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Today is "Pink Out Day." People around the country--including Pittsburgh*--are rallying in support of Planned Parenthood as once again, congressional Republicans (and Republican presidential candidates) continue their relentless attacks on reproductive health care. They do this even to the point of threatening to shut down the government, despite the fact that government funds do not go to paying for abortions. One in five American women have received care at a Planned Parenthood health center. And in 2013, Planned Parenthood served 2.7 million women, men, and young people. Maybe that's why USA Today found that Americans back government support for the group by more than 2-1. If you're not already at a rally, you can still participate:
Wear pink to show your support for women's health and for Planned Parenthood, and make sure your friends know why.
Share a #PinkOut selfie to #StandwithPP on social media.
"I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."
- Patriot Abigail Adams, 1776
"Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws."
- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, 2011
While the Founders would obviously have no problem with discrimination against women, how many truly believe they'd be in agreement that corporations were people who had religious beliefs that allow them to discriminate against a class of citizens and be exempt from duly passed laws?
Certainly the five Catholic, male judges on the Roberts Court believe that it's perfectly fine for corporations to hold others (others of course being women) hostage to their own particular religious views.
And while the media and supporters got the Supreme Court ruling in the Hobby Lobby case wrong by insisting that it was a "narrow" ruling, it only took a day for that to be proven false and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be correct (in calling it a "decision of startling breadth"):
In fact, it only took a day for the Court’s “narrow” decision to start to crack open. On Tuesday, the Court indicated that its ruling applies to for-profit employers who object to all twenty forms of birth control included in the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate, not just the four methods at issue in the two cases decided on Monday.
In light of its ruling on Hobby Lobby and a related suit, the Supreme Court ordered three appeals courts to reconsider cases in which they had rejected challenges from corporations that object to providing insurance that covers any contraceptive services at all.
[snip]
It’s bad enough that the Court privileged the belief that IUDs and emergency contraceptives induce abortion over the scientific evidence that clearly says otherwise. With Tuesday’s orders, the conservative majority has effectively endorsed the idea that religious objections to insurance that covers any form of preventative healthcare for women have merit.
Just as bad, these males on the court actually lied about their ruling.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing in a dissent on Thursday (signed by all the women on the court), noted, “Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word. Not so today.”
Sotomayor was referencing that accommodation was one of the reasons Justice Samuel Alito cited to justify his Hobby Lobby decision:
Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the government has to show it has pursued the least restrictive means to accomplish its goal. Alito claimed that because the nonprofit accommodation exists, that means the government has other ways to get women access to contraception that respects religious liberty. Yet only a few days later, he ruled that the nonprofit accommodation – again, signing a form – is also a violation of religious liberty.
Yep, that means that the often trotted out example of the Little Sisters of the Poor (with a name like that, how could anyone deny them anything?) can refuse to even sign a damn sheet of paper saying they want a waiver for providing birth control because: religion.
To recap: Corporations are people with religious beliefs. Their beliefs trump women's beliefs, women's rights under the law and women's health. Women can be discriminated against and have no rights against discrimination under the Constitution. And, it's perfectly fine for Supreme Court justices to lie in their rulings.
While voting to shut down the government Saturday night, apparently some of the House members weren't just drunk on power.
From a Politico Congressional reporter:
I'm not over exaggerating when I say I can smell the booze wafting from members as they walk off the floor.
— Ginger Gibson (@GingerGibson) September 29, 2013
And from a Buzzfeed reporter on Capitol Hill:
I def saw more than 1 member of congress putting a few back on Penn earlier. Ran into 2 in the liquor store.
— KateNocera (@KateNocera) September 29, 2013
And before they even got drunk, they were already acting like drunken pigs:
[T]hey have added a “conscience clause” to the spending bill which takes away preventative care from women, which includes birth control.
[snip]
Friday afternoon, Republican John Culberson from TX got huge applause from his colleagues when he compared the GOP’s effort to destroy Obamacare to the heroes of 9/11. Culberson compared the House Repubs to the passengers on United Flight 93 who overtook the terrorists and got control of the plane on 9/11. Yes, Seriously.
1. Romney kept his answers detail-free but full of lies. (He only got specific on his promise to off Big Bird.) From HuffPo:
Still, one issue continued to plague Romney: details. While he said he would end Obama programs, he was vague on how he would do so without eliminating a host of components he pledged to keep.
"At some point, you have to ask, is he keeping all these plans to replace [programs] secret because they're too good?" Obama said. "Families are going benefit too much from them?"
But the “Lying for the Lord” was in full force. Here's David Gergen, former presidential advisor who served during the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, so hardly a liberal:
PoliticusUSA on Romney's five biggest lies (in just the first half of the debate) here.
2. For those wondering when Romney would swing to the center – shake that Etch A Sketch! – the answer was October 3, 2012:
Tonight’s debate saw the return of the Mitt Romney who ran for office in Massachusetts in 1994 and 2002. He was obsessive about portraying himself as a moderate, using every possible opening or ambiguity – and, when necessary, making them up – to shove his way to the center. Why he did not attempt to restore this pose earlier, I cannot say. Maybe he can only do it in debates. Or maybe conservatives had to reach a point of absolute desperation over his prospects before they would give him the ideological space. In any case, he dodged almost every point in the right wing canon in a way that seemed to catch Obama off-guard.
3. I still can't believe that Romney's 47% comment was absent from this debate. WTF? If Lehrer wouldn't bring it up, the President should have.
4. Also absent from this debate was any women's issues. We're used to seeing few to no women as candidates or moderators, but while we're in a War On Women, it would have been nice to have some mention made of the issues and not to have women only mentioned in random anecdotes. Romney did mention at least twice that doctors and people should decide on medical treatments and not the government – oh, the irony, it burns!
Also not mentioned: LGBT issues and the environment (except in a knock by Romney at green jobs).
But of course, the deficit was covered ad nauseum because it's what's important to the Villagers.
5. While President Obama was far, far too passive, Romney played the bully. Apparently he thought he was the moderator and Lehrer didn't do much to disabuse him of this notion. If you watched any of this on CNN, you saw that women did not take kindly to uber privileged Romney running roughshod all over the debate. In fact, the male/female instant tracking graph running on CNN was a visual reminder of the vast gender gap throughout the evening.
6. And finally, speaking of CNN, their snap poll at the end of the debate – the one that showed Romney won the debate 69-25 – a diarist at Daily KOS finds something entirely astonishing:
According to the breakout, all the people surveyed are white, 50+, and from the South.
Additionally, it was top-heavy on men and those who were pro Mitt before the debate. So, totally fair and balanced, right?
When we last left GOP Senate Candidate Tom Smith who's running against Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), he was opining that there is no real difference between a pregnancy that occurs outside of marriage and one that is a result of rape. Now this expert on women offers some further insight: Girls love shoes!
SMITH: What are we talking about here, two girls together talking?
WOMAN: We’re talking about the power of petite women.
SMITH: My guess would’ve been you were talking about shoes.
Additionally, he recently offered this nugget of wisdom:
"Perhaps where we're making our mistake is that we are asking President Obama and Senator Bob Casey to do something they have no knowledge of. They've never been in business, they've never ran [sic] businesses, they don't have that knowledge," Smith said. "It would be like, your wife wrecks your car. You're gonna take it to the beauty salon to get fixed? No."
Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.
“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario — when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail — abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim.
"Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”
Here's the video:
Depressing is the whole notion of "legitimate" rapes. You know, "rape rapes" as opposed to some slut asking for it. (Of course the FBI waited until just this year to redefine their 1927 definition of rape as more than just “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” So, for example, raping a drugged women, coercing a minor, raping someone with a foreign object, or any rape of boys or men have never entered into their statistics for over 80 years now...)
Ironic is the possibility that this idiot who seems to have very little actual knowledge of basic biology when it comes to women may very well replace one of the few woman who now serves in the U.S. Senate -- Claire McCaskill -- whose reaction to his remarks is here (via Twitter).
And, chilling is the idea that Akin -- and men like him -- get to make laws about what women and girls can and can't do with their own bodies.
Speaking of rape and abortion, in 2005 Akin voted "against the creation of a national sex offender registry database that required those convicted of a sex crime to register before completing a prison term and increased mandatory sentences for those convicted of molesting children." And just last year, he 'joined with GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as two of the original co-sponsors of the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a bill which, among other things, introduced the country to the bizarre term “forcible rape."'
The sad truth is that Akin is not alone in his belief in the magic vagina venom:
1995-04-21 04:00:00 PDT Raleigh, N.C. -- Women do not get pregnant when raped because "the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work" during an attack, a state lawmaker said yesterday.
Republican Representative Henry Aldridge made the remarks to the House Appropriations Committee as it debated a proposal to eliminate a state abortion fund for poor women.
"The facts show that people who are raped -- who are truly raped -- the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant," said Aldridge, a 71-year-old periodontist. "Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever."
March 23, 1988|By JOHN M. BAER, Daily News Staff Writer
HARRISBURG — The odds that a woman who is raped will get pregnant are "one in millions and millions and millions," said state Rep. Stephen Freind, R-Delaware County, the Legislature's leading abortion foe.
The reason, Freind said, is that the traumatic experience of rape causes a woman to "secrete a certain secretion" that tends to kill sperm.
Two Philadelphia doctors specializing in human reproduction characterized Freind's contention as scientifically baseless.
Freind made the statement on a central Pennsylvania radio interview program earlier this month.
Akin already has his defenders. From Politico reporter Dave Catanese:
(Undoubtedly there will be other defenders. I'm thinking Trump who recently proclaimed that women like Obama because they "don't get what's going on" and Geraldo who believes there's a “lesbian cabal” at the Department of Homeland Security and the guy who just wrote a Letter to the Editor at the local Observer-Reporter about how the women folk do not belong in the workplace would love to chime in with their support.)
And then there's the Catholic Church which is opposed to any and all abortions -- even those to save the life of the women...and girl. From RH Reality Check:
A pregnant 16-year-old in the Dominican Republic died from complications of leukemia, according to CNN. The young woman was forced to wait nearly three weeks to begin chemotherapy to treat her disease as hospital officials initially refused to treat her fearing it could terminate her pregnancy. In the end she lost her life and the pregnancy, and may have died because of the delay in her treatment.
Under an amendment to the Dominican Republic's constitution which declares that "life begins at conception," abortion is banned, effectively for any reason. The girl's leukemia was diagnosed when she was just nine weeks pregnant.
Dominican women's health advocates told RH Reality Check this afternoon that while the doctors and the state refused to allow the girl treatment for leukemia, they made her undergo "ultrasounds to show that the baby was healthy and for her to see it moving."
Chemotherapy was begun after the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, at which time the girl began to bleed, yet still the doctors refused to interrupt the pregnancy. Advocates report that she subsequently miscarried the pregnancy and began to hemorrhage; the medical team was unable to contain the bleeding and she died.
The girl's mother had pleaded with both doctors and authorities to give her daughter an abortion so she could begin chemotherapy immediately.
The Catholic Church certainly had a large role in banning abortions in the Dominican Republic which led to this teen's death. And, they have certainly not been shy about using their influence on politicians in these United States. Pennsylvania women just recently escaped having ultrasounds forced upon them. If that law had passed, many would have ended up at a "crisis pregnancy" center like this one in Pittsburgh where Bishop David Zubik blessed their ultrasound machine (photo at link!). The name of the center? "Women's Choice Network."
"Choice." Uh-huh.
That's like calling pedophile priests "Altar Boy Protectors."
Some day, we might just start treating women like actual people -- not strange creatures with magic vagina venom.
US Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Butler, PA) commenting yesterday on the mandatory contraception coverage going into effect that day (via Talking Points Memo):
“I know in your mind you can think of times when America was attacked. One is December 7th, that’s Pearl Harbor day. The other is September 11th, and that’s the day of the terrorist attack,” Kelly said, according to NBC. “I want you to remember August the 1st, 2012, the attack on our religious freedom. That is a day that will live in infamy, along with those other dates.”
Yes, requiring all businesses -- including those owned by religious institutions -- to have insurance which covers women's reproductive healthcare needs is exactly like Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
If Kelly truly believes this, he should think seriously about jumping off the upper floors of a very tall building -- the way people had to at the World Trade Towers when they were attacked. Otherwise, he should think seriously about shutting the fuck up.
Missa Eaton is running against this assclown. You should think seriously about throwing her some bucks.
Here's what the Affordable Care Act does for women (when its not busy raping churches):
Women doing whatever it is they do that we need not concern ourselves with
The Associated Press (And Republicans): Jobs and the economy are the number one most important issue in this country, unless those jobs are held by women and then they are a mere distraction.
The John McIntire Dangerously Live Comedy Talk Show War on Women When: Saturday, May 5, 2012, 10:30 PM
Where: The Cabaret at Theater Square, 655 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15222 (map) Host: Comedian & Blogger John McIntire Panelists:Post-Gazette Cartoonist Rob Rogers, 2 Political Junkies Blogger Maria Lupinacci, Two Day Magazine Sex & Love Columnist Natalie Bencivenga, Advice Columnist Catherine Specter Cost: $5.00 or free with ticket stub from any earlier show. Menu:Here Website:Here Facebook: Event page here
It was about a rally, set for April 28 in Harrisburg, to "Defend Rights and Equality for Women."
The event happened. A couple hundred people attended:
About 300 people, a mostly female audience, gathered on the state Capitol steps for four hours today as part of a national grassroots movement called United Against the War on Women.
Similar rallies were sponsored around the country in most of the 50 states from Wisconsin, to Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, Calif.
The rallies were held as a show of strength against recent threats to women’s rights on issues ranging from from reproductive to economic and human rights.
“We can’t sit back and take it anymore. We can’t sit back and allow them to erode our lives,” said Julia Ramsey, president of Pennsylvania NOW.
Ramsey, one of about two dozen speakers at the Harrisburg rally, encouraged women in the crowd to speak to their female friends and family and spread the message about fighting back.
“This is a war against us and it affects all of us,” she said.
A nationwide effort with a rally at the state capital (with flickr photos to prove it and everything) and as far as I can tell (by googling ""War on women" Harrisburg"), there's not a peep of coverage from the local "liberal" paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
On the other hand, the P-G has seen fit to report on this:
A national Tea Party group Friday kicked off a 20-city bus tour in Cranberry, where it endorsed Republican Tom Smith's U.S. Senate bid, skewered Democratic President Barack Obama and appealed for help in what it called a watershed election year.
About 200 people attended the rally at North Boundary Park organized by Tea Party Express, which describes itself as the conservative movement's largest political action committee.
So the next time someone asks about the "liberal bias" over at the Post-Gazette, just show them this.
Help defend women's rights and pursuit of equality. Join Americans all across the United States on April 28th, 2012, as we come together as one to tell members of Congress in Washington DC and legislators in all 50 states, "Enough is enough!"
Pennsylvania Unite Against the War on Women Rally When: April 28, 2012, 10:00 am to 2:00 pm Where: Pennsylvania State Capitol Steps, Harrisburg, PA
They'll be a Meet-and-Greet with Patrick Murphy (running in the Democratic primary for Attorney General of Pennsylvania) this Thursday at the Shadow Lounge. It's being hosted by Pittsburgh City Councilman Bill Peduto.
Murphy played a leadership role in the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" when he was in Congress. He's also been extremely upfront about his pro choice views and against the Republican War on Women.
