When forced birthers say that their goal isn't to punish women but merely to save the fetuses and protect women from their own choices, they're lying.
Exhibit I-don't-even-know-how-many-at-this-point:
A Washington Heights mother whose miscarried fetus was found dead and wrapped in plastic bags inside a trash can in an alley next to her home has been arrested and charged with self-induced abortion, police said Thursday. [...]
The charge, which carries a maximum sentence of a year in jail, applies to a woman who "commits or submits to an abortional act upon herself which causes her miscarriage, unless such abortional act is justifiable."
Yaribely Almonte is 20. She has a three-year-old daughter. And she's hardly the first woman to be investigated for terminating her pregnancy. Remember the story I told you about in June?
An eastern Idaho woman faces a felony after she told authorities she took pills to terminate her pregnancy on Christmas Eve and kept the fetus in a box on her back porch for several days, according to a police report that was unsealed Tuesday.
Why did she try to terminate the pregnancy herself?
According to a police report obtained by The Associated Press, McCormack told authorities her sister ordered pills for her online and she took them to terminate her pregnancy because she did not have enough money to have the procedure done by a licensed professional.
That's what happens when the forced birthers make abortion inaccessible and unaffordable. Because women in desperate situations don't become less desperate just because it's against the law. And the $5,000 fine and five-year prison sentence she's now facing isn't going to help. Not that it matters to the "concerned" acquaintance, Brenda Carnahan, who just had to speak up for the fetus:
"I'm a grandmother myself. And the love and the compassion I have for my grandkids? They're my life. And I felt that if somebody didn't speak up for this baby, who would? It doesn't have a voice anymore," Carnahan said.
And thanks to Grandma Carnahan, three actual living children, ages 2, 11 and 17, could lose their mother for the next five years. Because that's what being "pro-life" really means: save the fetus, screw the children.
And who can forget Utah State Rep. Carl Wimmer's attempt to criminalize miscarriages?
This bill amends provisions of the Utah Criminal Code to describe the difference between abortion and criminal homicide of an unborn child and to remove prohibitions against prosecution of a woman for killing an unborn child or committing criminal homicide of an unborn child.
We do not yet know all of the facts about Ms. Almonte, but we do know that throwing her in jail won't bring her dead fetus back to life. It won't help her or her three-year-old daughter. Women who perform self-abortions don't need jail time or fines; they need safe and affordable access to sex education, contraception, and yes, abortion services. That's how you decrease unwanted pregnancies and abortions in this country. That's how you ensure that women will not take such desperate measures just to exert some control over their own reproduction.
When "pro-lifers" fight for these kinds of laws that throw women in jail and take them away from their families, it just further proves that they don't give a damn about women. Or their children.
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This week's good, bad and ugly below the fold.
- How would the media be different if it were run by women?
- Ugh:
Some women in the media industry have taken issue with what they see as the frat house vibe of MSNBC’s new "Morning Joe" promo, which features a responsible Mika Brzezinski waking up early and going on a run while Willie Geist and Joe Scarborough come in late from long nights of cigarette-and-alcohol fueled debauchery (Mike Barnicle wakes up on a park bench.)
- Double ugh:
Noted Catholic theologian and advocate Peter Kreeft claims that Catholics who support a woman’s right to choose are worse than the Catholic Church’s pedophile priests and are “straight from the devil.”
- Students at the Catholic Fordham University—which refuses to provide birth control at its campus clinics—take matters into their own hands.
- Yes, the wage gap is real.
- And so is other kinds of discrimination against women in the work place:
Alison Terry is one of the best swimmers to come out of San Diego, setting numerous high school records and competing in the Olympic Trials. She also received national attention as one of relatively few successful African American swimmers in a largely white sport, and for her outreach efforts with inner-city kids. But after more than a decade working summers as a lifeguard in San Diego, she couldn’t get hired for a full-time year-round lifeguarding job.
On Nov. 18 a jury unanimously awarded Terry, 37, a $100,000 judgment in a gender discrimination lawsuit against the city of San Diego, finding there was intentional discrimination that led to a situation where only six women and 88 men held year-round managerial lifeguard positions with salary and benefits.
- Memo to health care providers: if you think providing health care to women violates your morals, you're in the wrong line of work:
Twelve nurses filed a federal lawsuit against the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, challenging a policy that requires them to help patients prepare for and recuperate from abortion procedures, The Post reported. The 12 nurses comprise three-quarters of those working in the hospital’s same-day surgery unit.
- Apple says Siri isn't deliberately anti-choice:
Apple said Wednesday that the apparent inability of Siri, the virtual assistant in the iPhone 4S, to retrieve information about abortion clinics and women’s health services in some areas was not intentional or deliberate.
The company attributed the problem to kinks in the product that were still being ironed out. Siri is officially still a beta or test product.
- But of course the anti-choicers think it's perfect as is:
Now, one crisis pregnancy center in Boise, Idaho is simply “thrilled by the recent discovery that Siri does not promote or provide abortion information or referrals”:
Brandi Swindell, Founder and President of Stanton Healthcare, states,
“We applaud Apple iPhone’s 4S Siri and are thrilled that Siri does not list or refer to abortion clinics. Numerous lives will be saved as a direct result. Siri is setting the standard for all organizations — no one should ever refer anyone to get an abortion.
- Sarah Posner has a must-read post about the anti-choice movement in Rick Perry's Texas.
- David Usher, president of the Center for Marriage Policy, is an asshole:
Yesterday, Usher appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show to expand on his claims that feminists “came up with the concept of gay marriage,” telling Mefferd that feminists are using marriage equality as a ploy to convince women to marry each other and collect welfare from the government:
What happened was back in the late 80s, feminists decided that the only way to fix the structural problem of the single income family is to make it possible for any two welfare mothers to marry each other. But they couldn’t come out of the box saying, ‘hey we want welfare mothers to be able to marry each other’ because nobody would buy it, so they had to come up with a game that would work. And of course feminists being what they are, being really good at coming up with equality-based arguments that are as phony as a four dollar bill, they came up with the concept of gay marriage.
- The Personhood Amendment, a.k.a Every Sperm is Sacred bill, is heading for Wisconsin. And Oklahoma. And in Virginia, they're considering an extra-special version:
Undaunted by the Personhood Movement's embarrassing and historic overreach in Mississippi, Republican delegate to the Virginia legislature Bob Marshall introduced a bill to the assembly that would redefine life as beginning at the moment of conception. The law reads, in part,
...unborn children at every stage of development enjoy all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of the commonwealth, subject only to the laws and constitutions of Virginia and the United States, precedents of the United States Supreme Court, and provisions to the contrary in the statutes of the commonwealth.
All the rights and privileges available to other people? No responsibilities? How to I apply to be a fetus in Virginia?
- Hmm ... 2012 could be another Year of the Woman:
Democrats have accomplished the rare feat of convincing more women than men to run in leading Senate races next year. Include the six women up for reelection, and it’s the largest crop running for the Senate—ever. [...]
Of the eight open or Republican-held seats Democrats are aggressively contesting, there’s a good chance that a woman will end up as the standard-bearer in at least half. Democrats’ path to holding the Senate winds through Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, Rep. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Rep. Shelley Berkley in Nevada, and, potentially, Rep. Mazie Hirono in Hawaii. Party officials also are hoping former state Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp can pull off an upset in Republican-friendly North Dakota.