FUCKING STOP: An open letter to Gov. Perry and the Texas GOP

Dear Gov. Perry, Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, and the Texas GOP,

You don't know me, and I'm not a Texan in any way, shape, form, or fashion.  So I'd say you won't care what I think about this fiasco - except that you've already made it abundantly clear that you don't care what anyone thinks of what you're doing here, whether they're a constituent, a politician with the opposition, or God Herself, so I know it's nothing personal.

Since my words, and indeed, my very existence mean nothing to you, I will feel free to speak my true mind on this in very blunt terms.

You are the biggest pack of filthy hypocrites I've ever seen.

You (the wider GOP) venerate the Founding Fathers, who fought a war and founded a nation over the right to be treated with respect and have a say in one's government - and yet you blatantly disrespect the modern people of that nation when they gather by the hundreds and thousands to tell you to STOP.  You idolize (and I mean that in the truest sense of idolatry, by the way) a group of men who are remembered for, among other things, decrying "taxation without representation" - and yet you will happily impose far more intimate regulations on your constituents' very bodies while silencing their representation, whether it be through their elected officials or through their own voices raised in protest.

You use procedural trick after procedural trick to try to force those elected voices to shut up, eventually forcing them from the floor under guise of respect for parliamentary procedure - and yet you're quite happy to blatantly violate the same rules you insist everyone else abide by as soon as it suits you, by altering documents and timestamps to literally rewrite history once it became clear you'd lost.

Do you know why I am political in the ways that I am, Mr. Perry (et al)?  Because I still believe in - still want to believe in - the the noble ideals I was told we as a country stood for, as a child growing up in America.  I want this country to offer liberty and justice to all.  I want a government that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.

And you people claim to love the Constitution, love the Founders, love what this country "stands for" - that is, what we claim to stand for - and yet your actions tell a terrifyingly different story.

Because when you are faced with The People Themselves, in the flesh, by the hundreds, literally raising their voices to prevent you from making unjust laws that trample on their rights...

And your response, after every dirty trick and lie and machination you used failed you, is to say "That's fine, we'll just try it again next week"...

You are not acting in the spirit of the lofty goals of liberty and justice and freedom.  You are channeling King George.  (Hell, at this point, I'm inclined to say you're channeling Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine too, but that's my penchant for hyperbole and my geekishness sitting down for a drink together, so.)

You are liars.  You are hypocrites.  You are power-hungry tyrants unfit to wield authority over an ant colony, much less millions of human beings.  And you need to fucking stop.

With intense loathing,
J

Anti-Choicers Do Not Have Souls

Because no one with a soul, or, hell, even a modicum of human decency, would do this:

“Hey,” he says. He holds out his smart phone, as if he thinks I’m going to look at it.  “Is this your mother?”  The question seems so out-of-place, it doesn’t quite register. Of course, I don’t answer.  “It sounds like she was a good woman,” he says. ”This is her obit, right?”
And he begins to read to me from my mother’s obituary.

... 

Ron shared it with some other protesters while he was at it, handing them his phone to read, nodding in my direction to point me out. I think they’ve just learned that you can google someone and find out a lot about them, and are really excited about this new skill. Quick to share their opinions too.  According to them, my mother is ashamed of me. She’s looking down from heaven, she can see me, and she’s afraid for me. She doesn’t want me to do this. She’s upset that we’ll be separated for eternity, cause I’ll be going to the other place. My mother wants me to know that there’s still time for me to change, to turn away from this evil.

 That is the account of a clinic escort at the Louisville, KY abortion clinic, which is apparently host to some of the worst, most intense anti-choice protesters in existence.

Like, for example, the kind of amoral assbag who would read someone's mother's obituary to them to try to harass them into going away.

I thought I'd basically heard it all when it came to anti-choice shenanigans - lies, medical misinformation, picture-taking of clients as they arrive, if they can get a name calling the patient's family or even workplace to try to get someone to come shame/guilt them into not going through with their abortion, and my favorite (and by favorite I mean the worst thing I've heard of them doing) where they got the info of a 16-year-old girl who'd had an abortion, and a year later sent her a "baby's first birthday" greeting card splattered with red paint to look like blood.  But seeking out information about someone's lost loved ones and publicly using that to harass and attack them?  That's a new low, even for anti-choicers.

And, of course, it stands on their usual rhetoric about how apparently all mothers are pro-life, as evidenced by the fact that they chose to have kids, regardless of how laughably inaccurate that idea is when you consider that some 60% of abortion patients already have children, and are often choosing to terminate their pregnancy in order to be able to better care for the kids they've already got.  They know nothing about this person's mother.  They don't even know if she believed in god, was Christian, believed in heaven or hell.  They're literally just using the dead as a sockpuppet to try to give their own beliefs added emotional impact by putting their words in her mouth.

That is sick, that is twisted, that is wrong as fuck, and I want as many people to hear about this as possible, because it is a perfect example of how their "compassion" and "caring for life" is nothing but a front to mask some vicious bigotry and serious control issues.

Anti-Choice Hypocrisy, Teens and Parents' Rights Edition

Let me start by saying I'm glad this case turned out the way it did.  I think what the parents were doing to her was despicable and fucked-up and crossing a line into outright abusive, and I'm happy that the court sided with her against her parents.

But I have one question.

What makes this case, where the parents were going to force a young woman to have an abortion, different from a situation in which parents force their teen to have a baby?

Because they are different.  Anti-choicers will applaud the fuck out of "parents' rights!" and such when it comes time to restrict a young person's ability to make their own decision about ending their pregnancy, when their decision is to have an abortion - witness anti-choicers' repeated and often-successful efforts to pass the most restrictive possible versions of parental consent/notification laws, which require a teenager to at least notify, and in many cases get a permission slip from, their parents before having an abortion.  Which gives the parents the opportunity to interfere, thus forcing the pregnant teen to give birth.*

Yet they're also applauding the fuck out of this case, where the court sided with the young woman in question to override the "parents' rights" in order to let her make her own decision about ending her pregnancy.

Good gods.  The malodorous stench of hypocrisy is so thick in here, I may need a gas mask.

Which is it, anti-choicers?  Do you support the rights of the parents to control which medical procedures a teenager may, may not, or must undergo?  If so, why are you viewing this court case as a victory?  It specifically placed an injunction against the parents' attempts to assert their "rights" to control their daughter's reproductive health.  It placed the teen's wishes and choices above the parents' "rights" to make fertility decisions for her.

And if you support the right of pregnant teens to make their own reproductive health decisions independently of their parents' wishes, as your behavior regarding this case suggests, then why have a large portion of your legislative efforts historically been dedicated to attempting to enact laws that require parental consent before a minor undergoes an abortion?  You'll take "notification" if that's all you can get, but you're always angling for "consent" whenever possible, and y'all have gotten pretty fucking stingy about those judicial bypass clauses too, putting as many obstacles as possible between a pregnant teen and their ability to make independent choices about their pregnancy.

So with one hand, you work to enact laws that take decisions about a minor's reproductive health and fertility out of that minor's hands and place them firmly under parental control, while with the other, you work to give those decisions back to the minor even if it means getting a court to overrule the parents' control.

And you do this based purely on which decision the teen is making and how that aligns with your opinion on how the situation should be handled.

Either you trust teens to make their own reproductive health choices, or you don't.  If you're going to help and be happy for this girl because she gained the legal ability to choose for herself how to manage her pregnancy, then you damn well ought to be extending that same courtesy to young people who need that legal ability to make their own decisions, even if you don't agree with the decision in question.

Because "More rights...for people who agree with me, and fuck the rest of you, I will legally force you to "agree" with me too!" is in no way a morally-sound position to take.  And since y'all are so attached to your notions of being on the moral high ground, you might want to attend to that little problem.

*And indeed, I've heard some horror stories about parents who refused to sign consent forms for epidurals or other pain medications during labor, to "teach her a lesson she won't forget".  It's not about "preventing abortion" - that's just the mechanism by which it works.  The true intent is to force them to give birth.*

MY UTERUS IS SO FUCKING METAL

Conservatives keep finding new ways to surprise and delight/horrify me.  It's pretty impressive, to be honest.  Today's hilaritragic dose of "Excuse me, in which reality do you live?  It sounds like a fascinating place to visit!" comes from Kevin Swanson of Generations Radio, a conservative Christian radio show based out of Colorado Springs:

[S]cientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they’ve gone through the surgery [have] compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill. And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.

A stick-figure comic of a political rally.  One figure in the crowd holds up a large sign reading [citation needed] in the style of Wikipedia's superscript notation of incomplete sources.

DEAD BABY GRAVEYARD WOMB is going to be the name of my death metal band, you guys.  I just can't let a name like that go to waste.  Either that, or the title of my memoirs.  Maybe both.  It sounds like the title of a Dethklok album, doesn't it? 

Nathan Explosion: This is metal... for [dead fetuses].
Skwisgaar Skwigelf: [dead fetuses] don't gots no good music to listen to.
William Murderface: Yeah, it's true.

Props to Mr. Hyperbole for working in the phrase "dead babies" or "little babies" three times in five sentences, I guess.  Repetition, repetition, repetition.  Say it over and over again and people will eventually believe it. 

Congratulations, Kevin Swanson.  Your hard-on for incredibly, absurdly inaccurate "science" and attempts to wring the most emotionally-compelling/viscerally disgusting insults out of it have, like vegangelicals and the "bloodmouths" thing, flopped so hard you've actually created a sweet new term for us to describe just how hardcore and metal our bodies are.

Thanks bro!

People seeking abortions may only think about their decisions on business days, according to South Dakota

In the chip-chip-chip fight to render Roe a meaningless statute by eroding access to abortion services until we have the right, but not the ability, to access it, waiting periods have been a core piece of the movement.  Force people to make two visits to the clinic, which makes it harder for people who don't live near the clinic, which very few people do at this point what with absurd over-zoning and regulation forcing clinics out of business.  Force people to have to arrange rides, time off work, childcare, or missing class not once, but twice, possibly missing out on an extra day's pay in the process.  Make the whole thing drag a little more and hope that some of them tip over into the 2nd trimester while they have to wait, so that it becomes even more difficult, costly, and time-consuming to get that abortion.  And do it all under the plausible deniability of "we just want to make sure you don't do something you'll regret!  We are helping by making sure you take lots...of...time...to think about this (because we assume you haven't already thought about this, because if you had, obviously you wouldn't have decided to do it, Q.E.D.)."

And last year, if you'll recall, South Dakota made infamy by insitituting the longest waiting period thus far, at 72 hours (most states that have it are 24 hours, though I think there might be a couple 48s). 

Not satisfied with that, they're now trying to make those 72 hours stretch  e v e n   f u r t h e r  by specifying that they mean 72 hours, not including weekends and holidays.

>.>
<.<
o.O

So...if the ostensible point of waiting periods is about making sure pregnant people SIT DOWN AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE DOING YOU FILTHY BABY-MURDERING WHORE take enough time to come to a reasonable decision so they don't do anything they'll later regret...what does it matter which days the sit-and-think period encompasses?  Are people incapable of considering serious, life-altering decisions* on their days off?**  If anything, I'd think that'd be when people have more time and leisure to consider major issues, when they're not busy taking care of work, kids, and/or school obligations.

It all makes perfect sense when you know what's really going on, whisper-thin veil of concern for pregnant people aside, but usually they try a little harder to hold on to that veil.  When they start proposing restrictions that no longer make even surface sense with their supposed reasoning, they're beginning to risk more people figuring out what's actually happening.  Which suggests two very scary possibilities, to me.  Either they really do believe that people won't notice, that the average public isn't paying enough attention to catch the disconnect and suss out their real motivation (and what scares me here is the possibility that they're right) - or they are so confident in their political power after all the gerrymandering bullshit of late that they don't care how it looks, they're sure it'll go through anyway, and that's all that matters to them.

Like I said.  Scary possibilities.

*It's a serious, life-altering decision for some, but not for all; I phrase it this way because that's the framing that always surrounds this issue when we talk waiting periods.
**Not that weekends and holidays are everyone's days off, though a lot of people forget that.  Retail and food service don't stop for holidays and weekends.  And considering that it's low-income people, like those who work retail and service industry jobs, who are generally most affected by abortion restrictions, it sort of makes this doubly shitty by imposing a more or less irrelevant concept of "non-work days" on the people it's enforced against.

The Beauty of Anti-Choice "Logic"

TW: sexual abuse, reproductive coercion

This isn't the first time I've seen this argument, and I'm sure it won't be the last.  But something about the way it's phrased here kinda poked my brain with a sharp stick.

Over-the-counter birth control pills could encourage men to prey upon younger girls and dictate their contraceptive choices, according to Janice Shaw Crouse of the Christian activist group Concerned Women for America. 

"Any guy who is older and taking advantage of a younger girl could put her on a pill," Crouse said.

This really leaves me with only two possible conclusions.  Either CWA et al believe that a lack of hormonal BC will prevent men from abusing young women - a dubious notion at best, and with no factual support whatsoever for the idea, I'm calling shenanigans - or they believe an abuse victim is better off abused *and pregnant*, than just abused.  (Also, victims of sexual abuse would never have the agency to decide for themselves that they'd rather be protected, and seek out BC themselves.)

Yes, because what a young teen or pre-teen who's being abused needs is an unwanted pregnancy on top of that whole abuse thing.  I'm sure that'll be very helpful.  Especially considering these asshats are the ones who would then force her to carry and give birth to her abuser's baby.  That'll do wonders for the child's mental health, really.  "Well, the abuse was discovered when you got pregnant [and theoretically has been stopped]!  Hooray!  Now it's time to further derail your life by having a baby at 13!  Aren't you glad we're here to help you?"

Lucky teens, to have CWA on their side.  With friends like these...

The GOP and Fetuses, Sittin' in a Tree...

...giving out tax credits for parents-to-be!

Another one for the "Couldn't Make It Up If I Tried" bin, here.  The Michigan GOP has proposed a new $160 tax credit for "women who are at least 12 weeks pregnant by the end of the year".  This is, mind you, after they voted to eliminated the $600 tax credit for actual born children last year.

Have children you're struggling to keep fed and healthy?  Fuck you!  In your first trimester of a pregnancy which may or may not come to term anyway because pregnancy is complicated shit?  Here, have some government money!

LOL consistency what?

It's an attempt to tiptoe their "fetal personhood" fetish a little further into law via taxation: "See, the tax code treats the fetus as a person for whom the parents can claim a tax credit!  Obviously this means they are a person and therefore have more rights to your body than you do."

I can't decide if they're getting sloppy - in particular the part about it contrasting so blatantly with eliminating the tax credit for actual children - or just getting bold.  Either way, it's pretty ridiculous.  In a scary sort of way.

Who needs science when you've got BELIEFS?

This is some fucking bullshit.

One of the approximately eleventy-smillion lawsuits against the contraceptive coverage portion of the ACA - which is apparently the hill-to-die-on du jour for the entire American right-wing establishment or something? - has seen a judge issue an injunction against enforcement of the contraceptive coverage mandate against a Bible/Christian lit publishing house in DC.  Which is bullshit for all sorts of reasons, but something jumped out at me in the linked news post:

[Plaintiffs argued] that their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act would be infringed by requiring their health plans to cover contraceptive methods that the company and its owners consider abortifacients-- Plan B, ella and intrauterine devices.

Did you catch it?  Here, in case you missed it:

[Plaintiffs argued] that their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act would be infringed by requiring their health plans to cover contraceptive methods that the company and its owners consider abortifacients-- Plan B, ella and intrauterine devices.

Apparently, the only standard required to be able to argue against a law is "I'm against what I think this thing does," irrespective of whether or not that is actually the case.

The argument for this specific issue tends to rest on questions of religious belief and infringement thereof.  But this whole thing about "abortifacient" birth control isn't a matter of religious belief that must be held sacrosanct.  It's a matter of refusing to acknowledge fucking basic scientific fact.  I don't care what you believe these methods of birth control do.  You are free to believe that car headlights damage one's night vision and thus make driving less safe...but that is objectively untrue, and that belief doesn't exempt you from having to have your lights on when you drive at night, because that risks other people's safety for the sake of your untrue beliefs.  All the evidence we have about how birth control works points to interruptions in the fertilization process PRIOR to implantation, which is when a pregnancy actually begins.  You can't have an abortifacient if there's no pregnancy occurring.  End of story.

Beliefs != laws.  Nor do they provide a legitimate reason for being exempted from the law, especially when it affects the lives and safety and health of others who may or may not even share in your beliefs in the first place.  No, it doesn't matter how much you stomp your feetses or cry about it.  Facts dictate the laws and you are not exempt from those laws simply because you refuse to accept the facts.

As always, XKCD sums it up beautifully:

[Two stick-figure people arguing, a student and their professor:

Student: Professor, that man claims the earth is 6,000 years old!
Professor: So?  Just use your head and don't concern yourself overmuch with what other people think.
Student: But he says the fossils in the mountains were put there in a flood!
Professor: Well, evidence suggests that they were not.
Student: But he - 
Professor: A million people can call the mountains a fiction.  Yet it need not trouble you as you stand atop them.
Student: But he believes the silliest things!
Professor: So?  The universe doesn't care what you believe.  The wonderful thing about science is that it doesn't ask for your faith.  It just asks for your eyes.
Student: But he's a U.S. Senator!
Professor:  Ah.  Then yes, we do have a bit of a situation.]

Is it Christmas already? Judge rejects challenges to contraception mandate - HARD.

Go read this.  No, seriously.  Go read it.

Oh, fine.  For those not inclined to click through, Judge Carol Jackson of a federal district court in Missouri basically told anti-contraception assholes where to shove it.  She stated flat-out that the ACA's contraception mandate does not infringe on religious freedom, period the end:

… [T]he health care plan will offend plaintiffs’ religious beliefs only if an OIH employee (or covered family member) makes an independent decision to use the plan to cover counseling related to or the purchase of contraceptives. Already, OIH and Frank O’Brien pay salaries to their employees---money the employees may use to purchase contraceptives or to contribute to a religious organization. By comparison, the contribution to a health care plan has no more than a de minimus impact on the plaintiff’s religious beliefs than paying salaries and other benefits to employees.

Is it just me, or is there an implied "...so shut the fuck up already" at the end of that paragraph?

And it goes on from there, rejecting every single argument they put forth, from the "defining a religious exemption means the government is excessively entangled in deciding what's religion and what isn't therefore it's establishment of state religion" claim (??? So they're fine with the IRS dropping all tax-exempt statuses for religious organizations, right?  Because there has to be a definition somewhere for those, too.) to the "compelled subsidized speech" claim (just because someone, at some point of the process, uses words to facilitate something happening doesn't make the thing happening fall into the category of 'speech'), and basically said "Yes, you *can* claim that the regulation was "arbitrary and capricious", but you're flat the fuck wrong, so go away."

I'm sure it will be appealed, etc., but this is a fantastic start to work from.  Thank you, Judge Jackson, for shutting down their collective temper tantrum so thoroughly from the word 'go'.

Rep. Mike Kelly Thinks No-Copay BC Is Like Pearl Harbor and 9/11

From the "I couldn't make this shit up if I tried" files, via RHRC, this fucking stunner of a quote from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-eprehensible):

"I know in your mind, you can think of the times America was attacked," he said at a press conference on Capitol Hill. "One is Dec. 7, that's Pearl Harbor Day. The other is Sept. 11, and that's the day the terrorists attacked. I want you to remember Aug. 1, 2012, the attack on our religious freedom. That is a day that will live in infamy, along with those other dates."

Day.
That will live.
In infamy.
Like Pearl Harbor
And 9/11
Days when hundreds of people were violently killed
And wars were begun from those attacks that killed thousands more.

The ability of people who have health insurance to access hormonal birth control without paying anything out-of-pocket for it is equivalent to MILITARY ATTACKS THAT STARTED WARS?

Go
Drink
Motor oil
and hydrochloric acid
you miserable
insufferable
PRICK.

I suggest we tell him exactly how we feel about this bullshit.  Drop him an email here (use zip code 16002-3805 to bypass the "only in my district" crap), and this page has the phone and fax numbers for all his offices.  Oh, also here's his Twitter (though it hasn't been used in months, it seems) and his Facebook, where the conversation is rather more lively regarding his absurd remarks.

Fly, my pretties.

"Pre-Pregnant" Goes a Step Further

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Miter Mafia and HHS, Part II

I didn't title the first part as Part I only because I didn't realize I would be writing a Part II.  The problem is, I wrote my first post about the 5 pages of "summary" at the start of their 21-page whinefest, hit publish...and then I kept reading.  And there is far too much fuckery in there to keep to myself.

This is why you read me: I'm the gift that keeps on giving!

So, my original post was about what I got out of pages 1-5.  Yes.  A whole post about just the first 5 pages.  Now.  Picking up on page 6...

"Indeed, for individuals with a conscientious objection to contraceptive coverage, the ANPRM actually exacerbates the problem.  In its February 10 rule, the Administration proposed to have insurers “offer contraceptive coverage directly to the employer’s plan participants (and their beneficiaries) who desire it."  The ANPRM,however, no longer uses the language of “offer,” which allows for the possibility of acceptance or rejection.  Instead, HHS would now require insurers or third-party administrators simply to “provide this coverage automatically to participants and beneficiaries covered under the organization’s plan (for example, without an application or enrollment process), and protect the privacy of participants and beneficiaries covered under the plan who use contraceptive services.” 

As a result, women will have less freedom, not more.  They will not have the freedom to decline such coverage.  They will not have the freedom to keep their own minor children from being offered “free” and “private” contraceptive services and related “education and counseling” without their consent.  Thus, the mandate now poses a threat to the rights not only of employers, religious and secular, but of parents as well.  It is even proposed that this intervention into the family may be delegated to “private, non-profit organization[s]”potentially including groups such as Planned Parenthood, which may volunteer for the task.

Restriction is Freedom!  Up is Down!  Right is Left!  Making something available without requiring you to A: have prior knowledge that it exists, and B: jump through hoops to get it, is TAKING AWAY OUR FREEDOM, LADIES!  (As usual, the Church refuses to acknowledge cis women who can't get pregnant, trans women, trans men, and everyone else not a fertile cis lady who will use birth control specifically to keep her uterus empty.)

They are being willfully obtuse about the difference between "automatic coverage" and "taking advantage of coverage provided", of course.  Yes, everyone will be automatically covered, but it's not like the insurance companies are going to show up at your doorstep and force packets of the Pill into your hands.  Being covered by this rule is a passive state that doesn't affect you in any way, unless you choose to access these services.  Hell, I'm sure they'd be thrilled if nobody used the coverage, as that means less money spent on providing it.  As I understand Catholic doctrine, the sin is *using* birth control, not simply *having access* to it.  So this objection is purely spurious, not that I expected anything better from the MM's spin machine.

And what is this fuckery about minor children?  We are talking about health plans provided to employees and, in some cases, college students.  All of whom are adults.

If they're talking about the minor children of the employees who may be covered as dependents on their parents' plan, well...again I will point out that it's a passive coverage.  Considering that most kids don't exactly get individual mail notifying them of their coverage under their parents' health insurance, how exactly are they going to know A: that it's covered, and B: even if they know that (which would most likely be because of the giant shit fit the MM is throwing over this rule in the first place), how to go about accessing it?  Again, this is not a situation where PP employees are going to climb through your child's bedroom window and deliver the Pill by the bucketload.  They're kicking up stink over a, while possible, extremely implausible occurrence.

Next up, page 8, where they express their dissatisfaction with the definition of "religious organization" (which we all know they want to mean "any organization with a religious person running it, no matter the purpose and scope of their work or who they serve or hire"):

Reduced to its simplest terms, an organization is “religious,” in the Administration’s view, only if it is insular, while organizations with a missionary or public outreach are deemed insufficiently “religious” to qualify for the exemption.  We are free to worship our God, but not to serve our neighbor.

Bzzzzzzzt!  Thanks for playing, try again never.  This is their usual bullshit of "any restriction in any way of how we do our public service stuff, even if it's for the protection of said public we're "serving", even simply removing government contracts or money from the equation and leaving us to do it on our own, is OPPRESSING OUR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM!"

Y'all are absolutely free to both worship your god and serve your neighbor.  You just can't use worshiping your god as a shield for discrimination in how you serve your neighbor (or how you treat the secular personnel you hire to help you serve your neighbor).  There's a difference.

Okay, now, stop eating and drinking and cover your keyboards, everyone, this next one had me making extremely undignified sounds at my desk.  Page 12, regarding the fact that the insurer would still be providing the objectionable services using premiums the employer paid to them:

One might ask how this is any different from paying salary to an employee who then uses that salary toward purposes the employer believes to be intrinsically evil.  

WHAT DID I TELL YOU?!?!  DID I NOT SAY THEY WOULD MAKE EXACTLY THIS ARGUMENT?!  DID I FUCKING CALL IT OR WHAT?!

Ahem.  What I mean to say is, lol they are making the exact argument I - and probably many other people - fully expected them to fall back on in order to take the next step in exerting religious control over nonreligious people simply because those nonreligious people happen to depend on the religious people for an income to live off of.  They're currently only using it as an analogy for the relationship between the employer and the insurer that provides the "intrinsically evil" care, but that tells us they do believe the two to be equivalent.  So given that, how long before they start applying that argument directly?

Continuing shortly thereafter on page 13, the MM begins making up new "rights" for themselves, as they are so often wont to do...

One can suppress religion not only by making conscientious objectors actively cooperate with what they see as evil, but also by depriving them of the right (a right that others continue to exercise) to support what they see as good.  Those who favor contraceptive coverage will retain the right they have always had as employers to provide a health plan consistent with their values.  Objecting religious organizations will lose that right, because any plan they offer will be amended by others so that the practical outcome for employees is exactly the same as if the organization had no such objection.  

Yeah, that's...really not what's going on here.  Not even a little bit.  Employers do not have any "right" to "provide a health plan consistent with their values".  What they have is a legal obligation to provide a health plan to their employees, without discriminating in that coverage.  Y'all are making this up.  This "right" is pulled *right* (u c wat i did thar?) out of your collective ass.

And you notice, dear readers, that they're not even baww'ing about their precious pennies funding it at this point.  They're just upset because the practical outcome for employees is not within their control.  That they cannot literally force their employees to abide by their moral rules or force them to pay out the ass for the privilege of self-determination to go outside the purview of the church's control.  They are revealing perhaps more than they think they are, when they make this objection.  They've just admitted that no matter what kind of compromise we offer, it will never be okay unless they can completely bar their employees access to family planning of any kind, without regard for the employee's moral rules on the subject.  They really do believe that employing a person entitles you to control over that person, including in extremely personal areas of their life, if it's because "Jesus said so".

They then try to pretzel-logic their way into arguing that there's no point in providing contraceptive services for free like this anyway, because either it's the government trying to "convince" employees of religious organizations to use contraception they weren't already using, or just relieving the financial burden on those who already use them and pay out of pocket for it, in which case the savings that are supposed to go to paying for the coverage, which are intended to come from costs like childbirth and well-baby care that won't be necessary if more people have access to contraception, won't be there to support it.

The Administration’s assumption under Goal 2 [to fund the coverage with savings on birth/well-baby costs] is that the employees of objecting employers were not already using contraceptives.  If, for example, they already were paying for contraceptives with their own financial resources, there would be no reduction in births from making those contraceptives “free.”  (The only thing to which this would “increase access” is whatever the employees will now purchase with the money they no longer spend on contraception—and that could be almost anything.)  Yet in earlier rulemaking, the Administration tried to justify its narrow and discriminatory definition of an exempt “religious employer” by arguing that any broader class of religious organizations probably has many employees who have no objection to contraception and so will not be seriously impacted by the mandate. The Administration faces a dilemma on this point.  Is it trying to change these employees’ reproductive behavior, or not?  That is, does it assume that its policy will chiefly influence employees of religious employers to increase their use of contraception by removing perceived cost barriers, or that it will merely reduce the out-of-pocket cost of contraception for employees who already use it? If the former, it intrudes into the right of employees and their families to take account of the teaching of their faith without undue influence from government.  If the latter, the policy may produce no “savings” that can be applied toward helping to offset the costs of contraceptive coverage, because it is chiefly being applied to people who already accept and use contraceptives anyway. In the very cases where the contraceptive coverage is “free”—that is, where its costs are offset by “savings” in other areas—the Administration would achieve this goal by undermining a far more important freedom.

So they're again taking the very broad stance - you know, the one that can't even remotely be repackaged as being about "religious freedom" - that contraception should not be universally covered at all.

They're also making an extremely flawed assumption - namely, that employees of religious organizations which do not offer contraceptive coverage will be able to afford contraception outside that coverage and will have done so in every case.  Some can.  Some do.  Some are able to access other resources, like Planned Parenthood, which can help them access low-cost contraception.  But it is the height of naivete (and no more than I would expect from a bunch of celibate old cis men pontificating from on high) to assume that anyone in this country who wants contraception will have it with or without insurance to help them pay for it.

Not to mention, that people who manage to make whatever sacrifices in order to be safe from unintended pregnancy (or, y'know, to control any of the half a dozen conditions that hormonal birth control helps with...?), may be giving up almost anything to make that work.  Like better food - or enough food.  Clothes for the kids they already have.  The ability to live in a safer part of town.  The MM made that argument themselves, in the above quote, only they meant it to sound scary - who KNOWS what else those godless fucks might be doing with that money??? - rather than reasonable - who knows what those people might be doing without in order to have this?

And at last, we have reached the end of this coal train of bullshit, finishing on a summary note that reemphasizes their misunderstanding of the terms "health care" and "preventative care" by insisting that contraception is neither, and at the last brings it back to trying to make things about their freedom to impose their will on those around them, while disappearing the freedoms and lives of those most affected by this whole fiasco:

The final rule continues to keep in place a regulation that defines as “preventive health care” drugs, devices, and procedures that render a woman temporarily or permanently infertile, and that may be associated with serious adverse health outcomes.  We believe that this mandate is unjust and unlawful—it is bad health policy, and because it entails an element of government coercion against conscience, it creates a religious freedom problem.  

Similarly to the related issue of abortion, this problem comes down to a fundamental clash of freedoms: when the freedoms and rights of two different entities are in mutual opposition to one another, something has to give.  Someone has to come out on top.  Someone has to have the 51%, the tie-breaker vote.  And as usual, the Miter Mafia would see the individual freedom and lives of people with uteruses subsumed to the will of the Church.

Fuck.  These.  Assholes.  I cannot say this clearly enough.  The Miter Mafia is worming its way further and further into the lawmaking and regulation activities of an explicitly secular government which governs a population comprising many different faiths and often, no faith at all.

THIS IS NOT OKAY.

And I can only hope that the Obama administration and HSS have the spine to stand up to them and tell them exactly where they can shove their notions of Catholic moral supremacy.

Q.Q Harder, Miter Mafia. Your Tears Are Delicious.

Or, How Many Condescending and Belittling Synonyms for "complain" Do I Have In My Vocabulary?*

The Miter Mafia (which is what I'll be using to refer to the Catholic hierarchy from now on, to distinguish between my ire at the Church as a sociopolitical corporation as opposed to blaming the Catholic faithful as a whole) has submitted 21 pages (PDF) of crying about the fact that the government wants to make contraception available to people who want it, to the HHS's official notice of rule change regarding the the "contraception compromise".  Remember, the shitty insurance-company workaround the Obama administration offered to salve the Miter Mafia's hurt fee-fees when they threw their shit fit and held whole cis-male-only Congressional panels to discuss how the idea of people being able to access low-cost or free contraception was making their boners very sad?

Basically, they're still whining about the fact that contraception was not completely removed from the list of mandated preventative services.  (They also include "education and counseling" as part of contraceptive services.  So not only do they want to deny us access to ways to control our fertility, they want to keep us completely in the dark about the fact that said options exist and how they work!)

Failing that, they're stomping their little feetses because the exemption criteria weren't reworked to their specifications.  (Never has there been an organization in this world with more hubris than the Miter Mafia, truly.  In a country with an explicit separation of church and state, where you are far from the only religious organization, what on earth could possibly make you think you get to be the one to dictate the terms of exemption or inclusion from religiously-referential regulations??)  They believe that restricting the exemption to religious organizations is too narrow.  They want any person, or organization headed by a person, who believes that birth control is dirtybadwrong to be able to deny their employees coverage for it.  This is, of course, perfectly in line with their ongoing attempts to widen "conscience clause" protections to an absurd extreme such that bus drivers can refuse to continue their route if they believe a passenger is going to an abortion clinic, nurses can refuse to interact in any way with abortion patients even for mundane things like processing paperwork or checking vitals after the fact, and pharmacists can deny medication to stop bleeding if they think it's because the person had an abortion: they really do believe that nobody should ever have to do anything even tenuously connected with Teh Badz (abortion and b/c), even if that thing is extremely indirect AND within the bounds of something they have consciously chosen to do.  Like, say, being a pharmacist, or a nurse, or a bus driver, or owning/running a company that employs people who may or may not share your beliefs.

And then there's the pouting that the compromise is just Not Good Enough Anyway So You Should Just Rescind The Rule Completely, because it still allows employees to access contraception, even in a way that bypasses the employer, because the employer-provided insurance plan acts as the "conduit" by which access is gained, and thus the employer is tainted by association or some bullshit like that.

It is literally not enough, and will literally never be enough, for them, until they are able to make completely certain that every single person who needs contraceptive services has to go to completely independent third-party agencies for it, and pay full price out of pocket.  And I would not be particularly surprised if they argued against even that, on the basis that the out-of-pocket cost was paid out of wages earned from an employer, so the employer should be able to veto an employee's decision to use their money that way if that employer doesn't want their wages to go to such things.

And of course, they want to force us all to rely on third-party services and pay out-of-pocket while we're still in the middle of a recession, as they oversee giant cuts and defunding efforts to the sorts of places that offer that kind of care.

This is nothing more nor less than an attempt to forcibly impose their moral beliefs on contraception on the entire country, with a series of targeted workarounds that don't directly challenge established law and precedent, but which would have the effect they want anyway.  (Sound familiar?)  Restrict access to contraception on employer-provided health plans --> Expand conscience protections so any employer anywhere for any reason can choose to bar access --> Defund the organizations that help subsidize those (expensive) costs for those who don't have money to burn --> Millions of people completely unable to access contraception and therefore forced to live by the moral dictates of a religion they may or may not subscribe to which teaches that all contraception is bad --> Continue/increase the Church's immense power over the secular world and nonbelievers --> Profit!

(Oh and for bonus fuckery points they describe birth control as "not health care" because it "[disrupts] the healthy functioning of the human reproductive system".  So if you're not conceiving, it ain't healthy.  MOAR BABIES FOR EVERYONE!  I wonder how they can describe as "healthy functioning" the pregnancies that endanger people's lives?)

A Pro-Choice Poem for Mother's Day

This Mother's Day, as the antis try to use it for propaganda
(as they always do)
I want to thank my mother.

I want to thank my mother, not for simply having me -
But for waiting until she was ready to have me.
For having me when she wanted to have a child.
For bringing me into a home and a situation where I was planned,
wanted,
loved.

I want to thank my mother, not for simply having me -
But for all the twenty-six
(and counting)
years that have followed.
For making Halloween costumes and prom dresses,
lunches and dinners and Christmas cookies,
and in the process, teaching me.

I want to thank my mother, not for simply having me -
But for all the times she went to bat against an unfair world,
stood up to bullies,
taught me I deserved better.
For instilling in me a love of reading that has made me into the writer I am today.
For quietly, subtly - just by being the person she is -
instilling in me a budding proto-feminist sensibility,
So that when, in college, I made my first fumbling steps into formal feminism
it was less like learning
than simply coming home.
(And that, too, has made me who and what I am today.)

And with these more usual gratitudes,
I want to thank my mother for something else.
Something the antis would see as directly antithetical to the spirit of the day.
But which, I feel,
is exactly right.

I want to thank my mother,
For helping me to not be a mother.
For taking me to her doctor to get on birth control when I started having sex at 15,
for making it so that I wasn't one of the teens who had to sneak around and buy condoms under cover of shame and darkness.
For taking me at my word when I said for the first time, at about age 12,
"I don't ever want to have kids."
For never pressuring me to produce grandchildren,
and for waving off family members who might have.
(It helps that I have lots of cousins who have had lots of babies already, I suppose.)

And, six years ago this past week,
For driving two hours down at 5 in the morning to my college apartment,
so we could get breakfast before my appointment.
Sitting with me in the awkward hush of the waiting room.
Then, six years ago this very weekend,
Laying in supplies of favorite foods and movies and lots of very thick pads,
shooing my brother out of the house to go hang out with friends,
so that I could bleed out the baby I wasn't ready to have -
will never be ready to have -
in privacy, and safety, and comfort, and support.

That year, we celebrated Mother's Day by keeping me from being a mother.
And I have been grateful, every single year since.
So the next time the antis throw out that tired line,
"Aren't you glad your mother was pro-life?!?!?!"
I will laugh,
as I always do,
because they don't know my mother.
I do.
And she has shown herself, in a thousand thousand ways, a wonderful mother,
and part of that has been in her respect for my body,
my choices,
my life.
That's her pro-life stance.
She's pro-my-life.  Pro-her-daughter's-life.
Pro-the-life-of-every-person-who-could-face-this-decision.
So I think, when I laugh in the face of the next anti to assign a political stance to a woman they have never met,
based purely on the fact that she has given birth,
I will also say,
"Yes, she is.  But not in the way you think."

Happy Mother's Day, mamana.  I love you.

What About The Doctors' Rights?

In the overwhelming tide of anti-choice legislation (honestly, don't these people have ANYTHING else to do?), we've seen a trend of being focused on legislating what goes on in the exam room, what words are exchanged between doctor and patient, what specific techniques the doctor has to use.  As Melissa over at Shakesville has pointed out a few times, these "state-sanctioned rape" bills (laws mandating transvaginal ultrasound prior to abortion) not only enforce a requirement of coerced penetration on the patient, they require that the doctor administer said non-consensual penetration.  In essence, they victimize the doctor as well as the patient, by coercing them both to engage in an act of penetration to which neither has the option of not consenting to.

We've also recently seen a rise in striking-back bills - ones that declare "sperm persons", ones that would require a person seeking medication for erectile dysfunction have a variety of invasive medical tests before receiving care, etc.

So here's a fun one that combines those two angles:  A doctor in Alabama has crafted a piece of legislation that would declare that the physician's judgment and medical necessity supersede any legislation requiring specific procedures or services.  Here's the text:

No physician or health care provider licensed to practice in the State of Alabama shall be forced by state or local regulatory authority to perform any medical service or component of medical service if the service or component of service is not medically necessary or would be harmful to the patient and the patient does not desire the medical service. The right to practice within the scope of a medical license supersedes any existing or future legislative act.

It's basically the good twin to the "conscience clause" bills that allow people working in healthcare (often including not only the doctors themselves, but everyone from the intake and discharge nurses, to the person who cleans the room or preps instruments or fills prescriptions in any way even tenuously related to abortion or end-of-pregnancy care) to refuse to participate in any level of the abortion process.  If they're allowed to refuse to do certain medical procedures because of their conscience - and even, in many cases, allowed to refuse to refer for those services - why shouldn't doctors of a different ethical bent be allowed to refuse to do other medical procedures that they find offensive?  I think this is a fantastic idea, and every state plus the federal government ought to have one.  And if they vote it down, we should play "zombie bill" with it and keep bringing it back over and over until it passes.  ^_^

I wasn't able to find bill-tracking information for it.  RH Reality Check said that it was offered as an amendment which was voted down after only 10 minutes of debate, but also said to check the legislative calendar for the Judiciary Committee to see when it comes up, so I'm unclear on the status.  (If anyone knows more, please let me know in comments.)

Also, I found this sentence at the end of the RHRC piece to be hilarious in a lolsobby sort of way:

...action is needed to protect the rights of [people] seeking reproductive health care in statehouses across the country.

I know "in statehouses across the country" is meant to modify "action is needed", but I'm cracking up at how the proximity to "seeking reproductive health care" implies that they are seeking reproductive health care in statehouses across the nation.  Well, shit - if this trend keeps up, it may well be the only way to *get* reproductive health care.  You'll have to petition your representative for a permission slip.

South Dakota Requires Doctors Be Psychic, Divine Patient's Future Before Providing Abortion Services

Not quite - not yet, anyway - but that's pretty much where they're going.  (And I wanted to have fun with an Onion-style headline, so nyah.)

Remember that terrible South Dakota law, which was injunctioned (can that be a verb?) almost as soon as it passed, that required people seeking abortions to receive biased "counseling" from unlicensed pseudo-clinics renowned for their lies, misinformation, and manipulative tactics?

Well, they're amending it this session, and there's slightly-less-worse news, and ridiculous news.

The slightly-less-worse is that they're implementing a requirement that the counselors people will be forced to see at crisis pregnancy centers be licensed.  So at the very least, it won't just be a random volunteer spending an hour telling the pregnant person they're going to Hell and they need to go live with a good Christian family and give their baby up for adoption.  It'll be a licensed counselor condescending to and shaming them for choosing not to continue their pregnancy!  Isn't that much better?

The flat-out ridiculous is the whole new section on pre-abortion physician counseling.  The pregnant person must have a consultation appointment with the doctor who will be doing the abortion, and the doctor must, according to the new amendment to the law, probe into their religious beliefs and personal views, their mental health conditions, and precisely how difficult they found the decision to abort, in order to create a profile of "risk factors for adverse psychological reaction" (one of which is simply "being under the age of 22", for bonus age discrimination points).  Maybe it's just me, but I really don't expect to have to explain my theosophy on the universe when I go to the doctor to access a medical procedure, you know?  The whole thing sets up a nearly-impossible standard of attitude and history for people seeking abortions to meet.  Now, not only do you need to be pregnant and not want to be, and also receive counseling, you need to disclose your religious beliefs, and convince your doctor that it was totally an easy decision, in order to "qualify".

Oh, and all this information?  Goes on a form that is to be entered into the person's permanent medical record.  Cause I know I totally want details on my religion and decision-making process to be part of my medical records.  That's absolutely where it all belongs.  Right?

It's like South Dakota is taking the usual paternalism of anti-choice ideology and turning it up to 11.  Now your doctor is supposed to discourage you from getting an abortion, if you so much as found the decision hard to make.  Have these people ever lived?  Because life is full of difficult decisions, and a decision being a hard one to make doesn't necessarily make it wrong.  Why is it so impossible to treat pregnant people as though they are capable of making their own decisions without the intervention of multiple people pointing out every possible downfall and flaw of what they've chosen to do?  You cannot swaddle and coddle people from every possible consequence of their choices, and for a party that regularly decries "nanny-state"-ism, this is the absolute epitome of that kind of intrusive "caretaking" from the government.

Or in other words, it is the ultimate in concern-trolling.  "Here, let's make absolutely certain you're not in any way ever going to regret this, by putting eight billion onerous burdens on you and making you jump through a dozen hoops at every turn, just to make sure you've really thought about it and are really, really, really, really, really, really, really sure that this is what you want."

Hence why I said, in the title, that it won't be long before the GOP is trying to demand that doctors peer into the future and know for sure that an abortion won't in any way negatively impact the pregnant person's life, before providing services to them.  Because gods forbid people be free to make their own mistakes or hard choices, if those mistakes or hard choices include exercising control over their reproductive lives.  That just wouldn't be Freedom.

Karen Handel Resigns from Komen (Amid Copious Spin and Nonpologies)

The good news: Karen Handel, anti-choice politician and failed gubernatorial candidate-turned-VP of policy for Komen, has resigned.

The bad news: her resignation statement, which has been released, is a ridiculous batch of defensive spin and nonpologies, and there's no hint that Komen, as an org, has actually learned a single damn thing from this whole sordid affair.

However, Komen’s decision to change its granting strategy and exit the controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood and its grants was fully vetted by every appropriate level within the organization. [...] I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it. I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve. However, the decision to update our granting model was made before I joined Komen, and the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization. Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology. Rather, both were based on Komen’s mission and how to better serve women, as well as a realization of the need to distance Komen from controversy. [...] What was a thoughtful and thoroughly reviewed decision – one that would have indeed enabled Komen to deliver even greater community impact – has unfortunately been turned into something about politics. This is entirely untrue. This development should sadden us all greatly.

TL;DR: Waahhhh, I'm the victim here, I'm being scapegoated for something the whole organization was on board with, and also pro-choicers who rallied around PP are a bunch of meanies who turned this into a political thing (because it totes wasn't before).

There are two ways we can take the claim that the whole organization was on board with and agreed to/encouraged the defunding of PP's grant.  It's either true, and the decision truly was "vetted at every appropriate level within the organization" (although the use of "appropriate" certainly lends that statement quite a bit of ambiguity; "appropriate" may just mean "my desk" for all we know), or it's a defensive attempt to deflect the hot spotlight of public criticism away from her own face.  Either way, it doesn't really win Komen back any points.  If it's true, and this was an org-wide decision, it just means the whole damn thing is riddled with anti-choicers and/or anti-choice sentiment, and ought to be tossed even harder out on its ass in the rain.  If it's the spin I suspect it is, it's a sad little lie that nevertheless means the org was infiltrated but good, and can no longer be trusted because if it happened once, it can happen again.

I'm also rolling my eyes so hard I'm surprised I haven't sprained anything at the contention that the decision "was turned into something political".  As if taking advantage of a spurious, vendetta-based sham "investigation" by a politician with an ax to grind in order to justify cutting off funding to one of the biggest providers of early detection exams to underserved communities was somehow an apolitical decision, and we who responded should be ashamed of ourselves for "making it political".  Yeah, how about no.  A former politician guided the org to make a move against another org which has been targeted by political maneuvering, and you want to claim it wasn't political?  Pfffft.

Oh, and by the way - if it was really about "distancing the organization from scandal" with a position-neutral change to grant rules, as opposed to a targeted move against PP, then why is Komen still giving grant money to Penn State, which is under very public, very visible investigation for covering up child abuse?  If you want to make the claim that your new rule is totes apolitical, you should probably make it plausible by applying the rule apolitically.

This is just more damage-control and PR from Komen, in a desperate attempt to save what little face they have left.  But I'm still going to hold out hope that enough has been shown of their unethical nature, to enough people over the course of the past couple weeks, that they will end up fading back from the public eye, making room for better orgs to carry on the work of researching cures and supporting patients and survivors, without all the drama and pink ribbon$.

The Latest Skirmish in the Birth Control Mandate Wars

Oh, Catholic Church.  Can't you ever just admit when you've lost and move on?

Rhetorical question, of course.  No, they really can't.

After the HHS ruled that contraceptive coverage was part of the definition of "preventative care" that would be a requirement without copay for all insurance plans, the Church threw a hissy.  They claimed that their religion was being disrespected.  Mind you, the churches themselves were covered by a religious exemption from the very start.  Nobody ever tried to force churches to offer contraceptive-covering insurance plans to their employees, despite what the Catholic Church claimed.  No, the problem was in Catholic-controlled hospitals and schools, which, despite being religiously-affiliated, did not meet the religious exemption criteria of primarily serving and employing those of their own religion.  So because Catholic hospitals and schools routinely employ non-Catholics, and offer services to the general public, they would be required, like all other employers, to offer insurance plans to their employees which cover contraceptives.  They appealed.  The Obama administration refused their appeal, but gave them an extra year to figure out the logistics of transitioning their insurance.

Apparently that's not good enough, and in a truly epic tantrum, they had letters from the bishops read in services across the country, condemning the administration's decision and framing it as a matter of religious freedom and civil disobedience in defense of their cherished rights to religious liberty.   Seriously, read it:

In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation's first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). ... We cannot--we will not--comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America's cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights.

Dramatic, isn't it?  "Cast aside the First Amendment"!  "We will not comply with this unjust law"!  People of faith as second-class citizens!  Stripped of our God-given rights!  Dramatic and scary and completely, totally, utterly, and in all possible ways, bullshit.

I know I've said this before, but obviously, it bears repeating: imposing your religiously-motivated will on others who do not share your faith is not an integral part of religious freedom.  "My religion says I have to be the boss of your underpants" is not a valid religious-liberty argument to compel the law to support your bossing of other people's underpants, and denying you the support of law in being the boss of other people's underpants is not "making you a second-class citizen" - not in any world except your fevered imagination, anyway.

And now, the next salvo has been fired - a petition is up on the We The People site, calling on the Obama administration to rescind the HHS ruling on contraceptive coverage by religiously-affiliated businesses.  (You can find it here, if you want to look - be warned, it doesn't even try to make sense in its reasoning.  Something about the government "deigning to represent transcendental truth", which, bwuh?)  NARAL Pro-Choice America has put up a counter-petition, available here, which you can sign if you have a WTP account, asking the administration to remain supportive of the ruling.

I never thought I'd say this - as the half-dozen lolsobtastic petition "responses" sitting in my inbox waiting to be posted here for the lulz can attest - but you know, for once I'm actually glad of the total ineffectiveness of We The People as a platform for petitioning the Obama administration to do anything.  They can sign all they want (and so can we); I doubt either petition will make even the slightest bit of difference.

In fact, I might be convinced to bet actual money that both petitions, assuming each makes the 25k signature minimum, would receive exactly the same copy-pasted response reasserting the administration's position on the mandate.

Any takers?  ;-)

The Komen Brouhaha is turning me into a hipster

It's all I can do to keep from saying "Well, I refused to support Komen before it was cool!"

At any rate, there's little I can say that hasn't already been said very well by many other people - this is some fucking outrageous bullshit, it is demonstrating yet again that anti-choicers do not deserve the moniker "pro-life" because they don't give a shit about any kind of life other than the fetal kind, etc.  What I can do, however, is make available some links I've seen in various places, so that if you had been donating to Komen, or were inclined to make a statement by starting your breast-cancer-fight donations with someone else because of this, you will have a list of alternatives.  I know that Komen's vastness and extremely effective pinkwashing efforts have made them often the *only* visible target for people who want to give to this cause, and a lot of people wouldn't begin to know where to look for alternative orgs, so here you go.  In no particular order:

• Directly to Planned Parenthood's Emergency Breast Care Fund
• African American Breast Cancer Alliance
• National Breast Cancer Foundation
• Breast Cancer Research Foundation
• Living Beyond Breast Cancer
• Breast Cancer Network of Strength

As always, do your due diligence before giving money to an organization; I haven't had time to research these organizations in particular, so they may have issues as well.  Some are more focused on patient and survivor support, while others use donations more for research, which handily allows you to direct your money toward the side of the cause you prefer, or split it however you like.

Special thanks to Bebinn on Tumblr, and the rest of the feminist Tumblr community for the various posts and reposts of links I saw today and from which I collected these.

Would somebody put a stake through this thing's heart, already?

We have killed it three times already, and it simply will not stay dead!  Via RHRealityCheck, I hear that the zombie parental notification bill is back in California again, after defeats in 2005, 2006, and 2008, for another round.  Two different versions of the bill (one of which would require a 48-hour waiting period between notification and procedure, the other of which would not) are now circulating petitions to gather signatures in the hopes of making it to the ballot for 2012.

This particular fight is, in a strange way, dear to my heart, as it was the scene of my first involvement in a political campaign as an adult, back in 2005 - the first demonstration I ever went to was coordinated through the Santa Cruz Planned Parenthood against Prop 73, the first phone banking effort I took part in was also through them for the same issue.  It brings up good memories, but at the same time, it's annoying to see an issue I first fought for as a rosy-cheeked behbeh activist still in my teens, coming up again.

Admittedly, pro-choicers in CA sort of knew this would happen; the initiative has been funded each time by a wealthy conservative newspaper owner in SoCal who has publicly vowed to keep trying until it passes, and he's renewed that commitment after every defeat.  (Gee, must be nice to have money enough to throw at a failing proposition year after year - voter initiatives don't come cheap, especially if they get sufficient publicity to turn truly contentious.)  It does, however, mean the rights of young Californians will be continually at risk, until Mr. Holman either dies, or gets bored of it, or gets the message and goes away.

I would be surprised to see this bill fail to get enough signatures, since it's managed to multiple times before and this time, it's riding a surge wave of anti-choice momentum from the past year.  Most likely, it will end up on the ballot, meaning another campaign, more money and time and effort spent on simply trying to hold the crumbling battlements against the unending anti-choice onslaught.

Well, I'll be there.  Again.  And to my readers in California - or anywhere else, if you have the means to remotely assist - I hope to see you there, on the front lines.