Pro-lifers: taking away women's birth control, one state at a time.

Having solved all other serious problems in their respective states, senators in Indiana and Pennsylvania are introducing bills to allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control to women. Because god forbid women be allowed to determine their own family size by preventing pregnancy.

Senate Bill 3, authored by Sen. Jeff Drozda, R-Westfield, has come under fire from some lawmakers, particularly women, and from Planned Parenthood of Indiana, who say it would allow a pharmacist to refuse to give a woman birth control.

Drozda said the bill would not do that, but opposed an amendment to the bill that said it did not impact contraception.

Got that? He insists that it's not about denying women the pill, but refused to put it in writing within the actual bill, which obviously leaves the door wide open for pharmacists to deny women the pill.

Last week, the Senate tied 24-24. Today, three Republican senators and three Democratic senators changed their votes from no to yes, moving the bill to the House for consideration.

Those Democratic senators should be tarred and feathered. What in the hell is wrong with them? Since when is sending women back to the 19th century a part of the Democratic platform? What are these cave-dwellers doing in the party of women's rights?

This is the pro-life movement, folks. It's not just about abortion, it's about stopping women from having any control over our reproduction whatsoever.

Cross-posted.

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Hillary's pro-choice agenda

And speaking of voting for choice, Hillary Clinton has just released her agenda on reproductive health care:

The Clinton campaign today reinforced its commitment to protect a woman’s right to make the most fundamental decisions about her life and health and announced a comprehensive agenda for women’s reducing unintended pregnancy and enhancing access to reproductive health care. The announcement comes on the 35th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade and follows the news of the endorsement of WCLA - Choice Matters, one of the oldest pro-choice advocacy organizations in the nation.

"When I’m President, I will appoint judges to our courts who understand that Roe v. Wade isn’t just binding legal precedent, it is the touchstone of our reproductive freedom, the embodiment of our most fundamental rights, and no one - no judge, no governor, no Senator, no President - has the right to take it away."

The agenda includes preventing unintended pregnancies by increasing access to honest, accurate sex education, contraception and family planning services, ensuring that private health plans offer the same level of coverage for contraception as they do for other prescription drugs and services, ensuring that women who survive sexual assault have access to emergency contraception upon request. Clinton also calls for providing greater access to reproductive health care services overseas.

"On the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I am reaffirming my commitment to safe, legal, and rare abortion, and unveiling an agenda for decreasing the number of unintended pregnancies in the U.S. through honest and complete sex education and expanded access to contraception and family planning," said Clinton.

Hallelujah!

I'm particularly excited about the prospect of seeing more pro-choice justices on the Supreme Court, especially if they're women. One female justice is not enough!

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Blog for Choice 2008

Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and Blog for Choice Day.

This year's topic: tell us, and your readers, why it's important to vote pro-choice.

Because legal, safe, doctor-provided, state regulated abortion is far superior to illegal, unsafe, black market abortion performed by criminals or by pregnant women themselves.

Legal abortion both spares women's lives and reduces abortion rates. This is true both in the US and around the world. If you care about keeping women safe, and you care about preventing as many abortions as possible, then you should care about keeping abortion legal and regulated.

And legal abortion providers have good reason to follow those regulations. They don't want to lose their medical licenses, for which they have worked so hard. The typical legal abortion in the US is performed in a clean, safe environment, by a qualified medical practitioner, and involves pre-abortion counseling, receiving information from the state on fetal development as well as all your options and risks, parental involvement or judicial permission for minors, an ultrasound, and a waiting period to think it all over. After a legal abortion, patients receive follow-up care, birth control and post-abortion counseling, if they need it.

With illegal abortion, all those regulations and safeguards go out the window, as abortion is taken over by organized criminals looking for fast, easy money. We can not allow this to happen, after 35 years of improving safety and diminishing abortion rates.

I may be a member of the post-Roe generation, but that doesn't mean I'm naïve enough to want to go back to the bad old days. Prohibition doesn't work for alcohol, doesn't work for drugs, and doesn't work for abortion. Regulation does work, has worked, and should be allowed to continue working.

A vote for choice is a vote for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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Feminists have to go it alone.

Peggy Noonan on Meet the Press this morning:

MS. NOONAN: Can I say, on the campaign trail, one of the things I find jarring the past few weeks is that Hillary Clinton is the first major party woman running for president of the United States. She is a woman. She's running for president. She's running for head of the United States, chief executive officer. And she has to send her husband out to yell at the neighbors? It's like she's, she's saying, "You go out there, you fight for me. My husband's going to tell you off!" There's something strange, jarring, unbecoming and even unfeminist about it.

So when every male candidate has his wife out there, campaigning for him, that's fine. But when a female candidate has her husband campaigning for her, that's "strange, jarring, unbecoming and unfeminist?" Michelle and Elizabeth can be a part of their husbands' campaigns, but Hillary has to go it alone, lest she be seen as a weak little woman "sending her husband out to yell at the neighbors?"

Please.

Cross-posted.

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Men more likely to put love before career

So much for stereotypes:

When it comes to work versus romance, the stereotype has been that men put a premium on career goals while women focus more on family and friends. Not so, according to a study published recently in the scientific journal "Gender Issues."

Men were more willing than women to sacrifice achievement for a romantic relationship, according to the study conducted by Catherine Mosher of Duke University Medical Center and Sharon Danoff-Burg at the University of Albany.

Researchers asked 237 undergraduates to rate the importance of goals such as financial success, career, education and contribution to society, as well as goals such as romantic relationships, marriage, children and friendship.

While 51 percent of the women prioritized romantic relationships over achievement goals, more than 61 percent of men did the same.

Looks like men aren't really so logical and unemotional as they're made out to be.

Cross-posted.

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This garbage doesn't belong in public schools.

Found via Feministing:

"What if this duct tape represented your body?"

Or what if your body was a firework, and sex was the match?? One little spark and you're OBLITERATED!!!

When I was in abstinence-only classes, I believe the metaphor we were given was a piece of gum: you wouldn't want to chew gum that had already been chewed by three different strangers, would you? Hell no!

Not a documentary.

Even when I was 16, these shitty metaphors had me rolling my eyes. I knew damn well that abstaining until marriage would not guarantee a happy marriage in the future. How could it? Abstaining from sex doesn't make anyone a better judge of character or improve anybody's communication skills. There's nothing magical about virginity that wards off losers and abusers. This isn't education; it's fairy-tale fantasy. They might as well pop in a copy of Disney's Sleeping Beauty and tell the students, "See? Sleeping Beauty married the first man she ever laid eyes on, and she lived Happily Ever After! And so can you!"

Thank God my body isn't a piece of duct tape, or gum, or any other one-time-use, disposable object. How can anyone think it's a good idea to tell kids that having sex makes you sort of like garbage?

Cross-posted.

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My happy family is a threat to world peace.

Haaay, first post of 2008.

What is this crazy shit?

Pope Benedict ushered in the third New Year of his pontificate on Tuesday with a call for the protection of the traditional family, which he said was vital for world peace.

Funny, excluding same-sex couples from marriage hasn't brought about world peace, so far. You'd think that by now, we'd have seen some results.

"I wanted to shed light on the direct relationship that exists between the family and peace in the world," the Pope said, in his first public address of 2008.

"The family is the primary agent of peace and the negation or even the restriction of rights of the family ... threatens the very foundations of peace."

So why restrict and negate the rights of same-sex families?

If the rights of the family are the primary agent of peace, then it makes sense to allow as many loving, committed couples to partake of those rights as possible. If families with rights bring peace, then more families with rights can only bring us more peace, right?

Gay marriage is legal in several European countries including predominantly Catholic Spain, where hundreds of thousands of people marched on Sunday in favor of the traditional family.

Unwed couples have sought more rights in staunchly Catholic countries including Italy, something Catholic leaders warn would weaken the traditional family.

The traditional family.

Ah, the "traditional" family: heterosexual, fertile, and only married once. The problem with "strengthening" this particular flavor of family is that most of us are excluded from it, so how are we supposed to strengthen it, exactly? And why would we want to?

I love my non-traditional, blended family. What am I supposed to do, not be married to the love of my life?

Shouldn't unhappy couples be allowed to divorce? Shouldn't divorced people be allowed to remarry? Shouldn't single parents be allowed to marry? And if a single parent can find happiness with a divorced spouse, and the world hasn't crumbled from that abomination, then why not let same-sex couples marry, as well? What is the harm in allowing imperfect people to pick up the pieces and form happy families together?

How is it that a loving, happy family can be the primary agent of peace if it's your first try, and a threat to the very foundations of peace if it's your second try, or if you already have a kid, or if you're gay? That's why the fight against same-sex marriage is doomed to failure: it makes no sense whatsoever.

Cross-posted.

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