Post. “Women are going to realize that a Democratic-controlled House has passed legislation that would prohibit women paying for abortions with their own funds. . . . We’re not going to let this into law.”
Kelli Arthur Hykes of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio feels the problem stems back to the “Big Tent” strategy implemented in recent years. “If we had people in office who went through the vetting process so we knew who supports the party platform we would not be stuck with anti-choice leaders.”
Political commentator and newly elected Pepper Pike City Councilwoman Jill Miller Zimon is very concerned about the ramifications of this legislation, citing how important this health care legislation will be for so many people. Yet in spite of that, as a pro-choice Democratic woman she stands firmly behind the 41 women in the House who have signed a statement vowing to vote down the bill if the Stupak/Pitts language is not removed.
“We DO need to pass the health care bill,” Zimon said, “but healthcare for all of us, and that includes our senior citizens, men, and women, not just select constituencies.”
The health care bill is so important, we can’t let this amendment get in the way of its passage, but don’t mistake that to mean its O.K. to ask the ladies to “take one for the team,” not this time. The women have taken plenty of hits “for the team” and if you haven’t noticed, the women ARE the team. Have you ever gone to a democratic activist meeting? Who shows up? Who runs the phone banks, types the letters, does the filings, buys the coffee and washes the dishes when the meeting is done? Women are often expected to do all the leg work for the Democratic Party; to host the fundraisers, print the flyers, type of the paperwork, and get out the vote, but are continually thrown under the bus when its time to legislate pro woman policy. Enough! Take one for the team? I don’t think so. Either this language is removed from the Senate bill before Christmas or there won’t be a team for 2010.
Rachael Maddow predicted a revolt, and she is right on target. Progressive groups are mobilizing with force around the Stupak/Pitts controversy and working hard to put pressure on the “big tent” DINO’s who fail to uphold party principles. It is the first spark of a firestorm and a movement on the rise… a movement that will unite Democrats not just on the level of winning elections to expand the base, but to win with candidates who vote like true progressives. That’s the Hope and Change people voted for and the spirit of “Yes We Can.”
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Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy knows that the national Republicans have painted a big target on her back. She knows she’s likely facing a rematch from her ‘08 opponent in which she narrowly won thanks, in part, to a high youth turnout fueled by the presidential election that is unlikely to materialize in ‘10.
And yet, she not only voted for the House health insurance reform bill, but she also voted against the Stupak anti-choice amendment.
If you’ve got some spare change, give Kilroy some coin. If you live in the area and have some spare time, then give Kilroy’s campaign your time.
Kilroy is living proof that you don’t have to wear an uniform to show the courage of your convictions.
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President Obama recently announced that he plans to change some crappy Bush-era policies allowing doctors and pharmacists to refuse care to female patients who need contraceptives or want to terminate their unwanted pregnancies.
Anti-choice nutjobs are, of course, pissed off. But this time they are taking a new approach. Instead of their normal accusations that The President supports killing babies, they are accusing him of giving women breast cancer. Seriously.
According to Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer (and noted wingnut):
Basic medical texts acknowledge that women can help prevent breast cancer by having more children, starting at a younger age, and breastfeeding them longer. The woman who chooses not to have a baby (i.e. abortion), therefore, has a higher breast cancer risk than the one who has a baby. Additionally, the World Health Organization classified combined (estrogen + progestin) hormonal contraceptives as Group 1 carcinogens in 2006. Why aren’t women being told**?
Instead, the government is physically abusing women through its determined pursuit of an antiquated population control policy. The Obama Administration is sacrificing scientific integrity and women’s health in order to pursue an ideological agenda.
A half-century of research shows that abortion further increases risk by leaving the mother’s breasts with more places for cancers to start.
I suggest Karen spend ten minutes talking to a group of sexually active teenage girls. I have a feeling she would … uh… you know… like… totally change her mind.
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So the McCain/Palin camp announced that Sarah Palin will FINALLY sit for an interview on Thursday.
I would like to suggest a few choice questions she should be asked…
Ms. Palin…
Modern screening processes for genetic disorders like down sydrome are safe and effective and available to most women who are at risk.
Because abortion is currently legal and safe, 90% of pregnant women who receive a down syndrome diagnosis choose to have an abortion.
This has led to a large drop in the number of children born with down syndrome are each year- down to around 5,500.
Once you outlaw abortion this number will grow ten fold.
Are you planning to increase federal funding by at least 1000% to help families and institutions deal with the large increase in the number of mentally disabled individuals who will, in many cases, require support for their entire life?
If so, will you increase taxes to cover the cost?
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According to Ohio law “Fetal death” means “death prior to the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of human conception of at least twenty weeks of gestation.”
A fetal death certificate can be issued by the state if you lose your baby after 20 weeks- which makes sense since that’s right around the time your fetus would be considered “viable” – i.e. able to survive outside the womb.
If Kevin Couglin has his way, “fetal death” is going to be redefined in Ohio to mean ANY “product of human conception”- including that tiny mass of cells that requires a microscope the be seen.
He’s calling it the Grieving Parents Act (SB 175) and it just passed the Senate today 88-6.
Technically, up until the 8th week it’s called an embryo- but hell, why let science get in the way of really bad legislation.
At the end of the day we all know that Coughlin is just trying to establish fetal (or embryonic) personhood hoping that it will eventually lead to women being deprived of their reproductive rights.
Still, I am totally amazed that so many Dems voted for this piece of shit bill. But I suppose it is an election year and no one really wants to go on record as voting against grieving parents.
UPDATE:
Just got info on the votes. Congrats to these State Senators for voting against this ridiculous piece of legislation: Boccieri, Cafaro, Kearney, Miller D, Morano, Smith
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In a speech today at Wake-Forest University, McCain “vowed to model his Supreme Court appointees after George W. Bush’s” – i.e. radical, right-wing judges who want to overturn Roe v. Wade and take away reproductive rights from America’s women.
McCain also attacked a 2005 Supreme Court decision that “barred capital punishment for murderers who were under 18 at the time of the crime.”
In essence saying: I want to force women to have a bunch of unwanted babies and then, when those babies grow up to be murders, THEN we’ll kill them.
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This week George Voinovich helped introduce another anti-choice bill in the US Senate aimed at limiting access to abortion services for pregnant women.
The bill is also being sponsored by Sam Brownback and David Vitter- a couple of real nutjobs when it comes to this issue.
Brownback has a long anti-choice history, a 0% rating by NARAL and at one time compared abortion to slavery.
Vitter is even worse. He seems to lack any respect for women whatsoever. Besides cheating on his wife – as revealed by the DC Madam scandal – Vitter tried to introduce an amendment to stop all funding to Planned Parenthood for basic health services like “contraceptives, Pap smears, breast exams and tests for STDs.”
In typical Republican fashion, they are calling their latest bill “the Pregnant Women Health and Safety Act” – a name intended to hide to true purpose of the bill.
When asked about the bill, Voinovich said nothing about protecting pregnant women or keeping them healthy and safe. Instead he said: “We must do all that we can to restore our nation’s once cherished culture of life.”
Same thing with Brownback who said: “We are working toward the day when every unborn child is welcomed and loved.”
Hopefully the rest of the Senate will see this bill for what it really is- an attempt to control women’s reproductive rights – and dump the damn thing ASAP.
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According to the AP, Florida has taken a step forward by formally apologizing “for the state’s ’shameful’ history of slavery”.
Meanwhile, Ohio takes a step backward with Governor Strickland’s signing of HB 314, the anti-choice bill that forces doctors to show ultrasound pictures to patients considering an abortion.
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I finally got a chance to watch Juno last night, and I found it quite enjoyable. I think it also quite nicely captures the pro-choice position; despite the fact that Juno decided to carry the pregnancy to term and give the baby up for adoption (it would have been a pretty pointless movie if she hadn’t), the choice is hers, and her friends and family support her, whatever path she decides to go on.
The “pro-choice” movement is not about aborting babies, it’s about empowering women to have control over their own bodies, and to be able to make choices free of coercion. Juno has that freedom, and so despite her freak-out at the abortion clinic that prevents her from going thru with it, this movie is not “pro-life”. In fact, Juno’s parents don’t find out about the pregnancy until Juno has already decided to carry to term, and they (despite dad’s – justified – wisecracks about how irresponsible it was of Juno to get pregnant) never pressure her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. There’s one scene in particular where Juno’s step-mother tears into a judgmental ultrasound tech that illustrates how supportive they would be of any decision she were to make.
At times the dialog is too-clever by half (“That’s not an Etch-a-Sketch. That’s one doodle that can’t be undid, homeskillet”, while hilarious, is the last thing I’d expect a 30-something convenience store clerk to say to a 16 year old girl about the results of a home pregnancy test), and the film definitely over-simplifies some things about pregnancy, and especially about adoption. But in the end, despite some of the hardships and emotional turmoil, Juno comes out the other end better for the experience, I think.
Ultimately, it’s a fun little progressive movie, with an almost sappy happy ending. I loved it.
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From the Baltimore Sun:
At National Right to Life’s conference this year, Mitt Romney set out to convince anti-abortion leaders he was their candidate. At the podium, he rattled off his qualifications. To a layman’s ears, it sounded pretty standard for abortion politics. He wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. He supports teaching only abstinence to teens.
But for those trained to hear the subtleties, Mr. Romney was acknowledging something more. He implied an opposition to the birth control pill and a willingness to join in their efforts to scale back access to contraception. There are code phrases to listen for – and for those keeping score, Mr. Romney nailed each one.
One code phrase is: “I fought to define life as beginning at conception rather than at the time of implantation.” The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines pregnancy as starting at implantation, the first moment a pregnancy can be known. Anti-abortion advocates want pregnancy to start at the unknown moment sperm and egg meet: fertilization. They’d also like you to believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that the birth control pill prevents that fertilized egg from implanting in the womb.
Mr. Romney’s code, deciphered, meant, “I, like you, hope to reclassify the most commonly used forms of contraceptives as abortions.” In fact, he told the crowd, he already had some practice redefining contraception: “I vetoed a so-called emergency contraception bill that gave young girls abortive drugs without prescription or parental consent.”
Romney isn’t the only one, of course. Brownback, Tancredo, and McCain (!!) have all used similar language, much to the delight of the wingnuts over at RABid I’m sure.
Contraception (including of the emergency variety) is not an abortifacient. If we allow people to erroneously define it so, banning of contraceptives like the pill are inevitable.
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State Representative Tom Brinkman introduced another crazy bill today trying to ban all abortions in Ohio.
Here’s the important part of Brinkman’s HB 284:
On and after the effective date of this amendment, all abortions are prohibited in this state
It also makes doctors “liable in compensatory and exemplary damages in a civil action”.
Crazy wingnuts. Will they ever learn?
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This is INSANE.
Feminism is a minority social movement, whose members murder innocent children in order to obtain sexual gratification.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! I absolutely refuse to link to this trash; but I will provide a link to Feministing’s excellent rebuttal. Of course, this asshat’s (aka “Mike Adams”) most offensive comment might not have been the one above – it might be this:
I have come to the firm conclusion that I’ve not been nearly harsh enough in my treatment of feminists. And today I plan to start treating them the way they deserve to be treated.
What exactly does that mean? Does it matter that he directly compares feminists to Charles Manson? If he believes that feminists “murder innocent children” for “sexual satisfaction”, isn’t this statement an outright threat of violence?
Wingnuts hate women. There is no other way to say it.
Here is an excellent post which underlines (with a big, fat, fucking Sharpie) the evidence that the “pro-life” movement is really anti-woman.
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We’ve been saying as much here at Plunderbund for quite some time: the pro-life movement is little more than a tool to subjugate women. And if you don’t believe us, why not believe it when it comes from the horse’s mouth? From Lawyers, Guns, and Money:
Marty Lederman points us to an interesting WaPo article, in which a few members of America’s tiny minority of serious, principled “pro-lifers” have come to see that “Partial Birth” bans are silly, irrational laws whose primary purpose is to separate money from their wallets and funnel it to the Republican Party. Focus on the Family, however, maintains that the bans do have an upside: the law does increase the “danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus.” If you don’t believe me that most of the American forced pregnancy lobby cares a great deal more about punishing women for sexual choices they don’t approve of than protecting fetal life, well, I say we take their word for it.
Did you miss it? Let me spell it out for you: Focus on the Family admits that the recent PBA ban does nothing to reduce the incidence of abortion, since PBA was virtually never an “elective” abortion, but it does have an upside: the procedure that is still legal has a “danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus.”
Because I learned that you have to mention your main theme three times for it to stick, I’ll say it again: pro-lifers think that the PBA ban is good because it increases the “danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus.”
I know there are honest, principled people out there who would like to see the incidence of abortion get as close to zero as possible, and you know what? So do I. I just don’t want to perpetrate violence against women to get there. I support sex education, birth control, and family planning as the best way to reduce unwanted pregnancy, which is the only way to reduce abortion without abusing women and their right to control their own body. Safe, legal, and rare.
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Montgomery County BOE reconsiders allowing pollworkers to wear “right to life” shirts
by Lorraine on July 27, 2007 · Comments
When I finally got close to the front of the line at my polling place in 2004, a pollworker told me to cover my T-shirt. It had the words “Vote Explosion” on it.
Seeing as I had nothing to cover it with and had just spent 3 hours in line, I politely pointed out that there was no partisanship expressed by the shirt. Vote Explosion was just a loose group of friends registering folks to vote at rock shows. She replied that they were trying to avoid even the slightest possible implication of impropriety.
OK, fair enough. Polling places are supposed to be inner sanctums of nonpartisanhip. Neither voters nor pollworkers may wear political shirts, stickers, or buttons within a 100 foot radius. Although the words “Vote Explosion” aren’t explicitly partisan, neither are the words “Eagle Forum” or “MoveOn.” I think it was a wise move to err on the side of overzealousness, and simply prohibit T-shirts bearing all of the above.
The guy behind me in line loaned me his sweatshirt, and I was able to step forth to express my partisanship in the privacy of the voting booth. As an ongoing tribute of thanks to sweatshirt guy, ever since that day I’ve stowed an extra large, plain T-shirt in my purse whenever I go to vote – just in case a fellow voter is asked to cover up.
Until I read Monday’s Columbus Dispatch, it had never occurred to me that I might someday want to offer my spare shirt to a pollworker.
As part of its “Day of Democracy” effort to fill 2,200 pollworker spots in 548 precincts, Montgomery County Board of Elections deputy director Betty Smith told Dayton Right to Life executive director Christi Dodson that the organization’s logo would be permitted to be emblazoned on the chests of pollworkers.
According to the Dayton Daily News, “although Right to Life sent people to work at the polls in May, none wore the group’s shirts because they were not ready, said Christi Dodson, executive director.”
Did Smith think that as long as all the organizations that produced pollworkers were allowed to wear their t-shirts, it would be o.k.? Equal opportunity and such?
Betty Smith obviously showed unacceptable ignorance and lack of good judgment, but equally culpable are organizations that took her up on the offer. Leaders of any politically-oriented organization should know better than to participate in this “marketing” plan. But Dodson, executive director of Dayton Right To Life, was prepared to take the opportunity a step further. In reference to her organization’s members who would be acting as pollworkers on election day (italics mine):
Well, that got the attention of the good folks of the Montgomery County BOE. I’m not sure where they all were back when the “Day of Democracy” program was approved, but anyway:
I can think of one cause that is appropriate for pollworkers to champion on election day: upholding the letter and spirit of election laws. That includes maintaining an atmosphere of impartiality. Anyone who is incapable of that has no business being a pollworker.
Which brings us back to the chronic pollworker shortage, which unfortunately is not limited to Montgomery County. Here in Franklin the BOE has over 5,000 spots to fill. Cuyahoga County needs 3,000 poll workers.
So I’m going to be a pollworker November 6 and I assure you I won’t be wearing my Vote Explosion shirt. Or my Planned Parenthood pin. Heck, just for kicks I might even make sure I’m not wearing pink, orange, or black.
It will be tough to keep my opinionated nature under wraps for a full day, but I’m up to the challenge. If you’re up for it too, please join me – sign up to be a pollworker. Click here for a full list of county Boards of Elections.
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