woohooo, Canada!!
 

Now in their 80s and 90s, aging WWII sex slaves haven’t forgotten
 

http://www.womenundersiegeproject.or...0ZlRcg.twitter

http://www.womenundersiegeproject.or...mfortwomen.jpg

By Michele Lent Hirsch/Associate Editor — March 29, 2013

It’s a euphemism we still haven’t shaken. “Comfort women” refers to the women and girls—usually foreign, from countries like Korea, the Philippines, and China—forced by the Japanese military to do sex work mainly during World War II.
Armed groups from various countries have done this too, although perhaps without the euphemism, choosing a group of individuals to use for repeated sexualized violence. Then combatants and high-up generals rape them. Again and again.

Euphemisms, and terminology in general, are tricky in the context of war. As I wrote in November 2012, “ethnic cleansing” is a phrase that may, at this point, successfully connote Hitlerian violence, but it’s been up for debate.
“Comfort women,” however, sounds cozy where it should be horrifying. It sounds like the archetypal mother who holds her infant on a cold night, quilt tucked in neatly and the radiator on.
It sounds like the opposite of the brutal enslavement and sexualized torture of a young woman.

That brutality is what photographer Ahn Sehong’s new exhibit, featured on The New York Times’ “Lens” blog, aims to capture. Sehong’s show, currently on display at the Korea Press Center Gallery in New Jersey, zooms in on the faces and daily lives of a handful of the estimated 200,000 women held as sex slaves during the war.
Sehong shows the faces of 80- and 90-year-olds, their faded maps of home, and the poor conditions they live in 70 years later. Only three of the women he photographed are still alive.

At one point, these elderly women were young and living in Korea, then held captive by the Japanese army in China. After the war, the Times explains, they were stranded there.
When Sehong first visited them, hoping to document their memories, “most lived in hovels, often in the same dusty rural towns where they had endured the war,” he said.

Each of Sehong’s subjects has a grueling story. One, Bae Sam-yeop was just 13 when a “high-ranking” Japanese officer raped her, she says.
Yet for a long time now, politicians have had trouble acknowledging the violence.
Just before the end of 2012, the Times reported that Japan’s new government might be “revising” an official apology given nearly two decades earlier to the victims of sexual slavery.
And in May last year, Japanese diplomats visited a small monument honoring these women in New Jersey and asked to have it removed.

The photographer is pairing his project with activism, hoping to raise aid for the aging survivors.
But even his images have been controversial: Sehong had to battle in court last year in order to display them at a Nikon gallery in Tokyo.
The company tried to cancel his show after receiving complaints.

For the survivors still holding on to a poor daily existence in China, Sehong’s efforts may matter more than politics.
Of the women he’s documented, Sehong said, “We couldn’t take care of them after the war. But now we have money and power to help them.”

As far back as their suffering during World War II may be, these women are still struggling to scratch out a living now, Sehong said in a local news story. And regardless off what term we use to describe the violence perpetrated long ago against them, they continue to be burdened by their memories.

“Their broken hearts are not in the past,” Sehong said.

Obama says Planned Parenthood is ‘not going anywhere’
 

President Barack Obama on Friday defended Planned Parenthood—the largest source of reproductive health care for women, as well as an abortion provider—against its opponents, and warned critics that the organization remains steadfast.

"Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere," Obama told the 1,000 people at the group's annual national conference in Washington. "It’s not going anywhere today. It’s not going anywhere tomorrow." He is the first president to address Planned Parenthood.

The organization has long been a target of abortion opponents, who in recent years have fought to cut off its federal funding—despite the fact that that money, by law, is not applicable toward abortions. (Abortions make up an estimated 3 percent of the organization's budget.)

The president on Friday lauded Planned Parenthood's work “providing quality health care to women all across America."

Obama added, "We are truly grateful to you.”

He noted that 1 in 5 women in America have sought services from Planned Parenthood, which is the primary source for health care for many women. When politicians attempt to turn it into "a punching bag," Obama said, they are shutting out women who need health care and communities that may need health care services the most.

"When it comes to a women's health, no politician should get to decide what's best for you," Obama said. "The only person who should get to make decisions about your health is you."

Obama used his appearance to champion his health care law, which he said promotes many of the same principles as Planned Parenthood. Obama said his law supports health care for women by allowing young women, for example, to be covered by their parents' health care insurance plans, and by preventing women with pre-existing conditions from being denied coverage.

The president did not say the word "abortion" during his remarks, but did reference a woman's "right to choose."

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus recently targeted the organization with a scathing op-ed for conservative news site Red State accusing Planned Parenthood and Democrats of supporting infanticide. Priebus wrote that testimony from a Planned Parenthood lobbyist in Florida indicated the organization supports the killing of infants.

Planned Parenthood later released a statement on the lobbyist's testimony, saying, "As a trusted health care provider, Planned Parenthood strongly condemns any physician who does not follow the law or endangers a woman's or child's health. And while HB 1129 addresses a situation that is extremely unlikely and highly unusual, if the scenario presented by the legislation should happen, of course a Planned Parenthood doctor would provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant."

The president's appearance at the conference comes at a time when infanticide has been in the national news due to the murder trial of former abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell, of Philadelphia, is charged with murder in the death of a woman in 2009 during an abortion procedure and in the deaths of four babies.


http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/o...145150867.html

Welcome to a pro-life world

By Jill on April 30, 2013

In El Salvador, a young mother pseudonymously called Beatriz is pregnant and dying. She has lupus and is facing renal failure; the fetus she’s pregnant with is anencephalic, meaning it has no brain and will not survive once born. If she dies, she will leave behind a husband and their toddler. With each passing day, she gets sicker and sicker, and the chances of death increase. She needed a termination weeks ago; more delays could pose significant hardships, as the probability increases that she will have to be on dialysis for the rest of her life — not a reasonable possibility for a poor woman living in rural El Salvador. But because El Salvador outlaws abortion under any circumstance, Beatriz cannot terminate the pregnancy that’s killing her.

This is what a “pro-life” world looks like. And indeed, even in this extreme case, religious and pro-life groups in El Salvador oppose allowing Beatriz to terminate:

The Archbishop of San Salvador José Luis Escobar, said, “it is my understanding that the mother of the child is not in an intensive care situation… For me, it is the baby in utero that is in more danger because there is a movement to terminate its life. Only God knows how long this baby that they want to kill will live.”

Anti-choice groups in the U.S. who are currently raising hell about late-term abortions supposedly killing babies are notably silent on this case, where pro-life laws are slowly killing a woman.

You can sign the petition at RH Reality Check to encourage the government to move quickly and save Beatriz’s life.

Women's groups decry appeal on morning-after pill
 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration's decision to appeal a court order lifting age limits on purchasers of the morning-after pill set off a storm of criticism from reproductive rights groups, who denounced it as politically motivated and a step backward for women's health.

"We are profoundly disappointed. This appeal takes away the promise of all women having timely access to emergency contraception," Susannah Baruch, Interim President & CEO of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, said in a statement late Wednesday.

"It is especially troubling in light of the Food and Drug Administration's move yesterday to continue age restrictions and ID requirements, despite a court order to make emergency contraception accessible for women of all ages. Both announcements, particularly in tandem, highlight the administration's corner-cutting on women's health," Baruch said. "It's a sad day for women's health when politics prevails."

The FDA on Tuesday had lowered the age at which people can buy the Plan B One-Step morning-after pill without a prescription to 15 — younger than the current limit of 17 — and decided that the pill could be sold on drugstore shelves near the condoms, instead of locked behind pharmacy counters. It appeared to be a stab at compromise that just made both sides angrier.

After the appeal was announced late Wednesday, Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, said, "The prevention of unwanted pregnancy, particularly in adolescents, should not be obstructed by politicians." She called it a "step backwards for women's health."

Last week, O'Neill noted, President Barack Obama was applauded when he addressed members of Planned Parenthood and spoke of the organization's "core principle" that women should be allowed to make their own decisions about their health.

"President Obama should practice what he preaches," O'Neill said.

In appealing the ruling Wednesday, the administration recommitted itself to a position Obama took during his re-election campaign that younger teens shouldn't have unabated access to emergency contraceptives, despite the insistence by physicians groups and much of his Democratic base that the pill should be readily available.

The Justice Department's appeal responded to an order by U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in New York that would allow girls and women of any age to buy not only Plan B but its cheaper generic competition as easily as they can buy aspirin. Korman gave the FDA 30 days to comply, and the Monday deadline was approaching fast.

In its filing, the Justice Department said that Korman exceeded his authority and that his decision should be suspended while that appeal is under way, meaning only Plan B One-Step would appear on drugstore shelves until the case is finally settled. If Korman's order isn't suspended during the appeals process, the result would be "substantial market confusion, harming FDA's and the public's interest" as drugstores receive conflicting orders about who's allowed to buy what, the Justice Department concluded.

Reluctant to get drawn into a messy second-term spat over social issues, White House officials insisted Wednesday that both the FDA and the Justice Department were acting independently of the White House in deciding how to proceed. But the decision to appeal was certain to irk abortion-rights advocates who say they can't understand why a Democratic president is siding with social conservatives in favor of limiting women's reproductive choices.

Current and former White House aides said Obama's approach to the issue has been heavily influenced by his experience as the father of two school-age daughters. Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius have also questioned whether there's enough data available to show the morning-after pill is safe and appropriate for younger girls, even though physicians groups insist that it is.

Rather than take matters into his own hands, the Justice Department argued to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Korman should have ordered the FDA to reconsider its options for regulating emergency contraception. The court cannot overturn the rules and processes that federal agencies must follow "by instead mandating a particular substantive outcome," the appeal states.

The FDA actually had been poised to lift all age limits and let Plan B sell over the counter in late 2011, when Sebelius overruled her own scientists. Sebelius said some girls as young as 11 were physically capable of bearing children but shouldn't be able to buy the pregnancy-preventing pill on their own.

Sebelius' move was unprecedented, and Korman had blasted it as election-year politics — meaning he was overruling not just a government agency but a Cabinet secretary.

More than a year later, neither side in the contraception debate was happy with the FDA's surprise twist, which many perceived as an attempt to find a palatable middle ground between imposing an age limit of 17 and imposing no limit at all.

Any over-the-counter access marks a long-awaited change, but it's not enough, said Dr. Cora Breuner of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which supports nonprescription sale of the morning-after pill for all ages.

"We still have the major issue, which is our teen pregnancy rate is still too high," Breuner said.

Even though few young girls likely would use Plan B, which costs about $50 for a single pill, "we know that it is safe for those under 15," she said.

Most 17- to 19-year-olds are sexually active, and 30 percent of 15- and 16-year-olds have had sex, according to a study published last month by the journal Pediatrics. Sex is much rarer among younger teens. Likewise, older teens have a higher pregnancy rate, but that study also counted more than 110,000 pregnancies among 15- and 16-year-olds in 2008 alone.

Social conservatives were outraged by the FDA's move to lower the age limits for Plan B — as well as the possibility that Korman's ruling might take effect and lift age restrictions altogether.

"This decision undermines the right of parents to make important health decisions for their young daughters," said Anna Higgins of the Family Research Council.

If a woman already is pregnant, the morning-after pill has no effect. It prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg. According to the medical definition, pregnancy doesn't begin until a fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the uterus. Still, some critics say Plan B is the equivalent of an abortion pill because it may also be able to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus, a contention that many scientists — and Korman, in his ruling — said has been discredited.

http://news.yahoo.com/womens-groups-...071825445.html

--------------

Was trying to find the words to comment on this but all I can come up with is....huh?

Cardinal skipping BC ceremony over abortion issue
 

BOSTON — Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley said Friday that he won't attend Boston College's graduation because the Jesuit school's commencement speaker, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, supports legislation to permit abortion.

The bill allows abortion if a doctor authorizes it to save a women's life. Opponents say the bill would lead to widespread abortion by also allowing it if a woman threatens suicide.

In a statement Friday, O'Malley said abortion is "a crime against humanity" and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has asked Catholic institutions not to honor officials who promote it. Kenny is set to receive an honorary degree from BC at the May 20 commencement.

O'Malley said that since Boston College hasn't withdrawn its invitation, and Kenny hasn't declined it, "I shall not attend the graduation."

"It is my ardent hope that Boston College will work to redress the confusion, disappointment and harm caused by not adhering to the bishops' directives," he said.

Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn said the school respects O'Malley and regrets he won't attend graduation. "However, we look forward to our commencement and to Prime Minister Kenny's remarks," he said in a statement.

Dunn said Kenny was invited to BC because of his country's historically close relationship with the college and
that the school "supports the church's commitment to the life of the unborn."

Kenny has said the bill affirms, rather than weakens, Ireland's general prohibition against abortion.

"Our aim is to protect the lives of women and their unborn babies by clarifying the circumstances in which doctors can intervene where a woman's life is at risk," he said in a May 1 speech.

An email requesting comment was sent to Kenny's office in Dublin on Friday and a voicemail requesting comment was left with an Irish Consulate-General in the U.S. Neither was immediately returned.

Ireland has the toughest abortion restrictions in Europe under an 1861 law that makes it a crime punishable by life in prison.

In 1992, its Supreme Court ruled abortion should be legal only if doctors determine it's needed to save the woman's life. But voters rejected two referendums, in 1992 and 2002, to allow abortion to stop a physical threat to
a woman's life, not including suicide.

The latest bill is being debated following last year's death of Savita Halappanavar, who was 17 weeks pregnant when she was hospitalized at the start of a protracted miscarriage. She died of massive organ failure after doctors refused her request for an abortion.

The bill permits a single doctor to authorize an abortion if the woman's life is in immediate danger, requires two doctors' approval if a pregnancy poses a potentially lethal risk and mandates three doctors' approval if the woman is threatening suicide.

O'Malley said the Irish bishops have concluded the bill "represents a dramatic and morally unacceptable change to Irish law."

Last year, another Catholic college in Massachusetts was involved in a similar controversy after the Bishop of
Worcester (Mass.) pressured Anna Maria College in Paxton to rescind an invitation to U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy's widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, to deliver its commencement address. Bishop Robert McManus objected to Kennedy's public support for abortion rights and gay marriage.

Kennedy later accepted the Boston College School of Law's invitation to give the keynote address at commencement.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pb...519963/-1/NEWS
--------------------------------------

Hoping my alma mater doesn't cave in to the bishop.

Ginsburg says Roe gave abortion opponents target
 

CHICAGO (AP) — One of the most liberal members of the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg could be expected to give a rousing defense of Roe v. Wade in reflecting on the landmark vote 40 years after it established a nationwide right to abortion.

Instead, Ginsburg told an audience Saturday at the University of Chicago Law School that while she supports a woman's right to choose, she feels the ruling by her predecessors on the court was too sweeping and gave abortion opponents a symbol to target. Ever since, she said, the momentum has been on the other side, with anger over Roe fueling a state-by-state campaign that has placed more restrictions on abortion.

"That was my concern, that the court had given opponents of access to abortion a target to aim at relentlessly," she told a crowd of students. "... My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum that was on the side of change."

The ruling is also a disappointment to a degree, Ginsburg said, because it was not argued in weighty terms of advancing women's rights. Rather, the Roe opinion, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, centered on the right to privacy and asserted that it extended to a woman's decision on whether to end a pregnancy.

Four decades later, abortion is one of the most polarizing issues in American life, and anti-abortion activists have pushed legislation at the state level in an effort to scale back the 1973 decision.

Ginsburg would have rather seen the justices make a narrower decision that struck down only the Texas law that brought the matter before the court. That law allowed abortions only to save a mother's life.

A more restrained judgment would have sent a message while allowing momentum to build at a time when a number of states were expanding abortion rights, she said. She added that it might also have denied opponents the argument that abortion rights resulted from an undemocratic process in the decision by "unelected old men."

Ginsburg told the students she prefers what she termed "judicial restraint" and argued that such an approach can be more effective than expansive, aggressive decisions.

"The court can put its stamp of approval on the side of change and let that change develop in the political process," she said.

A similar dynamic is playing out over gay marriage and the speculation over how the Supreme Court might act on that issue.

The court decided in December to take up cases on California's constitutional ban on gay marriage and a federal law that denies to gay Americans who are legally married the favorable tax treatment and a range of health and pension benefits otherwise available to married couples.

Among the questions now is whether the justices will set a nationwide rule that could lead to the overturning of laws in more than three dozen states that currently do not allow same-sex marriage. Even some supporters of gay marriage fear that a broad ruling could put the court ahead of the nation on a hot-button social issue and provoke a backlash similar to the one that has fueled the anti-abortion movement in the years following Roe.

The court could also decide to uphold California's ban — an outcome that would not affect the District of Columbia and the 11 states that allow gay marriage.

Ginsburg did not address the pending gay marriage cases.

Asked about the continuing challenges to abortion rights, Ginsburg said that in her view Roe's legacy will ultimately hold up.

"It's not going to matter that much," she said. "Take the worst-case scenario ... suppose the decision were overruled; you would have a number of states that will never go back to the way it was."

http://news.yahoo.com/ginsburg-says-...004044065.html
---------------

Control and Abuse of Women and Girls’ Sexuality
 

Con't
 

Prostitution and Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation

Prostitution is not the world’s oldest profession, as is commonly said, although it is probably one of the world’s oldest forms of men’s violence against women and girls. It seems old because men’s sexual exploitation of women and children is ancient and defended as a part of men’s natures that they have to have sex, even if it is purchased, forced or with a child. Prostitution is not natural or inevitable; it is abuse and exploitation of women and girls that results from structural inequality between women and men on a world scale. Prostitution commodifies women and girls and markets their bodies for whatever acts men have sexualized and want to buy. Rarely are adult men treated this way.

The majority of girls enter prostitution before they have reached the age of consent. Each year for the past decade, the average age of girls in prostitution has declined, especially in Asia and Africa where men have created a demand for young girls, assuming they are free of HIV. Girls are sold into prostitution by relatives. Pimps recruit them after they run away from home. They enter prostitution after enduring incest, abuse and rape by acquaintances, which accommodates them to violence and exploitation until eventually they think this is their role in life.

Poverty, desperation to support family members, and drug addictions compel women into prostitution. When the social infrastructure collapses as a result of war, famine, and economic crisis women turn to prostitution as a last resort.

No matter how women and girls get into prostitution, it is difficult to get out. Pimps and brothel owners use violence, threats, and addictions to drugs and alcohol to control the woman, sometimes keeping them in slavery-like conditions. Often women can leave prostitution only after they are used-up, become ill, and no longer make money for the pimps. Women in prostitution are further burdened with a stigmatized identity that is impossible to escape, unless their pasts are kept a secret.

There is no dignity in prostitution. Many of the acts of prostitution, including those that are photographed in the making of pornography, are intended to degrade, humiliate and express domination over women. They are acts of misogyny, not respect or affection, and have nothing to do with love or intimacy. Women don’t emerge from sexual exploitation into positions of power, respect or admiration. They remain powerless as individuals and an underclass as a group.

Most laws aimed at suppressing prostitution are based on the sexually repressive doctrines of patriarchal religions that view prostitution as immoral activity, with women being the most immoral participants. In this view, men give in to the temptation offered by immoral women. Men have traditionally condemned prostitution in public, while ensuring its continuation in private. Where prostitution is illegal, it is usually the women who are punished; pimps, traffickers, and men who buy women in prostitution are seldom punished. Being bought, sold and enslaved in prostitution is a condition for which women and children can be arrested, imprisoned, deported, and sometimes executed.

Trafficking is the practice that delivers women and children into sexual exploitation. The number of women trafficked for this purpose is unknown, although conservative estimates put the number in the millions. Women do not voluntarily put themselves in situations where they are exploited, beaten, raped and enslaved. Women do not traffic themselves. Criminals who recruit, buy and sell women and girls are the crucial intermediaries for delivering women into prostitution. Traffickers supply the necessary elements for travel, such as money, documents, and connections in other countries. Traffickers are paid a sum of money for each woman and girl they deliver to a brothel or pimp. They use force, coercion, seduction, deception, and any other techniques that are effective in controlling the women and girls they are trading.

Criminals traffic women and girls within borders, from rural areas to cities, and from town to town on circuits to provide new faces and bodies to men who want variety. They traffic them to large sex industry centers for men’s nightlife entertainment, to migrant labor camps for men’s hometown comfort, and to immigrant communities to provide sex for men who want women from their own nationality. They traffic them to rural areas for farmers who want wives, and to the US, Australia and Western Europe for men who want non-feminist wives.

Global Sexual Exploitation--Supply and Demand Markets

Prostitution and trafficking in women and children are global phenomena. They occur all over the world and the activities are carried out transnationally. There is a global culture of sexual exploitation in which women’s bodies are used to market consumer products and where women and girls themselves are products to be consumed. Currently, the global sex industry is estimated to make US$52 billion dollars a year. To keep the sex industry in business, women are trafficked to, from and through every region in the world. The value of this global trade in women as commodities for sex industries is estimated to be between seven and twelve billion dollars annually.

The global sexual exploitation of women and girls is a supply and demand market. Men create the demand and women are the supply.[1] Cities and countries where men’s demand for women in prostitution is legalized or tolerated are the receiving sites, while countries and areas where traffickers easily recruit women are the sending regions.

Sending countries or regions are characterized by poverty, unemployment, war, and political and economic instability. These conditions facilitate the activity of traffickers who target regions where recruiting victims is easy. In sending countries, such as Vietnam, the rise of consumerism has led families to accept loans for material goods from traffickers in exchange for the of use their daughters. In many parts of Asia, daughters are culturally bound to repay their families for their up bringing, and a daughter in the sex industry is sometimes the main financial support for families in impoverished areas. Women and girls become vulnerable to traffickers as a result of family pressure, poverty, family violence, and community conflicts. Traffickers procure women and girls when their families say, “Go,” or when women say to themselves, “Anything is better than this.”

In receiving countries or sites where men’s demand for women and girls in prostitution exceeds the supply in the local area, women and girls must be recruited and imported. Sex industries use up women, physically and emotionally, necessitating fresh supplies of women, which keeps the trafficking of women so profitable.

Criminals and organized crime groups have always been the organizers and moneymakers of the sex industry. In the United States, they were the founders and controllers of the pornography industry for decades. Sex industries contribute to secondary illegal activity, such as money laundering, which is needed to convert illegal cash into useable funds. The criminal networks that traffic women are fully transnational. Some are composed of a few loosely connected individuals, while others are highly organized crime syndicates, such as the Mafia, the Yakuza, Triads and “Russian” crime groups.

The Internet has become a site for the global sexual exploitation of women and children. In the past five years, sex industries have been the leaders in opening up the Internet for business. The Internet is almost without regulation because its international reach has made local and national laws and standards either obsolete or unenforceable. In addition, governments, such as the United States, decided on a “hands-off” policy to allow the sex industry almost unfettered operation on the Internet. With new types of technology, pornographers have introduced new ways to exploit and abuse women. With the techniques of videoconferencing, live sex shows are broadcast in which men dictate the performances of the women.

In 1999, the revenue from pornography and live sex shows on the Internet was US$1 billion dollars and comprised 69 percent of the Internet content sales. Pornographers in the United States garnered a majority of the money. By the year 2003, these sales are predicted to triple and generate half the revenue of online content sales.

Intense competition on the Internet has led pornographers to attract buyers with more extreme images, such as bondage, torture, bestiality and child pornography, leading to increased violence against women and children as more degrading and violent images, videos and live performances are made and marketed. Last year, an American in Phnom Penh, Cambodia set up a live video chat site to broadcast the pay-per-view rape and torture of women.

The Harm of Sexual Exploitation – From the Individual to the State

Global sexual exploitation is a human rights crisis for women and girls. It is also a crisis for democracy and the security of nations. The harm of sexual exploitation extends from the individual to the state.

The rape-like sex acts of prostitution cause harm to women and girls’ bodies and minds. Women contract sexually transmitted and other infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis. They suffer from post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety. Under these conditions women make the best choices they can. Rarely do these choices approach true consent. With few options, women comply in hope that eventually they will earn enough money to buy their way out of debt bondage or find a way to escape. When escape is not possible, they use drugs and alcohol to numb themselves from the emotional distress and assaults to their dignity and bodily integrity. Most women and girls emerge from prostitution ill, traumatized, and as poor as when they entered. For increasing numbers of women and girls, prostitution is a death sentence when they contract HIV. In some regions, more than fifty percent of prostituted women have HIV/AIDS.

The sex industry targets and consumes young women, usually under age 25. When a state permits prostitution or trafficking to flourish a certain portion of each generation of young women will be lost. Some might argue that prostitution is the work of women, a way of making a living unique to their gender, but in fact, prostitution is the position the dominant class puts the subordinate class into, in order to use them as they desire. Prostitution creates an underclass of women whose purpose is to sexually serve men. It is a degraded status, everywhere. No form of sexual exploitation leads to the liberation or empowerment of women, or enhances the rights or status of women.

Prostitution and trafficking are extreme forms of gender discrimination and exist as a result of the powerlessness of women as a class. Sexual exploitation is more than an act; it is a systematic way to abuse and control women that socializes and coerces women and girls until they comply, take ownership of their own subordinate status, and say, “I choose this.”

Prostitution and trafficking restrict women’s freedom and citizenship rights. If women are treated as commodities, they are consigned to second-class citizenship. No state can be a true democracy, if half of its citizens can potentially be treated as commodities.

In addition to harming the individual and creating an underclass of women, trafficking and prostitution operate through criminal activity and corruption that threaten the stability and security of nations. Due to relatively low risk and high profits, the trade in women is increasingly replacing the trade in drugs and arms as the preferred activity of transnational criminal networks. When officials are bribed or collaborate, they use their authority to protect criminals and profit from the sexual exploitation of women. As the influence of criminal networks on law enforcement and governments deepens, the corruption goes beyond occasionally ignoring illegal activity to providing protection by blocking legislation that would hinder the activities of the traffickers and pimps. As corruption and collaboration increase, the line between the state and the criminal networks starts to blur. This merging of criminal networks and government has occurred in many of the former Soviet republics, which are the major suppliers of women to the brothels of Europe. Reports from the Netherlands, Germany and Australia, indicate that legalized prostitution does not solve these problems, but leads to increased prostitution, trafficking and organized crime.

Resistance to Sexual Exploitation

If women and girls are to live in this world with dignity and equality, their bodies and emotions must belong to them alone. They cannot be commodities to be bought and sold. The sexual exploitation of women is justified or condemned by so many different perspectives and ideologies it is difficult to get people to see and understand the harm to women, individually and as a class.

There is a double battle to be fought against the abuse and control of women and girls’ sexuality. The first is against the repression of women and girls’ sexuality; the second is against the exploitation of women and girls’ sexuality. In the case of prostitution, the challenge is to end the discrimination for being in prostitution, while at the same time, ending the oppression of being used in prostitution. To do this we need to decriminalize prostitution for women, so the state is no longer punishing women for being exploited and abused. We need services that assist victims who are suffering from trauma, poor health, and physical injuries. States need to provide assistance to women and girls in the form of shelters, hotlines and advocates.

At the same time, we have to oppose the legalization and regulation of prostitution and trafficking, which allow women to be exploited and abused under state determined conditions, and the decriminalization of pimping, trafficking and buying women in prostitution. We must focus more attention on the legitimacy of the demand by men to sexually exploit women and girls. We have to hold the criminals and perpetrators accountable for the harm they do.

In addition to ending the harm to women and girls, successful opposition to sexual exploitation offers countries of the world a breakthrough for global justice and democracy. Successful prosecutions of individuals and criminal networks that traffic and pimp women will eliminate a signification portion of transnational organized crime and corruption that are destabilizing governments all over the world.

[1] This dynamic is the case for heterosexual prostitution. Exceptions are gay prostitution, men’s sexual abuse of boys, the occasional sexual abuse of children by women and the almost non-existent prostitution of men by women.

Eight Men Consider House Bill To Restrict Women's Reproductive Rights
 

http://media-cache-is0.pinimg.com/73...aa0c89fdf0.jpg

"Just more proof that the anti-abortion movement has nothing to do with being pro-life and everything to do with punishing women."

Absolutely. Nothing "pro-life" about the deep misogyny and shame based 'morality' inherent in assuming a position like the one above.

.......misogyny, shame based morality, and self righteous politicians....
 

Childbirth-Related Psychological Trauma:
 

http://www.scienceandsensibility.org...eding-baby.jpg

It’s Finally on the Radar and It Affects Breastfeeding

http://www.scienceandsensibility.org/?p=6821

That link isn't going anywhere for me. Just a heads-up.

i *think* the Science & Sensibility site is down...i can't link to it either from any source. Thanks for the heads up Allison :)

Komen cuts half its 3-day races, cites low numbers
 

DALLAS (AP) — Susan G. Komen for the Cure is canceling half of its 3-day charity races next year because of a drop in participation levels, a spokeswoman for the Dallas-based breast cancer organization said Wednesday.

The announcement comes about a year and a half after Komen experienced intense backlash after news became public of its decision to stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood for breast screenings. The funding was restored days later, though it didn't quell the controversy.

Komen said its 3-day races will not return next year to Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Phoenix, San Francisco, Tampa Bay and Washington D.C. Seven other races will still be held next year in Atlanta, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Michigan, Philadelphia, San Diego, Seattle and in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

Participation in the 3-day events has declined 37 percent over the last four years, according to the group. Participants must raise at least $2,300 to walk 60 miles over three days, and due to the amount of money that must be raised, 60 percent of participants only take part in the event once, Komen spokeswoman Andrea Rader said.

Rader said the decline came in the wake of the economic downturn, but noted that the drop was "a little more dramatic" last year following the Planned Parenthood controversy in late January. She declined to give specific figures for each year, but said other contributing factors for the last year were the economy and competition from other events.

She said the "vast majority" of people have moved on from the controversy.

"There are some folks who will never be back and we know that, and we hope that they will support breast cancer charities because the work's important," she said.

Komen said no other events are being cut back. Among them are about 140 Races for the Cure events each year.

Rader said that while last year, as a "general rule," the organization saw a participation dip in Race for the Cure events, it noticed more people started coming back toward the end of the year.

http://news.yahoo.com/komen-cuts-hal...165421673.html

Modern Western childbirth methods makes for a dreadful experience for too many women and babies. The repercussions can seriously affect a baby's physical and psychological health for decades. I would love to see radical changes in this area. Thanks for highlighting.

pxo

Feds: All girls to have morning-after pill access
 

NEW YORK (AP) — The federal government on Monday told a judge it will reverse course and take steps to comply with his order to allow girls of any age to buy emergency contraception without prescriptions.

The decision ends a years-long fight between President Barack Obama's administration, which had argued that age limits for the morning-after pill are common sense, and women's rights groups, which insisted the drug should be made as freely available as aspirin.

The Department of Justice, in the latest development in the complex back-and-forth over access to the drug, notified U.S. District Judge Edward Korman it will submit a plan for compliance. If he approves it, the department will drop its appeal of his April ruling.

According to the department's letter to the judge, the Food and Drug Administration has told the maker of the pills to submit a new drug application with proposed labeling that would permit it to be sold "without a prescription and without age or point-of-sale prescriptions." The FDA said that once it receives the application it "intends to approve it promptly."

Last week, an appeals court dealt the government a setback by saying it would immediately permit unrestricted sales of the two-pill version of the emergency contraception until the appeal was decided. That order was met with praise from advocates for girls' and women's rights and with scorn from social conservatives and other opponents, who argue the drug's availability takes away the rights of parents of girls who could get it without their permission.

Advocates for girls' and women's rights said Monday the federal government's decision to comply with the judge's ruling could be a move forward for "reproductive justice" if the FDA acts quickly and puts emergency contraception over the counter without restriction.

Annie Tummino, lead plaintiff in a lawsuit over unrestricted access to the morning-after pill and coordinator of the National Women's Liberation, said women and girls should have "the absolute right to control our bodies without having to ask a doctor or a pharmacist for permission."

"It's about time that the administration stopped opposing women having access to safe and effective birth control," she said in an emailed statement.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards, in a statement, called the government's decision to drop the appeal "a huge breakthrough for access to birth control and a historic moment for women's health and equity."

But opponents of easy access to the morning-after pill, such as the anti-abortion Family Research Council, criticized the government for not sticking with its decision to appeal.

"We're very concerned and disappointed at the same time because what we see here is the government caving to political pressure instead of putting first the health and safety of girls (and) parental rights," said Anna Higgins, director of the council's Center for Human Dignity.

The government had appealed the judge's underlying April 5 ruling, which ordered emergency contraceptives based on the hormone levonorgestrel be made available without a prescription, over the counter and without point-of-sale or age restrictions.

It had asked the judge to suspend the effect of that ruling until the appeals court could decide the case. But the judge declined, saying the government's decision to restrict sales of the morning-after pill was "politically motivated, scientifically unjustified and contrary to agency precedent." He also said there was no basis to deny the request to make the drugs widely available.

The government had argued that "substantial market confusion" could result if the judge's ruling were enforced while appeals were pending, only to be later overturned.

The morning-after pill contains a higher dose of the female hormone progestin than is in regular birth control pills. Taking it within 72 hours of rape, condom failure or just forgetting regular contraception can cut the chances of pregnancy by up to 89 percent, but it works best within the first 24 hours. If a girl or woman already is pregnant, the pill, which prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg, has no effect.

The FDA was preparing in 2011 to allow over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill with no limits when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled her own scientists in an unprecedented move.

The FDA announced in late April that Plan B One-Step, the newer version of emergency contraception, the same drug but combined into one pill instead of two, could be sold without a prescription to those age 15 or older. Its maker, Teva Women's Health, plans to begin those sales soon. Sales had previously been limited to those who were at least 17.

The judge later ridiculed the FDA changes, saying they established "nonsensical rules" that favored sales of the Plan B One-Step morning-after pill and were made "to sugarcoat" the government's appeal.

He also said they placed a disproportionate burden on blacks and the poor by requiring a prescription for less expensive generic versions of the drug bought by those under age 17 and by requiring those age 17 or over to show proof-of-age identification at pharmacies. He cited studies showing that blacks with low incomes are less likely than other people to have government-issued IDs.

The decision marks a sharp reversal for Obama and his administration. His previous decision to appeal set off a storm of criticism from girls' and women's rights groups, who denounced it as politically motivated and a step backward for their health. Abortion rights advocates who had counted Obama as among their supporters angrily questioned why a Democratic president had sided with social conservatives in favor of limiting women's health care choices.

Reluctant to get drawn into a messy second-term spat over social issues, White House officials have argued that the FDA and the Department of Justice were acting independently of the White House in deciding how to proceed. That approach continued Monday, with the White House referring all questions about the decision to Health and Human Services.

Still, Obama has made clear in the past that he feels strongly about the limits, and he said in 2011 he supported Sebelius' decision to impose them despite the advice of her scientists.

"As the father of two daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine," Obama said then.

http://news.yahoo.com/feds-girls-mor...025550538.html

About fucking time. What the hell was Obama thinking in the first place, here?

The War on Women is back
 

A controversial abortion ban passes a House committee, while a Republican raises eyebrows with a startling comment about rape.

Republicans on Wednesday handed Democrats more ammunition to declare that the GOP's War on Women, a focal point in last year's elections, is back.

The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved a bill by a 20-12 vote that would outlaw all abortions — including those resulting from rape and incest — after 20 weeks. The current federal and Supreme Court-mandated threshold is 24 weeks.

Even before the bill's passage, Democrats were outraged over comments made by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), the bill's author. Franks defended the decision to exclude exceptions for rape by saying, "The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low."

To some, the remark echoed the "legitimate rape" comment made by failed Senate candidate Todd Akin (R-Mo.) last year. Akin's claim that women's bodies could magically detect "legitimate rape" and had a way of "shutting that whole thing down" to prevent pregnancy likely cost Republicans an easy Senate seat. It also spurred a Democratic campaign accusing Republicans of outright hostility toward women's interests.

Democrats on Wednesday immediately seized on Franks' comment.

"The idea that the Republican men on this committee think they can tell the women of America they have to carry to term the product of a rape is outrageous," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.)

Unlike Akin, however, Franks may have managed to steer clear of crazy town.

"Simply stating that the number of abortions in the case of rape is low (in relation to the total number of abortions) is not the same thing as Todd Akin's crazy, unscientific claim that women can't get pregnant from 'legitimate rape,'" The Weekly Standard's John McCormack wrote.

New York Magazine's liberal columnist Jonathan Chait agreed, noting that Franks did not say the "rate" of rape-induced pregnancy was low, but rather that the number of actual pregnancies as a result of rape are. Plus, he said, Franks "was not relying on pseudoscientific nuttery about the lady-parts shutting down pregnancy in the case of rape."

Franks may have a statistical case to support his comment, too. According to the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network, the pregnancy rate from rape is roughly five percent.

Still, Franks' remarks came off as tone deaf, especially since they followed other questionable comments about women that Republican lawmakers and pundits have made over the past few months.

As Congress debated how to handle the military's sexual assault epidemic, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) suggested the problem was an unavoidable result of "the hormone level created by nature." Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) went further, accusing women of bringing the problem on themselves by joining the military in the first place.

And last month, following a Pew Research report that found women were the sole or primary source of income in 40 percent of American households, Red State's Erick Erickson said that men were the "dominant" sex, and that women should accept their "complementary" role in society. After receiving plenty of scathing responses, Erickson needled his opponents even more, saying "feminist and emo lefties have their panties in a wad."

It's no surprise that Democrats are quietly stockpiling all those remarks, part of a new offensive against the GOP. The Republican Party may not want a War on Women, but Democrats will make sure they get one.

http://theweek.com/article/index/245...-women-is-back

Compare the map above with these maps.
 

US Supreme Court agrees to hear challenge to Mass. abortion clinic buffer zone law
 

US Supreme Court has agreed to consider a challenge to the Massachusetts abortion clinic buffer zone law.

The Supreme Court issued an order today granting a writ of certiorari to the petitioners, who are objecting to the law that keeps abortion protesters a set distance away from abortion clinics.

The high court’s action comes after a federal appeals court in January upheld the law, saying it protected the rights of patients while, at the same time, allowing others to express their opinions.

The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said in its ruling, “Few subjects have proven more controversial in modern times than the issue of abortion. ... The nation is sharply divided about the morality of the practice and its place in a caring society. But the right of the state to take reasonable steps to ensure the safe passage of persons wishing to enter health care facilities cannot seriously be questioned.

“The Massachusetts statute at issue here is a content-neutral, narrowly tailored time-place-manner regulation that protects the rights of prospective patients and clinic employees without offending the First Amendment rights of others,” said the opinion, written by Judge Bruce M. Selya, who heard the case, along with two other judges.

The appeals court ruling affirmed a decision by US District Judge Joseph L. Tauro in February 2012.

The law creates a 35-foot fixed buffer zone around the driveways and entrances of clinics. The lawsuit, Eleanor McCullen et al v. Martha Coakley et al, was brought by seven people who say they regularly engaged in antiabortion counseling outside the three clinics.

The challenge to the law was the latest in a series. “This case does not come to us as a stranger,” the appeals court said, leading off its decision.

The court twice upheld an earlier version of the law, in 2001 and 2004. After the Legislature revised the law in 2007, the appeals court upheld it again in 2009. More challenges were launched in Tauro’s court. Tauro rejected them, but the plaintiffs appealed.

Massachusetts began moving toward a buffer zone law after the slayings of two clinic workers in Brookline in 1994 shocked the nation. John C. Salvi III, a 22-year-old abortion opponent, shot two clinic workers to death and wounded several others. Salvi later committed suicide in prison while serving two life sentences.

http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013...nzJ/story.html

Texas House passes sweeping abortion restrictions
 

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives approved on Monday sweeping restrictions on abortions, including a ban on most after 20 weeks of pregnancy and stricter standards for abortion clinics.

If the bill becomes law, Texas could become the 13th state to pass a 20-week ban and would have some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country.

Supporters says the bill is needed to protect women's health and to keep fetuses from feeling pain. Opponents say it will cause nearly all the state's abortion clinics to close or be completely rebuilt.

"Sadly, too often today the back-alley abortion is the abortion clinic because the standards for providers and the facilities are too lax or substandard," the measure's House sponsor, Representative Jodie Laubenberg, told colleagues early Monday. "This bill will assure that women are given the highest standard of healthcare."

State Representative Senfronia Thompson, a Democrat, waved a coat hanger on the floor of the House, warning that such objects would be used to perform abortions if the measure became law.

"There are going to be more people ending up in the hospital DOA (dead on arrival) for trying to do the abortions themselves," Thompson said during the debate.

The vote was 95-34, mostly along party lines. The House gave the measure preliminary approval earlier on Monday by a vote of 97-33. The measure now returns to the Senate, which has passed a version of the bill that does not include a 20-week ban.

Republicans are racing to send the measure to Governor Rick Perry, who supports restricting abortion, before the current special legislative session ends on Tuesday.

The U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, but conservative states have enacted laws in recent years that seek to place restrictions on the procedure, especially on abortions performed late in pregnancy.

Twelve states have passed 20-week bans, including two states where the bans take effect later this year, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. Courts have blocked the bans in three of the 12 states - Arizona, Georgia and Idaho.

Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill banning abortions 20 weeks after fertilization. The measure is extremely unlikely to become law because Democrats control the U.S. Senate and the White House.

Similar to the federal measure, the 20-week provision of the Texas proposal is based on controversial medical research that suggests a fetus starts to feel pain at that point.

The Texas proposal would allow exemptions for abortions to save a woman's life and in cases of severe fetal abnormalities.

Thompson unsuccessfully proposed an exemption for victims of rape and incest.

Planned Parenthood said the stricter requirements for abortion facilities would reduce the number of clinics in Texas to five from the present 42.

http://news.yahoo.com/texas-house-re...150751075.html

Please Support Senator Davis
 

Texas senator Wendy Davis filibusters against abortion bill

AUSTIN, TEXAS Wearing pink tennis shoes to prepare for nearly 13 consecutive hours of standing, a Democratic Texas state senator on Tuesday began a one-woman filibuster to block a GOP-led effort that would impose stringent new abortion restrictions across the nation's second-most populous state.

Sen. Wendy Davis, 50, of Fort Worth began the filibuster at 11:18 a.m. CDT Tuesday and passed the nine-hour mark in her countdown to midnight -- the deadline for the end of the 30-day special session.

Before Davis began speaking, her chair was removed. CBSDFW.com reports that Davis must speak continuously -- and stay on topic -- the entire time. She is not allowed to lean against something for support. And she will not be able to stop or take a break, not even for meals or the restroom, during the entire 13-hour ordeal.

Davis offered some insight to her plans Monday night on Twitter:


If signed into law, the measures would close almost every abortion clinic in Texas, a state 773 miles wide and 790 miles long with 26 million people. A woman living along the Mexico border or in West Texas would have to drive hundreds of miles to obtain an abortion if the law passes.

In her opening remarks, Davis said she was "rising on the floor today to humbly give voice to thousands of Texans" and called Republican efforts to pass the bill a "raw abuse of power."

Democrats chose Davis to lead the effort because of her background as a woman who had her first child as a teenager and went on to graduate from Harvard Law School.

In the hallway outside the Senate chamber, hundreds of women stood in line, waiting for people in the gallery to give up their seats. Women's rights supporters wore orange T-shirts to show their support for Davis, and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst reminded those in the gallery that interrupting the proceedings could results in 48 hours in jail.

Davis tried to stay comfortable and sharp by shifting her weight from hip to hip and slowly walking around her desk while reading notes from a large binder on her desk. When a male protester stood in the Senate gallery and shouted, "Abortion is genocide," Davis continued talking uninterrupted as the man was removed by security.

Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, speaks as she begins a filibuster in an effort to kill an abortion bill, June 25, 2013, in Austin, Texas. / AP PHOTO/ERIC GAY
If the filibuster succeeds, it could also take down other measures. A proposal to fund major transportation projects as well as a bill to have Texas more closely conform with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision banning mandatory sentences of life in prison without parole for offenders younger than 18 might not get votes. Current state law only allows a life sentence without parole for 17-year-olds convicted of capital murder.

Twice in the first six hours, anti-abortion lawmakers questioned Davis about the bill, presenting their arguments that it would protect women or that abortions were wrong. Davis answered their questions but did not give up control of the floor.

"This is really about women's health," said Sen. Bob Deuell, who introduced a requirement that all abortions take place in surgical centers. "Sometimes bad things can happen."

Davis questioned then why vasectomies and colonoscopies aren't also required to take place in such clinics. "Because I've been unable to have a simple question answered to help me understand how this would lead to better care for women, I must question the underlying motive for doing so."

Davis read testimony from women and doctors who would be impacted by the changes, but who were denied the opportunity to speak in a Republican-controlled committee. During one heart-wrenching story describing a woman's difficult pregnancy, Davis choked up several times and wiped tears.

The bill would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy and force many clinics that perform the procedure to upgrade their facilities and be classified as ambulatory surgical centers. Also, doctors would be required to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles -- a tall order in rural communities.

"If this passes, abortion would be virtually banned in the state of Texas, and many women could be forced to resort to dangerous and unsafe measures," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund and daughter of the late former Texas governor Ann Richards.

CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez reports many clinics would be forced to shut down because they wouldn't be able to afford the changes required by the law. Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman's Health, said it would cost up to $2 million for each of her clinics to be upgraded to hospital-style operating rooms.

"I'd have to knock down the wall between this room and another room, I'd have to add airflow systems, I'd have to get oxygen piped in through walls instead of tank in here," she explained in one of her centers.


Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said the Democrats never should have been allowed to put Republicans "in a box" and complained that many in the Senate GOP were "flying by the seat of their pants."

But the bill's bogging down began with Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who summoned lawmakers back to work immediately after the regular legislative session ended May 27 but didn't add abortion to the special session to-do list until late in the process. The Legislature can only take up issues at the governor's direction.

Then, House Democrats succeeded in stalling nearly all night Sunday, keeping the bill from reaching the Senate until 11 a.m. Monday.

Debate in that chamber included lawmakers waving coat-hangers on the floor and claiming the new rules are so draconian that women are going to be forced to head to Mexico to have abortions.

At one point, the bill's sponsor, Republican Rep. Jodie Laubenberg of Spring, errantly suggested that emergency room rape kits could be used to terminate pregnancies.



=================


Texas Senator Wendy Davis is standing on the Senate floor RIGHT NOW filibustering conservative attempts to pass some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.

Tell Wendy you stand with her in fighting for women's health care and reproductive rights - now and in the months to come. We will send her your messages of support.

Sen. Wendy Davis Filibuster Live Stream: Watch The Texas Senator Try To Defeat Abortion Bill

Wendy Davis didnt make it to midnight but was the vote too late?
 

The news is reporting Wendy Davis didn't make thru all the hoops Texas required for her filibuster to hold off voting on the abortion bill.

But, now there is controversy as to when the vote was actually taken. The official record originally had the vote taken after midnight. It was then changed to before midnight.

http://news.yahoo.com/dispute-texas-...070453921.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...6pLid%3D336067

Yee Haw! :fastdraq:

Texas gov. calls 2nd special session on abortion
 

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday called a second special session of the Texas Legislature to pass widespread abortion restrictions across the nation's second-largest state, after the first attempt by Republicans died overnight following a marathon one-woman filibuster.

Perry ordered lawmakers to meet again on July 1 to act on the abortion proposals, as well as separate bills that would boost highway funding and deal with a juvenile justice issue. The sweeping abortion rules would close nearly all the state's abortion clinics and impose other widespread restrictions.

Perry can call as many 30-day extra sessions as he likes, but lawmakers can only take up those issues he assigns.

The debate over abortion restrictions led to the most chaotic day in the Texas Legislature in modern history, starting with a marathon filibuster and ending with a down-to-the wire, frenetic vote marked by questions about whether Republicans tried to break chamber rules and jam the measure through.

Democrats put their hopes of thwarting the bill in the hands of Wendy Davis, a state senator clad in pink running shoes, for a daylong attempt to talk the bill to death. Over the duration of the speech, Davis became a social media star, even becoming the subject of a tweet from President Obama for her efforts.

But just before midnight, Republicans claimed she strayed off topic and got help with a back brace — two things that are against filibuster rules — and cut her off.

That cleared the way for a vote.

But when Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst shouted into the microphone, trying to call the final votes, nobody seemed to hear him. Some 400 supporters jammed into the gallery had taken their feet with a deafening roar, drowning out his voice. It was, as some claimed, a "people's filibuster" — an attempt by protesters to finish what Davis had started more than 11 hours earlier.

"Get them out!" Republican Sen. Donna Campbell shouted to a security guard. "... I want them out of here!"

As the crowd clapped and shouted "shame, shame, shame," Dewhurst gathered Republican lawmakers around Secretary of the Senate Patsy Spaw to register their votes. Democrats ran forward, holding up their cellphones, which showed it was past midnight.

But Dewhurst and other Republicans insisted the first vote was cast before midnight by the Legislature's clock and that the bill had passed.

By the time decorum was restored and the 19-10 vote in favor of the measure was recorded, the clock read 12:03 a.m. Confusion took over: The Republicans had passed the bill, but did it count? Were the votes tallied in time?

Reporters checked the Senate's official website and saw the vote registered on Wednesday, after the deadline. But a short time later, the website was updated to show the vote on Tuesday. Sen. Chuy Hinojosa produced two official printouts of the vote, each showing a different day for the same vote.

After protests from angry Democrats, senators met privately with Dewhurst for more than an hour. Eventually, he returned to the then-empty Senate chamber and declared that while the bill had passed, he didn't have time to sign it, so it wasn't approved. In return for declaring the measure dead, Democrats promised not to question the date of the vote any further.

While altering a public record is illegal, stopping the clock to allow for a vote or changing the journal before it is published are long traditions in the Texas Legislature and unlikely to lead to a prosecution.

The bill would have banned abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy and forced many clinics that perform the procedure to upgrade their facilities and be classified as ambulatory surgical centers. Also, doctors would be required to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles — a tall order in rural communities.

The law's provision that abortions be performed at surgical centers means only five of Texas' 42 abortion clinics would remain in operation in a state 773 miles wide and 790 miles long with 26 million people. A woman living along the Mexico border or in West Texas would have to drive hundreds of miles to obtain an abortion.

Conservatives and anti-abortion campaigners joined Dewhurst in condemning the "unruly mob" for violating the Senate's decorum by screaming obscenities at Republican backers of the bill.

Texas Democrats, though, see an opportunity to capitalize just months after setting up a grassroots organization called "Battleground Texas" with a $36 million cash infusion. And they circled around Davis — the teen mom turned Harvard Law School grad whose Twitter followers rocketed from 1,200 to 83,000 in just 24 hours.

"As Sen. Wendy Davis most powerfully emphasized, Democrats are not afraid of a fight," said Gilberto Hinojosa, Texas Democratic Party chairman. "Last night was a turning point in that story of Texas."


http://news.yahoo.com/texas-gov-call...211507600.html

Texas State Senator Wendy Davis
 

IMO, she is an outstanding example of an elected official. The Republicans say "grandstanding." I say intelligent woman with conviction. Side note, I just saw the National Planned Parenthood president, Cecila Richards on Rachel Maddow's news broadcast. Ms. Richards is the daughter of the late Governor Ann Richards. Ann Richards another extraordinary woman and leader.
__________________________________________________ _________


Texas. State Sen. Wendy Davis is all the rage in the Democratic party for her fights over abortion rights and education funding. Republicans aren't so sold on her grandstanding.


CONFLICT WITH REPUBLICANS

• Tuesday's filibuster was not Davis' first. In 2011, she led a shorter filibuster that prevented the Texas state legislature from passing a budget that removed $4 billion from public schools.

• Davis' 2011 filibuster drew the ire of Texas Republicans, who were forced to meet for a special session. She was dropped from the Texas Senate Committee on Education by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) following the filibuster. Gov. Rick Perry called Davis a "show horse" after the incident.

• Davis became the 12th Democratic member of the Texas State Senate in 2008. That electoral victory and her re-election in 2012 prevented Senate Republicans from establishing a filibuster-proof majority.

• In 2011, Republicans engineered a redistricting plan that attempted to shift Davis into a more conservative district. After a battle in federal courts, attorneys for the state announced in late May that they would drop their effort to redraw Davis' district's boundaries, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

HARDSCRABBLE BEGINNINGS

• Davis was raised by a single mother with a sixth-grade education and began working at the age of 14 to support her mother and three siblings.

• She worked at an Orange Julius and sold subscriptions to the Star-Telegram, according to the New York Times.

• Living in a trailer park at the age of 19, Davis was already a divorced single mother. Despite her predicament, she went on to complete high school, junior college and an undergraduate degree at Texas Christian University, where she graduated first in her class.

• Davis was the first person in her family to graduate from college. She went on to receive her law degree from Harvard. She then remarried and had a second daughter. Davis divorced again in 2003.

Read More:

http://news.msn.com/us/who-is-texas-...en-wendy-davis

Kansas judge blocks portions of state's new abortion law
 

KANSAS CITY (Reuters) - A Kansas judge on Friday issued a temporary injunction on two parts of the state's new anti-abortion law, while upholding the majority of far-reaching measure that goes into effect Monday.

Shawnee County District Judge Rebecca Crotty struck down a part of the law that forbids a waiver of the required 24-hour waiting period to be granted based on the woman's mental health.

Crotty also struck down a part of the law requiring abortion providers on their websites to vouch for the accuracy and independence of the state's health department material on abortions.

Crotty ruled that forcing abortion providers to attest to material would be an infringement on free speech.

Kansas is one of a handful of states, primarily in the country's south and midsection, to have passed or enacted laws restricting abortion recently. Some of the measures appeared designed to stand as challenges to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal.

Crotty refused to issue an injunction on the rest of the measure, which was signed into law by Republican Governor Sam Brownback in April.

The law defines life as beginning at fertilization, blocks tax credits for abortion services, bars employees of abortion clinics from providing sex education in schools and bans abortions based solely on the gender of the fetus.

Crotty's injunction will stay in effect, pending future hearings, said Teresa Woody, the lawyer for doctors Herbert Hodes and Traci Nauser, who brought the lawsuit.

Kansas is one of seven states to have laws that say life begins at fertilization, according to the anti-abortion Guttmacher Institute, which researches abortion-related laws nationwide.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/kansas-judg...040248614.html

CBO: GOP abortion bill would raise deficit
 

Nearly every single House Republican voted last week to increase government spending and push the nation further into debt — all to limit abortion access for some women.

The official budget scorekeeper of Congress says the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks, would increase Medicaid costs by as much as $400 million.

The bill from Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), received a lot of media attention and angered some House Republicans, who had no idea why the party was voting on abortion restrictions when it is trying to make inroads with female voters. Six Democrats joined 222 House Republicans to pass the bill.

The Congressional Budget Office, which judges the budgetary impact of all legislation, says “Depending on the number of additional births under H.R. 1797, such Medicaid costs could range from about $75 million over the next 10 years to more than $400 million over that period.”

CBO officially estimates that the bill increases federal deficits by $75 million between 2014 and 2018, and $225 million between 2014 and 2023.

CBO’s cost estimate is based on this: “about three-quarters of the abortions that would occur 20 weeks or more after fertilization under current law would instead occur earlier, and the remaining one-quarter would not occur so those pregnancies would be taken to term.

“Because the costs of about 40 percent of all births are paid for by the Medicaid program, CBO estimates that federal spending for Medicaid will rise to the extent that enacting H.R. 1797 results in additional births and deliveries relative to current law,” CBO added. “In addition, some of those children would themselves qualify for Medicaid and possibly for other federal programs as well.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/0...#ixzz2XisCbthj

---------------------------------


Another of those "huh?" moments.

Meet Ohio's Three New Anti-Abortion Laws
 

Ohio has three new abortion-restricting laws on the books now that Governor John Kasich has signed the new state budget without vetoing any of the abortion measures attached to it.

Kaisich also continued the trend of keeping the visuals of abortion legislation 100 percent men.

Keep in mind that there are actually two big anti-abortion legislative efforts going on in Ohio this month. HB 200, the bill that will, among other things, require doctors to give patients disputed scientific "facts" about abortion, is still making its way through the state's legislature. The budget measures signed today pertain to funding provided to family planning services (effectively prioritizing anti-abortion pregnancy centers over Planned Parenthood for federal funding), and bans surgical facilities that perform abortions from partnering with public hospitals for transfer agreements. The Cleveland Plain Dealer explains the practical effects of the latter:

Surgical facilities in the state are required to have a transfer agreements with a hospital, Ribbins said, adding that barring Planned Parenthood from drafting agreements with public hospitals would force the health care provider to seek agreements with private hospitals, which are often affiliated with religious groups that oppose abortion."

A last-minute provision added to the bill will require doctors to listen for, and if detected, inform patients of, a "fetal heartbeat." The bill doesn't specify the method used to detect the heartbeat, but this could possibly mean that doctors will perform external ultrasounds.

The new measures could cause the closure of some clinics and family planning centers that provide abortions. At the very least, they'll make it a lot harder for women in the state to receive any of the services offered by those providers.

While the three abortion measures in the budget went untouched, the governor did veto 22 measures from the budget, including provisions pertaining to Medicaid, the sales tax, and Spider Monkeys.

http://news.yahoo.com/meet-ohios-thr...030520731.html

North Carolina latest state to seek tighter abortion clinic rules
 

Reuters) - Stricter rules for abortion clinics were approved by the North Carolina Senate on Wednesday, adding that state to the ranks of a growing number nationwide seeking to tighten regulations.

The bill passed the Republican-majority state Senate on Wednesday on a vote of 29-12. Supporters maintain the bill is designed to protect the safety of women who seek an abortion, while opponents argue it could shut down all but one of the state's clinics.

The package of anti-abortion amendments was attached to an unrelated bill that would ban sharia, Islamic law in the state.

The amendments would require abortion clinics in the state to meet the same safety standards as ambulatory surgery centers, limit healthcare coverage for abortion and that a doctor be present when women take the RU-486 pill to induce abortion.

The move comes as lawmakers in Texas and Ohio have pushed hard for abortion limits in the past week, angering supporters of abortion rights. The tightened standards for abortion clinics are being considered in five states, and are already on the books in nine more, according to abortion rights advocates.

"A fuse has been lit that is burning across this country. Women have been shut down, shut out and told to shut up, but we demand to be heard," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund. "These attacks on women's health are dangerous and deeply unpopular, and that's why politicians are trying to sneak them in with special sessions, midnight votes, hearings without witnesses and other underhanded tactics."

The North Carolina House of Representatives has already passed the sharia bill without the last-minute abortion provisions, which were added by state senators without public notice in a late-day committee hearing and put to a preliminary vote on the Senate floor in Raleigh on Tuesday night.

The bill now goes back to the House for approval of the changes. If the bill is not approved, it may be sent to a conference committee to decide whether the abortion restrictions stay in the bill before it goes to the governor.

The hasty action was decried not only by supporters of abortion rights, but by the state's Republican governor.

The nine states that require abortion clinics to meet the same safety standards as ambulatory surgery centers for all abortions are Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia, according to the National Abortion Rights Action League.

Twenty-five states have passed less stringent variations of those laws, NARAL said, including some that require later-term abortions to be performed in a hospital.

North Carolina protest against abortion bill ends with 64 arrests
 

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - North Carolina's "Moral Monday" protesters, now in their tenth week, objected to a bill that could limit abortion access - the latest move to counter a conservative shift by the state's first Republican-led government in more than a century.

The rally at the state capitol in Raleigh on Monday night was one of the largest since the protests began this spring, drawing about 2,000 people, including 64 protesters who refused to leave the legislative chambers and were arrested.

The protests have gained momentum since a few dozen people first rallied against the political shift to the right in a state that Barack Obama won in the 2008 presidential election but lost in 2012. Some 700 people have been arrested in acts of civil disobedience over issues ranging from natural gas drilling to school vouchers to voting rights.

Republican legislators have largely stayed mum in the midst of the protests, though some state officials have grumbled about the cost of the arrests and the impact on the state.

"I'm fielding calls every day, ‘What the heck's going on (over) there?'" the state's Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker told a crowd of reporters Monday. "The current environment makes it very challenging to market North Carolina."

This week, the protest zeroed in on a bill passed last week by the North Carolina state Senate requiring abortion clinics to conform to the same safety standards as ambulatory surgery centers, a regulation currently met by only one of the state's five clinics.

Opponents say it will limit access to safe abortions. Supporters of the measure say the higher standards will make abortion safer.

Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, criticized senators for pushing the regulations through without a public hearing.

The state House of Representatives has scheduled a public hearing on the proposed regulations for Tuesday.

The bill makes North Carolina the latest state to consider abortion restrictions. The issue has dominated politics in Texas in recent days, after Democratic state Senator Wendy Davis spent 11 hours on the senate floor in an effort to stall the measure.

On Monday, a U.S. federal judge temporarily blocked a part of a new Wisconsin law, signed on Friday by Republican Governor Scott Walker, that opponents say will close two of the four abortion clinics in the state if enforced.

Cecil Bothwell, a city councilman from Asheville, North Carolina, made the four-hour bus ride to Raleigh with about 100 of his constituents. He said state lawmakers want to have it both ways when it comes to the state's role in health care.

"It amazes me that they claim they don't want government intervening in health care issues, yet they want to tell women what to do with their bodies," Bothwell said.

Melissa Reed, a vice president of Planned Parenthood Health Systems, brought a petition with 10,000 signatures opposing the measure.

Like many at Monday's protest, Tanya Glover, 34, who lives in Harnett County, a rural area outside of Raleigh, wore pink.

As she lined up with her father to be arrested, she said the legislature's lean education budget will slash services for her special needs child.

"This state has gone to hell and it's hurting my family," said Glover.

Parent must be told before teen abortion in Illinois: court
 

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A parent must be notified 48 hours before a girl under the age of 18 gets an abortion in Illinois, the state Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, culminating nearly two decades of legal wrangling over the issue.

A state law passed in 1995 required doctors who performed abortions to notify parents 48 hours before the procedure unless there was a medical emergency.

In 1996, a federal judge stopped enforcement of the law because no rules had been adopted that allowed a girl to seek permission from the courts to undergo an abortion without notifying her parents. It has been the subject of legal sparring ever since.

The earliest the court's ruling can be enforced is 21 days, according to Paul Linton, an attorney representing the Thomas More Society, an anti-abortion organization that has been involved in the case.

Planned Parenthood of Illinois, which opposed the parental notice law, said it was disappointed by the decision. The organization provides health counseling and services including abortion.

"Planned Parenthood of Illinois is committed to doing everything we can to make this new process as easy as possible for teens," the group said.

The law does not require parental consent.

The Illinois court decision is the latest in a series of state measures imposed in recent years restricting the right to abortion approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/illinois-hi...154929844.html

I stayed up really late the night Senator Davis did her filibuster and hundreds of people gathered both in the rotunda and outside the capitol. There was some dude doing a live stream from inside the rotunda and you could hear and see lots of chaos and determination happening.

I was literally biting my hand to keep from shrieking as Jackhammer lay next to me. I was just sure they were going to try to steal the vote. And they did try, it seems.

The one thing that struck me is that the demonstrators outside were described as "an unruly mob" rather than citizens who were protesting. If that doesn't lend itself to the Republican mindset that "I can do whatever the fuck I want regardless of what the citizens actually want", then I don't know what does.

Texas Senate passes new abortion restrictions
 

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas Senate passed sweeping new abortion restrictions late Friday, sending them to Republican Gov. Rick Perry to sign into law after weeks of protests and rallies that drew thousands of people to the Capitol and made the state the focus of the national abortion debate.

Republicans used their large majority in the Texas Legislature to pass the bill nearly three weeks after a filibuster by Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis and an outburst by abortion-rights activists in the Senate gallery disrupted a deadline vote June 25.

Called back for a new special session by Perry, lawmakers took up the bill again as thousands of supporters and opponents held rallies and jammed the Capitol to testify at public hearings. As the Senate took its final vote, protesters in the hallway outside the chamber chanted, "Shame! Shame! Shame!"

Democrats have called the GOP proposal unnecessary and unconstitutional. Republicans said the measure was about protecting women and unborn children.

House Bill 2 would require doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, allow abortions only in surgical centers, limit where and when women may take abortion-inducing pills and ban abortions after 20 weeks.

Abortion-rights supporters say the bill will close all but five abortion clinics in Texas, leaving large areas of the vast state without abortion services. Only five out of 42 existing abortion clinics meet the requirements to be a surgical center, and clinic owners say they can't afford to upgrade or relocate.


http://news.yahoo.com/texas-senate-p...050032557.html

Women Denied Abortions More Likely to Wind Up on Welfare, study shows

In the United States, women are, in theory, legally equal to men. It was a long road traveled by many waves of feminists, but women steadily gained legal recognition as people having the right to vote and to receive equal education and employment opportunities. Now, one of the most contentious issues on the women’s rights scene is, you got it, abortion.

A new study shows that women who are denied abortions are more likely to be unemployed, on welfare, and in abusive relationships than their counterparts who did receive the abortions they petitioned for. The preliminary results of the “Turnaway Study” throw light on the importance of pro-choice legislation in continuing to promote women’s equality in the United States.

The researchers of the “Turnaway Study” have conducted over 2,800 interviews with women who sought abortions between 2008 and 2010. Some received the desired procedure with more or less difficulty, and some were turned away because they had been pregnant for longer than the abortion clinics’ limits for the procedure. The most common reason for seeking an abortion was economic: women felt that they simply did not have enough money to support a child. 76% of the women who had to carry an unwanted baby to term were on welfare two years later, as opposed to only 44% of women who had abortions. Furthermore, 7% of the women turned away from clinics were in abusive relationships at the times of their interviews, as opposed to only 3% of their counterparts. The interviews indicated that this was a result of women without children having more freedom to leave abusive partners.

Freedom is the key word here. It’s the principle, the fundamental human right, on which the United States is supposed to operate.

While the women in this particular study were not allowed to have abortions because they were outside of the time limit for the procedure, pro-life advocates would deny any woman from having an abortion. The result of this approach if we follow the trends laid out by the “Turnaway Study” would be a female population with decreased socioeconomic freedom. Laws requiring employers to provide equal employment opportunities to woman are useless if the women cannot apply for jobs because they must care for children borne of unwanted pregnancies.

Furthermore, pro-life policies would force more women onto welfare, a favorite target of disdain by the same group of politicians who support the banning of abortion. These policymakers criticize those Americans who are dependent on welfare while supporting policies that reduce women’s ability to choose a better economic option, that is, to abort an unwanted pregnancy.

The final, and perhaps most concerning, piece of this puzzle are the statistics on relationship abuse revealed by the “Turnaway Study.” Domestic violence is one of the least reported crimes in the country, with only 33% of those involved in abusive relationships ever telling anyone. Since women carrying unwanted babies to term also carried increased economic burdens, it’s not surprising that they would choose the relative economic security of a relationship, even an abusive relationship, in order to support their children. If denying a woman an abortion forces her into the prison of domestic violence, then we should count this as just another reason to defend Roe v. Wade with tooth and nail.

After all, pro-choice legislation is not pro-abortion legislation: It is pro-freedom legislation. It supports a woman’s, a person’s, right to choose the path of her life, to pursue opportunities on an equal basis with any other person. So if she chooses not to have a child because she is financially unable to support that baby, then she should be allowed to make that call. She should not have her freedom stripped from her and be condemned to a life of poverty and violence.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/19...re-study-finds