As expected, the weekend mass murder in California has brought out the usual suspects on the pencil-penis right. I'm not even going to go into the kinds of things that are being said by the sociopathic Elliot Rodger wannabes out there in the "pickup subculture" who think that their very existence entitles them to sex provided by beautiful women that they can then spit on later for being sluts, evil, or whatever bile they choose to spill to cover up their deep self-loathing.

I'm here this evening to look at the so-called "mainstream" of wingnut thought on this question; the NRA acolytes who seem to honestly believe that without their guns they have no penises. First we have the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch's useless Big Apple rag, which yesterday showed everything that's wrong with the subculture that fueled the shooter's rage:



It's all here -- a photo of a pretty blond girl -- exactly the kind of girl that Rodger hated for rejecting him -- her finger half in her mouth, a hint of cleavage showing, a look that could be interpreted by sad sack losers as "come hither" -- and the subheadline "Childhood snub set me off, madman seethed." I'm sorry, Rupert, but you can call him a madman all you want; this cover shows what you REALLY think, and it's vile...disgusting. How do you sleep at night?

Meanwhile. the male Sarah Palin, Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurtzelbacher, seeking another moment in the sun, penned an "open letter to the parents of" those killed. An excerpt:

I am sorry you lost your child. I myself have a son and daughter and the one thing I never want to go through, is what you are going through now.> But:

As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.

Richard Martinez, whose son (Christopher) was among the murdered, choked back tears at a news conference, blaming politicians the next day: “The talk about gun rights. What about Chris’ right to live?” Martinez said – and much more.

There are no critical words for a grieving father. He can say whatever he wants and blame whoever he’d like – it’s okay by me. You can’t take a step in his shoes – at least I can’t.

But the words and images of Mr. Martinez blaming “the proliferation of guns”, lobbyists, politicians, etc.; will be exploited by gun-grab extremists as are all tragedies involving gun violence and the mentally ill by the anti-Second Amendment Left.

Is Wurtzelbacher saying that everyone who has opined in the aftermath of this that "The bitches had it coming" is mentally ill? Or just those who BECAUSE THEY HAVE ACCESS TO GUNS go out and kill women?



While looking for the video above, I came across a number of Alex Jones-style tinfoil hat videos insisting that Richard Martinez is a tool of the anti-gun left, that the shooting was an Obama false flag operation designed to take away the guns of good patriotic 'muricans who just want to know that they could take out the black man in the White House iff'n they had a mind to. No surprise there either, but it makes me wonder -- what WILL it take to change enough minds so that we demand action; that we INSIST on it? We had twenty dead six-to-eight-year-olds dead because of guns and still we did not cry out.

So I'm going to say something that will no doubt piss a lot of people off:

We need to see more grief.

Yes, there are those who will continue to insist that Newtown and Santa Barbara were false flag operations. Those people are beyond hope. But what about the people who sort of marginally care but hey, Dancing with the Stars is on tonight and we need dog food and the car needs an oil change? How do we get them to realize what a bunch of men with penis size anxiety are doing to our country?

We need to see more grief.

Yes, it makes us uncomfortable. That is why people have needed to try to paint Michael Martinez as something other than a grieving parent. After all, we don't see much raw, live grief. We saw the Newtown parents clutching photos of their dead children, telling Barbara Walters or Ann Curry or some other faux-carer of the media what their child was like. We saw their jaws quiver and their eyes fill with tears -- all very tasteful, all very sanitary, all very seemly.

What we didn't see is the times when the cameras were turned off, and they went into the bedrooms of their lost children and collapsed onto the floor screaming. We didn't see them break down in the supermarket for no particular reason after they've been fine all day. We didn't see them close the door on a room that is now a shrine, or pack up toys and clothing that will never be worn again....Christmas presents that will never be opened. We didn't see them wake up in the morning even now, and for one brief moment pretending it was all a bad dream before realizing it's real. We don't see what grief looks like.

Grief is supposed to be something linear. You're supposed to cry for a week, or two, or even a couple of months -- and then buck up and move on; "get over it", because there's work to do and people to not make uncomfortable. The problem is, that's not how it works. For every time you see someone collapse in screams upon hearing the terrible news that their child or spouse or sibling has died, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people who leave the accident scene, or the hospital, or the nursing home, in a state of shock and numbness. We look fine on the outside for a while, just like those poised Newtown parents. But after a while the numbness wears off and the waves start. And they can last a very long time. But since we have not adhered to some external timetable, we do our grieving behind closed doors, alone. I guarantee you, the Newtown parents do it. The families of the women George Sodini killed in 2009 do it. Trayvon Martin's parents do it. The families of the others killed by Elliot Rodger will do it too. Because that is just how it works. After all, we mustn't make other people uncomfortable. It would be unseemly.

Well I say bullshit to that. Death is part of life. Loss of loved ones happens. It is horrible and it sucks royally, but it happens. People get sick. They die. People also get murdered by punk kids with a false sense of entitlement who think beautiful women owe them sex because of some delusion of grandeur they have. Those of us who arguably had time to prepare, to try to wrap our minds around something that is unfathomable until it actually happens, well, we will continue to have to grieve behind closed doors because we make people uncomfortable. But a parent whose son got killed while at work, or whose daughter was in a sorority house, or whose son was coming back to his father's house with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea; a husband whose pregnant wife was gunned down while she was teaching aerobics at a gym -- we owe it to them and to the memory of their horrific losses to witness their grief; to hear the screams of the nightmare that will never end; to witness their legs give out from under them.

Photographs of pristine, healthy, adorable children didn't do it. Lovely, dignified, stoic parents trying to be brave for the cameras didn't do it. Perhaps seeing what pure, raw grief looks like MIGHT get through. And we have to allow them to show us no matter how long it takes for the numbness to wear off. Because no, Samuel Wurtzelbacher DOESN'T know what Richard Martinez is going through, because he gets to tuck his kids in at night. Wurtzelbacher lacks the empathy to even TRY to imagine. So perhaps people need to start showing him.

Labels: grief, gun nuts, misogyny, right-wing hatemongers, wingnuttia

We already know that when Barack Obama was elected, this country had a collective nervous breakdown from which it has not yet recovered, and from which it will probably never recover. It won't recover because the 2008 election was a feature, not a bug -- a feature of an America in which everyone now believes s/he should have a stake. Women, immigrants, minorities -- all those who are not white Christian males have stepped up and said "This is mine too." And the men who took for granted their dominance over everything they saw have been saying "Oh now it isn't" for six years now.

>It didn't start with Obama, but reached Peak Crazy during the Obama Administration. It goes back to before the Civil War, but it started to gain critical mass in popular culture and memory when Jack Roosevelt Robinson stepped onto a baseball field to play alongside white players. It's impossible for any sane person to watch Alan Tudyk's masterful, if horrifying, portrayal of Phillies manager Ben Chapman without wincing (and wondering how Tudyk managed to get some of the filth out of his mouth, though he explains how here and you can read it starting on page 75 here). It escalated with the civil rights movement, when white Christian men with firehoses turned them on black people who wanted the same rights as white people. We continued to see it at Kent State, the horrific outcome of a generation of kids saying "No, we are NOT going to go off to war just because you say so." We saw it, and continue to see it, when women say "No, we are NOT going to be subservient to men. We are going to go where we want, wear what we want, do what we want. We are going to run for office and sit in the boardroom and we are not going to be her just for your use and amusement anymore." We see it now when people who are gay are saying, "No, we are NOT going to stay in the closet anymore just because YOU don't want to see a way to live a life that isn't a lie."

It's not exclusively a white man's country anymore. They're going to have to share it. And they do not want to do it.

No one has a patent on the backlash of the right wing, but today I'm posting about women. I'm doing this because today seven people are dead, including three college women, because Elliot Rodger could not find a girlfriend; because Elliot Rodger believed that desirable women were somehow obligated to have sex with him because of his self-assessment as a "nice guy."

As longtime readers of this blog know, I'm not much of one for throwing around terms like "rape culture" and "trigger warning", because I don't believe that defining yourself as a victim forever just because bad things happened to you only empowers those who perpetrated these bad things. I didn't get all up in arms about Jaime Lannister raping Cersei on Game of Thrones because I felt it was in the service of the story (even though it differs from the books, which I have not yet read. Some might call me a tool of the patriarchy, but as someone who DID have something bad happen to me in college and went on to live a perfectly functional life including a marriage of 27 years cut short only by my husband's death last fall, I feel qualified to say that.

But it's impossible to watch Elliot Rodger's horrifying video attempting to justify his actions or even skim his 141-page manifesto/autobiography without wondering if perhaps those bandying about the term "rape culture" aren't on to something.

And so ends another era of my extraordinary and tragic life. I call it the era of Hope and Hopelessness, where I drifted and languished in lonely despair while I lived at my mother’s apartment and attended two colleges. At various intervals, something happened to give me a new hope for my life, only to have it shattered later on. My life had been moving in that same pattern for a long time now, and I was sick and tired of it. All while I was suffering this lonely existence, other boys my age lived their happy lives of pleasure and sex. I can never forgive such an injustice, and it was my bid to overcompensate for it in the future. I had to make up for all the years I lost in loneliness and isolation, through no fault of my own! It was society’s fault for rejecting me. It was women’s fault for refusing to have sex with me. The move to Santa Barbara is the endgame, the ultimate climax of everything. I saw it as a new chance that was given to me to finally have the things I want in life: love, sex, friends, fun, acceptance, a sense of belonging. But I could never forgive the world for denying me such things in the past. I was already turning twenty soon. I had already lost many years of my life. I deserve better than that. I am an intelligent gentleman, and I deserve the love of girls more than the other obnoxious boys of my age, and yet they get girls and I don’t. That is a crime that can never be forgotten, nor can it be forgiven. I always wanted to exact my revenge on humanity for forcing me to live such a life, but I’ve also always had the hope that if I can do things in life to make up for all my suffering, then that in itself would be a form of peaceful revenge.

In truth, the move Santa Barbara was actually a chance that I was giving to the world, not the other way around! I was giving the world one last chance to give me the life that I know I’m entitled to, the life that other boys are able to live with ease. If I still have to suffer the same rejection and injustice even after I move to Santa Barbara, then that will be the last straw. I will have my vengeance.

And then this black boy named Chance said that he lost his virginity when he was only thirteen! In addition, he said that the girl he lost his virginity to was a blonde white girl! I was so enraged that I almost splashed him with my orange juice. I indignantly told him that I did not believe him, and then I went to my room to cry. I cried and cried and cried, and then I called my mother and cried to her on the phone. How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more. I tried not to believe his foul words, but they were already said, and it was hard to erase from my mind. If this is actually true, if this ugly black filth was able to have sex with a blonde white girl at the age of thirteen while I’ve had to suffer virginity all my life, then this just proves how ridiculous the female gender is. They would give themselves to this filthy scum, but they reject ME? The injustice!

Females truly have something mentally wrong with them. Their minds are flawed, and at this point in my life I was beginning to see it. The more I explored my college town of Isla Vista, the more ridiculousness I witnessed. All of the hot, beautiful girls walked around with obnoxious, tough jock-type men who partied all the time and acted crazy. They should be going for intelligent gentlemen such as myself. Women are sexually attracted to the wrong type of man. This is a major flaw in the very foundation of humanity. It is completely and utterly wrong, in every sense of the word. As these truths fully dawned on me, I became deeply disturbed by them. Deeply disturbed, offended, and traumatized.

We'd like to believe that Rodger was an anomaly, a bad apple, someone unusual. But Amanda Marcotte has been writing about what she calls "Nice Guys®" for years, and the Elliot Rodger is yet another one of them. From 2011 in an article about men cornering women in elevators:

Every time I've written about Nice Guys®, I've picked up at least one man who makes a permanent enemy out of me, proving often how "nice" he is by sending me a bunch of nasty emails or blog comments about how I understand how his niceness keeps him from getting laid and women are all shallow bitches that like to be abused. Indeed, the "niceness" I've experienced at the hands of self-proclaimed Nice Guys® has done little to convince me that they're actually nice guys who've been edged out of the sexual market by women's inconstancy and evilness, and has instead convinced me they strike out a lot because their entitlement issues make them irritating to be around.

Elliot Rodger is nothing new. In 2009, George Sodini went into a women's aerobics class at an LA Fitness facility and opened fire. His body count was almost identical to Rodger's: Three women dead, nine injured, and the gunman killed himself. Sodini was 48 years old, and like Elliot Rodger, fancied himself to be a "Nice Guy®", and wrote a misogynistic (manifesto about what he did. Sodini was an equal opportunity basher, excoriating the liberal media that loves Obama and right-wing religious kooks alike.

May 18, 2009:

I actually had a date today. It was with a woman I met on the bus in March. We got together at Two PPG Place for lunch. The last date for me was May 1, 2008. Women just don't like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one. Not one of them finds me attractive. I am looking at The List I made from my May 4th idea. I forgot about that for several days. That tells me where I stand. These problems have gotten worse over a 30 year period. I need to expect nothing from me or other people. All through the years I thought we had the ability to change ourselves - I guess that is incorrect. Looking at The List makes me realize how TOTALLY ALONE, a deeper word is ISOLATED, I am from all else.

I no longer have any expectations of myself. I have no options because I cannot work toward and achieve even the smallest goals. That is, ABOVE ALL, what bothers me the most. Not to be able to work towards what I want in my life. I believe I am deserve that. I read recently it is called "self efficacy", but who knows. Is that more psychobable?

May 25, 2009:

I was invited to a picnic, and I went. An older woman there, out of the blue, asked if I liked high school. Then quickly asked if I was picked on very much. Intersting why she would ask that. But, thanks, I already know what the problem is, but a solution eludes me.

May 29, 2009:

Another lonely Friday night, I'm done. This is too much.

June 2, 2009: Some people I was talking with believed I date a lot and get around with women. They think this because I showed an email I got from a hot woman to the department gossip, but it didn't work out. All this is funny. Actually, I haven't had sex since I was 29 years old, 19 years ago. That's true.

June 5, 2009:

I was reading several posts on different forums and it seems many teenage girls have sex frequently. One 16 year old does it usually three times a day with her boyfriend. So, err, after a month of that, this little hoe has had more sex than ME in my LIFE, and I am 48. One more reason. Thanks for nada, bitches! Bye.

[snip] July 20, 2009:

Been a long time since last write. Everything still sucks. But I got a promotion and a raise, even in this shitty Obama ecomomy. No more grunt programming. Go figure! New boss is great. He tactfully says when you did something wrong or complements on good things. Never confused with him. But that is NOT what I want in life. I guess some of us were simply meant to walk a lonely path. I have slept alone for over 20 years. Last time I slept all night with a girlfriend it was 1982. Proof I am a total malfunction. Girls and women don't even give me a second look ANYWHERE. There is something BLATANTLY wrong with me that NO goddam person will tell me what it is. Every person just wants to be fucking nice and say nice things to me. Flattery. Oh yeah, I am sure you can get a date anytime. You look good, etc. Pussies.

Awwww, wait. I can just start being self-righteous and say I live a good, clean life. I am holy, that's all Rick Knapp stuff. Hear that you mother fucker: I Am Just Good!

August 2, 2009:

The biggest problem of all is not having relationships or friends, but not being able to achieve and acquire what I desire in those or many other areas. Everthing stays the same regardless of the effert I put in. If I had control over my life then I would be happier. But for about the past 30 years, I have not

Sodini was 48; Rodger was 22. And yet both men write of the same thing -- sexual frustration and an inability to understand why women aren't interested in Nice Guys® like them. Like Sodini, Rodger was a frequenter of pickup artist sites, trying to find the reason why women weren't attracted to them. These sites prey on guys like George Sodini and Elliot Rodger, and feed their rage. Kate Harding wrote in 2009 after the Sodini shooting:

George Sodini knew he wasn’t really a nice guy. He knew there was something “blatantly wrong” with him. He wished someone would tell him what it was. But who’s going to say, “You seem to have a really deep hatred of women, and some serious rage issues, and a ludicrously overblown sense of entitlement, and I’m guessing you’d need about a hundred years of therapy before you’ll be ready for a healthy relationship”? Certainly not any woman he approached at a bar, who only wanted him to go away as quickly as possible and without incident. Nor friends who, by all accounts, kept pulling away until he had none anymore. Probably not his family, whom he professed to despise. So that left R. Don Steele, whose best advice was, “Nice Guy Must Die.”

Well, this one did, along with three innocent women. As long as Pickup Artists keep conning insecure men into believing that hatred of women is the hallmark of a real man, and women still have reason to feel it’s too risky “to completely and utterly shut down” men who make them uncomfortable, I guess all we can do is hope there aren’t too many more “Nice Guys” out there with guns.

These men know that something is not right with them, but because men in our culture are not supposed to be introspective at all, they cannot fathom what it is. So they frequent web sites that can't help them, and then blame others for their plight. The only difference between guys like Rodger/Sodini and your average white guy looking down the ladder at Latino immigrants and black people and blaming them for their problems while the oligarchs are lifting the last two bucks out of their back pockets is that the average white guy hasn't taken his NRA-sanctioned gun and killed someone -- yet.

But it's coming, and many of the targets will be women. They will be women because access to sex is the primal bastion of White Chriatian Male entitlement. When everything else falls by the wayside, when their jobs are offshored and their homes are foreclosed and their future looks bleak, violence is the one thing they still have. Women are an easy target for their rage. Even right now, there's another angry guy out there, walking into a gun shop, preparing to buy a firearm so that he too can show those bitches who's boss. And there are plenty of right-wing politicians out there ready to blame the dirty sluts for what happened to them. .

Labels: gun nuts, misogyny

Despite spending much of the last month looking at a glowing screen into the wee hours, I have been able to keep up with the Todd Akin fracas. Coming this late to the game, there's not a whole lot more I can add to what's already been said, except for one thing: Where is the woman in the equation of parsing the definition of rape? Where is the woman in the sanctity of human life definition?

When Akin made his now-infamous statement about "legitimate rape" over the weekend, he said "I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."

This was perhaps the most important part of Akin's words; far more important than the talk of "legitimate rape." We already know how right-wing men love to spend hours thinking about rape in an attempt to determine which rapes make it OK to have an abortion. My own personal favorite is this one from 2006, forever known as the "Sodomized Virgin Exception":

A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

This is how the middle-aged white men (and it's disproportionately middle-aged white men) who hold the well-being of women in their hands via the state houses across the country and in Washington DC, think. This is how they spend their time, coming up with some perfect specimen of Virtuous Virginal Womanhood that whose life would be previous enough to make ending that of a blastocyst acceptable. This is how they spend their time, discussing with bogus doctors ways that the female body somehow magically shuts down when sperm from a rape is deposited in her. The most important thing to these men is to come up with a way to stigmatize and demonize not just the sluts and whores who dare to have sex and defy the rules these men have set down, but also women who become pregnant through no will of their own. It's so important to these men that women who would seek an abortion be branded as whores that they have invented the Magical Shut-Down Valve, just to assuage any pangs they might feel about forcing a woman to carry for nine months the product of the most traumatic experience of her life. Because for them, the woman is just an incubator and completely unworthy of their consideration, especially if they can invent some biological way that they can use to reassure themselves that "she really wanted it or her body wouldn't have let it happen."

Roe v. Wade was decided the year I graduated high school. Even when I was in college, the clinics that would later help to make women full-fledged recognized human beings in this country by giving them full control over their bodies had not yet fully materialized. Girls were still making bargains with God to please, please, please not let them be pregnant. Back in high school, girls who had gotten a little thick through the waist were still sent off to "stay with their sick grandma" for a while (sick grandmas being the All-Purpose Pretext of Choice in those days, including the one John List used to throw everyone off his trail after murdering his family in 1971), returning with their waistlines restored in just shy of a year. But even in those early post-Roe days, yes, there were always people standing outside of clinics, but you didn't hear men who held national political offices parsing out the intricacies of sexual assault. Perhaps they did in the porn houses of 42nd Street, but not in the halls of government.

And yet, here we are in 2012. We live in a country increasingly dominated by religious fanatics who are attempting to work out their own sick, twisted sexual issues and fantasies in the legal space of America. These man can't afford to give the woman in question any humanity; that is reserved for the rapist (who in their fantasies is probably themselves) and the "child" (which is what they no doubt believe vindicates their sick proclivities). To them, the woman is not at all human, but simply a vessel -- a vessel for something that they can regard as the only kind of life that's "pure" and a symbolic vessel into which they can pour their own hideous minds and self-loathing.

Labels: abortion, misogyny, rant, Republican id-driven two-year-olds, sick motherfuckers, womens rights

I don't usually watch the troika of Sunday morning network gasbag shows. You know the ones I'm talking about -- the ones hosted by fossilized friends of the Bush family, craven ex-Clintonites trying to prove their moderatism, and Karl Rove's dancing partner. There is rarely anything substantive to these shows; they are an endless weekly repetition of the same old crap dished out by the same old (usually Republican) guest, followed by a discussion by Beltway hacks who stopped being relevant around the time George Herbert Walker Bush was astounded by a supermarket scanner.

It isn't that women aren't represented on these shows, it's that only a certain TYPE of woman is welcome. That woman is soft-spoken, tends to listen attentively and nod her head at what the menfolk are saying, and rarely has a contradictory opinion. She is well-coiffed, often with the Sally Quinn Pageboy Hairdo. She is Doris Kearns Goodwin and Peggy Noonan's Heart Will Go On For Ronald Reagan In Perpetuity. They are giddy fangirl Margaret Carlson and the plasticine face of what used to be Katty Kay. She is Donna Brazile only because with Donna you get a twofer token -- a black female who is one micrometer to the left of the semi-loony right that now passes as the center. Perennial girly-girl Arianna Huffington is welcome now that she's become a quasi-conservative again, and while some of these women are livelier than others, no woman is ever allowed on these shows who might tell these people that they are full of shit.

Except on the rare occasions when Rachel Maddow is on Meet the Press.

I deigned to watch the roundtable discussion on David Gregory's excreble weekly exercise in cocktail-weenie hackery yesterday, as I was doing some extremely repetitive work on The Project From Hell, because I wanted to see what Rachel Maddow had to say. And that is when it struck me just how smug and misogynistic the men on these shows are. Most people who read this blog probably either watch The Rachel Maddow Show or at least have a passing familiarity with her. Rachel is passionate without being mean, and she doesnt' just pull stuff out of her ass. But how she got through yesterday's show without going back to the green room and putting her fist through a wall, I have no idea.

If I had been in her shoes, and had this exchange with National Review's Rich Lowry, I would probably be in jail right now for throttling him:



Rich Lowry. Why is this man's opinion even regarded as something people should hear? After all, this is the man who wrote this after the 2008 Vice Presidential debate:

I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America.

I'm sorry, but a man who doesn't know that the person he sees on a TV screen isn't actually sitting behind the glass has no business being taken seriously in punditry.

But this is the typical way that men on these shows have of silencing women (and there really IS only one ) who dare to contradict them. Every time Rachel Maddow is on a show where there is a Republican, she is filibustered by them -- and the male hosts always, always let it happen. It doesn't even matter what the political leaning of the host is, if the host is male, they seem to think silencing a woman by filibustering is perfectly OK. Watch this clip from Real Time With Bill Maher to see what I mean:



Of course Maher, despite the fact that he's largely on our side, is, in fact, a sexist pig. So I guess we should expect this. But if a show is supposed to be about "discussion", it would be nice if they would allow women to actually participate in the discussion instead of sit quietly and look nice and only be allowed to speak when they agree with the Republican men.

Labels: hack journalism, misogyny, Rachel Maddow, sexism

We're just breeders to them -- no different from barnyard animals:

In today’s news about more men who want to control women’s bodies, Georgia’s state representative, Terry England, wants to force us to carry stillborn fetuses to term–just like cows and pigs do, he says. Because, you know, women are just like barnyard animals.

England was speaking on the floor of the Georgia legislature in favor of HB 954, a bill which makes it illegal to obtain an abortion after 20 weeks, which is fine for him to take that stance and many people would even agree with that. However, he was pushing for that law to also apply to women who are carrying a stillborn fetus or one that is likely to die before it reaches term, making it illegal for women to have the dead fetus removed until their bodies do so naturally.

As if that insensitivity wasn’t enough, he then referenced the livestock on the farm where he once worked and how they had to sometimes deliver stillborn animals:

Life gives us many experiences…I’ve had the experience of delivering calves, dead and alive. Delivering pigs, dead or alive. It breaks our hearts to see those animals not make it.

In other words, if a cow or pig can give birth to a dead baby, then a woman should too. So what if it’s just plain cruel to force a woman to carry a stillborn fetus to term and then make her undergo labor. We are no different than cows or pigs, right? Yeah, that’s logic that just makes a lot of sense and is filled with so much compassion and understanding of women.

Video at the link.

The one good thing about assholes like Terry England is that they're showing us exactly what the fetophile movement is about. It's not about human life, it's not about babies, and it sure as hell isn't about God or the Baby Jesus. It's about their own issues with women, and how they want to punish them in the most profound way possible.

Labels: just another outrage, misogyny, The Republican War on Women

We always knew it was there, lurking under the surface. It was there back in the sixties when the Rolling Stones sang "Under My Thumb." It was there in the 1970's when Donna Summer moaned her way through "Love to Love You Baby." It was there in the 1980's when David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen sneered their way through "Hot for Teacher" and the J. Geils Band bemoaned that the girl they thought was a virtuous virgin appeared as a "Centerfold". It's been a part of pop culture ever since the Pill came along and upended the notion that women who don't (as Foster Freiss recently said) keep an aspirin between their knees were punished by unintended pregnancy.

I'm old enough to remember when pregnant teens were sent away "to stay with Grandma for a while." "Sick Grandma" was such an easy cover story that notorious family-murderer John List even used it to give him enough time to escape after murdering his entire family in 1971. In those days, pregnant teens weren't admired or emulated. They were shamed, and even when they returned to school with their new, slim figures, people looked at them with a peculiar mix of curiosity, judgment, and for some, a tiny bit of admiration -- but only on the part of the girls. For the boys, these girls were tainted forevermore. And this was in the late 1960's!

With all the video of Woodstock and Height-Ashbury, the popular conception (sorry) has been that from, say, 1968 on, this country was one big orgy of baby-boomer sex. Oh, there was a lot of sex going on, but most of it was outside of hippie enclaves, and while the sex was happening, the old double-standard was alive and well. At the small Pennsylvania college I attended in the 1970's, a girl who "slept around" still got a "reputation." There weren't so many accidental pregnancies, though, because even in provincial eastern Pennsylvania, college towns had free taxpayer-funded clinics where coeds could get gynecological examinations and free contraceptives of any kind.

But lurking under the surface there was always a double-standard. I'd been taught about sexuality from books written in the 1950's which promised dire consequences for girls who "necked and petted". There was always this Catch-22 of boys trying to get sex and girls trying to stop them -- and as long as the girls succeeded in stopping them and never thought about wanting sex themselves, the retrogrades who broke out in cold sweats at their own inability to handle their biology were happy. It really wasn't until the late 1970's that female sexual empowerment really went mainstream, and even then, the "If She Fucked Me That Means She'll Fuck Anybody" doctrine reared its ugly head at times, with its delusion that it said something about the women being judged rather than about the self-loathing of the men who made such judgments.

It seemed to go away for a while, until this birth control fracas, or at least it seemed to. After all, we watched Sex and the City for what seemed like a whole decade, and even after fucking a different guy every single week, Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and even the comically voracious Samantha ended up finding True Love And Happiness®. We got sick of them after a while, but what was refreshing about the way that series ended (and should have stayed ended) is that the "pasts" of these women DIDN'T "catch up to them." What a frightening thought to men who had grown accustomed to being able to use shaming and ostracism as weapons to keep women in line.

The ugly nature of Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke this week shocked many people. They shouldn't have. Comments like this are nothing new. Calling women whores, sluts, and prostitutes has been with us for millennia. It was shoved under the rug for a while, but it's always been there. Sexually active women have always been threatening to men like Rush Limbaugh, because to affirmatively take charge of one's own sexuality -- to decide when to have it, with whom to have it, to avoid the biological consequences of having it, up-end the illusion of male control that men like this seem to need so desperately. It's no accident that the most vocal public attackers of Ms. Fluke are Rush Limbaugh -- a man who struggles with his weight but attacks fat women, a man who has been married four times and has no children to show for it, a man who was nabbed at the border while returning from the Dominican Republic with a bottle of twenty-nine Viagra tablets in someone else's name; and Bill O'Reilly, who had to pay his producer millions of dollars to settle a sex-harassment suit.

Limbaugh and O'Reilly are the most public spewers of misogynist venom these days, but check out some of these gems from the comment sections of various online publications:

From "Anonymous", in response to jurassicpork's post No Fluke Here:

"Gee I need help. I've got this bad masturbation problem, six to eight times a day. Is there a way I can get money from the government so I can buy more paper towels? I'm going broke. "

Someone ought to tell Anon that this is about insurance companies, not about the government. But that's pretty tame. Here are some more that so far have escaped the comment-scrubbing that's been going on at news sites for the last few days.

From the comments at CNN.com:

Feral Conservative

Pot-kettle-black
Lib women are constantly telling conservatives to leave their uterus and ovaries alone.
Now this trollop wants to require taxpayers to babysit her input in said organs by paying for
birth control ? Just another me-me-me libtard who can go to a local clinic and get free contraceptives
but is too stupid to google and read street signs. I love it when the Pelosis of the world use morons like "Fluke"
for their transparent foibles. (Link)

Dominicant mama 4 nobama

What else do you call someone that needs to spend the amount of money she claims college students are spending on contraception...what the hell are they doing sleeping with everyone on campus AND all the professors??? guess people don't go to college to get an education anymore...

No one is trying to silence you...It's not your mouth that needs to be closed... (Link)

From Faux Noise, in response to Limbaugh's non-apology "apology":

tinetostandstrong
Whats the matter the TRUTH HURTS, all these woman have to do is KEEP THERE LEGS CLOSED is that too much to ask........................................ Dont make me pay unless Im doing you. (Link)

dgh69
This s lut wants birth control so she can s crew all she wants too without getting pregnant have a good time and wants me to pay for it. That is b ull s hit! (Link)

In the eyes of some, ALL who even SPEAK to Democrats are sluts. Again, from Faux Noise comments:

12wlw12
Are we paying for her College also...for a 30 yr old.."girl"? She got what she ask for by following Pelosi.. wonder how much she got paid for that little trip. Rush is correct... sluty!! (Link)

At Washington Post:

geriatricalive:
A student who admits to being promiscuous will get insulted especially when that same student wants the taxpayer to pay for birth control for her. My comment has nothing to do with women in general. It has to do with one who has agreed to be a scape goat for the Democrats on a very sensitive issue meant to be an election issue. She freely admitted to having sex at least twice a day. She is supposed to be there to learn not screw. She also is not there on a grant which means she can afford her own birth control. The least expensive of which is abstinence. Birth control pills will not protect her from STDs so it would be wiser for her to go to the drug store and buy condoms if she is going to continue her promiscuity. I do not see this as a feminist issue. I see it as one girl willing to be used for more than sex. (Link)

And this little gem from Glennbeckistan:

hard.right
Posted on March 3, 2012 at 5:41pm
if the gov‘t doesn’t offer to cover it, you could go paper bag and playboy magazines vs the dog and pills. works just as well and alot cheaper. then again, just find yourself a hot chick and pass on this one would be my recommendation. personally, i’d rather skip the ugly chick, paper bag, pills, dog, and just get the playboy magazine and take care of it myself. (Link)

Comments like this are becoming more difficult to find, because comment moderators are busy scrubbing the worst of them, something I wish they wouldn't do. Because views like this -- any woman who has sex is a whore or a lesbian, any woman who speaks out is part of the Great Obama Kenyan Muslim Communist Socialist Homosexual Conspiracy, women should just keep their legs closed -- really need to be out there so it's all clear exactly what we're dealing with.

Labels: contraception, misogyny, The Republican War on Women

In a way I'm glad that the fetophiles' true motivation is starting to come out. For thirty years, the people who think that there is never a time in a woman's life when she should be nothing but a vessel have been stymied by the "pro-life" label. But now we can call their movement "advocates of state-sanctioned rape". That's much better.

Virginia is poised to send two of the most abhorrent anti-choice bills to Governor Bob McDonnell to sign. The governor, eyes trained on a vice presidential bid, has indicated he will sign at least one if not both of the bills.

The first is a bill requiring the use of trans-vaginal ultrasound prior to a woman obtaining an abortion, the other is an egg-as-person bill.  Like other failed "personhood" bills, the Virginia provision would outlaw not only abortion but also forms of hormonal birth control. 

Although the Governor has said he will consider the personhood bill he has been clear he would sign the forced ultrasound bill.  But let's start calling this what it really is: state sanctioned rape.  

In Virginia, rape is defined as the following:

§ 18.2-61. Rape.
A. If any person has sexual intercourse with a complaining witness, whether or not his or her spouse, or causes a complaining witness, whether or not his or her spouse, to engage in sexual intercourse with any other person and such act is accomplished (i) against the complaining witness's will, by force, threat or intimidation of or against the complaining witness or another person; or (ii) through the use of the complaining witness's mental incapacity or physical helplessness; or (iii) with a child under age 13 as the victim, he or she shall be guilty of rape.

I called and emailed McDonnell’s press secretary Jeff Caldwell asking if the forced vaginal ultrasound bill would in-fact overturn the rape statute.  Caldwell did not return my call or email by the time of publication. 

During the debate Republican State Del. Todd Gilbert said:

The vast majority of these cases [abortion] are matters of lifestyle convenience.” And, 

“We think in matters of lifestyle convenience and in other matters that it is right and proper for a woman to be fully informed about what she is doing.”

Forcing a woman to undergo a vaginal invasion in order to have a legal medical procedure is state-sanctioned rape. Period. And that is what these people are: Rapists.

And by the way, Governor McDonnell has made clear that he's very interested in being on the Presidential ticket as a Vice President nominee this year. Just imagine the misogynist utopia that a President Santorum and his consort, Vice President McDonnell could create.

Labels: dangerous religious freaks, misogyny, The Republican War on Women

Remember the good old days, when the adorable David Naughton urged us to join him in being a Pepper?



Times have changed, and with over 14 million Americans out of work, many of them men who now wonder if they will ever work again, and if they don't, just who they are, concern about masculinity is at an all-time high. Enter Dr. Pepper, with a 10-calorie drink that they're marketing specifically to men, because 0-calorie questionable-tasting soft drinks sweetened with poison just aren't macho enough for them. No more wussy-ass song and dance guys who looked like the cast of Glee long before Glee was even a gleam in Fox's eye. No, in the new Land of Pepper, ten calories = one penis:


But this ad isn't the worst of it. The worst is the "10 Man-Ments" that are part of the ad campaign. Apparently you have to "Like" it on Facebook to get to it, so we'll let Chicagoist reveal it for you.

The intrepid Amanda ventured into the fetid swamp of male anxiety so you don't have to:

Obviously, Dr. Pepper rolled out this campaign before there was a mass shooting that left 8 dead, in which the murderer was apparently motivated to get revenge on his ex-wife over not getting his way in a custody battle. But if they'd done a little market research, they would have been able to predict the reaction from the very same misogynists they hope will buy up their soda. David Futrelle gathered some at Man Boobz. The theme of the comments he collected was, "Children are the property of men who create them all by themselves by ejacualating into incubators we call "women", and when you're done with your incubator, she shouldn't be able to get custody over your child-property, no matter what a judge says. And anyone who disagrees only has themselves to blame if they get shot in the face."  A sample:

E]nough of this type of offensive action might just start making women and their supporters* think twice, especially if they also become targets. (* Divorce attorneys, child services workers and counselors, family court judges, and other enabling cogs in the feminist legal system)......

Essentially men need to tell feminism to shut the fuck up, give it a vigorous slap across the face thus reminding it who is the biological superior, then order it back into the kitchen/bedroom.......

What options other than overt acts of physical violence are there for a man to deal with a shrew ex and corrupt family court system?....

Most men will just lay down and be resigned to the state-enforced kidnapping and extortion plot, but some are made of tougher stuff and for you to whine about this dead ex-wife or that is inconsequential and no loss to humanity.

I submit that women … are much more likely to pay attention when they’re being threatened.

In case you were wondering what's going on in the mind of the Tea Party male who's blaming everyone else for his troubles, there you go.

I'm quite sure that when the "creative" and the account guys at Deutsch, Inc. (the ad agency that perpetrated this monstrosity) got together in a room, they imagined themselves to be Don and Pete and Roger and Kenny and Paul in the halcyon days before that kiljoy Peggy got all uppity on them. It would not surprise me if the Mad Men ethos permeates today's ad agencies, as the denizens therein, many of them not around during those days when ad guys, not finance guys, were the masters of the universe, try to capture those long-lost times.

If the name "Deutsch" sounds familiar to you, it's because yes, it's THAT Deutsch -- Donny Deutsch, most familiar to political junkies as the guy on Morning Schmoe who obviously gets up in the morning and thinks that because he looks a little bit like Jon Stewart, if he just combs his hair the same way people will think he IS Jon Stewart. Here's a classic Donny Deutsch moment, which tells you everything you need to know about him:



That's just what Occupy Wall Street needs -- for a bunch of kids to get killed. Yeah, that's the ticket. you can't BUY that kind of publicity. Of course, this shouldn't surprise anyone who in this day and age creates an ad that's nothing more than a retooling of this:

Labels: Advertising, assholes, misogyny

After two days of listening to Republicans insist that George W. Bush alone deserves the credit for the successful Bin Laden mission and wingnuts everywhere dissing Navy Seals because God forbid Obama should get credit for ANYTHING, it's almost a relief to get back to life in normal America, where the most important priority is not the economy, or even national defense, but rather punishing all those slutty American women.

First, let's go back to redefining rape. Because while the tender feelings of people like me, who have spent 40 years having MY tax dollars pay for wars and tax cuts for the wealthy and other things I don't agree with, don't matter one whit, the tender feelings of those who love the fetus but hate the baby once it's here, are paramount:

In a 251 to 175 vote this evening, 16 anti-choice Democrats joined every House Republican present in passing H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act. A chief weapon in the House GOP’s “comprehensive assault” on women this bill proposes some of the most radical and draconian restrictions on women’s rights. They include:

– Redefinition Of Rape: The bill sponsor Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) faced serious backlash after he tried to narrow the definition rape to “forcible rape.” By narrowing the rape and incest exception in the Hyde Amendment, Smith sought to prevent the following situations from consideration: Women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults.

Smith promised to remove the language and while it is not technically in the bill, Mother Jones reports that House Republicans used “a sly legislative maneuver” to insert a “backdoor reintroduction” of redefinition language. Essentially, if the bill is challenged in court, judges will look at the congressional committee report to determine intent. The committee report for H.R. 3 says the bill will “not allow the Federal Government to subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape” — thus excluding statutory rape-related abortions from Medicaid coverage.

In America now, it's Republican Congressmen, not your physician, who gets to decide what constitutes health care. And so under this bill, you would no longer be able to deduct the cost of abortion as a medical expense, nor would you be able to use pre-tax dollars to pay for your insurance if that insurance even offers to cover abortions:

The bill would prevent people from deducting the cost of an abortion from their taxable income, except when the procedure is performed in cases of rape, incest or when a physician certifies that a woman's life would be in danger if she continues the pregnancy.

Current law, known as the Hyde Amendment, bars federal money for abortions, with the same exceptions as those in the bill. But the bill would make the Hyde Amendment federal law, rather than a provision added to other bills that must be voted every year.

Abortion opponents have charged that the health care overhaul contains a loophole for insurance policies. Obama's health care overhaul, passed last year, creates state marketplaces for insurance known as "exchanges." It allows participating plans to cover abortions, provided they collect a separate premium from policyholders and that money is kept apart from federal subsidies.

The bill, written by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., disallows the tax credit for the expenses of a small employer health insurance plan that includes coverage for an abortion. Democrats said that amounts to a tax increase.

"I thought my Republican friends hated taxes, but apparently they hate reproductive freedom and women's rights even more," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.

Supporters of the bill passed Wednesday say the health overhaul doesn't go far enough to make sure that no tax money is used to subsidize abortions. Congressional estimates say the bill would raise only a negligible amount of tax revenue.

Opponents say the bill would make it difficult if not impossible for many women to obtain medical insurance that covers abortions — even if they pay for it themselves. They say the legislation could put the Internal Revenue Service in the position of determining whether women who get abortions were sexually assaulted, so the agency can decide whether the procedure is tax deductible.

Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., said the bill is really an effort to prevent insurance companies from covering abortions.

Because in these troubled days, the most important thing to Republicans is to codify into law that women who are raped are really just sluts who are asking for it and should be forced to bear the children of their rapists. After all, they'll need cannon fodder for the wars THEIR future leaders are going to start.

Labels: abortion, hypocrisy, misogyny, Republican brownshirts, The Republican War on Women

I for one would love to see James C. McKinley spin this rape to "the bitch asked for it":

Two Memphis boys, aged 7 and 9, alleged to have raped a 2-year-old girl last August were placed in protective custody on Monday.

Shelby County Juvenile Court Magistrate Dan Michael turned the boys over to the state's Department of Children's Services after the prosecution asked that they be put in custody for treatment rather than punishment.

The boys' attorneys, James Sanders and Samuel Jones, had both asked that the boys be allowed to receive rehabilitative services from the state while in their own homes.

Sanders, who represents the 9-year-old, said there were "clearly no winners" in the situation.

"You've got a victim who certainly is going to probably bear the scars of this incident for years to come," he said.

"And you've got two young, alleged perpetrators who are going to have to carry the burden of this offense with them for years to come.

Wait. Maybe he wrote this Reuters story too. After all, the REAL victims of rape are the perpetrators, right?

Labels: hack journalism, misogyny, rape

Jill Filipovic writers over at RH Reality Check:

Dear Rep. Franklin,

I applaud your efforts to support the rights of zygote citizens of Georgia by criminalizing miscarriages and investigating every instance of fetal death as a potential crime. The bill you are trying to pass is clear that the Georgia State Assembly knows that life begins at the moment of conception, and that any fertilized egg that dies is a human death that we should all grieve. I couldn't agree more, and I would like to help.

As I'm sure you know, more than 50% of fertilized eggs --Georgia citizens! -- naturally don't implant, and are flushed out of the body during menstruation. I am personally concerned that my own murdering woman-body may have flushed out some human beings, and I may have flushed them down the toilet without knowing that I was disposing of Georgia citizens in such an undignified way. This must be remedied. I would like to be sure that I am not killing any more Georgia citizens -- and that if I am, they are able to receive a proper funeral and not a burial at sea, and that our state police can dedicate valuable time and resources to investigating their deaths.

To that end, I attach a picture of my latest used tampon. I am preserving this tampon, as well as all of my other tampons, pads, feminine hygiene products and soiled panties from my current menstrual cycle, so that the Georgia State Police can come collect them as evidence. I would also be happy to drop the specimens off at your office, should you want to examine them yourself.

Please let me know if I can make an appointment to give you these items. Or, since I appreciate that you are a very busy man, please let me know when the police will be by my home to collect them, as my next cycle is rapidly approaching and they are starting to smell. I cannot keep them in my refrigerator for much longer.

Thanks for all the work you do to further the pro-life cause.

Funny....disgusting...and I said it first -- in 2005, 2006, and last Saturday.

I call dibs.

Labels: batshit crazies, misogyny, reproductive rights, wingnuttia, womens rights

I've been saying for years that by the time Christofascist Zombie Brigade is done, you'll have to send your used tampons to the government for inspection to make sure there are no fertilized eggs in them.

Proposed legislation by Georgia state representative Bobby Franklin goes far beyond banning abortion:

According to this law, any human intervention other than delivering a living fetus is a crime. Every physician must make an equal effort to save the life of mother and fetus, but if the fetus does die after such an effort, it isn't a crime. It allows an exception for spontaneous abortion AKA miscarriage--but only if there is no human intervention involved.

That banging sound you hear is me beating my head against the stone wall of sheer stupidity.

It goes on to state that any attempt to remove a fetus from the mother except to facilitate a live birth is murder. The doctor MUST do everything to save the life of both fetus and mother, but if the fetus doesn't survive despite this, it's not a crime. Abortion is now a form of murder.

I can see so many issues with this bill.

There are situations where you can't save the life of both fetus and mother.

* What if the woman learns that she has cancer and must terminate the pregnancy in order to get treatment? No exception for that in this bill.

* What about a case where the woman is hemorrhaging, the bleeding can't be stopped and the doctor must save her and abort the fetus? No exception for that.

* What if she has a partial miscarriage, and is bleeding heavily. Must she wait until her body naturally ejects the dead fetus, even though carrying a dead fetus can lead to septic shock? Doesn't sound like there's an exception for that.

* What if it's an ectopic pregnancy? You cannot save the fetus and the mother in such a case.

* What if the woman is told she's carrying an anecephalic fetus with only a brain stem which will be non-viable outside the womb? Must she carry that fetus full-term?

It gets worse. Franklin wants to create a Uterus Police to investigate miscarriages, and requires that any time a miscarriage occurs, whether in a hospital or without medical assistance, it must be reported and a fetal death certificate issued. If the cause of death is unknown, it must be investigated. If the woman can't tell how it happened, than those Uterus Police can ask family members and friends how it happened. Hospitals are required to keep records of anyone who has a spontaneous abortion and report it. Yup, we've been waiting for someone to suggest this--and Franklin has.

Here is the bill, and here is the Uterus Police clause, from section 2.14:

Preparation and filing of reports of spontaneous fetal death shall be as follows:
(1) When a dead fetus is delivered in an institution, the person in charge of the institution or that person's designated representative shall prepare and file the report;
When a dead fetus is delivered outside an institution, the physician in attendance at or immediately after delivery shall prepare and file the report;
When a spontaneous fetal death required to be reported by this Code section occurs
211 without medical attendance at or immediately after the delivery or when inquiry is
212 required by Article 2 of Chapter 16 of Title 45, the 'Georgia Death Investigation Act,' the proper investigating official shall investigate the cause of fetal death and shall prepare and file the report within 30 days; and
(4) When a spontaneous fetal death occurs in a moving conveyance and the fetus is first removed from the conveyance in this state or when a dead fetus is found in this state and the place of fetal death is unknown, the fetal death shall be reported in this state. The place where the fetus was first removed from the conveyance or the dead fetus was found shall be considered the place of fetal death."

Just another dispatch from the Republican war on women.

Labels: fetophilia, misogyny, Republican men, wingnuttia, womens rights

California Rep. Jackie Speier vs. the sanctimonious, woman-hating Chris Smith of New Jersey:

Real women who have undergone abortions need to come forward. These men who would take away women's humanity and turn them into breeding machines who can be cast into the garbage, these men whose first priority is not creating jobs, or repairing our infrastructure, or ensuring that future children have some quality of life, but instead punishing people they believe to be nothing but dirty sluts, need to be called out on this.

Bravo, bravo, bravo to Rep. Speier.

Labels: misogyny, Republican men, womens rights

I'm not sure if I should be glad that I'm still shocked, because it means that I haven't completely sunk into a morass of utter cynicism and hopelessness. But even back before abortion was legal, men who would force women into childbearing weren't so open about their fear and loathing of women -- to the point of articulating that women are simply expendable vessels to be disposed of at will if it means "saving" even an unviable fetus:

The controversy over "forcible rape" may be over, but now there's a new Republican-sponsored abortion bill in the House that pro-choice folks say may be worse: this time around, the new language would allow hospitals to let a pregnant woman die rather than perform the abortion that would save her life.

The bill, known currently as H.R. 358 or the "Protect Life Act," would amend the 2010 health care reform law that would modify the way Obamacare deals with abortion coverage. Much of its language is modeled on the so-called Stupak Amendment, an anti-abortion provision pro-life Democrats attempted to insert into the reform law during the health care debate last year. But critics say a new language inserted into the bill just this week would go far beyond Stupak, allowing hospitals that receive federal funds but are opposed to abortions to turn away women in need of emergency pregnancy termination to save their lives.

The sponsor of H.R. 358, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) is a vocal member of the House's anti-abortion wing. A member of the bipartisan Pro-Life Caucus and a co-sponsor of H.R 3 -- the bill that added "forcible rape" to the lexicon this week -- Pitts is no stranger to the abortion debate. But pro-choice advocates say his new law goes farther than any other bill has in encroaching on the rights of women to obtain an abortion when their health is at stake. They say the bill is giant leap away from accepted law, and one they haven't heard many in the pro-life community openly discuss before.

Pitts' response to the complaints from pro-choice groups? Nothing to see here.

"Since the 1970s, existing law affirmed the right to refuse involvement in abortion in all circumstances," a spokesperson for Pitts told TPM.

"The Protect Life Act simply extends these provisions to the new law by inserting a provision that mirrors Hyde-Weldon," the spokesperson added, referring to current federal law banning spending on abortion and allowing anti-abortion doctors to refrain from performing them while still receiving federal funds. "In other words, this bill is only preserving the same rights that medical professionals have had for decades."

A bit of backstory: currently, all hospitals in America that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding are bound by a 1986 law known as EMTALA to provide emergency care to all comers, regardless of their ability to pay or other factors. Hospitals do not have to provide free care to everyone that arrives at their doorstep under EMTALA -- but they do have to stabilize them and provide them with emergency care without factoring in their ability to pay for it or not. If a hospital can't provide the care a patient needs, it is required to transfer that patient to a hospital that can, and the receiving hospital is required to accept that patient.

In the case of an anti-abortion hospital with a patient requiring an emergency abortion, ETMALA would require that hospital to perform it or transfer the patient to someone who can. (The nature of how that procedure works exactly is up in the air, with the ACLU calling on the federal government to state clearly that unwillingness to perform an abortion doesn't qualify as inability under EMTALA. That argument is ongoing, and the government has yet to weigh in.)

Pitts' new bill would free hospitals from any abortion requirement under EMTALA, meaning that medical providers who aren't willing to terminate pregnancies wouldn't have to -- nor would they have to facilitate a transfer.

The hospital could literally do nothing at all, pro-choice critics of Pitts' bill say.

"This is really out there," Donna Crane, policy director at NARAL Pro-Choice America told TPM. "I haven't seen this before."

Last month job creation was at an anemic 36,000. There is snow in Texas, there are floods and category 5 cyclones in Australia. Arctic ice is thinner than ever before. The Middle East is exploding. One in eight Americans needs food stamps to put food on the table. But all that Republican men care about is that the Evil Daughters of Eve be "punished" by forced continuation of pregnancies that will end up killing them -- so that they can deliver hopelessly deformed babies with no chance of survival. It's not about the babies. It's not about human life and it never was. Because these men do not see women as human. I've asked in the past at what point in the minds of these people when women cease to be human and become mere vessels. We now have our answer: It's always.

UPDATE: Best quote on this comes from, of all people, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs:

According to the “pro-life” GOP, an unborn fetus is a person — but a woman is not.

And there's more, from LGF and elsewhere:

Arkansas Anti-Choicers Reject Abortion Restriction Bill Because it Includes Exceptions for Rape and Incest

South Dakota Seeks to Force Women into Crisis Pregnancy Centers

Kansas House panel considers new abortion limits

And New Jerseyans who didn't think Chris Christie was going to shove his own religious beliefs into your homes, guess again: Abortion rights, in peril in New Jersey

Heh. If the Democrats had the slightest idea how to frame things, they'd call this bill the Human Sacrifice Encouragement Act of 2011.

Labels: abortion, health care, misogyny, reproductive rights, Republican brownshirts

Just as the Democratic Party exists so that we can delude ourselves that we have electoral choices, Republican women like Michele Bachmann, Sharron Angle, and Sarah Palin exist so that conservative women can delude themselves that the men in their party don't hate their guts.

Another shining representative from the "The Bitch Was Askin' For It" Party:

U.S. House Republicans have received a great deal of attention over the past week since seeking to qualify the crime of rape with the term “forcible” in a high-profile piece of legislation. Such a distinction could create classes of rape victims, with “forcible rape” victims somehow being ordained as worse off than victims of statutory rape, date rape, rape by coercion or deception, rape of the disabled or mentally impaired… You get the picture.

But what if rape victims could no longer be referred to as “victims” at all? What if people who have endured this horrible – and already chronically underreported -- crime could only be called “accusers”?

Georgia Republican state Rep. Bobby Franklin (of gold-standard-wannabe fame) has introduced a bill to change the state’s criminal codes so that in “criminal law and criminal procedure” (read: in court), victims of rape, stalking, and family violence could only be referred to as “accusers” until the defendant has been convicted.

Burglary victims are still victims. Assault victims are still victims. Fraud victims are still victims. But if you have the misfortune to suffer a rape, or if you are beaten by a domestic partner, or if you are stalked, Rep. Franklin doesn’t think you’ve been victimized. He says you’re an accuser until the courts have determined otherwise.

To diminish a victim’s ordeal by branding him/her an accuser essentially questions whether the crime committed against the victim is a crime at all. Robbery, assault, and fraud are all real crimes with real victims, the Republican asserts with this bill.

(Via Angry Black Lady. And yeah, what she said.)

Labels: assholes, fear and loathing, misogyny, rape

Here's how one Utah Republican lawmaker thinks his state should save a few bucks:

Under the theory that perhaps thousands of Utah college students are having babies paid for by Medicaid that they could pay for themselves, one lawmaker has a plan: cut all elective epidurals and elective C-sections.

Sen. Dan Liljenquist, R-Bountiful, has vowed massive Medicaid reform in next year's legislative session, and first on the list is people who may be freeloading. Medicaid pays for 15,000 births a year in Utah, a third of the total, Liljenquist says.

"Do we save some kid or make birth easier?" he said, noting that the waiting list for Medicaid in Utah just for the disabled has reached 4,400 people.

Liljenquist says the state could save millions. Epidurals, a shot given in the spine, are a common method of relieving pain during labor. At Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, 86 to 87 percent of women who deliver babies at the hospital get an epidural; studies show about 65 percent of births nationwide happen with an epidural.

Cesarean births have risen to nearly a third of all births nationwide and cost nearly double a vaginal birth. The average charge for a Cesarean delivery in Utah County in 2008 was $8,989, according to the Utah Department of Health. In 2008, the average cost of a vaginal birth in the county was $5,079, but that does not include an epidural.

On Wednesday, a group of senators including Liljenquist had an animated discussion about the matter after meeting informally on the Senate floor.

"These are 90 percent out-of-state students having babies on our dime," Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, told Liljenquist, referring to BYU students. Conservative lawmakers have been upset about anecdotal evidence of students with a Lexus and trust fund having a baby under Medicaid. They qualify because there may technically be no income.

Yeah. Let the dirty sluts writhe in pain. That'll teach them.

What kind of sick fucks is the Republican Pafrty putting into office these days, anyway? Between Louie Gomert standing on the floor of the House with his litany of sexual practices that most of us never even think about, or Man-on-Dog Santorum, or Lindsey Graham talking about illegal immigrant women coming her to "drop a child", the fear and loathing that Republican men have for women is indisputable. Given the private lives of all too many Republican legislators, what goes on in their heads about women is something I don't think any of us really want to know.

Labels: Greedy Republican Bastards, misogyny, sick motherfuckers

So it's official now: If you have a miscarriage in Utah, you can be subject to criminal investigation:

Gov. Gary Herbert signed into law Monday a bill that would allow a woman who arranges an illegal abortion to be charged with criminal homicide.

The new law is in response to a case last year where a 17-year-old pregnant girl paid a man $150 to beat her in hopes of inducing a miscarriage. A judge ruled there was no law on Utah's books allowing the mother to be charged with a crime.

The bill's original version drew national headlines because it allowed criminal charges if the mother's behavior was "reckless." That raised concerns that a mother who fell on the ice or was an avid jogger and suffered a miscarriage could be charged with a crime.

Herbert balked at signing that language and the bill's sponsor, Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, quickly revised the legislation to remove the word "reckless."

Herbert vetoed the original legislation, HB12, Monday -- his first veto as a governor -- and signed the revised version, HB462.

"I appreciate the willingness of Representative Wimmer to re-evaluate the impact of potential unintended consequences arising from the inclusion of 'reckless' behavior" in the original bill, Herbert wrote in his veto letter. "[The revised bill] is more consistent with the true intent of the legislation and addresses those situations in which the termination of a pregnancy is intentional and is not conducted at a physician's direction."

Let's say you're trying to quit smoking once you get pregnant, and you fall off the wagon. Or you have a glass of wine ONE night while out with friends. Or you're shoveling snow because, say, your husband just shipped out to Afghanistan. And then you have a miscarriage. None of these things can be construed as "reckless" (though for some purists, perhaps the glass of wine can), but all of them could subject you to criminal investigation as an "illegal abortion."

Between ten and twenty percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. The number of actual miscarriages, including those which happen before pregnancy is confirmed, brings the number up closer to 20-30%. This means that two to three in every 10 women who become pregnant will have a miscarriage, for a variety of reasons. In some ways, the legislation was better off before they deleted the word "reckless." Because now, any woman who becomes pregnant in Utah has to worry about miscarriage, not just because of the loss, but because a miscarriage in Utah now makes you a suspected criminal.

Still think they'll stop with abortion?

Labels: misogyny, wingnuttia

Nope. If you become pregnant in the state of Utah, you are no longer a human being; you are simply a vessel for a fetus. If you have a miscarriage, the onus will be on you to prove that you didn't act in a "reckless" way:

The Utah Senate has joined the House in allowing homicide charges against expectant mothers who arrange illegal abortions.

The bill responds to a case in which a Vernal woman allegedly paid a man $150 to beat her and cause miscarriage but could not be charged. The Senate on Thursday approved HB12 on a vote of 24-4, criminalizing a woman's "intentional, knowing, or reckless act" leading to a pregnancy's illegal termination. It specifies that a woman cannot be prosecuted for arranging a legal abortion.

The measure now goes to Gov. Gary Herbert for final action.

Some Senate Democrats attempted a last-minute amendment to remove the word "reckless" from the list of criminal acts leading to miscarriage. They argued that criminalizing reckless acts leaves open the possibility of prosecutions against domestic violence victims who return to their abusers only to be beaten and lose the child.

"It's part of the cycle of domestic violence," said Sen. Luz Robles, D-Salt Lake City.

"I hope none of you ever have to face that situation," she said after realizing the majority would pass the bill as is, "or have a daughter facing that situation, or a granddaughter."

But the bill's sponsor, Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, said the bill doesn't target victims at all -- only those who arrange to terminate their pregnancies illegally.

"I know it's well-intentioned," Dayton said of the attempt to lift "reckless acts" from the bill, "but I don't think we want to go down the road of carefully defining the behavior of a woman."

Except that's exactly what this bill does. It gives the state the power to decide, on a case-by-case basis, what constitutes "reckless behavior". It completely removes a pregnant woman's autonomy over her own body, deletes her humanity and turns her into an incubator. I wonder what this law would have done with someone who gets on an airplane after her water breaks, flies 4 hours, gets on another plane and flies more hours, then drives more hours and hours to get to a hospital. Would that then be reckless behavior then, Father?

If you still think the fetophiles are just about Teh BAYBEEEZZZZZZZZZZZZZ, think about how this legislation turns pregnant women into automatons and presumes that they are criminals. Then see if you still believe this is about anything other than hatred of women.

And stay the hell out of Utah if you want to be regarded as human.

(via)

Labels: abortion, just another outrage, misogyny, wingnuttia

It isn't just abortion that isn't covered, it's just about everything having to do with women's health care:

None of the bills emerging from the House and Senate require insurers to cover all the elements of a standard gynecological "well visit," leaving essential care such as pelvic exams, domestic violence screening, counseling about sexually transmitted diseases, and, perhaps most startlingly, the provision of birth control off the list of basic benefits all insurers must cover. Nor are these services protected from "cost sharing," which means that, depending on what's in the bill that emerges from the Senate, and, later, the contents of a final bill, women could wind up having to pay for some of these services out of their own pockets. So far, mammograms and Pap tests are covered in every version of the legislation.

Granted, Congress can't--and shouldn't--get into the business of spelling out every possible cause for a trip to the doctor. No one wants the process to collapse under a mountain of requests from special interest groups à la the Clinton mess in 1993. But women, half of all adult patients, are not a special interest group. And since both the House and Senate bills include lists of specific services that must be covered by health insurance companies and be provided without asking patients for additional money, it's hard to understand why all the services provided in a basic well-woman visit to the gynecologist isn't on them along with maternity care, newborn care, pediatric dental and vision services, and substance use disorder services.

The fault for the initial omission can be laid at the feet of Democrats, who shied away from the issue, not wanting to invite controversy, according to women's health advocates who tried unsuccessfully to get women's preventive health care included in the basic benefits package. Some of the concern had to do with cost. Adding any required service to the basic benefits package would mean the Congressional Budget Office would give the bill a higher score, or price tag, leaving it more vulnerable to attack by budget hawks. But another part of the problem clearly stems from the fact that women's bodies have become political lightening rods, even when abortion is not the issue.

Because after all, if we aren't producing babies for the Christofascist Zombie Brigade, they'd just as soon we all just FOAD.

(via...)

Labels: Democratic sellouts, just another outrage, misogyny

That Republicans hate women is no secret. Between "scarlet letter" abortion laws like the one in Oklahoma, thankfully stopped by the courts, the New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate calling young women with breast cancer "exceptions", and current health insurance company policies that regard rape as a pre-exisitng condition, you'd be hard-pressed to justify why the continuation of the current system is a good thing. And yet, Republicans do. Whether it's simply a matter of wanting to destroy Barack Obama for cheap political gain, or a function of their deep-seated fear and loathing of women remains to be seen. But there comes a point where their loathing of health care reform and their loathing of women hits the wall of their simultaneous Babies über Alles doctrine.

And here it is:

So at the same time as Republicans oppose the idea that women should be able to decide not to reproduce if they don't want to, it's perfectly OK for insurance companies to withhold coverage unless women are sterilized.

And this makes sense to anyone?

Labels: health care, misogyny, Republicans