by Damon Martin

When the Republicans took over the House of Representatives, it was with a promise to balance the budget and take back the old time values of our Founding Fathers. So far the GOP’s best efforts to reduce spending has been to try to cut funding to NPR and PBS, redefine rape under the law, and now they want to take away essential medical services from women nationwide.

Yep, that’s right, the latest Republican brainstorm was proposed by Representative Mike Pence of Indiana. It would pull all Federal funding from Planned Parenthood, which was given $363 million dollars last year by the government, and helped treat or give medical services to millions of Americans.

Started in the 1920′s by Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood provides medical services ranging from birth control to cancer screening to pregnancy testing and counseling, as well as STD testing and treatment, and yes – that word Republicans hate so much – abortion. While the funding from the government never directly goes towards abortions, the money does fund clinics who provide those services, and that’s fundamentally why Republicans are after the organization.

Shutting down abortions nationwide by any means necessary.



The law, if it passes, would pull funding to Planned Parenthood and 102 affiliates, which according to the organization, would in turn leave 48% of Americans currently eligible for receiving care, out in the cold.

Pence has said publicly that this bill is just another way Republicans are trying to reduce the deficit and cut spending. Looking at the big picture however, as was the case with NPR, the Republicans are once again trying to fix a trillion dollar problem by cutting pennies – while moving forward with other areas of their agenda. Republicans continue to target women and abortion in many of their “cost cutting” strategies, instead of looking at real problem areas that exist with the national budget.

For example, HBO host Bill Maher on his Real Time show last Friday night used a prop to illustrate the bloated expenditures that make up the biggest part of our national budget. It was symbolized by two huge pieces of chicken, a pile of mashed potatoes and a giant mess of macaroni and cheese, which represented the military budget, Social Security, and Medicare and Medicaid.

Federal budget tweaks have yet to negatively impact those areas, and, as a matter of fact, the defense budget went up again this year. Also just to note, the nuclear program, which encompasses thousands of weapons, doesn’t even fall under the defense budget, it falls under energy.

To compound the situation with regards to women and what Pence and the Republicans are trying to pass off purely as spending cuts, several states are trying to pass laws to take things even further back towards the Stone Age as well. In South Dakota, legislation is currently pending that would make it legal to kill an abortion doctor. And in Georgia, they are trying to pass a law that would change legal terminology in “criminal law and criminal procedure” in pre-conviction proceedings so that rape victims could only be called “accusers.”

While the Pence bill has little chance of surviving beyond the approval in the House of Representatives, it’s still should be noted that the Republicans are time and time again trying to take funding away from crucial services like Planned Parenthood.

Pundits from both sides have taken up the battle, including Representative Jackie Speier, who took to the Congress floor and gave her own emotional account of an abortion she had due to unforeseen complications with a pregnancy.



“For you to stand on this floor and to suggest as you have that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought is preposterous,” Speier said.

Conservative mouthpiece Glenn Beck took an entire hour on his show on Fox News to rail against Planned Parenthood, and even went as far as accusing Planned Parenthood of sex trafficking. He also painted Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger as a racist and essentially someone who hated children. His personal attacks went on for an hour straight (although I could barely stomach 10 minutes of his drivel).

Technically, because Beck is so absolutely batshit crazy, he might actually help the cause of people supporting Planned Parenthood, so I guess maybe we should encourage his personal lunacy.

Despite the best efforts of the enlightened opposition, Pence’s bill passed the House of Representatives with a vote of 240-185. Of note, three Republicans did vote against the bill (Rep. Jeff Flake, Rep. Walter Jones and Rep. John Campbell). It will now make its way to the Senate where it will in all likelihood be bounced by the Democrat controlled caucus, but it doesn’t mean the Republicans won’t keep trying. Meanwhile the left need to expose the right’s backhanded attempt to destroy women rights under the guise of cost control. (After all, if a measure like this did go through, so-called “pro-life” Republican should be prepared to increase budgets for welfare and Medicare to pay for all the additional unwanted pregnancies and children cuts to Planned Parenthood might cause. )

It’s an attack on a woman’s right to choose in America, plain and simple. Republicans should stop pretending it’s anything else.

I really liked this post, about a woman law student's experience of law school, and particularly about class discussions of pregnancy--and by extension, reproductive rights law.

This is why the argument that people so often resort to when gender comes into the discussion--that talking about gender is "not objective," that feminists "have an agenda" (which apparently people who don't care about feminism lack?!?)--is so deeply flawed. Because the presumption is that the "objective" point of view is the one that is somehow disembodied, unsexed, ungendered.

Well, think about that. *Is* there such a thing as a disembodied, unsexed, ungendered human being?

And since there isn't, how could it even be possible to view "women's issues"--pregnancy, reproduction, abortion, childbirth--in an "objective," disembodied way? The fact is that some human beings can get pregnant (whether or not they ever do), and other human beings can't (however much they may love children). All the human beings that can get pregnant are women. None of the human beings who can get pregnant are men.

What this means, for women law students--and by extension, for any woman whose reproductive behavior, decisions, history, accidents, luck, or misfortune happens to intersect with The Law--is that The Law is not, and can never be, truly "objective." As the linked post puts it,

That's a very central, arguably *the* central, feminist point. If "objective" means "ungendered," then equality is fundamentally unequal. In this world, the one we live in at the moment, this inequality mostly (but not always) hinders women, because those aspects of humanity that are specific to women, or perceived as mostly women's province (reproduction, kids, housework, private life) are the ones that are seen as optional, as "choices," as alternatives to the (single, childless, defined by paid employment, fully autonomous) "norm."

Using a blind woman to symbolize justice is kind of fucked up, if you think about it.

Bitch_PhD finds discussions of feminist jurisprudence fascinating.

On Halloween--next Wednesday--the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the Global Gag Rule, the Bush administration's policy of withholding money from overseas health and family planning NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that dare to mention to women that abortion exists and might be an option.

But Bush's Global Gag Rule prohibits

It isn't just Bush--it's the fucking Republicans and their fucking hatred of women's health and reproductive needs. Reagan was the first to pass the "Mexico City Policy", or Global Gag Rule, which was upheld by Bush senior, repealed under Clinton, and reinstated by the Shrub. It's called the "Gag Rule" because it prohibits women's health and family planning organizations from even *discussing* abortion--even when the funds that support abortion counselling or referrals come from non-US sources.

In effect, the Republicans and their masters in the Religious Right are using the power of the US's role and money to keep foreign reproductive rights organizations and women's clinics--which unfortunately rely on US funds--from setting their own policies and serving their own citizens.

If, like me and every other decent human being on the planet, you think this kind of bullying sexist pro-dead-women bullshit needs to stop, you can go here to download a petition saying so. Sign it and spend 41 cents to mail your copy by this Friday to:

NARAL Pro-Choice America
1156 15th Street, NW Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005

NARAL will send you a pen for your trouble and forward the signed petitions on to Congress.

Let the bastards know you're paying attention.

Bitch_PhD really hates those bastard Republicans.

The two main posts linked below in all caps are not only worth reading, they're worth bookmarking, printing up on transfer paper, and ironing on t-shirts. Seriously.

CHECK IT:

Duh.

Honest to god, that right there should be the end of the fucking argument, people. Women abort pregnancies whether or not the Man "allows" them to, because women are in charge of pregnancies and we know if we can deal with another kid or not. Period. Either you believe that women who abort deserve to die, in which case you're "anti-abortion" (or "pro-life", or you don't, in which case you're "pro-choice".

Let's rename those groups to reflect the facts. The antis can be the "pro dead women" camp and the pros can be the "pro adequate medical care" camp.

Extra bonus kicker:

Again, duh. How does the "pro dead women" camp stack up on the question of contraception? Catholic Church--anti-contraception (hence, pro dead women). George Bush--anti-contraception = pro dead women. The National Right to Life--officially has no position on contraception but is anti-Planned Parenthood, anti-health-care reform and pro-criminalizing abortion = pro dead women. Feminists for Life--pro-criminalization, "no opinion" on birth control = pro dead women. Concerned Women for America--anti-birth control = pro dead women.

Try it. Google any so-called pro-life organization you want + "birth control" and find out if they support birth control or not. Is their anti-abortion prosition "prevent abortions" or is it "make abortions dangerous"?

And for extra bonus points, see what they have to say about Planned Parenthood, which does more to prevent abortion in this country than any other organnization.

Part two

As ONE MEDICAL STUDENT EXPLAINS, to his surprise.

Read the whole thing--he puts to rest a lot of the cliches about who uses Planned Parenthood ("They are sexually active, almost always with one, monogamous partner, and they do not want to get pregnant."), whether or not women who use Planned Parenthood are "responsible" ("my patients are more informed about their health and medicines than me"), and whether they're the exception or the norm ("Over 90% of women of childbearing age use some sort of contraception method").

And yes, they also provide safe abortions. Because doing so is a necessary part of women's reproductive health care, one that saves lives.

Like I said, this shit deserves to be printed on t-shirts. Hell, shouted from the rooftops.

Bitch_PhD dismisses anyone who doesn't support Planned Parenthood as a woman-hating asshole, even if they're a woman themselves.

More statistics (including image source) here.

Lorraine Rothman died a couple of weeks ago, though the mainstream press is only now publishing obituaries.

Who was Lorraine Rothman?

Menstrual extraction was, and is, truly revolutionary. Using a simple device, which Rothman made with

women could perform early abortions on one another and on themselves. With simple training, the procedure was safe and effective, and it was used by women in the days before legal abortion in this country to help one another terminate unwanted pregnancies.

Rothman was also a pioneer of the movement, radical in the 1960s and 70s, to teach women to look at and be familiar with their own sexual and reproductive organs. With her friend Carol Downer, she established the Los Angeles Feminist Women's Health Center; later she wrote Menopause Myths & Facts, which argued--correctly, as it turned out--that "hormone replacement therapy" was unhealthy and unnecessary for women undergoing normal menopause.

Rothman's legacy is especially pertinent nowadays, for reasons that should be obvious. Witness, for example, what is happening now in Nicaragua, where abortion is now illegal, with no exceptions for a woman's health:

And of course González is not the only one.

As Echidne of the Snakes points out,

Criminalizing doctors for performing safe--and necessary--medical procedures creates an atmosphere of fear and reluctance around those same safe--and necessary--procedures; in such an atmosphere, women die. links to evidence that some anti-abortion activists will argue that

which is clearly not true; aside from emergencies like ectopic pregnancies, there's the very real and ugly fact that women *will* do dangerous and even fatal things to abort unwanted pregnancies.

Which is why women like Lorraine Rothman were, and are, heroines.

Bitch_PhD thinks more people should know how to perform menstrual extraction.

Well, whaddya know. Yesterday a State's Attorney in Illinois declared that, guess what, Planned Parenthood's permit for their Aurora clinic was perfectly legal.

Quel surprise: Planned Parenthood makes sure all its i's are dotted and all its t's are crossed when they build a new clinic.

Sorry, buddy, that's the way the law works: you make a stink, it goes before a judge, and the judge--yes, just one--makes his decision. Sorry your grapes are sour.

It seems that the antis aren't likely to have much luck, though obviously they intend to keep trying to figure out how to deny suburban Chicagoans complete--and legal--reproductive health care.

Meanwhile, there are women who have appointments at the clinic tomorrow. Guess they don't agree with the protesters who think that Planned Parenthood is "bad for Aurora."

More details are available at the Planned Parenthood Aurora blog, which posted this statement by Trombley earlier today:

One in four women in America. Thank god for Planned Parenthood.

Bitch_PhD went to Planned Parenthood for her first birth control prescription when she was just 17. It was the beginning of a long and healthy sex life free of unwanted pregnancies, and she is duly grateful. She wishes the same to all the women in Aurora who will use Planned Parenthood's services in the coming years.

At the risk of sounding divisive, I must start out by saying this is a news story for guys. Y-chromosome-havers. Bros. Dudes. Hombres. Hommes. Other words that could also be the names of gay male porno mags.

Not to say that the ladies can’t read this, I mean, if you’re really easily entertained or are trying to catch all of my glaring grammatical errors, Pokemon-style. It just might not have the same visceral impact on you as it does us guy-type-folk.

Fellas, how many times has this happened to you?

You’re sitting around your apartment, or dorm room, or dimly-lit basement that really is a good deal creepier than you think it is so maybe your recent dry spell isn’t because you’re “too nice of a guy”, or super-secret supervillain-style lair nestled inside the heart of an active and quite evil volcano, or some combination thereof. You’re playing Halo 3 or reading Dostoevsky or “logging on” to “the Internet” and “blogging” or huffing glue or krumpin’ or watching a Steven Segal movie or writing a poem about the girl who broke your heart using a combination of eyeliner and your sweet, sensitive tears as ink or whatever the fuck it is you kids do these days.

You may perhaps be in the nude. Because it’s more comfortable, or maybe because you enjoy startling delivery people. Perhaps not.

Eventually, you notice your testicles. They might be itchy, for example. You could be proactively checking for pre-cancerous lumps. Or masturbating. You may have recently nailed them to a board, and the wood grain is chafing your thighs. You may have lost one or more of them in a tragic farmyard or industrial accident and are now writing a very angry email to the author of this article about his callous attitude towards victims of testicular trauma.

You may take a moment to marvel at how your testicles provide you with sperm, testosterone and a searing reminder of the inherent fragility of the male body when you’re punched in them. This third benefit of having testicles is also known as “comedy gold” and must, by law, be featured in every PG-13 rated summer comedy.

Then you get a bit wistful and wonder if there isn’t perhaps a way your balls could be even more awesome.

Well, cheer up, since modern science has come to your rescue.

Here in New York City (which as well all know has been on the forefront of testicle research since at least the 1960s) scientists recently announced that they have been able to identify and extract from the testicles of mice the specific “progenitor” cells that eventually turn into mouse sperm cells once the scientists stop staring and poking at mouse junk and give the mice some privacy.

“Big deal,” you may say, “ Anyone with a syringe and way too much time on their hands can drain themselves some mouse balls.”

What makes these experiments with mouse testicles scientific, as opposed to just a really awkward day at the pet store, is that the scientists involved were then able to easily coax these progenitor cells into becoming “multi-potent” stem cells.

Stem cells, for those of you just now joining us from the 18th Century, are basically the impressionable youngsters of the biological cellular family. Most of the cells in the human body are a lot like me, cranky and old and set in their ways. If or when they get around to replicating, they usually only make duplicates of themselves. This isn’t a bad thing, since you normally don’t want the dead skin cells on your arms to be replaced with spleen cells, or cancer.

Stem cells, on the other hand, are open to all kinds of new experiences, and really just want to fit in. So when they’re not making out with other stem cells at parties or doing drugs because all the cool stem cells are doing them, they’re easily influenced into changing into other types of cells. Theoretically this means that stem cells can be used to replace cells in the human body, such as those found in the brain and spinal cord, that have been damaged due to disease or injury.

Scientists have been using two types of stem cells in their research. “Adult” stem cells are harvested from umbilical cord blood, connective tissue, and from creepy little glowing-eyed girls that lurk in underwater Objectivist dystopias. “Embryonic” stem cells are harvested from human embryos that are still in the very earliest stages of development (a process with destroys the embryo) or are created from the tears Jesus sheds after homosexual Satanists murder innocent tiny snowflake babies in the name of the false God they call “science”. Embryonic stem cells can change into a wider variety of cells than adult stem cells can, but research on adult stem cells both avoids pissing off anti-abortion activists and can be fully federally funded.

This explains why scientists spend more time playing with mouse testicles than heading down the local in-vitro fertilization clinic and saying, “Hey, since you’re about to destroy all those unwanted frozen embryos anyway, do you mind if we use them to maybe try and cure Multiple Sclerosis?”

While there are many possible advantages to harvesting stem cells from your own balls, such as a reduced risk of your body rejecting the transplanted stem cells, there are still a few bumps in the road to full testicular awesomeness.

Even if scientists are able to replicate their mouse-based findings in humans, some scientists have other concerns. As one British stem cell researcher phrased it:

Way to underestimate Americans, dude. All you’d need to do is film the procedure and advertise it as an open casting call for a Jackass: The Movie sequel. You’d have guys lined up around the block eagerly waiting their turn to have a huge needle jammed into their nutmeat.

Personally, I’d like to have federal law amended so that anyone in Congress or the White House voting against funding embryonic stem cell research has to have their balls harvested for the good of America.

Of course, then you might wind up having to tell people who’ve just been cured of Alzheimer’s that they have George W. Bush’s testicles to thank.

Now that's what I'd call a very painful procedure.

Even during an election year, not every governmental non-event can be properly inflated by both politicians and the media into a full-blown non-scandal. To really grab the attention of the public, you need something extra. Like wide-stanced homosexual foot-tapping (in public restrooms, not in the audience for the Broadway musical version of Xanadu).

Or in Australia’s case, tits.

See, didn’t that catch your eye?

Yes, on the eve of the upcoming Australian general election, the opposition Labor Party has brought up the ever-important wedge issue of tits.

Specifically, the new fake tits belonging to two female sailors in the Australian Navy.

These controversial fake tits were paid for by Australian taxpayers, as opposed to politically acceptable methods of fake tit payment such as a pile of sweat-and-glitter-soaked $20 bills fished out of a stripper’s g-string or cashing out a trust fund for a daughter’s graduation gift in lieu of a pony.

Australia’s Department Of Defence defends the fake tits, claiming that they were approved for psychological reasons, not simply to make the sailors “look sexy”. However, the Labor Party has grabbed on to the fake tit issue, claiming that allowing taxpayer money to fund free cosmetic surgery for people in the Australian military “smacks of a government out of touch”.

In case you think the non-issue of fake tits and real guns doesn’t translate well across the Pacific, think again. In the United States, a similar non-scandal perked up back in 2004 when an article in the New Yorker exposed our military’s own set of fake tits.

Yes, the United States military also uses taxpayer funds to pay for cosmetic surgery. However, the Army, the Air Force and the Navy were quick to dispel the impression that Vivid Video was now a co-sponsor, clarifying that while some cosmetic surgical procedures were offered for free or at a reduced cost to active-duty soldiers, they took a back seat to reconstructive surgeries and allowed military surgeons to improve their overall skills.

Personally, I’m not opposed to offering cosmetic surgery as a perk to folks in our armed forces. Of course, I’d hope that they were also offered enough body armor and time with their families, but apparently you go to ill-advised poorly planned war with the fake tits you have, not the fake tits you want to have.

If anything, I think the United States military should pay for more surgical procedures for our troops and their family members.

Like, say, abortions.

Under current federal law, the United States military cannot pay for abortions except in cases of incest, rape or when the life of the mother is in danger.

When the pregnant wife of a Navy sailor discovered the child she was carrying suffered from severe brain damage and would not survive past childbirth and decided to have an abortion, the Navy told her she’d have to pay all of the $3,000 cost. Unable to afford the medical costs, she sued the Navy and won, only to have the ruling overturned by a federal appeals court.

At least once she’s done using her minimum-wage salary to pay off her medical debts and has dealt with the emotional anguish of having lost her child, the Navy might just reward her with something that’s obviously a much more important use of taxpayer funds.

Fake tits!

When does life begin: with the chicken, or the egg?

A judge in New Jersey has a moment of sanity.

I am sorry for the woman in the case, and if her doctor actually said to her "don't be stupid" her doctor is an asshole. But it is up to her, not her doctor--and sure as shit not a judge--to decide if a six-week old fetus is a "baby" or not.

As it should be for every pregnant woman at every stage of pregnancy.

Bitch_PhD nominates Justice Albin for the SCOTUS.

Hurrah! Feministing announces that Congress has voted to repeal the Global Gag Rule, which banned U.S. family planning money to international organizations that so much as mentioned abortion internationally.

First passed in Reagan's second term, the Gag Rule stayed in place under Bush senior, was abandoned under Clinton (hurrah), and then reinstated, of course, by baby Bush. So this vote is the first time since 1993 that Congress has stood up for international women's reproductive rights. And, by the way, for actual science: there's no evidence that the Gag Rule reduces the incidence of abortions (especially since it withholds funding from the very organizations that are most likely to provide birth control), and plenty of evidence that it undermines women's health all over the world.

Who do we have to thank? In the Senate, Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME). Wanna tell me again that getting women into office doesn't matter? In the House, the original amendment was sponsored by Nita Lowey (D-NY) and Christopher Shays (R-CN). Wanna tell me again that being pro-women in office necessarily means being anti-man? (Hint: it doesn't--good on you, Rep. Shays).

Bush, of course, being a complete asshole, promises a veto--even if doing so means vetoing the entire $34 million foreign assistance bill that the amendment is attached to. Gotta love a man of principle: if women are gonna get to hear about abortion, no one is going to get any help!

Hang on, world. We'll be getting rid of this jackass next year, we promise.

Bitch_PhD apologizes for the lack of image on this article--my laptop's died, the computer I'm using doesn't have graphic imaging software, and no one's in the office what with it being Sunday and all.

Ah, Aurora, IL. Wealthy, conservative, smugly suburban. And of course horrified to find a Planned Parenthood in their midst.

Or in reactionary freakouts about the possibility that women in suburban Chicago might have a safe, anonymous place to get reproductive healthcare in an atmosphere where their health care providers are as likely as not to let their anti-abortion zeal interfere with their professionalism:

Much as some Aurorans would like to pretend, the difficulties there aren't just a question of local transparency or community values. There's a well-funded national campaign to attack Planned Parenthood--which, it shouldn't need to be said, provides birth control, pap smears, reproductive counselling, and in some cases overall health care to women (and sometimes even men!) to women who for reasons of privacy don't want to talk to their family docs, as well as to women who for reasons of poverty or lack of health insurance don't even *have* family docs.

Small wonder that PP has set up a subsidiary, "Gemini Office Development," under which they apply for necessary permits; everyone's fine with "Gemini Health Clinic" as long as it doesn't offer a *full* range of women's health care.

Specifically, the Aurora clinic will offer

• pregnancy testing
• a range of contraceptive options
• emergency contraception
• gynecological services
• Pap tests
• colposcopy services for abnormal Pap tests
• sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing and treatment, including rapid HIV testing
• abortion services (both surgical and medication) with sedation options
• options counseling, including adoption referrals

Joe Scheidler, the president of the Pro-Life Action League, which is based in Chicago (not in Aurora!)

Gosh, I wonder why PP tries to hide its identity when setting up new clinics. I bet the workers wish they could hide theirs. All praise to them for being willing to put up with implicit threats in order to give the women of Chicago's western suburbs safe, affordable healthcare.

You can support PP here, donate to help keep the clinic open (and fund its legal battle) here,

Bitch_PhD wishes people would realize that PP probably *prevents* more abortions than it provides, what with contraception and emergency contraception and actually educating people about birth control and all.

The news that Amnesty International has decided to support abortion access as a basic human right is, hopefully, not news to anyone reading this. But I'm linking to it now because there's a statement in this article, about their affirming that decision last month in Mexico, because there's a really, really awesome pull quote from Amnesty's senior director for international legal issues that I think should be made into samplers, throw pillows, tattoos, bumper stickers, buttons, and tshirts and spread far and wide.

Bin. Go.

And that, my friends, is the problem with the "I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist" argument. There are some human rights issues that are specific to women (albeit with indirect effects on men, what with men often being in relationships with women and all). To try to duck that fact by appealing to some argument that "humanism" is inclusive while "feminism" is exclusive or exclusionary, well, what you're saying is that only things that affect men count, and that things that affect women, and specifically women, aren't inclusive enough.

In other words, if there's nothing in it for boys, it's not important.

To which all right-thinking people will say: go to hell.

Bitch_PhD figures that the Catholic Church made it obvious a long time ago that they don't consider women fully human.

Clearly, the above billboard is completely awesome, and if I lived in Manhattan, I would go store all my shit with Manhattan Mini Storage. If I had no shit to store, I would go out and buy shit in order to store it there.

But apparently some people disagree.

Indeed. Like, say, for instance this:

"Titties and food! Yay! And we make no apologies for it, either!" WTF? Only in a totally bizarro world do we think this sort of thing is unremarkable.

Or this:

"Hi, I'm a slut! Who eats meat! Hahaha, you know what we're talking about here!" Again, people: this is just so, so, gross.

Or even, y'know, this:

"Look at my panties!" Uhm, yeah. Right.

Porn, fine. Whatever. But for god's sake, if you want the unquestioned right to use women's sexuality to sell stupid unrelated shit, then let's not get all bent out of shape when someone uses women's right to their own bodies to do so.

Bitch_PhD wouldn't mind if the ad had said "your" right to choose rather than "her" right to choose, but y'know, that's a pretty minor quibble.

At least, some folks in Ohio are trying to make that the law--and with the current makeup of the Supreme Court, they man succeed, despite the precedent of Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

OH State Representatives Adams, Wagner, Brinkman, Uecker, Huffman, Fessler, Wachtmann, Barrett, and Goodwin are sponsoring House Bill 287, which states that

Since we all know that women are lying whores, the good gentlemen (and one lady;* Rep. Fessler is a (brainwashed) woman) of Ohio have taken care of the probability that the murderous bitches will just lie and say they've been raped, or shamelessly claim not to know who the father is: you can't get an abortion for rape or incest unless there's a police report filed. Daddy raped you, honey? And you were too scared or conflicted to call the cops? Tough shit. If you've been whoring around and claim not to know the father, you gotta get a paternity test. Possible babydaddy not around any more? Too. Fucking. Bad.

According to Feministe, Representative Adams argues that

Which, as we all know, is a popular argument about libertarian-leaning people who believe that if you just say men and women are equal, that makes them so--minor things like a woman's right to bodily autonomy are irrelevant, whereas a man's absolute right to determine where and when he incurs financial obligations must not, under any circumstances, be infringed upon.**

As Melissa McEwan points out, requiring a woman to get a man's consent for an abortion is *not* giving him a "say"--it's giving him veto power. It's not making men and women *equal*--it's making women dependent on men's permission to decide what they do and don't do with their bodies.

But you know, if women didn't want to belong to men, we shouldn't have chosen to have uteruses in the first place.




*Irony alert. Of course any woman who could cosponsor a bill like this would be completely ladylike--since "lady," by definition, pretty much means "a woman who's bought into the idea that her sexuality belongs to men."

**Before y'all even get into arguing this point, let me ask if any of the guys (or foolish women) who want to talk about how unfair mandatory child support payments are to men have considered putting their energy into lobbying for governmental child support as a single-parent entitlement? Because if you don't want guys who accidentally cause pregnancies to have to support unwanted children--and let me point out that child support is *for the child*, not for the woman, thankyouverymuch--then you gotta provide some way for the kids to eat. Of course, if you don't think kids are entitled to eat, then you're just a straight up asshole.

Bitch_PhD wants everyone to know that they can contact (politely, one hopes--gentlemen and ladies do expect to be addressed politely) the Ohio State Legislature here.

For the first time (in Colorado, anyway), a judge has found that a young pregnant woman is too immature to have an abortion.

You have to like the logic:

Judicial bypass exists for girls who are unwilling to tell their parents about their pregnancies. Apparently, this particular judge thinks, therefore, that applying for a judicial bypass in and of itself makes a girl too immature to have an abortion.

That's some catch, that Catch-22.

For the record, the girl did consult with an adult (the school nurse, who was present at the hearing); her "own needs" would, of course, be the precise reason for having an abortion (that selfish bitch); presumably she hasn't discussed it with a doctor (though she did discuss it with a nurse, obvs.) because she hasn't gotten the judge's goddamn approval to go make that appointment; it seems to me from the article that she understands the risks of abortion as well as most people (and that the judge fails to understand that the risks of giving birth, especially to young women, are in fact ten times greater than the risks of abortion, but hey, he's not the one on trial here, now, is he?).

He's absolutely right, though, that being unemployed and supported by her mother is a mark of grave immaturity in a 16 1/2 year old girl--precisely the kind of situation in which young women should definitely not be allowed to have abortions.

Bitch_PhD is currently reading this book and promises to review it once she's done.

Cross-posted at Bitch PhD