Abortion

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.

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

Like both James Dobson and Tony Perkins’ pro-war Family Research Council prayer team, Conservative Woman is hell on both Islamist plots and abortion – but what happens when their twin “Christian” crusades collide?

What is happening is exactly what anyone should have expected. Pregnant Iraqi women and their babies are dying in unprecedented numbers – and women who fear adding to that horrendous death toll with their own lives and those of their children are taking what they see as a lesser gamble by seeking out illegal and unsafe abortions.

The War on Terror is making us all safer, one tiny terrorist at a time.

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.

from Talk to Action

As Flip Benham's Operation Save America prepares to besiege the same Birmingham, Alabama clinic bombed by Eric Rudolph, veteran associates of the underground terrorist network calling itself the Army of God prepare to memorialize assassin Paul Hill (left) — complete with a reenactment of the shotgun murder that took the lives of Dr. John Britton and his escort, James Barrett.

Events like these are intended to remind abortion providers that there is a violent underground. But they should also remind the rest of society that there is an armed wing of theocratic activism, to which most turn a blind eye. — Frederick Clarkson

Many also turn a blind eye to the fact that people such as these — "the underbelly of the Christian right ... as scary as anything that ever dwelled in a Tora Bora cave" — have influential associates in some very high places.

from Talk to Action

As Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards got right with Jesus and the only "single-issue voters" that rate the Democratic Party's approval, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried talking the talk to enlist "pro-life" support for funding stem cell research.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has drawn guffaws from the pro-life community for comments saying that embryonic stem cell research, which involves the destruction of days-old human embryos, is a "gift from God." Her remarks came after the House approved a bill to force Americans to fund it.

"Science is a gift of God to all of us, and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure... And that is embryonic stem cell research," Pelosi said.

As Pelosi speaks of God’s gift of science, a Democratic Congress votes to spend $27 million more on abstinence-only programs and crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) than Bush had even asked for — thereby ensuring an increase in the rate of sexually transmitted infections and abortions among young people — while dumping millions of our tax dollars into the coffers of the same Religious Right abstinence-only industry working to criminalize safe abortion care, abolish stem cell research, and defeat the Prevention First program that Democrats claim to consider a high legislative priority.

While these politicians might fudge their positions on "a woman's right to choose," this action undeniably stamps them as just what the Religious Right accuses them of being: pro-abortion — because despite all their meaningless cant about "reducing the number of abortions," increasing the number of abortions is the only thing that abstinence-only programs guarantee to accomplish.

from Talk to Action

As Rick Santorum, Hillary Clinton, Sam Brownback and Barack Obama packed to attend Jim Wallis' Pentecost 2006, some wondered about Wallis' true agenda.

The source of Wallis' appeal is his apparent moderation, both political and theological. His argument is compelling in its simplicity: An overriding commitment to social justice is more basic to Christianity than the issues championed by Christian fundamentalists. But to prevail he must avoid seeming too militantly progressive. "The country is not hungry, I don't think, for a religious left to counter the religious right," Wallis [said]. "The country is hungry for a moral center."

Before his elevation as an "evangelical progressive" celebrity, together with a Who's Who of the Religious Right -- Gary Bauer, Charles Colson, James Dobson, Robert George, William Kristol, Beverly LaHaye, Richard Land, Bernard Nathanson, Frank Pavone and Ralph Reed -- Jim Wallis signed a lengthy document that said plenty about his moral center, culminating in a call for a constitutional amendment to criminalize abortion entirely.

And to this day, Wallis has yet to repudiate a word of it.

from Talk to Action

Johnny Castle and Baby could have taken lessons from Texas Speaker of the House Tom Craddick and Joe Pojman of Texas Alliance for Life. With the Speaker's one-man rule of the House facing an unprecedented challenge from within his own party, with the passage of a high-impact antiabortion bill at stake, and with the Texas legislative session in its final days, Craddick and Pojman were caught dancing the political payola polka.

"One of the sources of irritation with the Speaker this session is the amount of blood spilled and floor time that has been committed to socially conservative issues," but Craddick and the "pro-life" lobby are longtime partners — and one good move deserves another.

In the Texas Legislature, dirty dancing is only politics as usual.

from Talk to Action

In The New Republic, Christine Stansell writes on "Partial Law: A Lost History of Abortion."

"Thank God for President Bush, and thank God for Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito," intoned Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention last week, after the Supreme Court announced its decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, the so-called partial-birth abortion case. But Land also should have thanked Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose majority opinion dangerously reframes the abortion debate.

Kennedy ... reasons that the ban on D&X procedures--the medical name for what the anti-choice movement calls partial-birth abortions--should be permitted because it is meant to protect women from making a choice that goes against their nature. "Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child," Kennedy declares. Concerned that women may learn the details of how the procedure is performed only after the fact, he writes, "The State has an interest in ensuring so grave a choice is well informed."
::
In Kennedy's words, one hears the echo of the anti-choice movement's new emphasis on abortion as a de facto violation of something at the very core of women's being. Medical technicalities take up the bulk of the Court's majority opinion, but the reasoning concerns the nature of women and the integrity of their moral choices--an implicit rejection of the most mainstream tenets of modern feminism.

An implicit rejection of women's moral capacity or authority, an echo from the past — and a recapitulation of the arguments that made abortion illegal over a hundred years ago.

Memory wall

Have you had to sit down and make a medical decision that could potentially end up aborting the 5 month-old fetus you have declared as your baby?

I have.

It was 1997 and Napier and I were getting ready to leave on our last vacation as a 'just the two of us'. We figured that once the baby was born our lives would be altered forever as three and that no matter how 'romantic' and exclusive the getwaway, once you have a child to care for, you're life, your body and your mind become inexorably linked to them and forever living in a world that would be 'just the two of us AND BABY'.

So you can imagine how unhappy I was when we were called from the OB/GYN's office to discuss a test I had but heard of in passing.

The results of an alphafetoprotein test had come in. This test was also known at the time as "The Triple Test" and it was developed by some R&D company with deep lobbying pockets to, screen for a slew of birth defects, one of them being Down Syndrome.

This test has become the bane of many pregnant women (now it, by the way, known as the Quadruple Test).

If you do not have an exact date of conception, this particular test is notorious for a ridiculous high percentage of false positives

from Talk to Action

About the author: In addition to the less noteworthy accomplishment of being my friend, Carole Joffe is Professor of Sociology at UC-Davis and the author of Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe V. Wade . With co-author Diane di Mauro, Professor Joffe recently published The Religious Right and the Reshaping of Sexual Policy: An Examination of Reproductive Rights and Sexuality Education [pdf link] in Sexuality Research & Social Policy, the journal of the National Sexuality Resource Center. She has granted permission to post the text of her essay in full. -- moiv

“Well, I used to do them—there is less blood loss, and in some situations, it just seems safer. I’m not sure what I will do now.”

The speaker is Dr. Jacob Clark (not his real name), a fit man in his 60s, an obstetrician/gynecologist who has spent his life serving poor women in an East Coast city. Over coffee, he is discussing over with me his deep frustration and confusion over the recent Supreme Court decision, Gonzales v Carhart, upholding an abortion ban.

The banned procedure—referred to by medical professionals as “Intact Dilation and Extraction”, and by antiabortionists as “Partial Birth Abortion”—is quite rare, less than 1% of all abortions performed in the United States. But Dr. Clark is one of those who performs this procedure, when the situation, in his judgment, calls for it.

Dr. Clark and I are attending a medical conference, shortly after the Court announced its decision. We’ve just heard the medical director of a large clinic address her colleagues from across the country, and succinctly state the dilemma that abortion providers now face: “We’ve got to keep our patients safe—and ourselves out of jail.”

Crossposted here because:
a) Michael and Nance *said* they wanted more,
and
b) Favorite Daughter hangs on moiv's posts and wanted to do her part, contribute to the conversation here. JJ

"A SUGGESTION FROM THE LIBERAL LION"

I don't try to be brilliant, it just comes to me.

So I wasn't surprised when, without even trying, I came up with the most innovative sarcastic social experiment since Swift's A Modest Proposal.

I've been thinking a lot about abortion and gay rights recently, as the Liberal Lion within me wakes up, indulges in a long, huge yawn, and takes stock of the current political climate. Though up and roaring through the Terri Schiavo debacle of 2005, he was soon lulled into a deceptively peaceful sleep by the conservative talk radio I've listened to of late.

But as I said, the Lion is now awake, and pontificating about politics in that annoying way Liberal Lions will.

"McCain is compromised by his base, not to be trusted." He growls. "And you can't trust a damn thing you see on television. Liberal media my tail -- I'd like to see one of them not in the administration's pocket. Obama is the Manchurian Candidate, can't be trusted either. Johnny Damon is the True Antichrist." (The Lion is decisive in his thoughts, and liberal to an almost paranoid degree. Also a rabid Red Sox fan.)

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.

from Talk to Action

Many professed shock after last week's attempted bombing of an Austin women's clinic. Others felt shocked by their shock, since the religious right's thinly disguised rhetoric of hatred has so permeated our public discourse as to have become the norm. But for some it is easier to pretend not to see what is before their faces, far easier to remain willfully blind.

In 1998, nurse Emily Lyons lost her left eye, was partially blinded in her right and sustained other permanently disabling injuries when another bomb — similarly packed with nails that flew as deadly shrapnel — was detonated at a Birmingham clinic by Eric Rudolph.

"Many may find the graphic images of my trauma ... to be offensive. I hope so. Violence is ugly. You should be offended by the senseless damage caused by the attack. It isn’t the photographs that are bad; it is the act of hate that created them."

Hers are powerful words. But are Emily's courage [pdf photo link] and Emily's words more powerful than the rhetoric of hate that made them necessary?

I don't think I have said it on this blog although it is something I consistently advice to advocacy organizations whenever I am on the conference trail : If you want to put a dent into mainstream media, you need to start investing into your own new media alternatives.

Here's an AP newsbit that Zuzu over at Feministe has blasted to pieces because, as an AP article, they get to set the tone of this act of agression and terror perpetrated against workers and patients of a reproductive health clinic in Texas :
Feministe » The terrorism that dare not speak its name:

For some reason, terrorism doesn’t count if it’s directed against women and their health care providers. It’s just not news, and the fact that it goes unremarked in the national media — and hell, even in the local media, as in the case of the Austin bomb — contributes to the idea that women are not important and that violence directed at women is not only to be expected, but to be dismissed.

[...]

We saw something similar with the Virginia Tech shooting — the campus police initially dismissed the idea that the gunman would be a danger to anyone else — even though they hadn’t identified or caught him at the time — because they saw a dead woman and just assumed that it was a “domestic incident” and there would be no further violence. Clinic bombings are treated as the equivalent of shrugged-off “domestic incidents” — hey, it’s just violence against women. It’s not like it’s going to affect real people or anything.

from Talk to Action

The deadline for filing new bills in the Texas Legislature passed some weeks ago, but State Senator Dan Patrick is so very special that he's been granted a very special suspension of the rules to file yet another of his very special anti-abortion bills. His Texas Baby Purchasing Act of 2007 drew more snickers than sponsors, and his co-effort with Rep. Warren Chisum to ban abortion entirely remains in committee, but the legislative session's not over yet. And the religious right never gives up.

Women in Texas already are denied abortion care until after a doctor warns them of nonexistent risks of breast cancer and mental illness, after which they must spend at least 24 hours pondering misinformation that no responsible physician would have given them, nor ever did, until forced by law to do so. Patrick's SB 920 adds yet another moralistic barrier by denying a woman abortion care unless she examines an ultrasound image of her pregnancy, whether she wants to see it or not.

Patrick (left), a Christian conservative talk show host and first-term senator who broadcasts his radio show from the Capitol, had his own vasectomy performed live and on the air. Had a compulsory ultrasound viewing been a part of that procedure, we would all be grateful that Patrick is one publicity hound who didn't have a television gig.

Women who seek abortion care deserve to have much more medical privacy than that, along with a lot more respect for their constitutional rights.

Three things to make note of before we start wading into this blog entry together, folks...

But you know what? For those in the audience who've been wondering WTF a guy like me is doing posting to feminist blogs, this is a significant chunk of the backstory for that. So make of it what you will.

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One of the things that really, really chaps my ass is what a small percentage of the people bloviating away about abortions, on both the right and the left sides of the fence, actually have any first-hand experience with them.

I'm sorry, SCOTUS. And I'm sorry, Fux News Channel. But... if you ain't been there done that, then you can't know. You just can't fucking know.

from Talk to Action

Just over a year ago, a group of veteran spiritual warriors for the religious right — including men who began their careers in the most radical fringes of the anti-abortion movement — sneaked into a Senate hearing room to "consecrate" the chamber with holy oil.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wondered about the legality of this holy trespass.

Do not be surprised if, at some point during next week's confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, a trumpet blast is sounded in the hearing room, winged angels descend, and Democrats on the Judiciary Committee turn into pillars of salt.

This undoubtedly would be the wish of the Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council. He held a news conference outside the Hart Office Building yesterday to announce that he would "consecrate Room 216 Hart" -- the hearing room -- in hopes of having, in the sacred words of Fox News, "a fair and balanced hearing."

"By dedicating it to God, we look to God to orchestrate and direct the activities that take place at that location," Schenck ... explained to the television cameras. It's unclear if this would violate Senate rules, which give Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) sole authority to direct activities in the hearing room.

Rep. David Swinford, who nominally rules the Texas House State Affairs Committee, now has had that authority usurped by the religious right as well. According to at least one Catholic anti-choice activist, the hearing room of Swinford's committee was given a clandestine inoculation against demonic pro-choice influences before its April 2 hearing on abortion-related bills.

Texas State Representative Warren Chisum made national news in February by endorsing the idea that teaching the theory of evolution in public schools is unlawful: Copernicus got it all wrong, and the rumor that the Earth rotates around the Sun is only a Kabbalistic plot. His hasty assertion that it was all a misunderstanding is belied by his effort to force Texas high schools to teach a Bible curriculum full of misrepresentations and outright lies.

Chisum's stunning ignorance of science and American history is surpassed by his bland disregard for the lethal nature of another of his current initatives. Should Roe v. Wade be overturned, Chisum's HB 175 would make abortion a crime. Illegal abortion currently kills at least 68,000 women each year — somewhere in the world, another woman dies in the time it takes to read this story — but for Warren Chisum, that's not worth worrying about.

Martin Luther showed no concern about pregnancy's horrific death toll among women of the 16th Century: "If they become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth, that's why they are there." And in some quarters, religious opinion on that subject hasn't changed much in the intervening 500 years. According to Warren Chisum, it's expected that women die from illegal abortion: "I'm not sure that doesn't happen even today. I suspect women try things on their own."

Yes, he really said that. I heard him.

from Talk to Action

On April 2, both House and Senate committees of the Texas Legislature will begin considering a number of bills affecting a woman's medical privacy, her control over her own bodily integrity and other aspects of reproductive rights. As always, the position taken by the medical community differs dramatically from that of organizations and politicians serving the Christian right. In fact, it's often hard to tell that they're even talking about the same legislation.

While the practice of medicine has undergone fundamental changes during the last 500 years, the religious doctrines inspiring and promoting anti-woman legislation currently pending in the Texas House and Senate have not.

Texas physicians who dwell in 21st century reality are coming forward to defend a woman's right to reproductive health care. But since many Texas lawmakers and their supporters on the religious right still seem to inhabit a world of fantasy, those doctors are going to need all the support they can muster.

from Talk to Action

Blogging has a lot in common with playing the slots. We spend endless hours researching, writing, and then refining what we've written before pulling the lever one more time by hitting "submit." Most of the time we're lucky just to break even, but once in a while we hit the jackpot.

While driving home from work, I often listen to news radio and catch up with what has happened during the day. Last Thursday afternoon, KRLD 1080 alerted me to an upcoming story that already sounded familiar.

Lawmaker wants to pay women for choosing adoption over abortion

A proposal by state Sen. Dan Patrick would pay pregnant women $500 for choosing adoption over abortion.

The anti-abortion Houston Republican said Senate Bill 1567 would provide an incentive to forgo abortion, but critics questioned whether such payments would be viewed as baby selling or coercion.

That story sounded so familiar because I had posted it online in the wee hours of that very morning.

from Talk to Action

Texas State Sen. Dan Patrick, author of a current proposal to criminalize safe abortion care, has figured out that adoption tax credits have a serious limitation: they don't do anything at all to increase the number of newborn babies available for adoption in the first place. But Senator Dan's the man with a plan to even out the shortfall.

Under Patrick's SB 1567, AKA the Texas Baby Purchasing Act of 2007, women would qualify for a $500 payment from the state within 60 days of signing away all parental rights to their newborn children.

If Patrick gets his way, childbearing in the service of the state won't be just creepy Handmaid's Tale fiction anymore. How's that for some moral family values?

from Talk to Action

From the March 18 lead editorial in the Palm Beach Post.

To have fewer abortions, stop subsidizing the lies

Public money should not pay for fear-mongering 'crisis pregnancy centers' that peddle lies about fetal development, contraception and abortion.

Florida, like the federal government, spends millions each year supporting such centers, many of which are run by religious zealots who see abstinence-only as the only alternative to abortion and for whom scientific facts do not matter.
:::
If reducing abortion is the goal, avoiding unwanted pregnancy is the way to reach that goal. That means investing in centers and schools that provide unbiased, medically accurate, comprehensive information about the benefits of delaying sexual intercourse and the availability of contraception to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy. Investing in fear and lies guarantees only more unwanted pregnancies and abortions.

Women deserve much more than they're getting from state governments controlled by the religious right, and several Texas Democrats in the 80th Legislature are providing a template for making that happen — in our state and all the others.

"Can Parents Trust These Nice Conservative Brothers?"
Full post at Snook today -This is about a young couple who. . .make up a story to tell Susie's parents.

For their (shuddering as I notice this for the first time) millennium collection!

It's not just the internet tubes that make my life of the mind so rich. Without my radio, I wouldn't have nearly as much off-the-wall selective-perception stuff to think about . . .turn the radio on, turn the radio on now, no, that was the Chemical Brothers I think. .. but I digress, did you know that the dynastic Governing Brothers both have the exact same favorite song?? (WHAT ARE THE ODDS??)

Yes, it's a highly rated crowd pleaser of a song that has stood the test of time, its power of story about lying to parents and pleasing the country-western crowd, but they are so gosh-darn earnest and church-going and clean-cut about it . . .

So JEB (says my radio) has doffed his official state title and reclaimed his personal three letter nickname. Subliminally this is very presidential, like FDR, JFK, LBJ -- hmmm, are there any famous Republican prez initials, can't think of any known by three letters except Ike, which weren't his initials -- and like another music-message-muddled, big-and-tall candidate-man (Dem, and four-lettered when three would do, Gore) my ex-governor reportedly has slimmed down since leaving office. Getting into shape for the next run? Maybe he needs a musical makeover too . . .

from Talk to Action

In their avid thirst for the blessing of the Christian right, GOP presidential hopefuls such as Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback lined up last fall to prostrate themselves before James Dobson and Tony Perkins. Now, in the grip of his own presidential fever, John McCain publicly joins them in pandering to the anti-woman agenda of the religious right.

The New York Times reminds us that McCain once played harder to get.

In his unsuccessful run for the Republican nomination in 2000, McCain called [the Christian right] "the agents of intolerance." ... For a taste of their views, you can visit the Web site of Concerned Women for America (C.W.A.), which bills itself as the "nation's largest public-policy women's organization." Its mission is "to protect and promote biblical values among all citizens," the Bible being "the inerrant Word of God and the final authority on faith and practice." As for dissenters from C.W.A.'s stand on issues like the "sanctity of human life," a handy link to Bible passages explains "why you are a sinner and deserve punishment in Hell."

A woman who dissented from that narrow view of godliness by having an illegal abortion might get to hell sooner than most. That's the only thing that criminalization of safe and legal abortion ever has accomplished through all of recorded time, and all it ever will accomplish  -- killing women before their time. That's the dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about, because saying such a thing out loud dirties the Christian right's whited sepulcher of religious purity.  And that truth doesn't matter when power-hungry candidates are selling their souls to be anointed as the chosen one.

This from the Portugal to legalize abortion, conservatives shaken - washingtonpost.com:

Under the current ban, women caught aborting can go to jail for up to three years.

When the ban is lifted, Portugal will join most European countries in allowing abortions, except a small group with strict abortion laws -- Malta, Ireland and Poland.

Liberals now hope other progressive laws can be passed as in neighboring Spain, such as allowing gay marriage.

The conservative camp, led by the head of Portugal's Catholic Democratic party, Jose Ribeiro e Castro, said this was a "sad chapter in Portugal's history" and blamed Socrates for insisting on a move that split Portuguese society.

More than half the traditionally Catholic nation's 8.7 million electorate abstained, but of those who voted in Sunday's referendum, 59.3 percent voted to lift the abortion ban and 40.8 percent to keep it.

Democracy cannot flourish if women do not have the right to exercising their free will. Anti-abortion laws are just another name for reproductive slavery.

A country is not conservative if it has laws denying women equal reproductive rights. Said country is a tyranny when it forces women --and for that matter families-- to take extreme measures when it comes to their free will.

This is a picture of a young girl not yet 18. It's a picture of a 17-year-old at odds with her own sexuality. She had seen the violence sex can bring, she had persevered and learned to dream once again, the dreams of a teenager who mistakenly believed that she had the right to chart her own course in life, a mistake that would bring with it tragic consequences. The year was 1966, the young girl in the picture is me.

Because today is the 34th anniversary of the passage of Roe v. Wade and because I believe stories are one of the strongest statements we can make, and because they touch the heart and help to change the world, I decided to post a very personal diary, one that was written and posted on MY Left Wing nearly a year ago.

Bush named January 21, 2007 the Sanctity of Human Life Day.

Sanctity of Human Life Dayhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070119.html

National Sanctity of Human Life Day serves as a reminder that we must value human life in all forms, not just those considered healthy, wanted, or convenient. Together, we can work toward a day when the dignity and humanity of every person is respected.

Every person is to be respected unless you're a woman or young girl pregnant without the access to or the means to pay for an abortion. Every person is to be respected unless you're a woman or young girl trapped in an unwanted pregnancy who doesn't follow the 'rules' laid out by the Bush administration in how you conduct yourself while pregnant.

Thing 1 spent all of last week at home, sick with the flu which got aggravated by his asthma. We spent most of last week as we did for years as homeschoolers : working on different things, watching videos, reading, doing arts & crafts projects, and getting into each others nerves.

I loved every minute of it.

I love being a mom. This is an admission that does not come easy to me. When I was in my 20s I fantasized of becoming a mother after 40. I thought that only after becoming successful as a writer and scholar, only after finding myself and who I really was supposed to be, that I would be ready to be a mother.

Then the condom broke. Twice.

I suspected I was pregnant with Thing 1 on a New Year's Eve because all the champagne I drank tasted funky and I had a hankering for olives. The funky champagne taste was new to me but not the hankering for olives. That had first happened 10 years prior when I first got pregnant.

I lived as fast and furious as any nerd with wild tendencies could. Yeah, I did my work at college but I also partied hard. This was the 1980s after all and sex, drugs and more sex were everywhere --notwithstanding the dawning of the AIDS era.

Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I come, not to bury the decision, but to praise it.

I also come to mourn for the young women, those under the age of 18, who for whatever reason—fear, for example—cannot tell their parents that they need an abortion and thus suffer unreasonably.

Parental consent laws are a hot-button issue. Many, many on the left support abortion rights, and yet, when it comes to the fate of those under the age of 18, there seems to be a "NMD" (not my daughter) attitude that consumes them. They argue, and I know because I've argued against them, that no person under the age of 18 should be allowed to make their own medical decisions.

This is what I wrote a few months back:

I want to talk about parental consent laws, and why I have a problem with them. I'm not condemning anyone for feeling different than I do; I already know that there are people here, people I respect, who believe that parental consent laws are a good idea. So, I want to offer this in the spirit of discussion, and not in the spirit of rancor.

At around six years old, I rode a hospital elevator with George Wallace. His legs had been destroyed by a failed assassination attempt and hunkered down in his wheelchair, he seemed like a nice old man. But when we got off the elevator, Mama said he was a bad man who didn't like black people. I really couldn't reconcile that smiling face with badness. If I remember correctly, he touched my hand. But Mama didn't believe he had changed for the better. History says he did, but history says a lot of things. One thing is for sure: someone shot him. Can't dispute that.

Now I sit here and I think about another historical figure: Martin Luther King, first and foremost a preacher before he was a political activist. King and Wallace are forever tied together, perhaps not just in their struggle against each other, but also in their love of God. Both quoted the bible frequently and lived what they considered a rightous life. And this makes me uncomfortable about what side Martin Luther King would favor today regarding gay rights, women's rights, and abortion. I know some of you are gonna wanna whip my ass, but I wonder if he would support any of the other issues besides racial equality that we on this site favor.

I believe in God and an afterlife but I think I am allergic to organized religion, except for the study of it. My brother and I are 2 out of 5.5 southerners never to be baptized. In the much of the south and a great deal of the black community, life centers around the church or a jail cell. I saw a lot of people come and go from both places, baptized or not. I don't know if this heavily influenced my politics; I guess so. I certainly don't come from the usual progressive family setting. My parents are not artist elites. They are very intelligent and creative but they always worked hard. Growing up, my dad lived in a southern ghetto in one room with 11 kids; my mother lived a rural life, so the empathy for poverty and the underdog ran strong in our house. Rules were made to be broken and mean people slapped (only when the occasion arose, of course). But I grew up believing that all people deserved a fair shot and backgrounds were not used to judge. This is how my parents said it.

Sometimes, as my dad always says, "you don't know whether to shit or go blind." (It's an English idiom.)

When I see what the members of the Right have done to the language in an effort to try to change reality, I know exactly what my father is talking about.

This week, in one of those grandstanding fuckwadded-up pieces of bullshit that they specialize in, right-wing Republicans will introduce House Resolution 6099, The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act. Because, according to the bill's sponsor, fetuses of 20-weeks gestation are capable of feeling pain. The answer? Is not to assume that it's a medical fact and require doctors to administer pain to these fetuses. No. The bill requires that doctors INFORM women about to undergo post-20 week abortions that their fetuses will feel pain.
See? That's the "awareness" part.
It's all part of the wicked baby-killer thou art woman bullshit.
According to Yahoo news,

The bill, by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., defines a 20-week-old fetus as a "pain-capable unborn child" — a highly controversial threshold among scientists. It also directs the Health and Human Service Department to develop a brochure stating "that there is substantial evidence that the process of being killed in an abortion will cause the unborn child pain."

It's official.

George Bush has appointed behind closed doors a Christian Fundamentalist extremist who believes too much sex affects the brain, birth control degrades women and abstinence (and by exstension forced pregnancy) should be the only choice in family planning:

From Washington Post :

Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will advise Secretary Mike Leavitt on matters such as reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy. He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are "designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons."

The appointment, which does not require Senate confirmation, was the latest provocative personnel move by the White House since Democrats won control of Congress in this month's midterm elections. President Bush last week pushed the Senate to confirm John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations and this week renominated six candidates for appellate court judgeships who have previously been blocked by lawmakers. Democrats said the moves belie Bush's post-election promises of bipartisanship.

As reported in San Francisco Gate:

STATEWIDE
100% of precincts reporting

Yes 3,035,043 45.9%
No 3,577,051 54.1%

Read the proposition as it appeared on the ballot:

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.

The feeling here among the Big Apple's grassroots is that winning Congress is going to be far more powerful for the Democratic Party than taking over the Senate. That said, I am very excited that Whitehouse has smacked Chafee out of the Senate.

Had Lincoln Chafee been a true pro-choice candidate as he had led NARAL to believe he was, he would have voted against both John Roberts and Samuel Alito. He did not. And for that matter, his ass needed to be thrown out of the Senate.

Tomorrow, of all days, the Roberts court starts deliberating on the late-term abortion ban. Thank Lincoln Chafee for voting the two most anti-abortion justices this country has ever had the misfortune to have seated in the Supreme Court.