The Assault on Womens Sexual and Reproductive Rights

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by silkepus

This is kind of brilliant and provoking at the same time. A man who wants to ban abortion is asked why a woman would want to have one.





In case you cant see the video, his answer is "I dont know, I'm not a woman. It's a question I never even thought about"



):-|

Silk, are you actually proposing that legislators actually think something thru before they act on it? That would clog up the entire system.

Seriously tho, the greatest mistake both men and women are making here, is that they are presuming this war on women is about abortion and religion and the Bible.

Those are merely excuses for what this war on women is all about. Sandra Day O'Connor says it better than I ever could:



This war on women is about male control, power, and dominance. It is about female enslavement, submission, and acquiescence.

One day, hopefully not in my lifetime, women will be scratching their heads, wondering how they became enslaved again.

This is how.

If you don't think misogyny and sexism is dangerous, or even exists, or isn't an integral part of the socialization of both males and females, there will be a rude awakening in your future.

[silkepus]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Silk, are you actually proposing that legislators actually think something thru before they act on it? That would clog up the entire system.

That would indeed be crazycakes.

I saw someone describe conservative’s view of unwanted pregnancies (or forced pregnancies) as sending women to their room for nine months for having been a naughty girl.

You’re absolutely right, banning abortion has little to do with saving babies and everything to do with controlling women. If people who are anti-choice really cared about reducing abortion numbers they would work hard to make contraception cheap and easily available. They would fight for sexual education that taught young people how to have safe sex. They would make plan B easily available too.

But instead it is the same people who want to ban abortion who often want to ban contraception (or make it hard to obtain and thus in reality banning it for a lot of women), who want to have abstinence only sex education who say plan B and abortion is the same etc.

It really does feel like were going backwards sometimes. I don’t think women should be too comfortable with the rights we have gained. History is full of examples of oppressed groups who gained rights only to lose them again.

[Kobi]

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Originally Posted by silkepus

That would indeed be crazycakes.

I saw someone describe conservative’s view of unwanted pregnancies (or forced pregnancies) as sending women to their room for nine months for having been a naughty girl.



Funny how the woman is a naughty girl but the sperm donor gets a 2 thumbs up eh?



You’re absolutely right, banning abortion has little to do with saving babies and everything to do with controlling women. If people who are anti-choice really cared about reducing abortion numbers they would work hard to make contraception cheap and easily available. They would fight for sexual education that taught young people how to have safe sex. They would make plan B easily available too.



Very true. The same people who are fighting against abortion are simultaneously fighting against the Obama administrations mandate for birth control to be part of health plans.



But instead it is the same people who want to ban abortion who often want to ban contraception (or make it hard to obtain and thus in reality banning it for a lot of women), who want to have abstinence only sex education who say plan B and abortion is the same etc.



Abstinence for females, not males. Females right to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies is being frowned upon. Males "right" to impregnate them - with or without their consent is still seen as a manly thing.



It really does feel like were going backwards sometimes. I don’t think women should be too comfortable with the rights we have gained. History is full of examples of oppressed groups who gained rights only to lose them again.



We are going backwards.....by design. Women won some of the battles but we lost track of the war. In addition, we have lost track of the insidious nature of sexism and misogyny and in doing so are, unwittingly, being complicit in our own victimization.

It is a prime example of the Stockholm syndrome on a nationwide/worldwide basis.

Stockholm syndrome, or capture–bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.

Stockholm syndrome can be seen as a form of traumatic bonding, which does not necessarily require a hostage scenario, but which describes “strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.

One commonly used hypothesis to explain the effect of Stockholm syndrome is based on Freudian theory. It suggests that the bonding is the individual’s response to trauma in becoming a victim. Identifying with the aggressor is one way that the ego defends itself. When a victim believes the same values as the aggressor, they cease to be a threat.

[Kobi]

U.S. District Court judge ruled on Friday that a North Carolina state law requiring women to undergo ultrasound treatments before having an abortion is unconstitutional, the Carolina Mercury reported.

Judge Catherine C. Eagles wrote in her ruling that the law, approved by the state General Assembly in 2011, “is an effort by the state to require health care providers to deliver information in support of the state’s philosophic and social position discouraging abortion and encouraging childbirth, it is content-based, and it is not sufficiently narrowly tailored to survive strict scrutiny.”

Eagles had already blocked the law from taking effect in October 2011 while waiting to hear arguments concerning its effects.

Supporters argued that its requirements that doctors deliver detailed descriptions of the ultrasound and ask patients if they would like to hear the fetus’ heartbeat was an effort to spare the patients from the emotional aftereffects of having an abortion. However, a February 2012 study showed that ultrasounds often do not influence a woman’s decision to do so.

The law was challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), as well as its North Carolina state chapter, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CPR), and Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Nancy Northrup, the CPR’s president and CEO, celebrated the verdict in a statement Friday evening.

“Today’s decision represents a robust affirmation of the First Amendment rights of physicians, making clear that politicians cannot use physicians as mouthpieces for their political agenda and interfere with patients’ personal decision making,” Northrup said. “Politicians don’t know better than doctors how to practice medicine, and they don’t know better than women how to navigate the often complicated personal circumstances surrounding a pregnancy.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/1...n-requirement/

[Kobi]

[Kobi]

[Kobi]

WASHINGTON — When the Republican National Committee gathers for its winter meeting here on Wednesday, the action will start a few hours late to accommodate anyone who wants to stop first at the March for Life, the annual anti-abortion demonstration on the National Mall. And if they need a lift to the meeting afterward, they can hop on a free shuttle, courtesy of the Republican Party.

“We thought it only fitting for our members to attend the march,” said Reince Priebus, the party chairman.

Abortion is becoming an unexpectedly animating issue in the 2014 midterm elections. Republicans, through state ballot initiatives and legislation in Congress, are using it to stoke enthusiasm among core supporters. Democrats, mindful of how potent the subject has been in recent campaigns like last year’s governor’s race in Virginia, are looking to rally female voters by portraying their conservative opponents as callous on women’s issues.

“Republicans have turned the floor of the House into the battleground for their relentless war on women’s health care and freedoms,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Every time they launch another extreme attack against women’s rights, they lose more ground with women voters.”

Aware that their candidates at times have struck the wrong tone on issues of women’s health, Republicans in some states are now framing abortion in an economic context, arguing, for example, that the new federal health law uses public money to subsidize abortion coverage. In the House in the coming weeks, Republicans will make passing the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” one of their top priorities this year.

Democrats say their success this year will depend on how close they can come, given lower turnout, to President Obama’s overwhelming margins with female voters; in 2008, he enjoyed a 14-point advantage among women, and in 2012, it was 12 points.

The fraught politics of women’s health care are already surfacing, as restrictions on abortion are appearing on state ballots and becoming the focus of debate in congressional races — many in places like North Carolina and Colorado that could hold the key to whether Republicans can sweep Democrats from power in the Senate and maintain their grip on the House.

“I don’t think this is a niche issue anymore,” said Drew Lieberman, a vice president at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a political consultancy concern, who has advised Democratic congressional candidates and has done polling for Naral Pro-Choice America.

In North Carolina, Senator Kay Hagan, a Democrat in a difficult re-election fight, and her allies plan to make an issue of the new restrictions on abortion approved by the Republican-led state legislature.

In Colorado, where Senator Mark Udall, a Democrat, says anger over the Affordable Care Act could hurt his chances, social conservatives have succeeded in placing a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would enshrine legal protections for fetuses. Even if it fails, similar “personhood” measures in Colorado and elsewhere have given Republican turnout a boost in years past.

In Oregon, Senator Jeff Merkley could face a similar situation if supporters of an initiative there succeed in getting an anti-abortion measure with a fiscally conservative twist on the ballot: the measure seeks to outlaw the use of state funds to pay for any abortion unless the mother is in grave medical danger.

“We don’t make this a pro-life thing,” said Jeff Jimerson, who is organizing the petition drive. “This is a pro-taxpayer thing. There are a lot of libertarians in Oregon, people who don’t really care what you do, just don’t make me pay for it.”

Coupling the issue of abortion with a subject important to Republicans’ Tea Party followers — government spending — is one way the party is recalibrating its election-year message. Republicans say that by framing the abortion debate in terms of fiscal conservatism, they can make a connection to the issue they believe will ultimately decide who controls Congress next year — the Affordable Care Act.

“For a lot of members politically it ties into the issue they want to be talking about this election, which is Obamacare,” said Tom McClusky, vice president for government affairs for the March for Life.

Republican presidential candidates have almost universally opposed abortion rights. When Arlen Specter, then a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, ran for president in 1995 and declared he wanted to “take abortion out of politics,” the right balked, and his candidacy was short-lived. But Republicans do see a danger in talking about it the wrong way.

“It’s a matter of tone as well as substance,” said Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who noted how Republicans hurt themselves in 2012 by picking congressional candidates like Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, whose infamous “legitimate rape” comments cost him his Senate candidacy and put his entire party on the defensive over women’s issues.

What do they want us to talk about?” Mr. Reed said. “Rape and incest. What should the pro-life candidate talk about? Late-term abortions, sex-selection and Kermit Gosnell.” Dr. Gosnell was convicted in Philadelphia last year of murdering babies after failed abortions.

Mr. Priebus, the Republican chairman, will attend the March for Life this week, rare for a party leader. So will Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader. In years past, Republican presidents have addressed the march by phone or video message to avoid speaking in person.

Nowhere was the power of the abortion issue more evident recently than in the governor’s race in Virginia, where the Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, won in November in part because women preferred him by nine percentage points over the Republican, Ken Cuccinelli, whom Democrats portrayed as extreme on women’s issues.

Nearly one-third — about $4.6 million — of the $16.4 million that Democrats and their allies spent on broadcast television advertising in Virginia last year dealt with abortion or birth control, according to an analysis by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising.

Abortion rights groups have built targeting models that allow them to predict an individual voter’s position on women’s health issues. These models, along with similar ones built by the Obama campaign, were factors not just in Virginia last year but also in Democratic electoral victories in 2012.

One state that Naral and Planned Parenthood Action Fund are studying is North Carolina, where they see parallels to Virginia. Demographic changes there are giving Democrats hope that it could swing back into their column.

One of the leading contenders to be Ms. Hagan’s opponent in November is Thom Tillis, the speaker of the State House, who voted for the tough restrictions on abortion. Democrats believe that would set them up to make the same kinds of sharp attacks that helped them prevail over Mr. Cuccinelli in November and over Mitt Romney in 2012.

While Democrats say such measures seeking to restrict abortions could stir votes, they acknowledge the limits of midterm turnout. “Off-year elections are difficult,” said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “You have lower turnout, and a lot of drop-off voters are women. So in a lot of ways, making sure women are aware and voting is important.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/us...race.html?_r=1