Pro-choice

Join Us & Celebrate Change in 2008!

For New York, the 2008 Election will be the time for pro-choice political change and the Planned Parenthood of New York City Action Fund is committed to making that change happen.

But we need pro-choice New Yorkers like you!

Fight for Your Rights. Party.

Pro-Choice Poker!
Saturday, November 17th, 2007
5-9pm
Pete's Candy Store
709 Lorimer Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Tickets $20

Meet other pro-choice New Yorkers, play a friendly game of poker and support the important political work of the Planned Parenthood of New York City Action Fund!

Your $20 ticket to this fabulous party also gets you a one-year membership to the Action Fund. As a member, you'll get all the latest info on how to make pro-choice political change in 2008 and beyond.

Click Here to RSVP!

It's not just what happened on April 18 when the über-cons that Bush appointed to the Supreme Court set a dangerous precedent by refusing to consider risks to a woman's health to be a valid medical concern anymore. It's how and why it happened at all.

As Katha Pollitt points out in an excellently angry rant in her 'The Nation' column, it really does matter which party you vote for. A Democratic-controlled Congress would never have passed the draconian Partial-Birth Abortion Act. A Democratic President would never have signed it. And a pre-Bush SCOTUS would never have upheld it. (In fact they already didn't, once. But that was before people who really should have known better let the Rethuglican camel's nose into the tent.)

So, NARAL Pro-Choice America -- or whatever your latest bland, pandering brand name is -- maybe, much too late, you'll rethink your policy of supporting pro-choice Republicans, who made the majorities that set the agenda that led us to this very bad place. And maybe, Tom Frank and assorted liberal know-it-alls of the op-ed page and blogosphere who've been telling us to calm down because Republicans are all bark and no bite on abortion, you'll take a look at the real world. Sometimes politicians deliver on their promises. As for all you pro-choicers with qualms out there -- who think abortion is icky and "late term" abortion especially so, although you couldn't say exactly when that even is, and who wonder why women are so careless and shouldn't emergency contraception have taken care of this already? -- maybe it's time to start defending the right you say you believe in, instead of cutting the ground out from under it.

Yeah. What she said.

Let Freedom Ring!

South Dakota voters overturned the most restrictive abortion law in the nation Tuesday, handing abortion rights supporters a huge victory in a conservative state.

The law was signed in March but was put on hold pending the election. If approved, it would have barred almost all abortions, including for rape and incest victims, and allowed them only if a mother's life was in jeopardy.

"This is a wake-up call to lawmakers in other states that the American pro-choice majority will not allow any assault on Roe v. Wade to go unanswered," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America

Unfortunately, they not only re-elected the man that signed the law, Gov. Mike Rounds, but they also banned gay-marriage.

Planned Parenthood is fighting the South Dakota ban on abortion and they are asking you to host or attend a potluck fundraiser for choice.

Potluck House Parties will be held across the country to raise money and build awareness for the campaign to defeat the abortion ban in South Dakota.

Sign up to host a Potluck for South Dakota with your friends and family!

Use their online tools to create, manage and promote your potluck.

The host whose potluck raises the most money will win a Newman’s Own gift basket and a trip to New York City to meet Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards!

Or you can find a potluck near you to attend.

When I was in fifth grade, the Equal Rights Amendment was making its rounds about the states, looking for confirmation from the legislatures. It was a hot topic in our classroom. On the television at night, we saw the images of war and destruction in Viet Nam, saw the colour images of soldiers being carried off the battlefields. Saw the sawgrass whipping in the wind of the helicoptor rotors. We saw the dead Vietnamese, too. The little kids, our age, covered with napalm, or the men in their black pyjamas. It was our nightly dinner companion, the war, and for many of us, it was the conversation at the dinner table, too.

My parents didn't believe in the Domino Theory. They believed the war was bullshit, a waste, and the images would enrage my father. Shortly before the November, 1972 election, Henry Kissinger stood in front of microphones and promised that "peace was at hand." I begged my father to vote for Richard Nixon over George McGovern because I honestly believed that Nixon was going to end the war. I wanted to take off the bracelet I wore, the one that bore the name of an American POW who had been captured in 1965, and who still sat in a Hanoi jail. I thought about his family, his children, and wondered how they coped with their father gone.

So, when the teacher in our class suggested that we should debate the ERA in our classroom, it was those images that filled our heads and coloured our debate. The boys found our Achilles' heel, and they shot at it. "If the ERA passes, girls will be drafted, too," they taunted. We caved. I didn't want to go to war. I didn't want to get shot. I didn't want to be one of those people laid out on a gurney dying a horrible death in the maelstrom of the chopper blades.

To a girl, we voted down the ERA in our classroom. And to a boy, they voted for it.

March 8 is International Women's Day, and the Leader of the Free World has declared an end to sexual exploitation of women, free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, it's a miracle. And if he can't change the whole world by executive order, today he's at least making a stern example of those South Dakota sex traffickers and exploiters of women and young girls?

Off to tell my teen-aged daughter the great news that it's morning in America and starting today, she'll be judged on the content of her character, not her uterus. . .

From the festive Voice of America holiday story:

"America will help women stand up for their freedom no matter where they live."

The president says his administration is working with other nations to end sexual exploitation and the human trafficking of women and young girls . . .

Most of the women I know are full of rage at this moment. We fucking screamed that if he got re-elected, women were going to pay for that election with their bodies. We yelled at our fellow leftists that the right to privacy was important enough to go to the mat for, but we were told to shut our fucking pie-holes because there were more important issues to get worked up about. And now, well, now we have two more anti-choice asswipes on SCOTUS, and states are lining up to gang-rape Roe v Wade. South Dakota got its dick out first, but apparently, other states like Tennessee and Missouri don’t mind sloppy seconds.
As an expression of that rage and disbelief, it’s been floated that it's time for the Lysistrata option. That is, since women cannot be trusted to make a choice, our choice should be:

[Liza suggested I cross-post this from my main site, The New Homemaker.--Lynn]

Over at the new-ish blog Mother Talkers, Amy points to a program in Wichita that is the kind of thing I wish anti-abortion people would take to heart. I have been saying this for years: The issue is not whether to outlaw abortion or not, the issue is, are we going to be there for women and children who need us?

I am personally pro-life, to the point that for me the only exception is life of the mother; after eight weeks, that's a baby as far as I'm concerned, and it's not that child's fault if it's the product of rape or incest.

At the same time I recognize the utter futility of outlawing abortion, especially without providing some form of help for women faced with unwanted or inopportune pregnancies. And "inopportune" is so not the right word, but it's the best one I've got at hand. The Choices program gives me hope, because as things stand now all we have are two polarized political bureaucracies who stand to gain from never moving forward on this issue.

I just wanted to give y'all a heads up about the Matt Brown campaign. I just got off the phone from a PR call announcing their internal polling results. Their numbers are looking good.

[via Matt Brown - Brown Gaining Momentum; Leads Whitehouse in New Poll]:

Brown is leading Whitehouse, even though Whitehouse has a 16 point advantage in name identification (Whitehouse 81%, Brown 65%).

"Matt has run an aggressive grassroots campaign since day one and people are responding - but we aren't taking anything for granted until the final poll on Election Day," said Pete Brodnitz, campaign pollster. "Whitehouse has the backing of the political machine, the endorsements and money. But Matt Brown has the people. This poll shows Matt has room to grow and the more voters know about him, the more they like him."

As I said before, Matt Brown looks like a good pro-choice candidate to support. I am keeping my eye on this race because I am hearing good things that I have not heard from other campaigns here in New York :