trailer park feminist

Mexico's Roe v. Wade

2008-08-29T11:38:00.001-05:00

Great news: the Mexican Supreme Court has upheld legal abortion in Mexico City!

The ruling is likely to encourage similar legislative drives outside Mexico City, where abortion remains illegal except in certain cases, such as pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

Abortion rights activists said the ruling set a precedent for state legislatures to pass measures legalizing abortion. The leftist Democratic Revolution Party, which governs Mexico City, has signaled plans to push for such laws.

Hooray! Now even more lives will be saved!

It's about keeping contraception away from rape victims.

2008-08-22T17:26:00.001-05:00

"'This regulation is not about contraception. It's about abortion,' said Mike Leavitt, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

But Mr. Leavitt acknowledged that some medical providers may want to 'press the definition' and make the case that some forms of contraception are tantamount to abortion.

Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life, said she expects members of her group will do exactly that. 'It would be pretty excellent,' she said, if states lost federal funding over laws requiring pharmacists to fill birth-control prescriptions."

(Emphasis mine.)

Sixteen states currently require hospitals to provide rape victims with information about emergency contraception, but Pharmacists For Life wants to put a stop to that. Normal people see nothing wrong with protecting rape victims from unwanted pregnancy, but Karen Brauer feels we ought to be more worried about protecting rapists' sperm, and the Bush administration agrees.

One year later, legal abortion is saving lives in Mexico

2008-08-12T10:16:00.002-05:00

It's been one year since Mexico City legalized abortion up to 12 weeks and required public hospitals to provide them for free, and so far, at least a dozen women's lives have been saved.

According to the Health Secretariat more than 96.9% of the abortions in the last year have been performed without complications. Only one death occurred due to medical malpractice, in which case the doctor responsible was suspended. Raffaela Schiavon highlights the fact that "overall maternal mortality has significantly decreased (14 deaths less than in 2006), and that there has been a clear decline of mortality due to abortion (only one death compared to an average between 8 and 10 per year in the last decade).

(Emphasis mine.) And contrary to the predictions of anti-choicers, women have not flocked to Mexico City from all over the country for abortions: 78% of the patients lived in Mexico City. There are likely thousands more Mexican women who can not afford to travel to Mexico City for abortions, and must still rely on clandestine/do-it-yourself procedures. Imagine how many more lives could be saved if abortion was legalized throughout Mexico.

Abortion is a life-saving medical procedure

2008-08-09T15:05:00.001-05:00

Memo to Democrats for Life:

If you want to be taken seriously by the Democratic party, it's probably best not to say stupid things like this:

[NARAL Pro-Choice America president Kate] Michelman supports language that pledges to reduce the "need for abortion," implicitly acknowledging the reasonableness of abortion in certain circumstances. [Democrats for Life executive director Kristen] Day, on the other hand, tells me "there is never a need for abortion," and she wants the party to emphatically state that its goal is to reduce the total number of abortions.

(Emphasis mine.) Never a need for abortion? Has Ms. Day never heard of ectopic pregnancy? Placental abruption? Cancer?

The fact is ABORTION SAVES LIVES EVERY DAY. Anyone who could say that there is "never a need for abortion" obviously cares more about slut-shaming than respecting life.

Paris Hilton's campaign ad

2008-08-06T11:13:00.002-05:00

In response to McCain's ridiculous "Celeb" ad, Paris Hilton has made her own "ad," and it is HILARIOUS!

Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Adfunny videosFunnyOrDie.com

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Why not Sebelius?

2008-08-05T13:45:00.000-05:00

THIS. I think it would be great if Obama picked Kathleen Sebelius as his veep. She has a fantastic pro-choice record. She's vetoed so many awful anti-choice bills in her time as governor of Kansas, the local Catholic archbishop asked her to stop taking communion.

I know I'm a pro-choice, feminist Clinton voter who's supposed to be all upset over her not being the VP, but I think picking Sebelius as VP would send a clear message that Obama cares about women's issues and women's advancement.

Hillary's loss should not be a loss for every other well-qualified, ambitious woman in this country.

Nancy Sinatra - These Boots Are Made for Walkin'

2008-08-02T00:04:00.000-05:00

Less coverage for birth control would be "fantastic," says FRC

2008-07-31T11:24:00.000-05:00

If the draft regulation were to prompt some insurance companies to drop coverage for prescription birth control, "that would be fantastic," said Tom McClusky, a strategist with the conservative Family Research Council.

EW ICKY SEX ED!!!

2008-07-31T09:59:00.000-05:00

Anti-choicers are DISGUSTED at Planned Parenthood Columbia Williamette's new sex ed website, TakeCareDownThere.org. Dawn Eden promised it was "truly degrading" and "gross, gross, gross," so I was expecting something at least as bad as the barf-inducing STD slide show from my old high school abstinence class.

Fortunately, it's nowhere near as disgusting as that. It's actually a pretty funny website. Kudos to Planned Parenthood for giving teens information about condom use and STD screenings in a fun and positive way.

Copper thieves have wrecked the Trail of Lights D:

2008-07-30T00:34:00.002-05:00

Oh no!!

If the Trail of Lights was held today, there wouldn't be much twinkle.

"It angers me, it really does," Troy Houtman with the city's Parks and Recreation Department said.

Houtman is angry because someone stole nearly 3 miles of buried power lines at Zilker Park. The lines, made mostly out of copper, are used to power the annual holiday light show. (...)

Now, they just need to find a way to come up with the almost $100,000 it will take to replace the stolen copper.

"We don't have the budget to replace that because that's not an item we typically replace," Houtman said.

This is awful! :(

Ohio woman charged for throwing away miscarried fetus

2008-07-29T22:25:00.001-05:00

I'm confused... Jewell Leon has been charged with tampering with evidence (a third degree felony) for throwing away her miscarried fetus.

How is a miscarried fetus "evidence?" Is it illegal to have a miscarriage in Ohio, or something?

Anti-choice groups still dominated by men

2008-07-29T16:29:00.001-05:00

Brilliant. Antigone at Punkassblog has compiled some pertinent information about America's most prominent anti-abortion groups.

When investigating Pro-Life Organizations, I choose to focus on 6 factors: are they secular or religious, does it appear to be women leading the organization, do they support sexual education, or contraception, or welfare for new mothers, and are they violent or peaceful?

The results are no surprise, of course. Of the 29 major anti-choice groups:

76% are headed by men
59% are explicitly Christian
Only one group -- Democrats for Life of America -- supports contraception and sex education.

Kansan sticks it to election system

2008-07-29T10:42:00.000-05:00

This is amazing!

OLATHE, KAN. -- When Sean Tevis decided to run for a seat in the Kansas Legislature, he faced a serious problem: money. Local political advisors warned the campaign novice that he would need a war chest of at least $26,000 to compete against his entrenched Republican rival.

It seemed like a fortune to the 39-year-old Democrat. Everyone he knew here was either on a fixed income, worried about losing a job or fretting that the nation's stumbling economy could spread to this southwestern suburb of Kansas City, Kan.

So Tevis created a droll online cartoon strip to appeal to potential supporters wherever they might be, using stick figures to represent himself, his GOP opponent and others.

In one panel, a stick-figure Tevis greets a constituent by rattling off a stream of personal facts he's found online about her -- including her birthdate, voting pattern, divorce, paycheck, credit card balances and medical history -- to illustrate his interest in protecting individual privacy.

When she slams the door in his face, the cartoon Tevis muses, "Maybe I should rethink my approach."

"I figured I'd raise a few thousand dollars, at most," for his bid to become a state representative, said Tevis, a computer systems manager who works for an industrial manufacturing company.

In fact, before he created the comic strip, Tevis spent weeks asking cash-strapped friends and family for help and walking door-to-door in the district. He raised $1,525.

The comic strip -- at www.seantevis.com/3000 -- was first posted online July 16. Today, when he files his campaign finance forms with the Kansas secretary of state's office, Tevis will report that he has raised $95,162.76 in donations through PayPal, the online service that allows payments and money transfers via the Internet.

Sorry We Asked, Sorry You Told

2008-07-24T16:11:00.002-05:00

AHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!

Sorry We Asked, Sorry You Told

By Dana Milbank
Thursday, July 24, 2008; A03

Don't ask, don't tell. And, whatever you do, don't ask Elaine Donnelly to tell you what she thinks about gays in the military.

The House Armed Services personnel subcommittee made just such a miscalculation yesterday. Holding the first hearing in 15 years on the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, lawmakers invited a quartet of veterans to testify on the subject and also extended an invitation to Donnelly, who has been working for years to protect our fighting forces from the malign influence of women.

Donnelly treated the panel to an extraordinary exhibition of rage. She warned of "transgenders in the military." She warned that lesbians would take pictures of people in the shower. She spoke ominously of gays spreading "HIV positivity" through the ranks.

"We're talking about real consequences for real people," Donnelly proclaimed. Her written statement added warnings about "inappropriate passive/aggressive actions common in the homosexual community," the prospects of "forcible sodomy" and "exotic forms of sexual expression," and the case of "a group of black lesbians who decided to gang-assault" a fellow soldier.

At the witness table with Donnelly, retired Navy Capt. Joan Darrah, a lesbian, rolled her eyes in disbelief. Retired Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, a gay man who was wounded in Iraq, looked as if he would explode.

Inadvertently, Donnelly achieved the opposite of her intended effect. Though there's no expectation that Congress will repeal "don't ask, don't tell" and allow gays to serve openly in the military, the display had the effect of increasing bipartisan sympathy for the cause.

Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) labeled her statement "just bonkers" and "dumb," and he called her claims about an HIV menace "inappropriate." Said Snyder: "By this analysis . . . we ought to recruit only lesbians for the military, because they have the lowest incidence of HIV in the country."

Oh, snap! Read the whole article! It's great that the country is finally coming around and seeing the deranged homobigots for what they are. (Hat-tip.)

Oh noes! Poor women might get pap smears!!1

2008-07-24T13:12:00.001-05:00

Jill Stanek, Dawn Eden and someone at Michelle Malkin's blog are all in a tizzy over the fact that the government's Women, Infants and Children website has a link to Planned Parenthood.

What, you don't see it? It's right there! In the Learning Center!

Still don't see it? Scroll down until you find the link for "Health Care."

Still don't see it? It's right there! Fifteenth link from the top! See it?

Scandalous!!

Next thing you know, women on WIC will be having regular pap smears and HIV screenings! They'll be using birth control and preventing unintended pregnancies! They might even take advantage of the free condoms, and prevent the spread of STDs!!

Anti-choicers sure do pick strange things to get upset over.

lol McCain

2008-07-23T21:49:00.003-05:00

So I was watching Black in America on CNN when Anderson Cooper breaks in to play this video of John McCain wandering around a grocery store, looking lost and out of place, and giving a speech before a case of deli cheese. LOL WUT

Soldier in famous photo dead of overdose

2008-07-20T12:58:00.000-05:00

PFC Joseph P. Dwyer, 26, runs while carrying an injured Iraqi boy.
PHOTO BY WARREN ZINN/ARMY TIMES

Tragic.

A photograph taken in the first days of the war had made the medic from New York's Long Island a symbol of the United States' good intentions in the Middle East. When he returned home, he was hailed as a hero.

But for most of the past five years, the 31-year-old soldier had writhed in a private hell, shooting at imaginary enemies and dodging nonexistent roadside bombs, sleeping in a closet bunker and trying desperately to huff away the "demons" in his head. When his personal problems became public, efforts were made to help him, but nothing seemed to work.

This broken, frightened man had once been the embodiment of American might and compassion. If the military couldn't save him, Knapp thought, what hope was there for the thousands suffering in anonymity?

Miscellanea

2008-07-19T21:46:00.000-05:00

* God, I am so glad this story is getting media coverage. "Congressional Democrats are criticizing the Bush administration for a draft proposal they say would change the definition of abortion and limit women's access to contraception."

* America is still pro-choice.

By a 63 - 33 percent margin, American voters support the 1973 Roe v Wade decision. But Americans remain divided on the issue of abortion:

* 19 percent say abortion should be legal in all cases;
* 38 percent say it should be legal in most cases;
* 24 percent say it should be illegal in most cases;
* 14 percent say it should be illegal in all cases.

* Jessica Valenti of Feministing is looking for personal stories about abstinence-only classes for a book she's writing.

* And isn't it amazing that Bush is suddenly talking about withdrawing from Iraq? It's almost like Obama is already in charge.

Abstinence isn't working in Texas

2008-07-15T12:21:00.001-05:00

I'm sorry I don't blog much. It's summer and I'm so busy with summertime family stuff, I don't usually feel like writing. But here is something I just HAD to blog about:

The Austin American-Statesman's Melissa Mixon recently did an extremely informative series on abstinence education in Texas that is WELL worth the read:

* Texas spends big for abstinence programs, but teenagers aren't always buying it
* Abstinence: The message vs. the reality
* Texas puts tight restraints on what teachers can teach about sex
* Students talk about sex education and abstinence
* What isn't being taught starts with what's not in the textbooks
* A reality check on the 'human use reality rates' for contraceptives

Dumbest Billboard Ever

2008-07-15T11:57:00.001-05:00

Note to Republicans: 9/11 happened under Bush's watch.

Bush wants birth control clinics to hire nurses and docs who won't provide birth control

2008-07-15T11:21:00.001-05:00

The Bush administration wants recipients of federal health dollars, like family planning clinics, to be forced to hire doctors and nurses who refuse to provide birth control.

In the proposal, obtained by The New York Times, the administration says it could cut off federal aid to individuals or entities that discriminate against people who object to abortion on the basis of “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

The proposal defines abortion as follows: “any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”

Mary Jane Gallagher, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which represents providers, said, “The proposed definition of abortion is so broad that it would cover many types of birth control, including oral contraceptives and emergency contraception.”

“We worry that under the proposal, contraceptive services would become less available to low-income and uninsured women,” Ms. Gallagher said.

They certainly would. Under this rule, clinics like Planned Parenthood could be forced to hire nurses and doctors who would then refuse to provide birth control to patients, or lose their federal birth control funding. Either way, poor and uninsured women are screwed out of their birth control.

Junior high bathroom birth leads to capital murder charge

2008-06-29T18:46:00.002-05:00

Why do so many of these tragic dead baby stories happen in Texas? Must have something to do with the state's abstinence-only policy. What bothers me most about it is that this does not have to happen.

What if, instead of making pregnancy out to be the most horrible thing that can happen to a girl, someone had told this girl her options? What if, instead of telling her sex is wrong, someone had told her how to have sex responsibly?

Teaching teenagers that they're too young and irresponsible to handle birth control and pregnancy creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. How can they use birth control if they've been taught that it's useless? How can they deal with pregnancy if all they've been taught is that it's too awful to deal with?

Why not teach kids how to use birth control, how to know if they're pregnant, and what to do about it? Because it might encourage some of them to have sex?

Isn't it more important to stop girls from giving birth in toilets and winding up in prison?!

Where the fuck are our priorities, when chastity is more important than saving lives?

"Tolerance is a problem threatening the morality of America."

2008-06-28T20:13:00.001-05:00

They don't allow commenting, so I'll ask here.

Why is the Abstinence Clearinghouse Blog calling for more religious intolerance?

American Life League keeping us safe from HIV education

2008-06-28T18:17:00.004-05:00

If being "pro-life" is just about saving babies, why do they have such a huge problem with HIV education?

Pro-Life Senators 4 Death!

2008-06-27T18:56:00.000-05:00

This disgusts me.

President Bush's efforts to broaden a widely respected, bipartisan program to fight the spread of AIDS in Africa have faced roadblocks by seven Republican senators.

Bush had hoped that Congress would pass legislation to spend $50 billion to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis primarily in Africa in time for the Group of Eight summit in Japan next month. However, the seven socially conservative senators, led by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., refuse to support the legislation unless spending focuses more heavily on treatment than on prevention.

In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the seven senators — Coburn, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and David Vitter of Louisiana — criticized the bills' increased spending over the next five years from $15 billion to $50 billion, the expansion of AIDS funding to countries such as China and India and the inclusion of funding for agricultural-assistance and poverty-alleviation programs.

"The bills' support would allow morally questionable activities, including advocating with host governments to change gender norms and policies and promoting activities that could include needle distribution to drug users," the senators wrote.

Apparently, for some people, preserving gender roles is more important than saving human lives. I'll never understand how these folks manage to claim the "pro-life" label, when they are clearly anything but.