More Race-Based Antichoice Propaganda

Remember these?  And these, and these?  Playing on the statistical discrepancy between rates of abortion for white and black women, they set out to demonize black women for making reproductive choices other than giving birth to EVERY PREGNANCY NO MATTER WHAT.  Conveniently, they ignored the part about structural inequality and poverty and other issues which might explain why abortion is much more prevalent among black women than white women.

Welp, they're at it again.  Only now it's Latinas under fire.  Using the same phrase, "The most dangerous place for a Latino is in the womb," in both Spanish and English, with a silhouette of a child and smaller polaroid-style pictures of babies' faces and a pregnant woman's belly (curiously, the woman is headless/faceless; it's almost like they don't want people thinking about the woman, only her body and specifically her uterus), the campaign is unveiling this weekend in Los Angeles, CA. 

The group behind it, as usual, cites statistics, showing that Latinas are 2.7 times more likely to get an abortion than non-Hispanic whites.  And as usual, that's thrown out there without any discussion of racism, systemic inequality, poverty, employment problems, access to contraception, etc which might, just a tiny bit, maybe in some way contribute to a woman's decision to abort rather than carry a pregnancy to term. 

As I said before, if you really want to address this discrepancy, work on the CAUSES of the disproportionate rate of unwanted pregnancy/inability to carry wanted pregnancies to term.  Demonizing Latinas who choose to abort like this is just fucked-up, and it's not going to help*.


*You know who is helping?  Planned Parenthood and all their low-cost/free/sliding-scale contraception and other sexual health services.  Suck on that, anti-choice assholes.

Rick Perry: Still Not Getting the Difference Between Politicians and Priests

Holding one's very own explicitly Christian prayer rally - even when one is an elected official - is one thing.  Holding a prayer rally to which one invites the leaders of every state in one's purportedly-secular nation is kind of another thing entirely.

Not that that matters to Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas. 

I have sort of the impression that Perry's mental representation of governing a state looks like this:

1. Pray really hard
2. ????
3. Profit!  All the state's problems will be solved!

It's also the height of disingenuous to claim that it's an "apolitical Christian prayer meeting," when, as I said, Perry specifically invited all 49 other governors, "as well as many other national and Christian political leaders."  Does that sound apolitical to anyone else?  Bueller?  Bueller?  Protip: If you want to call your event apolitical, maybe you shouldn't feature dozens of political leaders as specially-invited guests.  That tends to blur the line a bit.

But you know what really gets me?

That fucker put his rally on my birthday.  >:-(

Rick Perry can go un-fuck himself.  Anyone know if there are term limits in Texas? 

At least we know he's gotten three no's from his fellow governors so far.  Here's hoping the event falls flat on its church-state-conflating face.