The Assault on Womens Sexual and Reproductive Rights

[Toughy]

It amazes me...well no it doesn't....this issue of contraception and insurance has been dealt with by the states for a long time...

about half of the states require contraception be covered with no exemption for religious groups and that was never a problem until Obama made it part of health care reform.

interesting article:
http://www.guttmacher.org/statecente...s/spib_ICC.pdf

[Kobi]

I thought this article was an interesting reminder of how we live in what was meant to be a republic - electing a body of people to debate the big issues and find reasonable compromises in order to do well by the whole. It is also a reminder that because there are so many of us with so many ideas and preferences and beliefs, it helps to be mindful that we might not always get what we want for the reasons we want it, but hopefully we get what we can live with.


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There was lots of excitable talk last week about birth control, with President Obama dialing back his initial plan for mandating contraceptive coverage to exempt employers who object to such coverage on religious grounds. In those cases, the health-insurance provider, rather than the employer, will be on the hook to pay for the services. Tellingly, health-insurance companies seem quite happy with this compromise, knowing, as they do, that paying for contraceptives is a lot less costly than paying for pregnancies and neonatal care.

Despite the support of a healthy majority of Americans of all faiths, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich inexplicably described the compromise as “even worse” than the original plan. Gingrich’s opponent Rick Santorum scoffed at the need for contraception coverage, calling birth control a “minor expense.” Foster Friess, a major Santorum donor, suggested that “gals” might want to hold aspirin between their knees as a birth-control device.

With this hysteria at a fever pitch, it’s easy to forget a few simple truths. Taxpayers spend more than $11 billion each year (in 2001 dollars) on costs associated with unintended pregnancy. It’s a conservative figure that only includes public insurance costs and not the larger financial burden of bringing unwanted children into the world.

An estimated half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended according to an analysis by researchers at the Guttmacher Institute and published in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, and of those unplanned pregnancies, a further half end in abortion. That’s an awful lot of unwanted children and fetuses. By age 45, more than 40% of all American women will have had at least one abortion, a rate almost twice that of Western Europe. A comprehensive study by the World Health Organization confirmed that abortion rates in countries that prohibit or restrict legal abortion are no different than abortion rates in countries with liberal abortion laws; the only reliable way to reduce abortion is through the provision of affordable, accessible contraception. To cap off last week’s debate came the news that there has been a surge in births outside marriage, the fastest growth being among white women in their twenties with some college education. More than half of births to women under 30 now occur outside of marriage. Is this really a time to try to limit contraception? What about the reckoning of the reality of human lives?

People who cry moral indignation about government-mandated contraception coverage appear unwilling to concede that the exercise of their deeply held convictions might infringe on the rights of millions of people who are burdened by unplanned pregnancy or want to reduce abortion or would like to see their tax dollars committed to a different purpose.

Why should an employer’s right to reject birth-control coverage trump a society’s collective imperative to reduce unintended pregnancy? Should employers be allowed to withhold a polio vaccine or cataract surgery or safe working conditions on similar “moral” grounds?

We all enjoy the multifold benefits of a plural society, but the social contract requires that we must occasionally stomach government policies that offend and outrage us. Most Americans choose to live with this trade-off because, on balance, the benefits of being part of a civil society far outweigh the costs. We are assured a level of comfort and safety, for example, that is unheard of in much of the world. We travel on relatively safe roads and airplanes; we rarely get sick from our drinking water. We can call the fire department in an emergency and hire publicly educated employees; we undergo surgery and cancer treatments developed from taxpayer-funded medical research. Our armies are voluntary. We can worship where and with whom we want. Our legal disputes are solved by the state, not an irate neighbor with a pitchfork.

Americans generally understand that their world doesn’t collapse when they are forced to live with decisions and values with which they disagree. It seems people are quite willing to be flexible on most matters, except in an election year and where sex is involved.

The cost of living in a democracy is tolerating moral judgments we don’t always like. For those who object, there’s a clear alternative. Protesting the Mexican-American War in the 1840s, Henry David Thoreau withheld his taxes with the understanding that he would have to go to jail for his principles. In reality, he only served one night in jail, but he was willing to pay the price for his convictions. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela paid a much higher price for theirs.

Let’s see what our society would look like if we all had the luxury of imposing our unfettered will. At a minimum, the Catholic bishops and employers resisting contraceptive coverage should be willing to pay for the care of all those unwanted children. Or perhaps they’d be willing to spend some time in jail in protest. At my taxpaying expense, of course.

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/20/wha...#ixzz1nPJmUYmG

[Kobi]

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Feb 27, 2012 at 10:33 am

When a woman in Alabama seeks an abortion procedure, she already has to sign that her doctor has performed an ultrasound and that she either viewed the ultrasound image or rejected seeing it. But state Sen. Clay Scofield (R) is pushing SB 12, a bill in the Alabama legislature that would mandate the physician “to perform an ultrasound, provide verbal explanation of the ultrasound, and display the images to the pregnant woman before performing an abortion.” The physician could also require the woman to submit to a transvaginal ultrasound — “in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced” — if she or he determines it necessary.

A Senate committee voted 4-1 on Friday to approve the measure, and the state Senate is expected to vote on it early this week. Even though studies have proven that viewing an ultrasound does not lead women to not have abortions, the bill’s sponsor says he hopes it will:

Scofield said he hopes that, if signed into law, his bill will stop some abortions. Though the bill states a woman can look away from the ultrasound image, Scofield wants her to see it.

“So she sees that this is not just a clump of cells as she is told,” he said. “She will see the shape of the infant. And hopefully, she will choose to keep the child.”

The bill wouldn’t require an ultrasound if an abortion is necessary to save a woman’s life, but it does not allow the victims of sexual assault to opt out of viewing the ultrasound.

Last week, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell backed away from supporting the same measure after almost 1,000 women protested the measure and national media mocked the extreme bill. He explained that he backtracked after the state’s attorney general told him that “these kinds of mandatory invasive requirements might run afoul of Fourth Amendment law.” The Virginia House and a Senate committee have passed the ultrasound bill with substitute language from the governor that would not require women to receive a transvaginal ultrasound.


Update
State Sen. Linda Coleman (D), the sole vote against the bill in committee, told RH Reality Check that it is “a state-sanctioned rape bill.” “You can’t tell me forcing a probe into a woman’s vagina against her consent is anything but rape,” Coleman said.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012...ll/?mobile=nc#

[Kobi]

A Democratic lawmaker in Georgia is responding to a Republican-backed effort to prevent women from receiving abortions 20 weeks after fertilization with a tongue-in-cheek measure that seeks to limit men’s health care choices: legislation that “would limit vasectomies only to men who will die or suffer dangerous health problems without one.” “Thousands of children are deprived of birth in this state every year because of the lack of state regulation over vasectomies,” said Rep. Yasmin Neal (D) explained. “It is patently unfair that men can avoid unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly, while women’s ability to decide is constantly up for debate throughout the United States.”

The anti-abortion bill (HB 954), offered by Rep. Doug McKil­lip (R), “would effectively outlaw abortion 20 weeks after an egg is fertilized, the point where the lawmaker said fetuses can feel pain,” but would allow for exceptions in cases where a pregnancy threatens the life or health of the women. The bill also does not include exemptions for rape or incest and stipulates that doctors “performing abortions without the justifications the bill requires would be subject to a prison sentence of one to 10 years.”

Fourteen states have imposed prohibitions on abortions after a certain number of weeks, generally 24, and 6 of these states ban abortion at 20 weeks on the grounds that the fetus can feel pain at that point in gestation — a claim disputed by doctors:

Doctors’ groups and other experts testified during a committee hearing that establishing a 20-week rule could force prospective parents to make a decision on ending pregnancies before having all the information available from genetic tests that can reveal whether a fetus has severe physical problems.

“People could be making decisions on information that is not definitive,” said Dan Wies­man, a certified genetic counselor at Emory Health­care.

The concept of “fetal pain” is widely panned by many in the medical field, with the Journal of the American Medical Association determining that “pain perception probably does not function before the third trimester.” So discredited is the concept of fetal pain that even a Kansas Republican slammed the “false research,” adding “I would be embarrassed to be a state that bases its laws on untruths.”

Under current Georgia law, women can have abortions until 26 weeks after fertilization. Beyond that point, the procedure can only be performed “if three physicians agree that the woman needs it for medical reasons that can include mental health issues.”

“The Republican attack on women’s reproductive rights is unconscionable. What is more deplorable is the hypocrisy of HB 954’s author,” House Democratic Leader Stacey Abrams (D) said. “If we follow his logic, we believe it is the obligation of this General Assembly to assert an equally invasive state interest in the reproductive habits of men and substitute the will of the government over the will of adult men.”

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012...g-vasectomies/

[Kobi]

Changing course after an unwelcome national uproar, the Virginia Senate adopted a revised bill on Tuesday that still requires doctors to perform an ultrasound on women before they have an abortion, but also says that women cannot be forced to have an invasive vaginal ultrasound.

Gov. Bob McDonnell demanded the revisions last week, and their acceptance on Tuesday all but assured the state’s adoption of the ultrasound requirement. The original bill set off protests from women’s groups and others. Some critics called it “state rape,” and the plan was mocked on television comedy shows.

The furor has already had an effect in other states considering ultrasound mandates, including Alabama and Idaho, with lawmakers seeking to avoid accusations that they are subjecting women to an unwanted, invasive procedure.

In Virginia, the weakened version passed the Republican-led House last week but faced a battle in the Senate, which is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. On Tuesday the bill narrowly passed, 21 to 19, with further amendments that will require it to go back to the House for final approval. The Senate vote came after a bitter debate in which Democrats pleaded with the body not to adopt a bill that they said remained — even with the changes — demeaning to women and insulting to doctors.

Senator Ralph Northam, a Democrat and the only physician in the Senate, called it “a tremendous assault on women’s health care and a tremendous insult to physicians.”

The governor, an anti-abortion Republican who is said to have national political aspirations, is expected to sign the bill into law. Virginia would become the eighth state to require that women have ultrasounds before abortions and also be “offered” descriptions of the fetus. Anti-abortion advocates hope these mandates will persuade some women not to go through with an abortion, but many doctors and advocates for abortion rights describe them as an intrusive violation of doctor-patient relations.

In Alabama, the sponsor of a bill to strengthen an existing ultrasound requirement said on Monday that he would seek a revision softening the bill. The existing bill mandates that the screen must face the pregnant woman and requires use of the scanning method that provides the clearest image — which would mean vaginal ultrasounds in most cases.

The choice of scanning techniques should “be the choice of the mother,” the sponsor, Senator Clay Scofield, a Republican, said in a television interview on Monday in Huntsville. “If she does not want a vaginal transducer she does not have to have it.”

In Idaho, senators introducing a similar ultrasound bill added language on Monday requiring use of “whichever method the physician and patient agree is best under the circumstances.”

The choice is between vaginal ultrasounds, which involve placing a probe inside the body, or the more familiar abdominal procedure, done externally. Through most of the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, medical experts say, only the invasive procedure can provide a clear image of the tiny fetus or an audible record of the heartbeat, and most abortions occur within this period.

As a result, the bills under active consideration in several states, including Pennsylvania and Mississippi, require detailed fetal images that would in practice require many patients to have vaginal ultrasounds.

Such a requirement has been in effect since early this month in Texas with little of the outcry seen in Virginia. Similar laws adopted in Oklahoma and North Carolina are now blocked by federal court order until their constitutionality is determined.

In Alabama, the Virginia furor fanned new controversy over a proposal in the Legislature, prompting a swift reaction from voters and the author of the bill, which is called the “Right to Know and See Act.”

Even if it is amended to offer a choice of probes, the bill would contain some of the country’s strongest pre-abortion mandates.

It would require the ultrasound screen to face the woman while the doctor narrates the images, although the law states that it should not be “construed to prevent a pregnant woman from averting her eyes,” the bill reads. Doctors who do not follow the prescribed routines could face felony charges and could be sued by the potential father and grandparents.

“I do need to make sure that we leave that up to the women’s choice,” Mr. Scofield said of the scanning method. “But I do think it is very important that these women are given as much information as possible before they make this difficult decision.”

Dr. Pippa Abston, a pediatrician in Huntsville, objected to what she said were unnecessary roadblocks to a legal procedure. “As a physician I don’t like the idea that they are going to micromanage my medical practice,” she said.

In Mississippi, a bill working its way through committee requires an ultrasound that provides an image of high quality, which cannot be achieved with abdominal procedures in the initial months of pregnancy. The woman must be offered a chance to see the image and hear the fetal heartbeat. She cannot avoid hearing a description of the sonogram unless, among other things, she is a victim of sexual assault or incest or the fetus is medically compromised.

The Pennsylvania legislature is considering a law with some of the country’s strongest provisions. It would require vaginal probes in many cases, display of the scanning screen to the patient and a printout of the image for inclusion in the patient’s medical records. It would also impose a 24-hour waiting period between ultrasound and abortion that critics say would be a burden for some women.

Labeled the Women’s Right to Know Act, the bill is opposed by the Pennsylvania Medical Society and other medical groups. But it has been approved by a House committee and its sponsors hope for passage this year.

Kathy L. Rapp, a Republican representative and the main sponsor, said that the concerns about requiring vaginal ultrasounds were exaggerated because most clinics perform the procedures before abortions anyway.

She said that she did not have plans for revision in light of the Virginia experience but that if Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, were to ask for changes, “just as the Virginia legislature heard from their governor, that would be a consideration.”

“But at this point the governor has not communicated any concerns regarding the bill,” she said.

Before the Virginia Senate passed the bill on Tuesday it was amended to say that victims of rape or incest, if they reported the crime, would not be required to have an ultrasound before an abortion. The bill must return to the House for final approval, which is expected, and then will go to the governor for signing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/us...ewanted=2&_r=1

[Kobi]

In a win for Democrats, the Senate voted Thursday to table an amendment permitting employers and insurers to opt out of provisions in President Obama's health care proposal on moral or religious grounds.

The Senate voted 51-48 to kill the amendment, which was offered by Senate Republican Minority Leader Roy Blunt of Missouri as an add-on to the transportation funding bill. Blunt and fellow Republicans cast the amendment as a fight to protect First Amendment rights (which include the freedom of religion.) Prior to the vote, Blunt argued that the language should be deemed noncontroversial by his colleagues, stating on the Senate floor that every member of the Senate, barring some of the most recently elected members, "have voted for bills that have this language in them."

But Democrats said the amendment would limit access to contraception and infringe on women's rights at a time when Congress needs to focus on the economy and employment. "These aren't the issues we should be debating right now," Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet said on the Senate floor.

Following Thursday's vote, Blunt accused Democrats of playing politics with the issue.

"I am truly disappointed by the partisanship that has been injected into this debate on religious freedoms," Blunt said in a statement. "Instead of working to pass a bipartisan measure that has been part of our law for almost 40 years, this debate has been burdened by outlandish and divisive efforts to misinform and frighten Americans."

Blunt added that he will continue to fight this issue.

The future of Thursday's amendment in the closely-divided Senate hung on decisions from a handful of Senate centrists. Retiring Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine voted with the majority of Democrats to table the amendment, while three centrist Democrats-- Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Ben Nelson of Nebraska-- crossed party lines to vote with Republicans in favor of the amendment.

The president recently proposed a mandate requiring all employers to offer health insurance that fully covers contraception, including institutions such as colleges and business connected to Catholic churches, for example, that may oppose contraception on religious grounds. The proposal sparked significant controversy, angering those who viewed the proposal as an attack on religious liberties as well as many Catholic bishops and other religious groups.

In response, the president announced an "accommodation" for institutions that object to the mandate, putting the onus on health insurers instead of employers to provide full coverage for contraception and other women's health services.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/s...165939260.html

[Cin]

The Strange, Fascinating History of the Vibrator
The sex toy has its roots in the prude Victorian era -- but its history tells us a lot about the current attack upon women’s sexuality.

[Kobi]

Actual women—instead of phony gynecological issues—pervaded the last election. Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Elizabeth Edwards, Michelle Obama, Katie Couric and even Tina Fey can each credibly be said to have changed the outcome of the 2008 presidential election, as Rebecca Traister documented in her rollicking chronicle of that race, Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election That Changed Everything for American Women.

And those were just the women at the podiums. In Traister's account, each campaign hired women aplenty on the understanding that they could help their candidates, in one way or another, to attract voters. Got that? Women didn't come around to discuss obscure lady matters, but to help campaigns win votes.

Yet this time around, genuine women have disappeared, in favor of sex talk smuggled under the rubric of "values." The conversation recalls nothing so much as the days when the nightly news shows couldn't stop running pseudo-health segments that featured male reporters fondling silicon breast implants. They'd cluck over their hazards and fondle away at the translucent synthetic protoplasms. Today's fondlers of ultrasound wands seem no less prurient.

It's time we sidelined the fine points of obstetrics from public discourse in an election year. Just as girlie magazines are marketed to male readers, public discourse that features women's body parts should be clearly labeled—as Playboy used to be—"Entertainment for Men."

Transvaginal probes? Entertainment for Men. Interstate abortions? Entertainment for Men.

Single-sex entertainment is just fine, as far as it goes. But "transvaginal" anything and "interstate abortions"—no matter what side you're on—don't count as social issues. This stuff is arcana, and the rhetoric associated with these topics is third-order porn, and an occasion for (mostly) male commentators, politicians and satirists—and I mean you lefties too, Jon Stewart and Garry Trudeau!—to perseverate on gynecology in a weird O.C.D. way.

It's creepy.

Really, the zeal with which male politicians of all stripes make politics sexual is disconcerting. Last week Barack Obama placed a personal call to console Sandra Fluke, asking the law student and advocate of birth-control subsidies if she were "OK" in the days since Rush Limbaugh incoherently deemed her platform akin to sexual promiscuity. Limbaugh had likened Fluke to people who are paid for sex, and likened taxpayers to her pimps, or some bunk like that; Obama aimed to redeem a 30-year-old woman by comparing her to his daughters, ages 10 and 13, who evidently need his protection from bad men who use bad words.

Didn't this seem strange? It drove what should have been a non-erotic conversation—about health and money!—back into the key of sexual melodrama, with Dudley Do-Right Obama saving Maiden Fluke from Rake Rush.

The way Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney wax gynecological is weirder still. And, come on, Ron Paul is an actual gynecologist. They all get right into it, gunning to destroy Planned Parenthood and casually discussing "rape and incest"—limit-case exceptions to an abortion ban that doesn't exist—as if these far-fetched scenarios served any polemical purpose except to name-check sexual trauma.

Fortunately, women treat these fake-clinical spiels as neither appalling nor exciting, like Playboy itself. Maybe that's because those of us who have annual physicals don't cherish the notion of rehearsing the particulars of the ultrasound—or the speculum, for that matter. The topic's cashed even for humor.

Nor do women seem to be engaged in the psychedelic philosophical seminar, led by master logician Limbaugh, of whether employer-provided birth control is tantamount to whoredom. Instead, according to a Bloomberg poll published Wednesday, some 77 percent of women don't believe that birth control is a fit subject for any kind of political debate. Is birth control a talking point for sluts and prostitutes? Or for good patriotic women in public life? Neither! As a political topic, it's a non-starter.

It's no surprise that Terry O'Neill, of the National Organization of Women, wants politicians to "get out and stay out of women's wombs," but she should retire her incendiary anatomical language, too. It's just not what voters care about. Exit polls in the primaries suggest that Republican women tune out when male candidates start yapping about uteruses and cervices. As Kate Phillips and Allison Kopicki put it Tuesday in the New York Times, "All of the talk about birth control and abortion laws seems to have had little effect on the ways women are voting for the two leading Republican candidates, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum."

New idea: no more examining-table politics—not transvaginal, transtesticular, or any other kind. Four years ago, with the exception of a brief discussion of Sarah Palin's reproductive decisions, the campaigns steered clear of fake-clinical gibberish. Perhaps we're less eager to talk gynecological smack when there are real women around.

http://news.yahoo.com/this-campaign-...ynecology.html

[deedarino]

It is unending....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...xpires_in=6519

[Kobi]

Wow. I understand the position DHHS is in and I get where Perry's misguided ethics are leading him.

It just irks me that women, in particular poor women without other options, are being put in the middle of this pissing contest.

There is something very unethical about womens health being held hostage by men in positions of power.

Originally Posted by deedarino

It is unending....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...xpires_in=6519

[Kobi]

Arizona legislators have advanced an unprecedented bill that would require women who wish to have their contraception covered by their health insurance plans to prove to their employers that they are taking it to treat medical conditions. The bill also makes it easier for Arizona employers to fire a woman for using birth control to prevent pregnancy despite the employer's moral objection.

Under current law, health plans in Arizona that cover other prescription medications must also cover contraception. House Bill 2625, which the state House of Representatives passed earlier this month and the Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed on Monday, repeals that law and allows any employer to refuse to cover contraception that will be used "for contraceptive, abortifacient, abortion or sterilization purposes." If a woman wants the cost of her contraception covered, she has to "submit a claim" to her employer providing evidence of a medical condition, such as endometriosis or polycystic ovarian syndrome, that can be treated with birth control.

Moreover, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, the law would give Arizona employers the green light to fire a woman upon finding out that she took birth control for the purpose of preventing pregnancy.

"The bill goes beyond guaranteeing a person's rights to express and practice their faith," Anjali Abraham, a lobbyist for the ACLU, told the Senate panel, "and instead lets employers prioritize their beliefs over the beliefs, the interests, the needs of their employees, in this case, particularly, female employees."

The sponsor of the bill told the committee that it is intended to protect the First Amendment right to religious liberty.

"I believe we live in America," said Majority Whip Debbie Lesko (R-Glendale), who sponsored the bill. "We don’t live in the Soviet Union. So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom-and-pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs."

Lesko's bill resembles recent efforts on the federal level to repeal the Obama administration's contraception mandate, which requires most employers to cover contraception with no co-pay for their employees. Obama's rule has a broad religious exemption that allows faith-based organizations to opt out of covering birth control and shifts the burden of coverage over to the insurer in those cases. But many conservatives, including Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), are not satisfied with the exemption and believe all employers should be able to opt out of covering any kind of health service to which they morally object.


Lesko's bill is different from the controversial amendment Blunt proposed, in that it differentiates between birth control used for medical reasons and birth control used to prevent pregnancy. If the new law goes into effect, it will force female employees who can't afford to pay full price for birth control to share private, sometimes embarrassing medical information with her employer in order to get her prescription covered.

Lisa Love, a Glendale, Ariz., resident, testified before the committee about her polycystic ovarian syndrome in order to make a point about how private and personal the issue can be.

"I wouldn’t mind showing my employer my medical records," she said, "but there are ten women behind me that would be ashamed to do so."

The bill now moves to the state Senate for a full vote.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...ef=mostpopular

[Kobi]

Mitt Romney is doubling down on his commitment to defund Planned Parenthood, telling a reporter in Missouri that he would "get rid of" the country's best-known reproductive health care provider if he were elected president.

In an outdoor interview with Ann Rubin of KSDK.com, Romney offered a few suggestions on how he would cut the deficit.

"Of course you get rid of Obamacare, that's the easy one, but there are others," he said. "Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that."

Planned Parenthood responded to Romney's comments on Tuesday, characterizing them as dangerous and out of step with what Americans want.

“When Mitt Romney says he wants to ‘get rid’ of Planned Parenthood, he means getting rid of the preventive health care that three million people a year rely on for cancer screenings, birth control, and other preventive care," said Dawn Laguens, Vice President for Planned Parenthood Action Fund, in a written statement. “Mitt Romney simply can’t be trusted when it comes to women’s health."

Romney campaign strategist Eric Fehrnstrom downplayed the comments on CNN Tuesday night, saying the former Massachusetts governor was talking about cutting federal funding only.

"It would not be getting rid of the organization," Fehrnstrom said. "We're going to have to make some tough decisions about spending. The test that Mitt Romney will apply is, is this program so worthwhile and valuable that we'll borrow money from China to [fund] it?"


Romney has said repeatedly he wants to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood because the organization provides abortion services.

In February, he weighed in on the Susan G. Komen controversy, saying he agreed with their now-reversed decision to cut Planned Parenthood's funding for breast-cancer screenings.

Romney faces an uphill battle convincing conservatives of his anti-abortion stance. His path from pro-choice to anti-abortion has been heavily reported by the media and emphasized by his GOP competitors.

In 2002, he sought Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts' endorsement during his campaign for governor, and continued to support abortion rights until 2005, when he publicly came out as anti-abortion.

Romney is a piece of work. He instituted Romneycare in Massachusetts. It was the prototype Obama used for Obamacare. Of course Obama did it to help the people. Romney did it to increase revenues to health care providers and institutions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...ef=mostpopular

[deedarino]

I am holding out hope that come voting day, the US will show them how very wrong they are.

I am traditionally naive.

[deedarino]

[deedarino]

Lauren Zuniga, To the Oklahoma Lawmakers: a poem

[Soon]

10 Reasons The Rest Of The World Thinks The U.S. Is Nuts

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

10 Reasons The Rest Of The World Thinks The U.S. Is Nuts

The irony here is how much time, effort and resources we expend trying to convert others to our ways of being and living. We want to be the champion of human rights for the world while we systematically screw our own.

Perhaps the new American motto should be...do as we say, not as we do!

Anyone else wondering what men in power will do to this country when synthetic sperm is invented?

[Novelafemme]

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/articl...ove-about-your

It's getting crazy around here!

[Soon]

http://wearwhite4womensrights.tumblr.com/

[Kobi]

By Nick Valencia, CNN
updated 6:52 PM EDT, Wed March 28, 2012


(CNN) -- An Oklahoma County judge has overruled a state law requiring women seeking abortions to have an ultrasound of the fetus before the abortion, according to court documents

District Judge Brian Dixon's clerk confirmed the decision Wednesday, saying the judge ruled that the law was "unconstitutional and unenforceable."

The decision overrules an Oklahoma state statute passed in 2010 that would have forced women seeking an abortion to see a sonogram of the fetus and have the fetus described in detail.

Enforcement of the statute was halted in May 2010, shortly after it passed, by a temporary injunction, but Wednesday's ruling makes that injunction permanent and restrains law enforcement from enforcing the act.

It was not clear whether there were instances of the law being enforced in the time between its passage and the imposition of the temporary injunction.