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ear candle productions, who reads the rude pundit so i don't have to:

... I reproduce this quote from one of his [rude pundit's] readers.

"For some few years I volunteered as an escort at Dr. Tiller’s and several other clinics. I didn’t know the good doctor well, but met with him on several occasions and was impressed with his kindness and the care he obviously felt for the women who needed his services.

"Of course I have been heartbroken by his assassination, but I’m not so full of hate towards his killer. I’ve seen too many of his kind on the lines; in fact I remember seeing him. We knew Mr. Roeder as 'Prom Queen' from the flowers he usually carried there, and the screaming fits he would throw when approached by escorts. He was one of many not-too-bright mentally ill recruited by various self-appointed fundie leaders who groomed them to scream the threats they themselves were so careful not to utter aloud.

"I’m pretty sure that he has been exploited again to shoot Dr. Tiller. I don’t know who is using him this time- when I saw him, he was in Troy Newman’s stable of nuts, but the fundie leaders are an incestuous bunch who tend to swap followers as needed.

"According to papers Roeder filed today, his possessions amount to a 16yr.-old Taurus and $10, and he only works occasionally at minimum-wage jobs. Yet he managed to finance several 400-mile round trips to Wichita from the KC area in the last month to case the church and know Dr. Tiller by sight, bought a handgun, gas and meals etc. Also, he asked- begged- for bail to be set today, despite his total lack of assets. Obviously, the poor bastard expects someone to post it, all of which leads me to believe that he is not the solitary nutcase the fundies claim he is.

"Somebody had to put him up to it, help him plan it and pay his expenses, and will now feed him to the sharks. Hopefully, and maybe with a bit of psych help, he will realize how he was used and name names."

While you're there, you can check out this movie review and this piece on this piece on Iran.

Abortion availability

There are fewer and fewer clinics and hospitals where a woman can get an abortion these days. Which means that women have to travel further, and take more time out of their lives, to get an abortion. Or if they have no transportation, then they just have babies.

Something I don't see mentioned on websites or in discussions, but saw in a comment on a blog recently: even if you live close to a clinic, their services may be in such demand that you won't be able to get an appointment in time to get an abortion.

My new blog project:

point out at least one bad thing about McCain every time I blog.

First up, John McCain on Human Dignity & The Sanctity of Life:

Overturning Roe v. Wade

John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench. Constitutional balance would be restored by the reversal of Roe v. Wade, returning the abortion question to the individual states. The difficult issue of abortion should not be decided by judicial fiat.

However, the reversal of Roe v. Wade represents only one step in the long path toward ending abortion. Once the question is returned to the states, the fight for life will be one of courage and compassion - the courage of a pregnant mother to bring her child into the world and the compassion of civil society to meet her needs and those of her newborn baby. The pro-life movement has done tremendous work in building and reinforcing the infrastructure of civil society by strengthening faith-based, community, and neighborhood organizations that provide critical services to pregnant mothers in need. This work must continue and government must find new ways to empower and strengthen these armies of compassion. These important groups can help build the consensus necessary to end abortion at the state level. As John McCain has publicly noted, "At its core, abortion is a human tragedy. To effect meaningful change, we must engage the debate at a human level."

Toothpicks! We'll need toothpicks!

Dan Gelber gets it ---

The litany of problems facing our state is well known.

We are home to the worst high school graduation rate in the nation. One in five children lacks health insurance. Homeowners are paying way more than their fair share in property taxes and are faced with property insurance rates that are spiraling out of control. Family incomes have flat lined over the last decade, and declining sales tax revenues have caused multi-billion dollar deficits in our already stretched and tattered state budget.

So what did we spend seven hours talking about today?

Limiting a woman’s right to make a choice about her body and her health care.

Why the majority of my Republican colleagues believe they know more about a woman’s health decisions than does the woman is beyond me.

Unfortunately, the Florida House, in all its Republican-controlled wisdom, did not listen and has decided that all women seeking abortions must first be required to pay for --- and view --- an ultrasound of the fetus.

To top that off, they also passed a 'fetal homicide' bill that says anyone who caused a pregnancy to be terminated by assaulting or killing a woman could be prosecuted for murdering the "unborn child" — even if they didn't know the woman was pregnant.

Sure, the first one is being touted as a way for women to obtain health care, and that last one is being touted as a way to protect unborn children from drunk drivers, but in reality both of these measures are just two more of the many insidious ways that conservatives are trying to keep from women from having sex until the men in their lives decide that it's time for them to produce heirs.

Things are really bad when the only adult in the room

is a 16-year-old child.

She's sixteen years old. She's made it through tenth grade. She has no job, has never had one. She lives with her mom and brother. No dad, he died. This brother has already fathered a child and his mom is raising it, her grandchild, for him.

If she were to stand up before you right now and say I want to have children someday, but not just yet, you would praise her for her wisdom, her intelligence, her maturity, her sense of responsibility.

Here's the kicker: she's already pregnant.

She wants to get an abortion. She lives in a state that requires minors to notify their parents before getting an abortion. For whatever reason, she feels like she cannot do this and has petitioned the court for "judicial bypass," the process where a minor can go before a judge and get special permission to get an abortion without notifying her parents.

The lower court has ruled that she's too immature to make this decision on her own. She appealed that ruling, and the next higher court has also ruled that she's too immature to make this decision on her own.

Right.


There's a lot not to like about this whole case, and I had planned to tell you in detail what I think of the court's decision, but I'm just too angry right now. Maybe later.

This is your candidate. This is your candidate on abortion.

Democratic candidates, pay heed: we on the real left are watching you. Closely. And we're taking notes.

Mike Gravel beats the opposition on this issue, hands down. On Roe v Wade:

Any decision on abortion should remain between a woman and her doctor. There is no room for interference from politicians and judges. [emphasis mine]

On the recent Supreme Court decision that is too stupid to be named:

I am opposed to today's ruling or any ruling that places restrictions on reproductive freedom. Today's decision authorizes federal intervention to prohibit a nationwide procedure that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has found at times to be medically necessary.

Clean, clear, no-nonsense. None of this hand-wringing that we get from all the other candidates over how difficult this is, or how women need help from family, clergy, or other do-gooder interferences in making such a momentous decision.

It's true that late-term abortions are often performed because an otherwise wanted pregnancy has gone wrong, and that these women, and their families, can and do suffer real grief, but beyond that, get over yourselves, people. It's a clump of cells, and while we can't be sure, estimates are that Mother Nature herself spontaneously aborts a hefty percentage of pregnancies before women even realize they're pregnant.

On the Republican side, what it all boils down to: evey single one of those privileged white males thinks that privileged white males should be the ones to decide this issue for the weaker sex. I'll admit to having entertained, secretly, a guilty liking for Ron Paul, but not after reading his statements on abortion. He may be an obstetrician, but so was David Hager.

via Jill at Feministe

One man's abortion.

DBB writes passionately and intimately about his abortion. True, it was his wife who had the abortion, but this one was a bit different. You should go read it.

He's also posted a heartwarming tale of their first pregnancy.

Are they religious zealots, misogynists, or just plain idiots?

Lots of bloviating in the blogosphere as to whether this cartoon is anti-Catholic. I say it's not. Every single one of the Catholics on the Supreme Court voted to uphold the nation-wide ban on "partial birth abortion" [more properly referred to as intact D&E]. Every single one of the non-Catholics on the Supreme Court voted to to strike down that ban. It's the duty of editorial cartoonists to point out stuff like this, and to do so in a pointed manner too.

There's also the further bloviating on whether these Catholic judges really did let their religious beliefs influence their decision. I think it's very possible that they did, and I find this scary. If you read the entire opinion and the dissent, you can see that Supreme Court Justice Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, expends a lot of words on "moral" issues. This isn't conclusive proof either, but it's suggestive.

However, I'll save you the morality bit, and move on to the part that's really bothering me. Kennedy thinks there's legitimate dissent in the medical community on the health risks associated with various abortion procedures. He gasses on at length about this too, but here's part of it:

Here, by contrast, whether the Act creates significant health risks for women has been a contested factual question. The evidence presented in the trial courts and before Congress demonstrates both sides have medical support for their position.

Respondents presented evidence that intact D&E may be the safest method of abortion, for reasons similar to those adduced in Stenberg. See 530 U. S., at 932. Abortion doctors testified, for example, that intact D&E decreases the risk of cervical laceration or uterine perforation because it requires fewer passes into the uterus with surgical instruments and does not require the removal of bony fragments of the dismembered fetus, fragments that may be sharp. Respondents also presented evidence that intact D&E was safer both because it reduces the risks that fetal parts will remain in the uterus and because it takes less time to complete. Respondents, in addition, proffered evidence that intact D&E was safer for women with certain medical conditions or women with fetuses that had certain anomalies.

These contentions were contradicted by other doctors who testified in the District Courts and before Congress. They concluded that the alleged health advantages were based on speculation without scientific studies to support them. They considered D&E always to be a safe alternative.

Ginsburg, on the other hand, goes right to the heart of that matter:

In this insistence, the [Supreme] Court brushes under the rug the District Courts' well-supported findings that the physicians who testified that intact D&E is never necessary to preserve the health of a woman had slim authority for their opinions. They had no training for, or personal experience with, the intact D&E procedure, and many performed abortions only on rare occasions.

So, which is it? Is Kennedy [and the other four concurring Catholics] too stupid to distinguish the real experts from the wannabe experts? Or did he just gloss over the opinions of the true experts because they didn't support his moral [read: religious] views?

Then again, it could simply be outright misogyny. Kennedy blathers on, in a most patronizing manner, about protecting the woman's fragile emotional state. Ginsburg blasts him for that too. In fact, she neatly tears apart all of Kennedy's legal, moral, and pseudo-scientific reasoning.

These are all disturbing thoughts, trying to discern the possible motivations behind the decision, but the scariest thing to me is that FIVE Supreme Court justices are either unwilling or unable to recognize who the credible experts really are here.

Partial Birth Abortion

In 1911, the elegant Grace Miller posed in fashionable clothes. She and a partner operated The Ladies Tailoring College. Grace secured her hat with a long hat pin, and a second pin was held ready between her teeth. A breeze could send a large hat flying away, and pins through the hairdo and hat kept the hat in place.


Dave Nalle gives us a description of the partial birth abortion ban and wonders which way the Supreme Court will rule. Well, we need wonder no longer. Pseudo-doctors Anthony M. Kennedy, John G. Roberts Jr, Samuel A. Alito Jr, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, practicing medicine without a license, have decided that "partial birth abortion" is never medically necessary "... because other abortion procedures are still available."

Yes, the phrase "partial birth abortion" is used in the text of the law itself, rather than the medical term "dilation and extraction intact dilation and evacuation." You can read a good description of the procedure, and when and why it is used here.

The Partial Birth Abortion Ban, odious as it is, does at least include an exception for its use if the mother's life is in danger, but it does not allow a physician to use the procedure for saving the mother's health. Only her life is of value, not her health or well-being.

The procedure is gruesome, even when described coldly and clinically and devoid of all the loaded words and images favored by abortion opponents. However, from my [admittedly frivolous] reading of hundreds of murder mysteries and true crime books, I have learned that one quick jab of the Victorian woman's hatpin to the base of the skull and the poor guy never knew what hit him. Whether this is true or not, I don't really know, but it strikes me as a better way to die [if you're unlucky enough to be a fetus with with gross abnormalities and no hope of surviving] than being delivered by caesarian section and then dying.

Do they give the poor little things some kind of pain killer while they're lying there waiting for the Angel of Death to swoop down upon them?

If you can stand it, the video is of a baby being delivered by caesarian section.

South Carolina

Hey! That's me! Number 1090 and I voted NO.



South Carolina wants to force women to look at an ultrasound image of their own fetus before being allowed to have an abortion.

Opinions vary predictably: the female OB-Gyn is opposed to this bill, but the male OB-GYN seems to approve of it, and the male pastor doesn't condemn it very strongly.

If you can't stand the thought of reading the entire article [I couldn't], that's ok. Just go vote in the poll here. Not that I have a lot of faith in this one little poll being able to sway a significant number of votes in the South Carolina legislature, but it can't hurt to try.

Blogging for Choice is so ... last week.

That's me, a day late and a dollar short. More accurately, a week late. The 34th anniversary of Roe v Wade was January 22, 2007, and feminists were blogging specially on that day. Me, I was too busy bitching about war to notice. Sigh. Bad feminist.

This year's assignment: tell us, and your readers, why you're pro-choice. I spent some time roaming through the blogosphere, reading some of the posts, but Dr Violet Socks' contrarianism is my favorite.

Mine [I prefer to call myself pro-abortion instead of pro-choice]:

Dude. It's my body. Keep your paws and laws off.