I just wanted to bring that up since I keep getting these emails telling me how just awful Obama is on choice issues. In fact, he's fine. And so is Hillary, she's at 100% for both NARAL and PPFA as well. Still, I've gotten enough of these abortion-urban-myth emails about Obama, and they do seem orchestrated by someone, so it seemed necessary to finally weigh in about both candidates. They're both fine on abortion and choice issues, so please, whoever is throwing the kitchen sink at Obama - stop it, we're not idiots. You can check PPFA's and NARAL's scorecards for all your candidates.
Thirty-five years ago today, the Supreme Court declared that most laws against abortion were unconstitutional. Roe v Wade obviously had profound effects on politics at a variety of levels, but more importantly, it had an effect on people -- millions of people who, before their rights were recognized, could or would have been forced by the government to give up control over a choice that is among the most important, personal, and private in all of life. It is one of the most important rights a person has (and should have) in this country, and it is in constant danger of being abrogated.
I'd say more, but this is one topic that has certainly been covered by individuals far more insightful and eloquent than I. The best explanation of pro-choice perspective I've ever read is here, so take a moment away from the primaries, the stock market, and the daily grind to remind yourself why today -- why every day of this fight -- matters. For real people. Every day.
For some additional excellent pieces, check out AlterNet's excellent Reproductive Justice and Gender section, which is especially good -- and, again, important -- today.
*Second half of the title is a joke, but I realize it's a little random, so see here, e.g.
This central American country has become the third country in the world, after Chile and El Salvador, to criminalise all abortions. It is a blanket ban. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or life- or health-threatening pregnancies.
González was told at the hospital that any doctor who terminated her pregnancy would face two to three years in jail and she, for consenting, would face one to two years....
As a result of the blanket ban enacted last November at least 82 women have died, according to advocacy groups.
Let's get this first bit of lunacy out of the way -- Fred Thompson on who should face criminal sanction for an abortion:
"Don't punish women who have abortions," presidential hopeful Fred Thompson says. Punish the doctors who perform them...Authorities "can do whatever they want to with abortion doctors, as far as I'm concerned," the former Tennessee senator said while campaigning in Western Iowa according to the Los Angeles Times. But "if it comes down to giving criminal sanctions to a 19-year-old girl and her mama, I'm against that."
Wait a minute. If it's going to be a crime, why not punish the mother? If we're going to do the whole law and order thing (har-dee-har-har), when it comes to state womb control, doesn't the woman represent the one contracting the hit on the fetus?
As even one Freepersanely noted, the inconsistency makes no sense:
Under Thompson's logic here, it's perfectly legal for a woman to use a coat hanger to perform an abortion on herself but illegal for her to receive medical assistance in doing it. In other words, it's not illegal to kill a child. But it's illegal to help a woman do such. That doesn’t make much sense to me at all. I'm not sure how that’s even a pro-life argument.
And what about the male partner in this equation? What if he agrees with the woman in question that she should have an abortion, perhaps even drives her to the clinic in support of her decision -- is he then an accessory to the crime? Shouldn't he be prosecuted, Fred? Maybe the fantasy candidate of the freeper set agrees with Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He recently said that women who seek out the abortion are too "impaired" to be responsible for their actions.
The newest occupant of the GOP clown car also made it plainly clear where his thinking lies regarding marriage equality:
Thompson chastised those judges in Iowa, Massachusetts and other states for rulings that opened the way to same-sex marriage, calling for constitutional amendments to curb judges' power to do so.
"What we're seeing here is a totally judicially created problem," he told a crowd in Sioux City, Iowa according to the Times. "You know how many states have affirmatively approved gay marriage? State legislatures? Zero."
He also would like a constitutional amendment called for an amendment to bar judges from allowing marriage equality unless it is approved by a state legislature.
Fred's setting himself up to have egg on his face fairly soon, because California's legislature again approved a marriage equality bill, which first passed in 2005 and was vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger. This year the Governator has until October 14th to sign or veto the bill. He has cited in the past that the courts (I guess those "activist judges") should decide what to do about marriage, not the legislature.
There is an infamous video of clueless anti-choice demonstrators who are asked what punishment a woman should be subjected to if abortion is made illegal. Most make lame excuses -- it's a "crime" but the "perpetrator" should go unpunished. Actually, it's worse than that -- most of them say they never thought about the issue. Planned Parenthood and the National Institute for Reproductive Health have launched a campaign to ask pols the question "How much time should she serve?"
The protestors are clearly underinformed. But what about the anti-choice establishment? Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has an even more ridiculous answer -- only the doctor should be punished, because the woman who seeks out the abortion is too "impaired" to be responsible for her actions.
[I]f abortion were made illegal and he were a state legislator, Land said, "I would probably charge voluntary manslaughter for the abortionist. If [a doctor] were convicted, he would lose his medical license for two years and spend a year in prison with the first offense, and with the second offense, he would lose his medical license for life. At which point it'd be very difficult to find a doctor who'd do them."
Such a legal stance is tantamount to "ignoring or infantilizing women, turning them into 'victims' of their own free will," [Anna] Quindlen wrote. "State statutes that propose punishing only a physician suggest the woman was merely some addled bystander who happened to find herself in the wrong stirrups at the wrong time."
Land doesn't deny that women who have abortions might be addled, but he, along with Yoest, Earll, and Gans, takes exception to them being described as bystanders -- or as enlightened women making free, educated choices.
"It's not demeaning to assume that any person who is a mother who could make the decision to do this must be suffering from some form of psychological impairment because of the crisis of the pregnancy or because of societal demeaning of human life," Land said.
Clearly women are just too damn irrational to be able to control their own body and destiny because of those damn hormones. Daddy The State has to be in charge of the womb.
Look, one either has moral agency or one doesn't. If there's agency, then an illegal act is a crime. If not, then not. But to write off an entire class of women as mentally ill - if only temporarily - because they make a decision you don't approve of? That doesn't fit any moral framework I'm aware of. Nor does the outmoded idea that estrogen makes you crazy or the risible theory that society brainwashes women into killing their children.
My question -- what happens to women that have multiple abortions -- are these repeated delusions? Should she be forced into state-approved mandatory therapy to "correct" her thinking so she doesn't head to the clinic again? No one is saying abortion should be encouraged; it should be safe and rare, but that's not the point of this argument. The right already has its sights on making contraception more difficult to obtain, and continues its push for abstinence-only education. Jill at Feministe asks, where then, are the boundaries:
What about pregnant women engaging in behaviors that are risky for the fetus? Can she be prosecuted for child abuse or negligence if she, say, drinks coffee while she's pregnant? If she eats tuna? If she smokes? What about if she goes skiing? What if she didn't know she was pregnant, but should have known, and she does something risky-- like goes binge drinking every night and survives off of Cheetos? Willful blindness? Neglect? What if she miscarries, and perhaps you can attribute it to something she did -- negligent homicide?
And what about the male partner in this equation? What if he agrees with the woman in question that she should have an abortion -- is he then an accessory to the crime, or is he temporarily insane as well?
All of this is madness; what it does do is pull back the curtain of the real agenda of the anti-choice crowd -- controlling the sexuality of women by insinuating they are not capable of ethical, moral or practical decisions about their lives. Obviously, we need the bible-beaters to instruct us on such matters.
Republican Presidential candidate Sam Brownback refuses to back off his attacks on Mitt Romney, saying that the facts on Romney's pro-choice credentials are clear. Normally, Republican spats don't interest me, but this is one to watch for two reasons.
First, Romney is trying to weasel out of positions he stated publicly. Flip-Flopping was the weapon of choice used against John Kerry in 2004, and it was effective because the Republicans never let up on it. It will be interesting to see if it works as well in a Republican primary.
Second, and of most interest, is that Brownback is making these attacks via internet video . I think we will see a lot more of candidates traded charges over the internet, not just on television. This is an early test of whether the internet is an effective place to make campaign attacks, and so it bears watching.
Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.
A spokesman for the former Tennessee senator denied that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the group hired Thompson that year.
His task was to urge the administration of President George H. W. Bush to withdraw or relax a rule that barred abortion counseling at clinics that received federal money, according to the records and to people who worked on the matter.
The abortion "gag rule" was then a major political flashpoint. Lobbying against the rule would have placed Thompson at odds with the antiabortion movement that he is now trying to rally behind his expected declaration of a presidential bid.
The basic problem is that the Republican politicians don't really stand for anything any more. They've been lying to the public and their own voters for years - claiming to be for a strong defense, lower taxes, and family values. But those are just slogans, slogans that Republican politicians know Republican voters will buy, so they just keep repeating them decade after decade, even though the politicians themselves don't even believe the mantra. Republicans are for family values - sure, just ask Mitt Romney, friend of pornographers and the the guy who once sold himself as better on gay issues than Ted Kennedy himself. Republicans are for the 2nd Amendment - uh huh, and Rudy Giuliani has been the best friend gun control advocates ever had. Republicans are strong on defense - yeah, well, Republicans got us into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how are those going? Republicans are for fiscal restraint - and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have both bankrupted the country and sent us into record deficits.
Republican politicians lie. The thing is, they get away with it because for some reason Republican voters just don't care if they're lied to. So long as you tell them you're for a strong defense, cutting taxes, and family values, they believe you, in spite of the evidence to the contrary.
So it's no surprise that Fred Thompson advocates abortion. He lies like all the rest of the Republican politicians nowadays. But fortunately for Fred, Republican voters are so easily misled that so long as he gives a good speech, they probably won't even care about his pro-abortion record.
But hey, he says he's killing for Jesus, and as the religious right always likes to tell us, so long as they say that they're doing it for their religion, we have no right to criticize them. More from AP.
Mitt Romney provided a number of responses (imagine that) ranging from "her contributions are for her and not for me" before a speaking engagement and later updated to "I was effectively pro-choice at that time" so he did cover all of the bases, much like his floating beliefs. His second response "I was effectively pro-choice at that time" is troubling though and strikes me as outdated and sexist, as if his wife was simply an extension of himself rather than an individual who may happen to think differently. Is that what he was saying yesterday? Sure seems like it.
So now we have Romney, McCain and Giuliani all lying about their past in order to win the presidency. Do we really need another liar in the White House? More from Politico.
A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the first nationwide ban on a specific abortion procedure, restricting abortion rights in a ruling on one of the nation's most divisive and politically charged issues.
By a 5-4 vote, the high court rejected arguments challenging on various grounds the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that President George W. Bush signed into law in 2003 after its approval by the Republican-led U.S. Congress.
Obviously need more details, but this looks like a victory for the theocrats. They've got the Supreme Court they want now -- and they won't stop here. Yes, this means a woman's right to choose is in peril. That's the dream of Bush, his Republican party and the theocrats who support them.
This is bad for Romney. We can now add the environment to the litany of issues that Mitt Romney suddenly flip-flopped on in the past few years, once he decided he wanted to run for president. But it's worse than that. Remember how Romney now claims that his views on stem cell research have changed (he's now opposed) because of a shocking personal experience? Well, he claimed the same thing a few years ago as justification for why he supportedstem cell research - yes, another shocking personal experience.
And in many cases, he said his commitment had been cemented by watching the suffering of someone dear to him: a grandchild whose asthma left him worried about air pollution; his wife's multiple sclerosis, which had him placing hope in embryonic stem cell research; the death of a distant relative in an illegal abortion, convincing him that the procedure needed to remain legal.
All of Romney's liberal views were based on shocking personal experiences, then he decided to run for president and came up with new shocking personal experiences that could justify him wooing the far-right of the Republican party. This guy is a snake.
Oh yeah, more on the snake being uber pro-gay just four years ago.
He met gay-rights activists on their turf, in a restaurant attached to a popular gay bar, and told skeptics he would be a "good voice" and a moderating force within his party.
Then there's this:
"There's a benefit to simplicity. I'm a strong believer in stating your position and not wavering," he said at the 2002 meeting with the group, according to notes taken by then-NARAL officer Nicole Roos that were private until being shared with the Los Angeles Times.
Of course that was 1989. I'm sure Rudy Giuliromney will have a "different" view today. He's already for "conservative judges" who will overturn pretty much everything he believes in, so I can't wait for him to backtrack from his previous statements about the public funding of abortion. Hotlineblog has the video.
Let's get this 
