Metaphysical Mothering® asks the Question, “Is There a War on Women’s Rights? You tell me.
Metaphysical Mothering® asks the Question, “Is There a War on Women’s Rights? You tell me.
New law targets lone abortion clinic in Mississippi
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS and LAURA TILLMAN
Associated Press
Published: Thursday, Apr. 12, 2012 - 2:00 pm
Last Modified: Thursday, Apr. 12, 2012 - 2:35 pm
JACKSON, Miss. -- Mississippi's abortion laws, already among the strictest in the nation, are poised to become even tighter after a push bysocial conservatives to shut down the state's only clinic providing the procedure.
Women's legal options could soon be restricted to finding a doctor willing to terminate a pregnancy or seeking an abortion out of state, which would prove difficult for people with little money.
A bill passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and awaiting the signature of GOP Gov. Phil Bryant requires anyone performing abortions in a clinic to be a certified OB-GYN with admitting privileges at a local hospital. Those privileges aren't easy for doctors to get, either because they live out of state or because some religious-affiliated hospitals might be unwilling to associate themselves with people who perform elective abortions.
Bryant says he'll sign the law in the next few days. It would take effect July 1.
"We want Mississippi to be abortion-free," the first-term governor proclaimed earlier this year.
Abortion-rights advocates say politicians are simply inviting an expensive court fight - one the clinic's owner has vowed to start if the facility can't meet the requirements. The advocates say the state is enacting a law that could be found unconstitutional under the framework of Roe v. Wade,the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that established a nationwide right to abortion.
Those pushing the law defend its constitutionality and say admitting privileges are vital so doctors can continue to treat patients if complications arise from an abortion. Diane Derzis, who runs the Jackson Women's Health Organization, disputes that such privileges are needed. She says her clinic already has an agreement that allows patients with complications to be transferred immediately to a local hospital.
The admitting privileges provision could shutter the clinic by depriving it of the doctors it needs to operate. Only one of the three OB-GYNs who work at the clinic has been granted them. Derzis said the clinic will do everything it can to comply with the new law.
"And if we can't comply, we're going to sue," Derzis told The Associated Press.
Mississippi already requires a 24-hour waiting period for an abortion and parental or judicial consent for any minor seeking the procedure. It's also among the few states where only a single clinic operates. North Dakota and South Dakota each have one clinic.
The Mississippi clinic, surrounded by an iron fence woven with heavy black tarp, is in the trendy Jackson neighborhood of Fondren, a few miles north of the state Capitol. It's the site of frequent protests, including this week when abortion opponents patrolled a sidewalk lined with posters of bloody fetuses. One sang hymns and another screamed at cars driving away from the clinic.
A 27-year-old woman who went to the clinic for an abortion, said protesters persuaded her to keep her first baby when she was 16. But after she dropped out of school and had two more children, she decided she couldn't manage a fourth.
"It's a lot tougher when you start out young," said Jessica, who asked not to be identified by last name because of concerns about the social stigma of abortion in this conservative state. "When I quit school, I thought money coming in at that time was more important than the money I'd be getting later if I stayed in school."
If Mississippi's only abortion clinic closes, women could travel to surrounding states to terminate pregnancies. The closest clinics to Jackson are in Baton Rouge, La., and New Orleans, both some 150 miles away. There are also clinics in Memphis, Tenn., and Mobile, Ala., which are close toMississippi borders. Democratic Sen. David Jordan of Greenwood, who opposed the bill, warned that some women, particularly the poor, could seek dangerous illegal abortions if they can't afford a trip out of state.
Proponents dismiss the idea that the law will get shot down as unconstitutional. They say similar laws or regulations in other states, including those enacted by the South Carolina health department, have been challenged and upheld.
Without the clinic, elective, legal abortions could still be available at some doctors' offices inMississippi - if women know where to look in this Bible Belt state. If Mississippi physicians perform 10 or fewer abortions a month, or 100 or fewer a year, they can avoid having their offices regulated as abortion facilities.
The Mississippi State Department of Health website shows 2,297 abortions, listed as "induced terminations," were performed in the state in 2010, the most recent year for which statistics were available. Of that number, 2,251 were performed on Mississippi residents. The site does not specify how many were done at the clinic and how many in other offices or hospitals.
The move to put new regulations on abortion comes a few months after 58 percent of Mississippivoters rejected a "personhood" ballot initiative that proposed to define life as beginning when a human egg is fertilized. After the defeat, abortion foes vowed to regroup and continue trying to find ways to make the procedure less available.
Social conservatives in Republican-controlled legislatures in other parts of the country, includingArizona and Virginia, recently have tried to pass laws to make getting an abortion more difficult.
Robert McDuff, a Jackson attorney who has handled cases for abortion-rights supporters, said he believes the new law is flawed. Documents show that in 1996, a federal judge blocked a Mississippilaw that would've required anyone doing abortions in an abortion facility to complete an OB-GYN residency.
"A lot of politicians complain about big government, but yet they want the government to interfere with this very personal choice and force women to bear children at a point in their lives when they may not be ready to do so," McDuff said.
Doctors who work at the Mississippi clinic live out of state because they are routinely harassed, stalked or threatened, Derzis said. Betty Thompson, who formerly managed the clinic, said the danger is not new: "We had the FBI on our speed dial."
Frequent protester Roy McMillan of Jackson says he told a clinic doctor that his days were numbered. Since then, he's been required to stay 40 feet away. But he hasn't given up his fight.
"Mommy, please don't kill me mommy! I have a dream mommy," McMillan screamed through the windows of cars leaving the clinic.
Eight other states - Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina andUtah - require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges in local hospitals, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion-rights group. The states all have at least one clinic.
Jordan Goldberg, state advocacy counsel for the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights,said court rulings about other states' admitting privileges requirements might not be binding if theMississippi law is challenged.
"If the intent of the bill and the result of the bill are to shut down the only provider in the state, it may raise different constitutional questions than were raised in other cases where admitting privileges were an issue," Goldberg said.
Dana Chisholm, president-elect of Pro-Life Mississippi, was the last protester remaining outside the clinic one afternoon this week. Her tactics were decidedly different from McMillan's. She stood close to the entrance of the clinic and sang "Amazing Grace" and did Bible study when she was waiting for women to come outside. When they emerged, she told them she cares about them and wants to help.
Chisholm gave pamphlets to Chantal Willis, who went to clinic because she had a miscarriage.
"It's their choice, it's their decision," Willis said of the clinic's patients. "If their circumstances don't permit a child, they should have a clinic so they can make that decision."
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/12/4409972/new-law-targets-lone-abortion.h...
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Does the USA Budget reflect our morality?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/paul-ryan-challenged-by-georget...
WASHINGTON—Joining a chorus of Catholic bishops, theologians, priests, and social justice leaders, nearly 90 Georgetown University faculty and administrators have called Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) to task for his misuse of Catholic social teaching in defending his budget, which hurts the poor. The group sent a letter to Rep. Ryan in advance of his appearance on the Catholic campus on Thursday morning to give the Whittington Lecture.
In their letter to Ryan, the scholars make clear they are not objecting to his speaking on campus, but rather his recent comments defending his budget on Christian grounds.
“Our problem with Representative Ryan is that he claims his budget is based on Catholic social teaching,” said Jesuit Father Thomas J. Reese, one of the organizers of the letter. “This is nonsense. As scholars, we want to join the Catholic bishops in pointing out that his budget has a devastating impact on programs for the poor.” Reese is a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.
The letter quotes the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which wrote several letters to Congress saying “a just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons.” The bishops noted that “the House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.” Last week, Rep. Ryan dismissed the bishops’ critique, erroneously claiming the letters didn’t represent “all the bishops,” a point the USCCB media office denied.
“I am afraid that Chairman Ryan’s budget reflects the values of his favorite philosopher Ayn Rand rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ,” said Father Reese. “Survival of the fittest may be okay for Social Darwinists but not for followers of the gospel of compassion and love.”
The Georgetown scholars pointed to the devastating impact of cuts in food programs that keep the poor from starvation. From personal experience, they also “know how cuts in Pell Grants will make it difficult for low-income students to pursue their educations at colleges across the nation, including Georgetown.”
The scholars corrected Mr. Ryan on his use of the Catholic concept of “subsidiarity” as “a rationale gutting government programs.” The scholars say that it is true that “It calls for solutions to be enacted as close to the level of local communities as possible. But it also demands that higher levels of government provide help—‘subsidium’—when communities and local governments face problems beyond their means to address such as economic crises, high unemployment, endemic poverty and hunger.”
The scholars also gave the Representative a reading assignment: “The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church,” which was commissioned by John Paul II and published by the Vatican.
Signing the letter were over a dozen Georgetown Jesuit priests, numerous members of the Theology and other departments including History, Government, Philosophy, School of Foreign Service and School of Nursing & Health Studies.
The letter to Rep. Paul Ryan follows:
Dear Rep. Paul Ryan,
Welcome to Georgetown University. We appreciate your willingness to talk about how Catholic social teaching can help inform effective policy in dealing with the urgent challenges facing our country. As members of an academic community at a Catholic university, we see your visit on April 26 for the Whittington Lecture as an opportunity to discuss Catholic social teaching and its role in public policy.
\However, we would be remiss in our duty to you and our students if we did not challenge your continuing misuse of Catholic teaching to defend a budget plan that decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick, and gives more tax breaks to the wealthiest few. As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has wisely noted in several letters to Congress – “a just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons.” Catholic bishops recently wrote that “the House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.”
In short, your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love.
Cuts to anti-hunger programs have devastating consequences. Last year, one in six Americans lived below the official poverty level and over 46 million Americans – almost half of them children – used food stamps for basic nutrition. We also know how cuts in Pell Grants will make it difficult for low-income students to pursue their educations at colleges across the nation, including Georgetown. At a time when charities are strained to the breaking point and local governments have a hard time paying for essential services, the federal government must not walk away from the most vulnerable.
While you often appeal to Catholic teaching on “subsidiarity” as a rationale for gutting government programs, you are profoundly misreading Church teaching. Subsidiarity is not a free pass to dismantle government programs and abandon the poor to their own devices. This often misused Catholic principle cuts both ways. It calls for solutions to be enacted as close to the level of local communities as possible. But it also demands that higher levels of government provide help -- “subsidium”-- when communities and local governments face problems beyond their means to address such as economic crises, high unemployment, endemic poverty and hunger. According to Pope Benedict XVI: "Subsidiarity must remain closely linked to the principle of solidarity and vice versa.”
Along with this letter, we have included a copy of the Vatican's Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, commissioned by John Paul II, to help deepen your understanding of Catholic social teaching.
Letter with signatures can be found here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/paul-ryan-challenged-by-georget...
Women and The Affordable Care Act
http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/2011/08/women.html
Sandra Fluke Speaks On Rush
Sandra Fluke Speaks On Rush Limbaugh, Women's Issues And Her Next Steps
Rush Limbaugh's personal attacks on Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke's character may have taken the nation aback, but Fluke says she wasn't shocked by much of what the talk show host had to say about her.
"Perhaps I am a cynic, because [Limbaugh's] attacks were not that surprising to me," Fluke told a small audience of New York movers and shakers at an intimate dinner following a gala event for the Women's Campaign Fund to benefit female politicians and their causes. "They were outrageous, obviously, but we've seen this [sort of tactic] before. This is an old trick out of the old boys' playbook, to try to silence women."
What Fluke was surprised by, however, was how Limbaugh's remarks seemed to touch a particularly sensitive nerve for so many women -- and men -- across the country.
"I almost felt that the groundswell of support for me was more surprising," Fluke said, noting the numerous messages of support she's received in recent weeks. "I'm so grateful that Americans proved me wrong on that one, and reacted so supportively in those moments."
Support may be in abundance for Fluke these days, but sleep certainly isn't. Fluke is, on some level, living something of a double life at the moment -- attending galas, lectures, and political events on the side while attempting to maintain her studies at Georgetown.
The evening before accepting last night's first-ever "Name It. Change It." award recognizing her advocacy, she said she was up all night scrambling to finish a class paper -- a quintessentially collegiate move, and one perhaps refreshingly normal to hear from a woman whose boyfriend, Adam Mutterperl, characterized recent events as "a bit surreal."
But as the outcry over Limbaugh's remarks cools and the Affordable Care Act winds its way through the Supreme Court, Fluke says she hopes to shine the media's spotlight on other women's legislation in the works right now.
"One thing I'm very concerned about is the Violence Against Women act," Fluke told The Huffington Post after receiving the award.
The Act, which passed initially in 1994 and is currently up for re-authorization, has received pushback from some members of the Senate because the newest version provides domestic violence support for gays, lesbians, Native Americans and illegal immigrants.
"This has been landmark bipartisan legislation since 1994 ... this year it's having problems in Congress that it never faced before," Fluke said.
"Violence against women should not be something that any of us are having any trouble agreeing about."
While Fluke continues to follow the legislation that matters to her, right now she says her main focus is finishing law school. Asked repeatedly if she might have a future in political office, Fluke admitted she is "talking to a number of people right now about some exciting job opportunities."
But according to Fluke, finding fame in her next step isn't nearly as important as advancing the causes she cares about. "I'm just looking for ways to talk about these policies that matter to me, and that matter to women," Fluke said.
"I'm just trying to make something positive out of this unfortunate situation."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/03/sandra-fluke-rush-limbaugh-atta...
ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
Who votes these people into office?
Bill would define holding hands, kissing as "gateway sexual activity"
Posted: Apr 06, 2012 2:41 PM PDT
Updated: Apr 06, 2012 5:42 PM PDT
By Jerica Phillips
MEMPHIS, TN -
(WMC-TV) - Tennessee senators approved an update to the state's abstinence-based sex education law that includes warnings against "gateway sexual activity."
In a new family life instructions bill, holding hands and kissing could be considered gateways to sex. Planned Parenthood said that allowing state government to define local sex education curriculum could backfire.
According to a 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Study, 61 percent of Memphis City high school students and 27 percent of middle school students have had sex. That's higher than the national average.
Planned Parenthood said these numbers are why a new sex education bill promoting abstinence is not realistic.
"If the state of Tennessee gets to create the curriculum, it has to create something that umbrella reflects everyone," said Planned Parenthood Director of Education Elokin CaPese.
Tennessee House Bill 3621 and Senate Bill 3310 are currently up for debate.
In the bill, a uniformed policy on sex education is defined with terms like "gateway sexual activity." Also listed are statewide instructions on how to teach family life curriculum.
"It's not detailed enough in a health-based way," said CaPese.
The bill prohibits teachers from demonstrating gateway sexual activity. CaPese said that would include health education models.
"It makes it very clear that you can't promote contraception," said CaPese.
If an instructor goes beyond the curriculum, the bill gives parents more legal rights, stating, "The parent or legal guardian shall have a cause of action against the instructor or organization for actual damages."
"They can opt out, and that means that parents already have the power that we want them to have," said CaPese.
The bill goes before the House Education Committee next Tuesday.
Copyright 2012 WMC-TV. All rights reserved.
Republicans are painting
Republicans are painting themselves into a very small corner.
http://channelinseattle.wordpress.com/
Blind Sided because we just don't get the significance?
What do you suppose is the reason? I just don't get it. What is the benevolent intention behind all of this? Is it simply that we all have to realize that everything we do and say matters now more than ever?
Nothing can stay hidden anymore. Is this truly how the Republican party has become or have they been taken over by a loud, organized minority?
Can you imagine if the NRA was having their gun rights tampered with like this? They wouldn't stand for it. With these issues, where is the organized outrage? Why aren't more men upset about all of this and why aren't they organizing too?
I just don't get it.
Robin Alexis
Good questions. This sounds
Good questions.
This sounds like the American version of the Burka. Extremism is extremism.
This sounds like religious extremism, but that is the window dressing. If women are pregnant more, they won't be going to college and getting uppity, will they? If families have a house full of children, they won't be able to prosper, and will need to be more subservient to their economic masters. The New Feudalism.
This will not succeed. The ultra conservatives are drunk with power. They are headed for a big fall. The Republicans lost the last presidential election because they ran to the right instead of going to the center after the primaries. They are making the same mistake again, even more this time.
Or, as Martha C would say "Its all coming up to get transmuted!"
Amen to that!
http://channelinseattle.wordpress.com/
Security Issue, Decision Horizon, Eisenhower
It was my first series of meetings with Robin, around 1997, and she started channeling Dwight D. Eisenhower. He gave me specific information on what a cult is, and requested I do something about it. His love of country and devotion to God remains strong as ever. He, Robin and I bolstered each other's morale during a lonely and difficult time.
There are parallels now to our collectively wrought "original security agreement" with the ego (the collective mind, which we take to be god, but it is still separated from God while retaining the "look of authority") It cut us off from source, abundance, freedom, happiness, etc, with the promise of security. We bought it! Its promises were empty, and the anger and sorrow that we took as our own have been with us ever since, with the exception of a very few. You can see how the projections of stupidity onto one another have flown, when it was the mind, owned by no one else, that decided. This mind can be transcended. Our own unresolved grief over our decision to vote for the ego and forsake our Beloved, our God, our Self, can be RESOLVED. More to come. "Review Decision Horizon Part 2" We are aligning this issue with the Christ Mind at this time. It's OK to vote for candidates but doing this part first takes the extra "heat" off the emotional body and makes it more fluid. More to come. Out
Oh My God Todd! I was so
Oh My God Todd! I was so grief stricken over these energies and issues. I had no idea what it all meant. Now with this clarity I can responsibly address the energies, issues and decision making process.
Thank you so much from my heart to yours. May you rest in the arms of the Angels for your wisdom that you share so eloquently and generously. NOW I ask God to,
"Raise me Higher".
Robin Alexis
Have you seen "Thrive"?
www.thrivemovement.com
The tides are turning and it will happen with means of full knowledge and disclosure. Our right for full disclosure from everyone and anyone we have put into power on our behalf is not only justified, it's vital. Exercising this right will bring us ever closer to our original birthright to Thrive. It will also make clear to us what is really expressing itself to rise above.
The *&^%))*&&#%#% has to come to the top where it is easy to get to, so you can skim it off. It's a good thing!
XOXOXO
I haven't seen the movie yet.
I haven't seen the movie yet. Our Beloved Gentle Thunder opened the first premiere of the movie in a movie theater in San Francisco! Wouldn't it be cool if she was going all over the country opening for it? It would help people open their heart ears and states of consciousness cherished during these times.
Robin Alexis
It's now free online so as many can see as possible
and as soon as possible
www.thrivemovement.com
I even went out on a limb an forwarded it to a brother who I was not entirely sure how much of it he would have embraced. He replied with a thank you along with his receipt from a donation he just contributed to the cause. Please pass this along!
The shift IS happening!
XOXOXO
The way you share it Todd it
The way you share it Todd it is not about a political party. It is about consciousness. That is the benevolent intention.
Thank you again,
Robin Alexis
Imagination
It is not a figment of our imagination. Anytime you have policy makers using the power of the people to take away preventive health care for women in this country there is a war.
Don't you care whether women, especially poor women, have access to health care? Don't you care that abortion remain legal in our country? Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life don't you care that that choice is being taken away from you and other women that you know?
VOTE.
Robin Alexis
"Vajajah" a bumper sticker in Virginia for a reason
Virginia’s Proposed Ultrasound Law Is an Abomination
Under the new legislation, women who want an abortion will be forcibly penetrated for no medical reason. Where’s the outrage?
By Dahlia Lithwick|Posted Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012, at 6:57 PM ET
A Virginia law would require a woman seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound, whether medically necessary or not.
This week, the Virginia state Legislature passed a bill that would require women to have an ultrasound before they may have an abortion. Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced. Since a proposed amendment to the bill—a provision that would have had the patient consent to this bodily intrusion or allowed the physician to opt not to do the vaginal ultrasound—failed on 64-34 vote, the law provides that women seeking an abortion in Virginia will be forcibly penetrated for no medical reason. I am not the first person to note that under any other set of facts, that would constitute rape under the federal definition.*
What’s more, a provision of the law that has received almost no media attention would ensure that a certification by the doctor that the patient either did or didn’t “avail herself of the opportunity” to view the ultrasound or listen to the fetal heartbeat will go into the woman’s medical record. Whether she wants it there or not. I guess they were all out of scarlet letters in Richmond.
So the problem is not just that the woman and her physician (the core relationship protected in Roe) no longer matter at all in deciding whether an abortion is proper. It is that the physician is being commandeered by the state to perform a medically unnecessary procedure upon a woman, despite clear ethical directives to the contrary. (There is no evidence at all that the ultrasound is a medical necessity, and nobody attempted to defend it on those grounds.) As an editorial in the Virginian-Pilot put it recently, “Under any other circumstances, forcing an unwilling person to submit to a vaginal probing would be a violation beyond imagining. Requiring a doctor to commit such an act, especially when medically unnecessary, and to submit to an arbitrary waiting period, is to demand an abrogation of medical ethics, if not common decency.”*
Evidently the right of conscience for doctors who oppose abortion are a matter of grave national concern. The ethical and professional obligations of physicians who would merely like to perform their jobs without physically violating their own patients are, however, immaterial. Don’t even bother asking whether this law would have passed had it involved physically penetrating a man instead of a woman without consent. Next month the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument about the obscene government overreach that is the individual mandate in President Obama’s health care law. Yet physical intrusion by government into the vagina of a pregnant woman is so urgently needed that the woman herself should be forced to pay for the privilege.
The bill will undoubtedly be enacted into law by the governor, Bob McDonnell, who is gunning hard for a gig as vice president and has already indicated that he will sign the bill. (Update, Feb. 28, 2012: After an enormous backlash against the bill, McDonnell rescinded his support. The bill was voted down in the Virginia State Senate and shelved until 2013.) “I think it gives full information,” he said this week on WTOP radio’s “Ask the Governor” program. “To be able to have that information before making what most people would say is a very important, serious, life-changing decision, I think is appropriate.”
That’s been the defense of this type of ultrasound law from the outset; it’s merely “more information” for the mother, and, really, what kind of anti-science Neanderthal opposes information? Pretending that this law is just a technological update on Virginia’s informed consent laws has another benefit: You can shame and violate women, while couching it in the language of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s gift that keeps on giving—his opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart. That opinion upheld Congress’ partial-birth abortion ban on the grounds that (although there was no real evidence to support this assumption) some women who have abortions will suffer "severe depression" and “regrets” if they aren’t made to understand the implications of what they have done.*
Never mind that the evidence indicates that women forced to see ultrasound images opt to terminate anyhow. According to the American Independent, a new study by Tracy Weitz, assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, shows that “viewing an ultrasound is not an indication that a woman will cancel her scheduled procedure, regardless of what emotional response the sonogram elicits.” Weitz summarized her findings in 2010 when she said that “women do not have abortions because they believe the fetus is not a human or because they don’t know the truth.”
Of course, the bill is unconstitutional. The whole point of the new abortion bans is to force the Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade. It’s unconstitutional to place an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy, although it’s anyone’s guess what, precisely, that means. One would be inclined to suspect, however, that unwanted penetration with a medical device violates either the undue burden test or the right to bodily autonomy. But that’s the other catch in this bill. Proponents seem to be of the view that once a woman has allowed a man to penetrate her body once, her right to bodily autonomy has ended.
During the floor debate on Tuesday, Del. C. Todd Gilbert announced that “in the vast majority of these cases, these [abortions] are matters of lifestyle convenience.” (He has since apologized.) Virginia Democrat Del. David Englin, who opposes the bill, has said Gilbert’s statement “is in line with previous Republican comments on the issue,” recalling one conversation with a GOP lawmaker who told him that women had already made the decision to be "vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant." (I confirmed with Englin that this quote was accurate.)*
That’s the same logic that animates the bill’s sponsor in the House of Delegates, Del. Kathy J. Byron, who insisted this week that, “if we want to talk about invasiveness, there's nothing more invasive than the procedure that she is about to have." Decoded, that means that if you are willing to submit to sex and/or an abortion, the state should be allowed to penetrate your body as well.
I asked Del. Englin what recourse there is for the ultrasound law, and he told me that the governor, while unlikely to veto the bill, still has the power to amend it to require the patient’s consent or say that physicians can opt not to do the vaginal probe. One might hope that even the benign act of giving women “more information” not be allowed to happen by forcing it between her legs. Or is that what we call it these days?
Whatever happens in the commonwealth, it’s fair to say it’s no accident that this week the Legislature also enacted a "personhood" law defining life as beginning at conception—a law that may someday criminalize contraception and some miscarriages as well as abortion. Today was not a good day in the War on Women. Abortion is still legal in America. Physically invading a woman’s body against her will still isn’t. Let’s not casually pass laws that upend both principles in the name of helping women make better.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/02/virginia_ultrasou...
Nina Turner, Ohio State
Nina Turner, Ohio State Senator, Introduces Viagra Bill To Counter Anti-Contraception Legislation
As a member of a heavily male- and GOP-dominated state Senate since 2008, Ohio legislator Nina Turner says she has cringed watching her colleagues pass bill after bill to regulate women's reproductive health. Now, the Democrat has become the latest in a series of female state legislators to give her male colleagues a taste of their own medicine by introducing a bill that limits men's ability to get a Viagra prescription without meeting certain government conditions.
"We should show the same attention and love to men's reproductive health as we do to women's," Turner told HuffPost. "And my bill does that."
Specifically, Turner's bill would require men to receive psychological counseling to verify that they have a medical reason for taking erectile dysfunction medications, such as Viagra, before they can legally obtain a prescription for it. It would also require doctors to inform men, in writing, about the potential risks of drugs like Viagra.
The bill borrows language directly from Ohio's controversial "heartbeat bill," which bans abortions after the fetal heartbeat can be detected -- often before a woman even knows she's pregnant. But Turner said her bill is not just an answer to the heartbeat bill; she has been outraged by number of bills and amendments over the past couple of years, including one recently proposed to ban physician assistants from placing or removing intrauterine devices (known as IUDs), a common form of birth control, based on the Republican sponsor's moral opposition to that method of contraception.
"We need to fight fire with fire," Turner said.
Turner is inspired by female legislators across the country who have been countering anti-abortion and anti-contraception legislation with men's health-focused measures that come with conditions, she said. Oklahoma Sen. Constance Johnson, also a Democrat, proposed a "spilled semen" amendment to her state's "feel personhood" bill that would declare it an act against unborn children for men to waste sperm. Illinois state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, another Democrat, introduced an amendment to a state mandatory ultrasound bill that would require men to watch a graphic video about Viagra's side effects before being able to receive a prescription for it. A bill filed by Virginia state Sen. Janet Howell (D), would require men to obtain a rectal exam before obtaining such a prescription.
In Wilmington, Del., City Councilwoman Loretta Walsh authored a resolution that declares "each 'egg person' and each 'sperm person' ... equal in the eyes of the government."
Representatives of the Family Research Council, an anti-abortion organization, are not amused by the trend. "It sounds like they're mocking pro-life bills," said Jeanne Monahan, director of the council's Center for Human Dignity. "I will say, having met quite a few women who profoundly regret their abortions, this is not a laughing matter."
The Viagra bills are not comparable to the anti-abortion bills the Family Research Council are protesting, such as the mandatory ultrasound bill, because Viagra isn't a major surgery, Monahan said.
"Abortion is not like having a wart removed," she said. "More often than not, it's an invasive surgery with real consequences, and I would think that most women want more rather than less information before having one."
Terri O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, said that while she would not endorse any of the gender equity amendments being introduced, she thinks they're a "brilliant" strategy to combat anti-abortion legislation.
"Obviously in terms of policy, we would not support any of these amendments; health care is health care and should be left to the individual man and his doctor or woman and hers," she told HuffPost. "That said, I think they've injected in a wonderfully humorous way some common sense. The whole idea of using humor that snaps people out of this one mind-set and gets them to look at the problem from a commonsense point of view; it reminds me of the humor used to defang Joseph McCarthy way back in the 1950s."
If her bill sends a message to male legislators and injects some common sense into lawmaking, then Turner will be pleased with that outcome--but, for the record, she's not joking at all, she said.
"I'm just as serious as a heart attack," Turner said. "I'm serious about the potential side effects of Viagra. I'm as serious as my right-wing male colleagues who introduced bills to legislate women's health. It's ironic that when it come to women's health people think that's a serious matter, but when it comes to a man, they think we're joking. I don't think any of my sister legislators are joking."
None of the states have passed these men's health measures so far, and Turner's bill only has one cosponsor. But she does plan to reach out to female lawmakers in other states who have introduced bills like this and "make a decision as a group to unite in a more concerted effort to push this agenda."
"We need to fight for ourselves and for the future generations of young women who shouldn't have to ask the government for a permission slip to make their own health decisions," Turner said.
A resolution passed by the city council of Wilmington, Delaware calls on Congress and other states to pass laws giving eggs and sperm "personhood" rights.
"Each 'egg person' and each 'sperm person' should be deemed equal in the eyes of the government and be subject to the same laws and regulations as any other dependent minor and be protected against abuse, neglect or abandonment by the parent or guardian," says the resolution. "Laws should be enacted by all legislative bodies in the United States to promote equal representation, and should potentially include laws in defense of 'personhood,' forbidding every man from destroying his semen."
Councilwoman Loretta Walsh authored the resolution in protest of legislation like the Mississippi "personhood" amendment.
"Personhood" bills proposed by abortion opponents seek to define life as beginning at conception, giving fetuses legal status as people.
"What's good for the gander is good for the goose," Walsh told the Wilmington News Journal.
Do you know?
Ohio State Senator Nina Turner says;
"We are not children. Women do not need a permission slip from government to decide what is in the best interest of their bodies."
I can't believe how many highly intelligent women that I have spoken with of late who have NO IDEA what is going on in this country concerning women's reproductive rights.
Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney says he wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood. I used Planned Parenthood services when I was a single mother with very little money.
Don't take it for granted that if you need or choice to have an abortion, get medical care for any reason that it will just "be there for you".
VOTE.
Robin Alexis
Governor Jan Brewer Signs
Governor Jan Brewer Signs Arizona’s Extreme New Abortion Law
by Allison Yarrow Apr 12, 2012 7:42 PM EDT
Life now starts earlier in Arizona: In practice, the state has banned abortions after about 18 weeks.
Despite its name, critics derided the Women’s Health and Safety Act that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law today as cruel, dangerous, and hostile to women—likely to deter many Arizona women from seeking an abortion, and to distress those who nonetheless go through with one.
Arizona, which defines gestational age as beginning on the first day of a woman’s last period, has in practice banned abortions after about 18 weeks post-fertilization (20 weeks from the last menstruation) except in the case of medical emergencies. While that provision has been much discussed, abortions after that point account for only about 1 percent of the procedures currently performed.
The stipulation likely to be most widely felt is what experts are calling an effective shutdown of medication abortions. These nonsurgical abortions are usually performed within the first nine weeks of pregnancy, and account for between 17 and 20 percent of all abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-rights advocacy group. While women often take the pills at clinics and in their homes, the bill now mandates that a medical provider must have hospital privileges within 30 miles of where the procedure takes place. Many times clinics or homes are not within 30 miles of hospitals, and the distance prevents providers from other cities or even states from caring for women, says Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute. Another factor that could contribute to what Nash called a "shutdown" of medication abortions is that the law requires abortion pills to be administered using outdated protocols, confusing providers and obscuring proper use of the drugs.
While it becomes the seventh state to pass such legislation in the past two years, many Arizonans believe theirs is the most restrictive and sinister because of the degree to which it will legislate health care, thwart evidence-based medicine, and shame women. One in three women will have an abortion before age 45 according to Guttmacher, and more than half of those women already have a child.
The law “disregards women’s health in a way I’ve never seen before,” said Center for Reproductive Rights’ state advocacy counsel, Jordan Goldberg. “The women of Arizona can’t access medical treatment that other women can.”
Goldberg said her group is meticulously reviewing the law to consider a possible suit on behalf of client providers.
“This legislation is consistent with my strong track record of supporting common sense measures to protect the health of women and safeguard our most vulnerable population–the unborn,” Gov. Brewer said in a statement.
Other parts of the law includes education in public schools prioritizing birth and adoption, signs throughout health-care facilities warning against abortion “coercion,” and an order for the state health department to create and maintain a website touting alternatives to abortion and displaying images of fetuses. Also required is abortion counseling for women aiming to abort pregnancies due to fetal abnormalities, and if the abnormality is certain to be fatal, the counseling incorporates perinatal hospice information before ending the pregnancy. It reaffirms existing barriers to access, like the requirement of a notarized parental consent form for minors and a mandatory ultrasound screening within 24 hours of having an abortion.
State Rep. Kimberly Yee, the sponsor of the House bill, which passed Monday, said she acted with her constituents in mind, adding that many of them feel it “doesn’t go far enough.”
The bill requires abortion counseling for women aiming to abort pregnancies due to fetal abnormalities.
Josh Westrich / Corbis
“In 2010 when I campaigned and knocked on doors the first thing people asked me was, ‘Where do you stand on life?’” said the 10th District representative, a former aide to then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Yee said she championed the legislation because “I have to do what the majority of Arizona has asked me to do.”
The fingerprints of policy group Americans United for Life are all over much of the bill’s language, according to Nash. She says the legislation is a mishmash of parts of other states’ bills, and predicted that still other conservative states looking to restrict and discourage abortions will now look to Arizona’s bill as model legislation.
“The point is to make it so difficult to provide abortions that no one will do it,” said Nash. “Arizona likes to thumb their nose at women. They take that as a badge of honor.”
“This is the most draconian right-wing legislature I’ve ever seen, and they are hand-in-hand the governor who is in the same camp,” said former Planned Parenthood national president and part-time Arizonan Gloria Feldt. “It was as bad when Napalitano was there, but she was always a step ahead of them. She had an initiative and they danced to her tune.”
Brewer, a Republican, was elected after Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano left her office to become President Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security. On its website, the AUL credits that move with their legislative success: “With the appointment of Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security, the Arizona legislature was finally able to capitalize on an opportunity to enact life-affirming legislation without fear of unwarranted veto.”
The law’s tenets will take effect within 90 days. North Dakota and Oklahoma courts are litigating challenges to similar laws in those states limiting medication abortion.
Allison Yarrow is assignment editor and a staff writer at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Her essays and journalism have appeared in Huffington Post, Slate, CNN.com, Poets & Writers magazine, and The Forward. She created and hosted the Yid Lit podcast, which interviews authors of literary fiction and nonfiction. Previously, as an associate producer at NBC News Productions, Allison produced health segments for a nationally syndicated program hosted by Hoda Kotb and long-form documentary hours for MSNBC.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
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