STOP! PART 2

When I posted Stop! Part 1, it made the rounds on the internet. (I posted it at more than one blog and site.)
It created a lot of conversation and in the course of that discussion I learned a great deal.
I was introduced to a book, When Abortion Was A Crime: Women, Medicine and Law in the United States, 1867-1973, by Leslie J. Reagan, published in 1997.
It's a scholarly book, solidly researched and referenced. It's been used as a text book in law history courses in some law schools. But anti-abortionists hate it. Why? Because in it's cool, dry text is a stark, scathing indictment of illegal abortion and the sheer number of women lost to it over a nearly hundred year period in this country.
Many of the people I've spoken with are concerned that this new push to recriminalize abortion will be far worse.
In the past, when abortion was illegal, entire wards of hospitals were set aside to treat women that had undergone abortions and needed emergency care. They weren't exactly treated courteously (and in some cases actually had treatment withheld until they named their abortionist to the police) but by and large, women, themselves, were not criminalized; only the clinics and providers.
However, in this new era of anti-abortionism, it's already become apparent that the political climate is to also charge women with criminal wrong doing. Several high profile cases have been in the media about women charged with feticide when they have self aborted from lack of access. One was charged with it when she miscarried after a suicide attempt. Another was charged with attempted feticide when she fell down a flight of stairs and told her ER nurse that, early in her pregnancy, she had contemplated aborting.
This attempt to criminalize women is troubling on a number of levels. If abortion is totally outlawed, women will delay or even forego treatment entirely, if they run into trouble, to try and prevent being charged with a criminal act, thus placing their lives in far greater jeopardy than that in the past. Some cynics actually question the reason for this criminalization and point to private prisons and the need for their state contractors to fill them and make a profit.
In the end, there is simply no denying that, no matter what, if these laws get past Federal challenge, the impact on women and their lives is going to be horrendous.

STOP!

A New Frontier for Abortion

There's a growing movement that may make any abortion regulation by any state moot.
Thanks to the internet and advancement of chemical abortion in the form of RU-486, women are coming closer and closer to the ability to do "do-it-yourself" abortions. And, depending on the outcome of a case currently wending through the Federal courts, there won't be anything states can do about it, no matter how many feticide laws they pass.
In a way, it will take abortion back to the days of pre-Roe V. Wade but with a twist. The internet will provide tele-medicine sites to those states that out law it, will provide the prescription and medication from states that allow it, even to those states where it's illegal, and there will be nothing those states can do about it and no coat hangers involved.
Is this safe? Not as safe as a physical doctor and clinic. But it's a helluva lot safer than a coat hanger and Kansas and other states have made it crystal clear they could care less about the safety of women in their draconian anti-abortion laws. Anti-abortion groups used to try and use "safety of women" as one of their "concerns" in passing TRAP laws but now they don't even bother to do that. One should thank them for their new and increasing honesty about their real agenda.
In the meantime, other groups are forming like The Women's Above Ground Railway, a group formed initially in Virginia but now growing nationally, who provide transportation for women in anti-abortion states to states where it's legal and provide them financial support. for the procedure. There is also Women on Waves, an international organization taking ships to countries where abortion is completely outlawed and taking women into international waters for the procedure. They are significant in the US because they are one of the "shadow providers" of RU-486 to women in states like Kansas, Texas, Alabama, Idaho and the Dakotas.
In the end, women WILL wrest control of their own bodies from others, no matter what someone's "God" tells them, no matter whether they like it or not and no matter how many laws states pass. They can drive the procedure underground but it won't disappear. It's always been there and always will be. At least we can make sure women don't die from it, even in states that prefer it that way.

6,000 Year Old Lovers

The "Lovers of Valdaro" are a pair of Neolithic, 6,000 year old skeletons of two young people, no more than 20 years old, who were positioned in a lover's embrace at their burial. They were discovered by an archaeological team in a necropolis at Valdaro, near Mantua, Italy. (Recall that the story of Romeo and Juliet was set in Mantua.) Although cause of death cannot be determined for the pair, it has been determined that neither death was violent. http://www.archaeology.org/0801/abstracts/valdaro.html

Scare Tactics

This photo was taken at a women's clinic in Alabama. The photo shows (so called) "pro-life" protesters across the street from the clinic. They don't seem to be doing much, chatting among themselves. But notice something. See that camcorder on a tripod just to the right of the crucifixion picture? That camera is video recording every single car that enters and exits the clinic gates. Why do they do that? They are recording license plate numbers.
Do you have any idea how much personal information can be gleaned from a license plate number? Names, addresses. From there you can find out things like phone numbers, employers and all kinds of other personal information.
So why do they want this information and what do they do with it?
Call your house at 3AM, say "Baby killer!" and immediately hang up.
Go to your house and hang pictures of "fetuses" on your fence, spray it with fake blood and put "Murderer" on the sign for all of your neighbors to see.
Call your employer and inform them that you have had an abortion (whether you have or not).
Publish your personal information on the internet as a "baby killer", inviting further action.
Using these tactics they have sent people into mental, emotional and financial ruin. It's a vague form of thuggery that is rarely legally actionable. As much of it is anonymous, there is no criminal to catch. No actual physical harm is done. If by some rare chance a person is caught, they are charged, at the most, with a misdemeanor that doesn't carry jail time.
They wage psychological war. They terrorize people. And they use that potential to threaten women, whether they carry through with it or not. This is the type of war that Troy Newman speaks about when he says of the new Southwinds clinic where Dr. Tiller's clinic used to be, ""The abortion group may have bought Tiller’s old building, but that is still a far cry from resuming abortions in Wichita. If Trust Women wants to provide abortions then Operation Rescue will make sure the business is neither profitable nor sustainable." These are their tactics and ways that they use to obtain their objective.
What is most disturbing is that the state of Kansas harbors these people. Operation Rescue and Kansans for Life are very powerful lobbies in Topeka. They are so powerful that the Kansas Board of Healing Arts permitted Cheryl Sullenger (second in command to Troy Newman at Operation Rescue), a known Federal felon who was convicted of conspiring to fire bomb a clinic in California, to file the initial complaint against Dr. Kristin Neuhaus that led to her license being revoked. And there is no denying that, whether active or passive, Cheryl Sullenger was also complicit in the murder of Dr. George Tiller.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

EDIT: I'd like to give credit for the above photo to Leann Johnson. The photo was taken just yesterday at a counter protest to the 40 Days of Life campaign at a clinic in Huntsville, AL. However, it has been pointed out to me that the above person and his camera are not part of that campaign and has been stationed there for several weeks.

Tiller Clinic Sold. Guess to Who?

In a move that will surely enrage Operation Rescue, Troy Newman, Cheryl Sullenger and Kansans for Life (it's probably not going to make the guv'nor too happy either), the former clinic of Dr. George Tiller has been sold to a non-profit foundation called Trust Women. The foundation is led by Julie Burkhart, a former employee of Dr. Tiller's. Jeanne Tiller, Dr. Tiller's widow, had retained possession of the property since his murder.
Trust Women has announced that they intend to reopen the clinic as a full service women's clinic. I don't think it takes a wink and a nudge to know what that means.
One hopes this foundation has deep pockets. They will need them for a number of reasons.
1. The bully boy anti-abortion groups in Kansas will try to do what they do best; tie this place up in court over and over again for years and force them to spend thousands of dollars on legal fees.
2. They will need security equal to that of of a Colombian drug lord. In the past, the clinic has been bombed and it's former owner non fatally shot. At one point, Dr. Tiller admitted he never took the same route twice to and from his clinic and, after he was shot in the arms, he began wearing body armor. All it took was one moment of laxness, something he thought he could do in a church, and it killed him.
3. They will have to fulfill, right down to the millimeter, all of Kansas' new TRAP laws; laws that were designed with only one purpose in mind, cost the clinics money and run them out of business.
Operation Rescue has already announced they are reforming the same protest unit to harass women and litter the street in front of the clinic that they had during the former owner's residence.
This entire thing follows closely on the heels of another bit of news that silently slid by most Lawrence residents. Riding high on their successful act of getting the license of Dr. Kristin Neuhaus revoked, on September 18th, Operation Rescue filed ethics complaints against AG Derek Schmidt and Johnson County DA Steve Howe in the wake of the failed criminal charges against Planned Parenthood.
http://www.kansas.com/2012/09/25/2504262/foundation-buys-tillers-former.html
http://hutchnews.com/Localregional/BC-KS--AG-Ethics-Abortion-1st-Ld-Writethru-20120918-21-47-53

“Good Night Neil. Good Night Moon.”

Kevin Yoder

Many of the conservatives on this board are decrying this as a "nonissue". I suppose it's natural to try and make excuses but It's very much an issue and for more reasons than the "ewww" factor of envisioning Kevin Yoder nekkid.
This man runs on a "family values" platform that is anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-sex education and he's part of a contingent that wants to regulate sexuality, be it homosexual or heterosexual. Doing what he did may be small and inconsequential and in almost any other person I wouldn't care. But it points up the extreme disparity between his public face and his private one and illustrates a level of hypocrisy that comes close to breath taking.
Two, the intensity of the cover up and suppression the GOP did of this incident is also very telling. The reason it took an entire year for the story to come out was because it took the New York Times reporter that broke the story that long to prove it. You don't just accuse a member of Congress of skinny dipping in the Sea of Galilee while drunk without having the documented facts to back it up.
This brings up the question; if they fought that hard to keep it quiet, what other incidents are there that actually are important that they are hiding? Do we really want to have to deal with this level of mistrust in our elected officials?
So is it an "issue"? You bet it is. It was a violation of trust and if that's what you want in an elected official; a level of "Do what I say and not what I do" that's huge in scope, then go for it and "baaaa" all the way to the slaughter house...err excuse me, the polls.

Soledad O’Brien Wrecks Tim Pawlenty

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/08/17/soledad-obrien-demonstrates-exceptional-journalism-wrecks-tim-pawlenty-with-facts/

This is just hilarious! Soledad O'Brien kicks T-Paw right in the jimmy! And that's after she did the same thing to John Sununu LAST week! So tell me, Mr. Romney, who are you going to send up next to sacrifice on O'Brien's altar of facts? As the blogger put it in his closing statements, "This is getting pretty good, and she seems like she’s just getting started. It’s like a pre-game to the presidential debates!"
I already can hear the whining and moaning of the right wing posters on this board now. "It's just one more example of the left wing, liberal media." Yeah. Right. Forgive me if I lack sympathy.

The USS Constitution Sails Again!