Blog for Choice

...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.

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"?

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?

The FDA has shocked me. After stonewalling their own doctors and scientists, the politicians in the agency have decided to act rationally, perhaps as a ploy to help the Republicans you've seen frothing at the mouth over the past two years whenever they talk about sex to seem more reasonable.

It's a partial victory:

Girls 17 and younger still will need a doctor's note to buy the pills, called Plan B, the
Food and Drug Administration told manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc.

The compromise decision is a partial victory for women's advocacy and medical groups that say eliminating sales restrictions could cut in half the nation's 3 million annual unplanned pregnancies.

The pills are a concentrated dose of the same drug found in many regular birth-control pills. When a woman takes the pills within 72 hours of unprotected sex, they can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent. If she already is pregnant, the pills have no effect.

I hope the nutters out there will note that last sentence. The fact is that Plan B prevents conception. With this "morning after" pill, there is no abortion at all. It's not even an issue.

What's at issue for Plan B opponents is whether the man's sperm can claim dibs on a woman's body, even if they're just wiggling around in there without fertilizing an egg (conception), without even an egg's being there to be fertilized. It's one of the most absurd arguments for patriarchal privilege out there.

Of course, we can expect the nutters to continue to distort and lie about Plan B. Anything that gives women power over their own bodies is bad, according to them. Just wait. You'll see them all over cable news today (if you can stomach watching that crap).

The fear and unreason is already out there:

Bravo folks! let's give our kids one more reason to have sex like rabbits!

"Yeah, it's much better to have pregnancy as punishment! And kids will have sex because the girl will then get to take a pill!"

Don't worry, though. It seems that most people see the positive side. This could reduce the number of aborted pregnancies significantly. That should be good news for everybody.

Even when passing the hat, the temptation to lash out proves to be just too much:

You Can DONATE to Yearly Kos!

After all, if the pro-choice single issue groups aren't going to do their jobs, we'll just have to do it for them. We will sit down with these politicians and tell them to their face how important privacy and choice are to all of us.

We can use Yearly Kos to amplify our message beyond the convention hall.

Oh, they must mean Planned Parenthood, who doesn't just talk the talk but walks the walk -- and provides the women's health services. Yeah, they're no good.

Right.

Donate.

In another thread, "liberalrob" calls women's reproductive rights "ideological purity." He's not alone.

What liberalrob doesn't seem to realize is that what he dismisses as "ideological purity" is actually a matter of life and death. liberalrob and friends seems to think that the Democrats must avoid taking stances, even in matters of women's survival.

The problem is that when reproductive rights are positioned as "special interests" -- one of several Republican-forged labels that so many Democrats and party-line supporters have adopted without question -- then they can be dismissed as not important, down at the level of tax breaks for ball-bearing manufacturers and pork-barrell contracts for rubber companies.

It's a way of dismissing human rights -- or at least women's human rights -- as unimportant.

Of course, one of many possible explanations for this kind of attitude is that these ostensibly well-intentioned folks simply cannot see the implications of their attitudes due to male privilege. They have not had to negotiate their rights over their own bodies with the government. They have not had to consider legal implications over healthcare choices. And they certainly have not had to weigh the decision of whether or not to abort a pregnancy.

Other folks like to consider abortion as "something other people do" -- until it comes to their own lives and own decisions. And so it's easy to say, "Icky," and then judge all others who have to face such situations.

What's striking is how the Democratic retreat from reproductive rights has been part and parcel of a larger flight from any stances at all that might get labeled as "liberal" or "progressive." It's been going on for at least 18 years, since when Michael Dukakis ran away from George Bush the Elder's accusation that the Democrat was "a Liberal!"

And the Democrats have been losing ever since.

Now liberalrob and friends offer a profound prescription to reverse this trend: More of the same, only with more vehemence, employing right-wing frames, right-wing labels, and right-wing ideology.

What they miss is that the real lesson to take away from the "conservative revolution" is that "conservatives" engaged in the war of ideas. They offered up ideas, plans, visions of the future. And they have offered up simplistic, unrealistic and even delusional "moral values" frames for social issues. And the Democrats have refused to respond, refused to engage in this war of ideas.

And now we have a Democratic Party that cannot stand together for much of anything. They are so diluted that they cannot agree. They come out with a tired slogan, something like "Together America can do better" (I honestly cannot remember), and call it a plan. And whenever someone stands up and takes a moral stance, a dozen others go onto talk shows to say, "So-and-so doesn't speak for me."

And so the Democratic Party does not speak for me. And it's been that way for quite a while now. Oh, I tend to vote Democrat more than Republican, mainly because the Republicans have become modern-day fascists in love with authoritarian government, but I could not stomach registering as Democrat, and I sure won't be donating to them.

What's ironic is that while the Democrats are stampeding towards forced pregnancy laws and anti-choice candidates, the Republicans are running into resistance to their own state-run-breeding agenda:

HB1216 would have allowed women to sue abortion doctors for negligence if they later developed problems that they believed were linked to their abortions and felt they had not been fully informed about those problems.

The bill, which was killed 8-5 by the House Judiciary Committee, also would have required an abortion doctor to have patient admitting privileges at a nearby hospital if a woman needed emergency care.

The bill is legally questionable because it would set up two classes of doctors in South Dakota, said Dave Gerdes, lobbyist for the South Dakota Medical Association.

"It's completely unreasonable and unworkable," he said.

If heart surgeons had to meet the same requirements as those proposed for doctors who do abortions and had to worry about later getting sued for failure to inform patients of some potential risks, heart surgery would stop in South Dakota, he said.

"Not only is it illegal, but it's grossly unfair," he said of the bill.

Kate Looby, state director of Planned Parenthood, characterized HB1216 as a bill designed to harass those who do abortions.

"It's about forcing abortion doctors out of South Dakota by passing laws that are nearly impossible to comply with," she said.

Democrats should take note. Forced-pregnancy candidates are not a winning plan. And further retreat from progressive values embracing civil and human rights is not going to win anything but sour grapes and resentment.

And come November 8th, we'll be having this same conversation.

The strident right-wing e-rag with the ironic title "Life News" really really hates Hillary Clinton, even though she gave $10,000 to pro-criminalization candidate Bob Casey, Jr.'s campaign to win the Democratic nomination for Pennsylvania's open vulnerable Senate seat this year. Why?

Because they love strict father Rick Santorum, who has unshakable bigotry and misogyny credentials, more. And because Hillary is married to Bill, that unwashed boy from the South who dared rise above his station and become a part of the ruling class. (The good ol' boys are supposed to vet all new entries to the club, and Bill did not even apply. Damn inconvenient sometimes, this democracy thing.)

According to the Post, their campaign blasts Casey as a "Republican-lite on women's issues" and bashed it as a "calculated effort by party leaders to build a so-called 'bigger tent' at the expense of women's rights."

But the reason for Clinton's donation may have nothing to do with abortion.

Casey is running against pro-life Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, a Clinton nemesis. Santorum drew Clinton's ire after he published a rebuttal book to her "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child." Santorum's was titled "It Takes a Family."

A white, straight family with none of them queers or coloreds. Yeah. "Tell your neighbor to fuck off," is the Santorum way. Community? Neighborhood? The folks next door? They don't fit into Santorum's values system. There's no room for a metaphorical village in the radical right's view. Not when they're running the federal government and now have the power to invade people's lives. (Is spying on Americans a family value, too?)

But let's back up a sec. Why the hell is Hillary giving money to Casey during the primary, when he's running against candidates who favor reproductive rights?

Meanwhile, HillPAC spokeswoman Ann Lewis, a noted abortion advocate, told the Post, "Sen. Clinton is committed to electing Democrats through contributions and campaigning on their behalf."

Should Casey defeat Santorum, which is a possibility given his 10 percentage point lead in the polls, it would aide Democratic efforts to recapture the Senate in the November elections.

For Clinton, supporting abortion is still a salient issue and she proved her credentials again with her recent vote against Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Not only did she vote against Alito's nomination, she backed a filibuster engaged in by a handful of the most ardent pro-abortion members of the party.

About Alito, Clinton said "He will intensify his campaign to roll back" abortion rights granted in the Roe v. Wade decision.

Of course, Casey already announced that he thinks Alito would do a heckuva job.

So what kind of Democratic Party is Hillary trying to build, anyway?

That's the message we get from the pro-death right wingers. And it's the message we get from the "let's just be reasonable" would-be liberals and "progressives." The whole abortion discussion has moved away from whether a woman has a right to her own body, and over to this collective giving of the third degree to all women everywhere. Society is saying, "Yo, bitches, we'll decide what you can do with your own body based on our own sense of morality." Underlying that is a misogynistic and/or paternalistic attitude that refuses to even acknowledge that women might rightly have a say in what happens in their own bodies.

The Democrats and their supporters are split between three groups:

1. Those who want the government to control women's wombs
2. Those who are afraid of right-wing's "pro-life" spin on the issue
3. Those who believe people should have rights to their own bodies.

And in the context of a radical right minority's influence over Republican politics, and thus American politics as a whole, the Democratic Party has recognized the need to do something: cave in and put up right-wing candidates of their own, so that these silly ideas that women have rights to their own bodies can be "set aside" so that politics can get to the "important shit." Call this group #1.

Often the people pushing this agenda talk out of both sides of their mouths, claiming that they're "pro-choice" while pushing for pro-criminalization politicians like Bob Casey, Jr. and Tim Kaine -- which is kind of like a robber claiming he's the computer repairman while he carries your brand new iMac G5 out the door. Believe what you see, not what you hear.

Group #2 is probably why we don't even have a real debate about abortion. These folks just find it too "icky" to think about, and can't be bothered with the implications regarding fundamental human rights that underlie the issue. They see the screamers on television with their signs and spittle and want nothing to do with it. They hear the "culture of life" spin the right wing puts on its punish-the-women agenda and want nothing to do with it. And they hear the absolute and devastating silence from the other side, and want nothing to do with anything where nobody's got their back. And so they stay away.

Nancy Scola kind of treads the line between #2 and #3:

More important for me than it being morally wrong or not (though for the record, I generally don't think that it is) is whether or not it is a net bad for the individual woman involved. Everything tells me that it is....

I think it's important that we distinguish between the two basic positions open to pro-choice Democrats: that abortion is entirely neutral and that we must fight to the end to protect the right to have one, or abortion is a net bad and that we still must fight to the end to protect the right to one. Ezra Klein wonders why if we all agree on our policy end goal -- preserving choice, of course - what does it matter how we all get there? You see this kind of thinking time and time again. In this case, it's wrong for at least two reasons.

First off, if we admit that the policy is intended to address those worst case scenarios, then working to avoid having folks find themselves in these situations becomes the next logical thing to focus on. That this opens up the door to progressive/Democratic solutions -- on poverty, education, gender relationships, and so on -- is of course not a bad thing. Secondly and more importantly here, is where we stand in 2006 - we've got an anti-choice Democratic majority leader, House, and Senate. An anti-choice governor just gave the Democratic rebuttal to the State of the Union. We have a twice-elected President who ran heavily on the abortion issue. He's just appointed two anti-abortion Supreme Court Justices, something he promised he'd do when he asked people to vote for him. The evidence suggests that we have yet to convince a whole lot of people of the wisdom of the pro-choice Democrat way of thinking on this.

My own feeling is that people have no place wringing their hands over other people's private medical decisions. If you think abortion is bad, don't abort your pregnancy. But don't presume it's your place to judge what others do.

But of course, we never hear that, because women are already considered owned by society. Women's rights seem to be provisional, and in fact luxuries, such that when women speak out against attempts to establish governmental claims on their own bodies, people start whining about whining, shrieking about shrieking and bitching about bitching. The only difference is that the women are fighting for their fundamental human rights, while the others are just wanting the women to shut the fuck up.

What's come of all this are Establishment attempts to manufacture consent. We see Katha Pollitt's comments deleted from NARAL's blog. We see the notorious browbeating of progressives by Kos and friends. And we see the same bloviating garbage from puffed up Senators who talk a lot but don't say much.

And it's not going to work. Never. Ever. Because we've been there before, and wanted to part of it.

And the more Machiavellian Democratic pundits declare that this is a good thing, that a bloody harvest of women struggling with a jack boot on their abdomens will be a good thing for Democrats. Yeah right.

Just what the Democrats need: martyrs to their spinelessness.