Doonesbury

The Republican newspaper published my LOE on Gary Trudeaus comic strip Doonesbury. Trudeau walked the reader through what a young women would go through to obtain an abortion under the Texas law requiring a trans vaginal ultrasound.

Enjoy!

Doonesbury and Trudeau

The Texas sonogram law passed by Governor Rick Perry is one that does indeed "rape" women. Understand this, women who choose to terminate a pregnancy will undergo a trans vaginal ultrasound almost 100% of the time. The requirement in Texas stands that any woman who wants an abortion has to first undergo an ultrasound using a 10 inch sonogram wand to obtain fetal information. In this way the law is absolutley forcing itself upon women i.e. raping them.

Now during the procedure we know that the wand is inserted to visually display the fetus. What the horrible wretched law requires next is just disgusting- the pregnant women is then forced to look at the image of her fetus and listen to the heartbeat. Then the woman goes home to spend 24 hours considering her decision to abort.

IF and only IF you decide to have an abortion and willingly put yourself in the care of the doctors and nurses who perform these screenings can you refrain from calling the insertion portion of this procedure rape. The remainder of the procedure, in my opinion, is more damaging to women then the actual abortion surgery or process.

Imagine the scariest scenario you can think and put a person with their eyes pried open (science fiction-Orwellian, whatever) and then add the beating of Poe's Tell Tale Heart. Do I exaggerate? Only by making these comments especially visceral and slightly dramatic- but even then I'm holding back from saying what a cruel unnecessary mind fuck law this is.

This weeks Doonesbury comic by Gary Trudeau has been pulled from some newspapers who aren't kosher with his take on the Texas law. This is the second time in his career that Trudeau has been pulled from certain papers. The strip begins with a Texas woman going to a clinic seeking an abortion. The nurse tells her- “The male Republicans who run Texas require that all abortion seekers be examined with a 10” shaming wand.”

There it is-

Another strip has a nurse ask the young lady if it is her first pregnancy termination and when the young women replies with yes she says "Then you'll need to fill out this form. Please take a seat in the shaming room."

Shame, shame, shame. If abortion is legal, which it is, the proverbial waging tsk tsk scolding finger is at least publicly removed. Before abortion was legalized you could literally be shamed to death for seeking one but now it's left up to the states and their governments to humiliate any women who allows herself (because there isn't anyone else involved of course) to get knocked up. Those who have the least invested in women's health spend time and resources on reversing the progress made in the field of reproductive rights.

Gary Trudeau has done something really important with Doonesbury this week. One, he has brilliantly captured the absurdities of the bill in Texas in a way that couldn't be easier to understand. Secondly, he has done so in a way that brings attention to the law regardless of an individuals stand point. Perhaps most importantly of all, Trudeau offers a rare (albeit satirical) view of the experience that so many feel they have the right to offer insight into- being a young women who seeks to hold herself first and exercise her legal rights to have an abortion.

International Women's Day

Happy International Women's Day!

Women's eNew has a wonderfully written and comprehensive Arab Women in Revolution Report.

Here is an article written by Kevin Powell as an open letter to Men and Boys

This is a list of the 100 top achieving women from Women's eNews

Here is the letter written by Abigal Adams in which she tells John Adams to Remember the Ladies

And lastly, the Christian Science Monitor reports on how International Women's Day is celebrated around the world

Birth Control Debate Requirement-Know what Birth Control is and How it Works

One thing that Rush Limbaugh made painfully obvious during his disgusting tirade against Sandra Fluke last week is that he has know idea what birth control is.

That's the most dangerous aspect of this entire situation. His language and edict in general is horrendous- he's a very popular sad shock jock and that's nothing new. I want to point out why his tirade against birth control goes above and beyond a base, rude, gross and obnoxious take on a serious situation.

To revisit-

"What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex -- what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex." -Rush Limbaugh,

The next day:

"A Georgetown coed told Nancy Pelosi's hearing that the women in her law school program are having so much sex they're going broke, so you and I should have to pay for their birth control. So what would you call that? I called it what it is. So, I'm offering a compromise today: I will buy all of the women at Georgetown University as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want. ... So Miss Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."

So what does Rush get right about birth control pills?
Sure, he knows that it's a pill that women take and that it costs money and he doesn't want to pay for it. But with that logic the pill isn't any different from the aspirin he volunteers to spring for except that men don't need it.

Rush makes a fool out of himself with lines like "she's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception."

You need a new condom for every time you have sex but you don't need more birth control. You don't take less or more of the pill as you increase or decrease your sexual activity. In fact Women don't only take oral contraceptives to prevent pregnancies.

I am not so naive to think that this spells the end for Rush Limbaugh- though many of his advertisers have jumped ships and two radio stations (one in Pittsfield Ma. and the other in Hawaii) banned his show. I think he's brought to light one of the key factors in the birth control equation. Educating the public about what contraception is and what it actually does negates at least part of Limbaugh's gaffe because it would expose the fact that you can't criticize what you can't or choose not to understand.

The problem for women is that he does and he does it in the most disgustingly ignorant way as he possibly could.

Uhhh....Rush

I can't think of a single phrase, statement, sentiment or expression that can convey the utter disgust I feel towards Rush Limbaugh. That being said, I don't find his latest tasteless dribble surprising BUT I do think that this time it is impossible to ignore.

“Can you imagine if you were her parents how proud … you would be? Your daughter … testifies she’s having so much sex she can’t afford her own birth control pills and she wants President Obama to provide them, or the Pope. … What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex — what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.” … If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.”

Here is one of the petitions circling the internet to get this monster off the air.

Another petition here

And a list of his sponsors

And because she is AWESOME, a great video to finish off with.

Virtual Anti-Hate High-five!!

The Contraception Files

Does it seem that contraception has taken an unrepresented front and center role in the GOP presidential nominee campaign?

I think so. What I don't necessarily know for certain is why. I've read articles in the last few months that claim all sorts of political motivation as to why contraception is the talk of the town with the Republican candidates. Some have indicated that it is the Democrats who are putting birth control front and center-you know, to hide the actual issues in the campaigning by igniting fury over any attempt to limit women from accessing their pill.

But really it is the GOP here that is shooting itself in the foot by making it painfully clear that their leading man isn't as head over heals in love with talking about religious freedoms promoting the denial of contraceptive

As Mitt Romney so eloquently put it the other evening, "Contraception is working fine, leave it alone."

He also responded to the Ohio News Networks Jim Heaths question about supporting the "Blunt Amendment" which aims to reverse the Obama administrations requirement that all employers, including religious-affiliated institutions, provide health coverage that includes contraceptive care at no co-pay with this statement-

"I’m not for the bill, but look, the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a women, husband and wife, I’m not going there."

Romney later insisted that he would indeed support the bill and that the question was put to him in a confusing way.

"Of course I support the Blunt amendment. I thought he was talking about some state law that prevented people from getting contraception so I was simply — misunderstood the question and of course I support the Blunt amendment,"

Thankfully the amendment failed: 51-48

And Rush Limbaugh, national treasure that he is, called a law student testifying in a congressional hearing, a "slut" and a "prostitute" because she was explaining the burdensome cost of contraception.

Overall-

I'll take the failure of the Blunt Amendment as an overwhelming win; at least for today.

Trans-Vaginal in Virginia

In a bit of good news the Virginia Governor, Bill McDonnell had an abrupt about face this week and recommended that the bill recently passed requiring any women seeking an abortion undergo a trans-vaginal ultrasound be reversed.

Apparently the fetal image would have remained in a woman's medical file for seven years, and any doctor who failed to perform a pre-abortion ultrasound would be liable to prosecution and fines.

Both Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show with John Stewart satirized the bill and the original version- supported by McDonnell drew a large crowd of protesters to the state capital in Richmond earlier this week.

The reversal of McDonnell’s decision has been disappointing for the bill’s supporters. I find it really difficult to see how anyone could fail to see the problem with requiring a trans-vaginal ultrasound- you literally insert an 8-10 inch wand into the vagina. If the woman doesn’t consent to this incredibly invasive procedure, how can you interpret that as anything other than rape?

Even the pro-life Rutherford Institute - backers of Del. Bob Marshall’s personhood bill, which gives fetuses human rights - has expressed constitutional concerns over the ultrasound bill.

Virginia's House of Delegates by a vote of 65-32 approved the revised bill, which calls for women to undergo an abdominal ultrasound but not necessarily a more invasive internal one as required under the original measure. It is unclear if the State Senate is going to follow suit.

Ultrasounds are a regular part of Planned Parenthood's process when obtaining an abortion and it is done for medical reasons. To insist upon a mandate on the type of ultrasound isn't only unnecessary, it falls in line with the strategy for slowly eroding the legality of abortion as a procedure in all. To their credit, I imagine most women who want abortions do so with the understanding that an ultrasound is going to take place in some capacity, but you cannot mandate that and you certainly can't assume that the ultrasound would be an invasive trans-vaginal one.

I appreciate the backlash over the bill because it calls attention to the lengths that pro-life supporters will go to demand that if abortions are available legally than it has to be with as many hurdles or barriers as possible, regardless of what that means for the women actually affected.

In the Name of the Father...oh wait

It's long over due for the Catholic Church to relax its position on contraceptives. Over and over the religious institution have shown that they don't understand the concept of women centric policies because there aren't any women present in religious hierarchies. Not a single women is among the ranks of Catholic leaders that cry foul when governmental policies insist that all women have access to birth control should they desire so.

Obama modified the policy last Friday to require insurance companies, and not the religiously affiliated organization itself, to pay for birth control-Not enough for the naysayers-

But the issue hear isn't even about the mandate by President Obama anymore-It's about the wholly male centered, male dominated, male run, ancient institution that refuses to acknowledge women's right to choose- period.

Susan Komen-take back

The Komen foundation announced on Thursday that it was reversing its decision to cut funding from breast-cancer screenings done at Planned Parenthood. Three days after announcing it would eliminate grants to Planned Parenthood; the Komen Foundation, said Friday that Planned Parenthood would be eligible for future grants — but stopped short of guaranteeing funding.

So what was this all about?

Apparently this issue has been a long standing thorn in the Komen Foundations side. In an Article on The Atlantic website, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg reports that inside sources from the Komen foundation made it clear that new rules were adopted as an excuse to cut funding from Planned Parenthood.

The article from The Atlantic elaborates-

“The decision to create a rule that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to these sources, was driven by the organization's new senior vice president for public policy, Karen Handel, a former gubernatorial candidate from Georgia who is staunchly anti-abortion.”

An anonymous source told the author, "The cart came before the horse in this case, the rule was created to give the board of directors the excuse to stop the funding of Planned Parenthood. It was completely arbitrary."

The speculation has only intensified since last week as to the overall conclusion of the entire debacle. The few things I mentioned above are only a handful of the information that's come out-and forgive me for not sharing more of it. In the past few days I have read articles tying this situation to every matter relating to abortion, breast cancer and women's health in general. I honestly cannot process it all fast enough to yet write about it critically.

What I do know is that the attacks on Women's reproductive rights aren't anything that's going to go away anytime soon.

Next up-Catholics and Contraception.

Super Stupid

I really don't like Go Daddy.com

I really really can't stand their asinine advertisements.

More on this to come-or perhaps I won't even waste my efforts.

Also, the commercials during the Super Bowl have shown us that teenage girls don't like food.

Great.