Since 2010 maternal mortality rate doubles in Texas, now the highest in the developed world. Gee, I wonder how that happened?

Courtesy of The Guardian: 

The rate of Texas women who died from complications related to pregnancy doubled from 2010 to 2014, a new study has found, for an estimated maternal mortality rate that is unmatched in any other state and the rest of the developed world. 

The finding comes from a report, appearing in the September issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, that the maternal mortality rate in the United States increased between 2000 and 2014, even while the rest of the world succeeded in reducing its rate. Excluding California, where maternal mortality declined, and Texas, where it surged, the estimated number of maternal deaths per 100,000 births rose to 23.8 in 2014 from 18.8 in 2000 – or about 27%. 

But the report singled out Texas for special concern, saying the doubling of mortality rates in a two-year period was hard to explain “in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval”.

Boy that is puzzling.

After all without war or natural disaster what could possibly account for so many women dying?

In the wake of the report, reproductive health advocates are blaming the increase on Republican-led budget cuts that decimated the ranks of Texas’s reproductive healthcare clinics. In 2011, just as the spike began, the Texas state legislature cut $73.6m from the state’s family planning budget of $111.5m. The two-thirds cut forced more than 80 family planning clinics to shut down across the state. The remaining clinics managed to provide services – such as low-cost or free birth control, cancer screenings and well-woman exams – to only half as many women as before. 

At the same time, Texas eliminated all Planned Parenthood clinics – whether or not they provided abortion services – from the state program that provides poor women with preventive healthcare. Previously, Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas offered cancer screenings and contraception to more than 130,000 women.

Oh that's right, the Texas Republicans took away the health services that many women rely on.

How could I forget?

But hey ladies you just keep right on voting Republican.

After all it's not like it was a matter of life or death or anything. Right?

Alabama lawmakers pass bill treating abortion clinics like sex offenders.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:  

Alabama lawmakers passed two bills in the waning hours of their legislative session on Wednesday that could close two of the state's five abortion clinics and make it harder for women to receive abortions in their second trimester. 

One of the bills prohibits abortion clinics from operating within 2,000 feet of an elementary or middle school—the same restriction that applies to sex offenders. If Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley signs the bill, it may force two of the state's five abortion clinics to close, including a clinic in Huntsville that is the only one providing abortion care in the northern half of Alabama. The clinic just moved to its current location, across the street from a school, in 2014, in order to comply with other abortion restrictions passed in Alabama in 2013. 

The sponsor of the bill, Alabama state Sen. Paul Sanford, likened the restrictions to those imposed on sex offenders. "We can put a restriction on whether a liquor store opens up across the street and make sure pedophiles stay away from schools," he told the Times Daily in February. "I just think having an abortion clinic that close to elementary-age school children that actually have to walk on the sidewalk past it is not the best thing." 

The second bill would ban a common second-trimester abortion procedure.

First off family clinics do not typically have "Abortion" on the sign in front of their buildings. So how would school children know unless somebody told them in order to start the indoctrination into their anti-abortion hate cult?

Secondly this is yet another example of one of the deeply red states essentially undermining the law of the land until it is all but non-existent.

And thirdly if somebody was serious about protecting young children by imposing a 2,000 foot perimeter it would be one that kept Republican lawmakers from crossing it, because let's face it when a young child is sexually assaulted that is the direction one should look first. 

Teacher harassed on Facebook and at her school for her work as an abortion clinic escort.

Courtesy of Cosmopolitan:  

Shana Broders has been an elementary school teacher for over two decades. For the last year and a half, she has spent her downtime as a clinic escort, helping patients at a nearby North Carolina abortion provider navigate their way past the protesters and into the building for services. For that, a group of extreme anti-abortion activists wants to get her fired from her job. As a new school year begins, they have escalated their efforts, harassing her school by phone and threatening to picket. Broders tells Cosmopolitan.com how her school has responded and why no threats will make her give up supporting a person's right to a legal, safe abortion procedure. 

Ms. Broder explains in the article how her world got turned upside down:  

I have very strong and passionate beliefs and views on bodily autonomy and women's rights. I was following something on Twitter and I saw a video clip of protesters at a clinic in another city. I tweeted or made a comment, "Wow. That's so horrible. I'm so glad that doesn't happen where I live," in my ignorance. Then someone commented back, "Oh, yes it does, right down the road." I was like, "What? Where? Can I be an escort?" They said, "Yes and let me hook you up," so I got hooked up though Twitter with an escort group in Raleigh, North Carolina. That's how it started. 

I'm not sure how I was targeted for this. All I can tell you is that I got [one activist] called out for trespass, me personally. It was July of 2014, and I was escorting, and he went behind our building and another building, and he hid in the bushes waiting for the doctor. I was afraid if he jumped out of the bushes at him, someone could get hurt. I called the police for that reason. I think that made it personal. He learned my name fairly early on and he calls me by name. "You know, Shana, you were nice when you first started." I have him on video saying, "You were nice. What you were doing was evil but you weren't a bad person when you first started this but the darkness is taking over you." 

He called me out. He told me he would come to my school. He named my school. Another man who is in this group, AHA [Abolish Human Abortion], who lives in my town — that scares me — he has told me he's going to come to my school and tell all the parents that I'm a baby murderer. Pure intimidation tactics.

At first nothing happened, but then the next year the anti-choice folks followed up on their threats and the school started receiving harassing phone calls referring to her as a "baby murderer." And then they took to Facebook and started sharing the graphic at the top of the page, until it was essentially everywhere.

Now this poor woman, a teacher of small children, feels threatened and under siege in her own community.

Fortunately her school has rallied around her and she has support from her fellow teachers, and of course she is in no danger of losing her job.

However the question remains how long will it be before the people making these threatening accusations are no longer simply happy using words to cause her harm?

Because as we have seen time and time again, this kind of illogical hatred can often take the form of physical violence and even murder.

Dr. George Tiller.

Personally I think this woman is incredibly courageous and hope that she serves as an inspiration for others to consider volunteering at their local clinics as well.

Well I think this seems very appropriate this morning.

I don't usually like to wish ill on anybody but it would be awfully great if a couple of our least favorite justice's had some health concerns that forced them out of the Supreme Court either before the need of Obama's term, or during Hillary's eight years in office.

It does not have to be fatal or anything, just severe enough to force them into an early retirement.

As Texas closes two more Women's Health Clinics, legal abortion, for all intents and purposes, has been rendered virtually impossible in most parts of the state.

Courtesy of the Guardian:  

This week’s closure of two more Texas abortion clinics in the wake of the state’s strict new regulations means women from rural areas seeking to end pregnancies face journeys of hundreds of miles to the nearest facility. 

Workers and activists held a candlelit vigil on Thursday night outside the Whole Woman’s Health clinic in McAllen to mark the closure. The shutdown means that people in the Rio Grande Valley, an area on the Mexican border with about 1.3 million inhabitants, will face logistical and financial challenges to undergo legal abortion procedures. 

The valley’s metropolitan areas are often cited as among the poorest in the country. The nearest abortion clinic that meets the new required standards is in San Antonio, 240 miles away. While abortion is largely illegal across the nearby Mexican border, black-market drugs are widely available, leading to fears that women could put their heath at risk by crossing the frontier and attempting to terminate their pregnancies using unapproved and unsupervised methods. 

The McAllen facility stopped providing abortions last year after doctors were unable to obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals – a new state requirement – but remained open to provide other services. However, management decided that the restrictions meant it was no longer feasible to continue operating. 

The other clinic was in Beaumont, a city of about 120,000 people near the Louisiana border that is a 90-minute drive from Houston. 

Amy Hagstrom Miller, the chief executive of Whole Woman’s Health, said: “Families from the Rio Grande Valley and northern Mexico, to east Texas and western Louisiana, have been turning to our clinics for safe, compassionate care since abortion was made legal in 1973. We have done everything possible to keep our clinics open but we are simply unable to survive with the new, medically unnecessary guidelines required.” 

Her statement added: “The consequence of [the bill] is an injustice, plain and simple. It is an injustice to the women we serve and to our communities.”

Not only are legal abortions, which were guaranteed by Roe vs Wad, becoming a ting of the past in Texas, but these clinics also provided caner screenings, prenatal tests, and birth control, which means that Texas is now becoming a third world country when it comes to providing health care for women.

Especially poor women, because Texas also refused to implement the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion.

For the record Texas had 44 clinics in 2011, and today only has 20.  And that should send a chill up every Texas woman's spine.

But you know what Texas?

You can do something about it.

And it can start happening this year.

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.

After having their funding severely cut in Texas and being forced to close numerous clinics, Planned Parenthood receives help from a wealthy benefactor. And you will NEVER guess who it is. (No fair peeking at the picture.)

Courtesy of Salon:  

Thousands of women have lost access to vital healthcare since Texas dismantled its Medicaid-funded Women’s Health Program in 2011 because Planned Parenthood acted as a service provider under the program. As a result of these cuts, and the persistent targeting of reproductive health clinics by anti-choice lawmakers, many clinics have been forced to close in recent years, leaving Texas women without low- and no-cost options for reproductive healthcare. 

Enter: Ross Perot. 

The Perot Foundation of Dallas, which was founded by the billionaire and former presidential candidate, announced this week that it would be donating $1 million to the beleaguered women’s health provider to help serve the women of Texas. 

“For nearly 100 years Planned Parenthood has helped to educate men and women regarding family planning and general family health,” said Margot Perot in a written statement. “Our family has supported this nonprofit for many years because we are impressed with the work they do — providing birth control; scientifically based education; breast health exams; and basic, life-saving healthcare for women who cannot afford services otherwise.”

I literally thought that the next time I posted about Ross Perot would be to inform everybody of his passing. I NEVER thought that he would be one of the few reasonable people in Texas when it came to women's reproductive rights. 

I can barely think of Perot without remembering Dana Carvey's brilliant impersonation.

Good for the Perot Foundation. Hopefully there are other reasonable organizations that will help to offer cover from the GOP's war on women in Texas and other deeply red states as well.

Rather than apologize to Wendy Davis for being an asshole, Rick Perry doubles down.

"Look there are three things I don't know about women. Anything, everything, and ..uh..I forgot the third one."

Courtesy of Think Progress:

Last week, Perry faced criticism from members of his own party for suggesting that Davis, who was born to a single mother and is a single mother herself, should have learned from her own life experiences to value “every life.” During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Perry clarified that Davis should be grateful her mother did not abort her because “[y]ou never know who’s going to be considered to be an extraordinary individual”: 

JOHN ROBERTS (HOST): In hindsight do you regret those comments and do you think that if you decide to run for president again in 2016, that those comments could hurt you with independent women? 

PERRY: Actually, those comments were meant to be a compliment to her for what she had accomplished in her life, and you think about where she came from, what she’s accomplished. And as a matter of fact, I would think that she’s very proud of that as well. My point was that saving a life and letting that life come to its fulfillment and all the good things that happened. You never know who’s going to be considered to be an extraordinary individual who’s going to make that real impact and life. And that was our point that we were making, and nothing else. Nothing more.

So I guess if the un-aborted fetus grew up to be a drug dealer, or a child molester, or a dipshit Governor from Texas, instead of an "extraordinary individual," that Rick Perry would have a different opinion on ensuring that EVERY viable embryo be born?

And of course this is just the latest volley in Perry's war on women:

This is just the latest in a seemingly never-ending assault on Texas women. In 2011, lawmakers decimated the Texas family planning program with a two-thirds budget cut that closed nearly 60 family planning clinics across the state and left almost 150,000 women without care. Soon after, they also barred Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health clinics defined as “abortion affiliates” from the Women’s Health Program (WHP), a state Medicaid program on which thousands of poor women rely. Governor Perry insisted that former WHP patients could find new providers and claimed there were plenty to bridge the gap, but that simply is not the case. Clinics across Texas have reported a sharp drop in patients, and guess that former WHP clients are receiving no care at all. 

Nobody wants there to be ANY abortions if at all possible, but the reality is that they have existed almost as long as civilization itself. And introducing restrictions which would close down clinics and restrict access to abortions when women may find themselves in a desperate life or death medical emergency is beyond callous.

You know during the Republican primary I used to simply think that Rick Perry was an oversize frat boy that was good for a laugh or two. But now I am beginning to REALLY dislike his ass.

My new fantasy is that Wendy Davis challenges him for reelection and fucking DESTROYS him, leaving nothing behind but a pair of cowboy boots and a half empty bottle of Grecian Formula.

MItt Romney invested in firm that disposed of aborted fetuses. Pro-life heads to explode in 3..2..1.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate's reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion. 

But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney's exit from Bain.

Wow, making money off of aborted fetuses! I have to say that if THIS connection had been well known during the primary, I don't think that Romney would have had a snowball's chance in hell of winning his party's nomination.

I have always believed that, despite their endorsement of this candidate, the Evangelicals were always going to vote for Romney while holding their noses, but I am pretty sure that something like this is going to dramatically tamp down the enthusiasm factor, and inspire some of the true believers to give this election a pass.

The Right Wing is apoplectic at being accused of inspiring terrorism. I guess all of these people came up with the idea on their own.

Photo courtesy of the Red Phoenix

All of these incidents were compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

January 21, 2009
On the day after Barack Obama is inaugurated as the nation’s first black president, Keith Luke of Brockton, Mass., is arrested after allegedly shooting three black immigrants from Cape Verde, killing two of them, as part of a racially motivated killing spree. The two murders are apparently only part of Luke’s plan to kill black, Latino and Jewish people. After being captured by police, he reportedly says he planned to go to an Orthodox synagogue near his home that night and “kill as many Jews as possible.” Police say Luke, a white man who apparently had no contact with white supremacists but spent the previous six months reading racist websites, told them he was “fighting for a dying race.” Luke also says he formed his racist views in large part after watching videos on Podblanc, a racist video-sharing website run by longtime white supremacist Craig Cobb. When he later appears in court for a hearing, Luke, charged with murder, kidnapping and aggravated rape, has etched a swastika into his own forehead, apparently using a jail razor.

May 31, 2009
Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion extremist who was involved with the antigovernment “freemen” movement in the 1990s, allegedly shoots to death Kansas late-term abortion provider George Tiller as the doctor is serving as an usher in his Wichita church. Adherents of “freemen” ideology claim they are “sovereign citizens” not subject to federal and other laws, and often form their own “common law” courts and issue their own license plates. It was one of those homemade plates that led Topeka police to stop Roeder in April 1996, when a search of his trunk revealed a pound of gunpowder, a 9-volt battery wired to a switch, blasting caps and ammunition. A prosecutor in that case called Roeder a “substantial threat to public safety,” citing Roeder’s refusal to acknowledge the court’s authority. But his conviction in the 1996 case is ultimately overturned. In the more recent case, Roeder is charged with murder and faces life in prison.

Feb. 18, 2010
Joseph Andrew Stack, who had earlier attended meetings of radical anti-tax groups in California, sets fire to his own house and then flies his single-engine plane into an Austin, Texas, building housing IRS offices. Stack and an IRS manager are killed, and 13 others are injured. Stack leaves a long online rant about the IRS and the tax code, politicians and corporations.

March 27-28, 2010
Nine members of the Hutaree Militia are arrested in raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana and charged with seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction. The group, whose website said it was preparing for the imminent arrival of the anti-Christ, allegedly planned to murder a Michigan police officer, then use bombs and homemade missiles to kill other officers attending the funeral, all in a bid to set off a war with the government.

April 30, 2010
Darren Huff, an Oath Keeper from Georgia, is arrested and charged with planning the armed takeover of a Madisonville, Tenn., courthouse and “arrest” of 24 local, state and federal officials. Authorities say Duff was angry about the April 1 arrest there of Walter Francis Fitzpatrick III, a leader of the far-right American Grand Jury movement that seeks to have grand juries indict President Obama for treason. Several others in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement accuse Duff of white supremacist and anti-Semitic attitudes in Internet postings.

May 10, 2010
Sandlin Matthew Smith detonates a pipe bomb at a rear entrance to a mosque in Jacksonville, Fla., while worshippers are inside. Armed only with a fuzzy videotape, authorities only identify Smith, based on talking to witnesses to whom he admits the attack, a year later. They track Smith, a bus driver from Julington Creek, Fla., to a campsite near Fairview, Okla., where he resists arrest with a gun and is killed. A search of Smith’s two homes turns up explosive materials.

June 8, 2010
A bomb packed into a soda can is planted outside Osage Baptist Church in Carroll City, Ark., where a polling station for a Democratic Senate primary runoff between Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Lt. Gov. Bill Halter is located. The device does not explode, although authorities say it was capable of causing death or serious bodily injury. Officials later receive a tip from contractors who hired to clean out the foreclosed home of self-described “Patriot” Mark Krause, where they find bomb-making materials, manuals, and materials related to antigovernment militias. Krause, who earlier posted antigovernment messages to MySpace, eventually is arrested in Seattle.

July 18, 2010
An unemployed parolee with two bank robbery convictions, apparently enraged at liberals and what he sees as the “left-wing agenda” of Congress, allegedly opens fire on California Highway Patrol troopers who pull him over in Oakland. No one is killed, but two troopers are slightly injured and Byron Williams is shot in the arms and legs. Williams allegedly later tells authorities that he was on his way to attack offices of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation, a liberal organization that, although little known to most Americans, has been repeatedly pilloried on air by Fox News host Glenn Beck.

Sept. 2, 2010
A pipe bomb is thrown through the window of a closed Planned Parenthood clinic in Madera, Calif., along with a note that reads, “Murder our children? We have a ‘choice’ too.” The note is signed ANB, apparently short for the American Nationalist Brotherhood. Six months later, law enforcement officials arrest school bus driver Donny Eugene Mower, who allegedly also threatened a local Islamic Center and has the word “Peckerwood,” a reference to a white supremacist gang, tattooed on his chest. Mower reportedly confesses to the attack.

Sept. 7, 2010
The FBI arrests 26-year-old Justin Carl Moose, a self-described “freedom fighter” and “Christian counterpart to Osama bin Laden,” for allegedly planning to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. After earlier receiving tips that Moose was posting threats of violence against abortion providers and information about explosives on his Facebook page, the FBI set up a sting operation to capture him. Moose later pleads guilty to distributing information on manufacturing and use of an explosive and is sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Jan. 14, 2011
Federal agents in Arizona arrest Jeffery Harbin, a member of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, for allegedly building homemade grenades and pipe bombs that he apparently intended to supply to anti-immigration groups patrolling the Mexican border. A prosecutor says that Harbin constructed the devices, using model rocket engines and aluminum power, “in such a way as to maximize human carnage.” Harbin is indicted on two counts of possessing a destructive device and a third of transporting destructive devices. Jeffery Harbin is the son of Jerry Harbin, a Phoenix-area activist with past ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the racist Council of Conservative Citizens.

Jan. 17, 2011
Bomb technicians defuse a sophisticated improvised explosive device (IED) found in a backpack along the Spokane, Wash., route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade with 1,500 marchers. Using forensic clues found in the dismantled bomb, officials about two months later identify and arrest Kevin William Harpham, a long-time neo-Nazi. Harpham had posted more than 1,000 messages to the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network since 2004, when he was a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Harpham also had contributed to the white supremacist Aryan Alternative newspaper. He is indicted on one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and one count of possessing an IED. Later, federal hate crime charges are added.

We could have course quibble at a few of the incidents listed above as to whether the individuals were inspired by the "Right Wing" as most of us understand it, or more fringe elements, but we do have to admit it is a chilling list to see all put together like this.

I would also like to add our own Alaska grown terrorist Schaeffer Cox to the list as well. just to round it out.

These are just the incidents that have taken place since Barack Obama became President. You can see a much more comprehensive list over at Addicting Info.