There need to be some improvements to Alabama's health education programs, and soon, because this little slice of inanity actually came from a female lawmaker.

Via Raw Story:

In a recent interview, state Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin explained why she was sponsoring House Bill 57 — The Women’s Health and Safety Act — which would “require clinics to follow ambulatory clinic building codes and make it a felony — punishable by up to 10 years in prison — for a nurse, nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant to dispense abortion-inducing medications,” according to theMontgomery Advertiser.

“When a physician removes a child from a woman, that is the largest organ in a body,” the lawmaker declared. “That’s a big thing. That’s a big surgery. You don’t have any other organs in your body that are bigger than that.”

Worse yet, she's actually making progress on this bill, which is yet another back door attempt to bar women from seeking or receiving abortions of any kind. McClurkin has moved it through committee and it is up for a vote today.

Jezebel:

My liver, heart, and skin are all very excited that we are now giving organs personhood rights, although the latter is slightly upset about losing out on its "largest organ in the human body" rep.

Rep. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, who opposes the legislation because she is a smart lady, said she expects the bill, which is a mixture of old and new restrictions, to pass.

"They're drafting a bill on a subject they have no knowledge of," she said. "They've never been in a clinic. They don't know what the regulations are." (They also need to hop on the Magic School Bus for a refresher in how the human body operates!)

Yes, it would be helpful if they learned the regulations and maybe even understood basic biology and science before they do things like this. But then, that would be too sane for most of these crackpots.

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It's an insidious thing, framing the debate. And too often, people watch the Sunday news shows without doing the meta-analysis necessary to evaluate the truthfulness or accuracy of the information being presented to them. They don't look at the partisan or ideological bents of the invited guests; they don't consider the assumptions made the framing of questions. It never occurs to them that the media is trying to lead them to a specific point of view, even if it's not necessarily the one you actually hold.

I noticed this little bit of framing in the intro for This Week's roundtable discussion of the Constitution. It's just a small part of a larger intro, but it's very telling in the way that ABC News views the abortion debate. Go to 1:47 of the intro.

Here's the other way we've long tended to treat the Constitution -- as wrapping paper, as in wrap yourself in it to make your case sound even better type of wrapping paper, to put a nice bow on it. Which is really nothing new. Every case that ever gets to the Supreme Court gets there because both sides argue they have the Constitution on their side. Richard Nixon, refusing to give up his tapes, said the Constitution protected him. He lost. Folks that want to burn the American flag say the Constitution protects them. They generally win. People who argue the Constitution protects the unborn have yet to win their battle.

Hold on...what was that? "Have YET to win their battle"??? Um, no. They lost that battle. It was called Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court decided that an actual born woman's right to privacy and determine medical procedures on her body superseded any potential (and nonviable) life forms.

That is the law of the land, Republican attempts to thwart it notwithstanding. But so kind of ABC News and John Donvan to frame it as an still existing battle on behalf of the anti-choicers.

I've mentioned before that I had a miscarriage several years ago. Emotionally, the scars lasted for years and years. My poor sister, pregnant again after two recent miscarriages, is holding her breath, hoping that this pregnancy goes all the way to term. For someone hoping for a child, a miscarriage can be a devastating thing.

And now in Utah, un-fricking-believably, it can now be a criminal thing too.

Utah is not a state known for its legislative sanity. This, after all, is a state that recently made headlines for proposing to honor gun manufacturers on Martin Luther King Day and for considering the elimination of 12th grade to cut back on education spending.

Well, it just got a whole lot worse.

Utah just became the first state in the U.S. to criminalize miscarriage and punish women for having or seeking an illegal abortion. Utah's "Criminal Miscarriage" law:

• expands the definition of illegal abortion to include miscarriages
• removes immunity protections for women who have or seek illegal abortions
• treats women as presumptive criminals and leaves them open to criminal prosecution

But even among states that punish illegal abortions, this "Criminal Miscarriage" law is unique. It not only punishes individuals who perform illegal procedures; it punishes women.

This legislation was prompted by the case of a 7 month pregnant 17 year old girl who paid a man $150 to beat her until it caused a miscarriage, but make no mistake, this is all about making it impossible to have an abortion, and controlling women through their reproductive options. But don't write off that prosecuting women for miscarriages is some fantastical dystopian ravings of an ultra-liberal, think again:

So, after making it near impossible and mostly illegal for undocumented (and even documented) women to buy their own health insurance that covers abortions, after making it impossible to get free or reduced cost health insurance that covers abortions–the state of Utah feels it’s important to then criminalize women who don’t have “legal” abortions.

But…what is a “legal” abortion? Is getting advice on what herbs to take from a midwife “legal?” Is taking various medications that many Latinas can get from Mexico and other Latin American countries “legal?” Is a coat hanger “legal?”

Because there seems to be no definition of what equates “legal” written into this legislation, that means any woman anywhere who for whatever reason miscarries–will be subject to criminal charges. And lest you think that prosecutors have ever shown restraint when it comes to pressing criminal charges against women who are making their own *often times very LEGAL* choices about their bodies, please, surf around the National Advocates for Pregnant Women website for a while. This organization of lawyers that defend pregnant women from criminal prosecution, has worked to defend women who have done such things as being pregnant and addicted to various drugs to refusing c-sections to being “uppity” in the birthing room.

Unbelievable. The legislation is written so loosely that any district attorney could prosecute any woman for "reckless behavior" that results in losing a pregnancy. Drinking too much, maybe. How about not wearing a seatbelt? Or not taking pre-natal vitamins/getting pre-natal care? Where does it end? I gotta ask: when will we ever stop treating everyone else except rich, white men as second class citizens?

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Judy Thomas in the Kansas City Star has an amazing piece (picked up by MSNBC) about the online fund-raiser being planned for Scott Roeder, the right-wing extremist who shot Dr. George Tiller in the head in his church:

An Army of God manual. A prison cookbook compiled by a woman doing time for abortion clinic bombings and arsons. An autographed bullhorn.

These are among the items that abortion foes plan to auction on eBay and other Web sites in a fundraiser for Scott Roeder, the Kansas City man charged with killing Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller.

“This is unique,” said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who will sign the bullhorn. “Nobody’s ever done this before. The goal is that everybody makes money for Scott Roeder’s defense.”

One abortion-rights leader called the auction deplorable and said it could lead to more violence.

“The network of extremists promoting and defending the murder of doctors is contributing to escalating threats against clinics and doctors across the country,” said Kathy Spillar, executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation.

Roeder, charged with first-degree murder in the May 31 shooting of Tiller, is scheduled to go to trial in January.

Perhaps even more appalling is the line of defense they hope to pursue in the courts with this money:

Leach and others would like to help Roeder hire a lawyer to present what is known as a necessity defense. That strategy would argue that Tiller was killed to prevent a greater harm — killing babies. Other anti-abortion activists charged with violent crimes have tried to use such a defense but with little success.

Yeah, let's legalize killing abortion doctors. Sounds like a job for Antonin Scalia. One can only hope this defense has zero success, as it has in the past.

Rachel Maddow also featured a segment on this story last night on her MSNBC show, including an interview with the attorney for Tiller's family, who says he'll move to have the court attach any funds they raise on Roeder's behalf:

Continue reading »

These are Democrats, mind you. And the thing is, I don't even believe most of these amoral jerks give a damn about abortion. They're just playing to their audience, and it provides protective cover for their real agenda: Stop the public option at any cost.

And of course this means that women on Medicaid who already have abortion coverage would lose it. Our women's-rights president's bold stand?

"‘Look, try to get this thing worked out among the Democrats. We want you to work it out within the party,’ ” Mr. Stupak said, adding that Mr. Obama did not say whether he supported the segregated-money provision or a more sweeping restriction. “We got his attention, which we never had before.”

Isn't that nice. In a country founded on religious freedom, apparently some religions are much more equal than others:

WASHINGTON — As if it were not complicated enough, the debate over health care in Congress is becoming a battlefield in the fight over abortion.

Abortion opponents in both the House and the Senate are seeking to block the millions of middle- and lower-income people who might receive federal insurance subsidies to help them buy health coverage from using the money on plans that cover abortion. And the abortion opponents are getting enough support from moderate Democrats that both sides say the outcome is too close to call. Opponents of abortion cite as precedent a 30-year-old ban on the use of taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions.

Yes, God forbid that an unemployed couple who are struggling to get on their financial feet have abortion as an option. It makes a lot more sense to send them (and their offspring) further down the financial hole, don't you think?

Abortion-rights supporters say such a restriction would all but eliminate from the marketplace private plans that cover the procedure, pushing women who have such coverage to give it up. Nearly half of those with employer-sponsored health plans now have policies that cover abortion, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The question looms as a test of President Obama’s campaign pledge to support abortion rights but seek middle ground with those who do not. Mr. Obama has promised for months that the health care overhaul would not provide federal money to pay for elective abortions, but White House officials have declined to spell out what he means.

Democratic Congressional leaders say the latest House and Senate health care bills preserve the spirit of the current ban on federal abortion financing by requiring insurers to segregate their public subsidies into separate accounts from individual premiums and co-payments. Insurers could use money only from private sources to pay for abortions.

But opponents say that is not good enough, because only a line on an insurers’ accounting ledger would divide the federal money from the payments for abortions. The subsidies would still help people afford health coverage that included abortion.

You know what I see as the real issue? When we give high-quality, subsidized insurance to allegedly "pro-life" politicians, why, that means they have that much more cash to spend on their girlfriends' abortions (not to mention hookers of either gender), and that can't be allowed to stand.

The solution is obvious. Just to make sure we're not subsidizing immoral behavior, we need to stop paying for their health insurance. In fact, maybe we should cut their salaries so they're not led into temptation.

I wasn't planning to write about this today, but reading this really got to me. Despite the fact that this country was founded on the idea of freedom of religion, there's a substantial bloc of citizens who seem to believe their religious beliefs trump everyone else's, even to the inclusion of institutionalized terror tactics.

I wonder when our constitutional-law president is going to use the extensive anti-terror powers at his command to protect women's legal rights?

For a nation that claims to cherish its freedoms, America is pretty damned complacent about the harassment that goes on outside abortion clinics. Imagine this circus outside of dentist's offices instead. Imagine what it would feel like, having to endure being called a whore and a killer on your way in to have a bad tooth pulled. Maybe they'd throw little plastic teeth at you; maybe they'd even take your photograph on the way in. People wouldn't stand for it: I have the right to choose my own dental care, they'd say. Who do these people think they are? And even if I were the smallest bit unsure about the choice I'd made, even if some part of me wanted to be talked into a filling and not an extraction--why in god's name would some hostile, red-faced, screaming stranger get a vote?

Maybe there's an element of trolling to that analogy. I could write the outraged top-text for an email forward of this blog myself. "Can you believe it! A LIVING, ALMOST-BREATHING CHILD who will PROBABLY CURE CANCER SOMDAY is nothing more than a ROTTED MOLAR to this BARREN GODLESS WHORE!!!"

Feel free to copy/paste--but if you do, you're missing the point. Bullying never won any hearts or minds, and harassment or intimidation of private citizens going about their private lives is never, never, never a tool for good. There is no place for such tactics of fear in civil discourse, and no one who employs them can be truly called a warrior for good, no matter what they tell themselves while they're packing their bullhorn and their gore posters into the car every morning.

I can't make the protesters who camp out in front of my clinic in the mornings go away. I can't even make them behave like rational, responsible citizens. But I can make sure that the women (and men, and children) who walk into my clinic don't have to run that obstacle course alone, and I believe I can assuage some of their fear. I can shield them physically from shouts and eyes and cameras. I can assure by my presence as a witness that the protesters don't "forget" where the property line is. And I can be one voice of supportive reason, quiet but strong, in opposition to the shouting about the blastocyst deep conditioning cabal:

"I'm a volunteer with the clinic. We have some protesters out front who will try to shout at you. They don't know why you're here, but they're going to shout at you anyway. You don't have to listen to them. I can just walk alongside and keep myself between them and you. I'm sorry you have to deal with this today."

Their fear is why I escort. Their gratitude is why I keep coming back.

Well, I suppose we should have known. Apparently the big holdup with Max Baucus's Finance Committee bill is... abortion. (Yeah, I wondered what the hell that has to do with finance, too.)

But wait, it gets better! The Senate Republicans not only demand that abortions not be paid for with public funds (something already forbidden by the Hyde Amendment), they want to prevent private insurance plans from paying for them, too.

Wow. If the Dems knuckle under to this extortion, it'll be war.

TAPPED has more:

Many supporters of health reform believe that systemic questions, such as whether or not reform will include a public insurance option, should inform the congressional and public debates. But the truth is that Americans, unsurprisingly, seem to be most concerned about coverage specifics. After reform, what procedures will and won’t be covered? Will my array of choices expand or contract?

Those fears have been artfully exploited by the increasingly enthusiastic and radical conservative anti-health reform movement. In response, today the White House launched “Health Insurance Reform Reality Check“, a website modeled after “Fight the Smears,” a campaign season effort to dispel rumors about Barack Obama’s background and positions.

The new site is built around a simplified, eight-point explanation of how consumers will benefit from health reform. Using this messaging, the administration plans a public relations push during the congressional recess, with a focus on drumming up grassroots support via the Obama’s team’s email list and outreach to the liberal blogosphere. But given the intensity of anti-reform protests over the last week, there is little doubt that the president seems to be on the defensive. The continued lack of one, concrete, completed health reform bill means that opponents of reform can grandstand on a number of hypothetical issues. For example, both the House tri-committee bill and the Senate HELP committee bill create an independent council of medical experts to advise HHS on what services will be covered in the new health exchanges. Conservatives have suggested that the council — which, of course, does not yet exist — will prevent terminally ill patients from receiving life support or continuing care, or will mandate abortion coverage.

Both of those outcomes are completely improbable. Neither are on the White House’s agenda. But by kicking some tough choices on coverage down the line, to after reform passes, Democrats have opened the door to this kind of scare-mongering. Uncertainty is uncomfortable, and opponents of reform — along with skeptical moderates — are exploiting that simple truth.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the abortion debate. None of the health reform proposals in Congress threaten the Hyde Amendment, which currently prevents the federal government from funding abortions. But anti-choice legislators are not satisfied. Many women will receive government subsidies to buy health insurance after reform, and Republicans — including some senators in the all-powerful “Gang of Six” — would like those women to be banned from accessing abortion with those funds, whether they are covered through private insurance plans or a potential public option. This would be a significant curtailing of reproductive rights, since most private insurance plans currently do offer some abortion coverage.

In this case, the current reform proposals actually do maintain the oft-heralded “status quo:” Medicaid won’t cover abortion, but private insurance plans will. It is reform opponents who are pushing to change the way health care is delivered, by curtailing women’s ability to access abortion coverage in the private insurance market. This morning, a senior administration official, speaking on background, told me that some moderate Republicans are choosing to understand health insurance subsidies as tax credits, and thus, from a libertarian point of view, might support a woman’s right to access any health procedure she wishes with that “tax credit,” including abortion. And yet, this official affirmed that abortion is among the issues holding up the Senate Finance Committee — right alongside long term cost containment and debates over whether the federal or state governments will pay to expand Medicaid.

In other words, almost everything about health reform remains up in the air. Stay tuned.

You know why bloggers don't get invited onto more news shows? Because we would absolutely clean the politicians' clocks over hypocrisy like this. Billions of dollars to spend on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have killed more than a million innocent civilians, but they go all brave and weepy-eyed over theoretical babies. Funny, how little attention they give to them once they're out of the womb:

In the wake of Dr. George Tiller's murder, the U.S. Senate is debating a resolution that condemns violence against abortion providers. The words "reproductive health care" are in the bill, causing Republicans and anti-abortion senators to oppose it, according to a Minnesota Independent article.

Senators Amy Klobuchar, who is the lead sponsor, Jeanne Shaheen and Barbara Boxer worded the bill to say "acts of violence should never be used to prevent women from receiving reproductive health care." The bill's opponents say it glorifies abortion. The article also said that an anonymous Republican senator moved to use the "secret hold," which prevents a vote on the bill.

Klobuchar told the Minnesota Independent, "As a former prosecutor I have seen how acts of violence can tear apart communities...No matter how heated the debate or how great our differences, violence is never the answer."

A similar bill passed the House June 9, but it was a watered-down version of the one currently in the Senate. It did not mention Dr. Tiller or his profession, and did not use the words "reproductive rights" or "abortion."

Warren Buffett is poised, through tens of billions in charitable donations, to literally change the face of international philanthropy and relief efforts. The ability to ease suffering, combat disease, and reduce poverty received an unprecedented boost. It is, by any reasonable definition, a development to celebrate.

Naturally, everyone around the world is impressed and inspired by the generosity. Well, almost everyone.

Warren Buffett's new philanthropic alliance with fellow billionaire Bill Gates won widespread praise this week, but anti-abortion activists did not join in, instead assailing the two donors for their longtime support of Planned Parenthood and international birth-control programs.

One far-right critic went so far as to call Buffett "the Dr. Mengele of philanthropy."

Is this really where the right wants to go? Lashing out the most generous philanthropists the world has ever seen?

-- Guest Post by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report

Rachel Maddow had to bring Tucker Carlson back to earth on the issue of President Bush's anti-abortion judge appointments and the notion that Bush has no litmus test determining judicial nominees. ( Bush denies he has one.) (At least Kerry was perfectly clear about his feelings.)

Carlson:...There's only one issue that Democrats are interested in, and that's protecting Roe v. Wade. And I think it's totally legitimate, and in fact laudable, if the president were to come out and say, “You know what? Roe v. Wade is bad law. I'm not nominating anyone who is for it,” period.

MADDOW: If you flip a coin ten times and it comes out heads every time, do you start to think the coin is loaded? If you flip a coin 50 times—if you flip a coin 100 times, it's heads every time? How about if you flip a coin...

Download | play -WMP

CARLSON: It should be loaded. It should be loaded.

MADDOW: Bush has appointed more than 200 judges in his term. Not a single one is pro-choice. If you tell me he doesn't have a litmus test...

GASPARINO thinks the president should lie about it, well not really lie...just a little spinning of the truth. Rachell is doing a great job on the show and a good reason to tune in even when the game is always stacked two against her.

As John Cole says :It is pretty silly to pretend there is no litmus test for judges, when both sides clearly have them. It is even sillier for the press to play along, as they appear to have.