How Women’s Health and Social Media Won 2012: Retrospective
“Gentleman and ladies, your hard work paid off. Tonight we demonstrated to the other party what happens when you sneer at rape survivors, birth control and equal pay for equal work.”
By all accounts, it shouldn’t have ended like this. The president running for re-election was supposed to be an enemy of American values, waging the real “war on women” by giving out free contraception on street corners, encouraging girls to become sex objects by sleeping with hundreds of men and covering themselves in venereal disease, having abortion after abortion as their birth control inevitably failed them, until they no longer had any respect for their own bodies or lives – thus destroying the Christian work ethic that once made America’s economy great. And that was on top of Obama’s takeover of healthcare, bailouts for the billion-dollar abortion industry, and attacks on religious institutions that believe they have a right to discriminate against the healthcare of female employees.
...read morePlanned Parenthood, like, totally stole pink. It was so wrong.
Karen Handel, once senior vice president for public policy for the Komen Foundation during the Planned Parenthood defunding controversy, has accused Planned Parenthood of stealing… pink. She made the accusation to the Family Research Council at an event promoting her new book, cleverly and succinctly titled Planned Bullyhood: The Truth Behind the Headlines about the Planned Parenthood Funding Battle with Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
...read moreSelfish singles are good for society.
My latest in the Guardian is about that “Rise of Post-Familialism” study that has everyone in a tizzy, panicking that Western nations are facing a baby-shortage and selfish, indulgent single people are ruining the world. I take the position that the very things the study and conservative commentators brand as “selfish” are actually just smart, and the logical responses to both social progress and continued constraint. It’s one of my favorite columns so far, so I hope you’ll read the whole thing. A bit of it:
...read moreBut the moral case against individualism and choice doesn’t have legs. It’s a moral good when people have a wide array of choices and increased personal freedom – not just for the individual, but also for children, family and society. And the evidence backs that up.
Will older parenthood upend society?
There are so very many things to say about this article and so little time to say them. But: I do think it’s valuable to discuss the reality of fertility and age-related health issues. Certainly an uptick in diagnoses of things like ADHD, autism, etc have contributed to their soaring rates, but there may also be environmental factors, including fertility treatments and older parents. And we know that chromosomal abnormalities are significantly more common in pregnancies conceived by older people. It is important to talk about all of that. At the same time, there are myriad benefits to having children later. Children of older parents tend to do better in school. Older parents tend to spend more time (and more quality time) with their kids. Children born to older parents are more likely to be raised in economically stable households with lower divorce rates. Those are all good things, and unsurprising — on average, adults make better parents than people who are barely adults, whose brains haven’t finished fully developing, who lack life experience, and who lack stability in their job, relationship and finances.
...read moreUN Disability Treaty Fails in Senate Because of “Pro-Life” Senators
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was put up for a vote in the U.S. Senate today, and despite being largely uncontroversial, it failed. Why? Pro-lifers.
...read moreBring the binders full of men!
When I was a kid, grownups would tell me, “Only prostitutes need to be on birth control.” As I grew older, I saw these kinds of people being elected to office. By the time I came to university, they were openly waging war on women’s contraceptive rights, lecturing us on how rape survivors don’t need abortion access because you can’t get pregnant through “legitimate rape.”
Well, last week, two-thirds of women our age rose up and voted these creeps out of office – and elected a record number of women. Next year they’ll make up 20 percent of the Senate. One of them is openly lesbian. As a sibling to an LGBT sister, I almost cried when I heard that.
...read moreHow Many More Women Like Savita Halappanavar Should We Tolerate?
That’s what Feministe friend Soraya Chemaly is asking over at the Huffington Post. Check it out.
...read moreHere’s what happens when women are refused abortions.
They’re poorer. They’re less likely to leave abusive relationships. Their health suffers. In other words, women who don’t want to continue pregnancies probably know their own lives better than politicians.
...read moreWoman dies after being refused medically necessary abortion
“This is a Catholic country” was what Irish doctors told Savita Halappanavar after she learned she was miscarrying her pregnancy and asked for an abortion to avoid further complications. She spent three days in agonizing pain, eventually shaking, vomiting and passing out. She again asked for an abortion and was refused, because the fetus still had a heartbeat.
Then she died.
...read moreHow Did Republican Rape Philosophers Do Last Night?
Let’s take a look!
...read moreThe real Republican rape platform
My latest on Mourdock, Republicans and rape in the Guardian:
...read moreSome Republicans, like Mitt Romney, have tried to distance themselves from their party’s rhetorical obsession with sexual violation. What they’re hoping we won’t notice is the fact that their party is politically committed to sexual violation.
Pregnancy caused by rape is a gift, ladies, so say thank you!
Can Republicans stop talking about rape now? Or maybe keep talking, so we know what they really think?
...read more
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