Facts, myths, and blankety-blank lies about Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen Foundation
As the furor over Komen’s de-funding of Planned Parenthood continues, more and more myths about PP, its mission, and the impact of this cruel and foolish decision are getting thrown around. Frequently, those myths get lost and go uncorrected in the presence of bigger and more ideological arguments.
That’s really not fair.
Alas, this is merely the tip of the bullshit iceberg. As the Komen debacle is nowhere near coming to an end, we can expect new and exciting myths and lies to arise, like the head of a Hydra, as others are debunked. To that end, watch this space, and by all means contribute your own debunkings in comments.
...read moreWomen refuses to give raped daughter EC, brags about it on internet.
Ah, the kindness of pro-lifers: [trigger warning]
...read moreMy Dark-Haired Daughter, who suffers from bipolar disorder and limited cognitive abilities, went missing last Monday. For more than 48 hours, we had no idea where she was. Without all the gruesome details, after she was found, it came to light that she’d been brutally and repeatedly sexually assaulted. She’d been taken to the local women’s shelter, where (at least in our area) they do the exams in such cases.
More on Komen and Planned Parenthood
...read moreThe truth is that anti-Planned-Parenthood sentiments aren’t about abortion; they’re about hostility to women, and particularly to female sexuality. Abortion makes up 3% of its services. Cancer screening and prevention are 17%.
Birth Control: Kind of Like Pork Chops
“Pro-life” Catholic colleges are all salty about a new law requiring insurance plans to cover birth control. Because even though 98% of Catholic women will use contraception at some point in their lives, male Catholic leaders have decided that a baby is a gift from God and expecting insurance providers to cover birth control is like expecting pork to be served at a Jewish barbeque:
...read moreHeading Toward Menopause, Still Caring About Abortion
By Andrea Plaid, cross-posted at On The Issues Magazine I’m not an aberration because I’m a childless, employed, divorced, college-educated Black cisgender woman — regardless of what the promulgated stereotypes undergirding the media stories about women like me say. At this point in my life — I’m in my early 40s –I’m drumming my fingers [...]
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Filming Against Odds: Undocumented Youth “Come Out” With Their Dreams
By Anne Galisky, cross-posted at On The Issues Magazine.
“Papers”is the story of undocumented youth and the challenges they face as they turn 18 without legal status. More than two million undocumented children live in the U.S. today, most with no path to obtain citizenship. These are youth who were born outside the U.S. and yet know only the U.S. as home. The film highlights five undocumented youth who are “American” in every sense but their legal paperwork.
...read morePersonhood Amendments and the Pro-Life Long Game
I’m writing in the Guardian today about the real purpose of personhood amendments. A taste: Pro-lifers don’t actually believe that a fertilised egg is the moral equivalent of a newborn baby – if they did, there would certainly be major pushes for research on why more than half of all these cellular human beings are [...]
...read moreCommon Sense Time.
So Congressional GOP members want to extend Mississippi’s asinine personhood amendment to the whole country. Caperton wrote about the Mississippi bill, and detailed many of the ridiculous ways it will interfere with basic rights — one of the goals of the bill is to outlaw many forms of birth control, and it will undoubtedly be [...]
...read moreThe Female of the Species*
Through some miracle of the Fates, I had not one but two male teachers in high school who happened to discuss women’s issues on the same day. One of them, an aging hippie who had us read Hemingway but who gently nudged us to consider Hemingway’s treatment of his leading ladies, referred to the characters [...]
...read moreThe Politics of “Hello”
One of the stumbling blocks I repeatedly have over discussions of street harassment is that much of the time, on paper, it’s doesn’t look like harassment. Hell, much of the time what makes me uncomfortable isn’t harassment. Much of the time, what makes me uncomfortable is hello. Hello doesn’t get a lot of attention in [...]
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Welcome to the Dollhouse: Men and Beauty Products
Back when pretty much the only men wearing makeup were either rock lords or Boy George, I privately came up with the guideline that if any particular piece of grooming was something women generally performed while men generally didn’t, I could safely consider it “beauty work.” Nail polish and leg-shaving? Beauty work. Nail-trimming and hair-combing? [...]
...read moreBanning abortion after 20 weeks
An excellent article in the Times about the push to ban abortion after 20 weeks, and how bans are based on mostly made-up “facts” about fetal pain but pro-choice groups can’t fight them because the current Supreme Court is fairly hostile to abortion rights. As a result, women aren’t able to get abortions when they [...]
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