Category: Abortion

James Woods, Democrat for Congress, Who Mails Condoms to Pro-Lifers

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The condom

His letter

Abortion criminalizers mail a questionnaire to a Democratic congressional candidate, and he mails them back condoms stamped “Prevent Abortion.” How can you not love that?

In response to a letter-writing campaign promoted by an anti-abortion organization, Democratic congressional candidate James Woods is mailing back condoms — campaign condoms.

 The form-letters sent to Woods, who’s running for the Congressional District 5 seat currently occupied by Republican Congressman Matt Salmon, asked him to sign a pledge to fully support the “sanctity of life” in a candidate survey from the National Pro-Life Alliance.

 “Woods did return the survey, but stood in opposition to the entire platform of the Alliance,” Woods’ spokeswoman Seráh Blain tells New Times.

 The people who mailed this letter to Woods will also be getting some protection in the mail from the Woods campaign headquarters. Woods’ campaign also included a letter explaining why he’s not going to support the platform of the National Pro-Life Alliance.

This is epic beyond my capacity for to express.

He’s a long shot candidate, and he’s unopposed in the primary, and he’s blind, and he’s an atheist, and I’m putting him on Matthew Saroff’s Act Blue Page.

Give him money, or you make bunny cry.

God Bless the Satanists*

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The Satanic Temple has demanded an exemption from state laws restricting abortion using the Hobby Lobby case as precedent:

The Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision, which allowed some for-profit companies to claim a religious exemption to Obamacare’s contraception mandate, has sparked a heated debate over the definition of religious liberty and its role in modern society. At this point, even a Satantic cult has decided to weigh in.

The Satanic Temple — a faith community that describes itself as facilitating “the communication and mobilization of politically aware Satanists, secularists, and advocates for individual liberty” — has launched a new campaign seeking a religious exemption to certain anti-abortion laws that attempt to dissuade women from ending a pregnancy. The group says they have deeply held beliefs about bodily autonomy and scientific accuracy, and those beliefs are violated by state-level “informed consent” laws that rely on misleading information about abortion risks.

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, the Satanists point out, it strengthens their own quest to opt out of laws related to women’s health care that go against their religious liberty. “Because of the respect the Court has given to religious beliefs, and the fact that our our beliefs are based on best available knowledge, we expect that our belief in the illegitimacy of state­ mandated ‘informational’ material is enough to exempt us, and those who hold our beliefs, from having to receive them,” a spokesperson for the organization said in a statement.

Truth be told, their case is actually far stronger than Hobby Lobby’s because they are objecting to forced state speech, which is far more significant from a constitutional perspective than an incidental requirement that a company provide full insurance coverage.

Well played.

*Yes, I know that will piss off Satanists, but what the hell!†
†Oops.

This is F%$#ing Brilliant!

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(Click for Slideshow)





Heh!

A couple in North Carolina has come up with a unique counter protest to the Talibaptist abortion criminalization crowd:

……… One Raleigh, N.C., couple—Grayson Haver Currin, a writer for Pitchfork and music editor at Indy Week, and his wife Tina, a copywriter and creative strategist—has been protesting alongside pro-lifers at a clinic in Cary, N.C., every Saturday morning since March. But their signs take a different approach.

 Two days ago, Tina started the Tumblr Saturday Chores to document their glorious counter-protest technique. Grayson explains how this movement came about:

“There’s no big-box hardware store very close to where we live, so we were driving toward a suburb of Raleigh called Cary, which runs over with strip malls. We were getting supplies for a garden box. We both grew up not too far away, and we’ve seen the clinic in question hundreds of times. But for some reason, on this morning in particular, the protesters got under our skin a little more than normal. I’m full of crazy ideas and jokes, and Tina tells me which rare ones are good. I suggested that we make a sign that said ‘Weird Hobby’ and point at one of the protestors. She loved the idea and vowed that, if they were there when we passed back by, we’d do it.


 ………

 He states that though this is satire, there’s an important message behind the signs.

 “While it’s true that we’re mocking people, we consider the chief value of what we’re doing the solidarity that we demonstrate for the individuals or families that need to use the clinic’s services for whatever reasons they may have,” Grayson says. “Generally, upon arrival, they only encounter hate. We want to offer a rejoinder, however slight. And we also hope to show passersby on the busy thoroughfare that the far religious right need not be the only ones with a voice; those with progressive views have one, too, and we should use it.”

This is so F%$#ing brilliant.

No shouting, no screaming, nothing to make them feel like they are fighting “the man,” you just make them look, and feel, stupid.

I love it!

H/t Crooks and Liars.

I Disagree With the Rude One

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In response to the Supreme Court decision giving free reign for antiabortion protesters to intimidate doctors, nurses, and patients, the Rude Pundit suggests that we engage in aggressive in your face threatening protests outside the churches that winds up the anti-abortion terrorists:

Look at that church. Isn’t it a pretty little church? It’s St. Mary’s Church in Grafton, Massachusetts. It’s freakin’ idyllic, no? It’s also deeply invested in anti-abortion actions. The congregation participated in 40 Days for Life, an action during Lent that 17,000 churches around the world took part in, with another 40 Days planned for September 24 to November 2.

The St. Mary’s churchgoers headed over to Worcester to protest at a Planned Parenthood and to “sidewalk counsel” women there. “[I]s it worth it to stand out in the wind and rain and cold to pray in front of Planned Parenthood?” the church’s website asks. And, for them, it was. They convinced one woman to not get an abortion. You can see the baby. It’s like a taste of something that will keep them addicted to protesting. A crack baby, if you will. No doubt the church will be supporting the baby and the mother until the baby is an adult. No doubt.

Come September, and maybe even before, the parishioners will be harassing every woman who goes to the Planned Parenthood, even those just going for pap smears and help getting pregnant. And they will no doubt be joined by the anti-abortion radicals, the fetus picture carriers, the screamers, the hysterics who shame women.

“Is it really necessary to be out on the sidewalk instead of praying at home?” St. Mary’s wants to know. Look up at that picture again. What do you see in front of St. Mary’s? That’s a nice, wide, very public sidewalk. The parking lot is across the street, so most of the people attending church services on, say, a nice summer Sunday will have to walk that sidewalk, a sidewalk just like the one outside Planned Parenthood in Worcester. A sidewalk like the one that Eleanor McCullen “gently” counsels women from outside a Planned Parenthood in Boston.

 ………

 So let’s get out there, every goddamn Sunday, and head to the churches that send their lunatic Jesus-fellaters out to try to shut down Planned Parenthoods, and stand on their sidewalks, just like the one up there outside St. Mary’s in Grafton, and let’s make churchgoing a living f%$#in’ hell for ’em. Let’s bodily block the access to the walkways that lead to the church. Let’s bring signs that have pictures of women who were killed by illegal abortions. Let’s go up to them and try to convince them to convert or go atheist, following them until we are on church property and have to stop. Let’s block the street by walking back and forth in the crosswalk. Let’s force the churchgoers to need escorts to even get inside.

 Shit, let’s plaster the telephone poles with photos of the priests and church leaders, their addresses, their phone numbers. Let’s tell them as they pass, “We know where you live.” Let’s film everyone going into the church and post those on a website. Hey, it’s a public f%$#in’ sidewalk, man. Let’s scream at them about how they’re terrible people, how they support raping children, how they have given money to help silence victims. Can’t you hear their silent screams? Can’t you? F%$#, yeah.

 Going to church is a choice, no? Let’s make sure they regret that f%$#in’ choice, however legal it may be for them to make it. Then let’s see how quickly they’re begging for buffer zones.

(%$# mine)

First, and most important, is that this behavior is wrong.

Second, the methods that the Rude Pundit is suggesting require that its target already have a credible fear that they will be the target of violent terrorism.  The folks outside the Church will not be slashing tires, setting fire to the church, or shooting priests,* so any such demonstration will be almost completely without impact.

I would suggest, however, that people of good conscience refuse do make other common causes with people who go to places like St. Mary’s Church in Grafton, because consorting with terrorists, even at a soup kitchen, is still consorting with terrorists.

*Though some former alter boys might be considering this for a completely different reason.

Why the Catholic Church Should Be Out of the Hospital Business

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A Catholic hospital in (where else) Oklahoma has forbade its doctors from prescribing birth control:

Doctors affiliated with a small Catholic hospital in Bartlesville, Okla., are no longer allowed to prescribe contraception for the purposes of birth control, according to a report from the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise.

Administrators at Jane Phillips Medical Center are reported to have held a meeting last week to inform doctors of the new directive barring them from prescribing contraceptives as birth control; according to the Examiner-Enterprise, doctors are allowed to prescribe contraceptives for non-birth control purposes, such as cramps, menstrual pain or endometriosis.

“I have spoken to my doctor about my birth control options,” one patient impacted by the directive told the Examiner-Enterprise. “I was told that my physician has been instructed that they can no longer write prescriptions for birth control as birth control. This effects me because I take birth control as birth control. There are other ways to receive birth control, for example headaches, cramps, excessive bleeding — but I have none of those symptoms.

Note that this is not just employees, or on the hospital premises, this is a directive given to any doctor with admitting privileges.

The Catholic Church has been engaging in a massive hospital buying binge, and they are using it to make not just abortion, but birth control, unavailable across the nation.

Mike Huckabee is Terrified of Women’s Libidos

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Yesterday, I asserted that the abortion criminalization right wants to punish women for their own sexuality.

Today, Mike Huckabee removed all doubt:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said the Republican Party is waging a “war for women,” at a meeting of the Republican National Committee Thursday.

Addressing a luncheon of committee-members, staffers, and operatives, Huckabee took aim at Democrats who accuse the GOP of waging a “war on women” with its policies against abortion and government-subsidized birth control.

“Republicans don’t have a war on women,” Huckabee said. We’re having a war for women. To empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.”

“If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it,” he continued. “Let us take that discussion all across America, because women are far more than the Democrats have played them to be.”

Great shades of Elvis.

Cannot control their libido?

Unless Huckabee has some girl-on-girl fantasies and a turkey baster, there is, you know, a  penis involved in sex and conception.

Controlling their reproductive system?  That is the definition of birth control.

What is it about Republicans?   Are they still fuming over the fact that they couldn’t get laid during the “Summer of Love” in 1967?

I couldn’t get laid in 1967 either, but in my defense, I turned 5 years old that year.

I would also note that (most of the time, anyway) don’t act like a 5 year old these days, but it appears that Republicans have not managed that trick.

Charlie Pierce Gets It

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Pierce notes that when you look at those who wish to criminalize abortion (and birth control), “There Is No Common Ground On Abortion.”

They want to punish women for their own sexuality.  They want to remove their autonomy, and they (Catholic Church excepted) don’t give a damn about children once they are born into poverty.

These people who are afraid by women, and the power that women possess, and want to minimize it, and there can be no compromise.

The idea of  “Common Ground” is that it provides a way for Democrats to weasel out of this.

Guess what, the only people who feel inspired to vote for members of the weasel family are other weasels, like skunks.

Go read the rest

Arizona Abortion Restrictions Struck Down

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The Supreme Court has declined to review the appeals court decision invalidating the law, so the the decision stands:

The US Supreme Court on Monday turned aside a request by Arizona officials for the high court to examine the constitutionality of a state statute that sought to restrict abortions after 20 weeks of fetal gestation.

A panel of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the Arizona abortion statute last year, ruling that it violated long-established Supreme Court precedents by depriving a woman of the choice to terminate her pregnancy prior to the point of fetal viability.

Supporters of the law expressed disappointment over the high court’s move.

“Every innocent life deserves to be protected,” Steven Aden, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian nonprofit based in Scottsdale, Ariz.

“Not only did this law protect innocent children in the womb who experience horrific pain during a later-term abortion, it also protected mothers from the increased risk of physical harm and tremendous psychological consequences that come with late-term abortions,” Mr. Aden said in a statement.

Women rights groups praised the high court action.

I praise this high court action as well.

They Really do Loathe Women’s Sexuality

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Hatred and fear of women actually enjoying sex, so they must be punished, even if it is a rape:

The Republican-dominated Michigan state legislature pushed through a bill on Wednesday requiring women to purchase separate insurance policies if they want to have an abortion, the Detroit Free Press reported.

“I don’t think elective abortion should be a part of insurance,” state Rep. Nancy Jenkins (R) told the Free Press. “This doesn’t affect access to abortion. It will still be legal when this law takes effect. Who should be required to pay? Not Michigan taxpayers.”

However, the law, which takes effect in early 2014, will also ban women from purchasing the policy after becoming pregnant under any circumstances, including rape and incest, causing opponents to refer to it as a policy on “rape insurance.”

The bill passed by a 27-11 margin in the Senate, and a 62-47 vote in the House, mostly along party lines. According to the Associated Press, state Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D) said during the debate that she was raped 20 years ago.

“Thank God it didn’t result in a pregnancy because I can’t imagine going through what I went through and then having to consider what to do about an unwanted pregnancy from an attacker,” Whitmer was quoted as saying. “If this were law then and I had become pregnant, I would not be able to have coverage because of this. How extreme, how extreme does this measure need to be?”

What is wrong with these people?

This is not ignorance, it is raw hatred and evil.

Victory in Albuquerque

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The abortion criminalization crowd just lost their attempt to pass abortion restrictions through a local referendum in Albuquerque:

Voters here on Tuesday defeated a ballot question that sought to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, delivering a critical setback to an anti-abortion movement that had sought to use this progressive city to recalibrate the national debate around women’s reproductive rights.

The referendum, the first of its kind in the country for a municipality, was marked by record turnout and aggressive tactics by volunteers on both sides, who sought to capitalize on the controversy and passion surrounding the issue to drive voters to the polls. For political strategists, it also offered a chance to test the way their message on abortion resonated among Hispanics, a key constituency that accounts for nearly half of the residents in Albuquerque and New Mexico, and is one of the fastest-growing populations in the country.

“This was a clear counterpunch to the Republicans and right-wingers who came from out of state to push their agenda on us,” Sam Bregman, chairman of the New Mexico Democratic Party, which campaigned hard against the ban, said in an interview.

According to the city clerk’s office, about 87,000 votes were cast in the election, or 25 percent of Albuquerque’s registered voters. The final tally was 55 percent of votes against and 45 percent of votes for the abortion ban.

The ban would have affected the entire state, given that the only two clinics that perform abortion at that stage in the pregnancy are in Albuquerque. One, Southwestern Women’s Options, is perhaps one of the only in the country to openly admit it does abortions after 20 weeks; out-of-state license plates can often be spotted in its parking lot.

Double digit margin, bitches.

Understand that things like politicians using changes in parking requirements are still being used to shut down clinics, which is why Republicans must be actively campaigned against at all levels, whether it is for zoning board, or dog catcher.

I’m Beginning to Really Like His Holiness

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He may not be John XXIII, but he is a breath of fresh air after the reactionary JP II and Benedict.

Latest case, he makes the obvious observation that the exclusive focus on abortion and gays by the reactionary wing of the Church is not a good thing:

Six months into his papacy, Pope Francis sent shock waves through the Roman Catholic church on Thursday with the publication of his remarks that the church had grown “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage and contraception, and that he had chosen not to talk about those issues despite recriminations from critics.

His surprising comments came in a lengthy interview in which he criticized the church for putting dogma before love, and for prioritizing moral doctrines over serving the poor and marginalized. He articulated his vision of an inclusive church, a “home for all” — which is a striking contrast with his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, the doctrinal defender who envisioned a smaller, purer church.

Francis told the interviewer, a fellow Jesuit: “It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.

“We have to find a new balance,” the pope continued, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.”

It is noteworthy that this is an interview with a Jesuit which was released in Jesuit publications.  This is more than public assertion of his views, but an assertion of the traditional role of the Jesuits as being intellectual gadflies for the church, something which John Paul II detested,

As to the reactionary bigots, like this guy, who are upset that they no longer get to use the institutions of the church to go after people they find “icky”, I say go pound sand:

But there has been a low rumble of discontent from some Catholic advocacy groups, and even from some bishops, who have taken note of his silence on abortion and gay marriage. This month, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, R.I., told his diocesan newspaper that he was “a little bit disappointed in Pope Francis” because he had not spoken about abortion. “Many people have noticed that,” he said.

My heart bleeds for the right wingers like Tobin who are intent on abandoning the poor in order to wage war against women and the LGBT community.

This is actually pretty mild.  The Pope is telling the officers of the church to chill out, and remember that there is a lot more to the Catholic Church than abortion, birth control, and gay marriage.

It’s not like he’s forcing them out of the priesthood, like JPII did.

If She is Not Running for Statewide Office Soon, The Texas Democratic Party is Stupid and Worthless

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I am referring, of course to Wendy Davis, whose epic filibuster against the radical anti-abortion legislation proposed by the Texas Taliban Republicans was crucial to running out the clock on the special legislative session:

She was a state senator Tuesday morning. By Wednesday, she was a political celebrity known across the nation. But also hoarse, hungry and thirsty.

 The leg-numbing filibuster by Wendy Davis, a Fort Worth Democrat — in which she stood and talked for more than 11 hours at the Capitol here, never sitting, eating, drinking or even using the bathroom to help block passage of an anti-abortion bill supported by the state’s top Republicans — was not the longest such marathon, by Texas standards.

 But it didn’t matter.

 Her feat of stamina and conviction gained thousands of Twitter followers in a matter of hours. Pictures of the sneakers she wore beneath her dress zoomed across computer and television screens. The press corps demanded to know her shoe brand. (Mizuno, it turned out.) Hundreds of men, women and children waited for hours at the Capitol to sit in an upstairs gallery and watch her in action, standing in lines that snaked around the rotunda. Even President Obama noticed, posting a Twitter message on Tuesday that read, “Something special is happening in Austin tonight.”

 Ms. Davis, 50, has known long odds and, for Democrats, was the perfect symbol in a fight over what a woman can do. She was a teenager when her first child was born, but managed as a single mother to pull herself from a trailer park to Harvard Law School to a hard-fought seat in the Texas Senate, a rare liberal representing conservative Tarrant County. According to Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston, she had the second-most liberal voting record in the Senate in 2011.

They used some bogus rules of order to shut her down down two hours early, but parliamentary points of order made by Democrats, along with a remarkably raucous gallery, pushed the vote past the midnight deadline for the special section.

Of course, playing by the rules is not how the Republicans play, so they tried to reset the clock, in order to make it appear as if they had made the deadline:

That is evidence that someone changed the official record to backdate the vote, which took place beginning at 12:02 AM on June 26th to before 11:59 PM on June 25th.

That’s stealing the vote. Or cheating. Or being a Republican.

Social media is cruel to cheaters, though. There was a YouTube live stream, there was a paper record with a timestamp of 12:02 AM for the vote, there was this image of the date discrepancy, and there were plenty of reporters who put it together and deduced that hijinks were afoot.

Hundreds of thousands of people watched this online, and knew the time as well, so in the wee hours of the morning, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst fessed up.

Rick Perry, who appears to still think that he can become President, is calling another special session in order to get another bite at the apple.

I think that the Democratic State Senators should leave the state to prevent quorum.

I also think that Wendy Davis should be the Democratic nominee for either Governor or US Senate in the next election, but I rather expect that the Democratic Party insiders will find a way to dismiss her, because, after all, she has the, “the second-most liberal voting record in the Senate in 2011,” and heaven forbid that you nominate someone from the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.

6 Democrats to Punish

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They voted for the Republican bill outlawing abortion after 20 weeks:

Six Democrats and six Republicans broke with their respective parties late Tuesday on House GOP legislation to ban nearly all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, written by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), creates narrow exemptions to protect the life of the mother, and in cases of rape and incest as long as the crimes have been reported. It passed 228-196 but won’t become law because Democrats control the Senate and White House.

The six Democrats who voted for the act were Reps. Nick Rahall (WV), Collin Peterson (MN), Jim Matheson (UT), Mike McIntyre (NC), Dan Lipinski (IL) and Henry Cuellar (TX).

I would particularly note that Lipinski’s vote is particularly egregious, because he is in a solidly Democratic district.

6 Republicans also voted against the bill, but some of them did because they thought that the exceptions for rape and incest meant that the bill did not go far enough, and in any case, I’m not going to endorse a ‘Phant.

Appeals Court Slaps Down Obama on Contraception Restrictions

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They sided with the lower court, and ordered the Obama administration to make emergency contraception (AKA Plan B) over the counter:

The Obama administration has in part lost its push to sustain age limits on over-the-counter sale of Plan B One-Step, commonly known as the morning-after pill.

After a lower court recently slapped down all age limits, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday granted the Justice Department’s request for a stay on one-pill variants of emergency contraceptives but denied it for two-pill variants, declaring that the appellants have “failed to meet the requisite standard.”

This is a very well deserved smackdown.

The Obama administration’s behavior in this mater has been craven, dishonest, and hypocritical. They have taken what should be a core value, and used it as a political football.

Because the So Called Pro-Life Movement is an Oxymoron

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Yes, the folks who want to criminalize abortion have threatened the life of a Nevada state legislator for saying that she had an abortion:

The life of a Latina assemblywoman in Nevada has been threatened after she used a story about her own personal abortion experience at age 16 to make a point about the importance of sex education.

“I’m going to say something I’ve never said publicly before, because — Why not? I’ve been open about everything else?” Democratic Assemblywoman Lucy Flores reportedly told the state Assembly Education Committee on Monday. “I had six other sisters, all of them became pregnant in their teens — all of them. One was 14 years old when she got pregnant with twins. That is what I had to learn from.”

“I had an abortion because I didn’t have access to birth control, or even an understanding of what that meant,” she explained. “I didn’t even understand that my worth did not come from men, or sex with men, trying to fill up a hole in me from so much pain.”


………

After several Nevada news sites published accounts of Flores’ emotional testimony, conservative websites like Life News got the message out to anti-abortion activists with headlines like: “Democratic Legislator: I Don’t Regret Killing My Baby in Abortion.”

“Unlike Flores, most women regret their abortions and tell painful stories of how they are often unable to come to grips with taking the life of their child,” Life News’ Steven Ertelt wrote.

Flores was scheduled to explain her support for Assembly Bill 230 to reporter John Ralston on the Thursday edition of Ralston Reports, but canceled before the show aired.

Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, who testified at sex ed hearing re abortion as a teen, recipient of threatening messages. Cancels Ralston Thur.
— Dana Gentry (@DanaGentryLV) April 3, 2013



“Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, who testified at sex ed hearing re abortion as a teen, recipient of threatening messages,” television producer Dana Gentry wrote on Twitter. “Cancels Ralston Thur.”

On Thursday, feminist blogger and activist Emmily Bristol, who wrote about Flores’ testimony, wondered if she had “indirect culpability in giving greater exposure to the kind of information that has been shown to incite anti-choice news outlets and organizations.”

“Those opposed to reproductive health care — lest I remind you that abortion is a legal form of health care — and those opposed to comprehensive sex education share the same goal: To silence and shame women,” Bristol wrote. “They seek to demonize human sexuality.”

This is what the whole abortion criminalization movement is all about: Punishing women for having sex.

It’s why they threaten lives, and why, over the past few election cycles, they have talked about banning birth control, and keeping birth control coverage out of Obamacare.

They hate the idea of women having power over their bodies.

This is why compromise with those ratf%$#s is a losing proposition.

They Blinked

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Just a day after some wingnuts in Michigan proposed a transvaginal ultrasound bill, Michigan’s House Speaker has said it’s not gonna happen:

Michigan’s House Speaker Jase Bolger (R) on Thursday categorically ruled out legislation introduced by his Republican colleagues to mandate transvaginal ultrasounds for women before having an abortion.

“While I want to be sure women have access to the best technology available, I have absolutely no interest in forcing a woman to have a transvaginal ultrasound,” Bolger said in a statement. “This House of Representatives will not pass a bill mandating transvaginal ultrasounds.”

Mr. Bolger is aware of how toxic the teabaggers in his caucus are, even as he has made his bed with them.

It’s Back!!!!

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A transvaginal ultrasound abortion bill has been submitted in the Michigan state house:

Michigan Republicans have introduced a bill requiring all women to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound before obtaining an abortion, a move that rekindles last year’s firestorm when other GOP-led states were considering similar measures.

The legislation introduced Tuesday in the state House ensures the “performance of a diagnostic ultrasound examination of the fetus at least two hours before an abortion is performed” and requires her to sign a consent form prior to the abortion. The bill was introduced by state Rep. Joel Johnson (R) and cosponsored by 22 fellow lawmakers.

Johnson was not available for comment Wednesday, but his legislative aide, Ben Frederick, confirmed to TPM that, while the legislation does not specifically mention transvaginal ultrasounds, the bill aims to require women to undergo an ultrasound prior to receiving an abortion.

Katie Carey, a spokeswoman for Michigan’s House Democratic Leader Tim Greimel, categorically said the bill would mandate transvaginal ultrasounds for women before an abortion.

Because, as the vice presidential hopes of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell last year so clearly  showed, it’s such a political winner.

Just When You Think that Republicans Get Any More Contemptible………

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A state legislator in New Mexico proposed legislation to make a rape victim who has an abortion guilty of felony destruction of evidence:

A bill introduced by a Republican state Representative would make it a third-degree felony for a woman who was impregnated as the result of a rape or incest to have an abortion.

House Bill 206, brought by Rep. Cathrynn Brown, R-Carlsbad, is sure to be one of the most controversial bills of the session. While other bills do all they can to discourage women from having abortions by delaying the process, this bill would actually make it a third degree felony to not carry to term a pregnancy that is the result of rape or incest.

ProgressNow New Mexico executive director Pat Davis calls the bill “blatantly unconstitutional” and opposes the bill.

“The bill turns victims of rape and incest, who have just been through a horrible sexual assault, into felons and forces them to become incubators of evidence for the state,” David said in a statement. “According to Republican philosophy, victims who are ‘legitimately raped’ will now have to carry the fetus to term in order to prove their case.”

It in net, and blew up in her face, and suddenly, she is saying that she will rewrite the bill so that it would only apply to the rapist if they coerce an abortion.

If that had been her goal in the first place, she would have put it in in the first place.

Seriously, how do evil f%$#s like this get elected?