blog4choice

Urgent Action needed in Mississippi

A long but worth it diary on Kos about what's happening Monday March 27 in Mississippi. They may be the next South Dakota and they are trying to do it "quietly" but that's not happening.

There are a lot of action items toward the end of the diary. Lots to do in a short amount of time.

Here's the story.

posted by RevDeb @ 3:21 PM 0 comments

The Only Moral Abortion is MY Abortion

There is a diary up on the DailyKos here that discusses this article.

I found it on Steve Gilliard's blog here

Many years ago my husband, before I knew him, worked at the PP clinic in Seattle. He told me the story that had been told to him by the clinic director of the day that the head of the anti-choice group that picketed the clinic regularly asked to have an appt. with her after hours. The woman needed to make an appointment for her daughter who needed an abortion. Being the kind and empathetic woman that the director was, she said of course assuring the mom that confidentiality would be kept, etc.

At the end of the meeting, she asked the anti how she could reconcile taking this action with and helping her daughter get an abortion. How does she have thtemerityty to stand out in front of the clinic and try to block other women from coming in. The anti said something to the effect,

"My daughter's a good girl, she's not a slut like the others who come here."

The stories never end, and never will end.

posted by RevDeb @ 4:11 PM 0 comments

The Oglala Sioux Stand Up for Choice

This is the beginning of what could be a very interesting line of action.

Cecilia Fire Thunder, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe at Pine Ridge, SD, says that she is going to stand up to Gov. Rounds' ban of all abortion in the state of South Dakota.

The tribe is talking about inviting PP to open a clinic on the reservation. It's an interesting thought. Since the reservations of the various tribes are sovereign nations, they can make their own laws.

Here's more of the story with lots and lots of comments.

It raises lots of question—questions that could bring the debate to a new level.

posted by RevDeb @ 6:19 PM 1 comments

Small Victories—we'll take them

Small victory in Indiana:

Indiana is one of the worst states on choice I have ever seen. As you drive over the state line from wherever into Indiana, you will find the horrible beating heart billboards. So this small victory, the bad bills proposed to limit choice even further, died because of a deadline. Read the short diary:

My Left Wing

posted by RevDeb @ 6:17 PM 0 comments

Missouri, Marching backward in the annals of time!

Fired Up Missouri

Those good ole repulsivans in Missouri are hellbent to punish poor women for having sex. Now they want to take birth control availability away from state clinics. Gee, who'd o thunk it?

Comments on the story posted at:
Firedoglake, Crooksandliars, AmericaBlog and Booman.

Again, it's not about preventing pregnancies which lead to icky abortions, it's totally about slutty women having sex.

If you haven't read the paper written by Lisa Littman about prevention vs. punishment, go and do it.

Lots to catch up on—been having to do my real job lately— so I'll be back with another interesting exchange that Digby got into this week. . . . more later.

posted by RevDeb @ 2:23 PM 0 comments

A New "Game" of Twenty Questions

Interesting questions to ask our "pro-life" friends. We could probably add to the list—and will—but in the mean time, Molly has these for us:

Twenty Questions -- Baby Killing Edition
Since many of the people commenting on that other post are referring to "murder" in one form or another, here are some questions for those of you who claim to believe that abortion is murder, and that all women who receive them are "murdering their babies."

1) Should women who abort get life sentences in prison and/or the death penalty?
2) If a woman's husband knows she is aborting, should he be charged as an accessory to murder? . . .

Go see the rest here

Just Added mollysavestheday to the blog roll. Check it out

posted by RevDeb @ 8:47 AM 0 comments

Ignore the man behind the curtain

Remember the Wizard of Oz moment when Dorothy and friends are in the great hall in Oz and the curtain opens behind the wizard? He sees them and then turns back to his microphone and says "Don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain" or some such thing? As Ellen Goodman says, the curtain is now drawn on the pretense of anti-choicers only wanting to legislate to "help families communicate" and to "give women complete information".

The state of SD has finally made the upfront statement that all abortions should stop (except, of course those that save the life of a woman, or those for really religious virgins who have been brutally raped).

ELLEN GOODMAN
In South Dakota, at least the pretense is finally over
By Ellen Goodman | March 10, 2006

TWO MONTHS AGO, when all eyes were on Samuel Alito's confirmation hearings, I traveled 1,300 miles west to Sioux Falls, S.D. I went to see the state where the right to abortion had already come down to this: one clinic, one day a week, one doctor. The women in the waiting room had come from all over the state. The doctor had flown in from Minneapolis.

South Dakota had become a legislative laboratory for abortion restrictions. It had followed the blueprint that Alito himself had laid out in the 1980s. This was a strategy to add so many restrictions -- one law at a time -- that Roe v. Wade would collapse without ever being overturned.

As Kate Looby, the head of the state Planned Parenthood, said that day, we could end up with a hollow right to abortion that would mean nothing to the women of South Dakota.

Now Alito is on the bench and abortion opponents believe, in the words of South Dakota state legislator Roger Hunt, ''This is our time." The ''purists" are in charge now. All the pretense is gone. And the laboratory door has closed with a bang. Or, to put it more accurately, a ban. . . .

Read the rest of Ellen's most excellent take on it here .

posted by RevDeb @ 7:57 AM 0 comments

Faith....What God wants?

Faith Is Believing What You Know Ain't So
By moiv Wed Mar 08, 2006 at 12:54:48 AM EST

One can almost hear Mark Twain snorting in disgust.

This week Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota finally ended the suspense. After a prolonged, tantalizing and agonizing period of presumably sober deliberation, Rounds signed the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act. The law protects human life beginning at "that point in time when a male human sperm penetrates the zona pellucida of a female human ovum." Unless, of course, the live human in question is a woman who wants an abortion - in which case she'd better be a sodomized Christian virgin. . . .

Again, Moiv brings us the gallery of shame and further news of those who think they legislate for God.

Scratch the surface of the lives of some of the "crusaders for life" and you find some pretty shady dealings. Check out the whole article here

posted by RevDeb @ 4:43 PM 0 comments

Here's the hope

It seems that we have been fighting this battle for decades—we have—but it takes people like Bill Napoli, Julie Bartling, and Mike Rounds to really get everyone on the bandwagon. Here's Meteor Blades with the "all fired up and ready to get back in the battle cry"

March 08, 2006

Praising South Dakota. Confessions of an Ex-Abortion Provider

By Meteor Blades

For years, I've been complacent. Oh, I sent money. I slapped on bumper stickers. I voted for the right politicians. I swore at the passage of the latest restrictive statute. I sighed when a court ruling was announced. I shook my head in disgust upon learning that another doctor had felt compelled to buy a bulletproof vest or a shoulder holster. I got into a cocktail party argument every now and again. All along, I called myself pro-choice. A backer of reproductive rights. But, like a lot of people I know, I was lazy about it. Stupidly lazy. No more.

. . . .

read the whole thing and get aboard! (Lots of helpful links on it too)

posted by RevDeb @ 8:28 AM 0 comments

Analysis of a post-Roe country

State Law After Roe
by Scott Shields, Tue Mar 07, 2006 at 04:02:03 PM EST

Following up on last night's post about the South Dakota and Mississippi abortion bans, Josh Goodman of Governing magazine's '13th Floor' blog sent me a link to his analysis of state abortion law in a post-Roe America. Relying heavily on data from NARAL, Goodman concludes that "23 states would be likely to ban most abortions, 20 states would keep abortion legal... and 7 states would be battlegrounds...."

The rest and the links are worth a read over at MyDD.

posted by RevDeb @ 4:25 PM 0 comments

SD has started an avalanche of activity

There are lots and lots of opinions on the blogs right now about the Rapists Rights Law that Gov. Mike Rounds of SD signed yesterday. Here are a few:

Graphic foolery from the Dood
Freelancers
Atrios chimes in here and again here
Georgia10 about a Class 5 Felony
Think Progress has lots of good links here which bring together lots of the pieces of the story including Digby's posit about the raped religious virgin exception. This story line has been picked up all over the blogisphere. And now he has more about the moral inconsistencies of the pro-natalists here.
Steve Gilliard on how abstinence fails. Booman adds his two cents plus tax.

And Jane, bless her heart has this priceless bit:

I brought up one of my favorite forced birth conundrums the other day, guaranteed to make wingnut "life begins at conception" heads explode. If a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you can only save a petri dish with five blastulae or a two-year old child, which do you save?

do follow the links in the article to the Crooks and Liars audio of the right wing radio host's head exploding! She then has more here and here including this great question:

And Laura E. writes:
Here's an extension of the 5 blastulae or the 2-year-old question. Do first responders, like fire fighters, have training and equipment to rescue petri dishes? Would they run into a burning building to save them even if there weren't any 2 year olds? Do they have protocols? Will they need to train in South Dakota? What are the emergency evacuation policies in fertility clinics?

And it's even been picked up in the International Herald Tribune via Americablog

Had enough for one day?

Just for the record, my coreligionists worked long and hard to keep this from happening:
South Dakota UUs fought state abortion ban

posted by RevDeb @ 3:41 PM 0 comments

In case anyone still has illusions about John McCain

This should put them to rest. McCain would sign the SD Rapist's Rights Bill given the opportunity:

Straight Talk on South Dakota?
by mcjoan

Mon Mar 06, 2006 at 01:21:13 PM EST

John McCain, that self-styled "maverick" of Republican politics, continues to try to have it both ways, this time on the politics of abortion and specifically, the South Dakota ban.


A spokesperson said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would have signed the South Dakota legislation, "but [he] would also take the appropriate steps under state law -- in whatever state -- to ensure that the exceptions of rape, incest or life of the mother were included."

Well, Senator, the problem is that the South Dakota bill specifically ruled out exceptions for rape or incest, allowing only an exception for the health life of the mother, and by golly, the women of South Dakota were damned lucky to get that. I guess it's small comfort to know that their own lives rate just a little bit higher than a fertilized egg.

There's lots more here

DO NOT BE FOOLED by this man. He is not a centrist, he is not to be trusted. He's positioning himself for a run for president. He needs to be exposed at every turn for what he is—a right wing zealot.

posted by RevDeb @ 2:19 PM 0 comments

I am nothing but a disposable containter . . .

SusanG writes:

In South Dakota, I Am Disposable
by SusanG

Sun Mar 05, 2006 at 09:44:33 AM EST

Imagine this: One day you wake up and discover an entire state has passed a law that declares you are worthless.

You are no longer a person. You are a package - a package for a potential person. Picture the styrofoam Big Mac carton tumbling along the shoulder of the interstate. Remember the discarded, dented Budweiser can you kicked aside at the campground to pitch a tent. Recall the time you scraped a month-old Popsicle wrapper from the side of your garbage can. That's you.

Or rather, that's me. I am a discard. I am debris. I am a useless scrap of life, sacrificed. . .

the rest

This goes beyond the idea of pregnancy punishment. If the opposite of love is not hate but indifference, then it would seem that the legislation, as designed by the MEN in SD essentially is about either punishment or indifference to women—we are just needed to cook and clean and raise the young'uns and provide pleasure for their horny bodies.

I think it's time for the women of SD (and Mississippi and every other misogynist state) to have readings and productions of Lysistrata in every town across the state and take the message to heart. You want to punish women for having sex, fine than no sex it will be!

posted by RevDeb @ 1:00 PM 0 comments

Wal-Mart makes concession-

will stock Plan B.

This is probably a result of the lawsuit that was won in MA and the threat of many more.
From Reuters:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said on Friday that all of its pharmacies would carry emergency contraceptive pills, bowing to pressure from states seeking to force the world's biggest retailer to do so.

In a statement posted on its Web site, Wal-Mart said all of its pharmacies would begin carrying "Plan B" contraceptives as of March 20.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the company would not comment beyond the contents of the statement.

Now, will they carry them in SD? What about Mississippi? Only time will tell.

Update:

but added that workers who did not feel comfortable dispensing a prescription could refer customers to another pharmacist or pharmacy.

yep, there's that pesky thing that allows a pharmacist to have a conscience, but not a woman!

posted by RevDeb @ 4:48 PM 0 comments

It's not about Prevention, it's about Punishment

This is not a new concept. Lakoff has been writing about it and the Longview Institute has some great information that lays it all out—see the sidebar for the link.

Digby goes at it in fine fashion.

Cards On The Table

by digby

If more of these people would admit what they really believe we could have an honest debate in this country:

West Jordan Republican Sen. Chris Buttars scoffed at McCoy's suggestion that the legislation might force teens to other states for abortions or into their bathrooms to attempt the procedure on themselves.

"Abortion isn't about women's rights. The rights they had were when they made the decision to have sex," Buttars said. "This is the consequences. The consequence is they should have to talk to their parents."


Too bad if her father is the one who impregnated her:

the rest is here.

Updates by Echidne and Pandagon BOTH worth the read.

posted by RevDeb @ 7:04 PM 0 comments

Meet Mississippi, the new South Dakota

Haley Barbour couldn't wait to jump on the bandwagon. AmericaBlog

We're likely to see a lot more of this as the days and weeks and months go on. Again, this will mostly affect poor women, not those who can afford to travel and find doctors in states that still provide reproductive services.

Jane has more to say about it.

As long as NARAL and PPFA continue to support people like Lieberman and Chafee who make their token votes against people like Alito in the roll call vote, but don't do anything to stop them, as in, vote against cloture, then we will continue to have rapist's rights bills flooding state legislatures because right wing now thinks they will succeed.

How do they get such an idea? From thank you notes like this:

Alito to Dobson

posted by RevDeb @ 3:25 PM 0 comments

Kate Michaelman for Senate?

News from the Philly Inquirer that Kate may run for senate as an indy.
Here's the scoop and a quick analysis at MyDD

posted by RevDeb @ 3:23 PM 0 comments

Romney Flip-Flops on Choice

This is not news to any of us living in MA, but Mitt Romney, republican governor—in absentia most of the time— who intends to run for Pres. changes his views to fit the audience:

Boston Globe, Joan Vennochi

The only "choice" the Mittster believes in is his own. He wants to be able to choose his views on reproduction to suit whomever he is courting. This is a warning to everyone else out there WAY ahead of time . . . the Mittster will be coming to a venue near you one of these days.

posted by RevDeb @ 3:12 PM 0 comments

Interstate Abortion Tunneling: A Modest Proposal

I say we plan now for tunnels similar to the ones under the Mexican border. We have women in need transport from the repressive states to pop up in more enlightened ones.

posted by Bill Levering @ 2:22 PM 0 comments

Congressional Catholics Unite

to make a policy statement. Fifty-five of them so far. It's quite interesting, especially if you know anything about some of those folks.

Catholic Statement

Ed Markey and Jim Langevin agreeing on a policy statement that includes conscience and choice! Check it out.

posted by RevDeb @ 5:44 PM 0 comments