Culture Of Life

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 more

Women refuses to give raped daughter EC, brags about it on internet.

Ah, the kindness of pro-lifers: [trigger warning]

My 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.

...read more

More on Komen and Planned Parenthood

I have a short op/ed in the New York Daily News about the Komen Foundation’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood:

The 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%.

...read more

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 more
Official "Papers" Poster.

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 more

Personhood 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 more

Common 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 more

The 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 more
Welcome to the Dollhouse: Men and Beauty Products

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 more

Banning 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 [...]

...read more