Tag Archives: reproductive rights

Personhood Advocates Pledge to Try Again in Mississippi

by Seraphinakbj Posted on March 6, 2013

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Advocates of “personhood” for zygotes have decided that if at first you don’t succeed in banning all abortions, try again. And again, and again.

The anti-abortion group Personhood USA tried to pass a ballot measure granting fertilized eggs the same rights as adult humans in Colorado in 2008, and it failed. They tried again in Colorado in 2010, and it failed again, this time by a 3-to-1 margin. So then they tried in Mississippi in November 2011, where it lost yet again, with 58 percent of the voters even in this conservative state rejecting it.

So, the only logical next step for them, it appears, is to try again in Mississippi. On Tuesday, the group’s Mississippi chapter announced that it is working to get personhood back on the ballot. The Associated Press reports that the group filed paperwork with the secretary of state’s office on Tuesday in hopes of getting it on the 2015 ballot:

After a ballot title and summary are prepared by the attorney general’s office, the initiative’s sponsors would have one year to gather at least 107,216 signatures to get the measure on the ballot. That means the earliest likely date for a vote would be in November 2015, coinciding with the next governor’s election.

Mississippi only has one abortion clinic—which we reported on in a story and photo essay recently—that could be shut down in the next few weeks due to a new state law requiring the doctors there to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. So even without a “personhood” amendment making all abortion illegal, the state could be on its way to making abortion totally inaccessible for women living there anyway.

Reproductive rights groups reacted immediately to the news that the “personhood” folks were back at it. “Mississippi voters have already spoken: Health care decisions should be left to a woman, her family, her doctor, and her faith—not politicians,” said Felicia Brown-Williams, director of public policy at Planned Parenthood Southeast in a statement. “Mississippians expect real solutions to the real crises facing our state–not government intrusion into private medical decisions.”

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Personhood Advocates Pledge to Try Again in Mississippi

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Ashley Judd in DC: I’m a Three-Time Rape Survivor

by JoanSanderz Posted on March 1, 2013

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In her first appearance in Washington, DC since hinting at running for Senate in January, Ashley Judd opened up about the sexual abuse she was subjected to when she was younger.

Judd, who is considering a challenge to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) next fall as a Democrat, did not take questions from the press—although she did allude to reporters briefly as the “people here who don’t give a rat’s you-know-what about violence”—spoke for more than a hour on Friday at George Washington University on virtually anything but electoral politics. (Topics ranged from child prostitution, to female empowerment, to reproductive health care, to corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to her Kentucky roots.)

But her most candid remarks may have come when she was asked if she had any advice for women who have been sexually assaulted:

I’ve been aware of gender violence all my life, being a survivor of gender violence. Yet I was astonished when I went to graduate school and started to do a deeper dive on gender violence here in America how prevalent rape and attempted rape is, particularly amongst young people. Am I correct that it’s one in three college* students, college women? So that’s a lot. That’s a third of us in this room. And I think part of what’s important, in addition to how we shape the narrative, is that we all have the courage to talk about it, because we’re as sick as our secrets and the shame keeps us in isolation. And when we find that shared experience, we gather our strength and our hope. So for example, I’m a three-time survivor of rape, and about that I have no shame, because it was never my shame to begin with—it was the perpetrator’s shame. And only when I was a grown empowered adult and had healthy boundaries and had the opportunity to do helpful work on that trauma was I able to say, okay, that perpetrator was shameless, and put their shame on me. Now I gave that shame back, and it’s my job to break my isolation and talk with other girls and other women.

At that point, she acknowledged the audience reaction. “I see some people crying,” Judd said. “And that’s good.”

At that, Judd returned to talking about her work, mostly overseas, working with kids who had been sexually abused. “Because I am that kid,” she said. “I was that kid. And there are least a third of the people in this room who would tell that same story if they had the opportunity.”

Later in the Q&A, a self-identified rape survivor thanked Judd for her answer. “I am glad that you spoke openly today, because I felt so alone,” she said. “I know it is one in four because by my senior year in college I could count.”

Judd first discussed her childhood trauma in her 2011 memoir, All That is Bitter and Sweet. “An old man everyone knew beckoned me into a dark, empty corner of the business and offered me a quarter for the pinball machine at the pizza place if I’d sit on his lap,” she wrote. “He opened his arms, I climbed up, and I was shocked when he suddenly cinched his arms around me, squeezing me and smothering my mouth with his, jabbing his tongue deep into my mouth.”

Although the discussion of rape elicited the greatest emotional reaction from the audience, the bigger takeaway from Judd’s talk—at least according to my Twitter feed—was Judd’s frequent lapses into Hollywoodese. She referenced her friendship with Bono more than once, and at one point joked about spending winters in Scotland (where her husband is from).

*Estimates vary, but it’s somewhere between 20 and 25 percent.

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Ashley Judd in DC: I’m a Three-Time Rape Survivor

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In South Dakota, Women Can’t Think on Weekends

by gorso6 Posted on March 1, 2013

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On Thursday, South Dakota lawmakers approved a bill that will make its waiting period for abortions—already the most restrictive in the country—even more cumbersome. As we have reported here previously, the state already has a 72-hour waiting period for women seeking an abortion, but this new bill will exclude weekends and holidays from that time period—since, you know, women are not capable of thinking about their abortion adequately on a Saturday or Sunday.

Current law already requires a woman to consult with her doctor, then visit an anti-abortion organization called a crisis pregnancy center, and then wait 72 hours before she can actually have an abortion. This new law, which passed in the Senate on Thursday by a 24 to 9 vote, will mean that a woman who goes in for her initial consultation for an abortion on a Wednesday would have to wait five days before she can have actually have the procedure—six if she goes in before a long weekend. The governor is expected to sign the bill into law.

South Dakota has only one abortion provider, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls, and its doctors fly in from out of state. Women already travel from as far as six hours away to reach the clinic. While the clinic has said that has been able to find a way to make the 72-hour waiting period work, it thinks this new law will make it next to impossible for many women to access an abortion.

“It could mean that abortion is virtually inaccessible for many women, if not all women,” Alisha Sedor, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice South Dakota, told Mother Jones. “It doesn’t matter if abortion is legal in South Dakota if de facto women can’t access services.”

South Dakota voters have twice rejected a ban on abortion at the polls, in 2006 and 2008. But lawmakers have continued to chip away at access over the past few years. “South Dakotans have spoken on this issue and they do not want politicians interfering with the personal medical decision-making,” said Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota.

The new law’s critics have been having some fun on bill sponsor Jon Hansen’s Facebook page, asking him for advice about weekend decisions since their tiny woman brains obviously can’t handle them. Here are a few gems:

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In South Dakota, Women Can’t Think on Weekends

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Alabama Rep. McClurkin: Abortion Removes the "Largest Organ" in a Woman’s Body

by pedzacastrzala87 Posted on February 19, 2013

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The Alabama House of Representatives is expected to vote Tuesday on a bill that would place heavy restrictions on abortion in the state because, according to the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin (R), “when a physician removes a child from a woman, that’s the largest organ in a body.”

The bill would place a host of regulations on Alabama’s five abortion clinics. The Montgomery Advertiser reports:

The legislation … would require physicians at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at local hospitals; require clinics to follow ambulatory clinic building codes and make it a felony — punishable by up to 10 years in prison — for a nurse, nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant to dispense abortion-inducing medications.

The requirement that all doctors who perform abortions have admitting privileges at a local hospital is the same rule that is currently threatening Mississippi’s last abortion clinic. Hospitals are not required to grant doctors admitting privileges, so if local hospitals chose not to allow doctors to admit patients, abortion providers will not be able to comply with the law. That is exactly what has happened in Mississippi. (Currently, the clinic in Mississippi is open while it awaits a hearing with the state health department.)

“That’s a big surgery. You don’t have any other organs in your body that are bigger than that,” McClurkin told The Montgomery Advisor. Nevermind that the liver, the second-largest organ after the skin, is about the size of a football and larger than a first- or second-trimester fetus: McClurkin’s assertion that the fetus is an organ contradicts the idea of fetal personhood, a favorite Republican rationale for banning abortion. Organs are not people. That makes McClurkin’s comment possibly the most creative excuse for throttling abortion clinics in a while.

“Her comments alone prove the intent of the bill,” says Nikema Williams, a vice president at Planned Parenthood Southeast. Williams says the bill is “designed to close down all of the abortion providers in the state of Alabama.” The House of Representatives will vote on the bill Tuesday afternoon, Williams says.

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Alabama Rep. McClurkin: Abortion Removes the "Largest Organ" in a Woman’s Body

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Michigan Republicans Really, Really Want to Allow Concealed Guns in Schools

by hanhuogekennog Posted on February 11, 2013

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Damn the veto, full speed ahead for more guns in schools!

That may as well be the rallying cry for some Republican lawmakers in Michigan. GOP Gov. Rick Snyder vetoed legislation in mid-December that would have allowed concealed guns on the grounds of schools, churches, and daycare facilities. But State Rep. Greg MacMaster (R) is undeterred. He recently introduced the “Michigan School Protection Act,” which would allow licensed teachers and administrators to carry concealed pistols at school, the Associated Press reports. MacMaster, whose legislation has the support of numerous state GOP lawmakers, told the AP that his bill would let schools decide how to implement on-campus concealed carry policies. The speaker of the Michigan House, Republican Jase Bolger, has yet to embrace the new bill, saying lawmakers need to “take a breath” before moving ahead on the measure. But Bolger has also questioned the wisdom of making schools gun-free zones, suggesting he might be open to MacMaster’s legislation.

On December 13, the day before the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the GOP-controlled Michigan legislature approved concealed-carry legislation for schools, churches, and daycare centers. Post-Newtown, citizens barraged Snyder’s office with emails and phone calls urging him to veto the bill, which he did. “While we must vigilantly protect the rights of law-abiding firearm owners, we also must ensure the right of designated public entities to exercise their best discretion in matters of safety and security,” Snyder said in a statement. “These public venues need clear legal authority to ban firearms on their premises if they see fit to do so.”

Snyder did sign two other gun-related measures at the time, one streamlining the background check process for handgun purchases and another easing the sale of rifles and shotguns between buyers and sellers in states bordering Michigan. During a recent visit to an elementary school, Snyder sounded bearish on the idea of more guns in schools. “I don’t view dwelling on guns as the big conversation we should be having,” he told MLive.com. “If you look at the tragedy at Sandy Hook and the issues there, one of the big things we need to look at is the issue of mental health, and the issues of how do we help kids that have needs and different challenges in their life.”

MacMaster’s isn’t the only divisive gun bill introduced by Michigan GOPers lately. In mid-January, 13 Republican state senators offered the “Michigan Firearms Freedom Act,” a measure that would exempt guns or ammunition made in Michigan from federal regulations. Michigan joined nearly three-dozen other states in introducing such legislation. The measure is, for now, a purely symbolic one: There are no gun or ammo makers in Michigan.

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Michigan Republicans Really, Really Want to Allow Concealed Guns in Schools

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Obama Admin Widens Exemption for Contraception Coverage

by rakil23 Posted on February 1, 2013

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The Obama administration announced a shift in its policy regarding insurance coverage for contraception on Friday. The new policy provides an accommodation for faith-based non-profit organizations to the requirement that their group health insurance plans cover birth control.

The contraception policy previously exempted religious organizations that had “inculcation of religious values” as their main purpose and primarily employed and served people who shared their religious tenets. But other religious organizations that offer services (like meals, education, or health care) to and employ people not of their faith worried that they might not qualify for the exemption. With the new accommodation, those non-profits would have to certify that they oppose providing the contraceptive services required under the law; after they do that, they’d be given a pass from providing contraceptive coverage in their group health insurance plans. Instead, those women will get a separate plan directly from the insurance company that covers contraception.

This issue had been the subject of several lawsuits filed by religious-affiliated institutions like hospitals, schools, and social service organizations that believed they should not have to provide coverage for things that don’t align with their religious beliefs.

The new policy also changes the category of organizations that can qualify for a full exemption from the policy to the IRS’ definition, which includes all “churches, other houses of worship, and their affiliated organizations.” These organizations don’t have to provide contraception coverage at all if they oppose it.

One group that has been hoping for an opt-out for contraception coverage that didn’t get it: Private-sector CEOs who personally oppose birth control will not be able to remove it from employees’ plans.

Reproductive rights groups praised the change as a smart compromise. NARAL Pro-Choice America said in a statement that it is “optimistic that these new draft regulations will make near-universal contraceptive coverage a reality.”

“This policy delivers on the promise of women having access to birth control without co-pays no matter where they work,” said Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. “Of course, we are reviewing the technical aspects of this proposal, but the principle is clear and consistent. This policy makes it clear that your boss does not get to decide whether you can have birth control.”

This story has been corrected to clarify the new policy.

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Obama Admin Widens Exemption for Contraception Coverage

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Anti-Abortion Group to Lawmakers: Please, Let’s Talk About Rape!

by gerdi Posted on January 29, 2013

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Comments about “legitimate” rapes and pregnancies that “God intended” got several GOP politicians in trouble last year, and cost the party at least two seats in the Senate. But now one of the country’s most extreme anti-abortion groups is encouraging Republican politicians to keep talking about rape. Personhood USA—the group behind efforts to grant fertilized eggs the same rights as adult humans—announced last week that it is launching a new campaign to push lawmakers to strip rape exceptions from federal abortion laws.

Although abortion has long been a fraught issue in American politics, many anti-choice politicians have felt compelled—either out of personal belief or because of public pressure—to allow for narrow exceptions to all-out bans on abortion in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at risk. Federal policy has, for the most part, aligned with those exceptions. The Hyde Amendment, the legislation that governs much of the federal government’s relationship with abortion providers, forbids federal funding for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, and where the life of the mother is endangered. But Personhood USA’s new “Save the 1” campaign wants to eliminate those exceptions, and eventually make all abortions—even for rape victims—illegal.

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Anti-Abortion Group to Lawmakers: Please, Let’s Talk About Rape!

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Sex Ed Program Provokes Fight Over Planned Parenthood in North Dakota

by iscciaglewstrone123 Posted on January 28, 2013

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Last year, a pair of researchers at North Dakota State University won a federal grant to conduct and evaluate a sex education program for at-risk teenagers with Planned Parenthood. But now the school is backing out of the grant, and critics say that political pressure from anti-abortion lawmakers is to blame.

NDSU professors Brandy Randall and Molly Secor-Turner won the three-year, $1.2 million competitive grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families. The goal of the program—which NDSU announced in a press release last September—was to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in teens who are homeless, in foster care, or in the juvenile justice system. The school signed an agreement with Planned Parenthood in November to provide the services, which were expected to reach as many as 430 teens between the ages of 14 and 19. Planned Parenthood’s office in Fargo would run the program, and the NDSU professors would evaluate its results. They had already started recruiting participants, and the program was slated to begin at the end of this month.

But in early January, anti-abortion activists in the state started complaining about the grant. “When I see something that says this is Planned Parenthood—they’re not even a part of the state of North Dakota. They don’t serve anyone in North Dakota, and they shouldn’t be a part of North Dakota. They’re not a part of how we do business in this state,” said Rep. Bette Grande on a local radio show decrying the partnership: “It is an overt abortion industry that we don’t want to be a part of.” On Jan. 15, NDSU President Dean Bresciani said on a conservative talk radio show that the school had decided to block the funds, citing a “legal hang-up” that prevents the school from working with Planned Parenthood.

As the local newspaper Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reports, NDSU now says that it is “freezing” the grant while it figures out if it violates a 1979 state law that bars state dollars, or federal dollars coming through the state, from being used “as family planning funds by any person or public or private agency which performs, refers, or encourages abortion.” North Dakota Catholic Conference praised NDSU for making “the right decision,” and it got glowing reviews in the anti-abortion outlet Life Site News.

The school’s claims about legal concerns are specious, at best, say its critics. The 1979 law that the school cites deals with the actual provision of family planning care, like prescribing birth control or other medical services, which this grant is explicitly not designed to provide. It’s an educational program. Moreover, Planned Parenthood doesn’t even provide abortions or any medical services at all in North Dakota; its only office is in Fargo, and that office has advocacy, outreach, and education programs. Nor does the program have anything to do with what’s being taught in public schools, as some anti-choice lawmakers have implied. It’s outside of school, it’s voluntary, and participating teenagers have to have the consent of their parent or guardian.

The decision to block the grant has also angered professors at NDSU, who see the move as politically-motivated interference with faculty research. Thomas Stone Carlson, president of the Faculty Senate, issued a public response to President Bresciani on Jan. 17:

We are aware that you have received significant pressure from legislators (Betty Grande and Jim Kasper in particular) who have political agendas that oppose the work of Planned Parenthood. The announcement of your decision to freeze this funding on a conservative talk show and the quick response of several conservative groups thanking legislators for this important victory against Planned Parenthood, makes it difficult to see your decision as anything other than bowing to political pressure.

“The university president lacks the courage and willingness to protect and defend academic integrity that he should have as university president,” Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, told Mother Jones. “Bresciani is caving to some ideologically motivated legislators because he is worried about state funding for the university.”

“To turn away the grant on an ideological basis really just defies logic, particularly in North Dakota, where there is so little available to at-risk youth,” she continued. “This is really a program that is a wonderful lifeline for kids that don’t have other options.”

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Sex Ed Program Provokes Fight Over Planned Parenthood in North Dakota

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Roe: The Next 40 Years

by Unacoomt Posted on January 28, 2013

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Last Tuesday marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that affirmed a constitutional right to abortion in the United States. As the case heads into middle age, a new survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that only 44 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 29 could correctly identify what Roe was even about.

But survey results like that one only tell part of the story. The fact that many young adults can’t correctly identify a particular Supreme Court case shouldn’t be taken as a sign that Millennials—the generational term commonly used for anyone between the ages of 18 and 30—don’t care about reproductive rights. (After all, some of our elected officials can’t identify any Supreme Court cases.) Millenials’ actual beliefs about abortion policy matter more than their ability to identify Roe. On that subject, the poll results are clear: 68 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds believe that women should have a right to access abortion—the highest support in any age bracket other than the baby boomers.

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Roe: The Next 40 Years

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New Mexico GOP Rep. Wins Prize for Abortion Trolling

by wqds234der Posted on January 24, 2013

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You might think the 2012 election taught Republicans that talking about rape and abortion is just a bad idea. But apparently Cathrynn Brown, a GOP state representative in New Mexico, didn’t get that message, because on Wednesday she introduced a new law that would bar raped women from getting abortions because doing so would be “tampering with evidence.”

Brown’s bill, HB206, would make obtaining an abortion after a rape a felony punishable by up to three years in prison. Here’s what the bill says:

Tampering with evidence consists of destroying, changing, hiding, placing or fabricating any physical evidence with intent to prevent the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of any person or to throw suspicion of the commission of a crime upon another.
Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime.

As Huffington Post notes, the bill isn’t likely to pass: Democrats control both chambers of the legislature. But it is some world-class trolling that this is even being introduced.

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New Mexico GOP Rep. Wins Prize for Abortion Trolling

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