Reproductive Rights

She was against teaching condom use in schools before she was for them :

Palin appears to disagree with McCain on sex education - Los Angeles Times

Palin's statements date to her 2006 gubernatorial run. In July of that year, she completed a candidate questionnaire that asked, would she support funding for abstinence-until-marriage programs instead of "explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?" Palin wrote, "

Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support."

But in August of that year, Palin was asked during a KTOO radio debate if "explicit" programs include those that discuss condoms. Palin said no and called discussions of condoms "relatively benign."

For those of you that don’t know, the great state of Colorado will be voting on a constitutional amendment that will declare a fertilized egg a person. Yeah, the Dog can’t believe it either, but it is true. In this state we have 106, 000 people that were willing to sign a petition to get this amendment on the ballot, which can only make you sad for the state of critical thinking in CO.

Here is the thing, we know very precisely when pregnancy starts, and it is when the fertilized egg implants itself in the uterine wall. This signals the woman’s body that it is time to gear up and start making the hormones that drive the biological changes which sustain the embryo. It is also when home pregnancy tests can tell if she has a bun in the oven. Unfortunately, this can happen as long as 8 days after the egg is fertilized. This new amendment (note, not a law, but an actual change in the constitution) would recognize the egg as a person eight whole days before anyone could reasonably know that it existed!

This is what I would do if I had several thousand dollars to spare these days :

1. I would have wire clothes hangers, like the ones dry cleaning stores us, and I'd covered them in dark blue rice paper with the blue and logo of the McCain campaign.

2. The tag line under the logo? "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."

3. A second design option would have his fateful words about how he would change the Supreme Court of the United States with the judges like like Roberts and Alito or his dear friend Chief Rhenquist.

4. If I had more money, I'd hang a Supreme Court Justice looking robe from several hundreds of them and deliver them to each and every one of the high-profile Democrats, whereas politicians or funders, who are being assholes about supporting Obama.

Plain and simple message : You support McCain? Kiss equal rights for women away.

This has made my friggin' day :

NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC Endorses Senator Barack Obama for President

Washington, D.C. – NARAL Pro-Choice America, the political leader of the pro-choice movement with more than one million member activists in all 50 states, today announced that its political action committee is endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president.

"There are few more tireless defenders of women's rights in this country than NARAL Pro-Choice America and I'm proud to accept their support," Sen. Obama said. "For decades, they have worked in the courthouse, in the legislature, and in the streets to make sure that women have the right to choose. This is a fundamental civil right that I've fought to protect in Illinois and in Washington, that's being threatened by Senator McCain, and that I'll be fighting in the months ahead to make secure today, tomorrow, and always."

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, praised both Sen. Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton for their leadership in standing up for women's reproductive rights throughout this campaign, but only one of these dynamic candidates can advance to the general election.

Former President of Chicago NOW, Lorna Brett Howard explains why she left the Hillary Clinton campaign to join the campaign of Barack Obama. More specifically? She was disgusted at how the Clinton campaign lied about Barack Obama's record on pro-choice matters.

Over at YouTube this clip links to a Washington Post article that came out on the 18th of January, explaining the smear campaign waged by the Clintonites during the New Hampshire primaries :

Three New Hampshire Democratic leaders who signed a letter two days before the state's primary at the request of Hillary Clinton's campaign, attacking Barack Obama as soft in his support for abortion rights, are asking Obama supporters in the state to put the rifts of the primary campaign behind them and praising Obama for being "strongly pro-choice."

Of the two dozen prominent women who signed the critical letter, e-mailed by the Clinton campaign to a list of supporters and undecided voters, three have now signed their names to another missive asking abortion rights supporters in the state to come together and take comfort in the fact that all of the Democratic presidential candidates are firmly pro-choice. One of the three Clinton supporters went even further, saying in an interview Thursday that signing the letter attacking Obama was a "mistake."

Today is January 22nd, 2008 and women across the United States will observe it as the 35 anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. Many of them will even be blogging about how the right to choose is so important to them. Others will spend the day condemning it.

Which just brings me to the topic of birthing.

It seems like there is a baby boom in Hollywood. Everybody and their mother is pregnant. There is so much baby booming that it led Ricki Lake to make a documentary about the whole thing.

In The Business of Being Born, Lake goes on to document the way women in the United States go about birthing babies and reveal it for what it is, a business. As an advocate for midwifery and non-invasive birthing, Lake hopes "this film educates people and empowers them to really know their choices in childbirth."

Dear Sandra,

I don't mean to rub it in, but I bet you're wishing you had paid attention to that open letter I wrote you a few years ago. This week, a report on channel KPNX leaked that your Alzheimer's-stricken husband John is living, happily, with a new girlfriend in an old age home. Their video exposé even contains hard-core shots of your husband John holding hands with Kay, the local hooch of the Huger Mercy Living Center. Far from being jealous or upset, you, according to your own son, are a bit of a voyeur who likes to watch: "For Mom to visit when he's happy ... visiting with his girlfriend, sitting on the porch swing holding hands... No stress on mom. No guilt laid on mom."

Well I'm glad you enjoy watching your husband and his lady friend "exchange oxygen masks" and play footsie under the Bingo table. And I'm glad that you don't feel guilty about your John. But I still haven't forgiven you for what you did to me and, more importantly, what you did to America. And that is something to feel guilty about.

Liberals were so busy pointing their fingers at Alito and Roberts for shifting the court to the right they forget to look at the bigger question: How did Alito and Roberts get there? By replacing Rehnquist and O'Connor, respectively, on the bench. We can hardly blame Rehnquist, or as Nixon liked to call him, " Renchburg" the "Jewish clown". I mean Rehnquist could barely walk, couldn't talk, and had a gaping hole in his throat, which he covered ingeniously with his signature "tracheo-scarf." And yet this judge chugged away on decision after decision until the day he died at the age of 81.

from Talk to Action

In Life's Dominion, Ronald Dworkin posited that although most people believe that abortion is sometimes justifiable, they also believe it "a kind of cosmic shame when human life at any stage is deliberately extinguished."

Dworkin concluded that "because opinions about abortion rest on differing interpretations of a shared belief in the sanctity of human life, they are themselves essentially religious beliefs" -- which made the banning of abortion an unconstitutional establishment of religion.

But as self-styled political "moderates" decide that some forms of human life count more than others -- and that Christian conservative votes count most of all -- there's plenty of cosmic shame to go around.

from Talk to Action

Last week, Flip Benham's Operation Save America converged in Birmingham to "push what is left of the abortion industry into a deep grave." Writing of an OSA action against Birmingham clinics in 1994, Benham likened his mission to that of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Saints [were] held in the Birmingham jail where Rev. Martin Luther King wrote his letter. The battle we fight is the same, just a different colored glove. One colored glove: the humanity and equality of our black brothers and sisters. Second colored glove: the humanity and equality of our little brothers and sisters in their mother's wombs. Both gloves cover the hand of one who has come to rob, kill, and destroy -- the devil! The battle is the same.

Legitimate members of the clergy on the scene in Alabama this year included the Rev. Dr. Katherine Ragsdale of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, who witnessed a different kind of battle altogether.