Here's this week's reproductive rights news brought to you by the women of Our Word (and at least one of the guys!). If you see something you find relevant please email it to me, bayprairie at gmail dot com

We have news from South Dakota.

South Dakotans Launch Major Grassroots Effort to Repeal Over-reaching State Abortion Ban

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - March 24, 2006

SIOUX FALLS, SD -- Today the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, a new coalition of community leaders from across the state, announced the launch of a major grassroots mobilization to refer the state abortion ban to the November ballot. The referral will allow South Dakotans to vote to overturn the nation's most extreme abortion law which was signed by Governor Mike Rounds on March 6. With Governor Round's signature, this law clearly endangers the health of women in South Dakota and violates the right of women and families to make private, personal health care decisions.

::::more below the fold::::also posted at Our Word::::

"An overwhelming majority of South Dakotans believe that the Governor and the legislature went too far. This legislation is extreme and does not reflect the values of South Dakotans who want families to be able to make personal decisions about health care without government interference, said Jan Nicolay, spokesperson for the campaign.

Starting today, volunteers with the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families will hit the streets to gather petition signatures. To qualify for the November ballot, the Campaign must gather the signatures of 16,728 registered voters by June 19.

"Our state government's priorities are wrong. This legislation will jeopardize women whose health is put at risk by continuing a pregnancy and force women who are victims of rape and incest to have no options. As a state, our top priority should be to reduce unintended pregnancies by promoting education and ensuring access to safe birth control. This referral will give every South Dakotan the chance to protect their families and vote their values," said Nicolay.

"Politicians went too far and the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families is putting this issue back where it belongs - in the hands of the people of South Dakota," said Nicolay.

The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families is co-chaired by fifteen leaders across the state. They include:

1. Republican State Senator Stan Adelstein, Rapid City
2. Dr. Maria Bell, Sioux Falls
3. Sherry Bea Smith, RN, Nemo
4. Pastor Russ Tarver, Methodist Minister, Sioux Falls
5. Cecilia Fire Thunder, President Oglala Sioux Tribe, Pine Ridge
6. Dr. Tom Dean, Wessington Springs
7. Kathy Dean, CNM, Wessington Springs
8. Former Republican State Rep. Jan Nicolay, Chester
9. Democratic State Rep. Elaine Roberts
10. Roger Tellinghuisen, Former SD Attorney General, Spearfish
11. Terah Yaroch, USD Student, Vermillion
12. Dr. Marvin Buehner, OB-GYN, Rapid City
13. Morandi Hurst, Student, Rapid City
14. Dr. Nancy Phipps, Rapid City
15. Brenda Hill, Ex. Dir. Sacred Circle Women's Shelter, Rapid City

If you are interested in signing or circulating a petition, please call 605-221-5642 or email info@sdhealthyfamilies.org

Whether or not these citizens of South Dakota are part of a majority within their state remains to be determined, and it looks like that will be done at the ballot box. The fact that they are in the right on this issue is not in doubt. They are, and they deserve the support of all of us who believes in women's freedoms.

Planned Parenthood Applauds Grassroots Effort to Repeal South Dakota Abortion Ban

Kate Looby, South Dakota state director of PPMNS, issued the following statement on today's referral:

"We are pleased to see such a broad coalition of mainstream South Dakotans standing up to fight this ban. This law was pushed by politicians who want to impose their own religious views on others. This is a personal issue between a woman, her family, and her doctor — and the families of South Dakota want the government to stay out of it.

"Planned Parenthood's top priorities are the health and safety of our patients. We are the only provider in South Dakota that women can turn to for abortion care. We will do everything possible to protect our patients and their families. On behalf of the women who rely on us for their health care, we support the referral process, the effort to defeat this extreme ban and our friends who are leading the fight. This referral will give all South Dakotans the chance to protect their families and vote their values."

Across the country, extremist politicians are attempting to put roadblocks between women and reproductive health care. There are approximately 950 bills related to reproductive health care pending in state legislatures — the vast majority of those bills aim to impede access to family planning and abortion services. Following South Dakota's abortion ban, 11 other states are now considering legislation aimed at criminalizing abortion.

To stem the tide of legislation attacking women and families across the country, Planned Parenthood Federation of America will launch a major initiative next week called the Stand with the States Campaign. The campaign will fight abortion bans in states nationwide, and work to give families access to the health care and medically accurate sex education they need to prevent unintended pregnancy. One of the national campaign's first steps will be to support the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families in its fight to defeat the South Dakota abortion ban.

NARAL Pro-Choice South Dakota Joins Effort to Repeal Abortion Ban

"NARAL Pro-Choice South Dakota is proud to join our partners in standing up for women's freedom and privacy," said Thelma Underberg, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice South Dakota. "Since the legislature first passed this ban, I have received messages from people across the state asking what they can do to let politicians know that the ban does not reflect our South Dakota values. We will enlist these folks in our campaign to collect the necessary number of signatures from our friends, neighbors, and family members, so we can vote to repeal this abortion ban."

Good luck to the right-thinking people of South Dakota. We support you.

____________

Here's news from the Alabama Legislature, rushing to catch up with South Dakota's.

Alabama legislators consider bills to ban abortions

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Two Alabama legislators have introduced bills that would ban almost all abortions in the state, except those performed to save women's lives.

The bills are similar to legislation banning abortion that passed in South Dakota last month and was signed on March 6 by Republican Gov. Mike Rounds.

"I thought if South Dakota can do it, Alabama ought to do it because we are a family friendly state," said state Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo, who has introduced a bill in the Senate that would even ban abortions in cases where a woman became pregnant because of rape or incest.

How anyone in their right mind can possibly define forcing a woman to give birth against her will to a rapist's spawn as somehow being "family friendly" is beyond me. I suppose that means Senator Hank Erwin isn't.

Just as an aside, the bar is set a little to too low in this country for state legislators, don't you feel? Is this what small-town America does with a male who can't perform any other job? Make him a state legislator? The more i read about these legislatin' clowns the more I'm convinced something like this has to be the case.

____________

Here's an important question that a lot of us have been asking ourselves. Is The New York Times still pro-choice? Garance Franke-Ruta at the American Prospect online answers it succinctly. The short version is, NO!

Man Alive

Is The New York Times still pro-choice? You wouldn’t know it from reading the op-ed page.

A liberal, poet Robert Frost once quipped, is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel. Nowhere is this truer than at The New York Times today on the subject of abortion. The past two years have seen one of the most contentious and closely watched presidential contests in 40 years, the retirement of the first female Supreme Court justice, the appointment of two new justices, and an attempted Senate filibuster against one of them specifically because of liberal concerns about how he would vote on choice issues. And during that period, not one op-ed discussing abortion on the op-ed page of the most powerful liberal paper in the nation was written by a reproductive-rights advocate, a pro-choice service-provider, or a representative of a women’s group.

Instead, the officially pro-choice New York Times has hosted a conversation about abortion on its op-ed page that consisted almost entirely of the views of pro-life or abortion-ambivalent men, male scholars of the right, and men with strong, usually Catholic, religious affiliations. In fact, a stunning 83 percent of the pieces appearing on the page that discussed abortion were written by men.

:::snip:::

A Prospect examination of the authors published between late February 2004 and late February 2006 found that 90 percent of writers -- including staff columnists -- who discussed abortion on the Times op-ed page over the past two years were male. These men wrote 83 percent of the op-eds that mentioned abortion.

Even more surprising, more op-eds that mentioned abortion in the Times were written by pro-life men than by women of any belief system.

The New York Times, another paternalistic anti-woman newspaper? You be the judge.

____________

As posted by Wendryn at Our Word this past week we have good South Dakota news.

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed (at the SD abortion ban). A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.

“To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,� she said to me last week. “I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.�

Here's all the contact info on where to send your cash, chiklits:

Oglala Sioux Tribe
ATTN: President Fire Thunder
P. O. Box 2070
Pine Ridge, SD 57770

OR: and this may be preferred, due to mail volume:

ATTN: PRESIDENT FIRE THUNDER
PO BOX 990
Martin, SD 57751

Bitch, Ph.D. has a post on the same subject that's entitled Heroine of the week. Her post contains a photograph of Ms. Fire Thunder. Judging by her powerful name and her determined looks in the photo, I'd say she means business.

____________

And in news from Pennsylvania.

Casey, 2 foes to debate, but topics unclear

WASHINGTON - Democrats vying to challenge U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum have agreed to two debates next month, although it remains unclear on which topics they'll touch.

Challengers to state Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr. said he agreed to an April 8 debate at Slippery Rock University only if abortion rights and stem-cell research are off the table.

"The negotiating position that we agreed to in principle was that it would not be part of the questions," said Chuck Pennacchio, a college professor from Bucks County who is challenging Casey for the party nomination.

Randy Schulz, an aide to Alan Sandals, a Philadelphia attorney who is the other Democratic challenger, claims their campaign was told organizers of the Slippery Rock event "don't want it to be a bloodbath."

Back of the bus, ladies. Nothing to see up here. Move along to the back. You're issues don't concern us.

____________

Here's a good piece we found posted at Alternet from TomPaine.com that mentions a feeling many of us have had these past few weeks.

Running From Roe

South Dakota's extreme new law is making even Republicans squirm; now is the time for Democrats to reclaim the abortion debate.

Pro-choice Americans everywhere are becoming unsettled about the future of reproductive rights. The Supreme Court is one vacancy away from overturning Roe v. Wade and at least one state, South Dakota, has already outlawed abortion in the hope of bringing the Court a case to challenge Roe. But the ones who are really nervous? The Republicans.

That's because the South Dakota law -- which criminalizes abortion except to save a woman's life -- has pulled the abortion issue back to a fundamental question: whether Roe should be overturned and abortion made illegal in large parts of the country. This is just the debate Republicans don't want to have. For years, they've used a strategy of chipping away at reproductive rights by finding side issues like parental consent, "partial-birth" and the newest, "fetal pain," on which they can obtain broad public support.

:::snip:::

But for all the apparent success the pro-life side had with parental consent and "partial birth" laws, they never got any closer to their ultimate goal. Opinions on abortion vary dramatically depending on how you ask the question, but when we look over time, we see that opinions on a given question have remained essentially locked in place since the 1970s.

:::snip:::

Consider John McCain, he of the straight talk, firm principle and vaunted authenticity. McCain had a spokesman issue a statement saying he "would have signed the [South Dakota] legislation, but would also take the appropriate steps under state law -- in whatever state -- to ensure that the exceptions of rape, incest or life of the mother were included." Of course, there were no exceptions for rape and incest in the South Dakota law, making McCain's position essentially that he would favor banning nearly all abortions as long as it didn't involve banning nearly all abortions. That's the waffling of a man caught between fervently anti-choice Republican primary voters and a pro-choice general election majority.

Or take Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who, when asked on ABC's "This Week" if he would sign the South Dakota law, hemmed and hawed about exceptions for rape and incest, then said, "I'm opposed to abortion. I'm not the governor myself -- didn't have to vote on it but if I ever did have to vote on a situation like that, it would be around that feeling, opposition to abortion with those exceptions." Yes indeed, it would be "around that feeling."

:::snip:::

But the most revealing statements may have been those of Virginia Sen. George Allen, the Washington insiders' choice for the 2008 Republican nomination. When asked by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" whether he wanted to see Roe overturned, Allen retreated to the safe ground of parental notification laws, which he supports, in case you were wondering. By the time Russert asked him for the third time whether he supports overturning Roe, a visibly uncomfortable Allen, unable to say the words directly, finally sidled up to his long-held position with:

:::snip:::

The Republicans are embarrassed because they know their position on whether Roe should be overturned is a minority one -- embraced by only around one-third of the American people, according to recent polls.

____________

Moiv sent notice of this to the list under the subject line of The Mother of all TRAPs.

Change in `undue burden' standard could shift abortion law

South Dakota legislators enacted a sweeping ban on abortion last month that will retest the strength of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that overturned all state laws banning or restricting abortion. Other states are threatening to follow suit as anti-abortion activists flex what they think is new muscle: two new Supreme Court justices who are thought to be less sympathetic to abortion rights.

Legal experts say the courts almost certainly will strike down South Dakota's ban in short order. But this fall, when the Supreme Court considers the federal ban on late-term abortions, the justices could make it easier for state legislators to pass stringent restrictions on abortion without much fear that the courts might overturn them.

The high court could force those who challenge abortion restrictions to prove that restrictive laws prevent a significant number of women from getting abortions. Currently, the courts bar restrictions if it's plausible that they could impose burdens on women seeking abortions.

Such a ruling would validate many abortion laws that can't now survive court scrutiny, and in some states it would render abortion all but inaccessible to many women.

All this could happen without the court even touching on the core debate over abortion rights.

"Abortion restrictions could be revolutionarily increased without in any way overturning Roe v. Wade," said David Garrow, a professor at Cambridge University whose book on abortion, "Liberty and Sexuality," is considered one of the definitive accounts of how modern abortion law developed. "South Dakota is kindergarten simplistic by comparison, something the courts will just dispose of easily, and no one will be affected. This other issue would have real impact on women's ability to get abortions in states where the legislature doesn't want them to."

:::snip:::

The shift could happen if the justices endorse the thinking in a lower-court opinion in a partial-birth abortion case, which contains a little-noticed argument that the "undue burden" standard that the Supreme Court has imposed on all abortion laws has gotten out of control.

____________

Here's news from Jackson Mississippi.

Negotiations off to sedate start on Miss. abortion bill

JACKSON (AP) - Bebe Storm, a 58-year-old grandmother from Brandon, trembled as she spoke about one of the most divisive issues in the nation, saying her belief that a woman has the right to choose an abortion will hold her up to ridicule in her community.

She sat quietly, clutching her purse as lawmakers began their negotiations on an abortion bill.

“I'm shaking just sitting here having people hate me. People will say I'm not a Christian, but I think it's a moral issue. I think every child should be wanted,� Storm said.

The meeting on Wednesday drew about three dozen spectators on both sides of the issue.

Lawmakers have until Monday to reach an agreement, if any, on the abortion bill. The House-passed proposal would ban all abortions in Mississippi, except when a woman's life is at risk or she was the victim of rape or incest.

The Senate wants to insert language in the bill, backed by Pro-Life Mississippi, that would require doctors to perform an ultrasound and fetal heart monitor before each procedure.

:::snip:::

House Public Health Committee Chairman Steve Holland, D-Plantersville, who in recent weeks had said it is possible the legislation could die this session, said the bill may be “a couple of years ahead of its time.�

Holland said the Senate proposals would require scrutiny by the House, but stopped short of saying he would oppose all the measures.

“The Senate has followed the lead of some national directive,� Holland said.

The bill is Senate Bill 2922.

____________

Here's news from Rhode Island on an abstinence only program about to be banned.

State Bans Abstinence Program

PROVIDENCE - Rhode Island education officials have banned from public schools a federally funded abstinence program that civil rights advocates said embraced sexist stereotypes and included a voluntary student health survey that violated privacy laws.

Lawyers at the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union first complained last year that a now-abandoned textbook used by Heritage of Rhode Island taught students that girls should wear clothing that doesn't invite "lustful thoughts" from boys. The book described men as "strong" and "courageous" while women were called "caring."

A speaker on an accompanying videotape said abstinence helped him "honor my relationship with Jesus," although Heritage officials said the tape wasn't used in public schools.

:::snip:::

Heritage of Rhode Island has a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that provides $400,200 annually, a department spokesman said. The group has presented its curriculum to more than 600 public school students in Providence, Pawtucket and Woonsocket.

Pawtucket's top school official complained that he was duped by Heritage officials and halted the program even before a parent complained to the ACLU.

"We really don't promulgate any religious opinion in this school system. I think basically that's what they were trying to do here," Pawtucket Schools Superintendent Hans Dellith said.

____________

An editorial that ran in the Los Angeles Times this past week contains three lessons for South Dakota from Marianne Mollmann, who works on women's issues at Human Rights Watch.

Abortion lessons from Latin America

Lesson 1: Outlawing abortion does not stop women from having them. "What do I care if abortion is legal or illegal?" Marcela E. told me in 2004 in Argentina, where abortion generally is banned. "If I have to do it, I have to do it." The 32-year-old mother of three had a clandestine abortion after her husband raped her.

A community organizer in Argentina told me: "You will not believe what women end up putting in their uteruses to abort." I wish I didn't.

:::snip:::

Lesson 2: Providing limited exceptions to an abortion ban does little to improve access to safe abortions.

In reality very few, if any, women get such "non-punishable" abortions because there are no clear procedures. Fearing that they'd be charged with a crime, many of the women I interviewed who might have qualified for a legal abortion because they had been raped or because their health was endangered by the pregnancy did not dare to out themselves as potential abortion candidates. They went straight for the illegal and mostly unsafe back-alley abortions. A large proportion of maternal mortality in Latin America is caused directly by the consequences of such unsafe abortions.

Lesson 3: In Latin America, as everywhere else, the best way to stop abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Women and girls act within the circumstances imposed upon them. In Latin America, where contraceptives are inaccessible and sex is stigmatized (through cultural expectations that they be virginal and uneducated about sex), unwanted pregnancies are more common; not surprisingly, there is a higher proportion of abortions to pregnancies than in, for example, the U.S. The simple fact is that women with unwanted or imposed pregnancies would have preferred not to need abortions.

____________

Here's a good article from Salon about an often overlooked aspect of the fundamentalist agenda.

The battle to ban birth control

Using bogus health facts to scare women about the "dangers" of contraception, a fledgling movement fights for a culture in which sex = procreation.

March 20, 2006 | Ever since she was in her early teens, Mary Worthington has been vehemently opposed to contraception, which she regards as immoral and dangerous. To spread her anti-birth-control gospel, this month she launched No Room for Contraception, a clearinghouse for arguments and personal testimonials on this subject. NRFC joins other anti-contraception Web sites like Quiverfull and One More Soul.

Worthington, who wouldn't reveal where she lives and works, or her exact age, is a recent graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, in Ohio, where she earned a B.A. in theology and a minor in human life studies. She is also opposed to abortion. But NRFC doesn't even address abortion; its sole purpose is to "prove" that the pill and the IUD cause health problems and destroy women's fertility, that condoms lead to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases by making people believe that sex can be completely safe, that contraception destroys marriages by rendering sex an act of pleasure rather than one of procreation. Emboldened by the fact that the president and the two most recent Supreme Court nominees are anti-choice, a recent antiabortion victory in South Dakota, and legislative success restricting access to emergency contraception, groups like NRFC are shifting their focus and resources away from abortion and putting their energy into restricting birth control.

:::snip:::

"It is very hard to awaken people to the threat," says Gloria Feldt, the former president of Planned Parenthood, "because who can believe that something so accessible can be at risk? But that's what [people] said when they started attacking Roe, and now look at how close we are to losing Roe."

:::snip:::

And when you look closely, there is evidence to suggest that even the mainstream anti-choice groups are ready to make the battle against contraception part of their agendas. Many of the National Right to Life Committee state affiliates have opposed legislation that would provide insurance coverage for contraception. Iowa Right to Life even lists a host of birth control methods -- including the pill, the IUD, Norplant and Depo-Provera -- as abortifacients. And NRLC itself parses its language very carefully when it comes to contraception. A call to the organization resulted in an e-mailed statement on the group's position that read in part, "NRLC takes no position on the prevention of the uniting of sperm and egg. Once fertilization, i.e., the uniting of sperm and egg, has occurred, a new life has begun and NRLC is opposed to the destruction of that new human life." Such a position leaves the group plenty of wiggle room to argue, when it is ready to do so, that contraceptives prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg and are thus a form of abortion. (NRLC wouldn't comment further, because, according to a media relations assistant, contraception lies outside of its purview. For the same reason, Feminists for Life refused interview requests. And at Concerned Women for America, a group that has been openly anti-contraception, a spokesperson told Salon twice that none of its experts were available for interviews.)

In a post that links to the article cited above, Bitch, Ph.D. notes that:

that not one "pro-life" organization is also pro-birth control. Not one.

Articles such as the one cited above lead me to believe the anti-choice movement's concern really isn't about "life" at all. If it was, they'd support birth control wholeheartedly. In 21st century Puritan America the real agenda is about punishing women who have sex.
One only has to look to Western Europe, Belgium or the Netherlands, (which all have excellent family planning and sex education services and easy access to birth control at low cost) to see that broad support for these services result in a lowered abortion rate. The rate in Western Europe is 11 per 1000 and in Belgium/Netherlands 7 per 1000, vs the worldwide average of 35 per 1000. These are countries with legal abortion with no restriction as to reason either. But the fact is that easy access to abortion doesn't increase them at all, nor does criminalization reduce them. There's no better proof than Brazil in reference to that statement. Brazil has criminalized abortions and yet their rate is 38 per 1000.. Now think about that for a minute. Brazil's rate, where abortion is completely illegal is 7 times the rate in the Netherlands where abortions are readily available. From the hyperlinked cite above:

Both developed and developing countries can have low abortion rates. Most countries, however, have moderate to high abortion rates, reflecting lower prevalence and effectiveness of contraceptive use. Stringent legal restrictions do not guarantee a low abortion rate.

Anyone within the so-called "pro-life" movement who's really concerned with stopping abortions should be promoting safe, effective and inexpensive birth control. Here's the story from another site.

The Role of Contraception in Reducing Abortion

The data clearly demonstrate the dampening effect of contraceptive use on abortion rates, even though it often takes time for the impact to be seen. Skeptics remain, however, largely among those whose main strategy for reducing abortion is to criminalize it. But while it may seem paradoxical, the legal status of abortion appears to have relatively little connection to its overall pervasiveness. In some parts of Latin America, for example, the abortion rate is as much as twice that of the United States. Worse, mainly because the procedure must be done clandestinely, it is associated with a high incidence of maternal death and disability. By contrast, in many countries where abortion is legal and performed under safe conditions, abortion rates are among the world's lowest (see Table 1).

____________

Here's a good editorial from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on a woman's right to choose and the inconsistencies of belief in God. The editorial is by Rev. C. Joshua Villines of Decatur, a spokesman for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

Lacking basis, Christians fight abortion

Those who seek to outlaw abortion often use the rhetoric of "protecting the most vulnerable and helpless" in our communities. Many of them are Christians who see their opposition to abortion rights as inextricably linked with their faith and their understanding of Christian ethics. After all, wouldn't a God of love and life want us to protect life wherever we found it?

If only it were that simple.

:::snip:::

For every Christian with a "God Bless Our Troops" sticker on their bumper there is another with "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" on their rear windshield.

If my experience as a pastor is any indication, it is unlikely that the driver of either car would be making their point from the kind of complex theological arguments I learned in seminary. In practice, our upbringings, our biases and our circumstances have much more to do with what we believe God thinks; and we are often inconsistent.

How else could we spend millions of dollars to oppose abortion — despite no clear biblical argument for or against it — and ignore the overwhelming number of biblical texts that explicitly command us to care for the poor?

:::snip:::

The issue of abortion is not about whether life starts at conception. There are convincing arguments either way. The issue is which carries more weight: the life that may be in the embryo, or the life and needs of the woman in whose body that embryo was conceived?

After spending time in women's health clinics, I have come to realize that the "most vulnerable and helpless" who need our active protection are the women and couples who are faced with the agonizingly difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy. As a Christian pastor, I strongly support protecting the right of women to make this decision. Other Christian pastors have chosen otherwise, and our division on this issue is proof that there is no Christian consensus here.

The far right, however, has been able to set the issue of abortion apart from all of the other controversial, life-or-death decisions we make every day. Abortion is not a special case; and I pray that the guardians of our Constitution will continue to protect our freedom to choose our own priorities in all of these weighty matters.

____________

Here's another story on christian political action. In this article we also run across news of the catholic anti-choice activist, "Father" Frank Pavone and his strong support for George W. Bush.

Pastors' Get-Out-the-Vote Training Could Test Tax Rules

Weeks after the Internal Revenue Service announced a crackdown on political activities by churches and other tax-exempt organizations, a coalition of nonprofit conservative groups is holding training sessions to enlist Pennsylvania pastors in turning out voters for the November elections.

The founder of Let Freedom Ring, Colin A. Hanna, in his office Monday in West Chester, Pa., was M.C. at the pastors' first training session.

Experts in tax law said the sessions, organized by four groups as the Pennsylvania Pastors Network, could test the promises by the tax agency to step up enforcement of the law that prohibits such activity by exempt organizations.

Such a test could define the boundaries for churches and other groups.

Although the tax agency has often overlooked political activity by churches, it has repeatedly warned the clergy and religious groups that it intends to enforce its rules with new vigor this year, in part to correct what it considers to have been too much political intervention by churches and charities in 2004.

The first training session, on March 6 in Valley Forge, included a videotaped message from a single candidate, Senator Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican who faces a difficult re-election fight.

If the Bush-controlled IRS is concerned about politically-partisan church actions violating their tax-exempt status one would assume that the violations must be quite extreme. Right thinking American's should be concerned about this abuse of this exempt status. If churches want to play politics with collection plate dollars then let the partisan churches pay taxes on the proceeds of the collection plate. This is only fair.

After the tape, organizers offered participating pastors copies of the senator's book "It Takes a Family."

Colin A. Hanna, founder of the conservative advocacy group Let Freedom Ring and master of ceremonies, called the book "thoroughly and soundly grounded in Christian doctrine and Scripture as the revealed word of God," according to the recording.

Mr. Hanna described Mr. Santorum's book as a rebuttal to another book, "It Takes a Village," by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, and pointedly said he would not name its author. The session on March 6 attracted 125 members of the clergy, and on Monday, Let Freedom Ring posted a notice on its Web site that the Pennsylvania Pastors Network was hiring 10 full-time organizers to help churches get out the vote, suggesting a sizable and well-financed effort.

"Evangelical or Catholic background is helpful," the site suggests.

Gary Marx, who helped direct the Bush re-election campaign's work with Christian groups in 2004, oversees the get-out-the-vote effort.

This smells like dirty politics to me. Does it smell like dirty politics to you?

The tax agency found "a disturbing amount" of political activity during the 2004 election, including churches' inviting just one candidate to speak or distributing voters' guides that in effect favored one candidate over another, Mr. Everson said in a statement.

Pennsylvania appears to be the sole state where advocacy groups are pouring so much into working with churches so early. The outcome of the effort, and the way the tax agency responds, could have an influence far beyond the state.

Republicans, encouraged by their success mobilizing religion-minded voters in 2004, are stepping up their efforts to collect church directories around the country to help turn out voters for the midterm races.

This is bad news for Jesus. I see no reason not to begin a movement to tax all such political action committees. Render unto Caesar, and all that.

The Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, invoked the prophet Ezekiel, whose voice brought a field of bones to life.

"You and I are standing before a field of dry bones, aren't we?" Father Pavone told the training session. "Dead consciences. Destroyed life."

Without mentioning Mr. Santorum or Mr. Casey, Father Pavone emphasized how important control of the Senate would be if another Supreme Court vacancy opened soon, potentially tipping the court against abortion rights.

"This particular president needs the kind of support that he has today but might not necessarily have after 2006," Father Pavone said.

I like the way the pope's appointee separates church from state. Seems to me the church ought not to be meddling directly in our nation's government in such a manner.

____________

Here's a takedown that ran last week in the New York Observer of a puff piece on Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

Big Heart

This column (the Daily News’s "Big Town, Big Heart"), which ran last week, however, is an amazing attempt to slip one under New York’s typically sensitive political radar. It’s a glowing profile of a crisis pregnancy center, Bridge to Life, and its devoted founder.

No particular facts are in dispute, but somehow the part about how such centers are controversial foot-soldiers in the life-choice wars -- they’re often accused of using any means necessary to prevent women from having abortions, just as they accuse Planned Parenthood of pushing abortion -- never makes it out from under the warm, fuzzy feelings.

However, a reader, Sunny Chapman (also an abortion-rights advocate) did call up Bridge to Life, and told them she thought she was pregnant and was considering an abortion.

She emails:

Here are some of the things I was told:

• Abortion clinics do not inform patients of medical risks
• Suction machines can damage the cervix, scar the uterine lining and puncture the womb.
• Women who’ve had abortions have a higher rate of miscarriage and premature birth.
• Women who’ve had abortions have a higher risk of not ever being able to have children.
• 27 studies have shown a link between abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer.
• The high rate of breast cancer in Nassau & Suffolk counties is not linked to toxins, but to a high rate of abortion
• Women who’ve had abortions are five times more likely to commit suicide.

There are several interesting comments in the thread below the post. One of them goes like this.

I volunteered every day after school at a Crisis Pregnancy Center in Tallahassee, Florida during my senior year of high school. They are well-meaning people who offer nothing to poor women but false promises and lies (though I believe many of them don’t know they’re lies. These are not critically thinking, curious people we’re talking about here.) They strongly suggested adoption - yet almost all of our clients were African American and there would be no "market" for their babies (they would end up in foster care, as non-white babies are automatically considered "special needs".) We talked women into keeping their babies even though these were ALL women who couldn’t afford a $5 pregnancy test, and many of them were illiterate. All we offered these women was access to the "clothes closet" (full of threadbare maternity clothes from the 70’s) and the number of a Christian lawyer who specialized in adoptions. But again, nobody wanted these babies. When I started there I was fervently pro-life (picketing abortion clinics and everything), but gradually I realized that what we were doing was WRONG. REALLY REALLY TERRIBLE AND WRONG. It gives me chills to think that I played any role in coercing women into keeping children that they couldn’t care for. Their motto should Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Filling Tomorrow’s Prisons, Today.

CPCs are beginning to receive state and Federal funding. At present they are severely under-regulated. That needs to change as many of them have agendas that have nothing to do with the health of the "patient". Please note I've used the scare quotes because IMHO CPCs are in not legitimate health-care organizations. Except of course, to the crowd that considers intelligent design to be sound science.

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Here's a poll taken recently of adults in South Dakota. The question they were asked was: Do you approve or disapprove of the job Mike Rounds is doing as Governor? It seems that Gov. Rounds popularly has plummeted 14 points since signing into law the Abusive South Dakota abortion ban.

Track all Adults

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Here's a story by a rape survivor speaking on important issues to the many women who have shared her traumatic experience; the rape victim's right to choose and emergency contraception in relation to rape.

The Mourning After
The Story Of My Rape & The Politics Of Abortion

Emergency contraception, which is basically just a high dose of the hormones in birth control pills, will not induce an abortion. But if taken within 72 hours after rape, it can reduce the risk of pregnancy by as much as 89 percent by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus.

For a woman, having this medication easily available can spell the difference between eventually recovering from being raped and never recovering. If we want to further traumatize rape victims in this country, let's force them to bear their rapists' children - as South Dakota is trying to do - or have abortions, which is just as terrible in a different way.

Even those who have no affiliation with the Catholic Church argue that it is not too great a burden to ask rape victims to go elsewhere for this medication. If they end up at one of the state's Catholic hospitals, all of which are located in urban areas, they can get a prescription for the emergency contraception and fill it elsewhere, they say.

But we, as a society, don't expect victims of other violent crimes to leave one hospital, perhaps in the middle of the night, to look elsewhere for their treatment. Nor do we, it seems, yet have a reasonable understanding of what it is like to be raped.

:::snip:::

Rape, alone, can take a lifetime to recover from entirely, if ever. What happens after a rape shouldn't make it harder.

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Here's a bill that's been introduced in Ohio that under certain conditions would criminalize an Ohio citizen's leaving the state.

Abortion bill sure to fuel fire
Ohio law would make act a felony

Ohio house bill 228 introduced by Tim Brinkman, R-Mount Lookout, in April would make it a felony for a woman to seek to terminate her pregnancy and holds the same penalty if she chooses to leave the state for the medical procedure.

Additionally, anyone who helps coordinate an abortion or transportation to leave the state for one could be charged as well.

The bill is even more hateful and vindictive than the South Dakota abortion ban.

Stop Ohio House Bill 228

Tom Brinkman introduced House Bill 228, dangerous legislation that would outlaw all abortion in the state without exception - not even to save the life of the woman, not even in the case of rape or incest. It would even make it a felony to transport a woman across state lines to obtain an abortion.

Of course it goes without saying that women-hating fundies are rallying around this violation of human rights. They've even got a website up and running with downloadable flyers that are suggested inserts for church bulletins. That's some christian love isn't it? Letting a woman die in order to appease the cultist belief in innocent life? For shame, Ohio. For shame.

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Democratic Governor of Michigan signs anti-choice TRAP law.

Granholm agrees to abortion regulation

LANSING -- Gov. Jennifer Granholm will sign into law a bill requiring Michigan abortion providers to give a pregnant woman the option of viewing ultrasound images of her fetus before performing an abortion, according to her spokeswoman.

It would mark the first time Granholm has agreed with the Legislature's anti-abortion majority on a measure to regulate the procedure. The bill, which moved quietly through the Legislature, is an expansion of the state's so-called informed consent law.

Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said Sunday that the governor would sign the bill, which an abortion-rights advocate said is an effort to create a barrier to abortion.

:::snip:::

Kary Moss, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, said the ultrasound bill is another in a line of "small, incremental steps... all designed to put up barriers" to legal abortion.

The ACLU led a legal fight against the original informed consent law that delayed its implementation for six years. Moss said a lawsuit is not planned this time around.

The anti-abortion group Right to Life of Michigan, maintains that the change will ensure that pregnant women have more complete access to accurate information before having an abortion.

"I think she looked at both the substance of the policy, and at the politics, and determined that a veto was not the prudent thing to do," said Ed Rivet, chief lobbyist for Right to Life of Michigan.

Another shameful act by a Democratic party member. Gov. Granholm, we will remember your actions on this matter.

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