Grr. Argh.
I've been reading all these scary ass articles lately about an alarming number of states condescendingly restricting a woman's right to choose. These new laws (or pending bills, which I will not link to because I don't feel like crying right now) actually force a woman to give birth against her will, or at least make it really, truly, supercalifragilisticexpialidociously difficult and emotionally devastating for the woman to get an abortion.
That shit's fucked up. That just ain't right. Roe v. Wade is still on the books in the United States, but rat bastard Republicans have figured out a way around it, and that freaks me right the fuck out. It should freak out anyone who has a daughter, a sister, a niece, or a female friend; in short, it should freak out all of us.
And yet, on Daily Kos no less, we have at least one person decrying women's rights and explicitly stating that pregnancy is a woman's fault and a woman's responsibility.
Hello, Dark Ages? Is that you?!
Welcome to Sanctimonious Sundays! This is a new diary series that will be published by members of the groups The Amateur Left, Team DFH, and the Frustrati, as a collaboration of sorts. Feel free to get your sanctimonious on, baby! It's welcome here. It's always welcome here.
Before I rip the commenter a new one, please see the offensive thread first, which begins here.
From the commenter (bolding his):
Women need to be the gate keepers because they bear the child. Expecting all men to stop trying to get in their pants is foolish. A man can stop himself but he can't stop every other man from trying.
A women who can't say no is an accident waiting to happen.
A man who can't say no is not nearly as vulnerable.
Ah! So it's all the chick's fault because she can't keep her legs closed, is that right? You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me, dude. Unless she has a virgin birth (and, as far as I know, there has only been one of those in recorded history), a woman can't exactly get pregnant by herself. I mean, how the hell do you think that pregnancy crap even happens, Holmes? Stork? Magic pixies? Watching too many episodes of Sister Wives consecutively?
This attitude, coming from a supposed "progressive", really warms the cockles of my heart. And I have no idea what a goddamned "cockle" even is, but maybe that's because my arteries are clogged and bursting with joy at this disgustingly sexist repartee.
More (total fucking bullshit):
Women have to take responsibility and avoid pregnancy or spend a weeks paycheck on a abortion. The federal government does not pay for their parking tickets so why does it need to pay for their abortions?
In the case of rape or incest which is extraordinary rare and probably better handled by charities because of the politics involved.
From RAINN:
* 44% of victims are under age 18
* 80% are under age 30
* Every 2 minutes, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted
* In 2007, there were 248,300 victims of sexual assault
* 60% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police
* 15 of 16 rapists will never spend a day in jail
* Approximately 2/3 of assaults are committed by someone known to the victim
* 38% of rapists are a friend or acquaintance
Aside from the joker who wrote this tripe earlier today, women in this country have more than limited choice options and antiquated thinking to overcome. As LaFeminista diaried so very well the other day, there is an Orwellian trend emerging that is nothing short of terrifying. Prosecutors all over the country (but especially concentrated in the South) have started jailing formerly pregnant women for losing their fetuses, for whatever goddamned reason they can possibly make up.
From The Guardian article in LaFem's diary:
Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception. In Gibbs' case defence lawyers have argued before Mississippi's highest court that her prosecution makes no sense. Under Mississippi law it is a crime for any person except the mother to try to cause an abortion.
"If it's not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is," Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.
This whole thing stinks to high heaven. I wish to hell that men would stop trying to legislate what women do with their bodies, and that women as stupid as Michele Bachmann would wake up and see that, in the end, this isn't about abortion. This was never about abortion. This is about power. Men used to have it over women, and some men want it back.
Tough fucking shit. They ain't getting it, at least not from me.
Yesterday, I read this article from the Colorado Independent that made me hoppin' mad. Well, not so much hoppin' as swearin' and fumin', but still. If I had a word bubble following me around afterwards, it would have been very caustic and "FUCK" would have been in big, bold letters in the very front.
Troy Newman, president of the radical anti-abortion rights group Operation Rescue has announced that the group will be conducting a “massive research project to identify every abortionist in the country.” Newman says he needs fellow anti-abortion advocates to contribute any information they can about abortion providers where they live.
(snip)
“I have yet to find an abortion mill that doesn’t violate the law,” Newman said.
(snip)
In the past, putting a spotlight on abortion providers has had fatal results. The first “Summer of Mercy” held about 20 years ago targeted an abortion provider named George Tiller. That culminated in the first shooting of Tiller in 1993 by an anti-abortion activist and in his eventual murder in 2009 (committed by another activist).
OK, question #1: what exactly is an "abortionist"? I freaking love it how the Christian right always tries to make it sound like OB/GYNs who perform abortions absolutely adore death. Like they just went into that baby doctorin' business to FUCKING KILL 'EM ALLLLL!!!!!
It's like Grand Theft Auto, only the real life version.
Question #2: what exactly is an "abortion mill"? I simply have to know. It's probably something a little like this:
TOPEKA, KS—Planned Parenthood announced Tuesday the grand opening of its long-planned $8 billion Abortionplex, a sprawling abortion facility that will allow the organization to terminate unborn lives with an efficiency never before thought possible.
During a press conference, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told reporters that the new state-of-the-art fetus-killing facility located in the nation's heartland offers quick, easy, in-and-out abortions to all women, and represents a bold reinvention of the group's long-standing mission and values.
"Although we've traditionally dedicated 97 percent of our resources to other important services such as contraception distribution, cancer screening, and STD testing, this new complex allows us to devote our full attention to what has always been our true passion: abortion," said Richards, standing under a banner emblazoned with Planned Parenthood's new slogan, "No Life Is Sacred." "And since Congress voted to retain our federal funding, it's going to be that much easier for us to maximize the number of tiny, beating hearts we stop every day."
YEAH!!!!!
Question #3: Troy Newman, dickhead, do you really think that we don't know what you're up to here? Dr. George Tiller was murdered. Doctors who perform abortions have a history of winding up dead, and those who don't are relentlessly stalked and emotionally attacked. I surely hope the Southern Poverty Law Center is watching Operation Rescue very, very closely.
Goddamnit. Anytime this War on Women thing felt like ending would be too soon for me. I am done with this outright sexist crap that passes for information these days.