3.26.2007
“Pro-Lifers” once again show their commitment to death
Almost exactly five years ago, I fulfilled my six-month probationary period at work and was finally eligible for health insurance benefits. One of the first things I did was skim the provider handbook to find the nearest Planned Parenthood so that I could make a date with a speculum. But Planned Parenthood wasn't listed in the provider directory. So, I called MCARE and asked if there was a PP near me that I could use for my gynecological needs, only to be told that MCARE doesn't cover PP for annual exams—only abortions. Pleased as I was to find that first-trimester elective and therapeutic abortions would be completely covered at the PP of my choice, I was a little dismayed to find that my insurance company didn't think that PP, the largest provider of women's health services in America, had any utility beyond abortion. In fact, they'd probably be shocked to find out that most PP affiliate offices don't even perform abortions (or if they do, only one or two days a week), focusing instead on boring stuff like pap smears and breast and cervical cancer screenings.
Apparently MCARE and Missouri's Governor Matt Blunt have something in common:
For fifteen years, Planned Parenthood of Southwest Missouri clinics in Joplin and Springfield have offered free breast and cervical cancer screenings as part of the state’s “Show Me Healthy Women” program. Now Governor Matt Blunt has announced that he will cut off all program funding to Planned Parenthood and redirect it to other health clinics. “Patients should not have to go to an abortion clinic to access life-saving tests,” Blunt declared. Refusing to fund cancer screening at the clinics, he said, “ensures women may access important preventative care without contributing to abortion providers’ goal of facilitating the destruction of innocent life.”
PPSM has been providing quality health care to poor women for years—breast and cervical cancer rates have been dropping in the United States, and that is thanks to increased awareness and access to regular breast exams and pap smears, both of which help diagnose cancer earlier making treatment more effective. With lack of access to health insurance, and lack of funds to pay for life-saving treatments out-of-pocket, low-income women are disproportionately affected by breast and cervical cancer and have a higher mortality rate.
Governor Blunt is correct though—no women should have to go to an abortion clinic to receive cancer screenings. Of course, no women should be prevented from going to such a clinic if it is is closer to home or already that women's primary provider of reproductive health services. Or just because she feels like it. Cutting off access to health care—particularly from the largest provider of women's health services in the country—just to prove your fetus-love doesn't really do much to prove your pro-life (no scare quotes) chops. In fact, it shows a stunning lack of regard for the lives of poor women, who are more likely to use Planned Parenthood than a private doctor.
Oh, did I mention that PPSM doesn't actually provide abortions?
"[Governor Blunt] was being dishonest," says Kellie Rohrbaugh, director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Southwest Missouri, who says her office received a fax alerting them to the funding cuts 45 minutes before the governor's press conference. "We asked the administrator of the program if women had complained about going to Planned Parenthood, and she said we'd been a very good partner. We could get people in quickly, have them seen, refer them to treatment quickly if they needed it."
Hmmm...efficient, friendly, providing affordable quality care to people who most need it. It's obvious why PPSM's funding was first on the chopping block—it's giving lie to the anti's claim to the pro-life banner.
[via]
Labels: Douchebags, Feminism, Fundies Say The Darndest Things, Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 7:56 PM
1.22.2007
Because...
Today is the 34th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, and in commemoration feminist bloggers are celebrating in our own way: we're blogging for choice. This year's topic is so straight-forward and simple, I almost feared I wouldn't have much to say. After all, isn't obvious why I'm pro-choice? I'd think that anyone that knows me, or reads this blog with any regularity, would recognize immediately why I work so hard to maintain reproductive freedoms.I don't remember a time when I was anything but pro-choice. From the moment that I was aware of and able to conceptualize the issue of abortion (back when I was a wee little one of ten or so), I understood implicitly the importance of recognizing that women are and should be the guardians of their own bodies and reproduction. I used to wear buttons in middle and high school that looked like this:
It was an indelible image, and despite never having lived in a time when women were forced to resort to back alley butchers and dangerous home remedies, I still felt with passion and conviction the belief that we cannot, will not, go back. My Catholic upbringing did nothing to disabuse me of the notion that it is simply just and moral to recognize a woman's right to choose. I argued with priests and Catechism instructors, I argued with teachers and friends, and I went to college and volunteered at clinics, and argued with protesters bent on shaming women but not lifting a finger to help them. But in all that time, in nearly 20-years of feminist consciousness, never once have I articulated precisely why I am pro-choice. I never had to; it was enough for me to know that I am. So here is my attempt to remedy that.
I am pro-choice:
Because I trust women. I trust women as rational creatures to evaluate the circumstances of their own lives and decide for themselves if they are ready, willing and able to have a (or another) child. I trust that women understand the risks and consequences of pregnancy, motherhood and abortion, and to weigh those risks and consequences according to what is best for them. I don't trust outsiders, no matter how earnest or kind-hearted, to fully recognize the impact that unwanted pregnancy has on a woman's life. I don't trust that people wholly unrelated to any individual woman can ever have her best interests at heart when forcing her to make a decision contrary to her own feelings and reality.
Because the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the United States is murder. For some women, the decision to continue a pregnancy will literally put their lives in danger.
Because there is a inverse relationship between laws restricting reproductive rights and the quality of women's lives. In every country that recognizes women's bodily autonomy, women are safer, make more money, are more educated and generally happier. The ability to determine when, if and how many times she becomes a mother is the leading determinant of every other factor in a woman's life: her level of education, socio-economic status, her ability to escape an abusive relationship, and her overall health.
Because babies are not a punishment. Right-wing rhetoric, you know those moral people who constantly blather about family values, is rife with accusations of women avoiding the negative consequences of sex by having an abortion. They argue that these women made their beds and now they must lie in them, as if children are some punishment from on high for failure to live by someone else's moral statutes. Children are cute, they're adorably naive and often say funny things without meaning to. They make life better for those around them because they bring with them the promise of hope and a better world. They remind us that our time of this planet should be filled with wonder and joy. They make messes and sometimes smell funny, but that's okay because they also laugh at butterflies and give us kisses with chocolate-smeared mouths simply because they felt like it. They are not scarlet letters to be worn as evidence of moral failure. They're too precious. And their lives are too precious to forced upon someone unable to care for them as they deserve.
Because I believe that pregnant women are to be supported by society, not co-opted. Pro-choice activism in the United States often centers around the termination (or prevention) of pregnancy, but inherent in the belief that women should not be forced to continue a pregnancy, is the concomitant conviction that women who choose to remain pregnant should have the full resources of society available to them in that choice. That means pre-natal care for poor women who often go without due to lack of access or resources. It means the availability of midwifery for women who would rather not submit to the often patriarchal nature of obstetrician/hospital birth. It means calling a ceasefire on the public shaming of pregnant women: if a pregnant women is addicted to illegal substances, she should have the ability to get treatment for both her addiction and her child. No more arresting women post-labor for the presence of alcohol or drugs in her system—the crack down on addicted mothers does nothing to help children and everything to prevent these women from seeking quality pre-natal care for fear of imprisonment. And most importantly, it means helping women and their children after pregnancy—public housing and assistance for poor families, access to inexpensive yet healthy food, government funded or subsidized quality day care, paid family leave, flexible work hours, asserting the right of mothers to nurse in public, etc.
Because I am pro-life. I respect life, and more importantly, I respect quality of life. I believe that women's lives have value, that we are important, we are human and we contribute more to society than simply our ability to populate the earth. Treating pregnancy and child-rearing as a yoke to prevent women from fully participating in the public sphere oppresses not only women, but men and children as well. It prevents men from fashioning for themselves an identity beyond breadwinner and monetary provider. It treats men's relationships with their children as secondary and incidental, particularly as concerns a child's emotional development. It tells men that their ability to be an effective and loving father is not natural, that they will never be able to bond with their children in the same way, or to any degree similar to, a woman's ability. And as I've blogged about before, children who are the result of unwanted pregnancies suffer as well, even into adulthood:
The adverse health consequences of teenagers' inability to control their childbearing can be particularly severe. Teenage mothers are more likely to suffer toxemia, anemia, birth complications, and death. Babies of teenage mothers are more likely to have low birth weight and suffer birth injury and neurological defects. Such babies are twice as likely to die in the first year of life as babies born to mothers who delay childbearing until after age 20.Both unintended and unwanted childbearing can have negative health, social, and psychological consequences. Health problems include greater chances for illness and death for both mother and child. In addition, such childbearing has been linked with a variety of social problems, including divorce, poverty, child abuse, and juvenile delinquency. In one study, unwanted children were found less likely to have had a secure family life. As adults they were more likely to engage in criminal behavior, be on welfare, and receive psychiatric services. Another found that children who were unintended by their mothers had lower self-esteem than their intended peers 23 years later.
The biggest lie anti-choicers tell is that they are pro-life. When they fail to recognize that mere existence is not a life, all they achieve is making the lives of others more difficult, more miserable and less fulfilled. When they argue that the only moral abortion is my abortion, they betray an hypocrisy that undercuts any semblance of integrity or virtue. They show themselves as they truly are: zealots who fear and hate women for not being afraid or repentant or cowed by a misogynistic worldview.
Nothing I have said here should be shocking. When faced with the reality of an individual woman's life, only a tiny minority of people still cling to the but it's a baby! point of view. Any society that aspires toward freedom and justice must recognize when women do well, society as a whole does better. And the only way to ensure that women are successful in every other area of their lives is to ensure that women are given the respect and moral authority to control their health, bodies and lives. And that's why I am pro-choice.
Labels: Blog for Choice, Feminism, Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 6:34 AM
1.11.2007
Someone get James Kopp a new dictionary
click on the map, then click on a state to see a history of abortion clinic violence
- desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another, either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep-seated meanness: the malice and spite of a lifelong enemy
- Law: evil intent on the part of a person who commits a wrongful act injurious to others.
Premeditation:
- an act or instance of premeditating.
- Law. sufficient forethought to impute deliberation and intent to commit the act.
On the evening of October 23, 1998, anti-choice terrorist James Kopp* laid in wait in the woods behind Dr. Barnett Slepian’s home with a high-powered military rifle equipped with telescopic sights. Dr. Slepian and his family had just arrived home from his father’s funeral; when Slepian passed in front of a kitchen window, Kopp fired the shot that killed him—in full view of Slepian’s wife and two of their four children.
In Federal Court on Tuesday, Kopp apologized to Lynne Slepian for murdering her husband. In an effort to save his own ass from serving a mandatory life sentence, Kopp (acting as his own counsel), defended himself against murder charges by arguing that he didn’t mean to kill the doctor, only maim him. According to Kopp, since he’s so very, very sorry, and he surely never thought that shooting someone in the shoulder with a military rifle could possibly kill them, he is totally and completely innocent of these silly murder charges.
Earlier Tuesday, Kopp used his opening statement to tell jurors that Slepian's death was "a full-bore, 100 percent tragedy" but was not murder because it was not malicious or premeditated.
Kopp has acknowledged planning the shooting for a year and then firing a high-powered military rifle with telescopic sights from the woods behind the Slepian home, but he has said he meant only to wound the doctor to prevent him from performing abortions."Shoot them in the head, blow up a car, riddle their body with bullets like they do in the movies. That's how you kill someone" with premeditation, Kopp said.
He urged jurors to look for evidence of premeditation or malice toward Slepian. "If you don't see it, that's me proving my case," he said.
Apparently, intent to do harm and a year's worth of planning are lost on Kopp. As the old adage goes, a man who represents himself will have a fool for a client.
-------------------
*And I will damn well call him a terrorist. He’s a member of Army of God, whose other members include Eric Rudolph and Clayton Waagner. AOG "Chaplain" Michael Bray has also spoken approvingly of the public beheadings of homosexuals in Saudi Arabia. How very pro-life of him.
Labels: Fundies Say The Darndest Things, Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 12:40 PM
8.28.2006
Hooray!!
Good news for the ladies this Monday morning!
First up, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission ruled that employers who provide comprehensive prescription coverage must include birth control on the list of approved medications or be liable for a sex discrimination lawsuit. According to the Detroit News:
First up, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission ruled that employers who provide comprehensive prescription coverage must include birth control on the list of approved medications or be liable for a sex discrimination lawsuit. According to the Detroit News:
Small businesses that offer comprehensive prescription coverage but fail to cover birth control are violating the state's civil rights act and could be forced to change their policies under a ruling Monday by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission.
The commission agreed that those employers are discriminating against women by failing to pay for birth control, which studies show most women will use in their lifetimes and costs employers about $1.43 a month per employee.
The ruling paves the way for employees who work in businesses with less than 15 employees to challenge them to cover conception if they cover other prescription drugs. If they refuse, the employee could file a sex discrimination complaint with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights to force a change. A small business owner could appeal that decision to a circuit court.
The fact that employers are only out $1.43 per employee per month to cover the cost of birth control amazes me. The biggest roadblock to extending the Michigan law to small businesses (firms with 15 or more employees have been required to cover birth control in Michigan for a while now) has been the argument it is simply cost prohibitive to provide coverage for all medications. As the MCRC makes clear, even if all 14 employees are women using birth control, small businesses will only spend about $240 per year on contraception coverage. Ortho-Tricycline costs about $50 per 28-pill pack--without prescription coverage, the average women will pay $600 per year out of pocket for birth control.
And in even better news, as it affects women outside of the Mitten, the FDA has finally stopped caving to political pressure and approved Plan B for over the counter use. Of course, the ruling stipulates that only women aged 18 and over can procure Plan B without a prescription. Although, I'm willing to celebrate half a victory since they seem to be few and far between these days.
Needless to say, the Concerned Women forPatriarchy America are outraged that the FDA has "overstepped it's authority" by approving the drug for OTC use. In other news, the CWPA is similarly outraged that:
And in even better news, as it affects women outside of the Mitten, the FDA has finally stopped caving to political pressure and approved Plan B for over the counter use. Of course, the ruling stipulates that only women aged 18 and over can procure Plan B without a prescription. Although, I'm willing to celebrate half a victory since they seem to be few and far between these days.
Needless to say, the Concerned Women for
- The Post Office regularly delivers mail,
- Local law enforcement agents issue citations to speeding drivers,
- Fire Departments extinguish fires from burning buildings, and
- NASA consults science rather than Tarot cards to determine when to launch space shuttles.
"Overstepped it's authority?" Methinks the CWPA needs a primer on the purpose of the Food and Drug Administration.
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries, The Mitten
annamaria at 7:27 AM
8.10.2006
I want one!
Thanks to Bitch, Ph.D., these lovely t-shirts are now available for purchase--they're perfect for reminding the fundies that if they really cared about preventing abortions, they'd stop haranguing women for taking responsibility (and, dare I say it, ownership) for our own fertility, and start supporting Plan B. I think I'll wear mine to the pharmacy when I pick up my pills, to the OB for my annual exam* and Friday dinner with my churchy siblings. Definitely Friday dinners, since the shirt is bound to get me banned and I can actually start having fun on Friday nights again...---------------------
*My OB's office is in one of the swankiest neighborhoods in Metro Detroit, and I am routinely the only woman in the lobby who isn't bloated with child. Going there always serves as a gentle reminder of why my birth control prescription is worth a few moments with the business end of a speculum.
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 11:30 AM
7.26.2006
Saving America, one scared pregnant teen at a time
I hope you all missed me, ‘cause this one’s going to be long and ranty!Today, the Senate passed the Child Custody Protection Act, a bill that, you will note, has more interest in protecting parents’ property (i.e., children) than actually, you know, protecting kids. The CCPA would make it a federal crime for anyone other than a custodial parent to transport a minor child across state lines to obtain an abortion in contravention of laws of the minor’s home state. That means that if Grandma Joannie takes Little Susie from Michigan to Illinois, perhaps because Susie’s Daddy also happens to be her Baby Daddy, Joannie can look forward to an all-expense paid trip to Leavenworth.
Currently, thirty-four states require some kind of parental involvement in a minor’s abortion, either notification or consent, and fifteen states have no such requirements.* It seems to me, for a movement that is so keen on arguing that individual states should get to make decisions about whether to allow abortion, the Republicans are quite content with forcing liberal states like Oregon and New York to live by the more restrictive legislation of other states. Law enforcement will be required to treat young women differently based on their permanent address and not the laws of the state where the procedure took place. Imagine if gun laws worked like this—if Michigan had to acquiesce to California’s more restrictive handgun laws. Do you think the Freepers would be behind that legislation? And do you think CCPA is a two-way street? What if a vacationing New York teenager seeks an abortion in Ohio? Do her parents need to provide consent? After all, in her home state, she is free to terminate her pregnancy without involving her parents.
And more importantly, in nearly every jurisdiction in this country, a minor girl who carries a pregnancy to term is considered medically emancipated; doctors and hospitals are not required to seek out her parents’ permission in order to administer medication, treat pregnancy related illnesses or even perform a C-section. When a young girl is pregnant she is, for all intents and purposes, an adult. Why is it that a thirteen-year-old girl is adult enough to consent to a major surgery like C-section, but not a safe out-patient procedure like abortion? And if a thirteen-year-old girl is not adult enough to decide to terminate a pregnancy, how in the world can she be adult enough to continue it?
Parental consent and notification laws often seem to have their heart in the right place. No one wants a scared teenager to be faced with a major life decision without a support system in place. People genuinely believe that parents should be made aware of their daughter’s intention to have an abortion, because they believe that girls will need parental support, love and guidance. It is that reasoning that makes these laws so popular, even with people who otherwise identify as pro-choice. My sister and I had a conversation once about this very issue, and she looked at her young daughter and said, “I would want to know.**” And I get that. But you can’t legislate healthy families. You can’t force families to function in an ideal manner. And what is most disturbing about CCPA is that it actually prevents young women from seeking a healthy, familial support system by threatening grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, cousins, etc. with jail time for doing what good families should do: care for their most vulnerable members.
There is a part of me that hopes that the law gets enacted, if for no other reason than to see the Grandma Joannies of the world carted off to jail, and the shamefaced looks of sixty-four Senators when they realize what they’ve done.
* 34 plus 15 = South Dakota is a misogynist hell hole which doesn’t allow anyone to get an abortion.
**This is the same sister that once dreamt that I called her in the middle of the night, crying, sixteen and pregnant, and she made plans to drive to Michigan, take me to her home in Chicago, and get me to an abortion clinic. Ironic, huh?
Labels: Feminism, Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 12:01 PM
4.16.2006
Still think Pharmacists are all about saving lives?
So, my insurance company (the only HMO my employer offers) recently sent me a letter to inform me that they have decided to stop doing business with certain pharmacies, and won’t I please transfer my prescription to another pharmacy on this handy list we’ve provided? Unfortunately, not a single pharmacy on that list has a written policy demanding that their pharmacists fill all prescriptions as presented by their customers. Of course, I can press my luck with any number of drug stores which may or may not allow individual pharmacists to steal my prescription and call me a whore for daring to have irregular and painful menstrual periods which require an estrogen/progesterone combination commonly known as The Pill. Apparently, god gave me endometriosis to serve as a constant reminder of Jesus’ pain and suffering on the cross…or something like that. At any rate, in the last paragraph I have told you more information about my need for birth control than the average fundie pharmacist would have at their disposal when refusing to fill my prescription despite the fact that both my doctor and I have decided that this medication is the best course of action to preserve my physical health. Ironic, isn’t it?
But, of course, these pharmacists are not concerned about my painful cramps; their concern is for the fertilized egg that may or may not exist in my body (they don’t know if I’m sexually active, either) that this particular medication will prevent from implanting into my scarred endometrial lining. And if I don’t risk an ectopic pregnancy every time I fuck, the baby Jesus weeps. Allowing me to prevent a pregnancy that could potentially cost me my life (ectopic pregnancy is the second leading cause of maternal death—and we all know what the leading cause is, right?) is a secondary concern for the fundie pharmacists who are on a quest to save everyone’s life but my own.
And what better evidence for the fucked up priorities of the fundie-pharms than this:
Cedar River Clinics, a women's health and abortion provider with facilities in Renton, Tacoma, and Yakima, filed a complaint with the Washington State Department of Health this week alleging three instances where pharmacists raising moral objections refused to fill prescriptions for Cedar River clients. The complaint includes one incident at the Swedish Medical Center outpatient pharmacy in Seattle. According to the complaint, someone at the Swedish pharmacy said she was "morally unable" to fill a Cedar River patient's prescription for abortion-related antibiotics. Cedar River's complaint quotes its Renton clinic manager's May 17, 2005, e-mail account: "Today, one of our clients asked us to call in her prescription... to Swedish outpatient pharmacy. [We] called the prescription in... and spoke with an efficient staff person who took down the prescription. A few minutes later, this pharmacy person called us back and told us she had found out who we were and she morally was unable to fill the prescription." (Cedar River thinks their client eventually got her prescription filled.) [emphasis mine]
So, while the moral outrage sets in, let’s recap shall we? Woman had an abortion, meaning that whatever embryo/fetus/child (use the term of your choice) that existed in her body has been removed. Pharmacist receives prescription for antibiotics which will prevent infection from setting in the woman’s uterus. Pharmacist refuses to fill prescription, thus endangering woman’s health, because s/he does not approve of a prior act committed by the woman. Yep, sounds like actions of a person so consumed with the zeal to save lives that they are willing to allow women to die.
I am opposed to drinking and driving. My father was nearly killed by a drunk driver 20 years ago, and the thought that he would not have met any of his grandchildren had he not been lucky enough to survive the car accident is enough for me to never drink and drive, not allow my friends to drink and drive, and contribute time and money to organizations that work to educate people about the dangers of drinking and driving. The driver who caused my father’s accident died immediately, but had he survived I would not have supported any effort by EMS or the ER doctors to withhold treatment. I would expect that they would do everything they could to keep him alive, even if those medical personnel were as angered by his actions as I was. That is the reason we hold those in the medical establishment to a higher standard—you can believe whatever you would like, but to withhold medical treatment or services based on bigotries or prejudices is anathema to their profession. After all, where does it end? If women seeking post-abortion medical services can be turned away, what about smokers receiving Procrit to treat chemotherapy-related anemia? Can HIV+ patients have their prescriptions for protease inhibitors denied? Maybe men will have to submit a copy of their marriage license before picking up that Cialis? At what point to do we finally admit that one person’s morality simply cannot be a substitute for (or justification for denying) another’s medical treatment?
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 10:15 PM
4.06.2006
Marching forth toward Gilead
Via Feministing, Rachel Maddow interviews New York Times Magazine’s Jack Hitt on Air
Hitt describes the process by which the State collects evidence of the crime:
When a doctor does a pelvic exam on a woman and sees evidence of an abortion, police are called and then if there’s any ambiguity in the doctor’s assertion, the State has the right to essentially get a search warrant for the vagina, and to have a state-sponsored forensic gynecologist come and essentially examine the scene of the crime.
I second Jessica: Listen to this now.
Also in the piece, Maddows mentions that Human Life International, an anti-choice group based in
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 7:34 PM
3.28.2006
Posted (mostly) without comment
No, seriously, Nicholas, tell us what you really think:It’s easy to be an extremist when it’s not your daughter picking out a maternity dress for her junior prom. When the oats hit the millstone, you fuckers find a way to get your mind around abortion being okay just this one time because your special flower can’t be bothered with changing diapers while she’s working full-time as a sidewalk counselor.
So let’s drop the caring about the babies bullshit, okay? There are more kids in protective custody in South Dakota than there were abortions last year, so if you’re done pushing bloody photos in Sally’s face when she shows up for her pap smear, how about swinging by children’s services and giving one of those whippersnappers a home. Or do your politics stop at the edge of the vaginal canal?
[more]
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 7:29 PM
When your baby has a baby...
No, seriously. When your baby has a baby:In a rare operation, Pakistani doctors on Tuesday removed two foetuses, one of them fully grown, from the abdomen of a 45-day-old baby.Pam asks a very important question: if "pro-life" America truly believes that a fetus is a baby and all babies are precious little bundles of joy that must be saved at all costs, what in the world would they make of this?
The infant, Nazia, was brought to Pakistan's Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad with a swollen abdomen four days ago by her parents who are poor labourers from the Swat district in the North-Western Frontier Province (NWFP).
My guess--they'll completely ignore it and pray to god that no one confronts them with it. Seriously, it's pretty difficult to slut-bait a 2-month old, even one so unlucky as to have her triplet siblings somehow find their way into her belly. And if the fundies can't have a good old fashioned whore-bashing, well, there's really no point to discussing abortion at all, is there?
Labels: Fundies Say The Darndest Things, Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 6:57 PM
3.24.2006
why abortion should be illegal...
I am actually giddy with glee.
The title of this post - "why abortion should be illegal" - was entered in Google as a search term, and wouldn't you know it that the religious fundamentalist BOMT blog ended up in the second page of results! I am so proud of the potential people that this may draw to our site.
Like we did with "Human Battling Bitches" awhile back, let's see who else we can get. Leave your favorite anti-choice/homophobic/general Republican statements in the comments, and I'll revise the post to include.
Project, people! I'll start:
hedonistic homosexuals
abortion causes cancer
birth control causes cancer
gay marriage ruins family values
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
Anonymous at 2:43 PM
3.23.2006
Napoli likes it rough? He gets it rough.
click me to make me bigger!
We've been talking a lot about Napoil here at BOMT - Annamaria has brought up some good points inspiring us to take action and fight for the rights of women. But what good does it do? Republicans fight dirty. And now, so do we.
In case your memory needs refreshing in order to become full of fury, remember this?:
A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.Well, some bloggers have a bit of a great idea - launching a grassroots campaign to:
Solution? Make a donation to Planned Parenthood in the name of our favorite backwoods friend, with the standard "thank you" note mailed to his house.
Don't have that address? I do!
6170 S Hwy 79
Rapid City 57702-8467
Home phone: 605-341-2370
Maybe you might know of some racy porn sites that will send you some fancy lit if you request it. Sometimes you can have stuff sent to friends (or others), too.
Updated by Annamaria: You can also send letters of support and/or make a donation to the Oglala Sioux Tribe to help with Cecilia Fire Thunder's attempts to open a Planned Parenthood on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Ginmar has all the info, which I am reprinting here:
Oglala Sioux Tribe
ATTN: President Fire Thunder
P. O. Box 2070
Pine Ridge, SD 57770
or
ATTN: PRESIDENT FIRE THUNDER
PO BOX 990
Martin, SD 57751
Also, I Blame the Patriarchy commenter Hedonistic found these phone numbers to contact President Fire Thunder and offer your encouragement and support: (605) 685-6005 and (605) 685-5597.
Labels: Douchebags, Fundies Say The Darndest Things, Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
Anonymous at 8:40 PM
3.22.2006
Any chance the Democrats are listening?
Everybody and their mother has posted on this today, so I couldn't even begin to tell you where I first saw it. But that won't stop me from sharing it with all of you:When Governor Mike Rounds signed HB 1215 into law it effectively banned all abortions in the state with the exception that it did allow saving the mother’s life. There were, however, no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. His actions, and the comments of State Senators like Bill Napoli of Rapid City, SD, set of a maelstrom of protests within the state.With a name like Cecilia Fire Thunder you know this woman was born to speak truth to power.
Napoli suggested that if it was a case of “simple rape,” there should be no thoughts of ending a pregnancy. Letters by the hundreds appeared in local newspapers, mostly written by women, challenging Napoli’s description of rape as “simple.” He has yet to explain satisfactorily what he meant by “simple rape.”
The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.
“To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,” she said to me last week. “I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries, Women We Love
annamaria at 8:44 PM
2.23.2006
"Abortion should always be illegal"
Click here to enlarge image
I feel like a broken record, but it really needs to be stated again and again until we all know it by rote: pro-lifers don't care about babies. Of course, they don't want you to know that, so lucky for us that their complete disregard for babies is so glaringly obvious whenever they get the chance to legislate abortion. Take South Dakota's pro-lifers, for instance, whose duly-elected
After more than an hour of fierce and emotional debate, the senators rejected pleas to add exceptions for incest or rape or for the health of the pregnant woman and instead voted, 23 to 12, to outlaw all abortions, except those to save the woman's life.
Well, it's nice to know that if it comes down to my life or the little bundle of conceptus, South Dakota's got my back. But if Daddy rapes his little girl, sorry, but she's shit out of luck. Do you really think these people care about kids? There is no exception for incest! Where are all the baby worshippers when a thirteen-year-old girl is raped? Where is the hand wringing about saving her life? To quote Bill Hicks, "What, they reach a certain age and their off your fucking love list?"
Abortion bans are fundamentally punitive, and South Dakota makes that very clear by declaring that they don't care how the evil sluts got knocked up, they'll have to endure their womanly burden anyway. More importantly, anti-abortion rhetoric underscores that, for pro-lifers, life is nothing more than existing. Terri Schiavo was alive because she existed, and for all of those pro-life activists trying to reinstate her feeding tube and keep her hooked up to machines, the quality of her life was never even a question. Fetuses exist, and as such should be allowed to continue to exist, their line of thinking naturally follows, despite the horrific conditions in which they might end up living, and in spite of the lives of their mothers who are far too often still children themselves. The quote which I've used for the title of this entry is from South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds, who is the only person standing in the way of the ban becoming law. It's scary to think that a law which bans all abortions unless pregnancy will kill you might actually be too lenient for this guy.
Just like every time other time an abortion ban or restriction has been passed, Planned Parenthood will seek an injunction preventing the law from being enforced and a nasty court battle will ensue. But South Dakota has something that no state in the years since Roe has been fortunate to have: four little aces up their sleeves called Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito:
Lawmakers opposed to abortion rights here and advocates opposed to abortion rights around the country have been split over timing questions. Some argue that the arrivals of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on the Supreme Court and speculation that Justice John Paul Stevens might soon retire, made now an ideal time to challenge Roe.
Others, however, have said a challenge should wait, for the arrival of additional justices who might be open to overturning Roe and for a shift in public opinion.
Of course, throw in Kennedy who voted in Stenberg to uphold a so-called partial birth abortion ban despite its lack of health provision for the woman, and you've got the five votes necessary to overturn Roe.
One of the favorite arguments of those who want to see Roe overturned is that the decision was judicial tyranny, imposing abortion on the unsuspecting masses who should have been given the opportunity to allow local standards to inform abortion law. Leaving aside the obvious argument that if we allowed "local standards" to dictate civil liberties there would still be whites-only drinking fountains in the South, the pro-life argument is still specious since South Dakota purposefully ignored calls to "allow South Dakotans to decide the question in a referendum and an effort to prevent state tax dollars from financing what is certain to be a long and expensive court battle." So, not only did they tell the citizens of South Dakota that their local standards won't be necessary here where all the big boys are making the tough and important decisions, but also that they will have to pay for the "long and expensive court battle" that they may or may not have wanted.
But I can't let South Dakota have all the anti-choice fun today--just take a look at Michigan's stellar record. Don't worry Jen, this time I'll say it for you: your state is better than mine.
Thanks to Feministing for the Alito cartoon
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 7:12 PM
2.02.2006
Global Godbothering
Sometimes I forget that the United States isn’t the only place in the world with crazy Christians.The other day, Twisty (patriarchy-blamer extraordinaire) wrote about Australian "godbags" who want to prevent girls from being inoculated against HPV lest they take that as license to slut around. I’m not kidding, here’s an actual quote from Senator Barnaby Joyce:
"There might be an overwhelming (public) backlash from people saying, 'don't you dare put something out there that gives my 12-year-old daughter a licence to be promiscuous',"
I know that the threat of HPV stopped me from even thinking about sex when I was a teenager. Actually, that’s a lie; when I was a teenager, I didn’t even know what HPV was. And I’m willing to bet that since there are an estimated 24,000,000 (yes, that’s 24 million) HPV positive Americans I’m not alone in my teenage ignorance. HPV is often asymptomatic, and because the virus can reside in the skin, condoms are not entirely effective in preventing it. According to the CDC, by age 50, at least 80% of women will have been infected with HPV. There are 6.2 million new HPV infections every year.
Did I happen to mention that HPV is the cause for almost all cases of cervical cancer, a disease that kills nearly 4,000 women every year? The other day I wrote about the real anti-choice agenda--controlling the lives and bodies of women. Still need proof? Senator Joyce admits to being "personally very circumspect" about whether he would inoculate any of his four daughters against HPV should the vaccine become available. He’s "circumspect" about giving them a vaccine that would virtually guarantee that they will never get cervical cancer. He can’t decide if his daughter’s lives are worth living if it means that they might (gasp!) walk down the aisle without their hymens intact. He’s wants to sacrifice women’s lives in pursuit of unattainable goal—government mandated virginity. He wants women to die. And he’s not the only one. Wendy Wright, executive vice president of Concerned Women for
Think about it for a second—we have the opportunity to virtually eliminate a form of cancer that kills thousands of women in the United States every year. This would be the first cancer ever eradicated, and we can do it in one generation. If every baby born today was inoculated against HPV, not one of those beautiful baby girls will ever face the threat of cervical cancer.
Do you think Senator Joyce and Wendy Wright would oppose an HIV vaccine on the grounds that it might possibly encourage girls to have sex? And, if they did, do you think anyone would think they were anything other than certifiably batshit crazy? But the fringe right aren't too concerned with HIV (after all, it only kills the godless fags, right?), but mention birth control (including abortion) and the HPV vaccine, and they've suddenly got a whole lot to talk about. Do you think its a coincidence that pregnancy and cervical cancer only affect women?
At the expense of being inexcusably longwinded, I feel the need to note that the Aussies aren’t the only other place with crazies; the Brits are pretty insane, too:
An opinion poll from January conducted by Ipsos MORI found widespread public support for greater restrictions on abortion, particularly among women. Almost 60 percent of all women polled want to see greater restrictions on abortion access. 47 per cent want to see the current limit of 24 weeks reduced, while ten percent of women want to see abortion banned entirely, "under any circumstances."
Oh sweet Lord in heaven. No abortion under any circumstances?! Rape victims should be forced to bear their rapists’ children? What about incest victims? Thirteen-year-old girls raped by their fathers, brother, uncles, teachers, neighbors? Women who will die if they carry a pregnancy to term? Women with cancer—should they have to forego chemotherapy and radiation rather than terminate a pregnancy and save their own lives? Women whose pregnancies are high risk for serious and debilitating conditions? Manic depressive women who cannot take prescribed medications for their conditions, since they run the risk of seriously harming the fetus? None of these women deserve to live? Not one of these women deserves the right to her own bodily integrity? Ten percent of Britons are prepared to issue death sentences to pregnant women without even a thought about how it might impact their families or society as a whole. Ten percent of Britons are so sure of their own moral superiority that they would deny a basic human right to women, so convinced they are that they know better than the woman whose very life is at stake about the responsible and appropriate course of action. Ten percent of Britons think they are qualified to determine whether a woman’s life is worth saving. Pro-life indeed.
I won’t even get into Italy’s banning of RU-486, the Columbian manipulation of children to uphold abortion bans, or Canadian pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception. And all that was just this week…
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 2:07 PM
1.26.2006
What's the matter with Kansas?
Kansas AG Phill Kline is at it again. Not only does he want to violate patient privacy and demand the medical records (including any anecdotal evidence of sluttiness they may include) of women who obtain abortions—in an effort to prosecute child molesters, of course—but now he wants to take away abortion funding for rape victims while he’s at it. I guess he figures if he can’t shame women after abortions, be can do his damnedest to make sure they go broke trying to pay for one:
A Kansas judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by state Attorney General Phill Kline for the state legislature concerning taxpayer funded abortions in cases of rape or incest. The judge dismissed the suit against pro-abortion Gov. Kathleen Sebelius saying she couldn't be held accountable.
Shawnee County Judge David Bruns ruled that federal law requires the state to pay for abortions in such cases under the state's Medicaid program.
Notice that Lifenews characterizes Gov. Sebelius as “pro-abortion” rather than pro-choice. Because, as you know, we women are just waiting in the wings to wantonly kill babies whenever we get the chance. In fact, I’m going to join Pharmacists for Life and demand that women stop taking birth control, that way they can get knocked up more frequently, and I’ve got more babies to murder. But I digress…
According to the Kansas City Star, the state of Kansas spent a little less than $2,000 in Medicaid funds for abortions last year. Sebelius contends that refusing to pay for abortions would jeopardize the $1.32 billion Kansas receives from the federal government for Medicaid funding. Surely our fiscally-aware rightwing friends would see that preventing the seven abortions Kansas paid for last year is hardly worth the loss of that much federal funding.
But beyond that, the federal guidelines are just good law. No woman should be forced to carry to term a pregnancy that is the result of a sexual assault, or one that would put her own life at risk. Please tell me the compelling state interest in encouraging more unwanted babies to be born. I’ll help you out—there is none. Kline is fairly consistent, and representative, of his anti-choice brethren—his intent isn’t to prevent abortions and save lives. He doesn’t particularly care if there are more happy little bouncing babies in the world. People like Kline have one interest—they want to control women’s sexuality, and by extension, their lives. That’s why he’s going after medical records for 15-year-old would-be mommies. He’s not going to prosecute child molesters; his aim is to inform women that their right privacy will not be tolerated. If you want to slut it up ladies, remember that he’s watching. And when the decision to terminate a pregnancy is already fraught with uncertainty and the threat of exposure by anti-choice groups who are not above garbage picking for names and addresses, the knowledge that the government is going to get their grubby little fingers into your medical records is more than enough to give women pause.
This issue is no different. Kline isn’t concerned about taxpayers funding abortions despite their own moral qualms on the issue. He’s concerned about women getting a free pass, and controlling their reproduction without having to pay for it (financially, socially) at all. The next time you hear one of these reactionary, rightwing fuckwits bloviating about saving the babies, stop and listen to the subtext. Then look around for any evidence that the speaker has done one damn thing to better the lives of women and children. It’s easy to say that you want babies to be born, but it takes a better kind of person to make sure that their world is worth living in.
Edited to add that Arjet did a much better (and more passionate) job of discussing the real anti-choice agenda on his blog yesterday. Go read it.
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 10:55 AM
1.04.2006
It's for your own good
There is one thing that is guaranteed to send me into a fit of righteous anger every time, and that is people (usually men) who try to restrict my behavior under the guise of "It’s for your own good." This is the strategy employed by the worst kinds of anti-choicers—the ones who truly believe that by telling women to submit to their role a breeder cows for the human race, they are actually doing us all a favor. Abortion-restricting legislation like 24-hour waiting periods and parental and/or spousal consent laws are the usual means by which the anti-choice crowd force women to conform to their way of thinking—if you’re going to slut around, you’ll need to be as inconvenienced and degraded as possible before you can assert your rights. These laws are infantilizing and patronizing, and serve only to further the belief that women are not fully-functioning adults; we must be coddled and have our hands held, all while being told that we are incapable of making important decisions without good, rational men to guide us.The latest tactic is the abortion-depression link study that has been floating around. Seems some researchers have concluded that women who have had abortions have an increased risk of mental health disorders, and as a result, pro-life groups in the United States and New Zealand are seeking to require doctors to inform women of these findings prior to terminating a pregnancy. I’m all for informed consent, and believe that everyone should be apprised of the risks associated with any medical procedure, be it abortion or appendectomy. The problem I have is when anti-choice activism parades itself as academic research.
For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that the Fergusson study is correct—there is a correlation between abortion and depression (I refuse to accept a causal relationship—there are far too many other factors at work to make that assumption). Even if the Fergusson study proves an increased risk of depression for women who abort, there are two very important questions that it disregards: 1.) what is the risk of depression among women who go through with an unwanted pregnancy and 2.) what effect does social stigmatization of women who abort have on their continued mental health?
The first question is something the anti-choicers don’t want to consider. In their world, there are only two kinds of women: the evil sluts who fuck around and refuse to pay the consequences and the kind-hearted mothers who sacrifice all in the service of loving their children. While this dichotomy might be convenient, it’s hardly reality. A study conducted by Schmiege and Russo (abstract here) shows not only are claims of an abortion-depression link inconclusive, but the mental health effects of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term outweigh any negative psychological effects of abortion. And it’s not only women that suffer from unwanted pregnancy; according to a study by the Transnational Family Research Institute, children who are the result of an unwanted pregnancy suffer serious physical and mental health risk as well:
Both unintended and unwanted childbearing can have negative health, social, and psychological consequences. Health problems include greater chances for illness and death for both mother and child. In addition, such childbearing has been linked with a variety of social problems, including divorce, poverty, child abuse, and juvenile delinquency. In one study, unwanted children were found less likely to have had a secure family life. As adults they were more likely to engage in criminal behavior, be on welfare, and receive psychiatric services. Another found that children who were unintended by their mothers had lower self-esteem than their intended peers 23 years later.
The adverse health consequences of teenagers' inability to control their childbearing can be particularly severe. Teenage mothers are more likely to suffer toxemia, anemia, birth complications, and death. Babies of teenage mothers are more likely to have low birth weight and suffer birth injury and neurological defects. Such babies are twice as likely to die in the first year of life as babies born to mothers who delay childbearing until after age 20.
It’s fun to pretend that the second a woman choose not to (or is prevented from) terminating a pregnancy she is suddenly transformed into Susie Homemaker and the World’s Greatest Mother, but this little fantasy simply has no basis in reality. The work of pregnancy (and it’s work, people, not the passive state the anti-choicers want you to think it is) and child rearing is severely trying for women who desperately want their children—imagine the consequences of being forced to do that work against your will.
But since I agreed to suspend reality and accept for a moment a correlation between abortion and depression, what could be the cause? Maybe it’s the social stigma that follows abortion, the belief that a woman who chooses to terminate a pregnancy has murdered her child for selfish and capricious reasons. Even those of us on the Left, people with pro-choice credentials make these assumptions. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve said something along the lines of “Well, one abortion I can understand, but two or more just shows that you’re irresponsible.” Why do we assume that women are allowed one get out of jail free card, and all subsequent pregnancies can be prevented by the simple fact that they’ve had an abortion in the past? Do we suddenly become infallible after an abortion, and if we have to go back to the clinic it’s obviously because we forgot to act like the sainted creatures that we are?
As long as society continues to shame women who choose abortion, disregarding their lives, ambitions and daily realities as inconsequential, these women will be at risk for depression. So the “pro-life” groups in the US and NZ are seriously interested in passing legislation to protect women’s post-abortion mental health, maybe that’s a good place to start.
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 11:19 AM
12.06.2005
You're not a human until you're in my phone book
I haven’t visited with our friends, the Concerned Women for
Well, doesn’t that sound distressing? To think that homosexuals are performing abortions! Or is it that evil lesbians are getting themselves knocked-up by unwitting straight men only to go out and have abortions! Oh, I know! Genetic testing has allowed doctors to isolate a gay gene, and homosexual doctors are selectively aborting straight womb babies to aid the homosexual agenda and the queer quest for global dominance!
Okay, I give up. What is the abortion-homosexual connection? Does it have anything to do with The French Connection? I know that twinks really like to wear those FCUK t-shirts.
No, the abortion-homosexual connection is even worse that you thought. Check out what Robert Knight, CWFA director (and a man!), has to say:
[Susan] Kennedy's rise to the top of California's power structure is just the tip of the iceberg. Openly lesbian California Democratic legislators Sheila Kuehl and Carole Migden, along with openly homosexual Mark Leno, have led the fight against any restrictions on abortion while initiating a slew of pro-homosexual measures, including full-blown "gay marriage," promoting homosexuality in the schools, and a law prohibiting the state from doing business with firms that do not subsidize homosexual relationships. Leno and Kuehl are listed as co-authors of AB 654, a euthanasia bill so radical that it didn't even get a floor vote in the liberal-dominated Assembly.
At the national level, the pro-abortion National Organization for Women supports all aspects of the homosexual agenda, including same-sex "marriage," hate crime laws, and persecuting [sic] the Boy Scouts for barring homosexuals as scoutmasters.
Homosexual activist groups are players in liberal coalitions that work against pro-life judicial nominees, for socialized medicine, and for legislation restricting the rights of pro-life demonstrators, such as the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which treats pro-life protesters as criminals.
Don’t you see, folks, the evil abortion-homosexual connections? People who support individual liberty, human rights and privacy tend the be consistent! And as we all know, consistency is the enemy of the Religious Right. And Robert Knight has proof that the abortion-homosexual agenda is at direct odds with the values of “Christians” everywhere: some nutjob anti-choice advocate wrote a book called “The Criminalization of Christianity” wherein she posits that the ultimate goal of the homoabortionists is to, well, criminalize Christianity.
Longtime pro-life activist Janet Folger had an epiphany a few years ago at a pro-family conference at Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. She "suddenly connected the dots and realized it's all the same battle" after hearing a speaker discuss "the real aim of the homosexual agenda: the criminalization of Christianity."
When I was in college, I volunteered at my local Planned Parenthood clinic. Our director was a wonderful man, deeply committed to all aspects of social justice, including not only a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices, but also gay rights (by which, of course, I mean human rights). He was also a minister at a local Christian church. He never saw any conflict between his faith and his job at PPFA; in fact, he often argued that his faith was precisely the reason he chose to work at the clinic, because he believed that Christians cannot look the other way when confronted with injustice. I wonder if he knew that he was an instrument of evil, determined to vitiate his own religion. Somehow I doubt it.
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries, LGBT
annamaria at 8:08 AM
11.01.2005
Further proof that anti-choicers are out of touch with reality
Of course, Lifesite is hardly in the business of reporting on celebrities, so what purpose could they possibly have to comment on Ms. Shields? Well, to damn her for using in-vitro fertilization, of course!
Movie star Brooke Shields is pregnant with her second child. She already has a daughter with her husband, TV writer Chris Henchy, conceived by in-vitro fertilization. Presumably this second child is also an IVF baby, although news sources did not reveal this information.
Shields wrote about her experience of severe depression following the birth of Rowan Francis in 2003 in her book Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression. Australian researchers revealed in August that women who conceive through IVF are four times more likely to suffer from post-partum depression and early parenting difficulties as compared to women who conceive naturally.
IVF creates children outside of the loving union of a man and a woman. Furthermore, the lives of the embryonic children conceived by the IVF procedure are under severe threat since the latest statistics have revealed that over 85% of embryos transferred in the procedure die in the process. With over a million children having been born via IVF, that would amount to nearly six million embryonic children killed with the procedure.
Unfortunately for Lifesite, blaming women for post-partum depression doesn’t make them nearly as interesting as Tom Cruise. Nor does condemning the millions of would-be parents who are unable to conceive children through “natural” means.
I’m going to say this again, because apparently it bears repeating. Embryos die. They die at a rate of 50% during “natural” conception, when for some reason or another they are expelled from a woman’s body before being implanted in the uterus. Spontaneous abortion is as much a part of “natural” reproduction as happy, healthy babies. Death, as much as these people hate to admit it, is a natural and inevitable part of life. Some of us live to a ripe old age, some of us are killed in car accidents, and still others of us never make it past the embryonic stage.
As for the link between IVF and post-partum depression, guess what? Not as clear-cut as Lifesite wants you to think:
The group also found that women who became mothers using IVF were likely to be older, have multiple births and require delivery by Caesarean section. All these factors have been linked to an increased risk of postnatal depression in previous studies. These findings led the researchers to speculate that 'a previous history of fertility difficulties, advanced maternal age, assisted conception, operative delivery and multiple birth may heighten the risk for postpartum mood disturbance and early parenting difficulties'.
Seems that the circumstances that drive women toward IVF (advanced age, fertility difficulties, etc) are the same things that increase the risk for postpartum depression. Correlation, darlings, not causation.
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N.B. - This marks my inaugural Passive-Aggressive Use of Quotation Marks post. From this point on, I will co-opt the favored tactic of the right and use quotation marks inappropriately, paying special attention to words that fundies really like. "Natural" makes its debut here. In the future, I hope to use "heterosexual," "fetus" and "Christian."
Labels: Fundies Say The Darndest Things, Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 11:30 AM
5.12.2005
I like Ted Leo's pharmacists much more
I have so had fucking enough of anti-choice pharmacists. I have this recurring dream where I go to the local Walgreens to get my Ortho-Evra prescription filled, only to have some fundie fuckwit tell me that I am an evil, baby-killing whore—the dream usually concludes with me jumping over the counter and beating the holy-rolling shit out of the little man in the white coat. In fact, I’m almost hoping for this situation to play out in real life—although the idea of calling my parents from a holding cell and asking them to post bail for me isn’t nearly so appealing.
So, it seems that the latest tool in the anti-choice arsenal is to simply stop stocking the shit altogether. According to
Most Missouri pharmacists are bypassing the conscience debate by simply not stocking the controversial abortifacient morning-after pill according to a survey of pharmacies conducted by NARAL (National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League) Pro-Choice Missouri. NARAL found that, of 928 pharmacies surveyed statewide, less than a third – 29 percent – carried the Plan B prescription abortifacient, marketed as 'emergency contraception.'
Ah, how I love it when fundies call birth control and Plan B "abortifacients." They aren’t. An abortifacient, by definition, causes an abortion—are we following people? Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy—make sense? Pregnancy is the implantation of a fertilized egg in the endometrium—got that? So, until the fertilized egg implants into the endometrium, you are not pregnant. That is not just my opinion, but the opinion of the National Institutes of Health. See how I can find better sources than Dictionary.com?
So, does EC cause abortion? According to the EC website (hosted by Princeton University, and unlike most fundie sites, this is actually peer reviewed):
No, use of emergency contraception does not cause an abortion. In fact, emergency contraception prevents pregnancy and thereby reduces the need for induced abortion. Medical authorities such as the United States Food and Drug Administration/National Institutes of Health and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists define the beginning of pregnancy as the implantation of a fertilized egg in the lining of a woman's uterus. Implantation begins five to seven days after fertilization (and is completed several days later). Emergency contraceptives work before implantation and not after a woman is already pregnant. Depending on the time during the menstrual cycle that they are taken, ECPs may inhibit or delay ovulation, inhibit tubal transport of the egg or sperm, interfere with fertilization, or alter the endometrium (the lining of the uterus), thereby inhibiting implantation of a fertilized egg.
(emphasis mine)
But, enough of my logic and truth, let’s get back to the wingnuts, shall we?
Abortion zealots and media alike are decrying the fact that in some rural regions, such as Shannon County and Barry County, not a single pharmacy will allow their employees to cooperate in the destruction of an unborn child. Missouri lawmakers are considering a bill that would force pharmacies to fill the prescription whether they disagree with abortion or not.
Yes, and quite the abortion zealot that I am, considering that widespread availability of EC will actually reduce the need for surgical abortion. Obviously, I am just looking out for Planned Parenthood’s bottom line here, since I want to make sure that women have options other than abortion.
Last month Democratic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich filed an emergency amendment to the state code, requiring pharmacists to dispense medication – even if filling the prescriptions violates their conscience and religious beliefs.
"The governor is trying to make a decision that must be left to the pharmacy," said Illinois Republican Senator Frank Watson, according to a theledger.com report. Watson’s family pharmacy in Greenville, Ill. does not stock the morning-after pill. "It's an infringement on a business decision and also on the pharmacist's right of conscience."
Let me repeat and emphasize what Senator Watson had to say: "The governor is trying to make a decision that must be left to the pharmacy." Um, excuse me, but isn’t this "a decision that must be left to" the woman and her doctor? I have never had a pharmacist ask me why I am taking any medication, be it Ortho-Evra or amoxycillin. For all s/he knows, I need birth control to ease painful menstrual cramps and regulate my periods, or for lifesaving treatment for ovarian or uterine cancer, ovarian cysts, pelvic inflammatory disease or anemia. Who the fuck is some pill-pusher to stand in the way of my medical treatment, as decided by my doctor and myself?
Catholic hospitals in Colorado are already considering the administration of ovulation tests before they give EC to rape victims. What’s next? Will women have to provide pharmacists with signed affidavits that they are not currently engaging in vaginal intercourse, so no risk of abortion here! How about our doctors pin notes to the inside of our coats detailing our medical treatment, and assuring the pharmacist that it’s really, really okay for us to take the pill. Hey, isn’t that the purpose of a FUCKING PRESCRIPTION?
It’s really simple people—if you can’t do your job as required, you don’t deserve to keep your job. Allowing pharmacists to insinuate themselves into women’s medical treatment is going to backfire. What makes these people think that women are going to say "Well, I couldn’t get my EC, so I guess I’m just going to have to resign myself to being the best darn mommy in the whole wide world!" Rather than preventing abortion (which, need I reiterate, is what EC does), the fundies are going to drive women to clinics to have surgical abortions—which means killing the fetuses, as opposed to just ensuring that they don’t happen in the first place.
Labels: Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 11:07 AM
