Apparently SusanG's link might have just been missed due to all the primary turns and Bear Stearns' impending funeral. [Update: Susan G's post, smintheus' catch]
"Following scant debate, the Senate last week approved an amendment to an Indian health care bill that would permanently prohibit the use of federal dollars to fund abortions for Native Americans except in rare cases."
Are you kidding me? Where are the women and feminists of the blogosphere? Are you familiar with the words of Jesus Christ? Because you may remember that he said what you do to the least of these is what you do to me. And Senator Vitter (Scum-LA) just gave a big "screw you" to the women of the poorest, most frequently abused racial group in the country when he couldn't to you in the wealthier, more powerful communities.
Update: Link here
I haven't been a supporter of Pretty Bird Woman house because I'm strongly pro-abortion, I don't think in terms of this single "issues" that white-cultured voters allegedly do. I support it because I want to upport the totality of empowerment and freedom for my American Indian sisters. It's not enough to say you're a feminist and then back out when someone's been sexually assaulted, physically abused, economically threatened, coerced, kicked out or lost their homes.
American Indian women are more than twice as likely to be "raped or sexually assualted" as other American womens.
Whatever their circumstances, Pretty Bird Woman House is there for the women of Standing Rock Rez, one of the toughest reservations in a totally brutal national reservation dichotomy. If a woman's needs include an abortion in the real world where women face poverty and abuse it's bare decency to allow her that. I'm for all of those needs not just self-righteous indignation that Vitter would take a piss on abortion rights.
And just to illustrate how scummy the political debate is right now, let's provide some very light context.
Tribal police can't protect the women. You, David Vitter, didn't provide the funding for a decent police force to protect women living along hundreds of miles of roads in rural areas with heavy snow and storms on only a single reservation and yet you dictate their moral way of life as well as their economic one? You and your buddies in the global elite are still giving away Indian lumber to Weyerhauser, even when you don't have the authority to do so. Your buddies Gordon Smith and Dick Cheney engineered the biggest fish kill on one of the most important rivers which happen to be the lifeblood of a number of tribes, because you were facing elections and you wanted to manipulate those who hate Indians. All your interaction with American Indians is robbery or cultural rape and then you declare a token day of memorial for your victims the day next to Thanksgiving to absolve yourself. A holiday which will doubtlessly never take off.
I digress. Pretty Bird Woman House would have never been build if we had an honorably regarded Indian Health Services and equitable law enforcement. But liberals have abdicated where conservatives have slashed. Rapists and abusers know that the law is stacked on their side against the victims, if the law becomes present at all.
Straight on up to Washington.
What you do the least of these you do to me. Any woman's abortion rights have been smacked down with this. If they're not universal, they're not human rights.
And to any defenders of the thoroughly scummy way race is being talked about in the context of the primaries and by definition broader politics, YES, racism is here. If it is getting better does not speak much to me since I wasn't hear 50 years ago and so have no responsibility for that. I cannot absolve myself of my role just because I want to take an optimistic view of history and human nature. Facts don't give me that absolution. That same Amnesty International study linked above showed that in addition to being the most frequently assaulted racial group of women, at least 86% of reported sexual attacks on Native women were committed by non-Native men. In the reality of our sexual lives racism is not dismissively better unless we have the luxury to avoid it.
Update: the Senate voted 83-10 in favor of the new Indian Health Services bill with all its amendments. All 80 of them. With what passion? No presence in the media. This is the definition of racism. If a candidate's stances on Indian rights aren't important enough to you to make you mad it would seem like you don't care. Racism is a societal formation. The association in many people's minds: hateful words, anger, lynchings, are only a possible by-product.
We people of American Indian descent as a whole are one of a number of Democratic-leaning (not solidly Democratic, or at least weren't before Bush) minorities who tend to favor liberal social policy and conservative religious/cultural values simultaneously in response to the battering of history. I remind us of the sad turns for Cecilia Fire Thunder, or same-sex marraige among the Cherokee. I personally want to make America a place where abortion never needs to be performed and continue to favor reforms that would do just that. Personally, I know that in reality I have no right to go bossing around anyone I wasn't there for protecting and supporting in the first place.
But yes, David Vitter has now converted one political bi-conceptual solidly into yet another staunch, unbending supporter of abortion rights for a generation. I will never try to use my action to sacrifice the big picture of what's important for one issue, no matter how right I am to support it, and that includes abortion. If the arc of the universe truly is long but bends towards justice there will be a coming day when there is no abortion. But not the way "Do as I say, not as I do" hedonists and sadists like David Vitter intend. You can't get rid of abortion before you get rid of rape, poverty and sexual illiteracy. Not ever.
It's a good thing there is neither a hell or any right for us to proclaim who would be there. A good thing for you, Senator Vitter.