Women vote advocates Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL): Women Who Undergo Abortions Should Face Criminal Charges
MATTHEWS: So it should be a criminal matter for the woman as well as the doctor?
STEARNS: I think so. You are killing an embryo and in some cases you are killing an embryo that is four or five months into gestation.
“A society that does not accept the facts is a childish society, and a society that makes abortion illegal—and I believe that the PBAB is a calculated step in exactly that direction—is a cruel and backward society that makes being female a crime. It works in partnership with the illegal abortionist. It puts him in business, sends him his customers, and employs him to dispense crude, dirty, barbaric, savage punishment to those who break the law. And the ones who are punished by the illegal abortionist are always women: mothers, sisters, daughters, wives.
It’s no way to treat a lady.”
This is such an important article. Eleanor Cooney for Mother Jones on the “Partial-Birth” Abortion Ban and the necessity of having access to legal, safe abortions for all women regardless of circumstance, age, race, class, religion, number of months pregnant, reason for being pregnant, etc.
You must read this.
Yup yup yup.
I’ve found new resources for people in need of access, funds, transportation, and lodging for abortions, so I’m compiling all my posts on the subject into one, for easy reference:
Need Help Paying for an Abortion? - National Network of Abortion Funds and The National Abortion Federation
National Abortion Funds (United States)
Abortion funds cannot cover the entire cost of your abortion, but they will give as much as they can and help you find other funds and ways to pay for your abortion.
Some clinics, including Planned Parenthood, offer their services at a reduced fee for those who can’t afford the regular price. Contact the clinic nearest you to see if that’s an option.
Medicaid covers abortion in 15 states. Check to see if yours is one of them.
Fund Abortion Now has a checklist of ways to raise money for your abortion. If you’re running out of ideas, check it out.
The war on women is the final solution for Republicans to finally put women in the role the Christian bible commands as subservient to men, and what better way than keeping them pregnant, earning 74-cents on the dollar a man earns, or at the mercy of rapists. Republicans are able to keep a segment of the population clamoring for more anti-women legislation because their voice, Rush Limbaugh, is parroting sexist and misogynistic rhetoric three hours a day, five days a week to men who need slaves and women who are stuck in religious cults and desirous to see every woman in America subjected to the same subservient roles as them.
[…]
Republicans, religious extremists in the Mormon, Catholic, and evangelical faiths have been complicit in subverting women’s rights, and it is obvious they believe women cannot be trusted to make choices in their best interest. However, women are better educated, more politically savvy, and smarter than the conservative patriarchs lusting to return to a time when women could not vote, hold political office, serve on juries, or own land ,and Republicans will feel their wrath in November. This is a warning to Republicans and religious maniacs that their war on women, like their sexist mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh, has ignited a firestorm they are ill-equipped to extinguish, because not only are women smarter and better educated, they are driven to extend their rights until they are given their due as equal American citizens. Republicans should also fear husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons who are sick and tired of the women they cherish being treated like dogs and yet, the GOP escalates their attacks as if they are invulnerable. Women are patient and have long memories of the persistent abuse at the hands of conservatives and their onward Christian soldiers, and like Limbaugh’s sexist attacks, they have had enough, and with women making up more than half the population, the patriarchy is nearing its demise and it cannot come fast enough. It is ironic that women, who are the recipients of Republican and Limbaugh’s attacks, will be the force that brings this war on women to an end. Visit the Stop Rush Project and peruse Limbaugh’s sexist and misogynistic remarks and reflect on how they mirror the Republican and religious patriarchal war on women and join decent Americans to end the assault on America’s most valuable asset.
Women, especially young childless undecided women voters, are talking about jobs, not abortion rights, right? What women really care about is not contraception, not access to family planning resources, not social issues like gay marriage, abstinence-only sex “ed” or Mitt Romney’s 50 year old bullying. Nope – it’s the economy. Women, “like everyone else,”– that would the norm – men, just want to be able to go to work, earn a fair wage and support their families. These “social” things are a “distraction” leading Americans to avert their gaze from what’s really important: the economy. Polls are clear: jobs and the economy are their number one concerns.
This oft-repeated juxtaposition, superficial and irresponsible, between The Economy and Social Issues (especially, in polls, “jobs” and “contraception”) is like a political media Greek chorus. People believe it, especially women who are disinclined to think about themselves as discriminated against by virtue of their sex. Young women answer these questions and pollsters ask them the way they do based on the assumption that women, armed with education and “girl power,” have equal access to newly created jobs and will be paid fairly for their work. Those are false assumptions that women, especially young childless ones, need to consider before they vote, because this year’s elections, both state and presidential, will affect their ability to do both for years to come.
We’re engaged in a mass delusion that misleadingly pits The Economy against what are at their core, Reproductive Rights. Don’t be fooled when considering who to vote for – women can’t participate equally in the first until they have the second. The very phrasing of the questions and the reporting of the answers hide the complex and interdependent relationship between the two. Contraception, reproductive rights, gay marriage (defined as it is by conservatives as a threat to male/female hierarchies) – all have critical implications for women’s economic well-being and for the economy at large.
Insistence on splitting these two concerns is particularly useful to Republicans, because it allows them toblame women’s economic woes on their “choices,” a specific irony. If a woman gets paid less or doesn’t have a “seat at the table” it’s because she chose a lower paying job, or because she chose to have children and works part-time, or she chose to not complete her education. If women make “bad choices” it’s their own fault, their decisions and they have to pay the consequences. Which gets us to the second half of this equation. Simultaneously, for the “less important” Social Issues, the word “choice” is completely anathema to Republican legislators and presidential hopefuls. Girls and women cannot possibly be trusted with “choices” when it comes to their own bodies, sex ed, birth control, health care, sexuality, domestic violence and marriage.
Most importantly, however, in terms of the economy, is that what all of these secondary-in-importance social issues boil down to is that women especially cannot be allowed to “choose” for themselves when to become mothers – arguably the single most important contributing factor to their, and our economies, long-term well-being.
What single factor arguably has the greatest impact on a woman’s work life? In other words, what enables women to participate in the economy and become productive workers and engines of economic growth and expansion?
That would be motherhood.
So, even single, childless, undecided women who may one day get pregnant, should consider what happens to a woman when she gives birth:
- She is 44% less likely to be hired
- She makes 11% less than her non-mother female counterpart (who is already just making 78cents to the male dollar)
- She is less likely to go to school or complete her education.
- She works part-time with more frequency, so that she can provide child care for which she is uncompensated and can derive no benefits as child care is invisible labor.
- She is less able to work overtime.
- She is unable to get maternal health care coverage as part of a basic insurance policy. Already discriminated against by gender rating in insurance prices, she is now doubly financially harmed by the fact of her parenthood.
- She is more likely to have to limit herself to lower paying job sectors where she thinks she will have more “flexibility” even though this has been proven not to be the case.
- She is more likely to be impoverished and become state dependent.
And, what is motherhood? In it’s simplest terms, it is reproduction.
Control of reproduction is an economic issue. This isn’t an academic abstraction, it is a practical reality for any human endowed with a uterus.
This is why instead of The Economy and Social Issues being unrelated as people keep suggesting, they are integrally related. The very nexus of The Economy and Social Issues then, from a policy perspective, is the question “Do you believe women should work, for (fair) pay and outside of the home?” Republicans do not. That’s why their dedication to controlling female sex and reproduction is an economic policy choice – it affects women’s abilities to pursue education, get hired, be paid, stay in the workforce.
If you believe yes women should be able to work and be paid fairly outside of the home, then you do everything possible to create family friendly work structures, fair pay regulations, health care access, planned parenting provisions, that enable women to do just that. If no, then you don’t. You do the opposite. You create a disabling “social issue” legislative scaffold on which to build a “it’s your own fault” Temple to Patriarchy. This is precisely what the Republic party is doing. If you are an undecided woman voter you should pause to consider the impact of these intersections on your own life and the lives of other, often far less privileged, women.
As it is now, even for a woman who has access to birth control, health care, safe and legal abortion, becoming a mother in this country, planned or unplanned, is the single worst economic decision a woman can make. She is still cobbled by inadequate health care, higher gender-rated insurance premiums, discriminatory pay, poor return on her educational investment, greater responsibility for child care and an inability to save effectively for security in her old age.
Republicans have shown repeatedly and without remorse that they want to keep women vulnerable, dependent and at home:
- Lilly Ledbetter? What’s that? “Money is more important for men.” I finally support it, but (wink, wink) my surrogates will make sure it never happens. Fair Pay in Wisconsin? Don’t want to force employers to prove they are paying women fairly. Definitely don’t want to “clog up the legal system” unless, of course, it’s to send black boys and men to jail.
- Domestic Violence? Let’s make sure the Abuser Lobby is happy, given the mail order bride business and more, and ensure that women most vulnerable to violent abuse are isolated and left even more at the mercy of mostly men who will rape and beat them without recourse to the law.
- Reproductive Freedom? Let’s pursue husbandry-informed blunt force trauma legislation ensuring that women’s bodies and reproduction stay in the control of men. Eliminating Planned Parenthood, making it hard to find birth control and abortion services, mandating transvaginal ultrasounds that women themselves have to pay for, requiring waiting periods that require expensive travel – all of these things impede women’s freedom and ability to compete fairly in the job market.
- Health Care: What, you mean the stuff that keeps people healthy and able to go to work? Hell, no. We’ll not only fight against affordable health care (the opposite of which is unaffordable health care) but we will also stop federal funding for Planned Parenthood, even including monies dedicated to non-abortion services like…family planning – often the only services that poor women have access to. Title IX? The only federal program devoted to family planning, you almost cannot make this up it’s so ridiculous: Romney will eliminate it entirely, to save money for The Economy.
- And yes, even Mitt Romney’s 50 year old bullying of a gay boy. Why? Because the exact same attitudes that informed that incident inform his support of abstinence-only education, gendered societal roles, fair pay provisions, reproductive freedom – namely, there are rules, boxes which people are supposed to fit into – and when they don’t conform to his world view they should be punished and forced to. The roots of his high-school bullying escapades and his “Social Issue” policies both reside in an inability to empathize with people who don’t look like and sound like him. It’s why he saw nothing wrong in explaining that Ann Romney was responsible for translating females. Empathizing with women is just not a possibility if you’re a man.
All of these issues profoundly affect women’s ABILITY TO ENGAGE FULLY AND EQUALLY IN THE ECONOMY WITHOUT PENALIZATION. If Republicans were serious about their commitment to women’s unimpeded equality in the workplace, then they would not insist that “social” policies are unrelated to “the economy” and they would not be pursuing broad legislation that affirmatively harms women’s ability to participate in the economy on multiple levels. Basic control over her own body, that would be reproductive freedom and health care that is affordable, non-discriminatorily priced, and relevant to her body and not men’s, affects whether a woman can seek and complete her education. The type of job she can get. How many hours she can work. If she can afford to start a business. Whether or not she can work full time or has to work part time. Whether she can afford childcare and health care, if she works. Whether she can safely leave an abusive spouse without fear for her children and seek work to support herself.
That’s why Social Issues, like contraception, are ABOUT The Economy not separate from it.
All of this, yes.
This.
Fluke decried the “offensive” depiction of Cupp on Twitter. She said the sexualization of female public figures was meant to limit them to being merely sexual objects and nothing more.
The 24 Republican Congresswomen in the U.S. House announced yesterday that they have joined to form the Women’s Policy Committee, a caucus aimed at “raising the profile of GOP women in their roles as lawmakers, highlighting their diverse achievements and providing a unique, unified voice on a wide range of critically important issues.”
But a ThinkProgress review of their voting records shows that the two dozen women have been fairly consistent in their legislative opposition to women’s rights:
- Violence Against Women: Of the 24 women, 22 voted to rollback the Violence Against Women Act, backing a version of the bill that could violate the confidentiality of victims and that excluded protections for immigrants, LGBT people, and Native Americans.
- Access to contraception: 21 of the 24 co-sponsored the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act” to take away regulations enacted under Obamacare requiring most employers to cover birth control in their health insurance plans, without additional cost-sharing.
- Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: Of the 15 Republican Congresswomen who were in the House at the time, all 15 voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, a law that helps women hold accountable employers who discriminate in the pay practices based on gender.
- Paycheck Fairness Act Act: 13 of those 15 also voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would update the 1963 Equal Pay Act by closing many of its loopholes and strengthening incentives to prevent pay discrimination.
- Reproductive health: According to Planned Parenthood, 20 of the 24 GOP women earned a zero score, voting against reproductive health at every opportunity. The average score for the women was under 6 percent.
In lauding the group’s formation, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said “Make no mistake, these aren’t just leaders on so-called ‘women’s issues,’ these are women leaders on all issues.”
But their leadership on women’s issues has been decidedly absent. In fact, even in their two-minutes-and-fifteen-seconds introductory video “Working For You,” they note they are “working together to create jobs, reduce spending, health small businesses, and put back into your hands.” But they do not name a single accomplishment or goal relating to equal protection for women.
source (and the video mentioned in the article)
My inner-child almost got the best of me. Nearly clicked the link to mark their video as inappropriate.
Bei Bei Shuai was released on bail today after more than a year in an Indianapolis jail for being so depressed during pregnancy that she attempted suicide. She survived the suicide attempt but lost her baby — and her ordeal is not over yet.
Even though she was finally released today from jail, she is far from free. Even though she is no longer held in a cell, she must wear a GPS electronic monitor which tracks her location every second of the day, and which she must pay for herself ($12 dollars a day). All of Ms. Shuai’s savings have gone to the enormous cost of her ongoing legal defense, and now, she must literally pay for each day outside a jail-cell.
Ms. Shuai still has to stand trial for attempted feticide and murder of a viable fetus – facing a sentence that could be as long as 45 years. According to the Indiana Court of Appeals women who experience pregnancy losses may be charged with murder, and those who take any intentional act that is perceived as risking pregnancy loss can be charged with attempted feticide and attempted murder.
This is so incredibly wrong….
The vicious attacks on women’s health to which we’ve grown so accustomed on the national and state stages are trickling down to the local level, as municipal and county governments get in on the action. Thankfully, time and again, local citizens have mounted fast and furious responses, resulting in the type of swift and satisfying victories that sometimes feel unimaginable on the national stage.
Local officials around the country have been using the “no taxpayer-funding for abortion” mantra to quietly turn away money for family planning programs that provide vital services for their neediest constituents. These attacks tend to follow a pattern: a program that has been funded without debate for years is suddenly pegged by a politician as “controversial.” Fellow politicians fall in line and vote to defund the program before residents and public health officials have time to react.
But in a few instances, community members are stepping in to stop them once word gets out.
At last, a few encouraging stories.
Democrats, it seems, have taken a page from the GOP playbook. For a long time, Republicans have introduced what looks like dead-end legislation and then used it to demagogue their opponents, like the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011, which sought to fight the non-problem, at least in the U.S., of abortions motivated by race and gender. Then there are the more successful abortion restrictions and Planned Parenthood defundings that have trickled down from the federal level to sympathetic state legislatures, where they’ve found greater success.
If Democrats want to keep the GOP on the defensive on women’s issues — and not only maintain that gender gap that shows up in most polls, but mobilize women in the base — they should seize the moment and get ambitious. After all, the political conversation around women’s rights is still overwhelmingly reactive to the conservative agenda, and what victories there have been are partial — the potential for a moderately expanded version of VAWA and eliminating the co-pay on a range of women’s healthcare services aside.
I asked advocates and activists to think big and offer up a proactive policy wish-list. “I am inclined to suggest that we introduce a bill entitled, ‘Politicians Should Leave Women the Hell Alone Act,’” says Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice. Short of that, there are four main areas of focus here: reproductive health, employment issues, sexual assault and domestic violence protections, and foreign policy. Most of these bills wouldn’t have a chance of passing with the current composition of Congress, especially the House. But why leave the realignment to the right?
He had to be named Bubba. He just had to fill every possible stereotype of the Southern good ol’ boy, the shallow, narrow-minded redneck who treats his women like he treats his dogs. Only he’s a state representative, elected to serve in the Mississippi congress — and Bubba Carpenter is proud to have stripped medical services from the women of his state.
[…]
Bubba let slip the naked truth about the Republican agenda. The video of his statement is on youtube, but I suspect it won’t be for long: they’re scrambling to hide it away right now. I suppose it’s good that they exhibit a little shame, but it seems to be embarrassment that they were caught openly expressing what they think, not shame at their callousness.
At a time when women’s issues have become a political football in the national arena, many states have been chipping away at funds aimed at supporting working mothers and families, even as federal subsidies are drying up and the cost of child care is climbing.
The average cost of child care increased nearly 2 percent for centers and family-run child care homes in 2010 compared to the previous year, according to the most recent data available from Child Care Aware of America, which provides information for parents and child care providers. The cost of care for infants in a center rose 2.3 percent, while the cost of infant care in a home setting rose 2.6 percent.
Last month, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed a law requiring doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges in a local hospital. Mississippi has one clinic left, where, because of the state’s anti-abortion climate, they commute to work from Alabama. It’s no secret that Mississippi Republicans, in particular, are delighted by the prospect that they might put the state’s one and only clinic out of business.
Mississippi State Representative Bubba Carpenter, speaking to the Alcorn County GOP on Thursday, said as much:
“We have literally stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi. Three blocks from the Capitol sits the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi. A bill was drafted. It said, if you would perform an abortion in the state of Mississippi, you must be a certified OB/GYN and you must have admitting privileges to a hospital. Anybody here in the medical field knows how hard it is to get admitting privileges to a hospital…
“It’s going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to— Roe vs. Wade. So we’ve done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They’re like, ‘Well, the poor pitiful women that can’t afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger.’ That’s what we’ve heard over and over and over.
“But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere, and that’s what we’ve decided to do. This became law and the governor signed it, and I think for one time, we were first in the nation in the state of Mississippi.”
I got a chance to ask Representative Carpenter about the coat hanger part today. “That was what a lot of our critics on the House floor said during the debate,” he told me. “That was just some language that some of the African-Americans used.” A few white Democrats also spoke out about the old “home remedies,” he remembered, but in the end the measure passed with support from several Democrats.
via The Maddow Blog
