historicalslut:someauthorgirl:trubr0wn:occupyallstreets:

Pharmacists And Doctors In Kansas Can Now Deny Women Access To Birth Control And Chemotherapy

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) signed a bill yesterday that will allow pharmacists in the state to refuse to fill a prescription they think could be used to induce abortion. But since the “conscience” measure says they cannot be required to provide a drug or devise that they think “may result in the termination of a pregnancy” — but does not define which drug in particular — the law’s opponents say it could allow a pharmacist to interfere with a woman’s health care by refusing to distribute birth control or emergency contraception.

Women who already have difficulty obtaining contraception may face additional hurdles, according to Julie Burkhart, founder of an abortion-rights group in Wichita, Kansas:

Burkhart said the law could create a hardship for women in small towns with a sole pharmacist who may refuse to fill certain prescriptions. In larger cities, women will have to make sure they go to a cooperative pharmacist, she added.

“Women should not have to go armed with a lot of research when looking for a physician or pharmacist in the community,” Burkhart said.

No pharmacist could be fired for refusing to fill such prescriptions, and doctors can refuse to refer patients to pharmacists who would fill a birth control prescription.

Additionally, the Associated Press had reported that the law could “allow a doctor to refuse to provide chemotherapy to a pregnant cancer patient because it might end her pregnancy.”

Brownback’s office justified his signing by saying the bill “gives more legal protection to Kansas health care providers who refuse to participate in abortions” based on their conscience. Kansas already had a law that allowed medical professionals to refuse to assist in abortion procedures.

While Kansas lawmakers failed to pass a sweeping anti-abortion bill that would have required doctors to give false information to their patients, the expanded “conscience” law is just one of several laws recently approved in the state that undermine women’s health and well being.

Source

and chemotherapy too. great.

Institutionalized misogyny - it is alive and well.

we live in a post-feminist world my ass.

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:wearethe1in3:

I had an abortion when I was 19 years old. I have tokophobia. I don’t want to be pregnant, I don’t want to give birth. I just wanted to finish my studies (now I’m almost done!).

Mom was disappointed. Dad said that even if it was my body, I “had no right”. Tell me, have you ever felt like you weren’t a human being? Have you ever felt like an object? Have you been told that you have no rights? That basically your body is not yours? I have.

Sorry, but I’m not sorry. I am the 1 in 3.

AMAZING.

welcome-earthlings:

This is related to the on-going debate in Chile on whether or not abortion should be legalized. It was legal at one point, but because the Opus Dei of the Catholic Church has an extraneous amount of power it is now illegal. Pink posters have been plastered all over Valparaíso declaring “aborto sí, aborto no, eso lo decido yo” (yes to abortion, no to abortion, this is something I decide). Hopefully I’ll get a picture of them soon.

pantslessprogressive:theweekmagazine:

How TV shows deal with abortion: A timeline

It’s been 40 years since Bea Arthur’s outspoken liberal Maude Findlay was the first television character to have an abortion in a 1972 episode of Maude, but televising the divisive issue still courts controversy. On Sunday night’s episode of Girls, Jemima Kirke’s free-spirited global nomad made an abortion appointment, but conflicted feelings kept her from showing up for it. Indeed, while the hot-button issue surfaces frequently on TV these days, says Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon, characters rarely go through with abortions.

“Four decades after Roe v. Wade, are we ever going to able to talk about abortion on television and have more to say than, ‘Maude had one?’”

Here, a history of how TV series have dealt with the issue, from Maude to Girls

If a TV script can teach us anything on this topic, let it be this: considering an abortion is rarely ever an easy task.

There will be women who never thought they’d get an abortion who will consider doing so. There will be vehemently pro-choice women who, in the face of that difficult decision, consider keeping the child. There will be women who make a clinic appointment without a second thought. There will be women who still don’t know what choice to make after seemingly endless internal negotiation.

Even if most TV episodes that address abortion end with a woman choosing to have the child, the mere presence of abortion on TV as a real issue women deal with - not just an issue to be shunned via regressive legislation - is critical to the national conversation.

foreverliberal:

Drop “Arrest Grandma” Act! 

Sponsored by Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, nicknamed the “Arrest Grandma” Act, would make it a crime for anyone but a parent to go with a minor outside of her home state to get an abortion. 

The doctor performing the abortion could serve up to a year in jail. 

Amendments were going to be added to it to make exceptions for rape and incest, health threats, or other family members such as grandparents or older siblings going with her, but they were all rejected.

This bill is a violation of women’s rights, blatantly ignoring the girl’s health and well-being.

Many individuals cannot turn to their parents in these situations. Some are in abusive homes. They have the right to have whoever they want accompany them. These young women should not be forced into unsafe or undesirable situations in order to make decisions about their bodies.

Please tell Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to drop this bill!

Sign the petition here. 

stfuconservatives:soulofawomanwascreatedbelow:

March 3rd, 2012

RICHMOND, Va. — More than 30 activists have been arrested for refusing to leave the Virginia Capitol steps during a protest of anti-abortion legislation.

Virginia Capitol Police Capt. Raymond Goodloesays 31 protesters were arrested Saturday. The demonstrators were some of an estimated 500 people who had gathered to protest legislation like a bill that passed the General Assembly earlier in the week that requires an ultrasound before an abortion.

The group had a permit to rally at the Bell Tower on Capitol Square, but Goodloe said rallies are not allowed on the Capitol steps.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports (http://bit.ly/ye99lx) that police with plastic shields held demonstrators at bay while armed officers arrested protesters, who sat on the steps with locked arms.

Some moving and terrifying imagery.

kokopenguin:

Illegal abortion doesn’t mean less abortions, it just means less safe abortions

theprochoicegeneration:

[TRIGGER WARNING: Blood, gore, dead bodies, aborted fetuses, pro-life jackassery]

Today, a group calling themselves the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP for short, as in, there’s a GAP in their brains where logic should go) set up a huge display or graphic and disturbing images in the middle of the Florida State University campus, right on the common green in front of our library.

They came prepared with fliers of false information, “documentation” of abortion statistics, and worst of all, giant billboards that compared abortion in America to the genocides in Rwanda, the lynchings of African Americans in the decades before and after the civil war, and the Holocaust, complete with pictures of victims of these mass murders.

Already we’re off to a wonderful start, disregarding anyone who lives on our campus. There are dorms right next to that green. They held no respect for people who may have been triggered by these images.

Here are some of the things I heard today:

“Abortion is genocide!”

No, actually, Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. The common denominator between abortions is that all of the “victims” are unborn. Thus, this would be a genocide against the unborn, or as some put it, simply very, very young. However, when a woman gets an abortion, she does not look down at her body, go “this thing is unborn or young, I will destroy it because of that.” Therefore, it is not a genocide, because the common linking factor is NOT the cause or reason of the abortion.

Also there are quite a few Jewish friends of mine who would like to have a word with you about your comparison.

“I work as an ultrasound tech, I know what i’m talking about, ive seen thousands of pregnancies!”

This does not make you a doctor. An ultrasound technician, although you must have knowledge of ailments that often happen to pregnant women and an understanding of the medical procedures they will have to go through, is not a biologist. As a matter of fact, biology is not even a base requirement. You have not learned everything there is to know about the human body. You run a machine.

“Life begins at conception! Here, look at these article snippets!”

I was then handed pamphlet with snippets of medical journals. However, all of the quotes simply stated that human development begins at conception, which no one is arguing. The word “life” was mentioned once, and that particular quote only stated that conception was the first stage in creating life, not the start of it. When I pointed this out I was met with:

“Human development and life are the same thing!”

No, no they are not. Life is a philosophical concept, human development is scientific. When I pointed out that life was a philosophical concept, I was met with this:

“No it’s not! Life and conception are one in the same”

However, when I began to argue that a fetus is not a sentient thinking being, I was met with:

“Don’t get into philosophy, only science! Life begins at conception!”

So clearly, the man I was talking to (who seemed to be the ring leader) had gotten it into this head that my definition of life was philosophical, however his definition of life was scientific fact. 

Their billboards were also riddled with inaccuracy. The man I was speaking to held up a poster of an aborted fetus that claimed it was 22 weeks. However, a different angle of the same fetus on their larger billboards, claimed that it was 24. When I pointed out the inaccuracy to one of his female partners (the ultrasound tech) she initially tried to deny it. When I pointed out that the fetus has the same blood smears, the same umbilical cord placing, and the blanket it was placed on had the exact same blood pattern, she then took back her words and said that:

“When we judge when a woman gets pregnant we go by last period date, however it’s often more like two weeks after. That’s why that’s different.”

When I pointed out that it was still an inaccuracy and two weeks could make a difference between legal and illegal, she had no response for me.

 The man continued on his rant, and at one point asked me this:

“As a woman, can you look at this picture? It should tear at your heart strings! It should make you want to cry!”

Which I found particularly offensive. Simply because i’m a woman does not mean I have a motherly instinct, or can’t look at a fetus without bursting into sobs. I also got this little gem before I left:

“If you had seen this picture 100 years ago, you would have wanted to know who did this! You would have wanted to string them up on a flag pole! Think about if you saw this 100 years ago!”

At which point I was just done. How am I supposed to know what I would have thought 100 years ago? I’m not a vampire. I’m not a time lord. I don’t know anything about 100 years ago besides the fact that I would have had no rights at all.

But then again, they all want it that way, don’t they?

These people make their way to schools all over the country, so if you see them coming your way, set up a counter protest with actual information, and try to record their idiocy for all to see. This is the second year they came to FSU, last year they were sponsored by the College Republicans, this year they came on their own. I called the Student Relations office to have them removed, however Landis Green is a free-speech zone, and he told me straight up that they couldn’t remove them no matter how much they wanted to, because then the GAP would go to the news and they would get even more attention, and none of the staff wants that. Some of the things that came out of these people’s mouths were so inaccurate I almost cried. They also come with a bus with pictures of aborted fetuses on them that drives around for the two days in which they stay.

If you see them, just try to ignore them. Arguing science will do nothing, as they have grown such thick skulls they can no longer accept words that do not agree with their own. Their arguments are childish and illogical, and they back it up with no scientific fact. 

If you are around the Florida State University campus tomorrow, Friday the 24th, stop by Landis green and support the counter-protest. Here is the facebook group, they will probably be out there from around 10 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon if weather permits. 

You have way more guts than I have ‘cus I don’t think I would’ve been able to go up to them to argue. It leads nowhere when these people are so hardheaded that they drive around in a bus plastered with pictures of aborted fetuses. I’m okay with people protesting—to me it’s great that we can pinpoint these dumbasses from a mile away—but it’s not okay that they can have these huge billboards (facing people’s dorms without a care in the world as to how triggering these images might be to some people!!!, in a place where I’ve had nice picnics with friends!!!), it’s just not the way to go about this stuff.

think-progress:

Hundreds silently protest the Virginia bill that would force people to undergo involuntary vaginal penetration before receiving an abortion.

HT @maddowblog, Delegate Mark Sickles