Showing posts with label womens health. Show all posts
    Showing posts with label womens health. Show all posts

  • The above is a live stream of Texas Senator Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, several hours into a filibuster of SB 5, which would, if passed, prohibit abortions by law after 20 weeks of gestation.

    SB 5 is also one of the most stringent restrictions on abortions and women's reproductive health, supported by fine folks like Republican state rep Jody Laubenberg. Let's see what Jody has to say about...rape kits:

    Texas Rep. Jody Laubenberg (R) sponsored several anti-abortion measures currently making their way to the Governor’s desk. Taken together, they would shut down the vast majority of the state’s women’s health clinics and criminalize abortions after 20 weeks. But in reasoning out why she did not support an exemption for rape victims in the 20-week ban, Laubenberg betrayed a woeful lack of information on the procedures a victim of rape undergoes — namely, the “rape kit,” which is used to collect data on the assailant and in no way relates to pregnancy:

    When Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, called for an exemption for women who were victims of rape and incest, Rep. Jody Laubenberg, R-Parker, explained why she felt it was unnecessary.

    “In the emergency room they have what’s called rape kits where a woman can get cleaned out,” she said, comparing the procedure to an abortion. “The woman had five months to make that decision, at this point we are looking at a baby that is very far along in its development.”
    The remark about rape kits, which is not accurate, sparked widespread ridicule on social media sites. Laubenberg, who has difficulty debating bills, then simply rejected all proposed changes to her bill without speaking until the end of the debate.

    These are the kind of folks Sen. Davis has to fight against tonight. Wish her the best of luck.
  • "I’m beginning to get some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they've gone through the surgery, and they've compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill," Swanson explains.

    "And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies."

    The above quoted comes from Kevin Swanson. No, not Joe and Bonnie's kid, although this Kevin's done a great job turning himself into a cartoonish caricature. This Kevin is a fundamentalist pastor with a radio show of his very own. He's also a guy who genuinely believes (or at least wants people to believe) that birth control not only ruthlessly murders forming fetuses on contact, but it also turns the uterine wall into a vertical graveyard of little tiny fetuses, at which point they're eventually discarded and flushed away in a genocidal red tide, meeting an ignoble end on a tampon or a maxi-pad.

    No, Kevin, birth control does not work that way. Here, let me help you (and anyone else clueless about birth control) understand how it all goes down, courtesy of Columbia University:

    Birth control pills prevent pregnancy through several mechanisms, mainly by stopping ovulation. If no egg is released, there is nothing to be fertilized by sperm, and the woman cannot get pregnant. Most birth control pills contain synthetic forms of two female hormones: estrogen and progestin. These synthetic hormones stabilize a woman's natural hormone levels, and prevent estrogen from peaking mid-cycle. Without the estrogen bump, the pituitary gland does not release other hormones that normally cause the ovaries to release mature eggs.

    Specifically, synthetic estrogen in the pill works to:
    • Stop the pituitary gland from producing follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) in order to prevent ovulation.
    • Support the uterine lining (endometrium) to prevent breakthrough bleeding mid-cycle.
    Meanwhile, synthetic progestin works to:
    • Stop the pituitary gland from producing LH in order to prevent egg release.
    • Make the uterine lining inhospitable to a fertilized egg.
    • Partially limit the sperm's ability to fertilize the egg.
    • Thicken the cervical mucus to hinder sperm movement (although this effect may not be key to preventing pregnancy).

    Seems like poor Kevin's confusing birth control with more controversial abortifacients like Mifepristone, better known under the catchier name "RU 486." Then again, lumping the two together works well for drawing more outrage from concerned anti-abortion groups, as well as intentionally muddying the waters for everyone else.

    At any rate, you have to wonder where our friend Kevin came up with his home-grown theory on how birth control strangles the Gift of Life™ and tacks it on the wall like a Cenobite's bulletin board posting. The above quote indicates research was involved, and I'd like to know who did that research and what it entailed. I have a feeling Kevin simply reached back to the idea of preformation, where ready-made modules of humanity are fired off in the form of sperm into the female uterus, where the one (or more) chosen sperm will eventually grow into a healthy human being or wind up the uterine equivalent of a deer antler on a sportsman's wall.

    Oddly enough, nothing's said about the wanton murder that male masturbation causes, especially if you keep in mind the whole "preformation" idea. Trillions upon trillions of sperm are left to die a cottony death on the napkins, paper towels, socks and bedsheets of young and adult American men, yet nothing's ever said about this genocide of epic proportions. As one unlucky spermatozoa croaked just before expiring on a hotel mattress, "Kevin Swanson don't care about sperm people."





    There's also this thing about Kevin homeschooling himself. Not to knock the homeschool movement, but it's the perfect way for religious fundamentalists, the mentally imbalanced and the overly paranoid to short-circuit and bypass the public education process, creating a legion of misinformed and otherwise maligned beings who don't do all that well in society. Meanwhile, it causes problems for successful homeschoolers and their kids, now that they're lumped in with the snake handlers, crazies and other assorted assholes.

    Kevin self-matriculated from his own self-managed homeschool and wound up as "the student body president of a large (unnamed) west coast university." He homeschools his kids. He writes books for homeschoolers. Thousands, even millions of people are learning Kevin's theory on birth control's gynecological graveyard. That should bring a shudder to anyone with common sense.


  • The following is Missouri Senate candidate and current Representative Todd Akin shoving a size 12 patent leather shoe down his own throat:


    There's not much anyone with any common sense can say about this, except that this is perhaps the unmitigated height of stupidity and insensitivity.

    I don't think anyone knows exactly what a "legitimate rape" is. It's probably the same thing as Whoopi Goldberg's "rape rape." The fact that there's an established threshold before anyone takes rape seriously should make just about anyone throw up.

    I've heard of theories about how the stress and trauma of rape supposedly cuts off the chemical and hormonal processes needed to facilitate pregnancy. The underlying implication here is that if you were really raped, your body wouldn't allow the fertilization process to continue. Therefore, if you become pregnant after you were raped, then you really weren't raped, were you? And if you want an abortion, that would make you some sort of slut, right? "Good girls" don't get themselves into those typ...*pauses to throw up*..es of situations.

    I hope you had a barf bag on you. That stuff's hell to clean off a keyboard.

    It's not just Akin who thinks this way. The GOP has successfully cultivated a legion of politicians who are absolutely retrograde when it comes to matters that affect women most. These people are stuck in the mindset that declares female autonomy over their own destinies and biological functions to be the greatest societal sin imaginable. To them, it just ain't right that women can make their own decisions about bringing new life into this world and protecting themselves from predatory assholes who not only mistake a woman's vagina for a 24-hour convenience store, but feel that if women didn't want their registers robbed, they shouldn't have been open in the first place. No, I don't understand that line of thinking, either.

    And people wonder why rape remains one of the most under-reported crimes out there.

    The GOP is insistent using the power of the federal government to lock down women's reproductive rights at the same time it's equally insistent on the power of the federal government to be vanquished in just about every other matter save for the country's ability to go to war. That definitely speaks to the rather fucked up priorities of conservatives nowadays.

    It's not just Todd Akin who's busy refining rape to fit retrograde sensibilities. It's definitely worth mentioning that GOP vice-president candidate Paul Ryan was Akin's partner in crime when penning the infamous "forcible rape" language in the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." Ryan himself believes that abortion should be illegal everywhere, under any circumstance. If you need an abortion to keep yourself alive due to pregnancy complications or if you don't want to carry a child conceived in rape to term, then you're all out of luck.* If you think you'll at least have birth control, don't. Ryan's against that, too.

    None of this is about maintaining the well-being of women everywhere. If that were the case, this post wouldn't exist and neither would these attitudes. It's about maintaining control over women, a two-pronged process that involves shrinking women's autonomy over their own being via legislation while sanctioning society's shaming of women who remain determined to exercise their rights. The hoped result for many is a return to a society where women are seen (and fucked), but not heard. The menfolk are no longer threatened  by women who are not only not impressed with their success and trappings, but are more than capable of creating their own. In this rather fucked-up scenario, women remain property passed on from father to husband (and if said husband or father dies, from uncle to brother-in-law).

    Akin later issued out a boilerplate tweet that expressed regret over being excoriated over his comments:


    Meanwhile, Dana Loesch thinks people, namely the Democrats, are making too much of a fuss over this issue. Loesch managed to write the book on abject stupidity on countless occasions, so there's no new ground being broken here. You'd think that even a conservative woman would recognize how wrong Akin's comments were. *sigh*

    *Unless you travel to another country that's more than happy to get that done, but who's wealthy enough to make that happen?
  • “If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend. “It’s a fiction.”

    The above is current RNC Chairman Ranch Prius Rinse Proboscis Reince Priebus letting everyone know that the GOP's "War on Women" is fiction. Nevermind declaration after declaration of Republican warfare with that dangerous Axis of Evil, the Uterus, Ovaries and Clitorus. Priebus is doing his best impersonation of Baghdad Bob right about now. "No, there is no war with your vagina, ladies." *cue latest bill mandating transvaginal ultrasounds prior to abortion*

    If the War on Women is fiction, then so are the concerns of women everywhere when it comes to their reproductive health. That suits the GOP just fine, as women apparently don't exist unless conjured up for sex, dinner, laundry or beatings. That said, it's little wonder women's support of the GOP will be as nonexistent as Ranch Dressing's "War on Caterpillars".

    At least a caterpillar transforms into something beautiful over time. Baring a miracle, Reince will remain as ugly as ever, inside and out.

  • Most people know the story of how Jesus, the Son of God, came into being. One of the more interesting aspects of the story (and one that's also a big part of the Catholic faith) is the immaculate conception of Mary, precipitated by the appearance of the angel Gabriel, his message of Jesus' impending birth through Mary and the intervention of the Holy Spirit afterwards. Considering Joseph was a husband-to-be and the lovely couple didn't subscribe to the whole concept of sex before marriage, this event of immaculate conception remains one of the most intriguing episodes throughout Jesus' life, death and resurrection:*

    29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

    34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

    35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[b] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”

    38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
    Since then, the laws of physics and biology have put the kibosh on any future acts of immaculate conception. But the Arizona state legislature stumbled up on a way to rekindle that long-lost act through the power of bill-making:

    Arizona’s HB 2036 takes Nebraska’s 20-week abortion ban one step further by starting the clock on pregnancies at the woman’s last last menstrual period, which could be two weeks before fertilization.

    Specifically, the bill would “[p]rohibit abortions at or after twenty weeks of gestation, except in cases of a medical emergency, based on the documented risks to women’s health and the strong medical evidence that unborn children feel pain during an abortion at that gestational age,” where gestational age is defined as “age of the unborn child as calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman.”

    Take note of the underlined. The entire menstrual cycle lasts for about 28 days. The luteal phase, where the corpus luteum develops and subsequently atrophies sans fertilization of the egg, lasts up to 16 days.

    In effect, this means that if a woman has sex with someone, she could technically be pregnant weeks before the pregnancy test, morning sickness or tell-tale lack of a period gives her the official heads-up. Not exactly immaculate conception, but they're getting there. It's more like "pre-pregnancy," where the state knows you're pregnant long before you decide to become pregnant. Or something.

    More importantly, this means that if she decides, on the 19th or 20th week of gestation to abort, she'll technically be in violation of the abortion ban, because the window of opportunity slammed shut on the 18th week:
    Guttmacher Institute’s State Issues Manager Elizabeth Nash told Raw Story that obstetricians start the clock on pregnancies after the “last menstrual period” to “be on the safe side.”

    “Certainly, they are trying move the gestational cutoff from what had been over the last two years a 20-week gestational cutoff to an 18-week gestational cutoff,” Nash explained. “At the same time, they are trying to say, ‘Oh, this is a 20-week abortion ban.’ And they get away with that with the definition of gestational age that’s in the bill.”
    Determining the gestation date this way is a rather creative and supremely sneaky goalpost move. Which means it serves conservative pro-lifers and their GOP counterparts well. Selling a 20-week abortion ban that actually kicks in two weeks earlier than anyone expects constitutes fraud and deception on part of bill's supporters, not that it matters much.

    At some point, someone's gonna have the bright idea of suggesting that the pro-life anti-abortion contingent should just assume that all woman are presumed pregnant until actually pregnant, to eliminate all possibility of legal or illegal abortive acts. Of course, that'd also include hormonal contraceptives, since they prevent ovulation and fertilization. In short, basically anything that interferes with ovulation and fertilization. At that point, you'd have to wonder if that would include the entirely natural act of corpus luteum discharge.

    Is a tampon or a sanitary napkin admissible as evidence of an abortion? Would birth control pills signify intent? How about someone experiencing a miscarriage?

    Meanwhile, semen discharge from masturbation or wet dreams is largely overlooked. What? You seriously think the menfolk would willingly legislate their own reproductive faculties?**

    *If you believe otherwise, fine. Don't try to take a chunk out of my ass over it, thanks.


    **Nevermind the cases of surgical and chemical castration for sex offenders and black males with "virulent" perceived sexual appetites.
  • "...when the left wants to pretend they have no sense of humor, they are excellent at it. Yesterday in the riff about it, 'Okay, okay, fine. If we're gonna pay for this, at least let us have something for it. How about some sex videos?' If anybody doesn't realize that we are illustrating absurdity here by being absurd and that that is the trademark of this program ... But oh, no! 'Oh, of everything else you've said, that's the lowest of the low. Demanding sex video? Who do you think you are?' Lighten up. I remember using that phrase all the way back in 1989: Lighten up."
    "...now, at the end of this week, I am the person that the women of AMERICA are to fear the most. What can I do to the women of AMERICA? Do I have the power to raise their taxes? I do not. Do I have the power to regulate their behavior? I do not. Do I have the power to make health care decisions for them? I do not. Do I have the power to withhold birth control pills from them? I do not. Do I have the power to audit their tax returns? I do not. Do I have the power to take their little four-year-old kindergarten student's lunch and throw it away and make 'em eat something else? I do not. Do I have the power to look into their personal life and leak the information to the media? I do not. Is there one bit of freedom that I can deny them? Can I raise their taxes? They want to blame me as being the person they should fear, when in fact the people doing all these things I just said I have no power to do, the DEMOCRAT PARTY (sic) is doing."
    Rush Limbaugh remains the grand champion when it comes to unleashing one's inner asshole for both money and media fame. I forgot to add in the previous blog post that there's yet another way to neutralize an asshole: hit the asshole in his wallet. Or in Rush's case, his show's advertisers.

    Countless people took to Twitter and petitioned companies that bought airtime on Rushbo to pull their ads in protest. So far, several advertisers were convinced to pull their ads from the Rush Limbaugh radio program, including:
    Nevertheless, Rushbo remains resolute in both his willingness to remain an asshole and his unwillingness to offer an apology to Sandra Fluke. Even after finding out the president called to give his support to Fluke, Rushbo decided to take the piss on both with this lovely tidbit from Politico:
    And as he discovered while on the air that Obama had called Fluke, Limbaugh mocked their exchange. “Aw. That is so compassionate! What a great guy,” Limbaugh said. “The president called her to make sure she’s okay. What is she, 30 years old? Thirty years old, a student at Georgetown law who admits to having so much sex that she can’t afford it anymore.”

    Later on the show, the radio host laced into the president for telling Fluke that her parents should be proud of her.

    “Your daughter appears before a congressional committee and says she’s having so much sex, she can’t pay for it and wants a new welfare program to pay for it. Would you be proud? I don’t know about you, but I’d be embarrassed. I’d disconnect the phone. I’d go into hiding and hope the media didn’t find me,” Limbaugh said.
    I'd ask if it's too much for Rushbo to just shut the fuck up, but I find it more entertaining to see the ol' pillhead dig himself in the hole that much deeper.

    By the way, thanks to Redeye's diligence in locating contacts to Rushbo's biggest sponsors and paymasters, I was reminded that Clear Channel, the radio channel hosting the Rush Limbaugh show, is currently owned by Bain Capital. You know, the company founded and run in part by none other than Mitt Robot Romney.


    Speaking of assholes, not only has District Judge Richard Cebull apologized to the president for getting caught forwarding the infamous "Obama dog" email, but he's also calling for an investigation...on himself:
    U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull says he will apologize to President Obama and ask for a panel of judges to investigate his conduct after a Montana newspaper reported he had sent a racially inflammatory message using his courthouse email account last month.
  • "What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps."
    If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch," he said.
    Sigh. The War on Uteri™ continues unabated, from state legislatures churning out bill after bill to restrict, undermine and intimidate women from exercising control of their reproductive faculties to conservative front-liners like Rush Limbaugh and Foster Friess letting loose with ultimately misogynistic rhetoric such as the above.

    Here we have financially well-off men with their own personal demons and presumed difficulty in maintaining their sexual vigor declaring women who wish to NOT be punished with pregnancy or STDs whenever they have sex on their own terms and with partners they choose, "prostitutes," "sluts" and "whores." You have to wonder if these men and others like them are just angry they can't get any unless they hold out the carrots of power and wealth and then hope some unsuspecting intern takes a bite. Sexual deprivation and frustration tends to manifest in strange ways.

    “I get such a chuckle when these things come out. Here we have millions of our fellow Americans unemployed. We have jihadist camps being set up in central – in Latin America, which Rick has been warning about, and people seem to be so preoccupied with sex. I think it says something about our culture. We maybe need a massive therapy session so we can concentrate on what the real issues are. And this contraceptive thing, my gosh, it’s so — such inexpensive. Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

    But it's not just them. It's several segments of the national populace who enjoy hearing men like Limbaugh and Friess say the things they're too polite or afraid to openly proclaim themselves. These people have a low opinion of women who won't follow the narrow sexual path set down by a combination of religious doctrine and a pathological fear of sex itself. They can't enjoy sexual freedom for fear of being ostracized as a whore or a slut, hence appearances must be kept and "whores" must be shamed. Ta-Nehisi Coates calls it the "normalization of cruelty." I call it "unleashing your inner asshole."



  • I suppose this is how Republican Rep. Darrell Issa and his all-male panel on contraception and religious freedom feels. Oh, they won't openly admit it, but they're probably thinking it. From TPM:

    On Capitol Hill, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) held hearings on contraception and religious freedom that produced the now-famous picture of a table full of men called to weigh in on access to contraceptives. Democrats wanted a woman — a Georgetown law student with a friend who lost an ovary because the university doesn’t cover birth control — to say her piece at the hearing, but Issa wouldn’t let her on the panel. He said she wasn’t “appropriate or qualified” to discuss the topic at hand.

    *cue Scooby-Doo "huh?" noise*

    Issa bristled at the charge and said Democrats could not add their witness because she was not a member of the clergy, but a student at Georgetown. He also faulted Democrats for not submitting the name of the witness, Sandra Fluke, in time.

    Fluke would have talked about a classmate who lost an ovary because of a syndrome that causes ovarian cysts. Georgetown, which is affiliated with the Catholic Church, does not insure birth control, which is also used to treat the syndrome.

    Issa said the hearing is meant to be more broadly about religious freedom and not specifically about the contraception mandate in the Health Reform law.
    It's an issue that affects women's health, so you'd think there would be, well, women on the panel concerning a topic that affects them most. No dice. And plenty of people are calling foul, as they should.

    “This is an issue about women’s health and I believe that women’s health should be covered in all fo the insurance plans,” Pelosi insisted at her press briefing this morning, refuting the GOP’s claim that the debate should focus on “religious liberties.”

    “Where are the women? And that’s a good question for the whole debate. Where are the women?” she asked. “Imagine, having a panel on women’s health and then not having any women on the panel, duh!”

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