Randi Rhodes Forums

Arizona bans funding to Planned Parenthood in abortion fight
Reuters - Sat, 5th May 2012 07:19 AM
PHOENIX (Reuters) - Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on Friday signed into law a bill banning abortion providers like Planned Parenthood from receiving money through the state, her office said in a statement.

The Republican-backed Whole Woman's Health Funding Priority Act cuts off funding for family planning and health services delivered by Planned Parenthood clinics and other organizations offering abortions.

"By signing this measure into law I stand with the majority of Americans who oppose the use of taxpayer funds for abortion," Brewer said in a statement.

Arizona joins six other states with similar laws, officials said. But three of those states -- Indiana, Kansas and North Carolina -- are facing legal challenges.

Arizona does not provide tax dollars for abortion, but backers said the law is needed to make sure that no indirect monies are funneled to organizations like Planned Parenthood that provide abortion and other health services.

There were no estimates of how much money is involved. But officials at Planned Parenthood Arizona, the state's largest abortion provider, said the law means that thousands of women in the state may now go without life-saving cancer screenings, birth control and basic health care.(Continued)
http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/ ... lang=en-US

On my soapbox again with this group:



And again I remind folks that Susan B. Anthony List's General Chair is Jane Abraham, wife of former Sen. Spencer Abraham and board member of Susan G. Komen For The Cure.

Barack Obama @BarackObama

If you’re a woman for Obama, there's a free bumper sticker with your name on it. RT so your friends get theirs, too: http://OFA.BO/bFxaCB

tn is going through the motions regarding whether or not doctors can fly in to perform abortions. just ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars. more to look like they're taking a stand than anything.. meanwhile abortion is legal in tn.

Nobody is too young to fall victim to the War On Women

Girl Scouts Under Scrutiny From Catholic Bishops
By DAVID CRARY AP National Writer
NEW YORK May 10, 2012 (AP)

Long a lightning rod for conservative criticism, the Girl Scouts of the USA are now facing their highest-level challenge yet: An official inquiry by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

At issue are concerns about program materials that some Catholics find offensive, as well as assertions that the Scouts associate with other groups espousing stances that conflict with church teaching. The Scouts, who have numerous parish-sponsored troops, deny many of the claims and defend their alliances.

The inquiry coincides with the Scouts' 100th anniversary celebrations and follows a chain of other controversies.

Earlier this year, legislators in Indiana and Alaska publicly called the Scouts into question, and the organization was berated in a series aired by a Catholic broadcast network. Last year, the Scouts angered some conservatives by accepting into a Colorado troop a 7-year-old transgender child who was born a boy but was being raised as a girl.

Some of the concerns raised by Catholic critics are recycled complaints that have been denied by the Girl Scouts' head office repeatedly and categorically. It says it has no partnership with Planned Parenthood, and does not take positions on sexuality, birth control and abortion.

"It's been hard to get the message out there as to what is true when distortions get repeated over and over," said Gladys Padro-Soler, the Girl Scouts' director of inclusive membership strategies.(continued)
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/girl ... 6xhDNnaLTo

thx for posting this!
i already got my "obama/biden" sticker from CREDO....but i love "women for obama!"

actually its not FREE, you have to send in a donation, but that wasn't a problem....

Valerie Jarrett: Just Plain Wrong: House Republican Bill Undermines the Violence Against Women Act
May 16, 2012 08:26:34
The passage of the Violence Against Women Act nearly two decades ago was an historic moment for America's women and girls. The law gave women new legal protections that help ensure their safety.

Last month, Democratic and Republican Senators came together to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. The bill they approved would address the high rates of domestic violence committed against Native American women, ensure that LGBT victims have access to services, and make college campuses safer places to live and study.

This is in keeping with the tradition of the Violence Against Women Act, which puts women's safety above partisan politics. Through its bipartisan vote, the Senate not only acted to preserve the original bill -- they improved it, protecting even more women from violence and abuse.

Unfortunately, the bill being considered in the House of Representatives today would do the opposite. It leaves out the important new protections found in the Senate bill, exposing more students, Native Americans, and LGBT Americans to the threat of violence.

But the House bill doesn't stop there. It also rolls back existing protections, leaving women less safe. For example, if this bill were to become law, abusive partners would have an easier time using immigration status as a tool to control and further abuse victims. It would make it harder for immigrants to cooperate with law enforcement to prosecute criminals.

It would eliminate confidentiality that allows many women to leave their abusive relationships, without fear of retaliation. In other words, the bill going through the House right now would leave more women at risk.(Continued)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/blackberr ... id=1520613

EDITORIAL
The Campaign Against Women
Published: May 20, 2012
Despite the persistent gender gap in opinion polls and mounting criticism of their hostility to women's rights, Republicans are not backing off their assault on women's equality and well-being.

New laws in some states could mean a death sentence for a pregnant woman who suffers a life-threatening condition. But the attack goes well beyond abortion, into birth control, access to health care, equal pay and domestic violence.

Republicans seem immune to criticism. In an angry speech last month, John Boehner, the House speaker, said claims that his party was damaging the welfare of
women were "entirely created" by Democrats. Earlier, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, sneered that any suggestion of a G.O.P. "war on women" was as big a fiction as a "war on caterpillars."

But just last Wednesday, Mr. Boehner refuted his own argument by ramming through the House a bill that seriously weakens the Violence Against Women Act. That followed the Republican push in Virginia and elsewhere to require medically unnecessary and physically invasive sonograms before an abortion, and Senate Republicans' persistent blocking of a measure to better address the entrenched problem of sex-based wage discrimination.

On Capitol Hill and in state legislatures, Republicans are attacking women's rights in four broad areas.(Continued)
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/op ... s-real.xml

Probably the most intelligent comments section to an editorial I've read through in a while. For example, doing so yielded this gem:

The Truth About the Republican War on Caterpillars
Molly Ball | Apr 5, 2012
From an exterminator in the House leadership to trying to bring back DDT, the GOP has been no friend to America's larvae.(more)
http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archi ... rs/255522/

South Dakota Doctors Ordered To Say Abortions Lead to Suicide
—By Kate Sheppard
| Fri Jul. 27, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

A federal appeals court this week upheld South Dakota's law requiring doctors to tell women seeking abortions that they will face "increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide."

The "informed consent" law, which required doctors to read a formal script to all women seeking an abortion, has been in litigation since it passed in 2005. (The state drew much of their ideas from the legal writings of Harold Cassidy, who was profiled in Mother Jones last year.) A court had previously upheld other portions of the script, but the part about increased risk of suicide—a claim based on dubious medical research—was the last portion stuck in legal wrangling. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 7 to 4 to uphold that part of the script. From the Star Tribune:

"On its face, the suicide advisory presents neither an undue burden on abortion rights nor a violation of physicians' free speech rights," the court wrote in its majority opinion.

In September, a three-judge panel upheld U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier's decision to overturn the requirement following a lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood. The decision Tuesday by the full 11-member court grants judgment to the state and vacates the permanent injunction against enforcing the provision.

The Star Tribune notes that the argument came down to questions over the validity of the medical claims. Most of the research out there has not found a causal relationship between abortion and increased risk of suicide. But the state presented articles claiming that there is, in fact, a "statistically significant correlation between abortion and suicide." But as Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check points out, there are major problems with the paper that is most often used to support that claim. We wrote earlier this year about a new study totally debunking its flawed research methods that didn't distinguish whether the women had had mental health problems before seeking an abortion. And yet abortion foes still regularlly flog the paper.(continued)
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/07 ... ion-advice

War on women continues I see.

Romney doubles down on the War On Women by alleging a war on religion.

http://t.co/CT6oqkW3

(snip)Since Ryan received the nod from Romney, abortion rights supporters have brought up the little, teensy point that although Paul Ryan likes to make it out like Paul Ryan is all about budgets and dollars and deficits and stuff, he's also all about the highly fiscally irresponsible practice of advocating against birth control and the legality of abortion (unplanned pregnancies cost US taxpayers about $11 billion a year). And remember that forced pre-abortion transvaginal ultrasound bill in Virginia that was received so poorly that it caused the state's staunchly anti-abortion governor to back off? Paul Ryan supported the national version of that. Penalty dicks for everyone!

And while right wing pundits helpfully point out that Paul Ryan doesn't want to make abortion illegal (which: hahahahahahah), he just wants to give states the right to make abortion illegal, Mother Jones' Kevin Drum notes that Ryan's Sanctity of Human Life Act states,

(B) the life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent, irrespective of sex, health, function or disability, defect, stage of biological development, or condition of dependency, at which time every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood; and

(2) the Congress affirms that the Congress, each State, the District of Columbia, and all United States territories have the authority to protect the lives of all human beings residing in its respective jurisdictions.

Which actually means that states would have the right to ban all abortions with no exception for rape, incest, or the life of the mother. Further, in those states, if a woman was raped and wanted to have an abortion in another state, her rapist could theoretically sue her to stop the abortion, and Drum suspects that he'd probably win.
http://jezebel.com/5934975/paul-ryan-sp ... m-aborting

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