Reproductive Rights

Required Reading

This column by Frank Bruni on religion, morality, abortion and life as life truly is.

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AZ legislator would like to make women watch abortions before they can have them.

When I was about 10, I was visiting my grandparents in Chicago and for some reason I still do not understand, they played us a video of my grandpa’s cataract surgery. It was a close-up of my grandpa’s eye, and then the eye got sliced into, and then a little vacuum thing went in and oh god I won’t get any more detailed but it was horrific and psychologically scarring. Anything eye-injury-related still freaks me out (even more, I suppose, than the standard amount of freaked-out normally associated with eye-related injuries).

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Because those poor little men can’t be trusted to make their own decisions

I realize that Monday’s post about anti-woman bills was rather the downer. As an apology, today I thought it might be time to highlight some more… positive legislation.

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There’s actually a lot of competition for “worst state” for women’s health

Several commenters have noted that calling Arizona the “worst state in the union” is kind of unfair, since a state is more than simply the sum of its legislation. And it’s true. The fact is, right now, pretty much every state is just waiting to top the next most offensive offense. And here’s what we’re up against:

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A Conservative Argument for Birth Control

Conservatives like to say that they care about saving money, right? And that “Obamacare” is going to bankrupt the nation, the way that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security apparently already are? Well here’s a great way to save $1.32 billion annually: Fund birth control.

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“I personally prefer the classic term ‘strumpet’.”

So Rush Limbaugh calls a Georgetown law student a slut and a prostitute for having the audacity to talk about birth control, and when pressed to respond Mitt Romney simply says, “It’s not the language I would have used.” Very cool. Very principled!

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Absolute Truths

This piece by Emily Rapp about reproductive choice and pre-natal testing is a must-read:

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“I Use Injectables”

Whitney Davis, 18, could have been part of a startling statistic: by the age of 19, nearly 60 percent of all women in Liberia have started childbearing. However, Whitney doesn’t intend to add to this childbearing statistic. “I am on family planning,” she says. “I use injectables.”

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Virgina Rape Law

A proposed law in Virgina requires women to have ultrasounds before terminating pregnancies. Since most abortions occur in the first trimester, and since ultrasounds done before 12 are usually transvaginal, that means that the state of Virginia is effectively requiring women to be vaginally penetrated against their will. And that’s rape.

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Pic of the Day

Sometimes a picture really does say a thousand words.

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Shockingly, Catholic Bishops’ hostility to birth control is not about religious liberty.

Last week, the Obama administration instituted a new rule requiring institutions to provide birth control for their employees, with exceptions for primarily religious institutions — they didn’t have to provide birth control if it violated their conscience. Seems like a good compromise, right?

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We must have as much sex as possible.

A brilliant Democrat in Oklahoma has tagged an amendment onto her state’s proposed Personhood law, making sure that the government doesn’t just intrude into women’s reproductive lives, but men’s as well:

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