abortion

The Senate has passed a bill that contains language to repeal the global gag rule.

So what's next for the global gag rule? It's now headed to a House-Senate "conference committee," where a few members from each chamber will work out differences between each chamber’s version of the bill. Then the Senate and House must approve the final compromise version, which will be sent to the president.

Even though we won this key vote on the global gag rule, President Bush has already threatened to veto any bill that includes a pro-choice provision, including this one.

Now you can help rally support for that language to survive to the final bill.

Of course, the problem of governments' claiming they own women's wombs is well represented within US borders, too.

...it's time to push back the regressive forces in Congress. Support the Freedom of Choice Act.

Step 1:
Join NARAL Pro-Choice America in our National Call-In Day to Support the Freedom of Choice Act
- Wednesday, April 25
- Call 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected to both of your senators and your representative
- Use the following script:
“Please cosponsor the Freedom of Choice Act (H.R.1964/S.1173) to codify Roe v. Wade and guarantee the right to choose for future generations of women.”
- Click on the link [on the page linked above] to find out what other organizations are participating.

Step 2:
Fill out the form [on the page linked above] to urge your members of Congress to sign on as cosponsors, and then forward this action to your friends.

Who's involved?

NARAL Pro-Choice America is co-sponsoring the national call-in day with the following coalition partners:
Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Advocates for Youth
Alliance for Justice
American Association of University Women
American Civil Liberties Union
Catholics for a Free Choice
Center for American Progress Action Fund
Choice USA
Feminist Majority Foundation
Law Students for Choice
Medical Students for Choice
National Abortion Federation
National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum
National Council of Jewish Women
National Council of Women’s Organizations
National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association
National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health
National Organization for Women
National Women’s Law Center
People for the American Way
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
Reproductive Health Technologies Project
Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States
Sistersong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective

The pro-choice community is working to guarantee the right to choose through the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). 

• FOCA will restore the reproductive rights recognized under the vision expressed in 1973 in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, before anti-choice legislators and courts chipped away at these rights. 
• FOCA will secure the right to choose by establishing a federal law that will guarantee reproductive freedom for future generations of American women.  This guarantee will protect women’s rights even if President Bush and his allies are successful in reversing Roe v. Wade or imposing even more restrictions on our right to choose.

Click here to learn more about President Bush's Federal Abortion Ban and the Supreme Court's recent decision.

This is going to be a long battle in the war to establish and defend women's rights. I'm under no illusion that the current Congress, what with forced-pregnancy advocates sitting on both sides of the aisle, will pass this legislation, but showing support is a first step towards getting our elected officials to realize that the vast majority of Americans don't want the government controlling family planning.

...this can happen. It's a truly disturbing story. Horrifying.

This is a cautionary tale for the so-called "pro-life" movement, which has been clamoring for government control of family planning as well. The only difference is that the "pro-life" folks want the government to force pregnancy, while the Chinese government is forcing abortion of pregnancy.

Either way, the government decides and the woman, the family, the people directly involved have no say in the matter.

As Ann says at Feministing:

Bottom line? Despite what U.S. anti-choicers say, no one who is pro-choice is pro-forced abortion. We are against government intervention in personal reproductive decisions -- whether it be by the U.S. Congress in banning abortion or by the Chinese government in forcing it.

The issue is this: Who decides?

Our country has an unfortunate history. When the state and federal governments have meddled in human reproduction, horrors have resulted, including forced sterilization of women and men deemed undesirable by the government. That was plenty bad enough.

Imagine now an officially sanctioned governmental policy to control human reproduction in America. If the government can force a pregnancy, it can force an abortion. Family planning in all its subtleties and considerations becomes the government's decision. In fact, it's a mockery to even call it "family planning" anymore since, in effect, family planning is taken out of the family and placed in the smoke-filled rooms of the legislatures and Congress.

Is family planning really something we want the government controlling?

Really?

Russell Shaw calls for progressives to unite around whatever Democratic Party nominee for president:

I look at this past week's 5-4 Supreme Court vote against "partial birth abortion." Then I hold up the ages of liberal Justices John Paul Stevens (87), and an increasingly feeble Ruth Bader Ginsburg (74) against the actuarial tables.

I just pray these two are able to serve on the Court until that hopefully blessed morning of January 20, 2009.

At Noon on that day, a Democrat will- from my mouse to the Goddess' ears- take the Oath.

I'd love for the oath-taker to be Al Gore, or John Edwards, or Bill Richardson. But if it comes down to saving Roe, I'd settle for Hillary. With more campaign funds than her Democratic opponents, her nomination is likely. I can see where Obama will fade, Edwards may need to drop out, and Gore will stay out.

At this point in time, though, I can see a scenario that causes ideological purists on our side of the fence to do something stupid that will cause Hillary to fall short, and thus, pave the path for another anti-choice, Justice-appointng [sic] Republican to get into the White House.

Despite the fact that Russell Shaw is echoing radical right-wing (as well as Markos Moulitsas) talking points about "ideological purity" -- a Rovian expression if I ever heard one -- I can see his point. Just this morning, I was thinking about how any of the top four -- Obama, Edwards, Richardson or even Clinton -- would get my vote. And while I know not nearly enough to choose any one above the others, at this point, my sense is that one of them would suffice for me come November next year.

Making that decision so much easier is the fact that the Republicans have so far offered up boobs, bigots and bobbies. Given the radical and, yes, misogynist and, yes again, racist and, yes, obviously, homophobic values at the core of the right wing, I don't see myself voting for any Republican for president any time soon. Add in their modern penchant for fascistic governmental control over individuals -- making the phrase "the party of Goldwater" an oxymoronic joke -- and I don't see myself voting Republican in my lifetime.

However, Congress is a different matter. Do we continue to vote for pro-forced-pregnancy Democrats? How do we, as progressives, in good conscience cast our lot with men (yes once more, I'm afraid) who consider women's right to privacy to be non-existent, women's medical choices to be controlled by politicians, women's health to be a distraction, women's lives to be important only when not distracting from other interests, and women's bodies to be, ultimately, Property of the U.S. Government?

I wonder how many Democratic and independent voters even realize that their Democratic Senator(s) and/or Representative is an advocate of forced pregnancy.

The question is pertinent right now, pre-primaries, while we look at what kind of future we want to forge in the can't-come-soon-enough post-Bush America. Now is the time to ask the questions. Now is the time to choose. Now is the time to push for the progressives that will defend privacy and equal rights and civil rights and human rights for everyone, not just the ruling men who look upon the rest of us as "peasants."

It's not an easy thing, when the Democratic Party, whose vague favoring of progressive values stands out like a monument to all things noble and just when compared with the venal depravity that describes the power centers of the GOP, has such a slim and weak hold upon Congress.

It's all the more difficult when you consider that men claiming progressive values have historically dismissed our alarms about the Handmaid trends happening in our politics -- our politics. And it sure as heck doesn't help that ignorance and willful ignorance on the part of ostensibly well-intentioned men when it comes to issues women face continue.

The demographics are with us, though. More GOP seats in the Senate are up for election next year. Americans in general are suspicious of an overly invasive Government. And, while meaningful statistics are lacking (at least from what I can tell), based on anecdotal evidence there are quite a number of so-called "pro-life" Americans who oppose abortion until the issue comes home to roost in their own families, in their own lives.

So what's it going to be, boys? When you throw women's lives into the mix, does women's equality count as "important shit"?

Well they did it: The conservative men of the Supreme Court declared that the State has the right to control women's wombs, thus rendering women officially as second-class citizens with fewer rights than men, and even fewer rights than non-persons.

I really don't know what to say, except that if men had to bear the pregnancy burden, there would be no such debate today.

People will look back at this decade as the era when the United States turned to darkness. Iraq, torture, raiding the taxpayer coffers for corporate profit, unprecedented deficits, refusal to acknowledge global warming (let alone do anything about it), and now this.

"Today's decision is alarming," Ginsburg wrote for the minority. "It tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists....And, for the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a woman's health."

Bucking Markos' insistence that reproductive rights are not part of the "important shit," McJoan writes on Kos:

This decision throws basic abortion rights into question, which in turn brings the right to choose to the forefront of 2008, when Democrats again are going to have to make supporting the right to choose a litmus test, and where we're going to have to fight hard in the primaries for truly progressive candidates who will make protecting the right to make our own medical decisions paramount.

Via TalkLeft, it seems Joe Klein is tilting windmills. As one of "those bloggers" who mainstream media and Beltway insider types just love to paint with just such a label, I thought I'd run through the checklist.

A left-wing extremist exhibits many, but not necessarily all, of the following attributes:

--believes the United States is a fundamentally negative force in the world.

Nope.

--believes that American imperialism is the primary cause of Islamic radicalism.

Ha!

--believes that the decision to go to war in Iraq was not an individual case of monumental stupidity, but a consequence of America’s fundamental imperialistic nature.

Utterly stupid, by an imperial fundamentalist president.

--tends to blame America for the failures of others—i.e. the failure of our NATO allies to fulfill their responsibilities in Afghanistan.

Not!

--doesn’t believe that capitalism, carefully regulated and progressively taxed, is the best liberal idea in human history.

That would be silly.

--believes American society is fundamentally unfair (as opposed to having unfair aspects that need improvement).

On the contrary.

--believes that eternal problems like crime and poverty are the primarily the fault of society.

Haven't seen a cure for these in any system.

--believes that America isn’t really a democracy.

Still is so far, I think.

--believes that corporations are fundamentally evil.

That would be a problem, considering I am a part business owner.

--believes in a corporate conspiracy that controls the world.

No, though corporate interests do carry a lot of weight.

--is intolerant of good ideas when they come from conservative sources.

Why?

--dismissively mocks people of faith, especially those who are opposed to abortion and gay marriage.

I do have a problem with people who insist on controlling others' private lives. If you are against abortion, don't have one. If you are against gay marriage, don't marry a same-sex partner. That seems "straightforward" to me, and not at all a matter of faith. (If it is, let's revisit the First Amendment, shall we?)

--regularly uses harsh, vulgar, intolerant language to attack moderates or conservatives.

Once upon a time I was a moderate. Now I don't know what these terms mean. "Conservative" used to mean Barry Goldwater, but today he couldn't get elected dog-catcher via the Republican Party. After all, "conservatives" used to be for limited government, but now they seem to want the government to control every aspect of everyone's lives.

In comments, Acid Jones writes:

Wow. It's immensely telling that many of those "extremist beliefs" are right-wing caricatures of left-wing positions.

Cut to Ann Coulter.

Egalia reports this nuttiness:

Republican Lawmaker Wants State to Issue Death Certificates for Abortions

Remember Stacey "Black Caucus is More Racist than the KKK" Campfield? Well, the looney Republican lawmaker is at it again.

Campfield -- the blogging legislator -- has a little bill that would require the state to issue death certificates for every abortion performed in this state.

Of course, to be consistent, they'll have to issue death certificates for every miscarriage -- along with coroner inquiries as to why each woman had a miscarriage, perhaps. And just to cover all their bases, how about death certificates for every period any woman who has had sex in the past 4 weeks?

Never mind little things like logic, or the real world tradition of issuing death certificates to beings who actually have something called birth certificates!

Every day is a Blog for Choice day here, but this post is a few days late.

When it comes to abortion, there are a lot of nutters who believe that a woman's only proper function is as a baby factory. Many, if not most, of these folks would deny it, but when you get down to their opposition of birth control and sex education, and their calls for government-enforced pregnancy, it becomes pretty clear that a woman's right to her own body -- and even her right to her own life -- is at best contingent upon absence of the presence of sperm within a stone's throw of her womb.

Then there are those folks who find abortion to be "icky" and just don't like to think about it.

The big buzz phrase now in this current period of ephemeral desire for "bi-partisan" solutions is "common ground." Find "common ground" on abortion.

Can there be common ground? Really?

The fundamentalists pushing for criminalization are not just against abortion, they're against birth control and sex education. To them, the problem isn't that teenagers are getting pregnant, it's that teenagers getting pregnant should be punished for getting pregnant. Heck, not just teenagers -- let's throw in adult women. Let's throw in married adult women. Let's throw in married adult women who've already borne familes.

They're against pharmacists even providing birth control. They're against Plan B. They're against the HPV vaccine.

What they don't talk about, but what is the obvious result of their ideological

How do you find "common ground" with such people?

Links to other posts I saw:

PunditMom writes:

As a young adult in the late '70s and early '80s, trying to juggle two or three jobs, a full college classload and an unstable husband (now ex-husband), I hoped and prayed that I would not find myself pregnant or that I would ever have to make a decision about what to do about an unwanted pregnancy.

But I felt safe knowing that, even with the precautions of birth control, that if one little sperm got through, the government would not be able to intrude in my personal decisions about my body, whatever I decided.

Jessica Valenti puts it plain on HuffPo:

Today--on the 34th anniversary of Roe v Wade--I have a request. Instead of writing about the legislation, the rhetoric, or the politics surrounding reproductive rights and justice, let's keep it simple. Let's just trust women.

Seems easy enough, I know. But given that over 30 years after Roe women are still fighting the same battles, maybe we need a remedial course.

A better run-down is over at Fetch me my axe.

The Reclusive Leftist points to yet another example of how sexist chauvinism is accepted in ways that would never be tolerated by decent folks when it comes to racism.

Imagine if the host of a popular TV show on dog training had made the following remarks:

“Black people are the only species that is wired different from the rest. They always apply affection before discipline. White people apply discipline then affection, so we’re more psychological than emotional. All animals follow dominant leaders; they don’t follow lovable leaders.”

Of course, if we were to ask sometimes-funny but always-self-important culture critic Bill Maher about this, Diane Dees points out that he'd dismiss us for not focusing on the important shit.

Tonight on Real Time, Maher said something about what the Bush administration had done to "the working man." Mary Frances Berry, one of the panelists, said "The working woman, too. You said just 'the working man.'"

Then he said it: "There are so many more important issues. Don't hang me up here."

No wonder we're seeing self-labeled "progressives" willing to advocate forced pregnancy pragmatism in pursuit of power. Self-autonomy and equal rights don't pass the hill-of-beans test.

Just shut up, girls, and go make us some sandwiches. You know we're on your side, right?

Uh huh.

Now isn't this fall's election just so full of promise?