Getting an abortion in Texas is becoming virtually impossible. Welcome to 1969.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:  

You can see women's abortion access trickle away in the interactive map above. Some things to note: Before the state required admitting privileges, 13 cities had abortion clinics. Now, just seven do. After September, only five Texas cities—Dallas, Forth Worth, San Antonio, Austin, and Houston—will will have abortion clinics. Women in the Rio Grande Valley must now travel to Corpus Christi, a two-and-a-half hour drive, for abortion services. Soon, there won't be a single clinic providing abortions west of San Antonio. A clinic in Dallas that will operate as an ambulatory surgical center opened after the state's new law passed and does not initially appear on the map. 

In addition to making it harder for abortion providers to operate, the law also bans abortion 20 weeks after conception and forbids the use of medication to terminate pregnancies. At the time of its passage, anti-abortion lawmakers claimed that tougher requirements for abortion providers were necessary to safeguard women. But mainstream medical groups, such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, argue that requiring admitting privileges doesn't increase the level of care. Transfer agreements with hospitals offer patients the same protection in the rare cases when an abortion requires hospitalization. Plus, abortion foes have made it highly controversial for hospitals to grant abortion providers admitting privileges. In April, for example, two Texas providers claimed in a lawsuit that a Dallas hospital withdrew their admitting privileges because associating with them ginned up negative publicity. 

The restrictions that go into effect on September 1, mandating that clinics meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers, are even more cumbersome. For an abortion clinic to meet this requirement, it must have the ability to administer general anesthesia and its doorways and hallways must be a certain width. These requirements aren't medically necessary for an abortion, and they cost a lot of money to implement. One of the few abortion clinics in Texas that qualifies as an ambulatory surgical center, for example, costs at least $40,000 per month more to operate than an average clinic, according to the New York Times. 

Reports of the law's aftermath show that Texas women who have lost access to abortion clinics and medication have been traveling to Mexico or turning to the black market to obtain abortion-inducing drugs.

And the Republicans say there is no War on Women. 

Of course the law that has made all of this possible, was the one that Wendy Davis so famously stood for 11 hours to filibuster. However her efforts were for naught as Governor Rick Perry called for a second session and then fast tracked the bill so that he could personally deny women access to control over their own bodies.

Clearly Texas needs to do something drastic in order to get the state to start treating women as more than simple breeding stock, and a very good start would be to elect their first female Governor since Ann Richards left office in 1995.

Supreme Court refuses Oklahoma case that looked to limit access to RU-486, the so-called abortion pill.

Courtesy of MSN:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left intact a state court decision invalidating an Oklahoma law that effectively banned the so-called abortion pill RU-486, with the justices deciding to sidestep a potentially contentious case. 

The high court had been waiting for the Oklahoma Supreme Court to clarify a December 2012 ruling that had voided the law before deciding on whether to rule on the case. Last week, the state court issued a new opinion explaining its reasoning in more detail. 

The U.S. high court's latest action means the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling is final. The state court said the effect of the law would have been a ban on all abortions by medications, and as a result "restricts the long-respected medical discretion of physicians" who decide that method is safer for some patients than surgical abortion. 

That ruling invalidated a state law it said had the effect of banning abortion-inducing drugs altogether.

This is good news for the pro-choice movement, and kind of makes me feel a little better about the next one headed their direction from Texas.

Goddammit Texas!

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Only three days after a federal judge blocked a new Texas law that threatened to shut down many of the state’s abortion clinics, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, reversed the decision, saying the rule should take effect while the case is argued in the months to come. 

Abortion clinic owners and women’s health advocates said the decision would have catastrophic effects because as many as 13 of the 36 clinics providing abortions in the state would have to stop doing so immediately, forcing women in large swaths of Texas to travel several hours on at least two days to obtain abortions. 

The clinics forced to halt abortions have been unable to satisfy a new requirement, part of a broader anti-abortion law adopted in July, that doctors performing the procedure must have formal admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. 

Greg Abbott, the state attorney general and a Republican candidate for governor next year, filed an emergency appeal to the three-judge circuit court on Monday asking it to overrule the lower court. He said in a statement Thursday, “This unanimous decision is a vindication of the careful deliberation by the Texas Legislature to craft a law to protect the health and safety of Texas women.” 

Gov. Rick Perry, who has said he hopes to abolish abortion in Texas, said in a statement, “Today’s decision affirms our right to protect both the unborn and the health of the women of Texas.”

I have to admit that I allowed myself to get a little excited when that Federal judge ruled these new restrictions unconstitutional, but I also kept in mind that we were dealing with Texas here.

So it looks as if this whole thing is headed to the Supreme Court, which some pro-choice advocates think is a good idea, however I am not one of them.

I have little confidence in this court and believe that Antony Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito are fairly salivating at the opportunity to take a crack at Roe vs Wade.

And of course this case in Texas is NOT the only opportunity for the court to rule on abortion, there is also this case from Oklahoma: 

The U.S. Supreme Court could hear its first case on drug-induced abortions, after a Tuesday finding by Oklahoma’s highest court that a 2011 state law restricting the use of mifepristone was unconstitutional. 

If the U.S. court decides to hear an appeal in the case, it could clarify how far states can go in restricting abortions, following a 2007 decision upholding a federal ban on so-called partial-birth abortions. 

The Oklahoma Supreme Court provided the finding at the request of the U.S. court, which had asked for clarification of the state high court’s December 2012 decision striking down the drug restriction. 

The state court’s prior decision, just three paragraphs long, upheld a lower-court ruling finding the restrictions on mifepristone “or any abortion-inducing drug” unconstitutional. But it left unclear whether the law constituted an outright ban on drug-induced abortions or simply regulated them.

The Southern Republicans have been working at a frenetic pace to sabotage access to abortion in virtually every state where they hold a majority, and their attempts to get a case to the Supreme Court speaks to THEIR confidence that the Court will rule in their favor.

And that should be troubling to all of us.

Flea Markets and trips to Mexico may replace soon to close women's health clinics in Texas. No I am not kidding.

Courtesy of Salon:  

The Texas Senate voted late Friday night to approve a sweeping abortion measure that could force 37 of the state’s 42 abortion providers to close, leading some reproductive health advocates in the state to predict — with growing concern — that Texas women may be forced to seek dangerous alternatives to terminate unwanted pregnancies without medical supervision. 

One of those options, as the New York Times reports, is crossing the border to Mexico to obtain an “abortion pill,” misoprostol, which is sold in boxes of 28 pills with little information from pharmacists about how to safely use the drug. For women who can’t travel out of the state or cross border checkpoints — low-income women without the financial resources to travel, undocumented women and others — another alternative is obtaining these pills from Texas flea markets, where they are quietly sold under the table. 

With the new law threatening to shutter clinics and limit supervised access to medicinal abortion, “the only option left for many women will be to go get those pills at a flea market,” Lucy Felix, a community educator with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, told the Times. “Some of them will end up in the E.R.”

I wonder how the Texas legislators will feel after it is determined that their actions saved few fetuses, but did result in the deaths of perfectly healthy women?

Oh I'm sorry I forgot, in Texas women are only valued for their ability to produce offspring.

You know, like cattle.

Fox News guest accuses President of promoting statutory rape with over the counter Plan B pill.

Courtesy of Addicting Info:  

When Blakeman said that providing teenagers access to the morning-after pill means that Obama is somehow condoning or encouraging criminal behavior, statutory rape, my mouth dropped open. I know, I know, at this point I should not be shocked by the stupid that is Fox News but every once in a while I find myself at a loss for words. The president is not encouraging anything; he is being realistic, and the reality is that kids are going to have sex. We may not want them to have sex, but they are doing it. Turning a blind eye to the problem does not make it any less of a problem. The CDC found that in 2011 329,797 babies were born to teenagers; that is 31.3 percent per thousand girls between the ages of 13-19. That is an ASTRONOMICAL number! Wouldn’t you think common sense dictates that these kids need something readily available to them just in case they find themselves in an unwanted predicament? Of course not and Julie Rodinsky hit the nail right on the head as to why. 

"You’re living in a world that just doesn’t exist. The bottom line is, just because you don’t want kids who are 15, 16 years old to have sex, you’re going to punish them by not providing them with the means to not get pregnant. … It’s not encouraging it, these kids are going out and doing it; the president’s not encouraging it… All the president is doing and all the FDA is doing is assuring these kids is if they go out and do this – and nobody’s advocating that they do – but if they go out and do this that they don’t get pregnant… you might not like it, government is not condoning it, but if you don’t give them the tools to prevent abortion and pregnancy, they’ll have abortion and pregnancy."

Let's face it the Conservatives don't want women to have access to birth control, don't want them to have abortions, and don't want them to have access to the "morning after pill."

Essentially they don't want them to have sex.

However these same restrictions NEVER seem to apply to the men.

Where is the outrage over men buying condoms? Aren't THOSE encouraging per-marital sex?

Let's be honest. If conservative men could figure out some way to reverse the procedure when they got married to them, they would undoubtedly encourage female circumcision as a way to control the libidos and reproductive rights of young women.

These men fear the female sexuality and envy their ability to bring new life into this world,

If given the opportunity they would just like to shut that whole thing down.

If I were a woman this would absolutely piss me off! As a man I still find it incredibly unfair.

You know if it were the men who got pregnant there would be drive thru abortion clinics and the morning after pill would come in either bacon or pizza flavor.

Rick Santorum believes that allowing women to terminate the pregnancy which resulted from their rape would be to traumatize them twice. Wait, what?

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

"Would you allow no exceptions for cases of rape on incest?" Fox News host, Byron York asked. "Polls have shown that large majorities of Americans support some exceptions for abortion. Are your views too much, even for many conservatives to support?" 

"That child is an innocent victim," Santorum replied. "To be victimized twice would be a horrible thing. It is an innocent human life, genetically human from the moment of conception. We in America should be big enough to try to surround ourselves and help women in those terrible situations who have been traumatized already. To put them through another trauma of an abortion, I think is too much to ask. So I would absolutely stand and say that one violence is enough."

Now ladies I might need all of you weigh in here, because I am just one of those pathetic creatures burdened with a "Y" chromosome, but is there really ANY comparisons between the feelings associated with terminating an unwanted pregnancy and being forced to carry your rapists child to term?

Personally I would have to imagine that every day of those long nine months could potentially add layers upon layers of trauma to the initial pain of the assault.

It sounds as if Santorum, who believes that life begins as conception, feels this same way about the "morning after" pill. As if taking a precautionary medication to ensure that the potential of fertilization resulting from a violent insemination does not further burden the victim, can be compared to the act of rape.

Does Rick Santorum not have a wife, or sister, or daughter?

What is it about these people that makes them place the rights of a cluster of cells above that of every other already living person on the planet. 

They demand that the fetus be protected, yet they support the death penalty.

They demand that the fetus be protected, yet they have little problem sending our troops to kill people all over the world.

They demand that the fetus be protected, yet they argue against sending aid to places like Africa where famine is killing thousands of innocent people.

I will just never understand why the protection of a POTENTIAL life, can take precedence over the protection of an ACTUAL life.

And perhaps it is better that I NEVER understand that.