Reproductive Rights – Page 115

Bravo!

Bitch Ph.D. on the Florida case in which the state believes it is in the best interest for a 13-year-old girl to be forced to carry her pregnancy to term even though she has explicitly stated every step of the way that she doesn’t want to:

The fact of the matter is, young girls do sometimes get pregnant. It happens. Abortion is legal, having children is legal. Butt the fuck out and let these girls decide what to do for themselves, and if you’re so goddamn concerned about it, offer to help. Advocate for providing financial support to single moms; advocate for young women’s right to continue their education, even if they have children; argue with people who cluck cluck about young mothers; don’t assume that every young woman you see with a little kid is a big sister or a nanny (and don’t assume that, if she’s the mama, that that’s an awful pity); if you know a young woman who has a kid, offer to babysit once in a while. If she decides that adoption is the way she wants to go, support her in that (and don’t pretend that it’s an easy decision, going through forty weeks of pregnancy, with everyone treating you like a social pariah, risking your health and changing your body, only to give up the child you’ve borne at the end of the process, possibly never to see it again).

And for god’s sake, if a thirteen-year old kid decides, “hey, I’m not up for all that,” don’t argue with her.

And quotes from the girl’s testimony in front of a judge, courtesy of Shakespeare’s Sister:

L.G.: Why can’t I make my own decision?
Judge Alvarez: I don’t know.
L.G.: You don’t know? Aren’t you the judge?

* * *

Department of Children and Family Services: The Department of Children and Families has the custodial responsibility to do what is in the best interest of the child.
L.G.: I think if I want to make the decision, it’s my business and I can do that. It would make no sense to have the baby. I don’t think I should have the baby because I’m 13, I’m in a shelter and I can’t get a job. DCF would take the baby anyway [but] if I do have it, I’m not going to let them take it.

* * *

L.G.: Since you guys are supposedly here for the best interest of me, then wouldn’t you all look at that fact that it’d be more dangerous for me to have the baby than to have an abortion?
Judge Alvarez: A good point.
OBGYN: At her age and at her stage of gestation … her risk of death from an abortion procedure is about 1 in 34,000. The risk of death in pregnancy is about 1 in 10,000.

* * *

Judge Alvarez (paraphrase): Who is the father?
L.G.: That’s not really necessary.

I want to give this girl a hug for being so damned brave.

On Being a Breed Mare

This one speaks for itself, or will have to because I can’t come up with anything remotely un-profane to say about it:

Imagine two rape victims taken to the same hospital emergency room. Imagine them put in adjoining examination rooms.

Let’s say they have identical injuries.

Presume everything about them is the same except for where they are in their menstrual cycles.

Do they deserve access to the same medical treatment?

At most Catholic hospitals in Colorado, they can’t get it.

The protocol of six Catholic hospitals run by Centura calls for rape victims to undergo an ovulation test.

If they have not ovulated, said Centura corporate spokeswoman Dana Berry, doctors tell the victims about emergency contraception and write prescriptions for it if the patient asks.

If, however, the urine test suggests that a rape victim has ovulated, Berry continued, doctors at Centura’s Catholic hospitals are not to mention emergency contraception. That means the victim can end up pregnant by her rapist.

HT: First Draft

Knit for Choice

Dr. B. has radical reasons behind her knitting:

Doctors say Kenya’s strict abortion laws have forced thousands of women and girls to the backstreets where charlatans use all manner of sharp instruments — metal wires, knitting needles, forceps — to penetrate the womb and kill the foetus.

I know that this is absolutely insane. It’s where we have been in the U.S. and where we swiftly headed back to. As the daughter of the woman who ran a women and children’s clinic in the 70s and 80s and who had seen the horrors of botched abortions […] I knit with a purpose.

I do think about this now and then when I pick up my knitting needles. They have been used as weapons against others and against ourselves. Occasionally as I stroll through my house I see items once used with frequency in America to butcher women from the inside out. My stomach turns.

What is most horrifying is that these items are used to perform abortions by the untrained across the world on millions of women. And on occasion, still in the United States because, as Dr. B. says, we’re headed back to that time unless we are able to stop those who successfully battle against our rights to contraception and other methods of birth control.

HT: Dr. B.

The Good Ol’ Party’s Version of Morality

Representative Louise Slaughter:

The Rules Committee discovered yesterday that the Judiciary Committee Report on this very bill, which was authored by the Majority Staff, contained amendment summaries which had been re-written by committee staff for the sole purpose of distorting the original intent of the authors.

This Committee Report took liberty to mischaracterize and even falsify the intent of several amendments offered in Committee by Democratic Members of this body.

At least five amendments to this bill, which were designed to protect the rights of family members and innocent bystanders from prosecution under this bill, were rewritten as amendments designed to protect sexual predators from prosecution and were then included in the committee report as if that was the original intent of the authors. The thing is, sexual predators were not mentioned anywhere in any of these amendments.

Not only do they threaten women’s reproductive rights, they believe we are friends to sexual offenders.

What Makes A Woman A Woman?

From Big Brass Blog:

According to the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act of 2005 (Senate Bill 51 and House Bill 356, if you’re curious), it’s the ova and the uterus and nothing else. The Act, which has been criticized for its possible effects on abortion law, has been referred to committee in both the House and the Senate. It contains this excellent definition:

WOMAN- The term `woman’ means a female human being who is capable of becoming pregnant, whether or not she has reached the age of majority.

This definition of ‘woman’ was considered appropriate by both House and Senate. There are several interesting implications to this:

A. A female human being who is not capable of becoming pregnant does not qualify as a woman under this definition.

B. This definition implies that a woman is not, as any dictionary will tell you, an ‘adult female human.’ A thirteen-year-old female child is a woman if she has reached puberty. Fertility is the sole measure of womanhood, not maturity and the capacity to make one’s own decisions.

C. This definition could be used in other laws if this bill is passed and signed.

All of this reminds me of the definition of ‘woman’ in Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, wherein infertile women were considered Unwomen.

This is so unbelievably reductive it’s scary. And infuriating.

Benedict XVI

Apologies to Lauren for jumping in, but this is very important. The conclave has chosen Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to be the next pope. He is going to call himself Pope Benedict XVI.

I have nothing to say. A woman who was watching with me has gone out of her mind, and I’m about to.
_________________________
Lauren edited to add:
The implications of the name are very important, and Ratzinger has invoked the name of a series of moderate Popes, though he himself is considered to be a fundamentalist. As a Catholic fundamentalist, one of his efforts will probably be an attempt at further codifying Catholicism in Africa and China as he has repeatedly called for, areas of large Catholic growth that have morphed Catholicism into their own pidgin religions. Both regions have unusually high incidences of sexually-spread diseases, and a stricter Catholicism in these areas will likely have dire consequences for educational and medical efforts.

The choice of name is probably in reaction to the war in the Middle East, as the previous Benedict outlined a five point peace plan in reaction to WWII. This is the only reason I can think of that Ratzinger would choose the name Benedict considering his stance on myriad world issues.

The Wikipedia is already updated with info on Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, including his involvement with the Hitler Youth. From WaPo’s profile, “Guardian of Orthodoxy“:

He wrote a letter of advice to U.S. bishops on denying communion to politicians who support abortion rights, which some observers viewed as a slam at Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry. He publicly cautioned Europe against admitting Turkey to the European Union and wrote a letter to bishops around the world justifying that stand on the grounds that the continent is essentially Christian in nature. In another letter to bishops worldwide, he decried a sort of feminism that makes women “adversaries” of men…

…Ratzinger was active in stamping out liberation theology, with its emphasis on grass-roots activism to fight poverty and its association with Marxist movements.

He once called homosexuality a tendency toward “intrinsic moral evil” and dismissed the uproar over priestly pedophilia in the United States as a “planned campaign” against the church.

And aren’t the Italians stoked about today’s papal progress? You would have thought Mick Jagger walked onto that balcony. Norbizness has a prurient theory about their excitement.

Sex and Carnality

Jesse at Pandagon writes on the debate over the morning-after pill in Illinois. He has a point in saying that pharmacists are speading bad science as pro-life propaganda, but concludes that this denial of medical treatment is about the fear of sex.

The more I read these kinds of stories, the less I think the debate over sexual morality is about sex itself. The notion of carnality involved in sexual relationships, specifically those sexual relationships deemed immoral, seems to be what these pharmacists and pro-life groups have a problem with.

According to Christian doctrine, the only sexual relationship endorsable by the Bible is the model of married coupledom (the kind in which a woman is the man’s property to be “taken” by adulterers and all other women are seductresses) and those who don’t comply are the “polluted spring or …poisoned well.” Moral folks “run from anything that stimulates youthful lust,” including homosexuality, pornography, sadomasochism and all other models that the contemporary churches consider prurient.

I don’t even think the pro-life stance is so much about the protection of fetuses, embryos, or any of the rest of it. Abortion and birth control are carnality manifest. That sex is and can be carnal, and that a “good” woman can enjoy the carnality without physical or emotional consequences, is what gives them goosebumps, and thus they find anything they can do to stop this degradation of their moral code based on a fear of sexual freedom.

Carnality gives me goosebumps, too, but in an entirely different way.

Related Reading: Religion & Sex, Christianity
Bondage, from Preacher’s Files

Two Things

1) Josh, one of my real life friends, has a conversation with an objectivist on the subjects of Ayn Rand and feminism. It would be disparaging if it weren’t so funny. Jim at Patriside has a recent post on the bullshit of Ayn Rand. Good stuff.

2) I just got a phone call from a friend to inform me not to go to campus. The “abortion people” are here, she said, with their big placards of Photoshop-mangled fetuses, anti-birth control fliers, and a loud, obnoxious minister exclaiming that STDs are for sinners.

I’m so going to campus.

Nunya Business

I can’t help but quote this piece at length:

The next time someone calls abortion a moral choice, I will ask him the results of his last prostate exam, or her the results of her pelvic exam. I expect they’ll tell me it’s none of my business. To which I’ll reply, “exactly.”

The next time someone argues against gay marriage, I’ll ask him or her when the last time he or she made love with their spouse. I expect they’ll tell me it’s none of my business. To which I’ll reply, “exactly.”

The next time somebody defends pharmacists refusing to dispense birth control pills, I’ll ask them what prescription medicines they are currently taking. I expect they’ll tell me it’s none of my business. To which I’ll reply, “exactly.”

The next time someone says that Terri Schiavo was murdered, I’ll ask them if they’ve made arrangements for a local government official to be in their loved one’s hospital room making final decisions. I expect they’ll tell me it’s none of my business. To which I’ll reply, “exactly.”

The next time some legislator proposes banning sex toys, I’ll ask them what method of masturbation they prefer. I expect they’ll tell me it’s none of my business. To which I’ll reply, “exactly.”

The next time someone talks about family values, I’ll ask them to tell me what the last thing they disciplined their child over. I expect they’ll tell me it’s none of my business. To which I’ll reply, “exactly.”

We cannot allow our panic at being out of power to lead us to separate abortion rights, gay rights, end-of-life-decision rights, parenting rights, medical rights from the basic human right to live free of someone else butting their nose into our personal lives.

Exactly.

Culture of Life: Death Be Not Proud

Gerri Santoro was the mother of two daughters, and recently estranged from her abusive husband. For whatever reason, Gerri met another man, Clyde Dixon, and (gasp!) had sex with him. She became pregnant. Fearful of what her husband would do to her if he returned to town and learned she was pregnant by another man, Gerry and Clyde decided that they had to terminate the pregnancy. By any means necessary. Of course, they couldn’t afford to pay off some doctor in a nice hospital to do a purported D&C, as rich women could back then. Or hop on a plane and go to Mexico. Apparently, they couldn’t afford even a back-alley abortionist (what–abortion being illegal didn’t stop people from performing abortions???). No, these people were so poor, and so desperate, that they decided to do what far too many people in like circumstances saw as the only way. They decided to perform the abortion themselves. And they agonized over this decision so long, that Gerri was 6 1/2 months pregnant when they decided to take matters into their own hands.

Dixon acquired a medical book and equipment. They got a motel room, and he attempted to operate on her there. As expected, everything went completely wrong. Very quickly. Realizing he had made a mistake, realizing what could happen to him if he were there when Gerri died, Dixon fled the scene. She tried to stop the hemorraghing, but nothing worked.

Here is how Gerri Santoro’s life ended.

This is a culture of life.

HT: The Heretik