The War On Abortion And Women's Rights

[formergothardite]

If they are so upset about innocent babies getting killed maybe they should use the thoughts and prayers they use when innocent children are gunned down. 

[fraurosena]

15 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

If they are so upset about innocent babies getting killed maybe they should use the thoughts and prayers they use when innocent children are gunned down. 

They should also do something about their appalling infant mortality rates.

States with the worst anti-abortion laws also have the worst infant mortality rates

Quote

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since it’s a relationship that’s been known for years, but the states with the harshest restrictions on abortions also have the worst infant mortality rates.

The correspondence is unmistakable, and not hard to explain: Those states’ governments also show the least concern for maternal and infant health in general, as represented by public policies.

Advocates of women’s healthcare rights moved promptly to issue reminders of the connection Tuesday, after the Republican-dominated Alabama Legislature passed the most draconian anti-abortion bill in the nation. Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the measure Wednesday.

Alabama is one of two states, with Georgia, that enacted new abortion restrictions over the last week. Their records on maternal and infant health are shameful. Alabama is tied for fourth-worst place in infant mortality, with a rate of 7.4 deaths per 1,000 live births. Georgia, with a rate of 7.2, is tied for seventh-worst.

“In a state that has some of the worst health outcomes for women in the nation—such as the highest rate of cervical cancer -- Alabama is putting women’s lives at an even greater risk,” said Leana Wen, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

Of the 12 states ranked highest in infant mortality rates, all with rates of 7.0 or higher, 11 are described by the abortion rights organization NARAL as imposing “severely restricted access” on abortions. The one exception, West Virginia, is listed as having “restricted access,” a notch better. But NARAL reports that 90% of women in the state live in counties without a single abortion clinic.

By contrast, of the four states with the best infant mortality rates, all at 4.2 or better—California and Washington offer “strongly protected access,” NARAL says, and New Hampshire and Massachusetts “some access.” But access to abortion clinics in all four is strong—only 5% of women in California live in a county without a single clinic, followed by 14% in Massachusetts, 15% in Washington and 30% in New Hampshire.

These statistics should give the lie to legislators’ arguments that their anti-abortion measures are somehow good for women’s health or aimed at protecting their rights. A 2017 study by the Center for Reproductive Rights and Ibis Reproductive Health, a healthcare think tank, found that hostility to reproductive rights tended to go hand-in-hand with a lack of state-level policies supporting women’s and infant health.

States with the largest number of abortion restrictions such as mandatory waiting periods, counseling and ultrasounds; restrictions on insurance coverage for abortions in public or private health plans; and unnecessary standards on ambulatory abortion clinics tended to have the fewest number of supportive policies, the survey found. Those included Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act; family leave; sex- and HIV education programs; and good access to children’s health insurance programs.

Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and South Carolina all topped out with 14 of the 14 abortion restrictions tracked by the researchers; all also offered 11 or fewer of the 24 supportive policies identified by the researchers.

To take just one of those policies, seven of the 12 states with highest infant mortality have refused to expand Medicaid. Of the others, Indiana and Louisiana approved their expansion late (after Jan. 1, 2014, the earliest date for expansion) and three, including Ohio, have implemented it with restrictions such as work requirements or premiums.

Experts have connected the dots between abortion restrictions and maternal and infant health problems. Limits on access to legal abortions can prompt women to choose unsafe alternatives. Indeed, the reported rate of maternal deaths in Texas soared from 72 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2010 to 148 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2012, a trend that some experts attributed to the state’s closing of abortion clinics and cuts in funding for Planned Parenthood and other family planning services during the same period.

Unintended pregnancies, moreover, tend to be associated with poor health for women and their children, an unsurprising development among households with unwanted children.

The restrictions also have economic and racial components, for low-income and minority women face difficulties in accessing healthcare even under ideal conditions. The restrictions tend to fall heaviest on them.

These findings add a disturbing perspective to the measures in Georgia and Alabama. Both have elements of unexampled cruelty and malevolence toward women by criminalizing their choices in family planning. Alabama’s measure is so restrictive it effectively bans all abortions. The health profiles of women and children in those states, already among the most dismal in the nation, are about to get worse.

 

Edited May 17, 2019 by fraurosena
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[fraurosena]

Cory Booker is being quite vocal on this issue. I haven't seen much from the other male candidates yet.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sadly, this is another case where The Onion could be actual news:

 

[Ozlsn]

Missouri lawmaker says most of the rapes he's investigated were 'consensual'.

Fuck this guy. Seriously just fuck this guy. He should not be working as either a police officer or be making laws as he quite obviously doesn't understand the definition of "rape" and apparently believes that going on a date indicates a woman is available for sex.

Please, please can you just vote all these fuckwits out and replace them with people with a brain and some degree of compassion? 

What I would like to see - what I would really, really like to see is all these entitled arrogant smug men replaced by women at the next election. Every. Damn. One. I would like all the legislatures in the states passing this bullshit legislation to be female majority. And then I would like some fucking sensible legislation to be passed, particularly around health and public safety. 

Yes I am probably dreaming. But please, anyone who is eligible, get out and vote these fuckwits out.

And any other Australians out there - today is the election, if you haven't already voted (pre-polling's been goung for 3 weeks, about 20% have already voted) then please put the godawful vanity and microparties as low as possible and get the current Senate and Upper House morons out. And please number all the damn boxes above the Senate vote line, no matter what they say!!

(Seriously this is the first election where I am struggling to workout who will go bottom of the Senate vote because there are so many awful parties out there.)

 

[JMarie]

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/wendy-vitter-abortion

Quote

Probably with the fact that Vitter, who has been general counsel for the Archdiocese of New Orleans since 2012, seemingly believes that abortion causes breast cancer. At a conference in 2013, Vitter referred to a brochure that linked abortions to breast cancer, and told the audience, “Go to Dr. Angela’s Web site, Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, download it, and, at your next physical, you walk into your pro-life doctor and say, ‘Have you thought about putting these facts or this brochure in your waiting room?’ Each one of you can be the pro-life advocate to take that next step. That’s what you do with it.” That same brochure that Vitter appeared to endorse claimed that taking birth control can lead to cervical and liver cancers, and “violent death,” because “women who take oral contraceptives prefer men with similar DNA, and that women in these partnerships have fewer sexual relations, leading to more adultery, and ‘understandably . . . violence.’” Separately, Vitter appeared at an anti-Planned Parenthood rally, where she accused the group of “kill[ing] over 150,000 females a year.” Naturally, she left these activities off her disclosure form to the Senate  Judiciary Committee.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

One of the replies to AOC is perfect:

[fraurosena]

Beware women's rage.

 

 

[Ozlsn]

Texas fails to pass a bill that would have allowed women to face the death penalty for having an abortion.

"State Rep. Tony Tinderholt, a Republican, first introduced the bill in 2017, and again this year. 

..

"Tinderholt told the Texas Observer the bill is meant to "force" women to be "more personally responsible with sex."

"Right now, it’s real easy. Right now, they don’t make it important to be personally responsible because they know that they have a backup of ‘oh, I can just go get an abortion," Tinderholt said."

And the penalty for the man contributing to the unwanted pregnancy would be..?

[fraurosena]

 

[AmericanRose]

I just got into a... um, 'discussion' with someone on my acting teacher's FB.

At this point, I don't think men even know what pregnancy and abortion are. It's just things for women to deal with and for men to legislate. ?

[PsyD2013]

The male fuckwits & behind restrictive abortion laws,  naively think that making abortion illegal will end abortion.  Women will die when they are forced to seek out unsafe methods of terminating  a pregnancy.   The fuckwits fail to acknowledge that pregnancies have been terminated for centuries.   Abortion services were even advertised in 19th century newspapers- an era fondly remembered for family values by Lady Lydia and company.

 

https://lewiscar.sites.grinnell.edu/HistoryofMedicine/uncategorized/read-all-about-it-the-debate-over-abortion-in-the-nineteenth-century-american-press/

 

[Briefly]

On 5/16/2019 at 10:23 AM, Audrey2 said:

I've read about the use of slippery elm and tansy tea in historical novels. I'm appalled that they will be used again 

If that is "all" that is used, it will be surprising.  All that making it illegal will do is drive women to what used to be called back-alley abortions.  I have seen wearing a tiny clothes hanger lapel pin used as a protest in the past.  That is a symbol for a reason.

On 5/16/2019 at 11:05 PM, Ozlsn said:

If they gave a shit then they would have approved the Medicaid expansions, introduced gun regulation, increased welfare and maternity leave payments and the bills would contain increases in funding for medical care for pregnant women and children.

They care about the unborn, the born can suffer as far as they're concerned.

They won't approve medicaid expansions, etc., because those are so often seen as being minority issues.  The stereotype of the women of color being welfare queens as an example.  Almost any time I have seen/heard someone referencing welfare abuse, it's not white persons.  It's almost always women and never white ones.

[Briefly]

12 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

Texas fails to pass a bill that would have allowed women to face the death penalty for having an abortion.

"State Rep. Tony Tinderholt, a Republican, first introduced the bill in 2017, and again this year. 

..

"Tinderholt told the Texas Observer the bill is meant to "force" women to be "more personally responsible with sex."

"Right now, it’s real easy. Right now, they don’t make it important to be personally responsible because they know that they have a backup of ‘oh, I can just go get an abortion," Tinderholt said."

And the penalty for the man contributing to the unwanted pregnancy would be..?

That type of bill was proposed in Oklahoma recently.  What really scared me was that there were a lot of women who were in favor of it.

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm not usually a fan of Leslie Jones, but she's great in this:

 

[JillyO]

Mayor Pete tells it like it is:

Of the male presidential candidates, this is so far the most outspokenly pro-choice position I've seen. Make sure to watch the entire video, as most clips online only have the first half.

[pook]

Meanwhile in Canada:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/oosterhoff-abortion-1.5129494

Niagara West MPP Sam Oosterhoff pledged at an anti-abortion rally in Toronto Thursday to make abortion "unthinkable." 

"I'm pro-life. I believe children should be allowed to live, no matter how small they are," said Oosterhoff.

"We have survived 50 years of abortion in Canada and we pledge to fight to make abortion unthinkable in our lifetime."

Note:  Mr. Oosterhoff was homeschooled and raised by what is being described as quiverful parents.  He is 21 and engaged to a woman he met at church who of course has the same views.

Edited May 20, 2019 by pook

[laPapessaGiovanna]

12 minutes ago, pook said:

Meanwhile in Canada:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/oosterhoff-abortion-1.5129494

What an arrogant and pompous arsehole! How can a sanctimonious 21yo twit think he knows better than women about their life choices? What a smug prick!

[pook]

20 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

What an arrogant and pompous arsehole! How can a sanctimonious 21yo twit think he knows better than women about their life choices? What a smug prick!

You will be glad to hear that this happened...

https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/2019/05/18/handmaid-protesters-confront-mpp-sam-oosterhoff-over-reproductive-rights.html

"Inadvertently or not, it appears Sam Oosterhoff has raised an army.

And that army, many dressed in the red cloak uniform inspired by the recent adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, made a show of strength Saturday at what might otherwise have been a quiet community coffee event held by the Progressive Conservative MPP at the Grimsby branch of the Royal Canadian Legion."

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good piece by Rebecca Traister: "Our Fury Over Abortion Was Dismissed for Decades As Hysterical"

Spoiler

I have been thinking, like so many people this week, about rage. Who I’m mad at, what that anger’s good for, how what makes me maddest is the way the madness has long gone unrespected, even by those who have relied on it for their gains.

For as long as I have been a cogent adult, and actually before that, I have watched people devote their lives, their furious energies, to fighting against the steady, merciless, punitive erosion of reproductive rights. And I have watched as politicians — not just on the right, but members of my own party — and the writers and pundits who cover them, treat reproductive rights and justice advocates as if they were fantasists enacting dystopian fiction.

This week, the most aggressive abortion bans since Roe v. Wade swept through states, explicitly designed to challenge and ultimately reverse Roe at the Supreme Court level. With them has come the dawning of a broad realization — a clear, bright, detailed vision of what’s at stake, and what’s ahead. (If not, yet, full comprehension of the harm that has already been done).

As it comes into view, I am of course livid at the Republican Party that has been working toward this for decades. These right-wing ghouls — who fulminate idiotically about how women could still be allowed to get abortions before they know they are pregnant (Alabama’s Clyde Chambliss) or try to legislate the medically impossible removal of ectopic pregnancy and reimplantation into the uterus (Ohio’s John Becker) — are the stuff of unimaginably gothic horror. Ever since Roe was decided in 1973, conservatives have been laboring to roll back abortion access, with absolutely zero knowlege of or interest in how reproduction works. And all the while, those who have been trying to sound the alarm have been shooed off as silly hysterics.

Which is why I am almost as mad at many on the left, theoretically on the side of reproductive rights and justice, who have refused, somehow, to see this coming or act aggressively to forestall it. I have no small amount of rage stored for those in the Democratic Party who have relied on the engaged fury of voters committed to reproductive autonomy to elect them, at the same time that they have treated the efforts of activists trying to stave off this future as inconvenient irritants.

This includes, of course, the Democrats (notably Joe Biden) who long supported the Hyde Amendment, the legislative rider that has barred the use of federal insurance programs from paying for abortion, making reproductive health care inaccessible to poor women since 1976. During health-care reform, Barack Obama referred to Hyde as a “tradition” and questions of abortion access as “a distraction.” I’ve spent my life listening to Democrats call abortion a niche issue — and worse, one that is somehow repellent to voters, even though support for Roe is in fact among the most broadly popular positions of the Democratic Party; seven in ten Americans want abortion to remain legal, even in conservative states.

You can try to tell these Democrats this — lots of people have been trying to tell them for a while now — but it won’t matter; they will only explain to you (a furious person) that they (calm, wise, knowledgeable about politics) understand that we need a big tent and can’t have a litmus test and please be reasonable: we shouldn’t shut anyone out because of a difference on one issue. (That one issue that we shouldn’t shut people out because of is always abortion). Every single time Democrats come up with a new strategy to win purple and red areas, it is the same strategy: hey, let’s jettison abortion! (If you object to this, you will be told you are standing in the way of the greater progressive project).

I grew up in Pennsylvania, governed by anti-abortion Democrat Bob Casey Sr.; his son Bob Jr. is Pennsylvania’s senior senator now, and though he’s getting better on abortion, Jr. voted, in 2015 and 2018, for 20-week abortion bans. Maybe my rage stems from being raised with this particularly grim perspective on Democratic politics: dynasties of white men united in their dedication to restricting women’s bodily autonomy, but they’re Democrats so who else are you going to vote for? Which reminds me of Dan Lipinski, the virulently anti-abortion Democratic congressman — whose anti-abortion dad held his seat before him. The current DCCC leader, Cheri Bustos, is holding a big-dollar fundraiser for Lipinski’s reelection campaign, even though it’s 2019 and abortion is being banned and providers threatened with more jail time than rapists and there is someone else to vote for: Lipinski is being challenged in a primary by pro-choice progressive Democrat Marie Newman. And still, Bustos, a powerful woman and Democratic leader, is helping anti-choice Lipinski keep his seat for an eighth term. So I’ve been thinking about that part of my anger too.

Also about how, for years, I’ve listened to Democratic politicians distance themselves from abortion by calling it tragic and insisting it should be rare, instead of simply acknowledging it to be a crucial, legal cornerstone of comprehensive health care for women, people with uteruses, and their families. I have seethed as generations of Democrats have argued that if we could just get past abortion and focus instead on economic issues, we’d be better off. They never seem to get that abortion is an economic issue, and that what they think of as economic issues — from wages and health care to housing and education policy — are at the very heart of the reproductive justice movement, which understands access to abortion to be one (pivotal!) part of a far broader set of circumstances that determine if, when, under what circumstances, and with what resources human beings might have and raise children.

And no, of course it’s not just Democrats I’m mad at. It’s the pundits who approach abortion law as armchair coaches. I can’t do better in my fury on this front than the legal writer Scott Lemieux, who in 2007 wrote a blistering rundown of all the legal and political wags, including Ben Wittes and Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Cohen and William Saletan, then making arguments, some too cute by half, about how Roe was ultimately bad for abortion rights and for Democrats. Some like to cite an oft-distorted opinion put forth by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has said that she wished the basis on which Roe was decided had included a more robust defense of women’s equality. Retroactive strategic chin-stroking about Roe is mostly moot, given the decades of intervening cases and that the fight against abortion is not about process but about the conviction that women should not control their own reproduction. It is also true that Ginsburg has been doing the work of aggressively defending reproductive rights for decades, while these pundits have treated them as a parlor game. As Lemieux put it then, it was unsurprising, “given the extent to which affluent men safely ensconced in liberal urban centers dominate the liberal pundit class,” that the arguments put forth, “greatly understate or ignore the stark class and geographic inequites in abortion access that would inevitably manifest themselves in a post-Roe world.”

Or, for that matter, that had already manifested themselves in a Roe world.

Because long before these new bans — which will meet years of legal challenge before they are enacted — abortion had grown ever less accessible to segments of America, though not the segments that the affluent men (and women) who write about and practice politics tend to emerge from. But yes, thanks to Hyde and the TRAP laws and the closed clinics and the long travel distances and paucity of providers and the economically untenable waiting periods, legions of women have already suffered, died, had children against their will, while columnists and political consultants have bantered about the necessity of Roe, and litmus tests and big tents. In vast portions of this country, Roe might as well not exist already.

And still those who are mad about, have been driven mad by, these injustices have been told that their fury is baseless, fictional, made of chewing gum and recycled copies of Our Bodies Ourselves. Last summer, the day before Anthony Kennedy announced his resignation from the Supreme Court, CNN host Brian Stelter tweeted, in response to a liberal activist, “We are not ‘a few steps from The Handmaids’ Tale.’ I don’t think this kind of fear-mongering helps anybody.” When protesters shouted at Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings a few weeks later, knowing full well what was about to happen and what it portended for Roe, Senator Ben Sasse condescended and lied to them, claiming that there have been “screaming protesters saying ‘women are going to die’ at every hearing for decades” and suggesting that this response was a form of “hysteria.”

It was the kind of dishonesty — issued from on high, from one of those Republicans who has inexplicably earned a reputation for being “reasonable” and “smart,” and who has enormous power over our future — that makes you want to pull the hair from your head and go screaming through the streets except someone would just tell you you were being hysterical.

And so here we are, the thing is happening and no one can pretend otherwise; it is not a game or a drill and those for whom the consequences — long real for millions whose warnings and peril have gone unheeded — are only now coming into focus want to know: what can be done?

First, never again let anyone tell you that the fury or determination to fight on this account is invalid, inappropriate, or inconvenient to a broader message. Consider that this is also what women and marginalized people are told all the time about their anger in general: that they should not express it, not let it out, because to give voice to their rage will distract from their aims, undermine them; that it will ultimately be bad for them. This messaging is strategic. It is designed to get angry people to keep their mouths shut. Because if they are successfully stifled, they will remain at the margins, isolated, alone in their fury. It is only if they start letting it out and acting on it and working in tandem with others who share their outrage that they might begin to form networks, coalitions, the building blocks of movements; it is when the anger is let loose that the organizing happens in earnest.

Second, seek the organizing that is already underway. In the days since this new round of state abortion bans have begun to pass and make headlines, secret Facebook groups have begun to form, in which freshly furious women have begun to talk of forming networks that would help patients evade barriers to access. Yet these organizations already exist, are founded and run by women of color, have long been transporting those in need of reproductive care to the facilities where they can get it; they are woefully underfunded. The trick is not to start something new, but to join forces with those who have long been angry about reproductive injustice.

“Abortion funds have been sounding the alarm for decades,” said Yamani Hernandez, who runs the National Network or Abortion Funds, which includes 76 local funds in 41 states, each of them helping women who face barriers getting the abortion care they need, offering money, transportation, housing, and help with logistics. Only 29 of the funds have paid staff; the rest are volunteer-run and led with average budget sizes of $75,000, according to Hernandez, who said that in 2017, 150,000 people called abortion funds for help — a number up from 100,000 in 2015, thanks to the barrage of restrictions that have made it so much harder for so many more people. With just $4 million to work with, the funds were able to help 29,000 of them last year: giving abortion funds money and time will directly help people who need it. Distinguishing the work of abortion funds from the policy fights in state houses and at the capitols, Hernandez said, “whatever happens in Washington, and changes in the future, women need to get care today.”

And whatever comes next, she said, it’s the people who have been doing this work for years who are likely to be best prepared to deal with the harm inflicted, which is a good place for the newly enraged to start. “If and when Roe is abolished,” said Hernandez, “the people who are going to be getting people to the care they need are those who have largely been navigating this already and are already well suited for the logistical challenges.”

The fights on the ground might be the most current and urgent in human terms, but there is also energy to be put into policy fights. In 2015, California Congresswoman Barbara Lee authored the EACH Woman Act, the first serious congressional challenge to the Hyde Amendment, which came after years of agitation and activism, especially by All Above All, a grassroots organization led by women of color and determined to make abortion accessible to everyone. Those who are looking for policy fights to lean into can call and write your representatives and candidates and demand that they support the EACH Woman Act.

Rage works. It takes time and numbers and a willingness to express it, but it is among the most reliable catalysts of social and political change. That’s the story of how grassroots activism can compel Barbara Lee to compel her caucus to take on Hyde. Her willingness to tackle it, and the righteous outrage of those who are driven to end the harm it does to poor women and women of color, in turn helped to compel Hillary Clinton—who’d stated her opposition to Hyde during her 08 presidential effort—to make that opposition central to her 2016 primary campaign; opposition to Hyde is now — for the first time since it was passed in 1976 — a part of the Democratic Party’s platform.

In these past two years, fury at a Trump administration and at the Republican Party has driven electoral activism. And at the end of 2018, the Guttmacher Institute reported that 2018 was the first year since at least 2000 in which the number of state policies enacted to expand or protect abortion rights and access, and contraceptive access, outnumbered the number of state restrictions. Why? Because growing realization of what was at stake — and resulting anger and activism, pressure applied to state legislatures — led representatives to act.

Of course: vote.

Vote, as they say, as if your life depended on it, because it does, but more importantly: other people’s lives depend on it. And between voting, consider where to aim your anger in ways that will influence election outcomes: educate yourself about local races and policy proposals, as well as the history of the reproductive rights and reproductive-justice movements. Get engaged not just on a presidential level — please God, not just at a presidential level — but with the fights for state legislative power, in congressional and senate elections, all of which shape abortion policy and the judiciary, and the voting rights on which every other kind of freedom hinges. Knock doors, register voters, give to and volunteer with the organizations that are working to fight voter suppression and redistricting and expand the electorate; as well as to those recruiting and training progressive candidates, especially women and women of color, especially young and first-time candidates, to run for elected office.

You can also protest, go to rallies. Join a local political group where your rage will likely be shared with others.

Above all, do not let defeat or despair take you, and do not let anyone tell you that your anger is misplaced or silly or in vain, or that it is anything other than urgent and motivating. It may be terrifying — it is terrifying. But this — the fury and the fight it must fuel — is going to last the rest of our lives and we must get comfortable using our rage as central to the work ahead.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A couple of young women really stepped up: "Women at two Va. universities wanted more access to the morning-after pill. So they took ‘matters into their own hands.’"

Spoiler

The calls and text messages arrive directly to Michyah Thomas’s iPhone.

They come from other students at Hampton University in need of the morning-after pill or in search of a ride to a health center or a hand to hold. They reach Thomas, a 21-year-old at Hampton, through a hotline she and another student, Alexandria Brown, created.

Each time, the pair figures out a way to get students what they need, delivering the emergency contraception themselves or calling on a group of about a dozen volunteers to help with transportation.

Providing round-the-clock access to the morning-after pill has surfaced as a cause on campuses throughout the country. George Mason University in Virginia and colleges and universities in California and Pennsylvania have installed vending machines that dispense the contraceptive pill called Plan B, or a generic version that can be purchased over the counter in stores.

Thomas has worked on reproductive health at Hampton, a historically black university in Virginia, as well as in the Hampton Roads community where the school sits. She felt compelled to help increase reproductive health resources for students by launching the hotline with Brown in March. They’ve given away 26 units of emergency contraception donated by a group in the community.

“I had to continue to push for expanded access,” Thomas said, adding that having students provide the emergency contraception to their peers helps “eliminate that shame factor.”

They’re among a growing number of college and university students working to increase the availability of emergency contraception on their campuses, said Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia. Keene said many college and university health centers don’t carry emergency contraception or have limited hours, restricting access.

“Emergency contraception is stigmatized, along with a lot of reproductive health-care services,” she said, adding that students are “seeing that there is a real gap in health care and that’s why they are stepping up to take matters into their own hands.”

Hampton University officials distanced the school from the hotline, issuing a campus health advisory informing students it was “not a sanctioned organization or effort.”

“The administrators of the hotline are not licensed. Students who elect to take this medication do so at their own risk and/or benefit,” Karen T. Williams, the university’s health center director, said in the advisory. “Although emergency contraception is considered safe and is available over the counter without a prescription, we encourage students who choose to take the medicine to seek follow up care with a medical provider.”

College students nationally have argued that limited health center hours create a barrier to accessing the emergency contraceptive on campuses during weekends or late at night. The morning-after pill is more effective the sooner it’s taken, greatly reducing the chance of pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.

At Hampton, students who need emergency contraception are given a prescription by the health center for Plan B or Ella, which requires a prescription, or are told that Plan B can be purchased over the counter, university officials said. The university also provides on-call nurses after hours, the officials said.

Even so, Brown, 21, said she has faced invasive questions about her sex life when visiting Hampton’s health center for injections of Depo-Provera, a birth-control shot given every three months. She said she isn’t asked the same questions when she visits her physician at home.

University officials said medical providers use screening questions to determine patients’ needs and to determine the best care.

At George Mason University, three vending machines have started offering the morning-after pill in the last year, said Jul Delaune, 20, and Caroline Simpson, 21, students who urged the university to include the pill in vending machines.

The machines, which also offer ear buds and pain relievers, are stocked with a generic version of Plan B that costs $31.80, including tax. Students use a touch screen to select the product and are given three options to pay: credit card, Apple Pay or Android Pay.

Eighteen morning-after pills were sold from the first vending machine installed on campus during October, and 16 were sold the month after, Delaune said. Sales numbers for two vending machines that started carrying the emergency contraception more recently are not available.

Emergency contraception is also provided for a fee at George Mason’s health clinics, according to the university’s website. Nurses meet with students, provide information on how emergency contraceptives work and answer questions.

Delaune and Simpson want to normalize conversations about sexual health, but they acknowledge some students may feel self-conscious about interacting with a store clerk or health clinician.

“Students are able to get condoms without having to talk to anybody,” Simpson said. “So we want them to feel like this is also an option and you don’t have to feel bad about it.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good perspective: "Men who impregnate women don’t face any consequences in the new abortion laws"

Spoiler

I met my father at my mother’s funeral. I was 36 years old.

I was standing next to the open casket, greeting family and friends, when Aunt Mary grabbed my arm and pointed to a bearded man pacing back and forth behind a row of metal chairs. “Well, look who’s here,” she said. And when I failed to recognize the man she was pointing to, said, “Girl, that’s your dad!” and waved him over.

My father left my mother when I was a baby, before my first birthday. He was only 22, but his leaving marked both his second divorce and his second abandoned baby, providing no support, financial or otherwise. He simply disappeared.

So as Gov. Kay Ivey (R-Ala.) signed her state’s draconian antiabortion bill into law last week, I combed over the coverage with one specific angle in mind. I pored through the horrifying details about how doctors who performed an abortion could receive up to 99 years in prison, read there would be no exceptions for rape or incest, and learned that women and girls, no matter their age, would be required to carry a fetus to term. No exceptions.

But who’s missing in all of this? Men.

What I have yet to see in a single line in any of these new abortion bills — Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Georgia, Utah, Mississippi, Ohio, Arkansas — is accountability or penalties for the impregnators.

I was born and abandoned by my birth father in Cape Girardeau, Mo. When I was 6 years old, he signed away his parental rights — my stepfather wanted to adopt me — which had the added bonus of making him legally immune from both past and future child support.

Men like him in states like Missouri and Alabama don’t seem to be on anyone’s minds during this new rush to criminalize abortion. But they should be. A woman, after all, cannot get pregnant without a man’s sperm. This new definition of when life begins should be prompting a lot of questions about how the law really works when it comes to men’s moral and financial responsibility.

Where is the list of actions required, under penalty of law, for fathers? If life starts at conception, shouldn’t the father be required to pay for 50 percent of the medical bills incurred during pregnancy? If the father is not married to the mother, will she be allowed to use his health insurance plan? Can she claim the fetus on her taxes? Can she take out life insurance immediately and, if she miscarries, collect death benefits? Can the father? If the mother has a difficult pregnancy and cannot work or has to go on bed rest, will the father be required by law to support her financially? What will be the penalty for a father abandoning a fetus? How many years in prison? Will he have to pay a fine? If he has no money, will the state cover his child support payments? For how long?

After more than 35 years in absentia, my father finally showed up at the funeral home. I thought he looked familiar and vaguely recalled seeing him when I was about 17, but I couldn’t quite place him.

Standing next to my mother’s casket, we shook hands. He said, “Sorry about your mom.” And while I’m sure we both said more words, I no longer remember any of them. In the end, he pulled a business card from his wallet, wrote his number on the back in blue ballpoint ink and said, “Call us next time you’re in town.”

Who is us? I wondered.

I found out one day when I logged into Facebook and my father’s photo appeared under the words “People You May Know.” I clicked on his image and, with the magic that happens only in cyberspace, landed in my father’s life. There he was with his family: a wife, two sons, a daughter. I devoured his page. There were status updates on whether he’d be going to church that week, his inquiries about the health of friends, warnings of a coming thunderstorm (“a big one on it’s way!”) and some long banter with one of his sons about some inside joke.

I noted his birthday. My father has a birthday. How had I never known this? November 29. A Sagittarius. I typed the words “Sagittarius characteristics” into my browser and these traits appeared on my screen: magnanimous, honest, expansive, generous, reckless, extroverted, proud, larger than life, free.

Yes, free, I thought. Like so many men, he got off scot-free.

With these new antiabortion laws, we have prison time for doctors. We have humiliation and punishment for girls and women. What we don’t have are laws to address the impregnators, the abandoners, the shirkers of personal, social and financial responsibility.

My father was invisible for most of my life. Apparently, to the lawmakers in Alabama and Missouri and everywhere else who are so sure they know what’s best for women, that’s exactly how it should be.

While it's tempting to cheer on the bills that criminalize male masturbation, they are obviously stunts. Women in the draconian states need to push for laws that hold men just as responsible for women.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is scary:

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

48 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is scary:

 

If I understand correctly the legislative session is done for this year in WA, so no way that shit is going to happen any time soon. It sounds more like grandstanding and political clickbaiting, still scary though that such a void coconut head managed to get elected as a representative.

[GreyhoundFan]

52 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

It sounds more like grandstanding and political clickbaiting, still scary though that such a void coconut head managed to get elected as a representative.

He's a scary nutjob. I can't imagine anyone actually voting for him, but he won a seat.