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

William Saletan, The Judas Goat of pro-choice critique

William Saletan, the self-styled "liberal Republican," who hails these days from the elitist community of Chevy Chase, Maryland and who's the chief national correspondent and 'Human Nature' columnist at Slate.com is in the news again. This week, his topic is Plan B. But before we get into that, let's review his other great contributions to journalism.

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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.

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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

Our award this week for worst medical legislator in a lab coat© goes to wild-eyed Mike Foley of Nebraska. Mike is a danger to women.

Foley: "Pro-life" beliefs are driving efforts

After two days of tiptoeing around the issue, Sen. Mike Foley acknowledged Thursday that his "pro-life" beliefs and his disgust with Planned Parenthood are driving his efforts to redistribute funding for women’s health services.

“I am "pro-life" to the core, with no apologies,� said Foley, who said he is working to make sure Planned Parenthood doesn’t get state funding.

“They are to abortion what McDonald is to cheeseburgers,� the Lincoln senator said. “They do more than anyone else.

“And that’s what this is about.�

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This post contains an appeal for action at the end. Please read all of this post.

Four years ago, an unconscious 16-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by three teenage boys who penetrated her with objects that included a pool cue, a Snapple bottle, a juice can, and a lit cigarette while videotaping the entire event. The three were arrested in July 2002 after a girlfriend of one of the boys' acquaintances found the videotape at a house where he had been showing it to friends.

In what came to be known as the Haidl rape case (so named after one of the defendants), what came next was one of the most aggressive blame-the-victim defense tactics this country has seen in 30 years.

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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

Here's a story from Mississippi concerning reproductive rights from the BBC.

Abortion battle lines drawn in Mississippi

The Jackson Women's Health Organization is an anonymous enough building in the heart of strip mall America. Anonymous save for the permanent protest outside.

Arriving here is an intimidating, even shocking, experience. Anti-abortion campaigners hold up enormous and gruesome pictures of aborted fetuses. They stop every car going into the car park and try to persuade those inside to wind down their windows and take their literature.

The women going into this clinic for an abortion are screamed at. One protester, a man, yells "Don't go to those demons, don't let them take your money, don't let them kill your baby". When I ask him why he is being so aggressive, he tells me it's because America needs to know the truth: "Abortion is murder," he says.

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