What was that about the extreme fight against reproductive access being imagined? Did someone say there is no war on reproductive health? I would beg to differ.
Volunteers for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's Republican presidential campaign will be distributing water on Wednesday to residents of Flint, Michigan -- but apparently, only to anti-abortion groups.
Wendy Lynn Day, the Michigan state director for the Cruz campaign, announced on Facebook last week that the water will be delivered to crisis pregnancy centers for "expecting moms and moms of little ones."
Those aid efforts will assist only a small portion of the Flint's approximately 100,000 residents, who have been suffering from lead poisoning and a lack of clean water since 2014, when the city decided to cut costs by switching its water supply.
Day reportedly said the donations underscored Cruz's "pro-life values." Her Facebook post didn't mention whether the campaign will also donate water to children who are already suffering from lead poisoning, or to other city residents.
Once again proving pro-life is only for the lives of a select few.
Tip: You can’t call yourself pro-life if you’re neglecting lives that don’t suit your agenda.
theoppressedlittlefetus reblogged
Florida CLEARLY doesn’t give a single shit about wasting taxpayer money with this unconstitutional garbage.
“By an 8-3 vote Monday afternoon, a House criminal justice panel voted to advance the more sweeping piece of legislation (HB 865), which would make performing an abortion or operating an abortion clinic a first-degree felony in Florida, punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Just hours earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court reiterated its long-standing ruling affirming women’s right to the procedure.
“The bill recognizes that both the mother and the baby are citizens of the state of Florida… and we are therefore compelled to protect their lives,” said Rep. Charles Van Zant, R-Keystone Heights, the bill’s sponsor.”
Also this
“The Legislature finds that all human life comes from the Creator, has an inherent value that cannot be quantified by man, and begins at the earliest biological development of a fertilized human egg,” the bill says.”
Well that sounds like a big ol’ violation of Church and State.
This week, the University of Texas produced new research showing women wait an average of 20 days for an abortion in some of the state's regions. Their study, the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP), measured the impact of the HB2 anti-abortion law. Since the law passed, the number abortion clinics in Texas dropped from 41 to 18, and wait times have skyrocketed. HB2 forces abortion providers to meet standards similar to those of hospitals, like mandated minimum room sizes and pipelines to anesthesia.
Abortion providers and health organizations have opposed the legislation according to NPR. The Supreme Court's new term began this week. If they decide not to hear HB2, or if they take the case and rule in favor of Texas, Busby says the results will be devastating—and ironic. "The projections are that 20-day wait times will be the norm, and that will result in a doubling of abortions performed in the second trimester," she says. Although second trimester abortions are considered safe, Busby says the procedure comes with an increased risk for complications when compared to abortions performed in a pregnancy's first trimester. "So HB2 does exactly the opposite of the lawmaker's purported intent," she explains. "Of course, [abortion providers] knew all along the real intent was to close down clinics."
The Michigan legislature is considering a pair of bills that would criminalize coercing a woman to have an abortion, a policy that has been pushed for years by anti-choice lawmakers.
“Coercive abortion laws like these are the byproduct of a decades long public and political campaign to market that anyone who seeks an abortion does so because she’s confused, misled or coerced,” Shelli Weisberg of the ACLU of Michigan told MLive.com.
While a requirement of the bills addresses women who are forced into terminating a pregnancy, that measure does not mention women who are forced into carrying a pregnancy to term. Opponents of the proposed law say that shows the real agenda behind such legislation.
“These bills are one-sided in that they criminalize only coercion to terminate a pregnancy rather than evenhandedly covering the whole array of reproductive coercion,” Mary Pollock, government relations coordinator for the American Association of University Women of Michigan, told MLive.com.
Anti-choice legislators, however, have said that is a separate issue and could be addressed in other legislation.
WRAL reported Wednesday that House Bill 465 would triple the state's 24-hour waiting period for abortions to 72 hours and prohibit doctors at the medical schools of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill or East Carolina University from performing the procedure. A third provision would require that any physician performing an abortion be an obstetrician or gynecologist.
Republican state Rep. Pat McElraft pushed back on the idea that her fellow legislators would rather focus on less-divisive legislation.
"We are multi-taskers here in the General Assembly," McElraft said, according to WRAL. "I am absolutely an advocate for jobs, but we can do lots of the things. And actually, when we can have a few more little taxpayers born, why not?"
In a seemingly contradictory defense of the legislation, McElraft said both that the bill was meant to reduce the number of abortion procedures performed and that it wasn't an attempt to restrict the right to the procedure.
"There's no effort here to try to restrict a woman's right to have an abortion," she said. "What we're trying to do is make her care competent."
The Kansas state House passed a law Wednesday that would ban a second-trimester abortion procedure used in 8 percent of abortions performed in the state.
The legislation, which was drafted by the National Right to Life Committee, would effectively outlaw what it calls a "dismemberment abortion," which is the dilation and evacuation procedure that is used for most second-trimester abortions. Abortions in Kansas are generally allowed up to 22 weeks into a pregnancy, and this bill could ban abortions as early as 14 weeks post-fertilization.
In which we are still letting non-legal and non-medical professionals create laws that impact people’s health. Seriously, how are people with no medical education or training drafting bills about public health? How is that safe at all?
LifeNews sent out an email on Saturday with the subject line, "Subject: URGENT! Our office was bombed, we need your help!" They repeated that funny little turn of phrase twice before admitting that actually they've just been sent some letters with glitter in them from an organization called Glitter Bombs for Choice. The glitter bombs, you see, make a "huge mess" when opened. Although Steven Ertelet, editor of LifeNews, calls them "insulting and intimidating," but admits they're not "life-threatening." According to the National Abortion Federation, abortion clinics have been bombed 42 times since 1977, suffered another 99 attempted bombings, at least 550 incidences of abortion providers and employees being stalked, as well as the 100 or so times clinics were sprayed with butyric acid (causing respiratory distress and mass hospital visits for both patients and staff). Oh yeah, and the eight people who have been murdered: four doctors, two employees, a security guard, and a clinic escort, gunned down at clinics, at their homes, or, in Dr. George Tiller's case, as he served as an usher at church.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) suggested over the weekend that preventing women from having abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy was part of his state’s recipe for economic growth.
On Friday’s Washington Watch broadcast, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins ignored the economic disaster in Kansas, and praised Brownback for showing “Washington a thing or two” about improving the economy.
“It’s working,” Brownback agreed. “What we want Kansas to be is the best place in America to do two things: raise a family, grow a small business.
The best way to fix the economy? Force people with unplanned/unwanted pregnancies to have children they may or may not be able to provide for. Sounds super solid.
Across the country, as the number of abortion clinics has dwindled, there’s actually been a rise in the network of CPCs. Anti-choice organizations say that more than 3,500 crisis pregnancy centers are currently in operation.
NARAL Pro-Choice America has conducted undercover investigations in 10 different states to document what happens when women facing an unintended pregnancy find themselves in one of those fake clinics. In California specifically, the organization trained six investigators who visited 45 centers in 19 counties — more than 25 percent of the estimated 167 different CPCs in the state.
One of those investigators, 19-year-old volunteer Cristina — who asked not to be identified by her real name — attended counseling sessions at dozens of CPCs, and said she was amazed they all ended up blending together. “It’s like everyone was trained by one person. I heard the same thing over and over again,” Cristina said.
When Cristina told CPC employees that she was unexpectedly pregnant and didn’t think she wanted to have a baby, she always heard the same information about how abortion is supposedly linked to breast cancer, depression, and infertility. One employee told her that ending the pregnancy might puncture her uterus and close her Fallopian tubes, preventing her from having any more children in the future. One counselor asked her how she would have felt if her own mother had aborted her. Another told her she should “stop whoring around.”
My favorite part of this article is the fact that two places one of the undercovers went to identified her IUD as a fetus during ultrasounds. These people have no medical training, and yet they are operating with federal funds? Why on earth are there federal funds going to a place that lies to people about their health and pregnancies? How is that not recognized as being super dangerous?
A Republican state lawmaker in West Virginia said on Thursday that while rape is horrible, it’s “beautiful” that a child could be produced in the attack.
According to Huffington Post, Charleston Gazette reporter David Gutman was on the scene when Delegate Brian Kurcaba (R) said, “Obviously rape is awful,” but “What is beautiful is the child is that could come from this.”
Kurcaba made the remarks during a House of Delegates discussion of a law outlawing all abortions in the state after 20 weeks’ gestation. At 20 weeks, anti-choice activists and lawmakers allege, a fetus can feel pain and is therefore too viable to abort.
The bill was passed by West Virginia Republicans in 2014, but vetoed by Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. Now the state GOP has revived the bill and voted to remove an exception for victims of rape and incest.
Missouri legislators are pursuing legislation that would require a woman to watch a video showing the anatomy of her pregnancy at least 72 hours before obtaining an abortion. State Representative Linda Black (R) introduced the bill to "enhance" the written and verbal information Missouri doctors are mandated to give women seeking abortions. The bill is awaiting a vote in the Missouri House, and part of a larger trend of states restriction abortions.
On January 22, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion across the U.S., abortion providers got a strange gift in the mail: Handcuffs, with a note reading, "Could you be next?" The cuffs were a gift from Eric Scheidler, the executive director of the anti-abortion Pro-Life Action League. According to Scheidler, he sent them to every abortion clinic in the country after a fellow anti-abortion friend saw a report of an abortion provider getting arrested and joked, "Handcuffs: the fashion accessory no abortionist should be without." Scheidler insists his motives were more about dialogue than anything else. "I thought, you know, this could be a way to really make a connection there, with the abortionists," he told Cosmopolitan.com. "And maybe get some people working in the abortion industry to reconsider what they're doing."
theoppressedlittlefetus reblogged
Louisiana is trying (again) to make it harder for women to get the health care they need by targeting abortion providers with medically unnecessary and burdensome requirements. Take a stand and say NO to further restrictions on women’s health care! http://bit.ly/1D45CLf
theoppressedlittlefetus reblogged
We can’t make this up: On the same day that politicians failed on one anti-abortion bill and passed another anti-abortion bill instead, they also introduced…a THIRD anti-abortion bill. And wouldn’t you know it: its original sponsors are all men.
How’s that for priorities?
So is this what Congress is going to be all about this term? Trying to pass a slew of anti-abortion bills? At least I'll have a boatload of content to post about, I guess.
A Republican Colorado lawmaker is opposing efforts to continue an anti-poverty program that provides IUDs to poor women because he believes the birth control method to be an “abortifacient” that would stop “a small child from implanting.”
The Coloradoan reported that Democratic state Rep. KC Becker was sponsoring a bill in hope of finding funds to make sure that low-income women continue to be able to receive long-acting reversible contraception, like IUDs.
The Family Planning Initiative pilot program had been funded by a $25 million grant from an anonymous donor. It worked so well that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) estimated that the teen birth rate was down by 40 percent, resulting in $23 million in savings in Medicaid assistance to women and children.
CDPHE projected that the program, which would use $5 million from the state’s general fund, could save the state $40 million in Medicaid costs in the future.
But state Senate Health and Human Services Committee chair Sen. Kevin Lundberg (R) opposed funding the Family Planning Initiative on the grounds that IUDs induce abortions, even though doctors have said that the claim is inaccurate.
“Protecting life is a very big issue,” Lundberg explained, according to The Coloradoan. “In my mind, that’s what government is all about, and to protect the life of the most vulnerable and most innocent seems to be the most important.”
I'm failing how to see this is a bad thing. Providing people with contraceptives decreases teen and unwanted pregnancy rates, lowers those precious abortion rates Republicans care so much about, and saves the state money, which they also care about. This is basically a Republican's wet dream except they can't seem to get over the fact that people who don't want children aren't having children?
You use IUDs and don't have children, you're disrupting God's plan. You have children and sign up for assistance, you're a drain on the system. You literally can't win with Republicans.
theoppressedlittlefetus reblogged
By: Melissa Barnhart
Millennials are increasingly more pro-life and supportive of restrictions on abortion than their parents’ generation, according to polling data taken over the last decade, and…
I disagree with your last point. I don’t think anti-choicers are sincere at all in their love for fetuses. Antis are sharing their views on social media, and pro-choicers rebut their claims with facts. They learn that making abortion illegal doesn’t reduce abortions, but it does make it more deadly. They learn that 70,000 people die from unsafe abortion around the world. They learn that millions more die from unhealthy pregnancies that could be prevented with legal abortion. Of course, when the pregnant person dies, so does the fetus. But do any antis change their minds after learning this? Of course not, because they just want anyone whose pregnant and doesn’t want to be to die. Fetuses are collateral damage, not “innocent babies.” Antis aren’t upset that the fetus died, but that the pregnant person lived.
Gonna have to disagree with your disagreement. I don't think there are that many death hungry anti-choice people out there and the cause of their upset is that pregnant people are living. I've had very many discussions with anti-choice people and I've heard a whole slew of different reasons why abortion should be made illegal again and it always goes back to that they genuinely believe that abortion is murder because they do not see fetuses and fetuses, but as babies. They do not recognize the different developmental stages, they do not realize the developmental process that leads to things like a functioning body, nerve connections, emotions, and sentience. Most do not think of a fetus in terms of development but as a baby that just grows in size within the womb, or maybe a baby shell that grows while organs magially appear inside of it, who knows. Either way, this is why it's so hard for them to understand why abortion is legal at all, because they do not see fetuses as incomplete developing humans, they literally see it the same as cutting up a toddler.
They don't want people with unwanted pregnancies to die, despite what many anti-choice posts on Facebook say. In fact, if you ask them if there should be a penalty or what the penalty should be, many either don't have an answer or think that the "trauma of abortion will be penalty enough," or they should be prayed for, meaning no punishment. I won't say that there aren't any anti-choicers content with the idea of people who have abortions dying, but they aren't the majority, and there's always a few bad apples in every bunch.
The conclusion that could be drawn from the anti-choice mentality is either they are dissatisfied with people being able to selfishly make their own choices about their own pregnancies because they themselves are responsible for the accidental pregnancy or that they are dissatisfied with the idea of "murder," maybe a mix of both, but the fact that many feel that there should be no kind of punishment means that they simply recognize humanity, albeit in the wrong places, and really only see themselves as standing up for a human to have the right to live, which they see as far more important that someone who was "irresponsible" or "made some big mistakes" having a right to dictate what happens to their body and how it happens. To them, the anguish of being murdered far surpasses the anguish of having your right to control your own body violated and stolen in order to benefit the life of another. It's wrong, but to them, "murder" is the greater of two evils. And like I said in the previous post, they don't live in a time where they're regularly hearing about people being maimed and killed while trying to maintain control of their own body. Many of them here truly believe that making abortion illegal again will virtually eliminate abortion, and that very few people will actually seek out abortion if it is illegal. They simply don't believe in the facts that people tell them about keeping abortion safe, legal, and accessible.
Perhaps I'm wrong, and perhaps opinions have shifted, but I really don't believe that anti-choice is a culture about letting people with unwanted pregnancies die, it's just a culture of "nobly fighting for the right of babies to live" or whatever, because like I said, a human being able to live is far more important to them than a person being able to choose what happens to their own body, until it happens to them, that is.