Beatriz, a 22-year old El Salvadorian woman who is identified in the press only by her first name, is dying. She suffers from lupus, a chronic auto-immune disease that causes body’s immune system to destroy its own healthy tissue, and her condition typically worsens when she is pregnant. Since Beatriz is now about 23 weeks […]
(Source: thisgingerisback)
Despite the fact that Roe v. Wade has been in place for over 40 years by now, women’s reproductive rights still aren’t safe. Anti-choice activists are chipping away at women’s access to reproductive health care from all angles — piling on dozens of state-level restrictions, driving up the cost of abortion services, and ultimately enacting […]keep your goddamn rosaries off my fucking ovaries, assholes.
(Think Progress) - Nevada, which has one of the highest rates of unintended teen pregnancy in the nation, is considering updating its abstinence-only education policy to require more comprehensive sexual health instruction in public schools. This week, in a debate over that proposed legislation, Nevada Assemblywomen Lucy Flores (D)testified in favor of the bill, sharing her own personal story about the consequences of inadequate sex ed — all of her sisters became teenage mothers, and Flores herself decided to have an abortion when she became pregnant at 16.
Flores said that, since she was well-aware of the financial struggles that her sisters were experiencing as teen moms, she knew she wasn’t ready to have a baby. So she asked her father for money for an abortion. “I don’t regret it,” Flores told the Assembly Education Committee during her testimony, explaining that her decision was the right one for her. Now, she wants to make sure other young women in Nevada are better equipped to prevent pregnancy than she was. “We prevent this by giving them the information and the resources that they need, so they don’t have to go to their dad and say, ‘I need $200 for an abortion,’ ” Flores said.
But, as The Sin City Siren reports, Flores faced some serious repercussions for her honesty about her own experience with sex education, pregnancy, and abortion. The right-wing media jumped on her quoted testimony, with headlines proclaiming “Democratic Legislator: I Don’t Regret Killing My Baby in Abortion.” That coverage may have inspired some people to reach out to Flores, because local television producer tweeted on Thursday that the state lawmaker cancelled her appearance on a political news show after receiving death threats from people who had heard about her abortion story.
I think the first comment I saw on this over at think progress says basically what I was thinking when reading the article:
This is indicative of a patriarchal society worried about controlling women’s reproductive health. Instead of what abortion opponents cite as a “pro-life” culture worried about the fetus. Because everyone knows it’s “pro-life” to send death threats to someone who has had an abortion.
Kansas Bill Would Ban Abortion Clinic Employees From ‘Bringing Cupcakes’ To Their Child’s School
Kansas Republicans are once again resuming their war against a woman’s right to choose and this time they are targeting abortion clinic employees in a very personal way.
(Addicting Info) - A Kansas House committee passed HB 2253 on Wednesday along party lines, with Republicans pushing the bill through while Democrats opposed it. The bill is a broad spectrum of anti-abortion laws sponsored by GOP state Rep. Lance Kinzer, who is the poster boy for many of the outrageous abortion bills introduced and passed in Kansas these days. Included in the bill are measures declaring that life begins at conception, measures that keep women from deducting the cost of abortion procedures on their tax forms, and measures that affect “information the Kansas Department of Health and Environment distributes on abortion and fetal development,” according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.
But these measures weren’t the ones that Democrats objected to the most. Republicans apparently included a section in the bill that would affect employees of abortion providers in a most personal way. The Capital-Journal reports:
“Much of the debate centered on a portion of the bill that bars anyone associated with an abortion provider from working in a public school. It is meant to prevent districts from contracting with groups like Planned Parenthood to provide sexual education materials.”
Democratic Rep. Emily Perry opposes HB 2253, and pointed out another egregious section in the bill designed “to prohibit parents from going in and volunteering at their child’s school if they work at a place that provides abortion services.” Perry’s claim was later confirmed by Republican Rep. Arlen Siegfreid, who stated that the bill would “prohibit an abortion clinic secretary from ‘bringing cupcakes to’ school for his or her child’s birthday party.”
An amendment to fix the outrageous section was offered and passed but only after it was “tweaked to limit it to those who work for abortion providers and volunteer in schools, but not those who volunteer in abortion clinics and work in schools.” In other words, employees of clinics that provide abortion services are banned from volunteering at schools, even if their own children attend the school for which they wish to volunteer.
What is WRONG with these people???
“Party of small government”?
Where’s you liberty and freedom now?
(The New York Times) - Using taxpayer dollars to finance family-planning services has become politically thorny in Texas, largely because of Republican lawmakers’ assertions that the women’s health clinics providing that care are affiliated with abortion providers. In the fiscal crunch of 2011, the Legislature cut the state’s family-planning budget by two-thirds, with some lawmakers claiming that they were defunding the “abortion industry.” Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, found that more than 50 family-planning clinics had closed statewide as a result.
Now, amid estimates that the cuts could lead to 24,000 additional 2014-15 births at a cost to taxpayers of $273 million, lawmakers are seeking a way to restore financing without ruffling feathers.
Remember how everyone kept saying this is exactly what would happen if Planned Parenthood was de-funded?
Now Texas republicans are getting bitten in the ass by their own policies, and now have a problem were they can’t reinstate funding because they have been painting Planned Parenthood as the most evil thing in the world.
Again, the GOP is more interested in punishing women than giving them affordable health care
(Eclecta Blog) - When Michigan’s Republican Party isn’t busy cutting education, driving down workers’ wages or stealing presidential elections, they always have time to wage a little war on women.
HB 4187 of 2013 would “effectively require a transvaginal probe” for any woman who wants to end a pregnancy, according to OBGYN Dr. Charlene Abernethy.
Why would a woman be forced to have her body penetrated against her will?
To “protect” her, of course.
From the bill:
THE PERFORMANCE OF A DIAGNOSTIC ULTRASOUND EXAMINATION OF THE FETUS FURTHER PROTECTS THE INTERESTS OF THE WOMAN SEEKING AN ABORTION BY ASSESSING THE VIABILITY OF THE FETUS AND CONFIRMING THE APPROXIMATE GESTATIONAL AGE OF THE FETUS, AS THIS INFORMATION IS NECESSARY IN ORDER TO DETERMINE APPROPRIATE.
Of course, this is a smokescreen made up of stuff bulls have to evacuate.
“These bills are forcing doctors to do medically unnecessary procedures, and are totally politically motivated,” according to Vicki Saporta, President and CEO of the National Abortion Federation, the professional organization of abortion practitioners.
Amy Kerr Hardin at Democracy Tree calls this, “state-sanctioned rape. By law and by definition.”
Behind this violation is the idea that women are so callous that they do not understand what’s going on in their own body.
Republicans love to point out that trust in government is at a historic low.
They think this suggests that people want less spending and a weaker safety net whenthe opposite is true. What’s more likely is that Americans are sensing that in ways never publicly stated before that Republicans believe wombs are government property and thus the state is free to impose its will on the women that happen to be carrying those wombs.
Meanwhile Republicans are fighting the practical, most effective steps we can take to actually prevent abortions.
The cliche is that Republicans want a government that’s just big enough to fit in your uterus. The truth is they want a government that’s big enough to make sure women only use their bodies to procreate.
I don’t need to be nice, and I won’t be. I’ll cut you down where you stand. You don’t care about me, about my body, and I don’t give two flying fucks about your goddamn feelings.
I hope when I insult you that you feel it. I hope you feel as insulted as I when you demand control over my body and my life as if I’m nothing more than breeding stock.
I hope when I yell and scream that it hurts your feelings, I hope it hurts as much as knowing there’s an entire group of people in the world that would rather I die than save my life.
I hope you get called out, and I hope it never stops. I hope you feel as vulnerable and alone as the women I’ve escorted to the clinic do as countless hateful bigots scream obscenities and rip the last shred of privacy away from them.
I hope you get shit for “your opinion.” I hope it continues until you shut up. I hope you feel as silenced and backed into a corner as those you shame for making private medical decisions.
Most of all, I hope you realize how much I despise each and every one of you, and I hope you know, I’m not fucking sorry.
Pro-Choice Messages and Mothers
That last anon - me too! My mother had gotten pregnant several years before I was born and was in no position to raise a child. She waited until after she was married and had an established job before she had me to try and insure that she would be able to provide for a child.
I would probably not even be here if she had gone through with that first pregnancy, nor would my two younger brothers.
(Source: stfuprolifers)
AUSTIN, Texas (Daily News) — Texas can cut off funding to Planned Parenthood’s family planning programs for poor women, a state judge ruled Monday, requiring thousands to find new state-approved doctors for their annual exams, cancer screenings and birth control.
Judge Gary Harger said that Texas may exclude otherwise qualified doctors and clinics from receiving state funding if they advocate for abortion rights.
Texas has long banned the use of state funds for abortion, but had continued to reimburse Planned Parenthood clinics for providing basic health care to poor women through the state’s Women’s Health Program. The program provides preventive care to 110,000 poor women a year, and Planned Parenthood clinics were treating 48,000 of them.
Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit to stop the rule will still go forward, but the judge decided Monday that the ban may go into effect for now. In seeking a temporary restraining order, Planned Parenthood wanted its patients to be able to see their current doctors until a final decision was made.
“We are pleased the court rejected Planned Parenthood’s latest attempt to skirt state law,” attorney general spokeswoman Lauren Bean said. “The Texas Attorney General’s office will continue to defend the Texas Legislature’s decision to prohibit abortion providers and their affiliates from receiving taxpayer dollars through the Women’s Health Program.”
All I can do right now is facepalm.
(Think Progress) - Fox News Host and former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR) doubled down on his claim that the murder spree in Connecticut was caused by removing God from schools, linking the shootings to “tax-funded abortion pills” and society calling “sinful” acts “normal.” Speaking on Fox News on Saturday, Huckabee suggested we should not be surprised “that a culture without [God] reflects what it has become:”
Christian-owned businesses are told to surrender their values under the edict of government orders to provide tax-funded abortion pills. We carefully and intentionally stop saying things are sinful and we call them disorders. Sometimes, we even say they’re normal. And to get to where we have to abandon bed rock moral truths, then we ask “well, where was God?” And I respond that, as I see it, we’ve escorted him out of our culture and marched him off the public square and then we express our surprise that a culture without him reflects what it’s become.
In reality, there are no “government-funded abortion pills.” The Obamacare contraception mandate, which is what Huckabee is likely referring to, does not provide coverage for any abortifacients — and will actually help reduce abortion rates.
This puts me at a loss for words, in fact only one comes to mind: Disguising.
LANSING (pridesource.com) - The Republicans in the Michigan legislature have passed a bill today that would allow hospitals, nursing homes or any other health care center to deny services that run contrary to the religious teachings or conscious of its leaders. This so-called conscience objection bill would open the doors for healthcare providers, insurance companies and employers to disallow healthcare services to anyone they find objectionable, such as LGBT people and women seeking family planning services including birth control and abortions.
Senate Bill 975, approved Dec. 6, was introduced by Sen. John Moolenaar (R-Midland) and co-sponsored by 22 other Republicans - almost the entire Republican caucus.
“My bill will help protect the deeply held religious beliefs of Michigan families,” Moolenaar said in a written statement.
Today, the House Insurance Committee voted along strict party lines to move the bill out of committee to the full House for a vote as early as this afternoon.
This is the latest incarnation of the “conscience objection” bill that’s been floating around the legislature for 12 years. This is the first time a version of the bill has passed both chambers.
Opponents laid out numerous hypothetical situations under which this bill could stand in the way of a woman or an LGBT individual getting potentially life-saving treatment.
For any Michigan residents reading this:
Call To Action
Encourage Gov. Snyder to veto this heinous bill if and when it makes it to his desk: 517-373-3400
517-335-7858
517-335-6863 Fax
www.michigan.gov then click on Governor to email
One of the jokes I have often made about so-called personhood amendments is that if you give a fertilized egg full rights as a person, you should get to claim them on your taxes, too.
Suddenly, that joke is a lot less funny.
Michigan Republicans are now pushing a bill that would grant a tax credit to any fetus proven to be at least 12 weeks along by December 31st. Calling it an “advance” on the actual tax break the family would receive the next calendar year, the GOP frames the financial help as a chance to offset expenses with pregnancy.
MLive reports:
“You’re recognizing the fact that people have additional expenses, another person to take care of,” [bill sponsor Rep. Jud] Gilbert said of the rationale behind allowing fetuses to be claimed as income tax exemptions. “Money saved there could be contributed to doctor’s bills and all kinds of things.”
The bill, if it passed, would provide about $160 per family and would cost the state $5 million to $10 million per year, according to the report. Hospital costs associated with a pregnancy tend to range in the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, especially for women without health insurance. In the meantime, the state has continued to fight against the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the state insurance exchange.
The lack of financial impact the tax credit would offer families make it clear that this move isn’t about family support, but about reproductive rights. Zach Pohl, Executive Director of Progress Michigan, calls the move for exactly what it is — redefining “personhood” via the tax code. He said in a press release:
“This is really a backdoor way of passing extreme personhood legislation, which has been rejected by voters in states across the country. Even worse, this would create a special new tax credit for unborn fetuses, after Lansing Republicans eliminated the tax credit for living, breathing children last year. It’s time for our elected leaders to get their priorities straight and start working together to create good jobs and improve education.”
Provide extra support for a fetus while cutting off aid to those who are born? Anti-choice politicking at its best.
Well, look here, more proof that they care about fetuses more than actual children. Surprise, surprise.
When evangelicals were pro-choice – CNN Belief Blog
In 1968, Christianity Today published a special issue on contraception and abortion, encapsulating the consensus among evangelical thinkers at the time. In the leading article, professor Bruce Waltke, of the famously conservative Dallas Theological Seminary, explained the Bible plainly teaches that life begins at birth:
“God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: ‘If a man kills any human life he will be put to death’ (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22–24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense… Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.”
The magazine Christian Life agreed, insisting, “The Bible definitely pinpoints a difference in the value of a fetus and an adult.” And the Southern Baptist Convention passed a 1971 resolution affirming abortion should be legal not only to protect the life of the mother, but to protect her emotional health as well.
(Source: sarahlee310)
CC: everyone who says “wahhhhh i don’t want to pay for your birth control”
(via rabbleprochoice)
Further details on the Galway death.
Savita Halappanavar, who was 17 weeks pregnant, died of septicaemia a week after presenting with back pain on 21 October at University hospital in Galway, where she was found to be miscarrying.
After the 31-year-old dentist was told that she was miscarrying, her husband reportedly said that she had asked for a medical termination a number of times over a three day period, during which she was in severe pain.
But he said these requests were denied because a foetal heartbeat was still present and they were told at one point: “This is a Catholic country.”
Pro … “life”?
I think the term to use here is, “I can’t even”.
As in, I can’t even fucking wrap my head around fucking DOCTORS denying a medical procedure to someone who’s life is in danger and letting them FUCKING DIE because for some fucking reason they value this idea of protecting a non-fully formed fetus over the life of a fully autonomous, fully formed, living, breathing person.
It’s precisely shit like this that is the reason I’m so harsh of advocates of outlawing abortion and religious fundamentalists.
(via feurety)
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