planned parenthood – Page 4

How I turned into a screaming maniac…

For the past few days the group Justice For All (who I won’t link to, Google them if you’re really curious), an anti-choice, forced pregnancy organization has been on campus at UNM, invited by some on-campus group consisting of a mere 14 members. I don’t know whether anyone has ever seen one of these exhibits, but it consists of two-story high billboards plastered with pictures of mangled embryos and fetuses labeled as older than they are, with lots of vague and incorrect “facts” about abortion causing breast cancer and cervical cancer and whatnot.

Not only is it disturbing because of the massive misinformation, but also the images are highly insensitive to anyone who might have had a miscarriage (and don’t get me started on the way our culture treats miscarriage).

They put this exhibit in a completely centralized place, where you can’t help but walk by it if you want to get to class on time. I, however, was determined to walk by without paying it any notice, nobly proclaiming myself above reacting to such shock-value, trollish tactics.

Needless to say, less than half an hour later I was waving a coat hanger in the air leading several women in chanting “NEVER AGAIN!!!” at the top of our lungs. So much for nobility.

Luckily, the next day (what I’m assuming was) an impromptu “Women’s Health Fair” had sprung up on the other side of the plaza, with tables set up by doctors, Planned Parenthood, a group of midwives, and other such organizations handing out condoms, pamphlets giving the true facts about abortion, and the like. It was nice to see people combating deliberately provocative lies with helpful, simple, open truth. I stopped to snap a few photos with my cameraphone (below the fold).

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Women, Girls and Abortion

The Oregonian is doing a great series on Measure 43, their state’s parental notification statute. They take a different tack than the traditional news article on abortion, which inevitably involves an interview from a Planned Parenthood representative and an interview with an anti-choice leader. The Oregonian instead talks to the very people who this measure would most affect: Women and girls.

The articles aren’t perfect, but they offer a good balance of perspective. And I’m happy to finally see a publication listening to women.

Suzie McHarness, 50, of Southeast Portland, knows exactly what she would do differently, had it been possible. “If I had had an abortion, my life would have been very different,” she says. That’s why she opposes Measure 43.

Instead, McHarness says, she became pregnant at 15 and was forced to deal with an angry, abusive mother and shame from her mother’s friends from church.

As the morning sun streams into her kitchen window and catches the tears pooling in her eyes, McHarness says she was raped at a party by a friend of a friend.

“I was devastated,” she says.

She was afraid to tell her mother, so she waited until she couldn’t wait any longer.

Abortion wasn’t an option. It was 1972, before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal. Plus, McHarness says, “my mother never would have agreed to that.”

The baby was a boy, born with a facial defect. McHarness says she moved out of her mother’s house. She dropped out of high school and struggled to raise her son on her own. He needed a series of surgeries, and McHarness remembers hitchhiking to the hospital to be with him.

McHarness decided when her son was 14 months old that their life was “horrible” and “unfair to him”; she gave him up for adoption.

The two were reunited 16 years later and are working on a relationship. McHarness keeps her son’s picture on the wall beside her computer. She volunteers at least twice a month at a Planned Parenthood clinic, helping women and teens prepare for abortion and staying with them during the procedure.

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Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Vanessa at Plucky Punk, inspired by Biting Beaver’s story, has come up with an action plan:

If you’re not already well versed in the travesty that happened to Biting Beaver, click here to read her story and here to read the consequences.

Long story short: an adult woman with several children in a committed relationship was not able to obtain emergency contraception in time (due to some serious backwards actions on the part of several doctors and nurses) and became pregnant against her will. Now she must pay for an abortion she really can’t afford.

Reading about this seriously infuriated me, but I was also heartened that pretty much every thread I read about this story on contained information about how to lend Biting Beaver a financial hand.

What they say about tragedy brining out the worst in people *and* the best in people as usual proved true.

(To give to Biting Beaver, click here . Let’s help out one of our own.)

But it got me thinking, as all of the feminist blogtopia (y!sctp!), including me once again devolved into an endless debate about “fun.” What about the countless women who must have shared Biting Beaver’s experiences who *don’t* have all of blogtopia behind them?

At the Pandagon thread about this, Amanda linked to this charity, The National Network of Abortion Funds. And of course there’s Planned Parenthood. What I’d like to do is to rally the feminist blogtopia around not only Biting Beaver, but around all women needing reproductive care (well, let’s not euphemize, needing *abortions*) who can’t afford it.

The average cost of an abortion in the United States is 468 dollars. Somewhere, there is a woman in need of this money who doesn’t have it.

Let’s see if we can get together and raise this amount, either by giving to Biting Beaver, the National Network of Abortion Funds or to Planned Parenthood. Please leave to amount you donated or pledge to donate in the comments (or if you’ve already donated, leave that amount).

And if you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s cool. You can even email me your pledge.

Even if you can only donate a dollar, please do. (I know I’ve taken to paying bills with credit cards since going back to school and having a baby. I’m so broke I’m broken! So poor I’m po!) And if you can’t donate anything, please at least spread the word either on your own blog, or if you don’t have one, amongst your friends.

Let’s demonstrate that feminist blogtopia is about more than infighting about clothes and shoes and waxing and whatnot. Let’s demonstrate what we can do when we unite.

Again, here are the links:

Biting Beaver (and her blog, here.)
The National Network of Abortion Funds
Planned Parenthood

I’ll be tallying the amounts as they come in. The first especially generous donation wins a free t-shirt of choice from either the Plucky Shop or the Aelthing Shop.

So that’s my call to arms. Let’s see what happens.

Planned Parenthood = Terrorist Organization

Planned Parenthood was doing the same accursed thing on 9/11 that the terrorists were doing: Killing innocent people. And just like the terrorists, they’re proud of themselves and consider each death to be something to celebrate. But the terrorists are at least honest enough to admit that they’re killing, and they identify their victims as enemies. PP plays semantic games and dresses up their killing in pretty words about “freedom” and “choice.”

When your idea of freedom is “I get to kill children with impunity” you’ve joined the ranks of evil. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is and it’s asinine to pretend otherwise.

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Remembering Sept. 11, 2001 In A Different Way

Self-loathing former slut Dawn Eden has decided to use the fifth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center to smear Planned Parenthood and do a little slut-shaming on the side:

Five years ago this week, I was standing outside the upper West Side headquarters of the American Red Cross of Greater New York, helping the organization manage the streams of would-be volunteers and blood donors who swarmed the building. It was both beautiful and heartbreaking to see how people of every age and background wanted so badly to do something for the survivors, the victims’ families, the city, and the country.

Something tells me that Dawn wasn’t actually a volunteer for the Red Cross, but enjoyed playing traffic cop. And now she gets to feel important by associating herself, Zelig-like, with the organization.

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The Feminists Killed Kitty Genovese

Is there anything that we can’t blame feminism for?

From the comments over at Dawn Eden’s place, we have some deep thoughts about marriage, women, and how feminists have totally fucked shit up. And apparently, it’s our fault when a woman is stabbed to death and none of the 38 onlookers call the police:

I believe that Planned Parenthood, NARAL, et al. are in a sense responsible for instances like the Kitty Genovese case.

NARAL sorts are, in a nutshell, saying to the larger community:
“Don’t impose your morals on me. Get your rosaries out of my ovaries. It’s my choice. I’m autonomous. No man’s gonna’ tell me what to do…”

The weary response of the community is to say (specifically, here, to the young women in society):
“OK. OK. Alright, already. I won’t butt into your life. Do whatever the heck you wan’t. Go get your &*%#$ abortion. Go, sleep with a dozen men per week.”

Genovese was left to die by a society that had gotten the message, so to speak, that truly modern sorts don’t meddle in one another’s affairs.

To put a finer tip on my point, the upshot is that men and women are told, more and more, to disassociate from one another. In a world where no one harrasses one another, also no one counsels or helps the other.

Aside from her assailant, Kitty was autonomous in the ally.

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You Just Know It’s Bad When a Nun Takes Planned Parenthood’s Side

Ah, Dawn Eden. Such a special strain of hypocritical religious nutbag you are.

What’s got Dawn in a lather this time?

Seems that an anti-abortion group in Long Island got its abstinence-only education program defunded after the group’s executive director falsely claimed that Planned Parenthood was promoting bestiality:

In a setback for his program to bring together advocates and foes of abortion rights, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi has rescinded his offer of a county contract to a group whose leader accused another participant of promoting bestiality.

Lorraine Gariboldi, executive director of the Life Center of Long Island in Massapequa, made the comments about Planned Parenthood to Newsday at the county offices in Garden City in February, immediately following a news conference where Suozzi announced grants for eight groups in an effort to cut down on abortions.

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Reading Comprehension 101

Or, Ms. Jill takes on the issue of anti-choice terrorism and the right-wingers who laugh it off.

SAT Question 1:

If 1, 2, y, and z are listed under the heading “Letters and Numbers,” it should be properly concluded that:

a) 1, 2, y, and z are all letters.
b) 1, 2, y, and z are all numbers.
c) 1, 2, y, and z may be numbers or letters.
d) 1, 2, y, and z are all both numbers and letters.

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Why NARAL and Planned Parenthood’s Support of Lieberman Matters

Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake is a lawyer, a former prosecutor and a political junkie who’s supporting Ned Lamont in his bid to unseat Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary. She knows the issues of the race inside out.

What you might not know about her is that she’s also the survivor of a brutal rape. And in this post, she reminds us of the real stories behind the anger at Joe Lieberman for his cloture vote on Alito, his remarks about rape victims and Plan B that earned him the name “Rape Gurney Joe,” and at Planned Parenthood and NARAL for endorsing him (their national organizations; the Connecticut chapters haven’t, to my knowledge).

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Pro-Choice Organizations Endorse Lieberman

I have a lot of respect for Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, but I have to ask: What the hell are you thinking?

Both groups have endorsed Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, before the Democratic primary. Both groups are apparently willing to ignore the fact that Joe isn’t exactly the most pro-choice candidate in the world, and that his opponent is much better on women’s and reproductive rights issues. Both groups are ignoring the fact that Lieberman supported Alito’s appointment to the Supreme Court — an appointment that will surely have a detrimental effect on gender equality and reproductive freedom for decades to come.

I’m really, really disappointed in NARAL and Planned Parenthood today. I realize they have to make political decisions, and perhaps they feel it’s in their best interest to support an incumbent who they think has a better chance at winning. But this should be about standing up for women, and backing the candidate who will do the most to support our rights and liberties. In the Connecticut race, Joe Lieberman is not that candidate.

At least NOW got it right.

Thanks to Matt for the links.