Abortion Debate's topics - tribe.net

Nebraska: "This Clinic Stays Open!"

Hummingbird — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:05:42 GMT

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39024657@N07/sets/72157622188586772/

Pro choice forces again out mobilized operation rescue last week in one of the largest clinic defense actions in years.

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Adolph Hitler - Pro Life Poster Child

Jeff — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 22:22:22 GMT

http://www.refuseandresist.org/ab/062897father.html

Despite his complicity in murdering over six million post-born with gas chambers, ovens, firing squads, starvation, and heinous medical experiments, one thing that all historians can agree upon is Adolph Hitlers staunch pro-life stance. He was so incredibly pro-life that he actually called for the death penalty for mothers who attempted to abort their pre-born Aryan defenders. Who knows how many millions of babies might have otherwise been aborted during those years had Hitler not been so incredibly pro-life, he probably saved more lives than he destroyed which as we all know, is a Good Thing. I think we can all take a lesson from this proud defender of the sanctity of human life.

"On May 26, 1933, two pieces of penal legislation . . . prohibit[ed] the availability of abortion facilities and services. More important was the stricter handling of the old antiabortion law, resulting in a 65 percent increase in yearly conviction between 1932 and 1938, when their number reached almost 7,000. From 1935 on, doctors and midwives were obliged to notify the regional State Health Office of every miscarriage. Women's names and addresses were then handed over to the police, who investigated the cases suspected of actually being abortions. In 1936 Heinrich Himmler, head of all police forces and the SS, established the Reich's Central Agency for the Struggle Against Homosexuality and Abortion, and in 1943, after three years of preparation by the Ministries of the Interior and of Justice, the law entitled Protection of Marriage, Family, Motherhood called for the death penalty in 'extreme cases'."

posted in Abortion Debate - 3 replies

Abortion - not in the bible

Rocky — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 21:44:25 GMT

I have been kinda checking into this whole abortion thing since it has come up recently. It is known as Roe vs. Wade. I have asked many religious folks where all of this started. I have been assuming that there was a bible passage somewhere that said god was against it. Guess what, the word abortion is not only NOT IN the bible, it's not in any other translation either. Go ahead, try any version you want - http://www.biblegateway.com/

Granted it's still an ethics issue of course of whether or not it's murder or not. Other than the commandment thou shall not kill - but, when has Gov't or religion had a problem with that? I thought it was odd that they ignore or omit other types of murder like in WAR or the death penalty to only focus on abortion. Poverty, joblessness, lack of education, homelessness, lack of healthcare etc are all weapons of mass destruction yet, all are needed to benefit a human while they're alive but, Bush doesn't want to support that. The Bush administration are more interested in WAR.

You should know that it is a fact that the death penalty in Texas while Bush was governor killed more than all the other states combined. We've killed over 11,000 innocent civilians in Iraq most of them children & around 30,000 soldiers.

I saw a T-shirt that said -

"Killing one person is murder but, killing 100,000 is Foreign policy" - So true.

- About the Roe vs. Wade decision: http://www.religioustolerance.org/aborvw.htm

- All sides of the abortion issue: http://www.religioustolerance.org/abortion.htm

-------

Goto - "WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT ABORTION"

- then, click on "conclusions" - http://www.religioustolerance.org/abortion2.htm

"A case can be made that the 99% of all abortions (those which are performed prior to viability of the fetus do not appear to be prohibited by Bible passages, as translated by most versions of the Bible."

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posted in Abortion Debate - 62 replies

Poll: Majority of Americans Are Pro-Life for the First Time

Dan — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:38:44 GMT

Fifty-one percent of Americans consider themselves "pro-life" and just 42 percent say they are "pro-choice," the first time a majority of the country has stated a personal objection to abortion since Gallup polls began tracking the data 15 years ago.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/15/poll-americans-pro-life-pro-choice-time/

posted in Abortion Debate - 1 reply

Abortion is Wrong

Dan — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:56:28 GMT

Ok, We have said it. We can all go home now.

posted in Abortion Debate - 11 replies

Obama's Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor

Rocky — Wed, 27 May 2009 02:01:06 GMT

Sonia Sotomayor has not directly issued any rulings on abortion rights but has been involved in two cases:

1. Center for Reproductive Law & Policy v. Bush, 304 F.3d 183 Plaintiff public interest organization challenged the “Mexico City Policy,” a.k.a. the “global gag rule” and its provisions stripping U.S. aid to foreign NGOs informing about or performing abortions. Sotomayor authored the opinion which dismissed the case for lack of standing.

The anti-choice group Americans United for Life was pleased with the decision.

2. Port Washington Teachers’ Association v. Board of Education, 478 F.3d 494 (2d Cir. 2007). was the second case. Teachers challenged a school district policy which was trying to get teachers to report student pregnancies to the student’s parents. The case was dismissed for lack of standing because the policy was considered voluntary and thus no consequences could befall teachers who did not adhere to it.
http://www.choicematters.org/?p=249

Remember the gag rule on abortion - Sonia Sotomayor supported it.

The Bush Global Gag Rule: Endangering Women’s Health, Free Speech and Democracy

"On January 22, 2001, on his first business day in office (and the 28th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing a woman's right to an abortion), President George W. Bush re-imposed the Global Gag Rule on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) population program. This policy restricts foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that receive USAID family planning funds from using their own, non-U.S. funds to provide legal abortion services, lobby their own governments for abortion law reform, or even provide accurate medical counseling or referrals regarding abortion. The 1973 Helms Amendment is a legislative provision that already restricts U.S. funds from being used for these activities.

78,000 women die every year from unsafe abortion, a statistic that could be virtually eliminated by the provision of appropriate health information and services and law reform efforts. Despite this, President Bush's Executive Memorandum directs USAID "to reinstate in full all of the requirements of the Mexico City Policy in effect on January 19, 1993." According to this policy, foreign organizations--often the only health-care providers in remote, rural areas--are prohibited from using their own, non-U.S. funds for:

* providing legal abortions even where a woman's physical or mental health is endangered (the only exceptions are in cases of rape, incest, or where the woman's life is endangered);
* providing advice and information regarding the availability and benefits of abortion and from providing referrals to another health clinic;
* lobbying their own governments to legalize abortion, to maintain current law and oppose restrictions, or to decriminalize abortion; and
* conducting public education campaigns regarding abortion.

In addition, even the provision of services that are "permitted"1 on paper, such as life-saving abortions and post-abortion care, are often curtailed because NGOs fear jeopardizing their funding through any association with abortion. Providers may even be reluctant to dispense emergency contraception--which acts to prevent pregnancy and is not an abortifacient --because of the Global Gag Rule......."

http://reproductiverights.org/en/document/the-bush-global-gag-rule-endangering-womens-health-free-speech-and-democracy

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posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Abortionists use Mother's Day for fundraising

Sun, 11 May 2008 22:27:26 GMT

Planned Parenthood, the U.S. abortion industry's biggest presence, is using Mother's Day to promote its conferences and raise funds, triggering a jaw-dropping reaction among those who battle its agenda.

"You have to admire the utter chutzpah of the people at Planned Parenthood," said statement on the American Life League website, which has a specific STOPP program to reveal Planned Parenthood's activities.

"You would think that of all the holidays of the year, this organization that kills the babies of more than 255,000 mothers a year, would find little to celebrate on Mother's Day. But you would be wrong," the group said.

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=63846

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

No moderator?

btd — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:00:44 GMT

This tribe currently seems to have no moderator.
This is not a good thing, especially with a topic that can get emotional, and posts could get inappropriate.

If nobody else wants the role to be a moderator, I will happily do this in a non-combative way, ensuring there is appropriate respect to all members of the tribe while ensuring no (relevant) viewpoint is suppressed.

As a reference of my ability, I am the moderator of other "hot topic" tribe such as:

• Conflict Diamonds http://tribes.tribe.net/conflictdiamonds
against slavery and human right violations in Africa, in the mining of diamonds

• Inactivism http://intactivism.tribe.net
against male circumcision as standard practice in the USA, and to enable parents to understand facts vs myths

and I feel these tribes are fairly stable and respectful. I moderate other tribes (see my profile, scroll almost to the end).

I generally log into tribe daily (if not more often), so moderation will not become inactive.

But... I am a guy, you may feel the topic of abortion debate may be more appropriate for a women to moderate this tribe, and if you feel that, then please can someone step up, but I'd like to remind you that moderation of a tribe is not to subvert nor control the topics posted, but to ensure discussions keep a level of respect with everyone here, and to remove posts (and maybe even members) who disrespect the freedom of speech and debate, eg when people post insults of others, and not discuss the topic at hand.
Also moderation means to remove spam/irrelevant postings too. So maybe being female is not really a prerequisite, but I respect the consensus of the group.

If you feel I'd be acceptable to moderate this tribe, please reply here and say so.
When we have enough agreement, tribe staff can be contacted so we have a moderator.

Thanks.

posted in Abortion Debate - 11 replies

'Abortion is a racist, genocidal act'

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 03:22:57 GMT

Or So says Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. It appears that Blacks are starting to catch on. Margaret Sanger was a racist who wanted to abort as many blacks as possible. So it come as no surprise to many of us that Planned Parenthood is a racist organization as well.

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=57682

posted in Abortion Debate - 6 replies

Survivor says U.S. shares guilt for China's abortions

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:00:18 GMT

Consumerism pushes factories, boosts pressure to limit children

A survivor of China's forced-abortion policy is warning Americans they share the responsibility for that nation's holocaust of government-mandated death through their consumerism.

The testimony comes from Shiu Yon Zhou, whose ordeal in which she lost the child who would have been her first-born has been played before Congress, on national television and in the media.

But she spoke to WND today in light of the 2008 Olympics which are scheduled in Beijing and to counter statements being released by the Chinese government that the human rights situation, long deplored as one of the worst on record, is improving.

Her story was revealed to WND in sometimes-halting English, as she still works to grasp the idiomatics of the language she now teaches to her three children, ages 6, 4, and 2, at home

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=62656

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

what is the debate about here?

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:31:18 GMT

Abortion is the taking of innocent life. It is wrong and should be against the law. That it is not is evidence of the moral decline of our country. Excuses that "it is my body" or "I was raped" as sad as this may be do not change the fact that a fetus is an innocent human being. That it is dependant upon Mom for sustance is no argument either, so is a live baby!

The issue is that we want to chose to do what we want with our lives and the "inconvenience" of a baby is too much to bear for some. Another words, selfishness as at the root of this issue for the pro abortion constituency.

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

No To Anti-Abortion Ron Paul, How We Can Really End the War

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:13:40 GMT

"I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it." Socialist Anti-war Candidate Eugene Debs (who garnered nearly a million votes while he sat in prison for opposition to U.S. involvement in World War One).

"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action" wrote Ron Paul, who voted against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in Congress, the act that gave Blacks the right to vote, quote from his “Ron Paul Newsletter”.

No to NYC Indymedia Censorship, How We Can Really End the War

By STEVEN ARGUE

Claiming that only an alliance with Ron Paul conservatives can end the war, New York City Indymedia volunteers have allowed blatant slander against Liberation News and have censored attempts to respond to those lies. Among the slanders posted were accusations that Liberation News is opposed to Ron Paul because we support Hillary Clinton and her healthcare program. I tried posting the following response, but it was censored on the site:

Ron Paul supporter: “it's pointed out that yes Ron Paul is a racist but Stevies candidate Hillary is even worse.”

Steven Argue: “I don’t support Hillary Clinton. Never have, but you don’t listen. This is pure slander.”

They then repeat their slander that I support Hillary Clinton for her healthcare plan saying, “It's pointed out that Stevie is willing to sacrifice liberty for a bogus health care plan”

Steven Argue: “Hillary Clinton opposes both socialized medicine and single payer healthcare. She supports insurance company healthcare, the kind that is killing untold millions in the United States. This is one of many reasons I oppose her.”

“And no, I don't see Clinton as a first step towards socialized medicine. Her promise to force people to buy insurance has nothing in common with socialized medicine, nor partially socialized medicine (i.e. single payer). I’m clear about this in my article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It, By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

“As for Ron Paul, he wants to privatize everything, including public education, Social Security, and Medicare, eliminate the Voting Rights Act and Roe V Wade in the name of "states rights", signed on to the "Marriage Protection Act", would eliminate every environmental and labor protection, etc. etc. etc. This is a prescription for the slavery of the majority to protect the “liberty” of a tiny handful of capitalists to exploit.

“I oppose both Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul. But I’ve already made that clear as being my position. These accusations are slanderous.”

Ron Paul supporter: “Then Stevie moves the goal posts again. Waaa. He's being censored.”

Steven Argue: “I repeatedly posted a response to the slander that I support Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan, and the response is censored every time. I have no motive to make that up. I mentioned it because I wanted people to see my response. Frankly, I’m quite surprised it is happening. Let’s see if this one goes up.”

That response, as I feared, was also censored. Revealing the reasons behind the Ron Paul censorship at the site, the Ron Paul backers posted the following:

“Get off your sectarianism.

“What you don’t get is that there are only two ways we're going to end the occupation of Iraq:

“1.) A recession, and a bad one.

“2.) Convincing the vast majority of conservative Americans it's wrong. Ron Paul reaches these people. The guy with the Free Mumia shirt selling the "Socialist Worker" doesn't.

“To get anything done in a democracy you're going to have to work with people you don't agree with and people you might not even like. People in grown up countries do this all the time. They're called "coalitions".

“The Labor Party in Israel, for example, makes alliances with the ultra orthodox. The Liberal Democrats have made common cause with the Tories in the UK. The left made common cause with Vicente Fox to get the PRI out of power in Mexico.

“It's only in the puritan USA where everybody thinks you have to like all your political allies and agree with them on everything.”

Besides the fact that the majority of Americans already oppose the war; and besides the fact that these points show a total lack of understanding of the bourgeois nature of the coalitions in the countries mentioned; and besides showing a total lack of understanding of what it will take to end the war (I discuss this at the end of the article); New York City Indymedia’s lack of confidence in the ability of people to change has caused them to build a coalition with a capitalist politician who is a racist, homophobic, anti-worker, anti-environmental, bible thumping, sexist, anti-labor, anti-poor, free-market privatization fanatic. On top of that, they censor the left in order to achieve that coalition.

While a Ron Paul presidency would likely end the war, at what price would this come?

Ron Paul uses the term liberty a lot, so let’s take a look at what he means by liberty.

The liberty Ron Paul demands is:

The liberty of the capitalists to exploit without labor laws and environmental protections;

The "state’s right” to prevent Blacks from voting without the interference of the Voting Rights Act (voted against its renewal in Congress);

The "states right" to ban abortions without the interference of Roe v Wade;

The freedom of the government to deny same-sex rights (was an original sponsor of the "Marriage Protection Act");

The freedom of children not to attend schools (would abolish public education);

The freedom of the elderly and disabled to starve (would abolish Social Security);

The freedom of the sick to die (would abolish Medicare);

The freedom of the U.S. to destroy the planet without even the most basic limits on carbon emissions (opposes signing on to Kyoto and all other carbon limitations);

This is, in short, the liberty of a wealthy minority to make their money from the exploitation of labor and the environment with zero interference from labor laws, environmental laws, and the IRS. While his program is liberty for a minority of rich white heterosexual males, it is slavery for the majority.

Simply put, Ron Paul’s promises to end the war are not enough when one looks at the fact that he would eliminate two centuries of hard fought social progress in the United States.

Some of the anti-war backers of Ron Paul argue that we don’t have to worry about these things because Ron Paul will never be elected. They think that backing his campaign is a way to win over his supporters. What is clear is that such arguments could only come from people who are utterly lost and rudderless, which leaves unclear the question of what they are winning Ron Paul supporters over to. They are supporting a candidate whose program is George Wallace on crack cocaine! Yet, the ultimate absurdity is the fact that they are backing a candidate whose most reassuring feature is that he won’t get elected! Is this point lost on these people? And is the chance that their support may help him get elected a chance they really want to take? Nobody thought that third party candidate Jesse (the body) Ventura would get elected in Minnesota either, but he was, and as soon as he was elected he discarded his libertarian values on drug legalization and prostitution and instead proceeded to carrying out attacks on labor and carrying out disastrous cuts in education and other social spending.

Others argue that if Ron Paul is elected, he will easily be able to pull the troops out of Iraq, but congress will block him on the other issues. There is no doubt that they would block parts of Ron Paul’s program in order to prevent the social unrest such measures would cause, but with the ruling class’s desire to step up the exploitation of labor and the environment through eliminating regulation and through privatization, there can be little doubt that if he is able to maintain his presidency without being shot, aspects of Ron Paul’s domestic program would be implemented.

Today, in the United States we have two rightwing capitalist parties that rule. The activists who run New York Indymedia are floating around utterly lost and rudderless. On the one hand, their anarchist philosophy prohibits them from putting forward their own leadership or supporting socialist candidates; and on the other hand, they are stuck in the “real politic” of supporting “lesser evil” capitalist politicians. It is these characteristics that made them susceptible to being swept up on the Ron Paul band wagon. Despite their “libertarian” values of “freedom”, they have now taken this to the point where they are even willing to censor critics of Ron Paul on their website.

While Ron Paul, the only Republican candidate opposed to the war, is not worth supporting, the front running Democrats are also very bad. Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, are all pro-war. Both Edwards and Clinton voted for the war. Obama supporters claim that Obama never supported the war. While Obama was not yet in the Senate at the time of the Iraq war vote, Obama, Edwards, and Clinton have all voted for war appropriations. This puts them all in the position of having supported the war. Over a million Iraqis are dead due to the U.S. invasion and occupation, and billions of dollars have been squandered. Obama, by helping pay for the war, has his hands in this mass murder just as Clinton and Edwards do.

Obama’s Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007 supposedly would have begun troop withdrawal in May 2007. Yet, it didn't call for full nor immediate withdrawal. In addition, under the bill, the withdrawal could be halted if the Iraqi government met a number of criteria laid out by the Bush administration. These included a broad number of things such as changes in the use of oil revenue, government reforms, an end to sectarian violence, and other economic and reconstruction criteria. In Obama’s bill we have a crystal ball into the future. The excuses laid out in the bill will be heard once again as Obama, Clinton, or Edwards explain why they are keeping the troops in Iraq for their entire presidency; that is unless other actions are taken by the people to stop the war.

This brings us to the fundamental question of how to stop the war. If we are to listen to the Ron Paul censors / supporters at NYC Indymedia the only thing we can do to stop the war is support Ron Paul or hope for (pray for?) economic collapse. Yet, this ignores other less damaging possibilities. These include the troops refusing to fight, a general strike, strikes against the movement of war materials, or socialist revolution.

1. The troops refusing to fight. This worked in the struggle to end the U.S. aggression against Vietnam. It was the socialist movement who were the primary organizers of the anti-Vietnam War movement. That movement, immediately after the government’s murders at Kent State in May 1970 had 8 million students out on strike, and some Universities, such a Berkley, were taken over by students and faculty as anti-war universities. After May 1970, the majority of those drafted were already opposed to the war before they got to Vietnam. Refusal to fight was widespread, and the fragging of pro-war officers was common. Nixon could not continue to wage a war with soldiers who refused to fight. This, along with the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese, brought an end to the war in Vietnam.

Troops refusing to fight also helped bring an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, and helped bring down two pro-war governments in 1917.

2. A general strike or strikes against the movement of war materials. Strikes with such political demands have a long history of success. France has many good social programs because the workers there were willing to shut down their country to achieve them; and they are still willing to do the same to protect those hard fought gains.

3. Socialist revolution. The October Russian Revolution achieved an end to Russian involvement in the First World War. This was a good thing, despite the undemocratic nature of the revolution. Learning from those lessons, Liberation News opposes the dictatorial system of one party rule and raises the banner of revolutionary democratic socialism, while at the same time learning from many of the revolutionary strategies of Lenin and Trotsky.

Protests, pickets, information distribution, building a socialist movement, and answering pro-Ron Paul and pro-Obama-Clinton-Edwards propaganda all help towards building the momentum needed in achieving the kinds of actions that can end the war. Putting support behind Ron Paul only helps an extreme rightwing movement achieve the mantel of leadership for an anti-war sentiment that already represents majority public opinion. In addition, backing a guy like Ron Paul who just crossed a picket line to appear on Jay Lenno’s “Tonight Show” destroys the anti-war strategy of reaching out to the working class, as does backing a racist candidate like Ron Paul hurt the ability to reach out to the multi-racial working class.

No to the Democrats and Republicans!

U.S. Out of Iraq Now!

No to Insurance Company Healthcare, For Socialized Medicine!

Save the Planet, Curb Carbon Emissions Now!

Vote Socialist, Build the Labor Movement, Build the Anti-War Movement, Build the Socialist Movement.

[Note, small changes were made to the response that was censored at NYC Indymedia to make it more readable within the format of this article. Those wishing to see the original version will be given it upon request. Likewise, anyone wishing further sources will be provided them upon request]

This is an article of Liberation News, a low volume newsletter, Subscribe free!
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:12:55 GMT

The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

By STEVEN ARGUE

For the most part the Iowa caucuses were business as usual for the Democrat and Republican Parties. Among the Democrats, “Anti-war” and “pro-single payer health care” Democrat Dennis Kucinich put his support behind pro-war anti--single payer health care, Barrack Obama. Yet on the far right, anti-war Libertarian and Republican Ron Paul gained a stunning 10% of the vote.

Seeing the failure of the Democrats to deliver a candidate worth supporting; some left leaning individuals have been suggesting support to Ron Paul. One is anti-war Vietnam veteran Stan Goff, who suggested in his January 4, 2008 article ”Monkey Wrenching the System, Ron Paul’s Revolution” that people vote in the primaries for Ron Paul, switching party registration right away if they live in a state where such a move is necessary to vote in the Republican primaries.

At the root of the Ron Paul "revolution" is the dismantling of Social Security and the Department of Education as well as other basic social programs, and the elimination of worker and environmental protections. Advances like single payer health care? No way. Ron Paul's message is that you need to take care of yourself, and that there shouldn't be such government programs, nor such interference with private profit. While he puts forward reasons for not supporting going to war abroad, his domestic policies would ignite civil war at home.

In addition to pretending he's against all government, he's for outlawing abortion and supports the continued ban on same-sex marriage. He was one of the original co-sponsors of the "Marriage Protection Act".

He's also a religious extremist who thinks that creationism should be taught in the schools.

On race, Ron Paul was one of 33 Congress members to vote against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, an act that was first passed to give Blacks in the south the right to vote. On a similar note, he says the Civil Rights Act violates the Constitution and impedes on individual liberties. Speaking of Blacks in Washington DC he states in campaign literature, "95 percent of African Americans in are semi-criminal or entirely criminal".

No wonder the American Nazi Party has close relations with him (see letter from Nazi Commander Bill White below). In addition, Ron Paul has the support of other white supremacists such as David Duke, and has knowingly taken donations from former KKK Grand Wizard Don Black.

Hell would freeze over before I'd support Ron Paul. And being an atheist; that will be a long time.

There are plenty of candidates to the left of the Democrats worth considering supporting who oppose the war, would preserve public education and Social Security, who would provide single payer or socialized medicine, and who aren’t raving racist, homophobic, and sexist “Libertarian” fanatics. Why not look at them rather than someone from the loony right?

I discuss some of the campaigns that may be worth supporting in the following article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States,
And the Struggle to Achieve It
By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

Or here is a different version of the same article:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/01/93820.html

*****************
American Nazi Party Chief says Ron Paul is one of us

Bill White, commander of the American National Socialist Worker’s Party, aka The American Nazi Party, wrote the following on the Nazi Vanguard News Network:

Comrades:

I have kept quiet about the Ron Paul campaign for a while, because I didn’t see any need to say anything that would cause any trouble. However, reading the latest release from his campaign spokesman, I am compelled to tell the truth about Ron Paul’s extensive involvement in white nationalism.

Both Congressman Paul and his aides regularly meet with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review, and others at the Tara Thai restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, usually on Wednesdays. This is part of a dinner that was originally organized by Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, and has since been mostly taken over by the Council of Conservative Citizens.

I have attended these dinners, seen Paul and his aides there, and been invited to his offices in Washington to discuss policy.

For his spokesman to call white racialism a “small ideology” and claim white activists are “wasting their money” trying to influence Paul is ridiculous. Paul is a white nationalist of the Stormfront type who has always kept his racial views and his views about world Judaism quiet because of his political position.

I don’t know that it is necessarily good for Paul to “expose” this. However, he really is someone with extensive ties to white nationalism and for him to deny that in the belief he will be more respectable by denying it is outrageous — and I hate seeing people in the press who denounce racialism merely because they think it is not fashionable.

Bill White, Commander
American National Socialist Workers Party

*********
Poor Bill White. He’s having trouble with his brand of racism, anti-Semitism, mass extermination, and genocide not being "in fashion". But hey, you've got to thank the knuckleheaded Nazi for confirming our suspicions on Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan! -Steven Argue

Liberation News
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Abortion Debate - 1 reply

Yay, more dead nicaraguan women = pro-life!

Jeff — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:37:08 GMT

"Good job killing those women to save hypothetical children," sez Teh Pope. "Modern medicine, whose hands we've shackled for so many centuries will just magically do our bidding and make a life-threatening situation which flies in the face of our blind moral certitude into a happy bowl of cherries for everyone, especially if we speculate some socialism into existence to back it up. And if not, well so what? We've made our moral stand into law which makes it Right (or Reich) and a bunch of people dying and suffering as a result shouldn't bother us."

http://www.mahablog.com/2007/10/08/killer-law/
-------
Abortion has long been illegal in Nicaragua but there had been exceptions for “therapeutic” reasons if three doctors agreed there was a risk to the woman’s life. Those exceptions were no longer necessary, said the Nicaraguan Pro-Life Association, because medical advances obviated the need to terminate pregnancies. “The conditions that justified therapeutic abortion now have medical solutions,” says a spokesman. Pope Benedict XVI welcomed the ban but added that women should not suffer or die as a result. “In this regard, it is essential to increase the assistance of the state and of society itself to women who have serious problems during pregnancy.”
...
González was told at the hospital that any doctor who terminated her pregnancy would face two to three years in jail and she, for consenting, would face one to two years. … What González did next was - when you understand what life in Nicaragua is like these days - utterly rational. She walked out of the hospital, past the obstetrics and gynaecological ward, past the clinics and pharmacies lining the avenues, packed her bag, kissed her aunts goodbye, and caught a bus back to her village. She summoned two neighbouring women - traditional healers - and requested that they terminate the pregnancy in her shack. Without anaesthetic or proper instruments it was more akin to mutilation than surgery, but González insisted. The haemhorraging was intense, and the agony can only be imagined. It was in vain. Maria died. “We heard there was a lot of blood, a lot of pain,” says Esperanza Zeledon, 52, one of the Managua aunts.

posted in Abortion Debate - 2 replies

Herbal Fertility Control: Contraception and Abortion

Rocky — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:00:09 GMT

Herbal Fertility Control: Contraception and Abortion

An Ancient but Practical Approach for Women Who Want to Take Charge of Their Reproduction and Fertility, and Make Every Child a Wanted, Loved, and Planned-For Child! "

"There is a growing movement of self-determined women, to regain ancient knowledge about botanical herbs once widely used for the control of pregnancy. This knowledge was once widespread, perhaps even global in nature, but was largely wiped out in Western society during the "burning times", when the Christian church began a war against midwives and female healers, murdering millions of people who at that time "lived outside of the Church". While the power of the Christian Church has been dramatically reduced in the Western democratic nations over the centuries, the war against midwives was picked up and continued by the Western medical establishment, which today holds a power and authority position roughly equal to the old priesthood. Outside of the Western democracies, the situation is even worse, especially within the Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist nations, where women's status is generally low, often at nearly slave-like conditions. And in communist nations, women's reproductive capacities are generally state-controlled. Women's power for self-determination at many levels may not exist in such nations, where an unplanned pregnancy can be a life-threatening disaster, especially for unmarried females, where it may provoke the outrage of dead-hearted dominant males (or equally fanatical and life-hating females) who consider a younger woman's sexual organs and female virginity to be a "badge of family honor". But it is exactly in those places where herbal methods for fertility control may be most suitable, as dominant males generally ignore women's health issues. A woman who carries about "medicinal herbs" for "women's problems" is likely to be ignored, confusing such herbs as "kitchen spices". In medicinal botanical textbooks, the same herbs may also be identified to assist in labor, or to help with irregular menses or other women's health issues, so their usage is not confined merely to fertility control. Under such circumstances, especially in nations where women's status is very low, or where contraception and abortive methods may be expensive or legally forbidden, the herbal-plant methods are most suitable.

Here, we wish to alert all women, and their concerned male partners, about old methods for ending pregnancy in the early stages, mainly for restoring onset of menstruation where it might be delayed, by use of simple herbal preparations. The materials presented here should be viewed as a guide, a first-step into an ancient body of knowledge, and not as the sole information on how to proceed in the case of an unwanted pregnancy.

In addition to what is presented here, the reader is encouraged to also visit the various excellent web sites given below for even more information on the subject. Several excellent books on this subject are also recommended below.

Once you have educated yourself, it is up to you to make the decision on whether to try the herbal approach, or not.

Getting Started... "

http://www.orgonelab.org/contracep.htm

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posted in Abortion Debate - 2 replies

Abortion causes Illegal Immigration

kip-Cherone — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:33:31 GMT

HELLO, is this back???? can someone please explain to me the gaul of politicians like this. this argumetn was suggested and laughed at already.. now, like the horror movies, "it's backkkk".

Friday, July 20, 2007 10:00 a.m. EDT

Tom DeLay: Legalized Abortion Brings Illegal Immigrants

Reprint Information
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Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay told a gathering that legalized abortion is in large part responsible for illegal immigration in the United States.

Speaking in Arlington, Va., at the recent national convention of College Republicans – a 250,000-member organization that promotes GOP policies and candidates – the Texas Republican said: "I contend [abortion] affects you in immigration. If we had those 40 million children that were killed over the last 30 years, we wouldn’t need the illegal immigrants to fill the jobs that they are doing today. Think about it.”

DeLay echoed remarks from former Georgia Democratic Sen. Zell Miller, the Web site rawstory.com reported. He told an anti-abortion conference in March that abortion was responsible for illegal immigration and problems in recruiting soldiers for the armed forces.

posted in Abortion Debate - 2 replies

Beyond Rightist Lies, The Real Legacy of Che Guevara

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 18:41:30 GMT

Che Guevara helped bring women's rights, including access to birth control and free abortion on demand, to the women of Cuba. -Steven

Beyond Rightist Lies, The Real Legacy of Che Guevara

By Steven Argue

I posted the following response at the “Activists” site in defense of the legacy of Che Guevara. A series of writings have been posted in opposition to Liberation News at that site.
http://allactivists.tribe.net/thread/95ca19a9-4594-4204-95c2-88cd31a8c00e

And Glen the troll strikes again. On another site he was blaming "progressives" for homelessness and public urination. In reality it is capitalism that causes homelessness.

Here Glen makes the absurd statement, "I'm sure all those peasants Che murdered were happy for the help."

Che never murdered any peasants, but he did save a lot of their lives. He started out as a doctor traveling throughout Latin America, giving medical care to the poor.

Che Guevara was in Guatemala as a doctor in 1954 when the CIA overthrew the Democratically elected Arbenz government. That government was seen as a threat to the profits of the Rockefeller family's United Fruit Company because Arbenz advocated land reform. So U.S. imperialism overthrew Arbenz and put a long series of military dictatorships in power that tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of peasants and kept the people in extreme poverty. At the time of the CIA intervention in Guatemala, Che advocated that Arbenz should arm the people to resist, but Arbenz was not a revolutionary socialist and refusing to arm the people was his downfall.

Later Che was in Mexico when he met a dissident in exile, exiled by the U.S. backed Batista dictatorship in Cuba. The name of that young dissident was Fidel Castro. The Batista dictatorship had murdered tens of thousands of people, many of them student activists.

Castro and Che and a number of other Cuban revolutionaries set out in a boat called the Granma from Mexico for Cuba, armed and ready to lead the insurrection against Batista. The day they were set to arrive a general strike was called in Cuba, but the Granma got caught in stormy waters and arrived three days late. When they arrived Batista knew they were coming and most were killed. Che, Fidel, and a few others managed to escape and make their way into the rural Cuban mountains. There the peasants fed them and they began to build the revolutionary army that overthrew Batista in 1959.

Upon taking power the Cuban revolution, as in any true revolution, liquidated the old power structure. A new revolutionary government was built and the murderers and torturers of the Batista government were put on trial. Eight hundred were executed for their crimes.

Before the Cuban Revolution, Rockefeller’s United Fruit Company owned much of the land. Peasants starved in the off-season and lacked medical care and access to education. When the Cuban revolution came to power in 1959, Fidel Castro’s promise of land reform was quickly carried out. This made Cuba an enemy of the United States government, and the Cubans have never been forgiven since. Later a broader socialist revolution in the economy was carried out.

In addition to land reform the Cuban revolution has provided free access to good healthcare, education for kids even in the most remote rural areas, free education through the university levels, an elimination of hunger, an end to legal discrimination and segregation that existed against Blacks, women’s rights including birth control and free abortion on demand, environmental policies that the World Wildlife Fund says are the only passing policies on global warming in the world, and a promotion of culture.

For the vast majority of the Cuban people today their lives are much-much better than they were under the Batista government. They are a highly educated people doing much better. For a small minority, the wealthy, that profited from the misery of capitalism, their lives got worse. Most of them are now living in Miami. In Cuba, the Cuban people still come out in their millions at rallies in support of the revolution and socialism.

Che didn’t kill peasants, he doctored them, and when he decided that wasn’t enough, he fought along side them to better their conditions.

After helping lead the Cuban Revolution, Che was caught and murdered by CIA and Green Beret trained, equipped, and led Bolivian soldiers in 1967.

Yet the model of Che’s revolutionary self-sacrifice and dedication continues to live on and inspire new generations of socialist revolutionaries. Likewise, Che’s dedication to socialism, including providing medical care to the poor, lives on with the Cuban revolution.

It is interesting that tiny poor Cuba under a U.S. economic blockade is able to provide good healthcare for everyone. Cuba, unlike the United States, does not let people die in the emergency rooms without treatment or turn sick people away from receiving healthcare because they lack insurance. Cuba has taken the profit out of illness and injury and provide healthcare as a human right.

Likewise, while the United States is sending military troops to set up death squad governments in Iraq and Haiti and to intervene in Afghanistan, the Phillipines, and prop up the death squad government of Colombia, Cuba instead sends doctors. Cuban doctors save lives. They are on the ground in a number of countries providing regular care, and they are also sent to countries in emergencies. A few years back Cuba sent doctors to Central America after a bad hurricane and saved many lives. Likewise they offered to send doctors to New Orleans immediately after Katrina, they were well trained in dealing with that type of situation and would have saved lives, but Bush refused to let them in. A similar thing happened with the Nicaraguan government refusing entry, but that government let the Cuban doctors in due to protests.

While I have important arguments with the Cuban government in saying that revolutionary socialism must be democratic as well as on the essential nature of the Theory of Permanent Revolution in the international program; it would be the height of socialist sectarianism not to recognize the significant gains that have been made through the Cuban revolution.

U.S. Hands Off Cuba!

End the Economic Blockade!

For The Right of US Citizens to Travel To Cuba!

U.S. Out Of Guantanamo!

For National Healthcare in The United States!

End US Imperialism Through Socialist Revolution!

Subscribe to Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

anti-abortion politicians selfish, self-centered

kip-Cherone — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:39:01 GMT

Loved turning a raped woman into a political battle.
"(Taylors, South Carolina) Sen. Sam Brownback, campaigning for president before the National Catholic Men's Conference over the weekend, questioned whether rape victims should get abortions.

"Rape is terrible. Rape is awful. Is it made any better by killing an innocent child? Does it solve the problem for the woman that's been raped?" the Kansas Republican asked at the St. Joseph's Covenant Keepers gathering.

"We need to protect innocent life. Period," Brownback said, bringing the crowd of about 500 to its feet."
-----------
"does it solve the problem for hte woman that has been raped? it sure as hell solves ONE Of the, which is an unwanted pregnancy caused by a violent criminal.

but hey, he, a male, clearly knows what a raped woman needs better than she does, right?

They all, ALWAYS know what women need, better than we do, ourselves.

I hate that this a political battle. it is a single woman's issue. she may choose to include whom ever she sees fit. but the law needs to butt the fuck out, especially when it's ONLY there for the sake of making political hey and getting votes.

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Pro-War Democrats Battle for the Presidency

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 02:13:06 GMT

Pro-War Democrats Battle for the Presidency

By Steven Argue

Every four years the American people are subjected to the farce of bourgeois democracy, a “democracy” where only the candidates chosen by the very wealthy have any chance of being elected. That season of nicely dressed pathological liars and false hopes is now upon us.

Since the corporate media of the United States has long ago abandoned any semblance of reporting on anything of substance about candidates such as voting records and actual political views, it is up to the journalists of the left press and Indy-media to do so.

A front-runner in the race is pro-war Democrat Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton has voted for every war the United States has carried out since she came into office in 2000. Those pro-war votes include the Iraq war. She also voted to take away our civil liberties by supporting the “Patriot Act” and its renewal. Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats, pounds the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. In addition she voted for the anti-immigrant wall.

A key issue the Democrats claim to have is supposedly being "pro choice" on the abortion issue as women are 51% of the population. In fact, Dennis Kucinich had an anti-abortion voting record before he first ran for president. Hillary Clinton is busy welcoming the anti-abortion crowd to the Democratic Party. Senator Reid, the senate majority leader, is anti-abortion. Democrats joined Republicans in approving anti-abortion Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Kennedy and Roberts, the anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court, who have just criminalized late term abortions.

In her recent successful run for Senate Hillary Clinton amassed more than 22 million dollars, making her the biggest campaign finance recipient running for Senate in the country. Her money came from such corporate interests as drug and hospital conglomerates, Wall Street finance interests, real estate developers, and rightwing corporate media mogul, Rupert Murdoch.

Barack Obama

Another front-runner and “rising star” of the Democrat Party is Barack Obama. Like Hillary Clinton, Obama has voted for the Patriot Act by voting to renew it in 2006. He also voted for the racist anti-immigrant wall as well as the “guest worker” program that denies immigrants rights, but allows them to come to this country to be exploited and under-paid. Obama also voted for the so-called “Class Action Fairness Act” that makes it harder for the people to sue corporations.

One might think that Obama, as a black man in racist America, might have something to offer on issues dealing with the suffering caused by the racist police state, mass incarceration of the poor, lack of healthcare, and dramatic drop in the standard of living of the multi-racial working class and poor. Instead Barack Obama plays into racist stereotypes, blaming the victims of racist America rather than the corporate criminals, stating:

"Such wisdom might help us move beyond ideological bickering and serve as the basis of a renewed effort to tackle the problem of inner-city poverty. We could begin by acknowledging that perhaps the single biggest thing we could do to reduce such poverty is to encourage teenage girls to finish high school and avoid having children out of wedlock. . ." Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, pps. 255-256

The inner cities of America have, by and large, been abandoned by the same capitalists that got rich off of the jobs they have now exported, just as the victims of hurricane Katrina were left to die by this same racist system. Yet the best thing to do according to Barack Obama is for black girls to stop having children out of wedlock.

In his book Uncle Obama not only lets this racist system off the hook, but he praises one of the worst anti-working class reforms of the Clinton administration stating, "we should also acknowledge that conservatives-and Bill Clinton-were right about welfare as it was previously structured." Bill Clinton’s welfare reform has caused homelessness, hunger, and less access to other basic necessities for the poor in America, but Barack Obama says Bill Clinton and the conservatives were right.

Both Obama and Clinton have voted for war appropriations. The fact that they both decided at the last minute to vote against war appropriations in the most recent vote on supplemental war appropriations is a symptom of the fact that the war has not gone as planned. The war has not gained the desired oil loot for U.S. corporations and has caused a number of growing problems for U.S. imperialism including internal dissent in the United States. And while Clinton and Obama have finally voted against war appropriations this time, their pro-war Democrat Party garnered plenty of other votes to keep the imperialist war going.

In his book, Barack Obama makes clear his support for the billions being squandered on lining the pockets of the military contractors stating, “given the depletion of our [military] forces after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we will probably need a somewhat higher [Pentagon] budget in the immediate future just to restore readiness and replace equipment.” (Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, p 307).

Joe Biden

Another Democrat candidate is Joe Biden. Unlike many Democrat presidential candidates that have tried to distance themselves from the war that they voted for to begin with, in the most recent vote on war appropriations Joe Biden voted with the majority of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate putting billions of dollars towards the continued U.S. imperialist slaughter of the Iraqi people.

John Edwards

Another presidential candidate with a pro-war record is John Edwards. Edwards voted for the war against Iraq and campaigned as a vice presidential candidate on the pro-war John Kerry ticket. At that time both candidates defended their votes for the war. John Edwards has since apologized for his vote for unprovoked military aggression and mass murder (without using that wording and without recognizing that his vote for war was a criminal act).

Yet when Edwards was running for the position of vice president in 2004 this what he had to say on his pro-war vote:

“We need to stick to this [defending their Iraq war votes]. We should stand by our votes, say we would vote that way again. If you admit a mistake, it shows weakness in time of war. That's what the Republicans want us to do.” (John Edwards's changing tune on the Iraq vote, Scot Lehigh, The Globe, April 17, 2007)

Bill Richardson

Another candidate trying to paint himself as an antiwar candidate of the people is presidential candidate and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. Richardson doesn’t call for immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but instead calls for a slow withdrawal. In the early 1990s he did vote against the U.S. war to reinstate the anti-woman pro-U.S. corporate oil monarchy in Kuwait, but later said he regretted that vote. In addition Richardson is a strong supporter the pro-corporate anti-worker NAFTA, GATT, and WTO. On the death penalty Richardson, like many Democrats, says it is a good thing.

Well over one hundred inmates in the United States have had their convictions overturned as a result of new DNA evidence being brought to light, with some of these being death penalty cases. Still prosecutors have fought against the use of DNA evidence to overturn old convictions, even when the lives of innocent people are on the line. In racist America, death penalty juries are always more likely to convict because all who oppose the death penalty are excluded from these juries, making them juries that are more biased towards supporting the prosecution. Blacks often face all or mostly white death penalty juries. These are juries likely to contain a number of people who think that all Black people are criminals, making these jurors incapable of weighing the evidence and understanding the concept of reasonable doubt even in those rare circumstances when the evidence is fairly presented.

Why would anybody support the death penalty being carried out by a system that has been proven to make so many mistakes? The answer lies in the fact that the death penalty is an instrument of terror used by the American ruling class against the working class, poor, and people of color. On the one hand when such innocent people are executed it has no importance to the likes of Joe Biden because to them the lives of the poor and people of color are cheap. But for the ruling class, the added bonus of the death penalty is when it is used in political cases to silence dissent such as with the executions of Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, the Haymarket martyrs, and the threatened execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal. As governor, the fact that Joe Biden has no problem with the death penalty means that he already has blood on his hands.

Dennis Kucinich

Likewise Dennis Kucinich is portraying himself as the standard bearer of peace, love, and liberalism, but has voted in favor of the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The resolution Kucinich voted for falsely claims, “Mumia Abu-Jamal stood over Officer Faulkner and shot him in the face, mortally wounding him…” Yet this is not what the eyewitnesses said. For instance eyewitness William Singletary says, "Mumia Abu-Jamal didn't shoot Daniel Faulkner. The passenger in the right-hand side of the Volkswagen [that Faulkner had stopped] got out of the car and shot him. When Mumia came on the scene, we [Singletary and another man] were on the police radio trying to radio for help." ("Witness: Abu-Jamal didn't do it" Philadelphia Daily News Dec. 8, 2006)

In the last presidential election Dennis Kucinich portrayed himself up as an anti-war candidate of the Democrat Party. Yet on his web site the Kucinich campaign stated that Kucinich, “Supports a strong and efficient military. He believes that the current practice of procuring ever more costly weapons has the effect of weakening military readiness. As the cost of new weapons systems rise, the cost of merely replacing aging weapons with new ones becomes prohibitively expensive. As a result, U.S. military forces shrink, while they become at the same time more expensive to maintain and more prone to failure.”

So Kucinich advocates more frugal and efficient spending on imperialist terror and murder.

This is the same position taken by two U.S. generals waging the war in Iraq. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq General Stanley McCrystal complained, "It was enough for the enemy to show a little resistance and some creative thinking as our technological superiority begun to quickly lose all its meaning. Our expenses are not justified by the obtained results. The enemy is using an order of magnitude cheaper weapons to reach the same goals for which we spend billions on technological whims of the defense industry!"

Similarly General Richard Mayers commented on precision-guided munitions, "The rate of their use is incompatible with the obtained results. We are literally dropping gold into the mud!"

The contradiction here was purely limited to the difference between the pure profiteering of the military industrial complex and the desire for actual cost effective results for imperialist victory on the battlefield.

Dennis Kucinich spoke to a gathering of the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action claiming, "We [he and the congress] did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan. We did not authorize the Administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases. We did not authorize war without end. We did not authorize a permanent war economy. Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy."

Yet that is exactly what Kucinich and the rest of the congress, with the exception of California Democrat Barbara Lee, agreed to with their votes authorizing Bush’s endless war on the world. The entire Democrat Party in both the Senate and Congress, with only one exception, voted for Bush's war.

Since a different vote was later taken authorizing the US war in Iraq, the most practical application of this vote by Kucinich was to authorize the US war in Afghanistan.

In stark contrast to Kucinich’s vote for war Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote on March 2002:

“When U.S. President George W. Bush spoke about an "endless war," some took it as mere political speech, or rhetoric designed to gain the top spot on the evening network news. I did not. "W" is an agent of his class, the wealthy oil merchants of the land, and his intentions are to press for an ever-wider war in all corners of the earth, to make the world safe for capital exploitation and unbridled commerce. This will eventually become a war that reaches into a slew of countries in the Middle East, on behalf of the rich and powerful elites who rule. Make no mistake: this is a war that has nothing to do with democracy. The U.S. enters the region, armed to the gills, not to defend democracies, but to defend theocracies; to defend kings, princes and sultanates; to defend U.S. access to vast oil resources in the region.” Mumia Abu-Jamal

The U.S. war in Afghanistan has in fact killed tens of thousands of civilians and brought the Afghan nation back to the chaos of fragmented warlord rule last seen after the various U.S. trained and financed Mujahideen forces defeated the Soviet backed PDPA government.

The day after the September 11 attack this author wrote:

“Today the clerical fascists of the Taliban rule Afghanistan. The CIA put them in power with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. This massive U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was in opposition to the revolutionary PDPA government that came to power in 1978 on issues of promoting women’s rights and land reform. Literacy campaigns began teaching the poor and women how to read and write.

“Foreign religious fanatics and wealthy defenders of the old feudal system came together in a terrorist organization called the Mujahideen (from which the Taliban were later formed). With billions of dollars in assistance from the U.S. [starting under the Jimmy Carter presidency] these fanatical cutthroats waged a holy war that included killing woman for teaching little girls how to read and write and throwing acid into the faces of women who had become liberated from the veil. The Taliban came to power as a result of this U.S. intervention.

“Will a U.S. war now against the Taliban and former CIA aid recipient Osama Bin Laden set things straight? No. It will be the people of Afghanistan who suffer death and destruction from war as the U.S. attempts to install a puppet government friendly to U.S. corporate (oil) interests” Steven Argue, Liberation News, September 12, 2002

Kucinich, the “peace candidate”, as much as he may now want to deny it, voted for the war in Afghanistan and played his part in making it happen.

On the war in Iraq Kucinich now states, "There is only one way in which the United States will withdraw from Iraq, prior to the end of President Bush's term: Congress must vote to cut off funds." (Rep. Kucinich, The Huffington Report) This position not only ignores the role of the people of the United States, Britain, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere rising up and resisting the war and imperialist occupations, but it is also is being put forward by a politician that voted for the war in Afghanistan, wants a leaner meaner imperialist military, voted for the racist legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and who has worked hard to bring the anti-war movement back into the pro-war Democrat Party.

Some may argue that Kucinich is not perfect, but he’d make a better president than Bush. Yet it is unlikely that Kucinich has any intention of winning the presidency. His role is one of bringing the anti-war movement and others who are breaking from the establishment and the twin parties of war and racism back into the fold of the pro-war Democrat Party. Kucinich makes this point clear when he states, "The Democratic Party created third parties by running to the middle. What I'm trying to do is to go back to the big tent so that everyone who felt alienated could come back through my candidacy" (Counter Punch, April 2003).

Yet that tent Kucinich speaks of is one that, despite its name, is not democratic. It is a tent dominated by big capital and the politicians subservient to it. It is under this tent that the ruling class would like to swallow up the legitimate opposition of the people towards war and turn us into the water boys for the “responsible” politicians of the Democrat Party.

It is such "responsible" politicians, including Kucinich, that voted in their vast majority to back the racist legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal. It is outrageous that that the Democrat party would vote in its House majority to condemn a French city for daring to make an issue of this racist legal lynching, while at the same time doing nothing about the liar and killer, Bush. But then again that should be no surprise either since the Democrat Party voted in its majority for the war in Iraq.

Hillary Clinton

In a press conference on August 21, 2006 George Bush Jr. finally admitted what Liberation News has been pointing out since before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. Yet Bush had used a supposed connection as a pretext for the U.S.’s unprovoked aggression against Iraq. In addition, Bush Jr. also admitted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

Most of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, Hillary Clinton included, supported going to war with Iraq. Today Hillary Clinton has no remorse for that murderous decision stating, "Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since. No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade." Hillary Clinton: No regret on Iraq Vote, CNN.Com

In trying to let themselves off the hook many Democrats claim that Bush “did not fairly represent intelligence”. Feeble cries by these politicians today that their votes for war weren’t their fault because they were lied to by Bush not only make them look stupid, they are an insult to the intelligence of the American people. Clinton, however, is worse in not even distancing herself from this “justified invasion” and “weapons of mass destruction” lies.

While the Democrats helped promote the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had no right to defend itself, Liberation News pointed out that it is the United States that has the weapons of mass destruction. Instead we supported the right of Iraq to acquire the weapons necessary to defend themselves from U.S. aggression. There can be little doubt that if Iraq had acquired those weapons they might not be in the mess they are now.

Yet for Bush Jr. and Hillary Clinton Iraqi weapons were never the real motive for mass murder in Iraq. The capitalist ruling class, and their Democrat and Republican representatives, thought that they could use their superior military power to quickly move into Iraq and establish by force a stable neo-colonial puppet regime, and then make massive profits from the privatization of the Iraqi economy, especially oil. It is the failures of this imperialist plan, in the face of Iraqi resistance and growing unpopularity at home, that has forced some Democrats to try to rethink, or at least distance themselves from, the Bush policies they have supported.

Just as Liberation News opposes the U.S. occupation and corporate looting of Iraq, we also denounced the starvation blockade that was carried out through the UN by the Bill Clinton administration. That blockade, partially due to the capitalist nature of the Iraqi economy under Saddam Hussein, cost the lives of about a million people, many of them children. While a socialist economy like that of Cuba could have made sure that everyone in Iraq had food, blame for this mass murder should also be put on the Bill Clinton administration. Likewise, it was this Clinton starvation blockade that also weakened Iraq for the Bush invasion.

Today, while the U.S. occupation of Iraq has murdered well over 655,000 people and the U.S. starvation blockade of Iraq murdered a million or more, the U.S. government and its puppets in Iraq had the nerve to put Saddam Hussein on trial, and execute him, for propaganda purposes. Yet the worst crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime were also carried out when he was directly backed by the United States. In the 1980’s the U.S. was giving massive military assistance to Iraq to help Saddam Hussein commit genocide against Kurds and carry out a bloody war with Iran at a time when Saddam Hussein was being used as an asset of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Likewise the CIA helped Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party come to power, supplying them with the names of 5,000 socialists and labor leaders that the Ba’athists subsequently rounded up and executed.

Yet to those who claimed that an invasion of Iraq would be a chance for the U.S. to finally set things straight and set up a democracy in Iraq, Liberation News responded before the U.S. invasion saying:

“In the 1970s Iraq nationalized its oil fields. This helped the Iraqi people by taking a chunk of the profits made off of oil out of the hands of the international oil monopolies and instead keeping them in Iraq. This money helped pay for free healthcare and education. As such this was a socialist measure carried out by Saddam Hussein’s capitalist government. It was also a measure that stood up to the interests of the rich and powerful nations. For both reasons socialists supported the nationalization of Iraqi oil while those measures infuriated the imperialists...

“While defending Iraq against imperialist attack and supporting their right to defend themselves socialists also recognize that Saddam Hussein is a capitalist leader and that the Iraqi people have their own scores to settle with him. Yet any government set up by a US occupation army will not be democratic and will only lead to the privatization of the resources that American oil monopolies intend to steal...”

“U.S. imperialism will never solve the question of women’s liberation in the Middle East. Unlike all of the US supported governments and forces in the Arab World, Iraqi women have many rights found nowhere else in the Arab World except in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Over 50% of Iraqi doctors are women. Iraqi women are allowed to walk unescorted in the streets. They are allowed to drive. Iraqi women can even freely criticize men. In addition Iraqi women have the right to work and control their own funds. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of women under the repressive U.S. backed governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where women have no rights what-so-ever.

“The U.S. ruling class hates governments like Iraq, Libya, and Venezuela who use the profits of their oil resources partly to benefit the people with social programs. Likewise they love governments like that of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that strip the people of all their rights and keep the oil profits in the hands of the international oil monopolies and their corrupt local servants. Today in the United States we face unemployment, homelessness, and a lack of health care. The billions of dollars the U.S. will squander on killing Iraqis to steal their resources should be spent to benefit the working class and poor of the United States instead.” -From Liberation News: What Is Socialism, and Why We Oppose The Invasion of Iraq

What was predicted is reality. Those predictions were not from a crystal ball. They were accurate because they were based on the past behavior of U.S. imperialism. Today in Iraq the U.S. has set up a puppet Islamic government with functioning death squads and torture chambers. Socialists have been excluded from participating in elections and unarmed demonstrators have been shot down and murdered in the streets by U.S. troops and troops of the puppet Iraqi government. The puppet Islamic government also opposes women’s rights and women’s rights have deteriorated dramatically since the U.S. invasion. The rebuilding of basic infrastructure, such as electricity, has lagged way behind what was rebuilt by Saddam Hussein after the massive U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 1992.

With the exception of the privatization of Iraqi oil, all of the predictions have shown themselves to be true and the only reason that Iraqi oil isn’t completely under the direct control of U.S. oil monopolies now is because of the union resistance of 23,000 organized oil workers as well as the general resistance by the Iraqi people to the idea of Iraq’s resources being looted by U.S. corporations.

For the working class in the United States there is ever growing frustration with a war that is costing many lives and billions in dollars while needed programs for healthcare, jobs, the environment, and disaster relief do not get the funding they need. Just as the new imperialist masters of Iraq have shown a criminal lack of interest in the rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure, so too they left the people of New Orleans.

Yet for the ruling class their failure in Iraq is not in the murderous, undemocratic, and anti-woman puppet regime they have set up and the money that has been squandered in doing it, but in the failure of that regime to deliver the stability needed to acquire the oil loot. They complain that oil production in Iraq is below prewar levels and the occupation by U.S. and British troops serve as targets for the insurgency.

The words of Hillary Clinton, an icon of Democratic Party liberalism, makes abundantly clear that what she opposes is not the oil war itself, but the fact that Bush is not winning it:

“Let us not confuse the leadership’s failures with either the remaining mission in Iraq or the war on terrorism or with our support for our troops. What we have here is a failure of leadership to accomplish that mission. What was hailed as our shortest war has now become one of our longest. What was hailed as a model of democracy teeters on the brink of complete anarchy. What was the leadership that quickly claimed credit for success has been lethargic in the face of misjudgments and setbacks.” Hillary Clinton

As a result of imperialism’s failure in Iraq some Democrats that voted for the war like John Kerry have called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year. Yet the Kerry-Feingold plan actually calls for keeping troops in Iraq that are "critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces." The Kerry-Feingold plan also calls for "an over-the-horizon" troop presence in the region that could come to the aid of a failing puppet government in Iraq as well as intervene elsewhere in the so-called war on terror. (Lawmakers begin Bitter Debate on U.S. Troop Withdrawal Plan for Iraq, FOXNews, online report, June 2, 2006)

Hillary Clinton even opposed the Kerry-Feingold plan and voted against it arguing against any withdrawal timeline.

Unlike Hillary Clinton and the leading Democrats, Liberation News sees nothing good that can come from the continuation of the U.S. war against Iraq. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is doing nothing for anybody except the capitalists that are profiting from the war and the tax dollars of the American people. We call for no support to the Democrats and we demand: Iraq to the Iraqis! U.S. Out Now!

Liberation News calls for ending the war through building the mass movement in the streets; striking against arms producers; hot cargoing war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks; and building towards a general strike against the war. Likewise we support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war. We support students, such as those at UC Santa Cruz that have repeatedly driven military recruiters off campus. And we call for building the socialist movement to end imperialism through socialist revolution.

The Role of Peace Action (Formerly Sane / Freeze)

Hillary Clinton’s record is clearly pro-imperialist war. Yet the group “Peace Action” gives Hillary Clinton the passing grade of voting for peace 89% of the time. Other Democrats are given similar scores by these political hacks.

“Peace Action” is deceiving the anti-war vote. Why? Because Peace Action is a pillar of the status quo that sees no alternative to delivering votes to what they see as the “lesser evil” Democrat Party, even when the Democrats are equally pro-war. This strategy has made “Peace Action” an obstacle to peace and a pillar of the status quo of war.

Every few years the ruling class of the United States parades its selected representatives in front of the American people to give us the chance to vote for their so-called “lesser” and “greater evil” representatives in the Democrat and Republican Parties. The corporate media and liberal pro-war groups like “Peace Action” ignore the real anti-war candidates and back pro-war Democrats by misrepresenting their records to the people.

Liberation News urges all of the super-exploited workers that go door to door raising money for the Peace Action bureaucracy to quit your meaningless jobs and look for better work while looking for ways to hook up with the real anti-war/anti-imperialist movement that is marching in the streets. Likewise we urge all of the liberal and leftist minded people that give money to Peace Action to stop doing so and instead participate in the mass anti-war movement in the streets with your bodies, minds, and your money if you can afford it.

No to the twin parties of war and oppression! Yes to the independent organization and mobilization of working people!

Obama, Clinton, and Richardson, Supporters of Racist Israel

Hillary Clinton, like many Democrats, has pounded the war drum for the racist Zionist state of Israel even louder than the Republicans. The U.S. gives Israel billions of dollars in military aid every year and Senator Clinton’s vote backs that money for death. Israel is a racist settler state established in 1949 that has denied the original inhabitants, the Palestinians, many basic rights, often including the basic right to live. Besides denying Palestinians the same rights to travel, jobs, housing, and education as allowed Jews, the racist and religious Zionist State has used massacres and other forms of terror, wars, and torture to drive out the original Palestinian inhabitants.

Likewise Israel is always at war with its Arab neighbors. Israel’s recent attack against Lebanon where their aerial bombardment of the civilian population murdered 1,150 people and destroyed vital infrastructure is only the latest such terrorism by Israel. Yet Hillary Clinton recently told a pro-Israel rally “We will stand with Israel because Israel is standing up for American values as well as Israeli ones.”

She’s got it wrong, the mass murder and racism of Israel are in league with the values of American ruling class, as has been seen in Iraq, but these are not the values of the American people.

Claims of Israel being the victim, bombing and invading Lebanon on the pretext of two Israeli soldiers taken prisoner do not hold water in light of the fact that Israel is holding 2,000 Lebanese prisoners in their torture chamber dungeons from their previous invasion of Lebanon. In addition numerous reports say those two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanon, not in Israel. Those reports are from such sources as AP, Hindustan Times, and AFP.

On Israel “anti-war” Richardson shares Hillary Clinton’s views stating, “I am firmly committed to one of the United States' closest and most important allies - the State of Israel. Throughout my career, I've steadfastly supported Israel, obtaining a consistently pro-Israel voting record in Congress and defending Israeli interests as Ambassador to the United Nations.”

Barack Obama also backs racist Israel stating, “The United States and Israel share important interests - promoting a peaceful Middle East, combating terrorism, and encouraging reform in the Arab and Muslim world.” Likewise as a senator he has backed the massive military aid the United States gives Israel every year and says he will continue this policy as president stating he will, “insist on fully funding military assistance to Israel”.

For Socialist Democracy!

Let me be clear on this point, Obama and Clinton, and the rest of the pack will not betray us. They cannot betray us because they were never with us. Under the current politics most Americans would never have heard their names if they were on our side.

A truly democratic society would eliminate corporate control of the elections by nationalizing the corporate media and allowing all candidates equal access to the airwaves, cable, and print. Likewise a truly democratic society would carry out a sweeping “campaign finance reform” through the nationalization of the means of production (using that wealth for human and environmental needs rather than decadence and deception).

Up against the likes of Hillary Clinton, with her millions of dollars in corporate bribes, a sympathetic corporate media, growing police state, and increasing electoral fraud, it will take a socialist revolution to bring democracy to the United States.

How we can all resist:

Tell the truth!

Build the mass movement in the streets!

Strike against arms producers!

Become ungovernable!

Hot cargo war materials on the docks, trains, and trucks!

Build towards a general strike against the war!

Support the right of military personal to refuse orders and resist this war!

Drive military recruiters off campus!

No tolerance or excuses for the pro-war, racist, and capitalist Democrat Party!

Build the socialist movement to end imperialism, racism, environmental destruction, and capitalism!

End U.S. imperialism through socialist revolution!

Subscribe to Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

"partial birth abortoin" expanded beyond D&X

kip-Cherone — Wed, 16 May 2007 18:22:46 GMT

WEll, the right said "no no, we are explicit that this new bill in not for all abortions late term, jsut one type"

guess they lied. it's now being "applied" to several different "pba like" procedures where the child's head is too large to come out of the woman's body, due primarily to hydroenchpllitus (sp).

oh, and note how my husband can "suffer" from my abortion and sue my doctor. not me. my husband.

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Laws against women and our right to make our own decisions

kip-Cherone — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 20:13:52 GMT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070316/ap_on_re_us/abortion_ultrasound;_ylt=AvIPphszdv1kupIM9jSzErnMWM0F

i'm getting so tired of lawmakers, generally MALE LAWMAKERS deciding how, when, where i should be able to abort, and under what frame of mind.

Maybe, instead of seeing the fetus, we should be forced to see OUR SOLDIER'S COFFINS each night... oh wait, don't want to admit soldiers die.

Maybe, isntead of seeing this fetus, we should be forced to see a tv interview of the horrors in our nations Vet's Hospitals, and miltary care they get after they have been USED by bush.

but no, we shall plod along trying to convince women to do things "our way".

If i don't want to look, and keep my eyes closed cause i'm squimish, will they deny me my abortion?

posted in Abortion Debate - 1 reply

10million girls aborted as indians seek male heirs

acoustichrmny — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 18:58:23 GMT

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 09 January 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article337386.ece
At least 10 million female foetuses have been aborted in India over the past two decades by middle-class families determined to ensure they have male heirs.

The figure is revealed by a survey of more than a million homes published today which found that sex determination in pregnancy and selective abortion accounted for 500,000 missing girls each year.

Termination of pregnancy on the basis of sex was made illegal in India in 1994, but better-off families find ways round the law. Many couples believe their family is unbalanced without a son who will continue the family name and bloodline, earn money, look after the family and take care of his parents in old age in a country which has no social security system.

Population censuses in India show that the number of girls has been falling steadily for the past 20 years relative to the number of boys. For every 1,000 boys up to the age of six the number of girls dropped from 962 in 1981 to 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001.

Researchers say the most likely reason for the fall is the availability of ultrasound which allows parents to discover the gender of their child before birth and has been widespread in India for most of the past two decades.

Writing in The Lancet, which publishes the findings online today, Shirish Sheth of Breach Candy hospital, Mumbai, says: "To have a daughter is socially and emotionally accepted if there is a son, but a daughter's arrival is often unwelcome if the couple already have a daughter.

"Daughters are regarded as a liability. Because she will eventually belong to the family of her future husband, expenditure on her will benefit others. In some communities where the custom of dowry prevails, the cost of her dowry could be phenomenal."

Researchers from the University of Toronto in Canada and the Institute of Medical Education in Chandigarh, India, studied almost 134,000 births in 1997 among 6 million people living in 1.1 million households who are part of the ongoing Indian National Survey. They found the sex of the previous child born affected the sex ratio of the current birth, with fewer girls born to families who had yet to have a boy.

The effect was more than twice as great among educated mothers compared with those who were illiterate, but did not vary by religion.

Based on the natural sex ratio from other countries, the researchers estimated that 13.6 to 13.8 million girls should have been born in India in 1997 but the actual number was 13.1 million. The deficit amounts to between 590,000 and 740,000 female births.

Prabhat Jha and colleagues say: "We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for 500,000 missing girls yearly. If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable. Women who have already had one or two female children are clearly at highest risk."

The research team found that when the first birth was a girl, at the second birth there were 759 girls born to every 1,000 boys. At the third birth, the sex ratio declined further to 719 girls to every 1,000 boys when the first two births were girls. By contrast, when the first or second child was a boy, the number of girls born at second or subsequent births exceeded the number of boys.

The practice of female foeticide has taken the place of infanticide and is extensive in China as well as India, aided by the development of ultrasound. Dr Sheth says: "Female infanticide of the past is refined and honed to a fine skill in this modern guise. It is ushered in earlier, more in urban areas and by the more educated ... A careful demographic analysis of actual and expected sex ratios shows that about 100 million girls are missing from the world - they are dead."

posted in Abortion Debate - 3 replies

Mo. Panel's Report Links Immigration To Abortion

Rocky — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 23:42:37 GMT

Mo. Panel's Report Links Immigration To Abortion

By David A. Lieb
Associated Press
Tuesday, November 14, 2006; Page A09

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo., Nov. 13 -- A Republican-led legislative panel says in a new report on illegal immigration that abortion is partly to blame because it is causing a shortage of American workers.

The report from the state House Special Committee on Immigration Reform also says that "liberal social welfare policies" have discouraged Americans from working and have encouraged immigrants to cross the border illegally.

ll 10 Republican committee members signed the report, while the six Democrats did not. Some of the Democrats called the abortion assertion ridiculous and embarrassing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/13/AR2006111301129.html

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posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

SF: January 20 Action For Reproductive Rights

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:05:19 GMT

Liberation News is endorsing the following pro-choice action organized by BACORR.
Letter from BACORR:

Dear Defenders of Women’s Rights,

While California voters rejected Proposition 85, the parental notification act in last month’s elections, the fight for reproductive rights continues and your help is needed.

The rightwing remains on the offensive and for the third year running will be coming to San Francisco on Saturday, January 20 for their annual “Walk for Life—West Coast”. But, as in previous years, Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR) activists will be organizing a multi-issue response to the anti-abortionists. We are initiating a January 20th Coalition to bring together local and national community groups and activists to organize a counter demonstration with one united voice. We need you to join this important effort and to send the message that the San Francisco Bay Area stands for reproductive rights and that Roe v. Wade must be defended and expanded.

In past years our efforts were endorsed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, San Francisco Labor Council, ACCESS, East Bay NOW, Watsonville Brown Berets, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Radical Women, Code Pink, Women of Color Resource Center, GABNet, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and many more. This year’s theme is “Forward, Not Back—Reproductive Justice for All!”
Here’s what we need you to do:

1. If in the Bay Area: Attend the upcoming January 20th Coalition meetings: Wednesday, December 13 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at 1908 Mission Street, San Francisco (at 15th Street), Wednesday, December 20, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at 369 15th Street, Oakland (near 12th St./Downtown Oakland BART) and at these addresses on January 3 (San Francisco), January 10 (Oakland) and January 17 (San Francisco)

Contact BACORR for subcommittee meetings or to arrange meetings in other locations.

2. Endorse the counterprotest of the “Walk for Life—West Coast”. We ask for a $25 donation, but any amount is appreciated. Please make checks out to: Women’s Choice Clinic and mail to 570 14th Street, Suite 3, Oakland, CA 94612-1080 with Jan. 20th endorsement in the memo line.

3. Commit to bringing folks to the counterprotest on Saturday, January 20, 2007. Meet at 10:30 a.m., Pier #5 on the Embarcadero (to the left of the Ferry Building at Embarcadero and Market Streets) in San Francisco. Wear green, bring signs, and defend women’s right to choose!

Please call 415-864-1278, email bacorrinfo@riseup.net, or visit www.BACORR.org for more information.

BACORR stands for: free, accessible abortion on demand; no forced sterilizations; universal healthcare; pre- and post-natal care and childcare for all; safe and accessible contraceptives; an end to discrimination against people of color, queer, immigrant, and youth communities; embracing (not controlling or denying) sexuality; providing reality-based sex education in our public schools, and more. Fight back with BACORR!
In solidarity,
Anita O’Shea
Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights
(BACORR)

*********
BACORR
www.BACORR.org

Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

why no moderator?

sinamuscarina — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 15:22:27 GMT

shall i take it over?
sina

posted in Abortion Debate - 2 replies

British Docs suggest not reviving babies in ICU 22 weeks and earlier

UncleFishbits — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 19:24:48 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6149464.stm

interesting, especially how it starts diffusing the pro-life debate? maybe? I am not sure, but I would also assume a pro-lifer would call this murder... in the face of medica evidence and a bioethicist committee?

is this interesting at all? discuss...

posted in Abortion Debate - 1 reply

Supreme Court to examine abortion cases

Rocky — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 19:23:29 GMT

Supreme Court to examine abortion cases

WASHINGTON - Americans still will be chewing over election results Wednesday morning when the nine Supreme Court justices file into their courtroom for two of the biggest cases of the young term.

Voters in some states will be deciding whether to impose restrictions on abortions; one proposal would outlaw almost all abortions in South Dakota.

In the marble courthouse across the Capitol, this most politically charged of issues also will be under consideration.

The court will be discussing whether to uphold the first nationwide restrictions on an abortion procedure since the justices' landmark ruling in
Roe v. Wade in 1973 that established a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

Almost everything about a procedure opponents call partial-birth abortion is disputed, including how many take place each year and even its name.

Abortion rights advocates call the term an oxymoron that incongruously links abortion and birth as part of a political strategy to chip away at the Roe ruling.

"It's intended to obfuscate and in that, it's been successful," said Dr. David Grimes, the former chief of the government's abortion surveillance program. He now is affiliated with
Planned Parenthood of America.

Abortion opponents argue that the name aptly describes "a rarely used and gruesome late-term abortion procedure that resembles infanticide," as the Bush administration said in its legal filings. Most of the procedures, medically known as dilation and extraction abortions, appear to take place in the middle third of pregnancy.

There were 1.3 million abortions in the United States in 2002; all but about 130,000 came in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The early abortions are not at issue.

Estimates of the late-term abortions at issue range from 2,200 a year to upward of 5,000, although the data is far from precise.

What makes the method "gruesome" for some — a federal judge who struck down the law also described it that way — is that it involves partially extracting a fetus from the uterus, then cutting or crushing its skull.

But the dispute is not over whether a woman may end a pregnancy, but how the abortion should be performed.

The administration, for instance, argues that law does not restrict a more common dilation and evacuation method in which the fetus is dismembered in the uterus and then removed in pieces.

Lawyers for Planned Parenthood and doctors who challenged the ban say medical decisions, including which abortion method is safest for a patient, must be left to doctors. They also worry the law could apply to almost all second-trimester abortions, threatening doctors who perform them with up to two years in prison.

They are attempting to keep the focus on women such as Carrie Elliott, who was overjoyed to learn she was pregnant last fall at age 40. But by mid-January, when Elliott was nearly 20 weeks pregnant, genetic testing had confirmed that her fetus had a severe form of a rare disorder, cat eye syndrome, including failing kidneys.

"We wanted her so badly," Elliott said in a halting voice in a recent telephone interview from her home in the southwestern United States, "but we made the decision to let her go."

Elliott and her husband, Corey, said they simply did not have information early enough to decide on an abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

"More so now than ever, I really feel these kinds of decisions are best left to the woman, the partner and the doctor. Period," she said.

The administration, backed by the anti-abortion movement, is equally determined to highlight the procedure.

"A physician partially delivers the fetus intact, and then intentionally kills it, typically by puncturing its skull and vacuuming out its brains," Solicitor General Paul Clement, the administration's Supreme Court lawyer, wrote in his brief.

"Babies killed during such partial-birth abortions are alive until the end of the procedure" and experience pain, Clement said, using the same words Congress wrote into the law that is at issue before the court.

If there is a sense that the court has been here before, it has. Six years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a similar ban in Nebraska by a 5-4 vote.

That law was held invalid because the court found it encompassed other abortion methods. The law also did not contain an exception that would allow the procedure to preserve a woman's health, an underpinning of Supreme Court abortion rulings.

Three years later, however, Congress passed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. Lawmakers said the procedure was never medically necessary, eliminating the need for a health exception, and attempted to define the type of abortion more precisely to avoid overreaching.
President Clinton twice vetoed earlier versions of the law;
President Bush signed this one in November 2003.

Yet six federal courts on both coasts and in the Midwest struck down the law, based on lengthy trial testimony, because they found it had the same defects that doomed the Nebraska statute.

Why, then, are abortion opponents and even some on other side convinced that the Supreme Court will reach a different conclusion?

To put it simply, Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor has retired, depriving abortion rights supporters of a likely fifth and decisive vote against the ban.

Little in the past experience of the two new members of the court appointed by Bush, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice
Samuel Alito, signals an inclination to side with abortion rights supporters, although both men testified at their confirmation hearings of the importance of respecting high court precedent.

Justice
Anthony Kennedy, the court's swing voter following O'Connor's retirement, has been the object of much attention in the mountain of legal filings in these cases.

Kennedy was a forceful dissenter in the Nebraska case. "The state chose to forbid a procedure many decent and civilized people find so abhorrent as to be among the most serious of crimes against human life, while the state still protected the woman's autonomous right of choice," he wrote. "The Court closes its eyes to these profound concerns."

Priscilla Smith, who will argue the case on behalf of doctors who challenged the federal law, said she believes Kennedy can be swayed this time around by substantial evidence, including the testimony of 13 medical experts, that the procedure can be the safest choice.

Jay Sekulow, a prominent abortion opponent who is chief counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, said he is increasingly optimistic the court will uphold the abortion ban.

"There is not a lot of wriggle room in what Kennedy wrote," Sekulow said. "It was such a powerful dissent. I don't see him moving away from that."

The cases are Gonzales v. Carhart, 05-380, and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, 05-1382.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061105/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_abortion

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posted in Abortion Debate - 1 reply

Lost interest

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:21:42 GMT

Glad to see that this tribe is dead.

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Plan B

Amanda — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 20:52:55 GMT

Can anyone come up with a valid reason why it is a mistake for plan b to be available over the counter? Because I can't think of one, but I am shocked at all the individuals who are against it.

posted in Abortion Debate - 1 reply

abortion

Tied — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 01:27:27 GMT

I love abortion.

posted in Abortion Debate - 2 replies

Stem Cell Research

Rocky — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 16:09:45 GMT

Bush Bars Media From Stem Cell Veto

July 19 2006

Today, President Bush will veto his first piece of legislation – a stem cell research bill that “could lead to treatments that save millions of lives and improve the quality-of-life for millions more.”

67 percent of Americans support embryonic stem cell research. The same percentage believes “It would be terrible if cures were delayed because of policies that make embryonic stem cell research difficult.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5193998.stm

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/19/bush-bars-media/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071900524_pf.html

'Key Facts About Stem Cell Research' -

'Stem cell research is perhaps the most exciting medical technology of the 21st Century. Stem cells hold the promise of treatments and cures for more than 70 major diseases and conditions that affect millions of people, including diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cancer, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), spinal cord injuries, blindness, and HIV/AIDS.'

http://www.allianceforstemcellresearch.org/page.php?id=4

----------------------

Let us not forget this one either -

'The Bush Global Gag Rule: Endangering Women’s Health, Free Speech and Democracy'

http://www.crlp.org/pub_fac_ggrbush.html

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posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Annie Gaylor (FFRF) tonight at 9

Rocky — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 19:23:29 GMT

Annie Gaylor (FFRF) tonight at 9

JOIN US IN THE CHATROOM TONIGHT 9PM EST AT WWW.RATIONALRESPONDERS.COM

Show 14 Annie Laurie Gaylor Author and Co-Founder of FFRF joins us to talk about the recent push to ban abortion in South Dakota. Annie Laurie is leading a push to bypass South Dakota. Cancel your Citi-Bank credit card and tell them it is because their state restricts womens Constitutional rights.

We'll also be joined by Eric Schwartz, singer and comic who wrote and created "Keep your Jesus off my Penis."

Show Times:
Freethoughtmedia.com: Friday, June 16th, 9pm est

http://www.ffrf.org/index2.php

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posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Women’s Rights Under Assault, Abortion Outlawed In South Dakota

Sun, 26 Mar 2006 17:05:00 GMT

Women’s Rights Under Assault, Abortion Outlawed In South Dakota

By STEVEN ARGUE

On March 6, 2006 South Dakota’s Republican governor, Mike Rounds, signed into law a bill banning almost all abortions in the state. The bill makes it illegal for doctors to perform an abortion under any circumstance other than to save the life of a woman.

The right to abortion was won in the United States in 1973 through a mass struggle in the streets that culminated in the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. A radicalized movement for women’s rights, born out of the movement against the Vietnam War and other struggles for social justice at home, was sickened by the injustice of women being butchered in illegal back alley abortions and saw the right of women to control their own bodies as fundamental in the struggle for women’s equality.

Today the bill passed in South Dakota is a blatant violation of the law under Roe v. Wade meant to force the issue back onto the Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade. In response National Lawyers Guild (NLG) President Michael Avery said, "The legislators and the governor of South Dakota have violated their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. Local officials are obliged to follow the law as declared by the Supreme Court and are not entitled to repeatedly violate the law in the hope that the Court may change its rulings." The 6,000-member NLG is calling for the impeachment Governor Mike Rounds.

Outraged Cecilia Fire Thunder, President of the Oglala Souix Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, has voiced her defiance saying, "To me, it is now a question of sovereignty, I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."

Women in sparsely populated South Dakota currently obtain about 800 abortions a year. Under the new law women will be forced to take time off of school and work and spend money traveling out of state (or to Pine Ridge). These expenses and hardships are added to the price of abortion in the United States, putting the ability women to control their own bodies and their own lives further out of reach for many poor women.

While abortion is a free on demand health service in revolutionary Cuba, public funding for abortion in the United States was eliminated in 1977 when Democrat Jimmy Carter signed into law the Hyde Amendment that cut off Medicaid funding to 23 million poor women in the US. In response to critics Carter, a millionaire peanut farmer, replied, “There are many things in life that are not fair.”

In the 1980’s, under the Republican regime of Ronald Reagan, the right to abortion was widely seen as under attack. In response mass mobilizations for women’s rights continued to apply the kind of pressure that made the government fearful of inspiring deeper radicalizations by overturning the law. Internationally, however, the Reagan administration engineered major setbacks for women’s rights. In Afghanistan the U.S. gave billions of dollars of military support to the misogynistic Mujahideen that threw acid into the faces of women liberated from the veil and murdered teachers for teaching little girls how to read in write. US intervention brought to power the most rabidly anti-woman government in the world. In Poland the US helped organize and fund the rightwing Catholic Solidarnosc movement that upon taking power made abortion illegal and instated capitalist economic policies that brought about 50% unemployment. In El Salvador and Guatemala Reagan funded and trained rightwing death squad governments that routinely used the rape, torture, and murder of women in an attempt to silence the population.

On all of these international attacks on women’s rights by Reagan’s Republican administration the Democrats of Congress were willing partners.

While Clinton continued the Reagan Bush policy not touching the formal legality abortion he took no real action to preserve the right either. In fact abortion rights suffered more under Clinton than under the previous two Republican administrations as the pro-choice movement became largely demobilized and wrongly saw “effective” and “responsible” political organizing as support for the Democrat Party. Parental consent laws aimed against the rights of teenagers were passed all across the country and between 1992 and 1996 the number of abortion providers plummeted by 14%. While abortion was being chipped away at Clinton carried out a frontal assault on gay rights with his homophobic “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy” and the poor were driven down even further into desperation with his promise to “end to welfare as we knew it” made reality with his signing of the “Personal Responsibility and Work Responsibility Act”. Not coincidentally this was accompanied by his delivered promise of 100,000 more cops on the streets and an ever-increasing mass incarceration of millions of the poor.

Today in Iraq Bush Jr. has followed in Reagan’s Afghanistan footsteps by destroying another secular government where women’s rights were a priority and replacing it with a murderous anti-woman Islamic government friendly to U.S. imperialist interests. In the United States Bush’s religious anti-woman and anti-sex crusade has gone so far as to oppose letting girls be inoculated by the new Papillomavirus vaccine. The virus is known to be a cause of cervical cancer and the vaccine will save lives. In an article on the subject the New Yorker stated March 13, “The Bush Administration has been relentless in its opposition to any drug, vaccine, or initiative that could be interpreted as lessening the risks associated with premarital sex.”

With its nine lifetime appointees the U.S. Supreme Court will review the law passed this month in South Dakota. If upheld the legal right to abortion will be overturned in the United States. Sitting on that court will be two new openly reactionary judges appointed by the Bush administration, John Roberts and Samual Alito. Their decisions, however, will potentially be swayed by mass movements just as in 1973 the opinions nine reactionary judges were ultimately decided by the power of a mass movement that demanded nothing less than full rights for women.

Socialists stand unapologetically in full support of all women’s reproductive rights including access to RU 486, other birth control, and the right to free abortion on demand as an essential component to the liberation of women and the entire working class. To win and maintain these rights we see the necessity of building mass movements as well as the need to build a socialist movement independent and opposed to the Democrats, Republicans, and corporate media with the ultimate goal of establishing a democratic and egalitarian socialist society.

Women’s Liberation Through Mass Action and Socialist Revolution!
All Power To The People!

Liberation News
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

S.D. House Approves Abortion Ban Bill

Rocky — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 00:25:30 GMT

S.D. House Approves Abortion Ban Bill

PIERRE, S.D. - South Dakota lawmakers approved a ban on nearly all abortions Friday, setting up a deliberate frontal assault on
Roe v. Wade at a time when some activists see the U.S. Supreme Court as more willing than ever to overturn the 33-year-old decision.

Republican Gov. Mike Rounds said he was inclined to sign the bill, which would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless it was necessary to save the woman's life. The measure would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.

Many opponents and supporters of abortion rights believe the U.S. Supreme Court is more likely to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion now that conservatives John Roberts and
Samuel Alito are on the bench. Lawmakers said growing support among South Dakotans for abortion restrictions added momentum to the bill.

"I think the stars are aligned," said House Speaker Matthew Michels, a Republican. "Simply put, now is the time."

Planned Parenthood, which operates the only abortion clinic in South Dakota, has pledged to sue over the measure. About 800 abortions a year are performed in South Dakota.

Some opponents of the bill said abortion should at least be allowed in cases of rape or incest, or where the woman's health is threatened.

If a rape victim becomes pregnant and bears a child, the rapist could have the same parental rights as the mother, said Krista Heeren-Graber, executive director of the South Dakota Network Against Family Violence and Sexual Assault.

"The idea the rapist could be in the child's life ... makes the woman very, very fearful. Sometimes they need to have choice," Heeren-Graber said.

Under the measure, doctors could get up to five years in prison for performing an illegal abortion. The House passed the bill 50-18 on Friday, and the Senate approved it 23-12 earlier this week. If signed, it would become law July 1.

Money for the anticipated legal fight is already pouring in. Lawmakers were told during the debate that an anonymous donor has pledged $1 million to defend the ban, and the Legislature is setting up a special account to accept donations.

"We've had people stopping in our office trying to drop off checks to promote the defense of this legislation already," Rounds said.

Leslee Unruh, president of the Alpha Center, a Sioux Falls pregnancy counseling agency that tries to steer women away from abortion, said most of the abortions performed in South Dakota do not stem from rape or even failed contraception, but are simply "conveniences."

Unruh said she believes most South Dakota women want the state to ban abortion, and many who have had abortions "wish someone would have stopped them."

The governor said he believes it would be better to eliminate abortion in steps rather than all at once. Rounds indicated he does not share the view that Alito and Roberts will usher in sudden, dramatic changes in how the court views abortion. He said it could be a drawn-out legal battle, and noted that it is not even assured that the high court will hear the case.

The bill "may satisfy a lot of individuals out there who would like to see if there is one slim chance the court may entertain three years from now a direct assault on Roe v. Wade," Rounds said.

He added, however: "I've indicated I'm pro-life and I do believe abortion is wrong and that we should do everything we can to save lives. If this bill accomplishes that, then I am inclined to sign the bill into law."

Rounds said his staff will review the bill for technical defects. He noted that he vetoed a similar measure two years ago because it would have wiped out all existing restrictions on abortion while the bill was challenged in court.

Some advocates said an abortion ban would hurt poor women the most by forcing them to travel long distances to other states where the procedure is legal.

"It's a sad state of affairs that we have only one choice right now" in South Dakoa, said Charon Asetoyer of the Native American Women's Health Care Education Resource Center. "But if you have to go out of state, the cost of making that trip will be prohibitive."

Kate Looby, Planned Parenthood director in Sioux Falls, said women who cannot afford to travel to a clinic might be forced to turn to unsafe methods of abortion.

"We've seen it in the past in this country, we've seen it all over the world and there's no reason to believe it would not happen in South Dakota," Looby said.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization in New York and Washington, similar abortion proposals are in the works in seven other states: Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060224/ap_on_re_us/abortion_south_dakota_8;_ylt=AoGaempSgdodS7zxWNCJspmB_YEA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

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posted in Abortion Debate - 5 replies

Ethical Dilemma

Jeff — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 18:45:14 GMT

Stolen from http://www.callingallwingnuts.com/ who stole it from http://www.firedoglake.blogspot.com/

This one's for the abortion prohibitionists:

You find yourself in a blazing fertility clinic - the fire is ferocious. In one corner there is a two year old girl. In another, there is a petri dish with five fertilized blastula in it. You can rescue one or the other, but not both. Which do you rescue, the girl or the petri dish?

posted in Abortion Debate - 2 replies

from a former anti-choice woman...

skadi_lupa — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 17:31:59 GMT

the following was forwarded to me and i have posted it in other reproductive rights tribes. so i thought i would post it here as well:
___

I am self-righteous. I am unforgiving. I am a conservative asshole. But I have had a life-changing experience that showed me how arrogant and ignorant I really am.

**DISCLAIMER**
I didn't spell-check
I'm not a literary genius
I just want to share with you the fact that I was WRONG.

Here's my story.
I used to be one of those people who stuck up her nose at the thought of welfare, abortion, affirmative action, whatever. I saw myself as "conservative" and that the poor were poor because they were lazy, the pregnant got pregnant because they slept around with no protection and used abortion as birth control, and that the government shouldn't help out others because they just abuse it. I felt this way not becuase I have deep moral or religious views, I was just an ignornat slob who had no clue about real problems.

Well. The unthinkable happened. I GOT PREGNANT. I was on the pill, took it correctly and religiously, but still got knocked up. I WAS FREAKED. Never been pregnant before, and in the past when a woman said she was pregnant I thought "Aren't you used to this by now? You're just going to abort it and start all over again." NEVER did I consider what an emotional blow this is. Everything in my life stopped. I mean - me...pregnant?!?!?! But I was so careful! But I am a good person! But I can't have a BABY!!! This kind of thing happens to crackwhores and junkies, right???? WRONG.

So I had options: have it. don't have it. Was that really an option? FOR ME?? I can't have an abortion! I am against that, right?!?!? Well, I wasn't. I am not above it. I am not above or better than anyone who has had one, or two, or five. ANYONE WHO HAS HAD TO MAKE THIS KIND OF CHOICE KNOWS WHAT I MEAN! It's the most impossible decision a person can make. It hurt down to the core of me.
How could I judge ANY woman (or man) that has had to make this choice? It is horrific. Miserable. Painful. Life-changing. So I made the choice. I decided to terminate my pregnancy. My first, my only. I made an appoinment. I was scared as hell.

The cattle call began at 7am with PROTESTERS! Protesters outside the clinic screaming "That's a BAD BAD place! Get away! You are sick for what you are doing!!" I wanted to turn around and scream "You don't know SHIT about my life and my problems! BACK OFF!!" They were relentless, shaming, and cruel. I felt so degraded and dirty. How dare they judge me? They don't know the pain I am in...the misery of making this choice....how dare they!

So in I went, after being searched by a police officer who was making sure no one wsa going to bomb the place. UNREAL! People HURT other people over this issue!! Like it isn't hard enough?!
In the waiting room were 8-10 MISERABLE people, including boyfriends, sisters, friends, husbands. And they were all petrified. I had no idea. No clue what these people had to go through. Now here I was amongst them. Waiting my turn.

And BOY what a wait. 1 hour in the waiting room. Then you go pee into a cup and fill out your paperwork, and wait another hour in a little room with 7 other girls who are scared as hell, and no one wants to look at one another due to their own shame or embarrassment. I felt for these women as I had never felt for anyone before. So when you are finally called, they take you into another little room where you wait to have lab work done. Then you have a sonogram done by a MEAN woman. She says "yup you're pregnant." Thanks lady. But the worst part is waiting pre-op in your little gown and hat and booties again with 7 other girls. Then the moment of truth. They strap you in. Legs in the air, tush in the wind. Before you know it they put you put and you wake up feeling like hell. You collect your things and go home. Done.

I'm sorry for the judging, for the intolerance, for my ignorance. Who am I to decide what you should and should not to do with your body. Thank God abortion is legal and safe. I have many amends to make.

signed,
Pro-Choice.
_____

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Ind. Proposal: Life Starts at Conception

Rocky — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 19:25:56 GMT

Ind. Proposal: Life Starts at Conception

INDIANAPOLIS - Indiana women seeking an abortion would be told life begins at conception under a proposal that would give the state one of the furthest-reaching abortion consent laws in the country.

Only one state — South Dakota — has gone so far in what it orders doctors to tell women before they can get abortions, and that law has been blocked by a court.

Supporters say the legislation would provide women key information before making an irreversible decision, but critics argue it blurs the line between church and state and could infringe on doctors' First Amendment rights.

"To put our religion or faithful beliefs into a statute that's going to be law, without being able to back it up scientifically, I have real hard questions about doing that," said Indiana Rep. John Ulmer, a Republican who voted against the bill.

Indiana is one of 29 states with "informed consent" laws that require women seeking an abortion to receive information about the procedure, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization in New York and Washington, D.C., that researches and tracks state abortion legislation.

Most tell women assistance is available for prenatal care, childbirth and infant care if they decide to carry their pregnancy to term. Three states — Arkansas, Nevada and Wisconsin — provide information about the possible psychological effects of an abortion.

Only South Dakota has beginning-of-life language similar to Indiana's proposal, which would require women seeking an abortion to be informed in writing that "human life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm."

Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota challenged South Dakota's law, saying it infringed on doctors' First Amendment rights. No trial date has been set, but U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier of Rapid City granted a preliminary injunction last year blocking enforcement of the law, saying the plaintiffs have a good chance of winning.

The Indiana bill also would require abortion providers to tell women that a fetus may be able to feel pain. Such notice is required in Arkansas, Georgia and Minnesota, but those states specify that it applies to fetuses at 20 weeks gestation or later, while Indiana's proposal does not specify a gestation period.

Indiana's current law requires doctors to tell women about risks and alternatives to abortion, and to provide information about the fetus' age and potential viability. Doctors also must offer to show women an ultrasound of the fetus.

The proposed changes cleared the Republican-controlled House on a 70-30 vote Feb. 1; a committee of the GOP-led Senate is set to consider the bill this month.

Republican Rep. Tim Harris, the Indiana bill's House sponsor, said he did not intend to restrict abortion.

"We in no way infringe on a woman's right to an abortion," Harris said. "That's still legal. That is still the law of the land."

Supporters say the bill would give women information they need.

Dorothy Timbs, of the
National Right to Life Committee, said many women seeking an abortion are told the fetus is nothing more than "a blob of tissue." She says women need to understand the consequences of an abortion on both the fetus and themselves.

"This is a decision that profoundly affects both forever and is irreversible," she said. "Women deserve this information. The more they have, the better off they are."

Abortion-rights supporters say that's only true if the information is based in medical fact.

"We're seeing more and more informed consent laws passed that are politically motivated, with items in there trying to dissuade women from having abortions, rather than being politically neutral and giving women true risks and benefits," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers in the United States and Canada.

Yale Law School Professor Jack M. Balkin said Indiana's proposal could withstand free-speech challenges if doctors tell women the information is required by the state and might not necessarily reflect their own views.

"If a doctor can put it in those terms, then he's acting as a conduit from the state to the woman," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060211/ap_on_re_us/life_at_conception

posted in Abortion Debate - 3 replies

Calling All Interns & Staffers Working On The Hill

Clare — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 18:12:41 GMT

National cable network casting new docu-series showcasing a
never-before-seen look into the world of politics, through the lives of
ambitious men & women working on The Hill. This can include anyone from
interns, staffers, lobbyists, grassroots organizations to think tanks. This
groundbreaking show will be a fly-on-the-wall view of democracy in action
with a dynamic cast of individuals who may eventually go on to run the
country! For more information call 212-613-5417 or e-mail chgcasting@yahoo.com ASAP!

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

fifty babies/yr are alive after abortion

acoustichrmny — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 17:05:46 GMT

Fifty babies a year are alive after abortion
Lois Rogers
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1892696,00.html
A GOVERNMENT agency is launching an inquiry into doctors’ reports that up to 50 babies a year are born alive after botched National Health Service abortions.

The investigation, by the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH), comes amid growing unease among clinicians over a legal ambiguity that could see them being charged with infanticide.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which regulates methods of abortion, has also mounted its own investigation.

Its guidelines say that babies aborted after more than 21 weeks and six days of gestation should have their hearts stopped by an injection of potassium chloride before being delivered. In practice, few doctors are willing or able to perform the delicate procedure.

For the abortion of younger foetuses, labour is induced by drugs in the expectation that the infant will not survive the birth process. Guidelines say that doctors should ensure that the drugs they use prevent such babies being alive at birth.

In practice, according to Stuart Campbell, former professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at St George’s hospital, London, a number do survive.

“They can be born breathing and crying at 19 weeks’ gestation,” he said. “I am not anti-abortion, but as far as I am concerned this is sub-standard medicine.”

The number of terminations carried out in the 18th week of pregnancy or later has risen from 5,166 in 1994 to 7,432 last year. Prenatal diagnosis for conditions such as Down’s syndrome is increasing and foetuses with the condition are routinely aborted, even though many might be capable of leading fulfilling lives. In the past decade, doctors’ skill in saving the lives of premature babies has improved radically: at least 70%-80% of babies in their 23rd or 24th week of gestation now survive long-term.

Abortion on demand is allowed in Britain up to 24 weeks — more than halfway through a normal pregnancy and the highest legal limit for such terminations in Europe. France and Germany permit “social” abortions only up to the 10th and 12th weeks respectively.

Doctors are increasingly uneasy about aborting babies who could be born alive. “If viability is the basis on which they set the 24-week limit for abortion, then the simplest answer is to change the law and reduce the upper limit to 18 weeks,” said Campbell, who last year published a book showing images of foetuses’ facial expressions and “walking” movements taken with a form of 3-D ultrasound.

The Department of Health was alerted three months ago to the issue of babies surviving failed terminations. In August clinicians in Manchester published an analysis of 31 such babies born in northwest England between 1996 and 2001.

“If a baby is born alive following a failed abortion and then dies (because of lack of care), you could potentially be charged with murder,” said Shantala Vadeyar, a consultant obstetrician at South Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust, who led the study.

A systematic investigation of data collected through the CEMACH indicated that there are at least 50 cases a year nationwide in which babies survive abortion attempts.

“First sight of our data suggests this is happening,” said Shona Golightly, the agency’s research director. She said official confirmation of the figures would be available next year.

It is not known how many babies who survive attempted abortions go on to live into adulthood.

Paul Clarke, a neonatal intensive care specialist in Norwich, has treated a boy born at 24 weeks after three failed abortion attempts. The mother decided to keep the child, who is now two years old but is suffering what doctors call “significant ongoing medical problems”.

“The survival of this child was not recorded in any official statistics,” Clarke said. “There is nothing at the moment to force abortion practitioners to account for their failures.”

The issue will be highlighted by Gianna Jessen, 28, who survived an attempt to abort her. She is to speak at a parliamentary meeting on December 6 organised by the Alive and Kicking campaign, which is lobbying for a reduction of the abortion limit to 18 weeks.

Jessen, a musician from Nashville, Tennessee, was left with cerebral palsy but is to run in the London marathon next April to raise funds for fellow sufferers.

“If abortion is about women’s rights, then what were my rights?” she asked.

“If people are going to talk about abortion, then it’s important for them to know that these are babies that can be born alive and survive.”

posted in Abortion Debate - 3 replies

Alito abortion & privacy

Rocky — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 00:16:14 GMT

Alito abortion & privacy

Keep tabs on the Alito hearings at "Democracy Now" - http://democracynow.org/

View the videos or transcripts January 9, 2006

Fmr. NARAL Head Kate Michelman on Alito and Her Own Pre-Roe v Wade Experience Getting an Abortion and Consent From the Husband Who Abandoned Her - http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/09/1456207

Find radio and TV stations in your local area that air Democracy Now! Call your local radio & TV stations to make the recommendation if they don't have it - http://www.democracynow.org/stations.shtml

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

indiana bill seeks to make abortion illegal

acoustichrmny — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 17:13:20 GMT

POSTED: 2:39 pm EST January 5, 2006
INDIANAPOLIS -- A Republican lawmaker has filed a bill to make abortion illegal in Indiana, saying if it became law, it could ultimately be a vehicle to get the U.S. Supreme Court with new members to overturn abortion rights.

But Gov. Mitch Daniels said Thursday that his sense was "it would have a very limited prospect of ultimate success."

The bill by Rep. Troy Woodruff of Vincennes would change Indiana's feticide law to make it a Class C felony, punishable with a two- to eight-year prison sentence, to perform an abortion. The only exception would be when carrying a pregnancy to term would pose a "substantial permanent impairment of the life or physical health of the pregnant woman."

Woodruff said he filed the bill Wednesday in part because there will be a new U.S. Supreme Court and a state must pass a law and then appeal it to the highest court to see if the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling would stand.

"Also the people have never had an opportunity (through their lawmakers) to vote on the matter," Woodruff said.

The bill likely will be assigned to the House Public Policy and Veterans Affairs Committee. Chairman Marlin Stutzman, R-Howe, said he agrees with the bill but is uncertain whether he can schedule it for a hearing. He said with a short session that is to end by March 14, he will only have three committee hearings, and such a controversial bill would take up at least one entire meeting.

"The bill is very close to my heart," Stutzman said.

Daniels said he was a "supporter of the right to live."

But he questioned whether it have any prospect of success and whether any time and money spent on it would lead anywhere.

"Ultimately for this to change, I think, first the heart of the country and maybe ultimately the view the courts take of states' rights to place some limits would have to evolve," Daniels said.

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

posted in Abortion Debate - 1 reply

south dakota makes abortion rare through laws and stigma

acoustichrmny — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 18:53:22 GMT

South Dakota Makes Abortion Rare through Laws and Stigma
By Evelyn Nieves
The Washington Post

Tuesday 27 December 2005

Out-of-state doctors come weekly to one clinic.

Sioux Falls, SD - The waiting room at the Planned Parenthood clinic was packed by the time the doctor arrived - an hour late because of weather delays in Minneapolis.

It was clinic day, the one day a week when the only facility in South Dakota that provides abortions could take in patients. This time it was a Wednesday. The week before it was a Monday.

The day changes depending on the schedules of four doctors from Minnesota who fly here on a rotating basis to perform abortions, something no doctor in South Dakota will do. The last doctor in South Dakota to perform abortions stopped about eight years ago; the consensus in the medical community is that offering the procedure is not worth the stigma of being branded a baby killer.

South Dakota, those on both sides of the abortion debate agree, has become one of the hardest states in the country in which to obtain an abortion. One of three states in the country to have only one abortion provider - North Dakota and Mississippi are the others - South Dakota, largely because of a strong antiabortion lobby, is also becoming a leading national laboratory for testing the limits of state laws restricting abortion, both opponents and advocates of abortion rights say.

In 2005, the South Dakota legislature passed five laws restricting abortion, after a bill to ban abortion outright had failed by one vote in 2004. And new laws are virtually assured for the coming year. A 17-member abortion task force, made up largely of staunch abortion opponents, issued recommendations to the legislature earlier this month that included some of the most restrictive requirements for abortion in the country.

The report states that science defines life as beginning at conception and recommends a law that gives fetuses the same protection that children get after birth, thus banning abortion. Until such a ban, the task force recommends requiring that a woman watch an ultrasound of her fetus, that doctors warn women about the psychological and physical dangers of abortion, and that women receive psychological counseling before the abortion, among other measures.

As national leaders on both sides of the abortion debate focus on the upcoming Supreme Court nomination hearings of Samuel A. Alito Jr., they are watching states such as South Dakota pass more and more restrictions that might be upheld by a newly constituted, more conservative Supreme Court.

"Samuel Alito wrote the blueprint 20 years ago on how to dismantle and eventually overturn Roe," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, referring to a memo Alito wrote in 1985 in which he mentioned passing restrictions on abortion as a way to mitigate the effects of Roe v. Wade . "If he is confirmed, Alito could cast the decisive vote that allows additional attacks on women's reproductive freedom from the states to stand."

But Mary Spaulding Balch, director of the state legislation department of the National Right to Life campaign, said South Dakota is one of many states that have had success in passing laws the organization has been espousing for more than 30 years.

"Working within the fact that the Supreme Court said that it's legal to kill unborn children," she said, "it makes sense that you do your best to save whatever lives you can."

Each week, 15 to 20 or so women from across South Dakota find their way to the Sioux Falls Planned Parenthood for an abortion, no easy feat for many of them. South Dakota is home to some of the poorest counties in the country, including the poorest, Buffalo County, seat of the Crow Creek Sioux reservation. State law forbids any public funding for the $450 procedure, even in the case of rape or incest. Beyond cost, there is the distance. It's a long slog here from places like Rapid City, about 350 miles away in the western part of the state. For some women, the only way to do it - and not pay for a hotel room - is to make the 700-mile trip in one day.

"Women in the western side of the state don't think about abortion until they need to," said Kate Looby, Planned Parenthood's state director, "and then they're completely shocked that there's no way to receive that care unless they go to Sioux Falls." Even women in a medical or life-threatening emergency have only one hospital to go to that will perform an emergency abortion, she added. "One hospital. In the entire state, again in Sioux Falls."

On a recent clinic day, 13 women were scheduled for abortions but the waiting room was jammed with more than 30 people - the patients, spouses, children, parents, friends. Some patients coming from far away had to bring their young children because they could not get child care. Others, such as a 23-year-old woman who drove here in the early morning from Rapid City with her boyfriend, left their children at home and would have to turn right back after their abortion to return to their families.

"I figured I could get the abortion in Rapid City," said the woman, who has a 2-year-old daughter. "And I didn't know it would be so expensive. We had to borrow the money to get here."

The woman was 45 days pregnant, she said, the day she drove 350 miles to take the RU-486 abortion pill and then drive back. "I have to get back home to my daughter," said the woman, who said she was working full time and attending college part time to become a medical administrator. (She and the others interviewed did not want their names in the newspaper.) The woman said she had decided on abortion because "I can't afford another child, and I need to finish school and work to support the one I got." She receives $50 a month in child support and less than $200 a month in food stamps but was deemed ineligible for any further public assistance because of her full-time job.

Another patient, a 29-year-old teacher who became pregnant while using birth control with her boyfriend of a few months, who is also a teacher, said she was not ready for a child and neither was he.

"I'm pro-choice all the way," said the woman, who is from a town about 90 miles from Sioux Falls. She found out she was pregnant at seven weeks and had to wait two weeks for the abortion because the clinic's schedule conflicted with her work schedule.

Looby, whose father is an obstetrician-gynecologist, said she has talked to many doctors in South Dakota who say they have no personal objection to performing abortions but cannot risk their careers and community standing by offering the procedure.

When the Planned Parenthood clinic was built six years ago, architects factored in the hostility that clinics faced. It has no windows in the front of the building, so abortion protesters cannot look in, and the parking lot is in the back, on private property safe from picketers. The glass in the encased reception area is bulletproof. Doors are kept locked, and visitors must present identification to be buzzed inside.

But the loud protests anticipated in the building design have not materialized. Instead, abortion opponents have attempted to get laws passed restricting both abortion providers and those seeking the abortions.

One law passed in South Dakota this year is an informed-consent measure that requires doctors to tell women in writing and in person two hours before an abortion of the medical risks of the procedure and that an abortion ends the life of "a whole, separate, unique living human being." Enforcement of the law has been blocked by a lawsuit from Planned Parenthood.

Another measure is a "trigger law" that automatically bans all abortions in the state should the US Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade .

Leslee Unruh, one of the prime lobbyists for the law that created the abortion task force, said, "I want abortion to end."

posted in Abortion Debate - 6 replies

INDIANA DRAFTS 'UNAUTHORISED REPRODUCTION' BILL

Rocky — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 15:04:38 GMT

JUST HOW FAR ARE WE GOING TO ALLOW THE FASCIST STATE TO GO? INDIANA DRAFTS 'UNAUTHORISED REPRODUCTION' BILL THAT SAYS ONLY MARRIED WOMEN CAN HAVE CHILDREN

'Sen. Miller believes the requirement of marriage for parenting is for the benefit of the children that result from infertility treatments. "We did want to address the issue of whether or not the law should allow single people to be parents. Studies have shown that a child raised by both parents - a mother and a father - do better. So, we do want to have laws that protect the children," she explained. When asked specifically if she believes marriage should be a requirement for motherhood, and if that is part of the bill's intention, Sen. Miller responded, "Yes. Yes, I do."'

The next meeting of the Health Finance Commission will be held a t
the Statehouse on October 20, 2005 at 10 am in Senate Chambers and
is open to the public.

To express your support or opposition of legislation
making "unauthorized reproduction" a criminal act, contact members
of the Health Finance Commission by telephone or email:

check the full article

http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2005/10/3/223530/406

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posted in Abortion Debate - 7 replies

A recent article of mine, thought I should share

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 21:50:57 GMT

With Judge Alito climbing towards the supreme court and people looking at his opinion on abortion to decide if he is a nut job or not I figure I should at least make my point of view crystal clear. I have to admit that I am not exactly pro-choice, but I am definitely not pro-life. I think that the best description for my point of view would be pro-death.
While some may think that that would be a rather harsh view to have as we should try to save everyone. Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great, and if a sperm is wasted God gets quite irate... I disagree. If you think logically about it we all are going to die, its just a matter of when. So if you died before you were born, it just saved you the trouble of paying taxes. I think that I may have to put forward a new slogan for the pro-death lobby, kill-em-all and let the stem cell researchers sort 'em out.
As I had pointed out in a previous article there are also far to many people on this planet, if we upped the number of fetuses that we roto-rootered out of existence every year by 1500% or so possibly after a few decades the population would get down to a level that is sustainable. I hereby apologize to the makers of roto-rooter, that statement may have been rather crude.
Now I am not suggesting that we abort every baby, that would be draconian. But I think that we should practice a little amateur eugenics and limit births down from the current free-for-all vaginal shooting gallery that we have to only viable children with good genetics. How about only parents that can read, add, and actually have jobs being the allowed to become breeding pairs. Sort of the test you must pass in order to tag that ass. If we made even average mental competence the criteria for becoming a state sanctioned brood mare instead of our current system of the state just paying out social service monies for people that have made themselves state ward brood mares though there own lack of planning. Perhaps with the lightened load upon our social service systems we can start offering real and effectual post birth family leave and parental imprinting time. Just think if kids grew up thinking of dad as that person who along side their mother cared for them for the first six months of their lives. Someone who was able to be home every night and weekend instead of having the meaning of dad being a fuzzy concept that corresponds to the smell of cooked Drano and having mom's bedroom door locked.
If you think about it these methods may be a tad severe, and may not fly in our “free” society. That and they sound rather similar to this system that was being forced in Germany about 65 years ago. There are many other similarities between our current governmental situation and what was happening in Germany back then unfortunately. The Christian Theocracy, the want to have a new crop of children to fight future wars, and show our dominance over the rest of the world. A idiotic leader who swears off drinking, and horrible society changing terrorist act (Reichstag Incident/9-11). A war where we were obviously meant and preordained to be militarily involved and liberating the area (Sudetenland /Iraq). Christian leaders standing behind the leader to support his doctrines and policies (Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, Emmanuel Hirsch/Dobson, Falwell). I would go on, but that would just make me angry. Despite many concerned emails that I have received since I started writing these columns, I am actually a very happy person.
Although I, as of yet, have had no one comment on it, there was a point I missed in my previous article. Some people may have thought that computer software could be considered intelligently designed since the human mind was involved in creating it, to them however I have only this to say. The Blue Screen of Death, how could there be any intelligence behind Windows?
In other news I have decided that there has not been a political candidate since I have been paying attention that actually makes statements that mean something instead of just gingerly stepping around whatever subject is getting broached. Therefore I am throwing my hat into the ring for the United States Senate race in Minnesota for 2006. If all else fails maybe we can at least make some people think about the issues instead of just blindly playing follow the suit. As should be habit by now, send all rants, raves, hate mail to textonly@cpinternet.com

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

controlling teen sex?

skadi_lupa — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 22:06:58 GMT

controlling teen sex = stopping cervical cancer vaccine?

a friend passed on a link to an interesting article that i felt should be shared with all of you whether residing in the US or elsewhere...

Excerpted from a Washington Post article titled, Cervical Cancer Vaccine Gets Injected With a Social Issue, by Rob Stein dated 10/31/05 (link below):

"A new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer has set up a clash between health advocates who want to use the shots aggressively to prevent thousands of malignancies and social conservatives who say immunizing teenagers could encourage sexual activity...

Because the vaccine protects against a sexually transmitted virus, many conservatives oppose making it mandatory, citing fears that it could send a subtle message condoning sexual activity before marriage. Several leading groups that promote abstinence are meeting this week to formulate official policies on the vaccine..."

link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/30/AR2005103000747.html

-ska

posted in Abortion Debate - 4 replies

Alito: Right to Wife

skadi_lupa — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 17:31:51 GMT

Excerpt from William Saletan's
'Right to Wife:Why does Judge Alito treat women like girls?'
...
Judge Alito, it's a pleasure to have you before our committee this morning. You're obviously an accomplished jurist, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle speak very highly of you. I really have only one question for you, and it's my hope that you'll be able to put my mind, and the public's mind, at ease about it. What I'd like to know is, why do you think it's constitutional to treat a pregnant woman like a child?

I'm referring, of course, to your dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey 14 years ago. As you know, that case involved a Pennsylvania statute that required women to notify their husbands before having abortions, on pain of criminal sanctions. You voted to uphold the statute.

Full Article URL: www.slate.com/id/2129321/FPRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT="

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

just my 2 cents on it...

Cruithnii — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 04:59:35 GMT

regardless of where you stand on when life begins i believe in the necessary evil of it...

until there is not one single child in the world who needs a good family, who is up for adoption or foster or WHATEVER then MAYBE we can discuss the rights and wrongs/legality of abortion again...

Let people under 18 get access to condoms, birth control, etc WITHOUT parental consent. I know that saved my ass MANY MANY times and am sooo glad i had the opportunity to get ahold of bc LEGALLY and talk to a doctor so i have never had to make that horrible decision on whether or not to get an abortion. I was allowed to make the decision of whether or not i wanted kids BEFORE i ended up with one.

I'm not sure if I would get one... but im glad i CAN if i need to.

posted in Abortion Debate - 6 replies

New Pictures/graphs

kip-Cherone — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 17:27:30 GMT

Interesting to look at.

And the numbers belie what we are so often told. Things like, the number of christians who are having abortions is *higher* than the number represented by the general population.

The number of rich women who are having abortions is significatly higher than the population at large.

posted in Abortion Debate - 11 replies

abortion may outgrow roe v wade

acoustichrmny — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 04:53:48 GMT

Abortion Might Outgrow Its Need for Roe v. Wade
By John Leland
The New York Times
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/100305WA.shtml
Sunday 02 October 2005

With the confirmation last week of John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice of the United States, eyes turned to President Bush's next judicial nominee, who, on a closely divided court, may determine the fate of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that recognized a woman's right to an abortion. But such speculation overlooks a paradox in the abortion wars: while combatants focus on the law, technology is already changing the future of abortion, with or without the Supreme Court.

Even if the court restricts or eliminates the right to an abortion, the often-raised specter of a return to back-alley abortions is not likely to be realized, said Dr. Beverly Winikoff, president of Gynuity Health Services, a nonprofit group that supports access to abortion. "The conditions that existed before 1973 were much different than what they are in 2005," she said. "We have better antibiotics now and better surgical treatments."

But no change is bigger than the advent of an inexpensive drug called misoprostol, which the federal Food and Drug Administration approved for treatment of ulcers in 1988, but which has been used in millions of self-administered abortions worldwide. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, freeing states to ban abortion, this common prescription drug, often known by the brand name Cytotec, could emerge as a cheap, relatively safe alternative to the practices that proliferated before Roe.

"We won't go back to the days of coat hangers and knitting needles," said Dr. Jerry Edwards, an abortion provider in Little Rock, Ark. "Rich women will fly to California; poor women will use Cytotec."

Because it was never intended for use in abortions, it has not been widely tested for safety and effectiveness.

In 2000, researchers at three obstetrics and gynecology clinics in New York noted that low-income immigrant women were already using misoprostol as an alternative to going to an abortion clinic, because it was easier and less expensive. They got the pills from doctors, pharmacies, relatives and from contacts in other countries.

The drug causes the uterus to contract and, if the contractions are strong enough, to expel the embryo or fetus. In the United States, misoprostol is typically used off label with the abortion drug RU-486 in non-surgical abortions and in some surgical abortions. A spokeswoman for Pfizer, which sells misoprostol under the name Cytotec, said the company does not comment on off-label use. Last year, Americans filled 365,000 prescriptions of misoprostol for ulcers, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical consulting firm.

A dose sufficient to cause an abortion costs less than $2, said Dr. John K. Jain, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Southern California, who has performed limited clinical trials of abortions using misoprostol alone. He said he found that it was effective 80 to 90 percent of the time, if administered by a doctor. This is slightly lower than its effectiveness in combination with RU-486.

Misoprostol is usually used in the first trimester, but under clinical conditions, Dr. Jain and other researchers say it has been used safely and effectively in the second trimester. Women taking it on their own risk greater rates of failure and higher side effects, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and fever and chills.

Carrie Gordon Earll, a senior analyst of bioethics at Focus on the Family, which supports a reversal of Roe v. Wade, said the existence of new technologies like misoprostol should have no bearing on the law.

"The law operates as a teacher in a moral sense," regardless of people's opportunity to break it, she said. "Even if you have some people who get a drug off the black market and sell it to women, that doesn't mean we don't have a policy to discourage abortion."

In Brazil, where abortion is banned except in rare circumstances, misoprostol is the method of choice for up to 90 percent of all abortions, said Alessandra Chacham, a professor of sociology at the University of the State of Minas Gerais, who studies reproductive health in Brazil. In the late 1980's and early 1990's, she said, pregnant women started to spread the word, because the drug's label warned that it could cause miscarriages. Compared with illegal abortions using other methods, the rate of infection with misoprostol was 12 times lower, researchers have found. But researchers at the University of Rio de Janeiro reported that they also found that among babies born with certain birth defects, a high percentage of the mothers used misoprostol. When the government in response restricted access to misoprostol, drug smugglers created an illegal black market, Ms. Chacham said.

But American women may not be as receptive, said Norma McCorvey, who in 1973 was known as Jane Roe, the woman who brought the case that legalized abortion, but who has since argued for the reversal of the court's decision.

"When women start using these self-induced drugs, and start seeing body parts in their potty, they're going to go bananas," Miss McCorvey said. "And it's going to be horrible."

Dr. Jain said researchers still need to learn more about what happens when the drug doesn't work. Currently, if women fail to terminate a pregnancy using RU-486 and misoprostol, they still have a surgical abortion. But if abortion were illegal, many of these women might carry to term. "Data suggest it causes birth defects, including facial paralysis and limb defects," Dr. Jain said. "It's hard to quantify, but yes, there probably is a risk."

And widespread use of misoprostol could have another unintended consequence, said Mitchell Creinin, director of family planning at the University of Pittsburgh, who has run clinical trials on the drug. In Brazil, if women have problems with the drug, they go to the hospital to be treated for miscarriage. If women in the United States start using misoprostol for abortions, Dr. Creinin said, "someone going through a miscarriage is going to be looked at suspiciously, like, 'Did you do something?' "

Dr. Creinin added that "compared to when abortion was illegal before Roe, misoprostol is still safer." But as with any illegal drug, there is a period of elevated risk before users discover the proper dosages and protocols. If abortion became illegal, he said, "If I were a woman, I'd rather go to Brazil than Mississippi, because at least there they've learned how to do it."

posted in Abortion Debate - 6 replies

World Population Awareness Week (October 17-23)

Rocky — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 00:22:17 GMT

World Population Awareness Week (October 17-23)

"This year's World Population Awareness Week (October 17-23) focuses on the world's gender inequities. For example, women face substantial inequalities in access to basic health care, education and employment. Population Connection specializes in educating and advocating about the importance of family planning.

The right and ability to decide when and whether to have children is the very essence of freedom and critical to any effort to improve health, increase opportunity and slow population growth. Each woman needs roughly forty years of basic reproductive health care through her lifetime; however, approximately 201 million women around the world who desire family planning services lack access to effective reproductive health care."

http://www.populationconnection.org/Reports_Publications/Publications/publication441.html

;

posted in Abortion Debate - 2 replies

as long as war is legal

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 01:32:34 GMT

As long as war is legal, then abortion needs to be as well. There are so many children on this planet as it is who are not being cared for properly, why force mothers who don't want theirs, to give birth to them? At least wait for all of the existing children who are parent-less, hungry, cold, homeless, neglected and abused to be properly taken care of. Then, if you want to start saving all of the unborn, go for it.

If all you pro-lifer's want to take a stand, let's stop the wars first.

posted in Abortion Debate - 4 replies

Teaching your fetus to fight

petesart — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 15:21:49 GMT

Why is it that all the rich righties, the surf and turf set that own the oil and the cattle, seem to have such a vested interest in bringing every fetus to fruition? Why is it also that this same crowd is happy throwing you to the lions once you are born by underfunding education, fighting against "socialized" medicine and forcing the poor into the welfare hand out programs of the churches of the religious right? Could it be that they are more than happy to sit on their yachts and watch their wars being fought by poor people who are looking for a way out?

posted in Abortion Debate - 4 replies

Connections to teh Adoption INdustry?

kip-Cherone — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 16:35:14 GMT

I want you all to read this article from James Dobson, Focus on the Family and tell me how i can read this as anything *but* a sale of babys to teh adoption industry. I sware, if he were really about pro life, why is every single solution here to turn to adoption. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

There is not one suggestion that a woman or even younger teen might be better off with her child. Are we sure it's "pro life" that is motiviation thing? Cause I read this and was sickened that it came off like a sales advert for "we want your babies".

http://www.heartlink.org/directors/adoption/a000000110.cfm

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Emergency Contraception Education Bill

kip-Cherone — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:37:56 GMT

This came to my email from Planned Parenthood. Worthwhile bill, i'd say.
========

"Ask Congressmember Udall To Co-sponsor

The Federal Emergency Contraception Education Act

Emergency contraception is safe, effective, and can reduce

the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent.

Each year, 3 million pregnancies, or one-half of all pregnancies in the United States, are unintended. Half of these end in abortion. Emergency contraception does not cause abortion, but instead acts primarily by stopping the release of an egg from the ovary. EC is a safe and effective means of preventing pregnancy.

However, many patients and health care providers remain uniformed about this important contraceptive option. In the U.S., 9 out of 10 women of reproductive age remain unaware of this method. At present, less than 18 percent of hospitals provide emergency contraception at a woman’s request without restrictions, and only one in five ob/gyns routinely discuss emergency contraception with their patients.

The Emergency Contraception Education Act (H.R. 3326) will provide $10 million to implement important public education initiatives aimed at both women and medical providers regarding the benefits and uses of EC. Public awareness campaigns targeting women and health care providers will help remove many of the barriers to EC and will help to increase access to this important means of pregnancy prevention.

Contact congessmember Udall at (202) 225-2161 and ask him to co-sponsor this important bill.

Here's what you can say:

Congessmember Udall,

Emergency contraception can prevent unintended pregnancy in cases of rape, contraception failure, and unprotected sex. Too many women and doctors don't know about this safe and effective drug. The federal Emergency Contraception Education Act--H.R. 3326--provides $10 million to educate both women and health care providers regarding the benefits of EC. The bill already has 61 co-sponsors. Will you co-sponsor the bill?"

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

pro-choice but anti-naral

acoustichrmny — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 21:55:38 GMT

August 13, 2005
Pro-Choice but Anti-Naral
By JOHN TIERNEY
---
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/13/opinion/13tierney.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
---
My position on abortion has been, as politicians put it, evolving. I was once pro-choice and a contributor to Naral. Now I'm pro-choice but anti-Naral.

The group has a genius for alienating potential allies, as demonstrated by the television commercial it introduced this week and then hastily withdrew after a barrage of criticism. The ad, which featured footage of a bombed abortion clinic and a victim in a wheelchair, accused Judge John Roberts Jr. of siding with clinic bombers and having an ideology that would "excuse" their attacks.

What Mr. Roberts actually did, on behalf of the administration of the first President George Bush, was to write a brief supporting the right of people to protest at abortion clinics, not bomb them. His argument was not only reasonable, but also exposed a fundamental problem in the way Naral Pro-Choice America has framed the abortion issue.

The case involved a law forbidding conspiracies against a "class of persons," which was enacted during Reconstruction to protect blacks from the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Roberts argued (and the Supreme Court agreed) that the law didn't apply to the protesters at abortion clinics because they weren't discriminating against all women, just the women seeking abortions.

If that argument sounds reactionary, it's only because Naral and other groups have worked so long to make abortion a civil rights issue, presenting it as women's fight for freedom against an oppressive patriarchy. The tactic makes for displays of solidarity like the March for Women's Lives, an occasion for denouncing male anti-abortion politicians and waving signs with that perennial slogan "If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

It's true that pregnancy is a uniquely female burden and that most pro-life politicians are men - but then, so are most pro-choice politicians. There's no gender gap in opinion on the issue. Polls have long shown that men are no more hostile than women are to abortion rights. In a New York Times/CBS News Poll earlier this year, men were slightly less inclined than women to say that abortion should be outlawed.

Treating the issue as a civil rights crusade may be good for mobilizing some women, but this strategy alienates the public because it ducks the central issue. If you believe that life begins at conception, then protecting women's rights means protecting the rights of females in the womb, too.

The abortion debate, unlike the civil rights debate, can't be resolved by appealing to any widely held moral or legal principles. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court discovered a right in the Constitution for pregnant women to be left alone by the government. But that just ducked the question - what about the fetus's right to be left alone? - and angered huge numbers of Americans.

There's probably no group more eager to be left alone by the government than members of the Libertarian Party, but even they don't buy this new right. They have bitter debates on abortion, with some calling the fetus part of the woman's body, and others insisting it's like a stowaway on a ship who must be kept alive. (A few hard-core believers in property rights say that even a stowaway can be tossed overboard, but they're not in danger of being elected to anything.)

I wish the pro-choice movement would appeal to centrists of both sexes instead of playing to its activist base. The best way to keep abortion legal is to rely not on the Supreme Court but on the public, because three-quarters of Americans do not want to outlaw abortion.

Many of these people have moral objections and resent the Supreme Court's presumption in its Roe v. Wade decision, but they're also pragmatic enough to realize that a ban couldn't be enforced and would create a new set of problems. If Roe v. Wade were overturned and abortion policy left up to the states, these pragmatists would start to matter more than the ideologues on the left and right who now dominate the debate.

Legislators in some red states might keep their promises to outlaw abortion, but I think most would look at the polls and discover their position had suddenly evolved. The debate over abortion would ebb as the issue was settled democratically.

Instead of feeling obligated to fight over every vacancy on the Supreme Court, women would have a more secure right to abortion. They wouldn't have to worry about every brief and memo the nominee ever wrote - and they wouldn't suffer through an invidious commercial that only hurt their own cause.

E-mail: tierney@nytimes.com

posted in Abortion Debate - 6 replies

Why are you pro-choice or pro-life?

zendi — Fri, 20 May 2005 18:10:29 GMT

I would really like to understand both sides. We might find that there are several similarities between both. I would also like some feedback on my comments below.

Why do I consider myself pro-choice? I believe a woman has every right to decide for herself (either keeping or aborting her baby). Is aborting wrong? I don’t necessarily believe it to be completely wrong; it depends on an individual’s situation. But I do believe that if we were a moral society there would be fewer abortions not because society would have define abortion “morally wrong” but because more women would have the responsibility to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Unwanted pregnancies however, are not 100% preventable, especially when a woman is raped, and therefore the woman has every right to choose between abortion, keeping her child, or giving-up her child for adoption.

Since a woman has three choices (abortion, keep her child, or give-up her child for adoption), my next question is what’s worse? All three answers are clearly unknown outcomes since:

1. Abortion = death; nobody really knows what death really is (the after-life is quite debatable; heaven, hell, purgatory, nirvana, eternal suffering, etc)
2. Giving birth and keeping a child; the child could become a scientist who discovers the cure for cancer, a criminal, a rapist, a message therapist, a civil rights activist…anything is possible even early death.
3. Same as number 2 but without the biological mother present in the child’s life.

Clearly death is a certain unavoidable destiny in these three choices, so why choosing abortion is morally wrong? Many would argue because a child is not given the chance to live. How do we know the unborn child wants to live? What I do know is that the unborn child was conceived not by his/her choice, as we all know that it takes a sperm to fertilize an egg either through insemination either sexually or artificially decided by two parties, a woman and a man. So wouldn’t it make sense to let these two parties decide what’s best for them/her?

Being pro-choice doesn’t make me an abortion advocate, or one who believes abortion is the only answer. I believe there are many alternatives to abortion, it even includes birth control. I also value life; the right to live in happiness, peace and harmony.

posted in Abortion Debate - 36 replies

No moderator? New moderator...

btd — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 23:08:41 GMT

There seems to be no moderator for this tribe?
(I would like a posting deleted, which only the moderator can do.)

Apparently, the process to get a new moderator, is to vote.
The "winner" sends an email to the tribe staff (I believe "help@tribe.net"), the tribe staff review the voting/discussion, and the new moderator is assigned.

Please make your moderator suggestions.

posted in Abortion Debate - 20 replies

Free trade contradicts the pro-life philosophy

The_L_To_The_T — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:36:02 GMT

Would you give a billion dollars a year to Planned Parenthood?

No?

Then why do so many pro-lifers also tend to be "free trade" Republicans who support giving industrial capacity, and many billions of dollars from imported goods per year, to China, which engages in forced abortions and encourages the murder of millions of baby girls in the name of population control?

posted in Abortion Debate - 3 replies

john roberts

kip-Cherone — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 21:51:34 GMT

Lara posted this on another thread. I thought it was important enough to make it's own thread. thanks for the info, lara !

Civil Rights and Liberties
"As Special Assistant to Attorney General Smith in the Justice Department, and as counsel in the Reagan White House, Roberts compiled a staunch record of hostility to civil rights. For a unanimous panel, denied the weak civil rights claims of a 12-year-old girl who was arrested and handcuffed in a Washington, D.C., Metro station for eating a French fry. Roberts noted that "no one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation" and that the Metro authority had changed the policy that led to her arrest. (Hedgepeth v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, 2004)."

Separation of Church and State
"For Bush I, co-authored a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that public high-school graduation programs could include religious ceremonies. The Supreme Court disagreed by a vote of 5-4. (Lee v. Weisman, 1992)"

Criminal Law
"Joined a unanimous opinion ruling that a police officer who searched the trunk of a car without saying that he was looking for evidence of a crime (the standard for constitutionality) still conducted the search legally, because there was a reasonable basis to think contraband was in the trunk, regardless of whether the officer was thinking in those terms. (U.S. v. Brown, 2004)"

Privacy and Medical Choice (Abortion)
"In more than one case, Roberts has taken positions hostile to women’s reproductive rights and medical choice. Overturning Roe v. Wade was such a primary focus of the Reagan Administration's Justice Department while Roberts was in the administration, that during an oral argument by the nominee to the Supreme Court a Justice asked, "Mr. Roberts, in this case, are you asking that Roe v. Wade be overruled?" His reply was, "No your honor, the issue doesn't even come up." To this the justice replied, "Well that hasn't prevented the Solicitor General from taking that position in prior cases."

www.dkosopedia.com/index.ph...hn_G._Roberts_Jr.#Judicial_outlook_and_record

posted in Abortion Debate - 5 replies

When does life start?

btd — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 13:06:08 GMT

Or... at what point do YOU think abortion is no longer acceptble?

Maybe they are 2 different questions, so maybe you want 2 different answers. When life starts and when abortion is ok until.

But I'll pose some points in time to consider:
• conception (once sperm & egg join)
• once the first cell division occurs
• once the egg attachs to the womb
• once the heart is beating (about 6 weeks)
• end of first trimester (13 weeks)
• once some brain activity seems to be firing (debatable when this is)
• when the baby moves, kicks, etc (usually about 20 weeks)
• end of second trimester (26 weeks)
• anytime before birth
• a few weeks after birth - as the brain is not yet fully formed, the baby is just acting on instincts
• while the parents still have legal responsibility - I believe that is up to 18 years old. I know some parents of teenagers who'd quite like to have such an abortion procedure!

But also say "why" you believe that point in time. Thanks.

Why I feel it is important to think about when life starts, as (to me) that would imply murder to have an abortion after that point. But maybe you think differently?

posted in Abortion Debate - 1 reply

Operation Save America

kip-Cherone — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 16:34:31 GMT

Gee, we get this delight this week here in Denver.

Gross pictures designed to horrify via lies.

way to go, liers.

http://www.operationsaveamerica.org/brochures/acrobat/AbortionIslamHomosexuality3.pdf

posted in Abortion Debate - 3 replies

FREE Award-winning "Choice" Music

veronique — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 20:00:05 GMT

I live to be of service, and I would be so grateful if you would assist me in providing my award-winning pro choice music FREE to the world...

My project Cabaret4Choice is a musical tapestry of various genres all on the theme of empowered reproductive decision making for everyone.

I am making all ten songs available for FREE download! Please help yourself to these free downloads and if you like what you hear, then please help spread the word.

I ask no renumeration. I just want this thoughtful music OUT THERE!!! This is my heart's work and one of the ways I love being of service.

This record won me the Unanimous Choice for Best Indie Cabaret Artist at the 14th Annual Los Angles Music Awards http://lamusicawards.com/recipients.htm , so this is a quality project, with some very well-respected guest artists, such as Burleigh Drummond, founding drummer of that long-ago radio hit band Ambrosia, and Eje Lynn-Jacobs, formerly with Maria Muldaur's ensemble.

If you would be so kind as to repost the following bulletin ANY and EVERYwhere in cyberspace, I would be so grateful.

Also, if you are so inclined put my banner or link (at the bottom of the repost) on your page, or simply if you wish to go on record as being a Friend of Choice, just email moi, and I will put your link here:

http://cabaret4choice.org/Pages/Friends.html

Viva La Liberte!

~Veronique~

----------------- Begin Repost -----------------

FREE SONGS from VeroniqueCyphyre- Celebrating Artistic Independence

In the true spirit of Independence, I am offering alll ten full-length songs from the Veronique Cyphyre's Cabaret4Choice recording, as well as the CD cover art from the Cabaret4Choice http://cabaret4choice.org web site, or just click on the links below.

I am really proud of this project, which won me the Unanimous Choice for Best Indie Cabaret Artist at the 14th Annual Los Angles Music Awards. This is a quality project, with some very well-respected guest artists, such as Burleigh Drummond, founding drummer of that long-ago radio hit band Ambrosia, and Eje Lynn-Jacobs, formerly with Maria Muldaur's ensemble.

If you really like what we created, feel free to buy the CD from CD Baby or Seven South Records. The actual record comes with a beautiful illustrated lyric booklet, that you can't get from the download. Oh and the money is donated to pro-woman/pro-choice orgnaizations- this project is strictly a labor of love, so you choose. (This project is about choice, after all!)

Viva la Indie music !

Listen to and/or Download FREE full-length Cabaret4Choice MP3's here:

Who Owns Me Anyway- http://cabaret4choice.org/Sound/WhoOwnsMeAnyway.mp3

Motherhood Ain't For Me- http://cabaret4choice.org/Sound/MotherhoodAintForMe.mp3

Rock-a-bye My Baby- http://cabaret4choice.org/Sound/Rock-a-byeMyBaby.mp3

Basic Biology- http://cabaret4choice.org/Sound/BasicBiology.mp3

Strong Little Swimmer- http://cabaret4choice.org/Sound/StrongLittleSwimmer.mp3

Population Time Bomb- http://cabaret4choice.org/Sound/PopulationTimeBomb.mp3

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posted in Abortion Debate - 1 reply

Dare I post - part 1: When does life begin?

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 21:58:11 GMT

As I was writing this it started getting too long so I will break it up into more than one post to go beyond the ‘beginning of life’ life part.

It seems this is one of those things that will forever be a stalemate. I’ve had questions that I’ve wanted some solid answers to. I really don’t want to be attacked or call stupid (you don’t know me) I want to hopefully post some rational thoughts and hear some good responses. Please, if you want to be a turd, go lie on the lawn rather than be all stinky here. My stances are mostly born out of common sense than some sort of religious moral meter. I find myself with very mixed feelings. When does life begin?

The conception? Common sense seems to dictate, if the swimmer meet the orb of wonder and they join and they are left unimpeded in they’re natural growth process, usually the result will be in a few months a screaming little critter will appear that has the potential to be a Hitler or Einstein or Gandhi or someone who falls somewhere in between. So… Life from the Start, Right?

Xx Months? Common sense seems to dictate that , with some effort, it can be found at what is the earliest documented date a ‘product of conception’ has left the womb an survived (of course, then we'll have to define survive). Then it can be said, look, we have proof, not supposition that life really does start at this age (days/months). So… then it’s pre-birth age?

Birth? Common sense seems to dictate that, Duh (sorry, couldn’t resist that but I have heard it) When the ‘product of conception’ is free of its host is when it is alive. So… it’s first breath?*
• (sidebar – Scott Peterson <& others> should have one less murder count – don’t want to be hypocrites do we?)

At this time, I would prefer that abortions would not occur but I don’t condemn those who do. With minimal effort, there should not be a pregnancy in the first place. (this will be post 2)

Is there really a way to draw a better line? Comments? Please put your rocks and arrows away and see if w can draw that line. Please stay with the ‘life’ portion of the pro/anti argument at this time.

posted in Abortion Debate - 33 replies

Abstinence-only drivers' ed

Jeff — Thu, 19 May 2005 19:01:32 GMT

Seatbelts usually fail so you just shouldn't drive at all. Here are some pictures of car accident victims. There's your driver's training kids.

If you or your passengers die in a car accident now, it's your fault because you didn't obey your teacher.

posted in Abortion Debate - 3 replies

pro-choice or pro-life ?????????????

Angel_with_Horns — Wed, 25 May 2005 18:27:50 GMT

Debate @ www.problemsinamerica.com

Kim

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Speak your mind America

Angel_with_Horns — Sun, 22 May 2005 23:18:00 GMT

New website opened 2days ago www.problemsinamerica.com come by and speak your mind on the different topics there.

www.problemsinamerica.com

Kim

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: The Failure of Abstinence-Only Sex Ed

CrimsonTygress — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 07:58:44 GMT

I thought I'd post this here because it seemed appropriate and I'm incredibly proud of it. When I got my first draft back, there was a note on the bottom from my teacher telling me that she thought I was a great writer. Not only that, but that I could skip the second draft altogether and just bring her the final. It was really flattering so while my ego is still too big to fit in a single room and because I came here asking for help in the first place, I thought I'd post the paper here.

Leaving a convenience store one night, I was accosted by an over-eager little man, desperate for me to sign his petition. He felt it was imperative that if an underage girl went to her doctor for an abortion, she should be made to wait 48 hours and that her parents be informed. I wondered why the parents wouldn’t already know. Were they that uninvolved or was this hypothetical girl just that frightened of them? Either circumstance seemed to indicate they had little right to get involved at that point. And what about birth control? Wouldn’t it make more sense for this man to be campaigning for more available birth control and a comprehensive, federally funded sex-ed program rather than tattling on frightened, pregnant teenagers? That, I was told rather coldly, was a moot point. But how are birth control and sex-ed moot when they would not only help avoid unwanted pregnancy but prevent the spread of STD’s and HIV? Shouldn’t these be our first line of defense? Unfortunately, under George W. Bush, sex-ed has become abstinence or bust.

There has been an unprecedented surge of support for abstinence-only sex-ed since George W. Bush’s election. In 1988, one in 50 teachers (2%) taught that “abstinence was the only way to avoid getting pregnant or acquiring a sexually transmitted disease,” according to Priscilla Pardini of Rethinking Schools Online. That number went to one in four (23%) in 1999 and one in three (33%) in 2002. This jump can be attributed to the Bush administration and their $135 million dollar contribution for 2003, a contribution that is now budgeted for $167 million in 2005 (though Bush had proposed a budget of $270 million). Comparatively, in 2001, the last year of the Clinton administration, there was about $70 million budgeted for abstinence-only sex-ed according to The Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Education Program. Conversely, AlterNet reports that, “no federal funding is currently allocated for comprehensive sex-ed.”

Despite the lack of funding and the fact that only 69% of public schools have a sex-ed policy at all and, of those, 65% are abstinence only and mention birth control only to say that it doesn’t work, Rebecca Hagelin of World Net Daily says that the more than 700 abstinence-only programs have appeared to counter sex-ed programs that “many parents thought went too far with their graphic descriptions of condom use and lengthy discussions of alternatives to intercourse.” But when does information become too graphic? I suppose it’s something like the line between art and porn – rather hard to define until you’re right on top of it. But the abstinence-only side’s definition of “too graphic” is just too much for James Wagoner, a member of the former Center of Disease Control (CDC) funded Advocates for Youth program, a program dedicated to HIV/AIDS prevention that was terminated in the summer of 2003 for seemingly no reason at all. “Young people used the correct terminology for the male and female anatomy,” he says. “It’s absurd, what is the president going to do? Issue an executive order that henceforth every man, woman and child should refer to the penis as a dingaling?” While “dingaling” may be much more satisfying to say, it doesn’t seem to solve the underlying problem.

What the president has done is make sure that abstinence-only sex-ed is the only sex-ed that reaches millions of teenagers every year, despite several reports that indicate not only do teenagers respond better to comprehensive sex-ed, but that, as of 2003, 85% of the curriculum for abstinence-only programs contain “false, misleading or distorted information about reproductive health,” according to The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Education Programs. These inaccuracies can be attributed to the fact that there is no review by the federal government on the accuracy of the information contained in these programs.

According to the CDC, “latex condoms, when used consistently and correctly, are highly effective in preventing the transmission of HIV,” and a two year UK study of 171 monogamous couples who reported consistent condom use found that only three of the uninfected partners became infected, a failure rate of about 2%. However, neither the CDC or the UK study are included in the curricula. Instead, the 1993 study by Dr. Susan Weller that is included – a study that is included in several abstinence-only programs and has since been discredited by federal health officials – states that “condoms reduce HIV transmission by 69%” in heterosexual couples. This study, as will all others contained in abstinence-only curriculum, deals only with heterosexual couples. Rather than providing studies to back up their findings, these programs back up their staggering 31% reported failure rate with this analogy:

“Think on a microscopic level. Sperm cells, STI organisms, and HIV cannot be seen with the naked eye – you need a microscope. Any imperfections in the contraceptive not visible to the naked eye, could allow sperm, STI, or HIV to pass through…The size difference between a sperm cell and the HIV virus can be roughly related to the difference between the size of a football field and a football.”

The same program also claims that being exposed to sweat, tears and saliva puts you at risk to contract HIV, when there has never been a known transmission in this manner.

As far as a condom’s ability to prevent pregnancy, abstinence-only curricula state that the failure rate is around 15%, with no explanation that this reflects “typical use.” “Typical use” means that these rates are higher because of incorrect and inconsistent use, as opposed to the 2% failure rate of couples with “perfect use,” using a condom consistently and correctly. This distinction does not appear anywhere in the abstinence-only curriculum. The same program states that “touching another person’s genitals can result in pregnancy.” How exactly such a thing might be accomplished is up to individual speculation.

Amazingly enough, despite these blatant scare tactics, abstinence-only programs do not seem to deter sexual activity. No study has found a link between abstinence-only sex-ed and a drop in teen pregnancy or STD and HIV transmission. The counselors and teachers at schools that teach abstinence have heard from students – in one case, a known intravenous drug user – that that don’t bother to use condoms anymore because they’ve been told they don’t work. If anything, these studies have proven that comprehensive sex-ed programs have a much more profound effect on teenagers, that teaching them about “contraception and condoms has shown as much as a 55% drop in teen pregnancies and a significant delay in the onset of sexual intercourse.” With a teen pregnancy and STD infection rate that is the highest in the developed world, wouldn’t it make sense for the U.S. government to be funding programs that have yielded positive results? But the view of the current administration is that providing information “gives license to children and teens to engage in any number of sexual behaviors,” according to Renew America and Paul Weyrich:

“When it comes to sex, SIECUS’ [Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, an organization that has been openly critical of the abstinence-only programs] agenda effectively places pleasure above responsibility and health. ‘Relationships’ matter more than marriage…What is the value of having conservatives control the White House, the Senate, and the House if we continue carrying out the liberal agenda, showering money on organizations such as SIECUS and its cohorts such as Planned Parenthood and essentially push promiscuity on kids by promoting their ‘anything goes’ agenda?”

The irony here, of course, is that the abstinence-only side and supporters of comprehensive sex-ed want the same thing – for teens to wait when it comes to sex – but the abstinence only side has yet to realize that it is information and not scare tactics that are more likely to yield positive results. “I don’t like it when people don’t tell me everything – I want to know everything, then let me figure it out,” as one fifteen year old girl aptly puts it. It has become abundantly clear: teens are smarter than they’re given credit for. If they are given the information, they will use it properly.

posted in Abortion Debate - 8 replies

Question

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 11:10:55 GMT

Hi everyone,

I'm a Tribe member located in Sydney, Australia. Our politicians are currently debating our abortion laws. Most people are against the debate and are happy with the current laws, except for a few male politicians who would like our abortion laws reviewed.

The reason for my post is this. I have a (handmade) poster on my car window that reads "Keep abortion safe & legal or women will die". I have received various comments about this but the one that made me think came from a staunch feminist (and pro-choicer) who didn't think it was a good idea and said it should be "more subtle".

I'd appreciate other opinions on this.

Thanks.

Natalie

posted in Abortion Debate - 27 replies

Abortions have increased since Bush II took office

The_L_To_The_T — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 23:57:35 GMT

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=041013#5

Pro-life? Look at the fruits
by Dr. Glen Harold Stassen

I am a Christian ethicist, and trained in statistical analysis. I am consistently pro-life. My son David is one witness. For my family, "pro-life" is personal. My wife caught rubella in the eighth week of her pregnancy. We decided not to terminate, to love and raise our baby. David is legally blind and severely handicapped; he also is a blessing to us and to the world.

I look at the fruits of political policies more than words. I analyzed the data on abortion during the George W. Bush presidency. There is no single source for this information - federal reports go only to 2000, and many states do not report - but I found enough data to identify trends. My findings are counterintuitive and disturbing.

Abortion was decreasing. When President Bush took office, the nation's abortion rates were at a 24-year low, after a 17.4% decline during the 1990s. This was an average decrease of 1.7% per year, mostly during the latter part of the decade. (This data comes from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life using the Guttmacher Institute's studies).

Enter George W. Bush in 2001. One would expect the abortion rate to continue its consistent course downward, if not plunge. Instead, the opposite happened.

I found three states that have posted multi-year statistics through 2003, and abortion rates have risen in all three: Kentucky's increased by 3.2% from 2000 to 2003. Michigan's increased by 11.3% from 2000 to 2003. Pennsylvania's increased by 1.9% from 1999 to 2002. I found 13 additional states that reported statistics for 2001 and 2002. Eight states saw an increase in abortion rates (14.6% average increase), and five saw a decrease (4.3% average decrease).

Under President Bush, the decade-long trend of declining abortion rates appears to have reversed. Given the trends of the 1990s, 52,000 more abortions occurred in the United States in 2002 than would have been expected before this change of direction.

How could this be? I see three contributing factors:

First, two thirds of women who abort say they cannot afford a child (Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Web site). In the past three years, unemployment rates increased half again. Not since Hoover had there been a net loss of jobs during a presidency until the current administration. Average real incomes decreased, and for seven years the minimum wage has not been raised to match inflation. With less income, many prospective mothers fear another mouth to feed.

Second, half of all women who abort say they do not have a reliable mate (Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life). Men who are jobless usually do not marry. Only three of the 16 states had more marriages in 2002 than in 2001, and in those states abortion rates decreased. In the 16 states overall, there were 16,392 fewer marriages than the year before, and 7,869 more abortions. As male unemployment increases, marriages fall and abortion rises.

Third, women worry about health care for themselves and their children. Since 5.2 million more people have no health insurance now than before this presidency - with women of childbearing age overrepresented in those 5.2 million - abortion increases.

The U.S. Catholic Bishops warned of this likely outcome if support for families with children was cut back. My wife and I know - as does my son David - that doctors, nurses, hospitals, medical insurance, special schooling, and parental employment are crucial for a special child. David attended the Kentucky School for the Blind, as well as several schools for children with cerebral palsy and other disabilities. He was mainstreamed in public schools as well. We have two other sons and five grandchildren, and we know that every mother, father, and child needs public and family support.

What does this tell us? Economic policy and abortion are not separate issues; they form one moral imperative. Rhetoric is hollow, mere tinkling brass, without health care, health insurance, jobs, child care, and a living wage. Pro-life in deed, not merely in word, means we need policies that provide jobs and health insurance and support for prospective mothers.

Glen Stassen is the Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, and the co-author of Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, Christianity Today's Book of the Year in theology or ethics.

posted in Abortion Debate - 7 replies

question for conservative pro lifers

NickD — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 23:13:31 GMT

If there was a way to tell if a fetus was going to grow up to be a homosexual, would you condone an abortion?

posted in Abortion Debate - 5 replies

us blocking abortion pills

acoustichrmny — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:00:11 GMT

Published on Thursday, April 21, 2005 by the Guardian/UK
US Accused of Trying to Block Abortion Pills
by Sarah Boseley, health editor
---
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0421-08.htm
---
The US government is trying to block the World Health Organisation from endorsing two abortion pills which could save the lives of some of the 68,000 women who die from unsafe practices in poor countries every year.

The WHO wants to put the pills on its essential medicines list, which constitutes official advice to all governments on the basic drugs their doctors should have available.

Last month, an expert committee met to consider a number of new drugs for inclusion on the list. They approved for the first time two pills, to be used in combination for the termination of early pregnancy, called mifepristone and misoprostol. In poor countries where abortion is legal, doctors currently have no alternative to surgery.

The Guardian understands that the US department of health and human services has been lobbying the director general's office at the WHO to block approval of the pills, in line with President George Bush's neoconservative stance on abortion.

While the availability of pills might make abortion easier and could increase the number choosing it, the experts want them listed to reduce the deaths and damage caused by surgery. Every year, 19 million women have unsafe abortions - 18.5 million of those take place in developing countries. An estimated 68,000 women die as a result of botched or unhygienic surgery, while many others suffer long-term damage, including sterility.

The WHO's own department of reproductive health proposed the addition of the abortion pills to the list.

In a review of the drugs for the committee, a Brazilian professor of pharmacology, Lenita Wannmacher, wrote: "There is great concern about the effectiveness and safety of surgical methods that may be less effective and may increase the risk of infection, uterine perforation, cervical laceration, incomplete evacuation, haemorrhage, miscarriage, future sterility and even death."

The risk of death from abortion in developing countries is 100 times higher than in countries such as the UK, where mifepristone has been licensed since 1991. The pills were licensed in the US in 2000.

The WHO committee, which included two British and two US experts, recommended unanimously that the pills go on the essential medicines list. But although the director general's approval is usually a formality and the changes are published within days, more than a month has now passed.

On March 23, the director general's office wrote to committee members asking if they had considered a warning that mifepristone can, in rare cases, carry a risk of serious bacterial infections, sepsis and bleeding. The committee members replied that all side-effects had been considered, adding that the risks of infection and bleeding from surgery in poor countries were far greater.

One committee member told the Guardian that all the evidence on the risks and benefits of the pills had been on the WHO website for months.

A spokeswoman for the WHO director general's office said there had been delays because "we had some questions and sought clarification."

Asked whether there had been any contact between the US department of health and human services and the director general's office, she said: "I can't answer that. I just don't know." She said a decision would be made within days.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

posted in Abortion Debate - 3 replies

13 y-old allowed to have abortion

zendi — Tue, 03 May 2005 19:04:09 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4510847.stm

Florida girl's abortion allowed

Governor Jeb Bush says Florida will not fight the ruling
A pregnant 13-year-old girl in Florida has been allowed to have an abortion after a legal battle over the issue.
The girl, known only as LG, was told last week she could not have an abortion, because she lacked the maturity to make such a decision.

But the same judge reversed the order late on Monday, after LG underwent a psychological evaluation.

"Legally speaking, it's not a difficult decision to make. Morally speaking, it's very difficult," the judge said.

"But I'm not here to make the moral decision. I'm here to make the legal decisions," Judge Ronald Alvarez said, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper.

'No good news'

Florida Governor Jeb Bush said the state would not fight the judge's decision, but expressed sadness about the situation.

"It's a tragedy that a 13-year-old child would be in a vulnerable position where she could be made pregnant and it's a tragedy that her baby will be lost.

"There's no good news in this at all," he said on Tuesday.

Florida's Department of Children and Families had sought to block the abortion, because LG is a ward of the state.

She learned last week she was three months pregnant.

It is not clear if she has had the abortion.

Florida state law specifically does not require a minor to seek parental consent before an abortion.

LG's lawyers argued that meant the state - as her legal guardian - could not block it.

Abortion is a deeply divisive issue in the US.

posted in Abortion Debate - 1 reply

no abortion, no exceptions

acoustichrmny — Mon, 02 May 2005 04:10:11 GMT

http://www.alternet.org/rights/21892/
---
What rights do poor women and girls have in the United States when they want to end a pregnancy that is the result of rape or incest?

Very few. Despite laws protecting the right to assistance in these circumstances, poor women and girls who have been raped are routinely refused funding for abortion under Medicaid, the government program that is the primary source of health care for those with the fewest resources. Like other poor women seeking abortion, they are often unable to get the care they need.

The history of withholding abortion funding from poor and vulnerable women began in 1976, just three years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion. That year, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited federal Medicaid funding for abortion unless a woman's life was in immediate danger. In 1993, an exception was added to permit coverage if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. More than 30 state Medicaid programs have followed the federal model and only permit funding for poor women in the case of life endangerment, rape, or incest. There are 17 states that currently use their own funds to cover abortion in most cases.

So, what happens today when a woman or girl who has been sexually assaulted seeks Medicaid funding for abortion in one of the many states that pay only in the case of rape/incest or life endangerment? The reality is that she is almost always denied coverage for the abortion.

At least 9,100 abortions each year are attributed to pregnancies that occur because of forced sexual intercourse, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Yet, the vast majority of states that only cover abortion under the narrow exceptions report zero payments in any given year. In fiscal year 2001, the most recent year for which we have statistics, the number of abortions paid for by both federal and state Medicaid under the narrow exceptions totaled 81. This figure includes payments in cases of rape/incest, as well as in cases of life endangerment.

Denied funding by Medicaid in most states, poor women who have nowhere else to turn seek help from the National Network of Abortion Funds. This organization of 104 grassroots groups in 42 states and the District of Columbia helps 20,000 poor women and girls to pay for abortion each year, including many who have been raped but are unable to obtain Medicaid coverage.

Member funds share similar stories of women and girls who have been refused assistance from Medicaid, often after fulfilling laborious reporting requirements in the aftermath of a traumatic assault. In some cases, state Medicaid officials simply assert that they never cover abortion, either because they do not understand the rape/incest exception or because they do not believe in assisting women and girls with abortion under any circumstances. In other cases, the burdensome paperwork requirements on the part of the woman needing assistance, the police, and doctors ensure that payment is never made - or will never come in time for the woman to obtain an abortion. In still other cases, the reimbursement from the state to abortion providers is so low that clinics no longer choose to go through the complicated and rarely successful process of seeking coverage.

The truth is that there is no real Medicaid exception for poor women and girls who have been raped or victimized by incest. They join other groups of vulnerable women whose rights are not protected, but instead, are severely abridged by bans on abortion funding. By definition, the Hyde Amendment burdens some of the most disadvantaged women in our society - those who depend on the government for health care. Given racial inequalities in the United States and the resulting racial distribution of poverty, women of color disproportionately depend on such coverage. This makes the issue of abortion funding a matter of racial justice, as well as economic justice and women's rights. Young women, who often have few resources of their own, are also hard hit by funding bans.

A policy report released this month from the National Network of Abortion Funds, entitled Abortion Funding: A Matter of Justice, illustrates the devastating costs to women of bans on Medicaid funding by looking at case studies of abortion funds and the hardships faced by the women they assist. Women who come to abortion funds are usually already mothers and may be unable to care for another child. They have suffered from rape and battery at rates that are even higher than those of the general population, and they are also more likely to be living with a serious illness.

Because it can take so long for poor women to find the money for an abortion, they tend to have later and thus more costly abortions. Often, women pay for abortions with money that was supposed to pay for rent, food, or utilities. And many times, women are unable to get the abortion at all. As many as one in three poor women who would have an abortion if the procedure were covered by Medicaid are forced to continue the pregnancy.

While the Network helps thousands of women and girls every year, the organization can never fill the gap created by the denial of Medicaid funding. As a country, we need to replace harmful policies that target the most vulnerable women with just, compassionate ones that give poor women the resources they need to obtain abortions and also provide support for poor mothers to have and raise their children with dignity.

For details on the policy recommendations and the work of the Network, please see Abortion Funding: A Matter of Justice at http://www.nnaf.org/policy_report.html.

Stephanie Poggi is the executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds.

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Common ground?

seanford — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 17:23:52 GMT

Few issues inspire more heated rhetoric than the pro-life, pro-choice abortion debate. While in all likelihood the Bush will get to appoint at least two justices to the Supreme Court which could change things, for now at least the guiding command of Roe v. Wade that women have a right to an abortion, is firmly set as the law of the land.

Not being able to take on this main issue of abortion rights those who oppose the practice have turned their attention to side issues such as parental consent laws and securing the right to protest outside of clinics that provide abortion services. Pro-choice advocates, on the other hand, have staunchly opposed these efforts which they fear will have a chilling effect on abortion rights, as well as possibly being used later as a foundation to launch further legal or legislative challenges.

Framing all such issues as merely adjunct to the abortion debate prevents their full and adequate consideration, for many of them are full issues in their own right and should be given weight as such. The creation of criminal statutes that would allow indictment of individuals for the murder of an unborn child is such an issue on which there is little clear thinking, because it is overshadowed by its connection to the abortion debate. Such laws, both at the state and federal levels, have been getting more attention since the high profile case of Laci Peterson, who was pregnant at the time of her murder.

In the public debate on this issue things quickly polarize along the same lines as the abortion debate- pro-lifers supporting such laws because they view it as granting rights to a fetus, and pro-choicers opposing it because they view it as an attempt to begin to undermine abortion rights, but this breakdown doesn’t have to be so. Those who support abortion rights could support such fetus protecting legislation for the same reason that they advocate for a woman’s right to choose.

While not always readily apparent, abortion rights and related laws share a common underlying belief that it is only up to the woman, not the state or any other individual to determine whether a pregnancy should be terminated. While victories in the court have secured the right for women to choose not to carry a baby to term these laws would also help protect a woman’s choice to carry a baby to term. Having such a common interest in protecting a woman’s prerogative these laws are completely compatible with a woman’s right to choose.

Despite this fact many argue that the two would be in conflict- on the one hand providing fetuses with the protection and rights of the law so as to allow legal recourse in case of murder while on the other hand allowing a woman to choose to terminate the same life. This duality is better alleviated when the word “murder” is better defined within this context since it has become such a charged word in antiabortion rhetoric. These laws would not make the murder of a fetus punishable across-the-board so as to allow abortion doctors to be charged with murder. Rather such legislation could be narrowly targeted to only punish the non-consensual termination of pregnancy, either as a result from a specific violence against the fetus, or as a result from violence against the mother.

One main reason why abortion-right advocates have become so entrenched on this issue is that they view it, along with partial birth abortion banns and parental consent laws, as a strategic attempt to gradually erode the rights established in Roe. Specifically in this case, they wish to prevent future arguments against abortion that would seek to outlaw if either the state or the federal government recognizes a fetus as an individual with rights. But such laws would not necessarily have to equate a fetus with a person as they could outlaw the “murder of a person or fetus,” thus keeping them as two legally distinct entities. By crafting the legislation in this manner it would prevent such laws designed to protect from becoming a foundation for challenges.

Clearly though laying such a foundation is the goal of some who back these laws but that motivation alone is not a reason enough to oppose them. By fully evaluating these issues in their own right and not as merely a side issue of the larger abortion debate clear thinking can prevail. While with appropriate caution as to the wording of legislation, those who support a woman’s right to choose abortion should just as ardently seek to protect a woman’s right to choose to have her baby and support the passage of laws designed to protect both rights.

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Thoughts concerning the anti choice movement

brainwalks — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 21:42:46 GMT

Anti choice advocates are shooting the rest of us and our civil liberties in the foot. I'd appreciate it if they'd stop this stupidity. By demanding abortion be outlawed, these individuals want to add more misery, suffering, hunger, pain, abuse, and environmental damage to the world. They never seem to think that's what they're pushing for, but it’s an unavoidable cause of their little “crusade.”

Pretend Roe vs. Wade is overturned. Yay, all the fetuses can become babies and can be free to be born into families that want them and can afford them and can raise them well! Or be put into adoption or the under the state's care that ensures they always find homes in places like Mayberry with perfect families! They'll never go hungry or want for any necessity because everyone who gets pregnant is mature and emotionally and financially stable enough to raise offspring! And of course, there's no such thing as over population to be worried about! Yippee!

Oh, wait… that’s a fantasy, isn't it? Because in the real world, there's something called cause and effect. Logically, if there are more children in the world, there's going to be more child abuse of all kinds… And more people means more tax money going towards upkeep of the new kids and all that entails… Our already clogged system will have a dramatic influx of more people to support. But it's okay, you must obviously know what’s best for everyone else, and thank goodness you’ve found a way to force your views on the rest of the country!

Our civil liberties are in danger if Roe vs. Wade is overturned. If something as important as reproductive rights are demolished, what's next? Something _you_ think is important to our way of life? Someone else out there thinks a few of our liberties are in poor taste; deconstructing a landmark case would give them a lot of fuel.

Step back and look after your own life. My life and womb don't concern you.

“It's murder! Murder affects me!” is a very common argument. A fetus is no more a person than I'm a chipmunk, and to have the status of “murder,” an actual person would have to be killed, which isn’t the case in an abortion. Despite what the anti choice movement would have everyone believe, life doesn't begin at conception. For several months, a fetus is an indistinguishable glob of cells; if that's considered life, then male masturbation's mass genocide and a woman's period is systematic, monthly slaughter.

Further, a person who has an abortion is unlikely to harm you or any other person. So how were/are you affected? There was no possibility of you, or anyone else, being harmed. You don't need to fear for your life or anyone else's as a result of this person's actions. You, nor anyone else, were harmed. In the future, you won't be harmed as a result of this abortion. Another person's abortion doesn't affect you.

“Some religious comment here!” The United States is a _secular_ nation for a very good reason: to protect us from people who want to force religious ideals on others.

It's cliché, but truths often are: If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one. Simple as that.

posted in Abortion Debate - 39 replies

Hoping for a little help

CrimsonTygress — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 01:50:43 GMT

Hello, I just finished reading The W Effect: Bush's War on Women, which I highly recomend. There was so much in there that I didn't know and might not have known otherwise.

I am in an argumentative writing class and the next paper I'd like to write is on the corralation of abstinece only sex ed, the availibilty of birth control and teen pregnancy, abortion and the rate of HIV infection.

What I'm hoping is that people here might be able to point me towards a few good books or websites where I can get further information, statistics, that sort of thing. Any info you can point me towards would be extremely appreciated.

posted in Abortion Debate - 4 replies

I'm against abortion because I'm a former fetus

William — Thu, 27 Nov 2003 22:44:21 GMT

A baby is a gift not a choice. Abortion is part of what Pope John Paul II rightly described as a "culture of death". As conservative Americans we must actively fight to overturn Roe v Wade. We must speak loudly and clearly as a united voice against abortion, realizing we are speaking for our yet unborn citizens. For Conservative Inspiration go to: www.greencon.net

posted in Abortion Debate - 48 replies

20,000 kids starved to death today on earth.

common_terry — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 01:09:48 GMT

Ending poverty is required to end abortion.

20,000 kids starved to death today on earth.
Hungry kids work long hours cheap.
Wall Street profits. The USA sells weapons
to the corrupt leaders of the poor.
We eat food gown on land stolen from
the acestors of the starving.

Love and Peace, Terry

posted in Abortion Debate - 1 reply

..: feminists for life

girl_tm — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 11:22:12 GMT

I consider myself a feminist in the sense that I am independent. I run two small businesses alone. I pay my own way in the world. I am honest and upfront. I play in a rock band with two other women. I have my own style. I show my friends (both male and female) that I care. I think for myself. And I never allow myself to be a victim. That means I don’t put myself in compromising situations, such as going someplace alone with a man I don’t know very well, or getting too drunk at a party, or getting involved with a man who doesn’t respect my views when it comes to contraception.

I don’t believe in abortion because I believe that as women, we need to make our reproductive choices BEFORE we have sex. If we don’t want to become pregnant, then we discuss the matter with the man in our life and make him a part of the solution (hoping that he is respectful, responsible and considerate) – or we JUST SAY NO.

In my adult life, I find that women have fallen so far off of their pedestals that we have to demand respect from men. It frustrates me that I have to constantly fight for something that was freely offered generations ago. The sexual revolution hasn’t done a thing for us besides make us into human blow-up dolls and single mothers. You call that progress?

posted in Abortion Debate - 20 replies

supremes refuse to reconsider roe v wade

acoustichrmny — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 04:32:19 GMT

Supreme Court Refuses to Reconsider Abortion Rights Decision
Feminist Daily News
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http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=8918
---
Thursday 24 February 2005

On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Norma McCorvey, also known as Jane Roe, to overturn the landmark case she won in 1973 that legalized abortion. The justices rejected McCorvey's bid to reopen Roe v. Wade without comment or recorded dissent, reports Reuters. The move is not surprising, according to the Los Angeles Times, as the reopening of a case due to "changed circumstances" rarely occurs. McCorvey's case is based on anecdotal "evidence" that abortion harms women.

Two lower courts have previously refused to reconsider the case. In 2003, a federal judge in Dallas denied McCorvey's appeal, stating, "It is simply too late now, 30 years after the fact, for McCorvey to revisit that judgment," Reuters reports. The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals also rejected a bid last September to reopen the case.

With no Supreme Court appointments in a decade and with eight of the nine justices older than 65, two to four retirements on the Supreme Court are anticipated in the next four years. The last case on the constitutional right to a safe, legal abortion was decided by a 5-4 majority, and the public release of the late Justice Harry Blackmun's papers shows how fragile that majority is. Justice Anthony Kennedy, appointed by President Reagan, changed his vote at the last minute to protect abortion rights. Though Bush has refused to reveal whether he believes Roe v. Wade should be overturned, he has said in the past that he would model his Supreme Court appointments on Justices Scalia and Thomas. According to the Los Angeles Times, Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist have all said that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

..: how to reduce the frequency of abortions but still keep it legal?

girl_tm — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 05:40:34 GMT

Ok, after much debate in a previous post, we thought it would be more productive to come up with some ideas.

Whereas:

We've acknowledged the fact that both genders have been sexually irresponsible;

We've discussed the existence of abortion misuse as birth control;

We are concerned about overpopulation, child abuse, violence toward women and single mothers;

We observe that US taxpayers are paying for a high number of costly abortions annually;

We acknowledge that legal abortion is important in cases of rape and incest;

What do we propose to bring down the number of abortions in the US? Is there a compromise that both pro-lifers and pro-choicers can agree on?

posted in Abortion Debate - 17 replies

Misguided Compassion: the downfall of modern society

NickD — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 08:36:30 GMT

In today’s world of social and economic responsibility, all births should be planned. Unplanned births lead to the following(proven in recent studies):
-most mothers and child destined to live in poverty more of their lives; most single mothers are not going to attract men as husbands who can afford to take care of their financial needs (they want a women with no children)
-most children of single mothers more likely to be a drug abuser or criminal
-most children of a single mothers more likely to have their own bastard child
-most mothers of unplanned births are not college educated, the children of uneducated parents are less likely to seek higher education

Let’s not forget what is the most important thing to every one who can read this. Ready? Quality of life for the already born. Imagine if all unplanned pregnancies were aborted. We would all have a better quality of life. There would be more resources to go around, fewer overcrowded schools, fewer criminals on the streets, fewer criminals in jail that we have to pay for with our tax dollars, fewer welfare mothers we have to pay for with our tax dollars, less drug users, fewer ghettos, fewer homeless, fewer unemployed.

This is the one thing that is not going to change: people love to fuck and nothing is going to stop them. Educating is important. But, note that the points made above imply that it takes a family (mother and father) to raise a child who is going to be less likely to raise a child who is going to be a detriment to society. The more abortions that are done now, the less abortions that will need to be done in the future.

If you are someone you know is pregnant, you owe it to society to get an abortion if you do not have all of the following: a husband that can make enough money to support you and a child beyond your means (that means you stay at home and raise the child until he/she is out of college), your husband is a nurturing type who is not beating you or verbally abusing you, or doing drugs, or committing crimes, having an affair (the marriage will eventually end). If you fall into one or more of these categories, you owe it to us.

Women, pick your husbands wisely, and don’t get married until you are at least 25 and you and your husband have fucked plenty of other people (using protection of course) so that he/she will not wonder what it is like to be with another people, cheat, get divorced, end up single, live in poverty. Why do I speak mainly to women and not try to make the men responsible? Because the women has the ultimate decision in the matter. Of course, men should wear condoms to protect themselves from STDs. And women should make men wear condoms so she is protected from STDs as well. Men, don't put babies in women if your not married to them, you morons.

Pro-lifers mean well in their compassion for the unborn, but is it really worth it? I think not. Please use your compassion efforts to improve the quality of life for the already living if you really want to help, such as helping someone get an abortion when they are socially obligated to. Do you really enjoy seeing poor children in who are not raised by a two parent family who can afford them?

Times have changed since "the good old days," when extended family all lived under one roof, and pitching in to help raise a child was normal, and family (not school, career, and social status) was the top priority. Attitudes about abortion must reflect these changes as well.

Please don't give birth to the future rapists, car jacker, convenience store robbers, high speed pursuit drivers, drug dealers, and muderers of America, becuase I live here too. Raise a child only when the conditions are right. You have the choice. How dare you choose to wrong society.

posted in Abortion Debate - 22 replies

Intrusive enough for you yet?

Jeff — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 20:42:21 GMT

http://www.augustafreepress.com/stories/storyReader$30532

Legislation that would have required mothers who had failed to report fetal deaths to the police within 12 hours of the delivery to face a possible misdemeanor sentence will be withdrawn, its patron said on Monday.

"I've elected to withdraw HB 1677 from consideration by the General Assembly this year. The language is just too confusing," Del. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, told The Augusta Free Press.

Cosgrove's surprise move came after a firestorm of controversy spread across the World Wide Web over the weekend about the possible far-reaching effects of the measure.

"It was clearly absurd on its face. To expect a woman who has gone through the mental and physical pain of a miscarriage to have to contact the police department after it has happened is just ridiculous," said Ann O'Hanlon, the executive director of the Virginia chapter of NARAL Pro-Choice America, a women's reproductive-rights lobbying group.

"It was just another one of the extremists' efforts to try to sneak antichoice legislation through. The motive here seems pretty clear. It was to restrict women from having control of their reproductive lives," O'Hanlon told the AFP on Monday.

Cosgrove, for his part, said opponents of House Bill 1677 were engaging in an active campaign of "misinformation" to get their political points across.

"HB 1677 was intended to deal with situations involving mothers who had taken their pregnancies to full term and decided that they didn't want them who gave birth to their children and then tried to say that they were stillborn," Cosgrove said. "We've had a number of cases in the Chesapeake area that followed that description, and it was part of the legislative agenda of the Chesapeake Police Department to come up with legislation to try to give police more ammunition to be able to deal with these kinds of cases when they came up."

But the wording of the bill seemed to open up to interpretation that any woman involved in a fetal death - not just those who had carried their pregnancies to full term - could face jail time for failing to comply with the proposed code section.

The legislation provided that "when a fetal death occurs without medical attendance, it shall be the woman's responsibility to report the death to the proper law-enforcement agency within 12 hours of the delivery."

"It's interesting that he has made it a point to characterize the information that was being disseminated about what he had introduced as misinformation. His message has consistently been that the bill wasn't about women who have had miscarriages, which it clearly was," O'Hanlon said.

Cosgrove, who said he plans to move to strike the bill from consideration when it comes before the House Committee for Courts of Justice later this month, begs to differ there.

"The bill was never intended to deal with cases where mothers have had miscarriages. That has been what people are saying it was focused on, but that's not the case," Cosgrove said.

posted in Abortion Debate - 1 reply

Abortion: for it or against it?

yelle — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 04:17:34 GMT

simple question: for it or against it?

simple answer: yes or no

posted in Abortion Debate - 15 replies

A Question For Pro-Choicers

Tim — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 20:36:23 GMT

Should governments provide pre-natal care to women who cannot afford to pay for it?

posted in Abortion Debate - 12 replies

Euthenizing Babies

MyBodyIsATemple — Mon, 06 Dec 2004 23:26:18 GMT

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Tuesday, November 30, 2004 ·Last updated 6:07 p.m. PT

Netherlands hospital euthanizes babies

By TOBy STERLING
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- A hospital in the Netherlands - the first nation to permit euthanasia - recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.

The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives - a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.

In August, the main Dutch doctors' association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia cases for terminally ill people "with no free will," including children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident.

The Health Ministry is preparing its response, which could come as soon as December, a spokesman said.

Three years ago, the Dutch parliament made it legal for doctors to inject a sedative and a lethal dose of muscle relaxant at the request of adult patients suffering great pain with no hope of relief.

The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital's guidelines have come to be known, would create a legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar pain from incurable disease or extreme deformities.

The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child's medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it's best.

Examples include extremely premature births, where children suffer brain damage from bleeding and convulsions; and diseases where a child could only survive on life support for the rest of its life, such as severe cases of spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a rare blistering illness.

The has hospital revealed it carried out four such mercy killings in 2003, and reported all cases to government prosecutors. There have been no legal proceedings against the hospital or the doctors.

Roman Catholic organizations and the Vatican have reacted with outrage to the announcement, and U.S. euthanasia opponents contend the proposal shows the Dutch have lost their moral compass.

"The slippery slope in the Netherlands has descended already into a vertical cliff," said Wesley J. Smith, a prominent California-based critic, in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Child euthanasia remains illegal everywhere. Experts say doctors outside Holland do not report cases for fear of prosecution.

"As things are, people are doing this secretly and that's wrong," said Eduard Verhagen, head of Groningen's children's clinic. "In the Netherlands we want to expose everything, to let everything be subjected to vetting."

According to the Justice Ministry, four cases of child euthanasia were reported to prosecutors in 2003. Two were reported in 2002, seven in 2001 and five in 2000. All the cases in 2003 were reported by Groningen, but some of the cases in other years were from other hospitals.

Groningen estimated the protocol would be applicable in about 10 cases per year in the Netherlands, a country of 16 million people.

Since the introduction of the Dutch law, Belgium has also legalized euthanasia, while in France, legislation to allow doctor-assisted suicide is currently under debate. In the United States, the state of Oregon is alone in allowing physician-assisted suicide, but this is under constant legal challenge.

However, experts acknowledge that doctors euthanize routinely in the United States and elsewhere, but that the practice is hidden.

"Measures that might marginally extend a child's life by minutes or hours or days or weeks are stopped. This happens routinely, namely, every day," said Lance Stell, professor of medical ethics at Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., and staff ethicist at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C. "Everybody knows that it happens, but there's a lot of hypocrisy. Instead, people talk about things they're not going to do."

More than half of all deaths occur under medical supervision, so it's really about management and method of death, Stell said.

posted in Abortion Debate - 3 replies

A Theory That Embraces Both Fully

Mon, 17 Nov 2003 09:15:23 GMT

What about this concept? An abortion policy which totally respects a woman's right to DISCONNECT any other being from her body that she does not want connected to her body, and yet never seeks to actively illiminate the life of any fetus. The theory would go like this. We could, theoretically, say that a fetus is fully a human being, however, suppose a fully grown adult somehow became attached to your body, you could rightfully say, "I refuse to have you connected to my body, even if your life might depend on it," without having, as the main objective to kill the person attached to your body. Hence, a woman could have an abortion any time, never with the idea of killing the baby, but only with the idea of DISCONNECTING it from her body. Thus, the abortion procedure would be a disconnection procedure. Should the fetus be able to survive outside the body of the Mother, then that fetus could be rescued, or, if the fetus was developed far enough that it was medically feasable to rescue it, in the same way one would attempt to rescue any prematurely born baby, then it could live. That is to say, the DISCONNECTION procedure could take place to respect the right of a woman to control what is and what is not connected to her body, and then the chips would just fall where they may, in terms of whether the fetus could live outside the body or whether it could be saved. So that abortion would change from an overt attempt to kill a fetus to an attempt to disconnecti it from a woman's body, then the separate life of the fetus would either be sustainable or not sustainable, in the same way that if a person somehow were connected to my body, and if I wanted that person disconnected, it might remain an open question whether the doctors could save them, with the understanding that the doctors would do all they could to save that person, and with the understanding that I bore the person connected to me no ill will whatsoever, and would have no concern about elimiating his life. Whether he or the doctors could get his life jump-started would be between them. This Philosophy may seem a bit cold to pro-lifers and might seem a bit to religious to pro-choicers, but what other solution has anyone heard of that would totally respect the idea that the fetus has a right to life, absolutely, if it can be saved my medical science or if it is sustainable on its own, and also says that no woman can be forced to have people attached to her body that she doesn't want attached to her body. I really think I have the answer here to the riddle that was previously said to be insoluable. :) Okay, so I'm being egotistical, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? :)

posted in Abortion Debate - 10 replies

Punishment

Jeff — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 17:33:38 GMT

What should the punishment be for

1: Having one's fetus aborted?
2: Performing an abortion procedure?
3: Performing an abortion procedure in a piercing parlor?
4: Drinking a big cup of pennyroyal tea to induce an abortion?
5: Crossing state lines from a state or country where abortion is illegal to one where it is legal for purposes of an abortion?

By the prohibitionists' logic, all of these are murder and should be capitol offenses. The fetus is a human and abortion is murder. Calling for anything less than the penalty associated with first degree murder is basest hypocrisy.

How do you tell the difference between a spontaneous abortion and an induced abortion? When a woman loses a baby will she have to go to trial for murder and prove that it was an accident? Maybe the state prosecutor can prove that she purposely caused this so-called miscarriage. If a pregnant woman from Georgia goes on vacation to California and comes back no longer pregnant, will Georgia have to file charges? A woman is often aware of her pregnancy and can terminate it herself within the first two months, before she begins to show. Obviously our women will have to take weekly urine samples to show their pregnancy status and make an accounting for any pregnancies that don't come to term.

On top of this, you will have to expand the war on drugs to cover Pennyroyal and various other common landscaping plants.

I can see it now: The War on Abortion, coming soon to a supreme court near you.

posted in Abortion Debate - 24 replies

why pro-life? pro-woman or pro-child?

yelle — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 02:49:29 GMT

"the fact is this: thousands of pro-life organizations around the country and throughout the world provide free pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, counseling, support groups, childcare classes, financial management education, babysitting, diapers, children's clothes, and housing. add to these tens of thousands of churches donating time, money, food, house repairs, and every other kind of help to needy pregnant woman, single mothers, and low-income families. countless pro-lfers adopt children, open their homes, and volunteer to help children after they're born..while those who offer abortions charge woman for them, those who offer abortion alternatives give their assistance freely, lovingly, and almost entirely behind the scenes...they are pro-life. they care about a child and her mother and are there to help them both not only before birth, but after."

posted in Abortion Debate - 15 replies

Parsely, Rosemary & Thyme

maryanne — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 04:23:02 GMT

November 14, 2004 - 06:48 AM
abortion/parsely.sage, rosemary thyme

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

Maintaining Reproductive Freedom in an Era of Repressive Politics

An essay in hypertext by Scott Bidstrup

"There is a difference between a fetus that cannot survive on its own, and an autonomous human being. I find the pro-choice, anti-death penalty positions consistent because both support the value of the individual, and both oppose the state's power over the individual--whether to make decisions about our reproductive lives, or the length of our lives."
--Gloria Steinem quoted in Feminist.com

"Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme..."

If you're like me, you listened to the words of that Simon and Garfunkel song, popular in my youth, and wondered what the herbs had to do with traveling to a fair.

How naive I was. I had no idea in those days what wisdom those lyrics were hiding, right there in open view. As a committed Mormon at the time, I would have been not only surprised, but even shocked to find out.

The lyrics of that song were hiding a secret wisdom: There are herbal alternatives to pharmaceuticals such as "the pill" and RU-486 for both contraception and induced abortion. "Scarborough fair" was a code phrase for making love. And parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme are the ingredients in a traditional herbal contraceptive, which was, by all accounts, quite effective.

Not only do these herbal alternatives exist, but women knew about them centuries ago, and carefully passed the knowledge on discretely from mother to daughter. The knowledge of these alternatives has been suppressed in the last two centuries, mostly by men, who, for their own reasons, wished to control the reproductive health and freedom of women.

To understand how this came about, you need to know a little bit about how pregnancy and reproduction was viewed in earlier times.

When does life begin?
The assumption that life begins at conception is a very modern notion. It began with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity at the end of the 19th century. Prior to this time, a woman "decided" when she was pregnant, and wasn't legally pregnant until she declared herself to be so. Due to the widespread nature of diseases, many of which would disrupt a woman's menstrual cycle, a woman couldn't rely on a lapse in menstruation to know that she was pregnant. Indeed, most menstrual disruptions were indications of disease. Rather, the first reliable indication that she was pregnant came with the first kick of the fetus in the womb. The fetus was "quickened," and the woman was pregnant. She would then spread the word, and from that point on, she was legally pregnant.

Until the woman felt the "quickening," however, what she did with her body was her business. If she wished to use herbal preparations to restore her health, that was her business, and she had every right to do it. Since the loss of menstruation was simply presumed to be the evidence of a disease process, it was not considered suspicious should she choose to use herbal preparations to restore her menstruation. Hence she was allowed the opportunity to do so.

Use of Herbal Contraceptives
Use of a pre-coital douche was not unusual, since hygene was poor, and a woman often would use a douche on herself to 'sweeten' things up a bit prior to making love. What she often didn't tell her partner, however, was that the douche was actually intended as much to prevent conception as it was to enhance the experience. Women knew from traditional wisdom how to prepare these contraceptive douches, and they would use them to control the size of the families, often, if not usually, without the knowledge and consent of their husbands. Other contraceptives, for women who were sexually active but wished to prevent pregnancy, took the form of herbal teas, often consumed ritually.

How effective were these preparations? In ancient times, at least one species of plant was so sought out that it was driven into extinction. These preparations were effective enough that it was not uncommon for populations to actually decline for reasons other than disease and famine. By the 16th century, the church had become aware of these preparations, and the fact that they were preventing the creation of lots of little Catholics, sought to ban them. Thus began in the West the long history of suppression of this knowledge, and leading to it's nearly dying out.

Emmenagogues and Abortifacients
Of course, in spite of their general effectiveness, occasionally such contraceptives either weren't used or failed to prevent conception. But women were not without options. First was the use of an "emmenagogue," an agent that would prevent the implantation of the embryo into the uterine wall. There was a vast array of herbal preparations that served as emmenagogues, and many, if not most women knew how to prepare and use them. Long before modern women dreamed of a "morning after" pill, women were using herbal preparations for just that purpose. And of course, should all else fail, an abortifacient could be prepared and used to expel a small fetus. Again, a wide variety of herbal preparations were available to women for this purpose.

Of all the emmenagogues and abortifacients that were used, the most cherished by many women was European pennyroyal, Mentha pulegium. This herb (whose essential oil is dangerously toxic and should never be used internally), and its American relative, American pennyroyal, Hedeoma pulegoides was usually effective when properly prepared as a tea and carefully used, often in combination with blue cohosh, Caulophyllum thalictroides. The blue cohosh causes a flushing of the uterine wall (though use of a tincture can capture the herb's uterine-contractive effects as well), and the pennyroyal causes uterine contractions. Pennyroyal was so effective, especially in combination with blue cohosh, that eradication campaigns by the church were even conducted against it from time to time.

Contraceptives For Both Men And Women
The range of options available to women is quite large, when herbal preparations are considered. Not only contraceptives, but the long-sought "morning after" solution is available as well, in the form of a wide range of emmenagogues.

It is not just women who can benefit from this knowledge. There is at least one effective contraceptive for men, the neem tree of India, Azadiractha indica, which is effective in reversibly suppressing sperm viability in men, without affecting potency. Men who do not wish to father children don't have to wait for the pharmaceutical industry to catch up to nature.

Why the Opposition?
The reason that the fundamentalist right has always opposed reproductive freedom is, of course, that it removes from them the control to which they feel entitled. As has been often observed, the one thing conservatives hate worse than anything is not being in control. So when women decide for themselves whether they shall become or remain pregnant, the fundamentalist views that loss of control as an insult and a rebellion, and won't tolerate it.

The excuse used, at least nowadays, is that "life begins at conception." its interesting that nowhere in the Bible is a scripture that makes such a claim. There isn't even an indirect reference to it, because the notion of conception as the fusion of sperm and egg cells had no meaning to the ancients, who didn't know what cells even were, and were quite unaware of "eggs" as a concept applying to humans. To the ancients, indeed right up into the modern era, life didn't begin until the "quickening." That's what that word originally meant.

What's really frightening here is that people have begun to accept the concept which the fundamentalists have recently promoted that a zygote (a fused sperm and egg cell) is a child. Such a notion is preposterous. As recent cloning research has made very clear, a zygote is no different than any other cell in the body, except for the proteins and hormones that surround and infuse it, and it is no more capable of self awareness or independent life than a cell in the pancreas or an intestine. Yet, as Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebels once observed, a lie repeated often enough is eventually believed. So the lying goes on, and people have begun to believe. Therefore, there seems to be an increasing assumption in the current Rowe vs. Wade debate and the new debate on RU486, that a zygote really is a child. The reason, of course, that the fundamentalists promote this lie is that by making a zygote into a child, is that it brings that zygote under the moral, if not legal protections enjoyed by children.

That leads to a problem. When public policy is based on lies, bad laws are the result. There is a very good probability that Rowe vs. Wade, the bedrock Supreme Court decision defending women's reproductive rights, will be abolished by legislative fiat in the near future, and mostly because of a lie often believed.

Rowe vs. Wade
No discussion of abortion and women's reproductive rights would be complete without at least a brief mention of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision of Rowe vs. Wade which abolished blanket bans on abortion in the United States in 1973. As a court decision, it is subject to being overturned by legislation, or by the court itself in a future decision.

The justices who wrote the Rowe vs. Wade decision were well aware of the fact that women had once had the right to reproductive freedom as we have discussed in this essay.

When they wrote their landmark decision, they indicated, and quite rightly, that they were doing nothing new. All they were doing, they said, was reinstating English common law to the state it had once been, and had been since time immemorial.

What they wrote was true. Women had once had an unlimited right to control their reproductive activities, at least during the first trimester. The standard that the justices applied was that life begins at viability - the point at which the fetus becomes viable outside the womb.

Others have held that the standard should be when consciousness first becomes possible. We know that it is not possible for consciousness to occur in the absence of brain waves, and these arise at about the beginning of the third trimester - roughly the same point at which the fetus becomes viable. So there is really no conflict between the standards. Until that point arrives, there is no question that the fetus is not a child. It is simply a mass of tissue that has the potential to become a child.

Conservative Religion and Women's Rights
I've never been one to shrink from an intellectual fight. So I won't hesitate to say that it has been my experience that the real enemy of women's rights around the world has traditionally been conservative patriarchialist religion. In the West, of course, that takes the form of the fundamentalist streaks of Christianity.

What I find interesting is that even though these same people claim that all things are created by God, including the very herbs that are used for these purposes. Perhaps their god created these herbs with their unique properties for this purpose? One never hears, of course, this idea being postulated by these people. Yet the question begs to be asked - if God created these herbs, and God is all knowing, surely he knew what they could be used for. Why then did he proceed to create them with these properties as they claim he did?

Not that fundamentalist Christians are the sole guilty parties here. Conservative Islam also is guilty of the suppression of this knowledge, as are many other religions, including Hinduism, some forms of Buddhism, many Animist traditions, etc. Forcing women into purdah, the forced genital mutilation of women in Africa and elsewhere, the restriction on the education of women in India and the Middle East, all are symptoms of conservative religion forcing its domination onto women.

The common thread in all of these conservative religions is patriarchy. It is the desire of the proponents to subordinate women to the men in the culture. Doing so, of course, inevitably means a circumscription of the same rights to self determination that men of these cultures tend to consider their natural right. Seldom do they see the inconsistency in that position.

Maybe its time to end legally sanctioned patriarchy, like we've ended legally sanctioned slavery. In the West, we've made a few halting steps in that direction. Let us work to see that trend continue.

Internet Resources:
I have found one really good web site dealing with this issue. It not only discusses the herbs and their uses in detail, but has a lot of background on what options are available to women, not only herbal, but pharmaceutical and others as well. Due to the volume of hate mail I receive, the webmaster has asked me not to put a link to it here, but I will be glad to pass the URL on to you if you will write me.

Books:
There are two really good books on this topic, which unfortunately, are not widely enough known. Even if you do not want or need them for yourself, do the world a favor - before the fundamentalists can suppress this knowledge any more than they have, buy a copy of each, donate them to your local library, and help women gain and retain control over their lives:

Eve's Herbs by John Riddle is not only comprehensive, it is well documented and uses material both ancient and modern. Its an excellent read besides being an invaluable resource.

A Woman's Book of Choices: Abortion, Menstrual Extraction, Ru-486 by Rebecca Chalker and Carol Downer is one of the best books around for explaining a woman's choices, both herbal and pharmaceutical.

Source URL: www.bidstrup.com/abortion.htm
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Copyright ©2000, Scott Bidstrup.
Revised 9/29/2000

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Abortion vs Death Penalty

MyBodyIsATemple — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 22:55:50 GMT

Question - why is it that any time the issue of abortion comes up someone brings up the death penalty?

Abortion is ending an unborn babies life.
Death penalty is executing a person who is convicted of murder.

What is the connection between these two? I'm not getting it.

(I'm actually anti-death penalty because our system is so corrupt and we execute proportionally higher number of ethnic minorities than whites. If we had a better system, I would be pro-death penalty.)

posted in Abortion Debate - 30 replies

Natural Family Planning

Thu, 02 Sep 2004 16:28:51 GMT

I know this a little off-topic, can someone explain what is the reasoning behind NFP vs. a barrier method of contraception?

posted in Abortion Debate - 10 replies

Happy Anniversary!

Allene — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 04:26:07 GMT

The 31st anniversary of Roe V. Wade was today. Anybody recognize it in anyway? I went to a community event celebrating it and getting motivated for the March for Women's Lives that is coming up this April.

posted in Abortion Debate - 12 replies

men get of my bedroom

desiree — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 20:16:03 GMT

This is a open debate I am aware but why men???? It's my belief that women and only women should have the final choice on weather to abort a child or not. I don't not feel that men could honestly understands what it means to have a life growing inside of you. Or what it means to kill that life. Most of all how it affects your mental state. Im tired of old white men coming into my bedroom (theoraticly) and telling me what to do. I think thats BS. I personally decided four and half years ago that I was going to keep the going child inside of me. That man who was so very oppionated left me to raise my child alone.
It's not that I think when you get someone pregnant that the potential father shouldn't have input. It's that outsiders(law makers and uninvolved men) shouldn't be deciding what I do with my body. It should be the woman who caries the baby, that gets to have the final deision. For she is the one who has to live with that deision for the rest of her life.

posted in Abortion Debate - 19 replies

Pro-life groups against Birth Control Pills

zendi — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:18:51 GMT

I would like to know your comments on this topic please.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3652462.stm

Pill propelled into abortion debate

By Jill McGivering
BBC correspondent in Washington

The birth control pill revolutionised women's health - and grew to become one of the most popular forms of family planning. But it is now under attack from pro-life groups in the US.

The birth control pill does not always prevent ovulation

A growing number of doctors and pharmacists are now refusing to dispense it, on the grounds that it is actually a form of abortion.

Pro-choice groups fear this new moral objection to the Pill could lead to more unplanned pregnancies, even more abortions.

A woman taking the Pill does not usually release eggs. But occasionally she might - and it is possible that egg could be fertilised.

The hormonal conditions created by the Pill mean, if that happened, the fertilised egg would not be implanted or survive.

It's called a chemical abortion

Dr Cynthia Jones-Nosacek,
Family doctor
Mainstream medicine does not define that as a pregnancy. But some of those strictly against abortion do.

Dr Cynthia Jones-Nosacek - a family doctor in Milwaukee - now refuses to prescribe the Pill. She opposes it on moral grounds, arguing it is a form of abortion.

"The contraceptive pill doesn't always prevent ovulation. As often as 30% of the time, ovulation may occur and if that happens, fertilisation may occur," Dr Jones-Nosacek says.

"Then there are other mechanisms that can prevent that being from surviving. It's called a chemical abortion."

'Caught off-guard'

That definition is suddenly gaining support and some pharmacists now refuse to dispense the Pill.

Julee Lacey, a mother of two, had used the Pill for nine years when a pharmacist at her local chemist in Texas refused her prescription.

They've done so much with outlawing and restricting access to abortion that they've set their sights on birth control because there's nothing else really they can do to further restrict abortion

Lisa Boyce
Planned Parenthood
"She [the pharmacist] began to tell me she personally does not believe in birth control," says Ms Lacey.

"I was a little caught off-guard and shocked... I asked her again. She said: 'No, ma'am, I don't believe in birth control. I can't help you'...

"I really couldn't believe she had the right to withhold my medication from me," she adds.

At first these were just isolated cases, mostly in the Midwest. But recently they have increased dramatically.

Pro-choice groups now call it a significant and growing trend. Lisa Boyce of Planned Parenthood in Wisconsin says it is a conscious extension of the abortion debate.

"They've done so much with outlawing and restricting access to abortion that they've set their sights on birth control because there's nothing else really they can do to further restrict abortion here in Wisconsin," Ms Boyce says.

"Which is counter-intuitive because if you're against abortion in the least you'd think you would see the value in enhancing access birth control, the very means women look to preventing pregnancy and the need for abortion."

Conscience clauses

And in the run-up to the election, it is a hot political topic too.

This year 12 states took steps to try to introduce so-called conscience clauses. They allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs, including the Pill, on moral grounds, without losing their jobs.

In Wisconsin, the mostly-Republican assembly passed the bill, only to have it vetoed by the Democratic governor.

Representative Curt Gielow says pharmacists should be protected.

"There was an incident where a pharmacist who worked in a retail drug store refused on conscience to fill a prescription and that individual was terminated from employment," Mr Gielow says.

"That, I believe, set the stage for concern there might be employment discrimination opportunity here if in fact you listened to your conscience instead of doing what the boss told you to do."

At the moment, the Pill is hugely popular in the US. But calling it a type of abortion opens up a whole new front in the pro-life, pro-choice debate.

This moral condemnation is a fresh challenge to one of the most used, most reliable methods of family planning.

posted in Abortion Debate - 2 replies

Unsafe abortions

vbm — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 18:53:10 GMT

Health - Reuters

Unsafe Abortions Kill 70,000 Women a Year -Report

Wed Sep 1, 9:13 AM ET
By Patricia Reaney

LONDON (Reuters) - Nearly 70,000 women, almost half of them in Asia, die from unsafe abortions each year despite government pledges made a decade ago to improve human rights and reproductive health, researchers said Wednesday.

A report presented at a three-day meeting to gauge progress made since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo showed only small gains have been made to prevent maternal deaths from abortions.

"Unsafe abortion poses a serious threat to the health and lives of women all around the world, not just in Asia," Elizabeth Maguire, president of the Ipas group which works to protect women from unsafe abortions, told Reuters.

Unsafe abortion was recognized as a major public health concern at the ICPD when 179 members of the United Nations (news - web sites) set goals to improve women's reproductive health, education and rights and to increase family planning services to reduce unsafe abortions by 2015.

Governments also agreed, where abortion was considered legal, to make sure it was safe. But the Ipas research showed that in some regions unsafe abortions account for 50 percent of all pregnancy-related deaths of women.

"We have figures that 40 women every minute undergo an unsafe abortion and 200 are dying every day. The real message is that these deaths and disabilities from unsafe abortion are preventable," Maguire said.

She told a news conference at the London meeting called Countdown 2015, which marks the half-way point to 2015, that governments have not done enough.

"Changing the laws and effectively implementing those changes is the only way to ensure that women can fully exercise their right to decide whether and when to have children," she said.

According to the report, Asia accounts for 55 percent of the world's unsafe abortions, the highest of any region, with about 10.5 million in 2000, followed by Africa with 4.2 million unsafe abortions and Latin America and the Caribbean with 3.7 million.

In Chile and El Salvador (news - web sites), abortion is not legal on any grounds. Some countries allow it for reasons such as ensuring the mother's life and in cases of rape or incest.

"But the fact is, even where it is legal under limited grounds it is not available and it is not safe," Maguire said.

In Nepal, India, Indonesia and the Philippines, post-abortion care has been introduced since 1994. Poor, unmarried women, widows, adolescents and divorcees are the least likely to have access to safe abortions.

"Unsafe abortion is really all about human rights and social injustice because those women who are poor and vulnerable do not have access to safe abortion," Maguire added.

posted in Abortion Debate - 3 replies

Names

Thu, 06 Nov 2003 21:03:26 GMT

I guess maybe the first post should be about what to call each other while here....I heard the report on NPR about the group of women in Boston on both sides of the issue that met regularly to discuss abortion. "Names" were the first thing they talked about.

Any suggestions?

posted in Abortion Debate - 12 replies

God is pro-choice

Wed, 09 Jun 2004 20:57:51 GMT

Before you jump all over me -- from either side of the Abortion debate spectrum -- have a look at this post and say what you think or feel about it:

http://www.tribe.net/tribe/servlet/template/pub%2Ctribes%2CViewThread.vm?threadid=32c8e744-9881-453b-9a27-f07a604183db&tribeid=097549e6-2935-491b-aebe-eeb68aa058a6

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

Reagan's 1983 Abortion Essay

Tue, 08 Jun 2004 02:05:29 GMT

Read what the 40th President of the United States wrote about Roe v Wade, while in office in 1983:

http://www.tribe.net/tribe/servlet/template/pub%2Ctribes%2CViewThread.vm;jsessionid=997A31F528389C72EF7457E478197130.worker1?threadid=3c9ab7c6-71ff-4062-af6b-157a4146c346&tribeid=097549e6-2935-491b-aebe-eeb68aa058a6

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies

A Place to Go for Help

Tim — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 21:19:51 GMT

Some pro-choice advocates have accused those of us in the pro-life camp of condemning abortion without recommending any alternatives. I’d like to recommend the AAA Center for Crisis Pregnancy Counseling. They provide a variety of free services and information.

aaacpc.com

posted in Abortion Debate - 0 replies