stfuhypocrisy:

Women, especially young childless undecided women voters, are talking about jobs,  not abortion rights, right? What women really care about is not contraception, not access to family planning resources, not social issues like gay marriage, abstinence-only sex “ed” or Mitt Romney’s 50 year old bullying. Nope – it’s the economy. Women, “like everyone else,”– that would the norm – men, just want to be able to go to work, earn a fair wage and support their families. These “social” things are a “distraction” leading Americans to avert their gaze from what’s really important: the economy. Polls are clear:  jobs and the economy are their number one concerns.

This oft-repeated juxtaposition, superficial and  irresponsible, between The Economy and Social Issues (especially, in polls, “jobs” and  “contraception”) is like a political media Greek chorus.  People believe it, especially women who are disinclined to think about themselves as discriminated against by virtue of their sex.  Young women answer these questions and pollsters ask them the way they do based on the assumption that women, armed with education and “girl power,” have equal access to newly created jobs and will be paid fairly for their work.  Those are false assumptions that women, especially young childless ones, need to consider before they vote, because this year’s elections, both state and presidential, will affect their ability to do both for years to come.

We’re engaged in a mass delusion that misleadingly pits The Economy against what are at their core,  Reproductive Rights.  Don’t be fooled when considering who to vote for – women can’t participate equally in the first until they have the second.  The very phrasing of the questions and the reporting of the answers hide the complex and interdependent relationship between the two. Contraception, reproductive rights, gay marriage (defined as it is by conservatives as a threat to male/female hierarchies) – all have critical implications for women’s economic well-being and for the economy at large.

Insistence on splitting these two concerns is particularly useful to Republicans, because it allows them toblame women’s economic woes on their “choices,”  a specific irony.  If a woman gets paid less or doesn’t have a “seat at the table” it’s because she chose a lower paying job, or because she chose to have children and works part-time, or she chose to not complete her education. If women make “bad choices” it’s their own fault, their decisions and they have to pay the consequences. Which gets us to the second half of this equation. Simultaneously, for the “less important” Social Issues, the word “choice” is completely anathema to Republican legislators and presidential hopefuls. Girls and women cannot possibly be trusted with “choices” when it comes to their own bodies, sex ed, birth control, health care, sexuality, domestic violence and marriage.

Most importantly, however, in terms of the economy, is that what all of these secondary-in-importance social issues boil down to is that women especially cannot be allowed to “choose” for themselves when to become mothers – arguably the single most important contributing factor to their, and our economies, long-term well-being.

What single factor arguably has the greatest impact on a woman’s work life? In other words, what enables women to participate in the economy and become productive workers and engines of economic growth and expansion?

That would be motherhood.

So, even single, childless, undecided women who may one day get pregnant, should consider what happens to a woman when she gives birth:

• She is 44% less likely to be hired
• She makes 11% less than her non-mother female counterpart (who is already just making 78cents to the male dollar)
• She is less likely to go to school or complete her education.
• She works part-time with more frequency, so that she can provide child care for which she is uncompensated and can derive no benefits as child care is invisible labor.
• She is less able to work overtime.
• She is unable to get maternal health care coverage as part of a basic insurance policy. Already discriminated against by gender rating in insurance prices, she is now doubly financially harmed by the fact of her parenthood.
• She is more likely to have to limit herself to lower paying job sectors where she thinks she will have more “flexibility” even though this has been proven not to be the case.
• She is more likely to be impoverished and become state dependent.

And, what is motherhood? In it’s simplest terms, it is reproduction.

Control of reproduction is an economic issue. This isn’t an academic abstraction, it is a practical reality for any human endowed with a uterus.

This is why instead of The Economy and Social Issues being unrelated as people keep suggesting, they are integrally related.  The very nexus of The Economy and Social Issues then, from a policy perspective,  is the question “Do you believe women should work, for (fair) pay and outside of the home?”  Republicans do not.  That’s why their dedication to controlling female sex and reproduction is an economic policy choice – it affects women’s abilities to pursue education, get hired, be paid, stay in the workforce.

If you believe yes women should be able to work and be paid fairly outside of the home, then you do everything possible to create family friendly work structures, fair pay regulations, health care access, planned parenting provisions, that enable women to do just that. If no, then you don’t. You do the opposite. You create a disabling “social issue” legislative scaffold on which to build a “it’s your own fault” Temple to Patriarchy. This is precisely what the Republic party is doing.  If you are an undecided woman voter you should pause to consider the impact of these intersections on your own life and the lives of other, often far less privileged, women.

As it is now, even for a woman who has access to birth control, health care, safe and legal abortion, becoming a mother in this country, planned or unplanned, is the single worst economic decision a woman can make.  She is still cobbled by inadequate health care, higher gender-rated insurance premiums, discriminatory pay, poor return on her educational investment, greater responsibility for child care and an inability to save effectively for security in her old age.

Republicans have shown repeatedly and without remorse that they want to keep women vulnerable, dependent and at home:

• Lilly Ledbetter? What’s that? “Money is more important for men.”  I finally support it, but (wink, wink) my surrogates will make sure it never happens.  Fair Pay in Wisconsin? Don’t want to force employers to prove they are paying women fairly. Definitely don’t want to “clog up the legal system” unless, of course, it’s to send black boys and men to jail.
• Domestic Violence? Let’s make sure the Abuser Lobby  is happy, given the mail order bride business and more, and ensure that women most vulnerable to violent abuse are isolated and left even more at the mercy of mostly men who will rape and beat them without recourse to the law.
• Reproductive Freedom? Let’s pursue husbandry-informed blunt force trauma legislation ensuring that women’s bodies and reproduction stay in the control of men.  Eliminating Planned Parenthood, making it hard to find birth control and abortion services, mandating transvaginal ultrasounds that women themselves have to pay for, requiring waiting periods that require expensive travel – all of these things impede women’s freedom and ability to compete fairly in the job market.
• Health Care: What, you mean the stuff that keeps people healthy and able to go to work? Hell, no. We’ll not only fight against affordable health care (the opposite of which is unaffordable health care) but we will also stop federal funding for Planned Parenthood, even including monies dedicated to non-abortion services like…family planning – often the only services that poor women have access to. Title IX?  The only federal program devoted to family planning,  you almost cannot make this up it’s so ridiculous: Romney will eliminate it entirely, to save money for The Economy.
• And yes, even Mitt Romney’s 50 year old bullying of a gay boy. Why? Because the exact same attitudes that informed that incident inform his support of abstinence-only education, gendered societal roles, fair pay provisions, reproductive freedom – namely, there are rules, boxes which people are supposed to fit into – and when they don’t conform to his world view they should be punished and forced to. The roots of his high-school bullying escapades and his “Social Issue” policies both reside in an inability to empathize with people who don’t look like and sound like him. It’s why he saw nothing wrong in explaining that Ann Romney was responsible for translating females.  Empathizing with women is just not a possibility if you’re a man.

All of these issues profoundly affect women’s ABILITY TO ENGAGE FULLY AND EQUALLY IN THE ECONOMY WITHOUT PENALIZATION.  If Republicans were serious about their commitment to women’s unimpeded equality in the workplace, then they would not insist that “social” policies are unrelated to “the economy” and they would not be pursuing broad legislation that affirmatively harms women’s ability to participate in the economy on multiple levels. Basic control over her own body, that would be reproductive freedom and health care that is affordable, non-discriminatorily priced, and relevant to her body and not men’s, affects whether a woman can seek and complete her education. The type of job she can get. How many hours she can work. If she can afford to start a business. Whether or not she can work full time or has to work part time. Whether she can afford childcare and health care, if she works. Whether she can safely leave an abusive spouse without fear for her children and seek work to support herself.

That’s why Social Issues, like contraception, are ABOUT The Economy not separate from it.

All of this, yes.

Not gonna lie, if I didn’t have to work all week, I’d head to Jackson:

Rusty Thomas of Waco, Texas, is spokesman for Operation Save America. He said Wednesday he expects his group will bring about 50 people to Jackson.

Thomas said both his and the Milwaukee group are part of an effort by around 15 ministries that are targeting Wyoming as part of their “States of Refuge” project. He said they intend to make Wyoming one of the first states in which no doctors provide abortions. The groups have targeted Dr. Brent Blue of Jackson, saying he’s the only doctor in Wyoming who advertises that he provides the service.

“I think it would have tremendous ramifications,” Thomas said of the possible effect of ending abortion in Wyoming. “I believe it would have a ripple effect, a domino effect. Spiritually, it would punch a hole in the sky, and begin to liberate America from blood guilt one state at a time.”

Punch a hole in the sky? WTF? Anyhow…

Blue said Wednesday that while the protesters are exercising their right to free speech, he’s exercising his right to treat his patients legally.

Blue said he offers abortions to his patients the same as he performs vasectomies or prescribes birth control pills or medication for high blood pressure. “This is just part of our routine family practice, we’re not an abortion clinic,” Blue said. “I feel that women deserve the right to do what they want with their bodies, and they shouldn’t have to travel 150 miles to do it.”

Blue said the closest other locations offering abortions are in Bozeman, Mont., and Salt Lake City. He said Jackson draws patients from all of western Wyoming and eastern Idaho.

Other doctors in Teton County also perform abortions but prefer not to announce it publicly, Blue said. He said he had 100 percent support from the local community last year when the protesters came to town, even from members of groups opposed to abortion.

Dr. Brent Blue is a goddamned hero. Thank you to him and all those who stand up to these people.

Yes, they’re exercising their right to free speech, as distasteful as their speech may be. I encourage anyone who wants to, ahem, counter their speech to be respectful and non-violent. The last thing we need to do is encourage the anti-choice whackadoodles. 

I’m so shocked. If you don’t know who Lila Rose is, check this article out. She annoys the hell out of me, and Jezebel nails why. Rose’s depiction of femininity/womanhood is quite binary and leaves no room for any person who isn’t a carbon copy of Lila Rose and her minions.

“Pro-life, these people aren’t pro-life, they’re killing doctors, what kind of pro-life is that? What, they’ll do everything they can do save a fetus, but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it?” — George Carlin

Or, apparently, a female Texas State Senator who fought against the defunding of Planned Parenthood. Luckily, no one was killed, but this is horrifying. From Fox 4 News:

The Fort Worth Fire Department is investigating an arson attack at State Sen. Wendy Davis’ legislative office.

Fire officials said just after 4 p.m. on Tuesday someone threw two Molotov cocktails into the third-floor office on West 7th Street. Two of Davis’ staff members were there at the time. They used a fire extinguisher to put out the waist-high flames. No one was hurt.

According to UPI:

Davis, a Democrat, played a high-profile role last week in arguing against plans by Texas state officials to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, saying such a move could deprive 130,000 Texas women of healthcare services including cancer screening and contraception.

This is not fucking funny. This past August, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas was firebombed. The McKinney, Texas clinic is less than one hour from Fort Worth. In January of this year, Donny Mower received five years in prison for firebombing a California Planned Parenthood Clinic and vandalizing a mosque in late 2010.

From Texas Right to Life:

Click on a dot, get all the info about the clinic, or “abortion mills” as they call them. The McKinney Clinic is still listed as open.

Texas Right to Life on Sen. Davis:

While the Pro-Life super majority has been a blessing, there were a select few who would stop at nothing to squelch the advances for Life. Most notably, Representative Jessica Farrar and Senator Wendy Davis were determined to stop all Pro-Life efforts.

Writer Robert Gieb at Catholic Lane calls Sen. Davis “a political handmaiden of the abortion industry which makes millions of dollars from killing weak and vulnerable human beings.” Gieb also writes:

“The state senator who represents the district in which I reside, Wendy Davis, is a most fervent supporter of killing the innocent unborn, and has been well compensated by the abortion industry, having received thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the pro abortion group called Annie’s List, and both money and substantial in kind political advertising and telephone work from Planned Parenthood.”

When in the hell are we going to call these firebombings terrorism? When are we going to examine the heated rhetoric involved in calling a state senator a child murderer?

The entrance to the McKinney PP Clinic:

Sen. Davis’ door:

This is domestic terrorism. Period. It’s often religiously motivated. Bet you won’t hear Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney condemn it on the campaign trail — it’s just a feeling I have.

Sen. Davis’ staffers are very fortunate, and I hope the arsonist — the attempted murderer of innocent, already-born people — is brought to justice swiftly.

(Source: cognitivedissonance)

the-cold-revolution:

cognitivedissonance:

This Shit Irritates Me: War on uteri continues

I watched Fox News today (yes, I hate myself) and listened to commentators defending various radically restrictive anti-abortion laws, including Texas’ new law. The biggest line of defense seems to be, “Well, we just want women to have all the information. We want to make sure they have the right…

A study in Finland from 1997 says that women are much more likely to die in the year after an abortion then women who carry the child.  The same woman who is not pregnant would take more risks then if she was pregnant.  Pregnant women were half as likely to commit suicide then non-pregnant women.  Miscarriages were 1.4 more likely then non-pregnant with abortion being almost 4 times more likely to commit suicide.  

Between 2 and 3 % of all women who have an abortion have their uterus perforated.  This risk greatly increases for women with previous abortions or child births.  This can cause problems in a later pregnancy if it is not seen and treated. 

Hmmm… citation needed for the above “facts” — so I’ll provide some mythbusting. First, mental health:

The relationship between abortion and mental health is a highly contested issue. Some have claimed that a (presumed) negative relationship between abortion and mental health is a reason to make abortion less accessible. This argument is based on the reasoning that if abortion and a mental health problem (e.g., substance abuse) are related, then reducing access to abortion would reduce the prevalence of that problem. We would like to caution the reader against falling prey to this example of the “interventionist fallacy.” The interventionist fallacy results from the belief that if a relationship is currently observed between two variables, the form or magnitude of the relationship will remain unchanged if an intervention is instituted—for instance if the availability of abortion were to be dramatically reduced. As applied to the case of abortion, this reasoning (that if the number of abortions were to decrease, then there would be a proportional decrease in mental health problems) is flawed.

One consequence of such an intervention would be that the characteristics of the population of women who delivered children would change. Characteristics previously more prevalent among women who have abortions (e.g., greater poverty, problem behaviors, exposure to violence) would now be more prevalent among women who deliver. Note that this potential change in the profile of women giving birth may include new mental health problems that might develop from stresses associated with raising a child a woman feels unable to care for or may not want or from relinquishing a child for adoption. Thus, reducing access to abortion could result in poorer mental health among the population of women who deliver. Hence, rather than reducing the prevalence of mental health problems among women, this intervention could potentially increase it.

This is taken from the American Psychological Association Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion (2008). The task force reviewed every single study regarding the mental health claim from peer-reviewed journals — including the 1997 Finnish study you neglect to cite. Here’s their full report. I’ll give the key findings from the task force:

The relative risk of mental health problems among adult women who have a single, legal, first-trimester abortion of an unwanted pregnancy for nontherapeutic reasons is no greater than the risk among women who deliver an unwanted pregnancy. This conclusion is generally consistent with that reached by the first APA task force on mental health and abortion (Adler et al., 1990), as well as with a recent review of the literature by Charles, Polis, Sridhara, and Blum (2008).

The relative risk of mental health problems among women who terminate a wanted pregnancy because of fetal abnormality appears to be similar to (and no greater than) that of women who miscarry a wanted pregnancy or experience a stillbirth or the death of a newborn.

The claim that observed associations between abortion history and a mental health problem are caused by the abortion per se, as opposed to other factors, is not supported by the existing evidence. Unwanted pregnancy and abortion are correlated with preexisting and co-occurring conditions, life circumstances, problem behaviors, and personality characteristics that can have profound and long-lasting negative effects on mental health irrespective of how a pregnancy is resolved.

The majority of adult women who terminate a pregnancy do not experience mental health problems. Across studies, the prevalence of disorders among women who terminated a pregnancy was low, and most women reported being satisfied with their decision to abort both one month and two years postabortion (Major et al., 2000). Though most adult women do not have mental health problems following an abortion of an unwanted pregnancy, we do not mean to imply that no women experience such problems. Some women do. Abortion is an experience often hallmarked by ambivalence, and a mix of positive and negative emotions is to be expected (Adler et al., 1990; Dagg, 1991). Some women feel confident they made the right choice and feel no regret; others experience sadness, grief, guilt, and feelings of loss following the elective termination of a pregnancy. It is important that all women’s experiences be recognized as valid and that women feel free to express their thoughts and feelings about their abortion regardless of whether those thoughts and feelings are positive or negative.

And you’re right. Women who are pregnant typically take less risks than women who aren’t pregnant. I have never seen a pregnant woman skydive. So should we all get knocked up to mitigate risk? But Ddd you know that a woman’s leading cause of death rises from accidental injury to homicide if she’s pregnant — particularly if she’s young? So should women never get pregnant? It puts you at a higher risk of being murdered…

This is the correlation = causation fallacy. The homicide rate rises in the summer. So does consumption of ice cream. Therefore, ice cream causes an increase in homicide. 

As for the uterine perforation risk, fewer than 0.05% - 0.3% of procedures result in complications like perforation. Further, abortions performed in the first trimester pose virtually no long-term risk of such problems as infertility, ectopic pregnancy, spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) or birth defect, and little or no risk of preterm or low-birth-weight deliveries (See pp.11-22 or numerous medical journal citations). 

Guess what? Thirty-four percent of women in the US experience a uterine perforation large enough to pull a baby through. This procedure, otherwise known as a C-section, carries a much higher rate of complication. According to Dr. Jen Gunter, an OB/GYN, “27% of all c-sections will have some kind of complication and 10.4% of women will have a serious complication. An elective c-section (typically meaning a healthy mom in a controlled situation) has the lowest risk of complications, but that risk is still 7.1%.”

Do I need to discuss the complications with unsafe abortion?