Abortion

I love this short film by Gillian Robespierre starring Jenny Slate of SNL f-bomb fame: 

Obvious Child from Gillian Robespierre on Vimeo.

A new study concludes that carefully crafted informed consent laws, rather than discouraging women to forgo an abortion, have zero impact on the amount of abortions performed in the states that choose to mandate these "scary briefings."  While the purpose of informed consent laws is to educate women considering an abortion, they apparently do little to dissuade them from proceeding.

Those of us who are still around from the early feminist days of fighting for the right to have abortions will have to remind our worthless government once again that women own their own bodies! They do not belong to those sexless old men with white hair in congress.

Thank you, Tommy, for the link.  I'm outraged.  Abortion is legal yet our government turns a blind eye to the criminal harassment, death threats, and murder of its citizens.  Why do they continue to kow tow to the religious right?

Despite mounting threats to the clinic--and potentially to the life--of Nebraska Dr. Leroy Carhart, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has removed the federal marshals earlier charged with protecting him.

Dr. Carhart lost his federal marshal protection two weeks ago, much to the alarm of pro-choice leaders, leaving him vulnerable at a time when anti-choice violence has been escalating across the country, and when Carhart himself has been openly targeted by groups such as Operation Rescue, which is calling for protests at his clinic later this month. In addition, members of the Army of God, an organization that promotes the use of violence against providers of abortion care, and glorifies those who commit acts of murder, are also targetting Dr. Carhart.

The killing of Dr.Tiller offers no better example of why I couldn't wait to leave Wichita and move to NYC. This was back in 1950, so I missed the big abortion insanity that has raged there since I left home. I'm ashamed of my sister and brother Kansans. I can only hope they become better educated and the fog of ignorance lifts. To answer the question Thomas Franks asks in his brilliant book, "What's the Matter with Kansas" my answer is fundamentalist religion and the spin of Republican double speak that gets these folks to vote against their own interests based on buzz words like "liberal elite."

I remember sitting with Betty in a NARAL board meeting preparing for the final f*cking from the Bush admin and fantasizing about Obama taking office and reversing all their attempts to restrict a woman's right to choose as well as our access to contraception.  It's all happening!

The outgoing Bush administration this week will finalize a regulation establishing a "right of conscience" allowing medical staff to refuse to participate in any practice they object to on moral grounds, including abortion but possibly birth control and other health care as well.

In transition offices across town, officials in the incoming Obama administration have begun considering how and when to undo it.

They just won't give up the fight against intentional motherhood. Abortion opponents are pressing state and local governments to stop sending taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood, arguing that the nonprofit group has plenty of cash and shouldn't be granted scarce public funds at a time of economic crisis.

Planned Parenthood receives about $335 million a year -- a third of its budget -- from government grants and contracts to subsidize contraception, sex education and non-abortion-related health care for poor women and teenagers.

Betty and I predicted this during our podcast. We're going back to coat hangers and kitchen tables like Betty endured. And this is a two punch proposal: give doctors the right to refuse to give "abortions" and then define contraception as abortion.

The Bush administration on Thursday proposed stronger job protections for doctors and other health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions because of religious or moral objections. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said that health care professionals should not face retaliation from employers or from medical societies because they object to abortion.

Carlin and I span 3 decades and we both had abortions without any regrets. Mine was a kitchen table abortion and she went to a legal clinic. Today we are going to do a podcast about this. Finally the Dems are dumping their tentative language in support of a woman's right to choose. The moral issue here is valuing a woman's life more than her pregnancy.

The Democratic Party platform of 2008 finally dropped its old abortion language ("safe, legal and rare"), which had asked that women not have abortions unless they absolutely must. The 2008 platform, just announced, says instead, "The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade.

The New York Times reports that the Bush Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services is drafting a rule that would place new restrictions on domestic family planning programs.

While current law allows health care providers and professionals to refuse to provide abortions based on their religious beliefs, this provision would threaten the funding of organizations and health facilities if they do not hire people who would refuse to provide birth control and defines abortion so broadly that it would include many types of birth control, including oral contraception.