In the first quarter of 2013, states have proposed 694 provisions related to a woman’s body, how she gets pregnant, or how she chooses to end that pregnancy.
A new report released on Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute takes a comprehensive look at how the War on Women has continued past the election cycle and into 2013. It shows that the new legislatures across the country are still very much dedicated to restricting sex education, availability of medication, and abortion access for women. Indeed, 47 percent of the 694 provisions were directly related to abortion:
During the first three months of 2013, legislators in 14 states introduced provisions seeking to ban abortion prior to viability. These bans fall into three categories: measures that would prohibit all abortions, those that would ban abortions after a specified point during the first trimester of pregnancy and those that would block abortions at 20 weeks after fertilization (the equivalent of 22 weeks after the woman’s last menstrual period, the conventional method physicians use to measure pregnancy). All of these proposals are in direct violation of U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
Legislators in 10 states have introduced proposals that would ban all, or nearly all, abortions. In eight states (AL, IA, MS, ND, OK, SC, VA and WA), legislators have proposed defining “personhood” as beginning at conception; if adopted, these measures would ban most, if not all, abortions.
In 2010 the candidates from the Tea party ran on fiscal responsibility and swore to anybody who would listen that they were different than the OLD Republican party in that they would not focus on the usual social conservative agenda of fighting against fay rights, passing laws to ban abortions, or pushing a religious agenda.
None of that turned out to the be the case. In fact almost ALL of the laws introduced by this group have been focused on abortion, and they have fought tooth and nail against immigration reform, gay rights, and have tirelessly pushed their religious agenda as both representatives in local government as well as on the federal level.
I know what you are saying, "What, conservatives lied to us?"
The only question remaining is have women now learned their lesson, or will they continue to vote for a party that claims to fight for "traditional values" while actively trying to drag them back to the Colonial period where women knew their place?
"In 2010 the candidates from the Tea party ran on fiscal responsibility..."
ReplyDeletePreach it!
The 2010 campaigns were a disgrace and not so much because Tea Party candidates lied, but because the Democratic Party, women's organizations, and the media went along with the pretense that the economy was the only issue that mattered.
Those of us who followed Sarah Palin in 2008 are among the few that understood the tea party as a primarily christianist movement, emboldened by Palin's VP candidacy.
Thanks, IM!
Texans Push Back Against Republican Effort To Destroy Women’s Health Across The State
ReplyDeleteIn their effort to ban abortion throughout the state of Texas, Republican lawmakers are attempting to force through sweeping anti-abortion legislation during a special session designed to give them more power to do so. If the House GOP passes the measure, known as SB 5, it would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, prevent medically necessary abortions from being performed, and would shutter all but five abortion clinics across the second largest state in America. In all, 40 clinics would be shut down, dealing a significant blow to women’s health services and women’s right to choose in Texas.
But thanks to 700 brave Texans, a vote on the bill has been blocked for the time being. On Thursday, pro-choice and women’s health advocates flocked to Austin to testify against the sweeping measure in an effort to block a vote by the House committee reviewing the bill. Since the special session comes to an end on June 25th, protesters of the bill seized the opportunity to block any vote from occurring by giving endless testimony against it. Because of this, Democrats are organizing the clout they need to filibuster.
According to ThinkProgress, the GOP attempted to halt the testimony to silence the protesters after seven hours. As a result, 300 protesters faced being denied their right to speak out against the measure:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/06/22/hundreds-of-texas-citizens-travel-to-capitol-to-rally-against-draconian-anti-abortion-bill/
Gee, what does this remind me of?
DeleteHow about Prevo and Sullivan busing in people from the Valley to give testimony last year (which was allowed for days) on the unfairness of the fairness ordinance (regulations on non-discrimination)? And then that anti-union thing not long ago in Anchorage that cut off testimony because it was "repetitive and not productive" and then they rammed it through.
AK = Texas
I can't understand why women vote against their own best interests. You would think that they would want equal pay for equal work, control over their own bodies and nondiscrimination. I don't know what the Republicans are thinking when 51% of the voting population are women.
ReplyDeleteAnd the male disconnect; so many of these guys seem to long for the fifties, yet they enjoy, nay NEED the paycheck their wives bring home. Do they think these changes would only apply to the woman next door? I can’t get my head around the stupidity.
DeleteDarlene -
DeleteWhat they long for is the ILLUSION of the 50s.
They want the world that existed in the sitcoms of the day, where the women wore pumps and pearls and had a delicious dinner with carefully folded napkins waiting on the table when their big, strong, dependable male arrived home.
Where the children were well-behaved and adorable (if just a tiny bit precocious, strictly for entertainment purposes) and played in starched shorts and cotton shirts without ever getting dirty, and NEVER sassed their parents.
Where mortgages and utility bills and arguments and infidelity didn't exist, and no one ever went to the bathroom, got sick or passed gas.
That world never existed in reality.
I remember that war term......."carpet bombing".......
ReplyDeleteSo do I, anon@7:53.
DeleteIt was quite frightening for a young child to be one of the many huddling "under the carpet", i. e. in overcrowded bunkers and basements. Now saturation bombing is called "Shock and Awe". Don't get me going!
And YES, the legislative war against women's reproductive rights in this country has reached the proverbial carpet bombing/saturation level in many states as well as in the House of Representatives in DC. There is little we can do about it unless and until we get out to vote; not merely in federal/presidential elections, but from the local to the state level. Only then can we break the regressives' iron control over their gerrymandered districts and change the dialogue into something approaching sanity.
Any republican woman who are still voting republican are doing so because of 3 reasons:
ReplyDelete1. they still think there is a centrist, pragmatic Republican party out there. (a.k.a. Andrew Sullivan Republicanism)
2. They are brainwashed by their church to vote Republican.
3. They are brainwashed by their families to vote Republican.
Any self-respecting, intelligent woman in this country IS NOT going to vote for this party of misogyny and hypocrisy.
My 24-year-old daughter asked me yesterday: "Why would any woman vote for a Republican?"
ReplyDeleteShe's not particularly radical, but she's an educated "Millennial." For most of them, their mantra appears to be "live and let live."
The Republicans won't just lose the votes of thinking women, but also of a great many young people, who are libertarian when it comes to issues of personal privacy. And once the GOP has lost them it will be very difficult, if impossible, to get them back, unless Republicans completely change their spots. That won't happen.
So --a GOP without many women, without most of the young vote, without minority votes. Add it up, and the party is just about finished. With the tea party waging civil war from the inside, the GOP will be infinitesimal within a short period of time.
I would love to see the Republican Party implode or break up or just somehow go away, but I have a feeling it might never happen.
DeleteFor as long as I can remember, the GOP has been this oddball alliance between Wall Street and the religious right. Many have predicted that it cannot last. Yet all we see is the checks from Wall Street get bigger, and the religious right just gets nuttier. And nuttier.
I would love to see them crash and burn, but I am not holding my breath.
You may be right and the GOP may be headed for extinction (and we can all hope that's true).
DeleteHowever, as we can see from the 8 years of the Bush presidency, a tremendous amount of damage can be inflicted on our country in a short amount of time. And it can take decades to recover.
"Freethought"? There WAS a time when the repubes were not that way - and in fairly recent (as in MY lifetime) memory, too. Look up Barry Goldwater's speeches about the religious right.
DeleteUnfortunately, the repubes didn't listen to his warnings about those idiots trying to take over.
You're right about the Wall Street connection, but even there the intensity of that alliance wasn't always that strong.
I believe the downhill slide occurred AFTER Nixon got into office. And became a landslide when Reagan got into office.
I never thought I would see the day in America where I could say, without any sarcasm, "can clitorectomy laws be next?" Because truly, if we follow the 'logical' progression of what has happened, that's where things are headed. Women, and men who care about women, it's time to rise up against this misogyny – to defeat every. single. one. of these low-lifes, at the ballot box and elsewhere, so that they are no longer in positions of power.
ReplyDeleteanon@9:22... the very thought of clitorectomy sends more than shivers through my mind and body, and you are correct in assuming that this will be the final outcome of regressive rule.
DeleteI know many well educated and kind women that still vote Republican and pro life. It boggles my mind. I know none of them could look a friend in the eye and say "you should die so that fetus can live", but they don't get that far out of their white bread worlds to really see how abortion bans will really work. One of my friends has been unable to have children and was angry when her sister had an abortion. So now her position is pro life simply based on her own envy. Another was adopted and feels that if abortion had been an option for their mother she wouldn't have been born, so she votes pro life again on her own personal selfishness. What I particularly wish that pro choice women would be more attentive to is the views of female candidates. So many women voted for Sarah Palin for governor, just because she was a woman. They never looked at the fact she identified herself as the most pro-life candidate around. Just because they're female doesn't mean they're going to vote for women's interests. For example: Lora Reinbold, Cathy Geissel. We have got to get smart.
ReplyDeleteWhat really shocks me is their ability to justify the laws that ban abortion even if the pregnancy will cause the mother's death. The fetus cannot live without its mother and, even if it does, you're now condemning it and any siblings it may have to a life without one parent. Even worse, that child will forever live with the guilt that it killed its mother.
DeleteWow...that's some 'compassionate conservatism', isn't it?