Daily Kos

Reposted from cany by annrose

I grew up as an only child in a single parent family. It wasn't easy.

But one thing I remember clearly--very clearly--is learning there were no restrictions on what I could do. What I could achieve. Who I could become.

I did yard work and housework. Cleaned the garage and changed the bed sheets. Fixed things broken and put things together from pieces.

In baseball, I was always a first pick. Same with football. I was better at most sports than the male kids around me. But I had to settle for being a "bat girl" since I couldn't play in the boys' league. I was a Jr. Olympic swimmer and studied ballet for 11 years being offered a shot as child dancer on television. I attended college in the sciences for almost eight years.

I had NO gender related role given to or demanded of me. I wasn't raised by a feminist, but ended up being one merely by the lack of gender boxing. I was lucky.

As the right's political discussion becomes more painfully and unequivocally anti-woman every day, simultaneous with the notion that someone somewhere may be waging a war on religion, I wanted to change course and provide the proof that at least one religion is waging a war against women and has been for 150+ years. This is a religion I am most familiar with, but there are plenty more doing likewise. And it happens to be the religion of the unliked sometimes front runner, Mitt Romney, which makes it even more pertinent as this is the lens through which this man views girls, young women and women.

And it may help to explain why he is dangerous to women of any age.

This material is being taught today. Right now. Not just 150+ years ago.

Because of the debate tonight and the attention to cultural and religious doctrine espoused by candidates for the last several weeks, I wanted to put this out there to keep in mind should some journalist have the idea to question whether theology should be a factor in a secular office and perhaps to actually brave the theological muck which has risen to the top as of late.

And as a woman watching this disgusting display of patriarchal rivalry over my reproductive system, I am reminded that now more than ever, we women and the men and boys that respect and love us need to battle this with a full-throated response.

Reposted from DH of Oregon by Clytemnestra

One of the most unpleasant experiences I ever had.  Here's the procedure:  drink 32 oz of water at least 1 hour prior to the procedure - your bladder must be full for the procedure.  Feet in the stirrups, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Now hold still and try not to move for the next 30-60 minutes with a full bladder while they probe you with this instrument - over and over and over until they find what they need.

Ladies - if this shit passes, you have my permission to pee all over them!

Reposted from Laura Clawson by Clytemnestra Virginia Republicans continue frantically trying to figure out what to do about the state-sanctioned rape bill they seemingly didn't realize people would object to. With the state House postponing its final vote and Gov. Bob McDonnell no longer guaranteeing he'll sign the bill, some delegates and McDonnell staffers are talking about a compromise measure:

...after learning that some ultrasounds could be more invasive than first thought, according to two officials who were aware of the meeting but not authorized to speak about it publicly. Many of the bill’s supporters were apparently unaware of how invasive the procedure could be, one of the officials added.

To begin with, who would look at the name "trans-vaginal ultrasound" and not think "hey, this might be invasive"? But let's say the name doesn't quite register on you. How do you read even the most cursory description of a procedure that involves inserting a sizable probe into a woman's vagina and not think "yeah, that's invasive all right"? "We didn't realize it was so invasive" doesn't meet the laugh test even as Republican excuses go. That was the whole point. It was supposed to not just make it more time-consuming and expensive to get an abortion, but to make women suffer for it (as if the physical experience of having an abortion is pleasurable to begin with). But if they need to pretend otherwise to find a way to alter it without losing their woman-hating Republican cards, fine.

The Washington Post reports that "Democrats hope to alter the bill on Wednesday to make the ultrasound voluntary." That would be a pretty big alteration; it's hard to imagine Republicans being on board with that, even as some Republicans have clearly realized they can't pass the bill in its current form. But wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall as Republicans try to figure out what to do about this one?

Reposted from BruinKid by Clytemnestra

Jon Stewart was on fire last night, blasting Virginia Republicans for pushing their anti-women ultrasound bill.

And Governor Bob McDonnell, he's for the mandatory ultrasounds.  Is there anything he considers too intrusive?

11/30/2010:

WTOP REPORTER: The full body pat-downs that a lot of people are upset about going through the TSA lines... what are your thoughts on that?

GOV. BOB MCDONNELL, R-VA: I think that's probably over the line with regard to people's, you know, concerns about privacy and their civil liberties...

(audience boos)

OK, OK, Governor, let me... they're not booing, they're saying "Bruce".  We did, earlier, Springsteen songs.  Let me explain the concerns about privacy and liberty in the bill you're about to sign.  Women might consider this bill a TSA pat-down inside their vagina.

And by the way, it's not that Virginia legislators don't understand the concept of forced violation.  The supporters of this mandatory ultrasound bill believe many things rise to that level.  For instance, Virginia Republican Delegate Bob Marshall believes that the health care reform bill put forth by Obama "is not regulation of voluntary commercial intercourse; it is more akin to forcible economic rape".

See?  Bob Marshall feels like having to buy something you don't want, is like being raped!  "Oh, the cable package I want has to have the Lifetime Movie Network?  Oh!  Stop raping me!!"  Whereas having something shoved inside your genitals against your will is not rape.  He thinks that's not rape.  It's like a regional quirk.  Like some places in the country call soda, "pop".

I guess what I can't figure out is, whatever happened to the Republicans being the party of personal liberty?  Don't they remember this guy?

RONALD REAGAN (8/12/1986): The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Yeah, I got nine scarier words for ya.  (in Ronald Reagan voice) "I'm from the government, this wand's a little cold."

Video and full transcript below the fold.

Reposted from freelancewoman by Clytemnestra

The proposed Virginia law that would mandate vaginal ultrasound probe pre abortion resulted in a furor, that's having a salutary effect.

Yesterdays’ silent protest of over a thousand women who stared down their representatives walking through the gauntlet to the State House coincided with the vote being put off that day.

But the Virginia House has also put off ultrasound bill again today:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/...

The move came as a public outcry to bills restricting abortion has prompted some lawmakers to hint they may soften the ultrasound bills.

Two legislators -- one a conservative Republican -- speaking today on the condition of anonymity said one idea officials have discussed is making the ultrasound legislation optional rather than mandatory.

Other options are to pass the bills by or park them in committee. Either of those moves could effectively shelve the legislation for the year.

Over a thousand women (and men) looked their Republican representatives in the eye yesterday, and the Republicans blinked.
http://hamptonroads.com/...

Reposted from Joan McCarter by Clytemnestra For the second day in a row, the Virginia House of Delegates has postponed a vote on the controversial legislation that would require women seeking an abortion to have an invasive, trans-vaginal ultrasound. After hundreds of Virginians lined the streets around the capitol in silent protest yesterday, the House postponed the vote until today.

But the controversy over the legislation, and perhaps the fear that they might just be overreaching on this one, led to another postponement.

Some legislators suggested on Tuesday that they may attempt to soften Vogel’s bill. Two legislators -- one a conservative Republican -- speaking on the condition of anonymity, said one idea officials have discussed is making the ultrasound optional rather than mandatory.
Other options are to pass by the bills or park them in committee. Either of those moves would effectively shelve the legislation for the year. [...]

Gov. Bob McDonnell previously has expressed support for the concept embodied in the ultrasound legislation. Because the final product now appears to be in flux, however, a spokesman for the governor Tuesday wouldn’t commit to a position on the bill.

“If the General Assembly passes this bill the governor will review it, in its final form, at that time,” Tucker Martin said.

One of the bill's staunchest supporters, Republican whip Del. Todd C. Gilbert, says his party is still strongly behind the bill, and only delayed it so that it could be considered with a raft of other controversial bills, including "bills to relax the state’s gun laws, allow adoption agencies to discriminate against gays and others and permit homeowners to use deadly force against intruders." Quite the roll they're on in the Virginia legislature.

McDonnell's backing away from the bill could mean that at least one Republican in the state knows how to read a poll. Polling done this week shows that 55 percent of the state's voters are opposed to the bill.

Reposted from Liberal Granny by Clytemnestra

I am shaking with rage, unable to write until now. You see, I just read one more diary about the right wing belief that women "need to pay to play".  This diary may take all night to write because I am still shaking.  I will try to be calm to counter their lies and statements of belief.  They really do want women back under control, don't they?  They really do want to take us back to 1850.

Reposted from Joan McCarter by Clytemnestra The Right's War on Women really has become focused. It's not just a general war on the gender, with trivial things like equal pay for equal work. No, it's now reduced down the core. It's all about your vagina.

For example, see CNN's latest monster, Breitbart protege Dana Loesch. Commenting on the proposed Virginia law that would require women seeking abortions be forced to undergo vaginal penetration by an ultrasound-wand wielding health care professional, Loesch says that once a woman has had sex, consensual or not, she's given up all say on what happens down there.

OESCH: That’s the big thing that progressives are trying to say, that it’s rape and so on and so forth. [...] There were individuals saying, “Oh what about the Virginia rape? The rapes that, the forced rapes of women who are pregnant?” What? Wait a minute, they had no problem having similar to a trans-vaginal procedure when they engaged in the act that resulted in their pregnancy.

Sorry non-virgins, all your vaginas belong to the state now. Hell, with this reasoning, if you've used a tampon you've pretty much given up control. It's not just soulless, attention seeking gasbags saying so, it's the state. Here's what one Virginia lawmaker said about the bill, as reported by Dahlia Lithwick.

During the floor debate on Tuesday, Del. C. Todd Gilbert announced that “in the vast majority of these cases, these [abortions] are matters of lifestyle convenience.” (He has since apologized.) Virginia Democrat Del. David Englin, who opposes the bill, has said Gilbert’s statement “is in line with previous Republican comments on the issue,” recalling one conversation with a GOP lawmaker who told him that women had already made the decision to be "vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant." [...]

There you go, women of America. If you've ever had sex, your vagina is fair game. You don't get to say what happens to it now.

Can't imagine why that's such an unpopular idea in Virginia. It's so unpopular, in fact, that the House has decided to put off consideration of it, at least for today.

(Do not miss Clytemnestra's diary on this one.)

Reposted from Meteor Blades by Clytemnestra While the effort to impose religious dogma on the secular matter of birth control failed last week in great part because of an outpouring of citizen opposition, the victories of last year's anti-abortion juggernaut are starting to take their toll.

As we've pointed out here several times in the past nine months, the anti-choice forces made major strides in making legal abortions harder to get in 2011. They did their work at the state level where they have achieved steady, damaging victories for a number of years, but were especially emboldened by the Republican success at the polls in 2010.

To condense, 135 provisions were enacted in 36 states during 2011 relating to reproductive health or rights. Eighty-nine of those provisions restricted abortion, 50 more than in 2005, the previous record year for such legislation. Dry statistics. But as Carole Joffe reports, they are causing personal pain. Both for women seeking abortions and for providers.

First consider Jennie McCormick. She ordered abortion medication over the internet and now faces criminal charges that could put her away for five years. Joffe writes: "She has also been stigmatized in her own community to a degree to which the fictional Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter fame could relate." From the Independent:

When Jennie Linn McCormack walks the streets of Pocatello, the town in southern Idaho where she was born, raised, and still lives, she attempts to disguise her face by covering it with a thick woollen scarf.

It doesn't really work. In the supermarket, people stop and point. At fast-food outlets, they hiss "it's her!" In the local church, that supposed bastion of forgiveness, fire-and-brimstone preachers devote entire sermons to accusing her of mortal sin. [...]

Unmarried, impoverished and pregnant with her fourth child, McCormack faced the problem so many American women do because nearly 90 percent of the nation's counties have no clinics or hospitals that will perform abortions. That is an outcome of nearly four decades of attacks by anti-choice forces. For her, the closest clinic was in Salt Lake City, a 150-mile drive. Because Utah requires a waiting period, she would have had to make the five-hour round-trip twice. The expense of the trip, the procedure and follow-up medical care also worried her.

Then she found out from her sister about RU-486, the abortion-inducing drug. Her sister ordered it, and McCormack took the pill as soon as it arrived. It worked. But there were complications that brought the fact of her abortion to the notice of authorities. In Idaho, self-induced abortions are outlawed. Although the original charges against McCormack were dismissed last summer, they could be reinstated. The whole affair has put the issue of the constitutionality of the ban in Idaho, and by extrapolation similar bans in six other states, into the hands of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Then there is the provider. Joffe relates the example of Amy Hagstrom Miller, who oversees abortion clinics in Texas under the name Whole Women's Health. She and her clients now have to contend with new obstacles from a state law that requires a woman seeking an abortion to obtain an ultrasound from a physician who must describe to her in detail the development of the fetus. The same physician must perform the abortion, which presents a huge scheduling problem.

But, more importantly, the vast majority of abortions are performed at 12 weeks of pregnancy or less. The fetus is quite small at this phase. That means that physicians who want to avoid running afoul of a law that is intended by its sponsors to reduce abortions must use a transvaginal probe. That requires penetrating a woman's vagina, "state rape," as opponents have so rightly called it. If she refuses, no abortion.

From Idaho to Texas and other states across the nation, it's all part of the long-running effort to end legal abortions. There is nothing the anti-choice forces will not stoop to in their relentless war on reproductive freedom.  

Reposted from LaFeminista by annrose

The number of times I am told that "one must be reasonable" and "one must find common accord" in fact make me want to puke.

Yes but, when they talk about:

Denying contraception  is for my own fucking good?

When they talk about the defense of traditional marriage it is because they fucking care about me?:

When they want to stick a metal probe up my vagina it is not in effect violation?

When they couldn't give a flying fuck about my health care for religious reasons and for the salvation of my immortal soul?

Can they be fucking serious?

Every woman between Boston and San Francisco, between Chicago and New Orleans should be running these idiots out of town.

Some people expect me to be sitting down and talking to these jokers seriously for the good of the nation?

You're fucking joking, right? Right?

I'm so effing tired that conservative "values" must be give some type of bloody legitimacy, since so many in our nation hold these idiocies to be "true" and that negotiation is better that outright condemnation.

I'm at a loss, these people should be treated seriously?

What the fuck.

I am happy with who I am.

I am freed by whom I love and will not be dictated to and you may well ask why I am ranting.

The debate is no longer about subtleties of policy, it is about fundamental human rights, the right wing has gone too far in this GOP primary. No matter what they say from here on in has no relevance, what has been said, has been said.

It has not been voices from my side of the divide that has been engendering this gender war, far from it, so much ground has been given without a fight.

How scandalous would have been the choice of an all male commission to determine women's rights but a few years ago? Surely someone would have spoken up, right?

My question is:

How have we fallen so low?

The fight for women's rights started nearly two hundred years ago, are we still at the same bloody point?

We must reject the current right-wing thought completely from a philosophical standpoint, and we must insist that our own party is more vocal in our support.

We are on the cusp, and if we are silent then we have only ourselves to blame.

The right hates me, it hates all women, isn't it bloody obvious? This war on women must end, we have absolutely nothing in common either morally nor  of mutual benefit.

It is time to stop the pretense.

Reposted from Clytemnestra by annrose

I'm sorry.  Yes really sorry.

I did not know that the first time I had sex I consented for anything and everything to be  put up my vagina forever more.

I was under the impression that unless I gave consent for each instance of something, anything and everything, going up there, it was rape.

Silly me.

I just didn't know that once I had sex, inside or outside of marriage, consensual or nonconsensual (read:RAPE) that I had just given a blanket multi decade consent for the state, or anyone else for that matter, to put anything up there they damn well pleased.

I don't know why my gynecologist even bothers asking for consent for a pelvic exam, or why anything is considered rape after the first time a woman has sex- because once she  spreads her legs she has lost the right to object to anything going up her vagina.

Even if her first time of having sex was rape and that rape resulted in a pregnancy.

Female, CNN contributor Dana Loesch, knows the score.  Or at least thinks she does

Dana Loesch: The second hour of the Dana Show 866-455-9797, on-line 971dot com slash Dana . . . that's the big thing that, uh, progressives are trying say that it's, it's rape and so on and so forth.  And in fact this big battle  that  I've totally won with Keith Olbermann, by the way  like  not only won once but twice and three times, is .. but there were individuals saying (mockingly)
"But what about the Virginia rape.  The rapes, the forced rapes of women who are pregnant?"

What?!!

Wait a minute they had no problem having  simular to a trans-vaginal procedure when they engaged in the act that resulted in their pregnancy.  

forget her Palinesque word salad

  Ms. Loesch (rhymes with roach) said that a woman has no right to bodily integrity after she has her first sex act.  It does not matter with whom or the reason.  Even if the first sex she had was rape, (the trans-vaginal procedure) which resulted in the pregnancy.

There is no such thing as rape according to Dana Loesch, because consent is assumed after your first act.  We're all sluts.

I have been fuming about this all day.

Reposted from LeftHandedMan by Clytemnestra

I am Pro-Choice.

I believe in, and fully support, a woman's right to fully control her own reproductive destiny.

I believe that any woman should be able to obtain, or to opt of her own free will not to, a safe and legal abortion in a professionally staffed medical facility. I also believe that she should also be able to do so completely absent of having to prove to anyone else's secondary satisfaction that she is serious and has come to a final decision.

My position is pretty straightforward: 'It's her body, it's her choice'.

I believe that no woman should ever have to endure the reprehensible indignity of being forced by self-appointed guardians of both her womb and her virtue to prove to their satisfaction that her decision is binding. She should no more have to endure any battery of medically unecessary but still mandated procedures and examinations to get an appointment at a professional facility than she should have to run a gauntlet of physical harassment, scorn, and abuse to sucessfully get inside of it.

But there is something else I have to say.

I fully support a woman's right to choose to have an abortion regardless of how many women may choose to have one. I want abortion to be safe and legal. Period.

I do not care one whit if abortions are rare or if they are not.

The reason is also straightforward: 'Because it is absolutely none of my fucking business'.

My only concern is that abortion remain legal, and that every single abortion-related procedure that is carried out is one that is performed safely.

If there is ever any significant reduction in the overrall rate of abortions that occur in the US, say, as the result of a comprehensive new progressive plan that increases the availability of inexpensive and effective birth control to those who have previously lacked easy access to it, or because access to informed and effective family planning facilities or programs is expanded to previously grossly underserved areas of the country, then, wonderful, so be it.

My stance on preserving and defending Choice is about preserving and defending Choice.

Even if the abortion rate declines, or stays the same, or even if there is a very significant and sustained increase in the number of overall abortions. I am Pro-Choice first. There is nothing about a false equating of reducing abortion rates with being as important ensuring safe and legal abortion access and accessibility itself that matters to me or even enters my thinking.  

I steadfastly refuse to allow somebody else's 'ick factor' about the unpleansantness of the medical procedure color either my activism or my philosophical position on defending Choice.

"Abortion rates are frequently higher in more liberal states, where access is often largely unrestricted, than in more conservative states, which are more likely to have parental consent laws, waiting periods, and so on. “Safe, legal and rare” is a nice slogan, but liberal policies don’t always seem to deliver the “rare” part."

The ‘Safe, Legal, Rare’ Illusion
By Ross Douthat
New York Times February 18, 2012

This is exactly why I refuse to allow maintaining safe and legal acess to an abortion to ever be about anything other than maintaining safe and legal acess to an abortion.

Reducing in the rates of abortion is not my issue, keeping women alive and safe is.

If you want abortion to be neither safe, nor legal, buy into the frame of "Safe, legal, and rare."