The bad and the ugly:
- Rush Limbaugh is still an asshole.
- Speaking of people who are still assholes, remember Carl Wimmer, the Utah legislator who tried to criminalize miscarriages? He's baaaaaaaaack:
A state lawmaker is opening a bill file to keep federal officials from routing money to Planned Parenthood through Utah state agencies. But his opponents say the measure could cause serious harm.
Agencies like the Utah Department of Health are given federal money designated to go to Planned Parenthood. Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, says that's what his bill is trying to stop.
Of course, cutting off federal funds to the state agencies won't cut off federal funding of abortion because?say it with me now?federal funding of abortion is already prohibited. But Carl's latest brainstorm will cut off funding for abstinence programs, rape prevention, and a lab that tests for chlamydia. Way to go, Carl.
- Tennessee becomes the latest state to try to pass a total ban on abortion, in direct violation of Roe v. Wade.
- North Carolina legislators are totally cool with busting the state's budget if it means denying health care to women. I guess that's what passes for fiscal conservatism in North Carolina.
- Republicans think government shouldn't tell people what kind of light bulbs to buy?unless, of course, we're talking about light bulbs in women's health clinics:
TOPEKA | Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signed legislation Monday that will require annual, unannounced inspections of abortion clinics and impose new health and safety standards specifically for the three clinics operating in the state.
...
Along with annual, unannounced inspections of the clinics, the new law directs the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to write standards for exits, lighting, bathrooms and equipment. KDHE would issue annual licenses, have the power to fine clinics and could go to court to shut them down.
- Low-income women in Indiana are learning just what the state's new law prohibiting government funding of women's health care means for them.
- Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed into law his "emergency" legislation to force women seeking abortions to first undergo a completely unnecessary sonogram, hear a description of the fetus, and then wait 24 hours before going ahead with the procedure. But it's not like Texas Republicans are completely heartless.
In certain cases, including those involving rape and incest victims or serious fetal abnormalities, the woman could decline to hear the description of the sonogram.
Isn't that sweet?
- And of course mandatory sonograms were only the beginning.
- The military has a serious rape problem:
In February, Bertzikis, along with 14 other women and two men, filed a lawsuit (Cioca et al. v. Rumsfeld and Gates) charging Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, with mishandling their sexual assault cases.
MST is an epidemic. Nearly a quarter of women serving in combat areas say they have been sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers. But everyone agrees that reliable statistics don?t exist. The Pentagon, which recorded 3,158 cases of sexual assault in 2010, estimates that only about 14 percent of all incidents are reported.
- The drive in state legislatures to cut off funding for women's health care doesn't just restrict abortion:
Family-planning centers are the main source of health care for 60 percent of the women who use them, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Because forced birthers want to make super duper extra sure taxpayers don't have to fund abortions. Apparently, they don't mind that unintended pregnancies are costing taxpayers $11 billion a year.
- Forced birthers hate the Girl Scouts.
And now for the good:
- Massachusetts is one state where the anti-woman movement is flailing.
- It's about damn time?actually, it's long past time?for real pro-lifers to call bullshit on fake pro-lifers:
On Wednesday, 70 professors, priests and nuns at Catholic universities criticized House Speaker John Boehner for a legislative record on the poor that was, in their words ?among the worst in Congress.? His ?anti-life? budget, they wrote, ignores the ?most ancient moral teachings? of the Catholic Church on the duty of the powerful to care for the powerless.
- In Texas, lawmakers might hate Planned Parenthood, but it turns out, voters don't.
- Finally, a state law that really is about helping women:
That's why news from Maryland this morning is so welcome. There, Governor Martin O'Malley signed the Family Planning Works Act into law, which will make free Medicaid family planning services available to 33,000 more low- and moderate-income women there.
- Victory for midwives in Colorado.
- Are Saudi women catching the revolution bug?
A Saudi mother said Sunday she defied a ban on women drivers in the ultra-conservative kingdom by getting behind the wheel for four days without being stopped.
Najla al-Hariri, a housewife in her mid-30s, said she drove non-stop for four days in the streets of the Red Sea city of Jeddah "to defend her belief that Saudi women should be allowed to drive.''
"I don't fear being arrested because I am setting an example that my daughter and her friends are proud of,'' Hariri told AFP, adding she was offering driving lessons for women.
Hariri said she was an experienced motorist as she had driven for five years in Egypt and another five years in Lebanon, while she could not drive in her own country.
And other Saudi women are joining her:
Meanwhile, a group of Saudi women have launched a Internet-based campaign calling for a nationwide protest drive on June 17 in a bid to get rid of the ban once and for all.
"On Friday June 17th, we women in Saudi will start driving our cars by ourselves,'' says the Women2Drive page on Twitter.
The page for the event on Facebook is entitled "I will drive starting June 17'' and has 1,998 supporters.
Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/StE0r_EZ4tk/-This-week-in-the-War-on-Women
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