So what did I miss?

Wow. I go to work and am offline for blogging for 24 hours, and the governor of Wisconson makes an even bigger ass out of himself on a prank call. Not even the twisted minds behind Crank Yankers could have done something this beautiful:

For the most part, Walker sounds like the dweeby kid from chem class who's just been invited out to the after-game malt shop get-together by the football quarterback. But when he talks about getting the Democrats back under false pretenses of negotiation just to get them into the state so Republicans can vote, all bets are off.

Meanwhile, over in Indiana, another union-buster state, an assistant attorney general has been fired after a Twitter-fight with another Tweeter in which he advocated the use of live ammunition to mow down protesters in Wisconsin. That other Tweeter just happened to be a writer for what is now becoming even more indispensable reading, Mother Jones:

On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building—something that didn't end up happening—one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: "Use live ammunition."

From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were "political enemies" and "thugs" who were "physically threatening legally elected officials." In response to such behavior, he said, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force." He later called me a "typical leftist," adding, "liberals hate police."

Only later did we realize that JCCentCom was a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana.

As one of 144 attorneys in that office, Jeff Cox has represented the people of his state for 10 years. And for much of that time, it turns out, he's vented similar feelings on Twitter and on his blog, Pro Cynic. In his nonpolitical tweets and blog posts, Cox displays a keen litigator's mind, writing sharply and often wittily on military history and professional basketball. But he evinces contempt for political opponents—from labeling President Obama an "incompetent and treasonous" enemy of the nation to comparing "enviro-Nazis" to Osama bin Laden, likening ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Service Employees International Union members to Nazi "brownshirts" on multiple occasions, and referring to an Indianapolis teen as "a black teenage thug who was (deservedly) beaten up" by local police. A "sensible policy for handling Afghanistan," he offered, could be summed up as: "KILL! KILL! ANNIHILATE!"

Early Sunday, Mother Jones sent an email to Cox's work address at the Indiana attorney general's office, asking if the Twitter and blog comments were his, and if he could provide context for some of them. He responded shortly after from a personal email address: "For 'context?' Or to silence me? All my comments on twitter & my blog are my own and no one else's. And I can defend them all.

"[Y]ou will probably try to demonize me," he wrote, "but that comes with the territory."

To be sure, in the current political climate, partisan rhetoric has run hot online—and the Constitution guarantees everyone's right to such rhetoric. Nonetheless, a spokesman for the Indiana attorney general's office, Bryan Corbin, told Mother Jones that Cox's statements were "inflammatory," and he promised "an immediate review" of the matter. "We do not condone any comments that would threaten or imply violence or intimidation toward anyone," Corbin added.

As Blue Girl points out, you have to wonder what those who have had dealings with Cox over the last decade are thinking, particularly in cases regarding things like women's rights, collective bargaining, working conditions, or even free speech that doesn't agree with his.

You want Teabaggers in positions of authorty? Jeffrey Cox is what you get.

And the ever-burgeoning "EEEWWWW!!! Lady Parts!!!" caucus is On The Job -- in Georgia, where Bobby Franklin wants you to be put to death if he determines you had anything whatsoever to do with causing your miscarriage; in South Dakota, where women seeking abortions will be forced to be lectured by the Christofascist Zombie Brigade before obtaining one; and in Nebraska, where the legislature is playing "Mine's Bigger" with South Dakota in terms of Killing for Life, with even crazier "justified homicide" legislation. In Nebraska, you won't even have to know the woman seeking the abortion in order to barge in and kill the doctor. ANY third party, like, say, Scott Roeder, will be allowed to do so.

This is Teabag America, folks. And it's only the beginning.

And where ARE the jobs, anyway?

UPDATE: Legalized murder is spreading to Iowa now, too.

How can you be "pro-life" and be opposed to women's health?

Women like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are simply the shiny baubles that Republican males use as props in an effort to hide their very real feeling that women are nothing -- not human, not worth anything, just vessels for popping out babies (preferably white babies, in order to keep the Marauding Brown Hordes from taking over).

Because despite an intractable unemployment rate, crumbling infrastructure, and international crises, the first priority of this Republican House of Representatives is to make sure the dirty sluts are punished for not keeping their legs closed by being forced to bear the fruits of their sin. And they're doing it all under the mantle of "fiscal responsibility":

Invoking the mantra of fiscal restraint that has dominated House action since lawmakers reconvened last month, Republicans began committee work this week on two bills that would greatly expand restrictions on financing for and access to abortions. Another bill, one that would cut off federal dollars to women’s health care clinics that offer abortions, is expected to surface later this year.

Over and over, Democrats said that by bringing up the abortion issue now, Republicans were going back on their word to focus on the budget.

Yet the bills that have surfaced on the House floor this year have been fiscal in nature, including the repeal of the health care law, which was later rejected by the Senate, and some measures designed to cut spending.

“Republicans are focused on creating a better environment for economic growth and job creation,” said Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner, “and that is reflected in the legislation the House is passing,”

Not sure how denying women whose only access to medical care is through clinics creates jobs, Mr. Boehner. You got some 'splainin' to do there.

One bill, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” would eliminate tax breaks for private employers who provide health coverage if their plans offer abortion services, and would forbid women who use a flexible spending plan to use pre-tax dollars for abortions. Those restrictions would go well beyond current law prohibiting the use of federal money for abortion services.

The bill, sponsored by Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey, has drawn fire over language that undercuts a longstanding exemption on the ban on using federal money for abortions in the case of rape or incest; the measure narrows the definition of rape to “forcible rape,” a term that his office has never defined. Democratic lawmakers and others repeatedly hammered on the term, saying it suggested that victims of statutory rape and other crimes could not get abortions paid for with federal money.

While Mr. Smith’s staff said last week that the term "forcible rape" would be removed from the bill, the staff of RepresentativeJerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, said that language remained intact as of Tuesday.

Another bill, sponsored by Mr. Pitts, addresses the health care overhaul head-on by prohibiting Americans who receive insurance through state exchanges from purchasing abortion coverage, even with their own money. The bill is essentially a resurrection of a provision in the House version of the health care law but was not in the Senate version.

The bill would also permit hospitals to refuse abortions to women, even in emergency situations, if such care would offend the conscience of the health care providers.

Imagine a woman with an ectopic pregnancy that's ready to burst. She arrives at the hospital, and some wingnut doctor who thinks removing an ectopic pregnancy is an abortion and an offense against God decides that his religious beliefs prevent him from performing the procedure to remove it. It's entirely likely that this woman will die on the floor of the emergency room because a doctor, whose job is to provide care, decided his so-called "pro-life" beliefs prevented him from saving an actual, real-life woman. Imagine any pregnancy gone wrong -- and it does happen -- and the woman is allowed to die on the hospital steps because of such doctors.

Why are women's lives and women's health always expendable to Republicans? Why is it that the only life they care about is fetal life -- but after said fetus is born, it's on its own? No paid maternity leave for mothers. No health care services for the poor. No food or medical care for babies who were beloved by Republicans as long as they were attached to what these Republicans believe is a worthless vessel by an umbilical cord, but as soon as they're breathing on their own, and especially if their pigmentation is unsuitable to Republican goals, they're on their own.

MOST of what family planning clinics do is provide basic health care for women and contraceptives -- you know, birth control designed to PREVENT unwanted pregnancies. But no, Republicans and their frothing, idiotic wingnut minions think that this is off-limits too -- no sacrifice is too great for their worship of the fetus.

Why is it that forty years after Roe, we're still fighting this battle -- and losing? And when are Democrats going to find their fucking balls and stop compromising on the backs of American women? Or do they too think women are nothing but vessels?

The other Jill who isn't Cookie Jill or me also weighs in, and has waited until she stopped wanting to put a fist through a wall to do it so she's far more coherent than I am on this.

The politics of hair

Last week I posted a Sesame Street video featuring a clearly African-American Muppet singing about how she loves her hair. A few days later, I heard a segment on NPR featuring the man who wrote that song for his daughter, and about the highly emotional response that many women of color have had to the video.

Hair seems to be more fraught with emotional resonance with women than it does even for men, who have long tried to be creative about the hair loss that comes with middle age. And it doesn't matter how old you are, hair is perhaps second only to weight in the emotional baggage it often carries.

I never had great hair. Photos of me as a child show your standard-issue blondish child-hair, cut in the obligatory page-boy-with-bangs Scout Finch look that was inevitable in the early 1960s. I came to adolescence just in time for the flaxen-haired folk singers like Joni Mitchell, and spent years trying to tame my hair into being long, straight and fine. We did this by rolling the crown on two giant rollers while wet, then wrapping the hair around our heads and securing it with giant clips, and sleeping on it. And for about five minutes after getting up in the morning, my sister and I had straight Joni Mitchell hair -- until we stepped outside. Any humidity at all, and it clumped right up.

My mother has always had really thick hair. Even at 83, her hair is still quite thick. My sister has thick hair like hers, only hers is coarse and not-quite-curly -- the kind of hair that others have at times when it's fashionable, managed to have with body waves and perms. My head shows archetypal male pattern baldness genes -- thick around the sides and thin on top. I've been through many hair iterations in my life. There are lame and failed attempts at the Farrah Fawcett 'do of the 1970's, sleek pageboys, the long, wavy luxurious look of my high school graduation photo which lasted about as long as it took to take the photo. There's the chin-length perm that I hoped looked like a late 1920's wavy bob but didn't, the short, poodly perm that's cropped close on the sides with curls on top, and finally settled into the short cut I wear today.

Until I cut my hair short, hair care always took at least a half-hour in the morning, what with blow dryers and curling irons. The perms gave me my first taste of hair care freedom -- just wash, pick, and go. But when my hair started to go gray, not in a nice salt-and-pepper way, but rather, changing color from a kind of autumn wheat shade to a dull mouse brown with gray wires coming out of it, I went the dye route via my hairdresser -- the one thing I'm not frugal about, for all that he gives me a good price for my hair care by virtue of having been his client since 1986. The color is darker than my natural shade, but has some bottle-red highlights that border on purple, which makes me feel kind of punk-rockish. In the morning, it's wash, comb, and go -- a virtue when you have the kind of schedule I do.

My first short cut was a botch job, and I remember sitting in my therapist's office crying as if I were Samson and Delilah had just cut my hair off. I hadn't wanted it this short, and I felt as if I'd been de-womanized somehow. The therapist, who had long, wavy, salt-and-pepper hair, talked to me about the joys of Really Big Dangly Earrings, and for the most part, that's the route I've gone since.

With middle-age has come even more thinning on top, but the short cut keeps me from having broad areas of no hair. There's no combover here, but the short hairs cover the top of my head nicely. I'm sure I'll end up as one of those old ladies who has the four remaining hairs on her head teased into voluminousness to try to cover the baldness, but I'll worry about that when I get there.

It took me a long time to get to some peace with my hair. Sometimes I still wish I could wear it long, but I'm OK with it as it is. At 4'10" tall, hair that's too long creates a look reminiscent of Cousin Itt from the Addams Family anyway. My hair is what it is. The hair of other women is what it is. I'm fifty-five years old and I long ago learned that I'm not the center of the universe and most people I pass by in my day-to-day life aren't even looking. And I don't understand why it's necessary to waste perfectly good keystrokes on screeds like this, from last Thursday's New York Times:

MY mother hates it. My sister worries about it. My agent thinks I’m hiding behind it. A concerned friend suggests that it undermines my professional credibility. But in the middle of my life, I’m happy with it. Which is saying a lot about anything happening to my 55-year-old body.

I feel great about my hair.

I have long hair. I’m not talking about long enough to brush gently on my shoulder — when I tilt my head. I’m not talking about being a couple of weeks late to the hairdresser. I’m talking long. Long enough for a ponytail with swing to it. Long enough to sit against when I’m in a chair. Long enough to have to lift it up out of the sweater I’m pulling over my head. Long enough to braid.

What’s worse (to my critics) is that my hair is graying. Of course it is. Everyone’s hair is graying. But some of us aren’t ready to go there. That’s fine with me — I’m not judgmental about dyes. In fact, I find the range and variety of synthetic hair color to be an impressive testament to our unending chemical creativity. I’m particularly fascinated by that streaky kaleidoscopic thing some blondes do that looks kind of like Hair of Fawn. For my own head, I’m a tad paranoid about smelly, itchy potions.

No one seems to have any problems when a woman of a certain age cuts her hair off. It is considered the appropriate thing to do, as if being shorn is a way of releasing oneself from the locks of the past. I can see the appeal, and have, at times in my life, gone that route. Some women want to wash the men (or jobs) right out of their hair. Others of us have to have at them with scissors. Again, I do not judge. Go right ahead, be a 60-year-old pixie.

Uh, what was that about judging?

The author of this drivel, Dominique Browning, goes on to point out a bunch of crap about long hair that no one seriously believes anymore, particularly about how men find long hair sexy. I have no doubt that most men do, though the preponderance of women in the local A&P still in their yoga pants pushing shopping carts full of children tells me that long hair is not necessarily a prerequisite in the allure department, and let's face it -- once you get into your fifties, that horse may still be in the barn, but the kid at the local gas station isn't going to be asking you out anymore.

I really hate to tell Dominique Browning this, but most people really don't give a shit whether she has long hair or not. I suspect that this judgmentalism she writes about is coming from the messages playing in her own head that have been given her by her judgmental mother and sister, not by others. We're too busy worrying about our weight to even notice.

Bart Stupak: Still an idiot. Still has to go.

And so in the end, Bart Stupak came around. Did your head explode listening to him all of a sudden paint health care for pregnant women and children who are actually here as "pro-life", when until the day before he was perfectly willing to jettison the whole thing if it meant that dirty sluts who can't keep their legs closed wouldn't be punished by being forced to bear children they don't want. Because let's face it, THAT'S what it was all about, otherwise the internal inconsistency of his [wide] stance would never have held up in any school of logic.

And after a decade of people like me being forced to pay in the form of my tax dollars for a war based on lies, tax cuts for the already preposterously wealthy, and Blackwater rapists -- and told to sit down and shut up -- in the end, Barack Obama was only able to get this thing through by promising Bart Stupak that dirty sluts who couldn't afford to pay for their own abortions would be suitably punished.

Amanda nailed it even before the vote came in:

Did they come up with this brilliant plan after Stupak has made it clear that his contempt for women’s opinions applies even to nuns?  Is it possible that Nancy Pelosi called up Obama and said, “Look, I’ve been telling him and Sebelius has been telling him there’s no federal funding for abortion in this bill.  He apparently needs to hear it from a man, so can you give us a hand?”

And in the end, Stupak's year-long concern with the zygote and the fetus above all else didn't save him from the wrath of lunatics.

Stupak gets no brownie points for this. You know what to do.

A glimpse of what the "Christian nation" so beloved of Republicans would look like

Here's a taste of what the Christian theocracy that's the goal of so many conservatives would look like:

Nineteen-year-old Keshia Canter handed three burgers, fries and milkshakes to a car-load of Tuesday afternoon customers at the Hi-Lo Burger’s drive-though window. A lady sitting in the backseat leaned forward, between the two men in front, and handed her a leaflet: “Women & Girls” it said across the top.

“Even though nothing is showing, you’re being ungodly,” Canter recalled the woman telling her. “You make men want to be sinful.”

[snip]

“You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed,” it begins. “Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged?”

It continues with one essential theme: The sins of men are, in part, the fault of women, specifically women in tight-fitting clothing. Yates was annoyed. Then she got to a section on page two:

“Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin,” the leaflet states. “By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”

In Theocratic America, women are by their very nature evil, even criminals. This pamphlet was being distributed in Bristol, Virginia -- a state where now you can carry a gun into a bar. This is so that when the drunk at the end of the bar starts making disparaging remarks about your mother, you can shoot to kill.

Meanwhile, out in Utah, the nightmare scenario of women who miscarry having to prove they weren't trying to self-abort is just waiting for the governor's signature. And in Florida, which always seems to be doing everything it can to become more Alabama than Alabama is, new legislation would punish doctors who perform abortions with up to life sentences in prison.

Isn't it funny how efforts to create a "moral, Christian America" focus on the genitalia of women and what women do with those? Isn't it funny how the legislatures that come up with stuff like this are ALWAYS dominated by men? And isn't it funny how the ENTIRE burden of making "moral" choices always falls on women in their world? For decades we've heard about baby boomers and hedonism and self-indulgence, and yet these guys are not only terrified of themselves, but also seemingly completely unable to keep it in their pants unless all women dress like the Warren Jeffs polygamy cult women and are punished severely for exercising any kind of sexual self-determination.

These are just a few tastes of the Christian utopia envisioned in those states where a preponderance of people are simply unable to make behavioral without some punitive big white alpha male daddy figure in the sky. And it's interesting how that big white alpha male seems to forgive an awful lot of male transgressions, and none of the female.

Now whatever would give us that idea?

I wonder why anyone would think the Federal government and the medical profession were gunning for only WOMEN'S health care. After all, they're just planning to pass health care "reform" that doesn't allow coverage of abortion, they don't think breast cancer screening is necessary unless you are "at high risk" (note to the geniuses who thought up that one: for years they've been telling us that just being a woman puts you at high risk), and now they don't think cervical cancer screening is all that and a bag of chips either:

New guidelines for cervical cancer screening say women should delay their first Pap test until age 21, and be screened less often than recommended in the past.

The advice, from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, is meant to decrease unnecessary testing and potentially harmful treatment, particularly in teenagers and young women. The group’s previous guidelines had recommended yearly testing for young women, starting within three years of their first sexual intercourse, but no later than age 21.

Arriving on the heels of hotly disputed guidelines calling for less use of mammography, the new recommendations might seem like part of a larger plan to slash cancer screening for women. But the timing was coincidental, said Dr. Cheryl B. Iglesia, the chairwoman of a panel in the obstetricians’ group that developed the Pap smear guidelines. The group updates its advice regularly based on new medical information, and Dr. Iglesia said the latest recommendations had been in the works for several years, “long before the Obama health plan came into existence.”

She called the timing crazy, uncanny and “an unfortunate perfect storm,” adding, “There’s no political agenda with regard to these recommendations.”

In 1989 I had Pap test come back as class 3, which considering that the previous year's was normal, caused my doctor a fair amount of concern. Ordinarily, she would have just done another test, but because of the rapid change in results in just a year, she did a punch biopsy in addition to another Pap. It was a week before I could get these biopsies done, and yes, the anxiety was severe. After all, I was only 34 and there was the possibility of cancer. The biopsies came back normal, the second Pap came back normal, and everything was fine. She had me come back in six months for another Pap, and again in another six months to put me back on normal schedule.

Perhaps this doctor was being overly alarmed. Perhaps she could have just done the second test. Would that have caused me any less anxiety? I hardly think so. In fact, as afraid as I was before these biopsies were taken, and as anxious as I was, I think I would have been MORE so if I were just waiting for the results of another test, or worse, if I'd been told "Let's just keep an eye on it."

It's easy to talk about guidelines and statistics, but it's quite another thing when YOU are the woman staring breast cancer or cervical cancer in the face. With this sudden rash of "Ha ha, just kidding" out of the medical profession, but ONLY as it pertains to WOMEN'S health care screenings that WOMEN have been told for a generation are necessary, coming at a time when cost-cutting is the health care watchword of the hour, is more than a little bit suspicious. And if the Obama Administration really thinks that insurance companies won't look at these reports and change what they cover for women, and if they really think women won't care that it's THEIR health care, not men's, that's being sacrificed, then Sarah Palin is going to have one hell of a platform to run on against him in 2012 if she can get past her fetophilia and megalomania long enough to realize it.

Now let's see if the feminist bloggers get on this one. After all, this isn't just about old bags who don't matter anymore, it's about THEM too.

Maybe I should just stop talking about abortion; after all, I'M postmenopausal and it's not MY problem anymore

Being disheartened is such a usual state of mind for me these days it's surprising that this one gets to me so much. But I decided to do a quick spin around some of the alpha dogs of the so-called feminist blogosphere to see what is being said about the USPSTF's new mammography guidelines. You know what I saw?

Almost nothing.

I guess that when you're young (instead of old like me and leaving the house between 6-7 AM and getting home at 6:30 PM, then doing 2-3 hours of work every night and all weekend), you just don't have TIME to handle TWO issues about women's health care. After all, there's advertising to talk about, and the Sarah Palin Newsweek cover, and when combined with the Stupak amendment, well, the poor dears just have to pick and choose.

Kudos to Nordette at Whose shoes are these anyway? and jluther over at Feministing for actually realizing that they too will be over 40 someday and that this will become their problem.

Other than that? Crickets.

I'm not going to shame the so-called feminist bloggers who have chosen instead to write about divas with no pants or webcomics or the Sarah Palin Newsweek cover or why there are no women in Pirate Radio by naming them publicly. They know who they are. And to those bloggers, I have just one question: Why do you think this is not your issue?

Pregnancy hasn't been a concern for me since 2005, but I still write about the importance of access to abortion and contraception. Reproduction is an issue in my PAST, that I will never have to worry about again, at least not in this particular incarnation. But for the feminist bloggers in their twenties and thirties, this latest assault on women's health care is in YOUR FUTURE -- and that future is coming faster than you can even imagine.

So why the silence? Is it because this plan to ration health care services to older women is coming directly from Barack Obama's Department of Health and Human Services and you're afraid to criticize it? Is this what we've come to, selling our own sisters down the river rather than criticize a Democratic president?

I want to know: Am I wrong? I realize that with 20 minutes to blog this morning after I head in for a 7 AM meeting I don't have time to look at ALL the feminist blogs. But where is the feminist blogosphere on this? If you're a feminist blogger and you're writing about this, or if you're just a blog reader and you find a post about the new mammography guidelines, post the links in the comments. I'll bump them up into their own post tomorrow along with my crow eating (but the consumption of the bird only happens if the posts are timestamped BEFORE this one). And if I don't hear from anyone, I'm done writing about abortion. After all, it isn't MY concern, right?

Or is it just about saving money?

When you have a health care "reform" bill in the Senate that not only may effectively make abortion a non-reimbursable procedure, but also does not explicitly cover procedures that are unique to women, you have to wonder if women's health care is going to be sacrificed on the altar of cost containment. That's why I'm skeptical about the mammography guidelines put forth yesterday by the United States Preventive Services Task Force:

The new recommendations, which do not apply to a small group of women with unusual risk factors for breast cancer, reverse longstanding guidelines and are aimed at reducing harm from overtreatment, the group says. It also says women age 50 to 74 should have mammograms less frequently — every two years, rather than every year. And it said doctors should stop teaching women to examine their breasts on a regular basis.

Just seven years ago, the same group, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, with different members, recommended that women have mammograms every one to two years starting at age 40. It found too little evidence to take a stand on breast self-examinations.

The task force is an independent panel of experts in prevention and primary care appointed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Its new guidelines, which are different from those of some professional and advocacy organizations, are published online in The Annals of Internal Medicine They are likely to touch off yet another round of controversy over the benefits of screening for breast cancer.

Dr. Diana Petitti, vice chairwoman of the task force and a professor of biomedical informatics at Arizona State University, said the guidelines were based on new data and analyses and were aimed at reducing the potential harm from overscreening.

While many women do not think a screening test can be harmful, medical experts say the risks are real. A test can trigger unnecessary further tests, like biopsies, that can create extreme anxiety. And mammograms can find cancers that grow so slowly that they never would be noticed in a woman’s lifetime, resulting in unnecessary treatment.

Now that said, I have a certain amount of skepticism about mammograms, for all that I have one every year. I'm not sure I believe that they CAUSE breast cancer, as some believe (though I wouldn't rule it out, this IS women's health care that is aimed at women who are no longer "fuckable" and are therefore expendable in our society), but whether they prevent deaths remains to be seen. And then when I start thinking that way I think of the family friend who never had a mammogram and by the time her cancer was discovered, she had significant lymph node spread.

The timing of this report has my spidey-sense a-tingle, coming as it does from a group that advises doctors and insurance companies. If you think this report isn't going to affect coverage for mammograms, you're deluding yourself. And it just seems peculiar that it's WOMEN'S health care that is getting this kind of scrutiny.

I only WISH this were from The Onion

But it isn't:

A version of the anti-abortion initiative soundly defeated by Colorado voters in 2008 is making its way to the 2010 ballot, this time reworked as an “egg-as-a-person” initiative.

This new version would move the legal definition of a person further back into the reproductive cycle, granting cells the full spectrum of citizen rights. Opposition groups, including Colorado genetic and fertilization researchers, say the law would have spiraling consequences, that it would put women at risk and freeze current work in medicine and reproduction.

Colorado Right to Life and Personhood USA, the groups behind proposed Initiative 25, are undeterred by the fact that Coloradans voted against the test-run amendment last year by a margin of three to one. The new amendment is even farther reaching, moving the initial marker for the beginning of life from “fertilization” to “the beginning of the biological development of a human being.”

And to think I used to joke about having to send your used tampons to the government for inspection to make sure you didn't pass any fertilized eggs. Now you'll have to send them every time you have a period, because by this law, every menstrual period is an abortion.

Next up:

OK, I've decided

Al Franken: GREAT Senator:

I'm starting to really like Germany

As regular readers know, I made 2 trips to Germany this summer on business. These were my first transatlantic journeys -- something I'm not proud of given that I am over 50. But for decades, my attitude towards vacation was that I didn't want to spend it shlepping around, I wanted to sit on a balcony and drink coffee and read and look at water and swim and eat fresh food in a tropical setting. Now that I'm older, and bathing suits are more of an issue than ever, this model of travel has become less appealing and now I'm starting to want to see things as part of my bucket list. So I was fortunate to be able to travel to Cologne and Berlin this summer.

Because these are work trips which involve a fair amount of time spent with German colleagues, I've been able to learn more about the country's mindset than I would otherwise. But even in the touristy things I've been able to do, what strikes me most about Germany is how it has come to terms with the less savory aspects of its history in a way the U.S. probably never will. You are unlikely to ever see a "slavery museum" in the south, for all that there is an effort to create one in Washington, DC; one you don't hear much about and probably never will. When you look at the embrace of the Confederate flag in much of the south, it's hard to imagine that there will ever be a building containing oral histories from freed slaves about how they were treated. I'm not sure that even Roots would be made today without a great deal of hue and cry from the Usual Suspects in Congress. And when Glenn Beck is paid millions of dollars to spew the bile of slavery revisionist W. Cleon Skousen over the airwaves, we are a long way from coming to terms with slavery in the U.S.

And for all that there is a museum of sorts to the Topaz internment camp in Utah, commemorating the Japanese internment during World War II, there is hardly a national effort, despite George H.W. Bush's apology to the camps' survivors in 1991, to keep the Japanese internment in the national consciousness.

Germany's Holocaust memorial is right there in Berlin -- the country's capital -- right by the Reichstag. This is not a country that's flinching from its history. And yet, Germans don't define themselves by that history. I used to think, in my ignorance, that there was something in the German temperament that made them somehow more susceptible to the kind of leader that would create the Third Reich, with the ordered society in which you can get a ticket for jaywalking, no one crosses against the light even if there is no oncoming traffic, and the 8:37 S6 train really DOES show up at the Köln Hauptbahnhof at 8:37. But I think we've seen throughout history, and there are even pockets among the extreme right in our country, that when people's economic condition goes downhill, it's human, rather than German, nature to respond with fear and loathing and scapegoating. It is to Germany's credit that they keep a reminder around -- just in case.

In a smaller and less significant context of Things Germany Does That Just Seem Right comes this story about a popular German women's magazine whose publishers have decided that they are no longer going to use anorexic models that don't look like any of its readers:

"From 2010 we will not work with professional models any more," said Andreas Lebert, editor-in-chief, adding that he was "fed up" with having to retouch pictures of underweight models who bore no resemblance to ordinary women.

"For years we've had to use Photoshop to fatten the girls up," he said. "Especially their thighs, and decolletage. But this is disturbing and perverse and what has it got to do with our real reader?"

He said the move was a response to complaints by readers who said they had no connection with the women depicted in fashion features and "no longer wanted to see protruding bones".

"Today's models weigh around 23% less than normal women," Lebert said. "The whole model industry is anorexic."

Brigitte, which is Germany's best-selling women's title with more than 700,000 copies, offers readers a familiar diet of fitness, lifestyle, recipes and sex, which tends to appeal to upwardly mobile younger career women.

Lebert said the magazine would call on German women to put themselves forward as models for fashion and makeup articles.

Recently a plus-size model (she's a size 12-14, hardly a sumo wrestler) named Lizzie Miller dared to be photographed for Glamour magazine showing a belly pooch, and you'd have thought the world was coming to an end. And there's no sea change afoot, look at the kind of image Ralph Lauren's ad agency thinks is attractive. (Put down the pen device, and close up Photoshop, dude, and nobody gets hurt.)

How about we have them refuse to cover Viagra instead?

Very light blogging this week, folks. I am on a killer project which runs until mid-September, but right now I'm in full-bore crunch mode, which is why I was up doing work at 3:45 AM -- an ungodly hour that by all rights ought to have a Jamaican beach as its reward. But today this ungodly hour has a week with 20 hours of meetings after which I still have about 60 hours of actual work to do.

But this little find caught my eye and I simply had to pass on the news from ThinkProgress that Your Democratic Party is willing to sacrifice women's right to legal health care options on the altar of bipartisanship with Republican nutjobs:

As Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) prepares to unveil the Senate Finance Committee’s bipartisan health care reform legislation later this week, several blogs are reporting that Republicans on the Committee are pushing legislation that would require insurers operating within the new Exchange to to deny coverage for abortion services. From Raising Women’s Voices:

The Senate Finance Committee has been writing a health care reform bill and struggling to create legislation that will have bipartisan support. Chairman Max Baucus (pictured left) considered several compromises to win Republican support, so they can claim it is bipartisan legislation. One of these potential compromises comes in the form of an abortion exclusion, which would prevent abortion services from being covered by some or all insurance plans in the Health Insurance Exchange. We fear that members of the Senate Finance Committee are considering such a compromise.

Should it pass, the Senate Finance version would be the only bill that specifically prohibits a medical service. As the Wonk Room points out, “if denying abortion services to women is the price of bipartisanship, then perhaps winning those one or two Republican votes isn’t worth the price of jeopardizing women’s health and well-being.”

Max Baucus, who is owned lock, stock and barrel by health insurance companies, is holding a gun to women's heads and saying "You choose. You can have your right to have your health care covered, or you can have the right to abortion. You can't have both.

In case you had any doubts that Mr. Brilliant has been right all along; that the Democrats are simply there to make it LOOK like you have a choice, when in reality, BOTH parties serve only the moneyed and religious crazies, here's your proof.

You know, I'm working 60-80 hour weeks pretty routinely these days. At one point I was delusional enough to think that I, my letters to my elected officials, and by extension, this blog, could help make a difference. But here we are, in 2009, with our party having what should be a filibuster-proof majority, and on the social issues that have been important to us for decades, our party is falling on the side of, and sometimes to the right of, the Republicans. So why the hell do I even bother?

(h/t)

When the terrorists win and the law doesn't care

Rachel Maddow, on the permanent closing of Dr. George Tiller's clinic:

Scott Roeder is a terrorist, and yet no conservatives are talking about waterboarding him to find out when the next attack, the one he insists is coming, is going to take place. Scott Roeder is a terrorist, and not one Republican has expressed concern about having a terrorist housed within our borders. Scott Roeder is a terrorist, with ties to Operation Rescue, and not one Republican is advocating that people even peripherally associated with Operation Rescue be sent to Guantanamo Bay. Scott Roeder is a terrorist, whose targets are women and the doctors who provide medical services to them. And no one in government seems to care. Because after all, it's only women. And what is women's health care when compared to the right of men with issues about their masculinity and women who made choices they may regret and therefore want to make sure no other woman has the choice they had to intimidate medical providers out of business, to the point of murdering them.

I sure hope part of Obama's plan for Afghanistan includes getting rid of Hamid Karzai

I know that Karzai was the Bush Junta's hand-picked oilman to run Afghanistan and pave the way for a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline., but the Bushes are, at least temporarily, out of Washington. And I can't imagine that propping up a corrupt operator like Karzai is worth the trouble, especially now if it means we'll be spending American money and American blood to do business with a guy who has just legalized rape in the country he leads:

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which "legalises" rape, women's groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.

In a massive blow for women's rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman's right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent.

"It is one of the worst bills passed by the parliament this century," fumed Shinkai Karokhail, a woman MP who campaigned against the legislation. "It is totally against women's rights. This law makes women more vulnerable."

The law regulates personal matters like marriage, divorce, inheritance and sexual relations among Afghanistan's minority Shia community. "It's about votes," Ms Karokhail added. "Karzai is in a hurry to appease the Shia because the elections are on the way."

[snip]

The most controversial parts of the law deal explicitly with sexual relations. Article 132 requires women to obey their husband's sexual demands and stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least "once every four nights" when travelling, unless they are ill. The law also gives men preferential inheritance rights, easier access to divorce, and priority in court.

I'm quite certain that similar sentiments exist here in this country in the minds of men like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and in the proponents of the Quiverfull movement and other Jeebofascist zombies -- and probably some of our trolls, who will no doubt see this as a cue to post something in the comments. But while I would fully expect a Republican president to sacrifice the rights of women on the altar of political expediency, I still have some hope, however small, that Barack Obama, the father of two daughters, will decide otherwise.

(h/t)

Sarah Palin's America takes effect September 25

I never repost diaries from other sites in their entirety, and I only cite diaries at Le Grand Orange when they're particularly cogent and insightful, given the amount of chaff that finds its way amidst the wheat over there. But the diarist who wrote this, "Elise", has given blanket permission to disseminate this diary far and wide:

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt has proposed a new rule that will limit the rights of women to receive medically accurate information and treatment. The alleged goal of the rule is to protect the rights of health care workers, volunteers, and trainees. The result would be limited access to birth control and abortion for women all over the country - regardless of state law.

From CNN:

The rule, which applies to institutions receiving government money, would require as many as 584,000 employers ranging from major hospitals to doctors' offices and nursing homes to certify in writing that they are complying with several federal laws that protect the conscience rights of health care workers. Violations could lead to a loss of government funding and legal action to recoup federal money already paid.

The comment period ends on September 25th. We have 19 days until this rule takes effect.

This rule does not provide a clear definition of birth control or abortion - allowing the health care worker to utilize their own personal definition each time, so if you go to your doctor attempting to get birth control pills, you may find yourself denied that prescription because the doctor defines birth control pills as an abortifacient.

Leavitt says you shouldn't concern yourself too much though:

But Leavitt said the regulation was intended to protect practitioners who have moral objections to abortion and sterilization, and would not interfere with patients' ability to get birth control or any legal medical procedure.

"Nothing in the new regulation in any way changes a patient's right to any legal procedure," he said, noting that a patient could go to another provider.

It's that simple - your doctor, nurse, receptionist, volunteer, pharmacist, pharm tech, etc. won't help you get your birth control? Just go somewhere else!! And I'm SURE you won't have any trouble finding another provider...or maybe you will - based on the rule.

From WaPo (bold is mine):

The regulation drops the most controversial language in a draft version that would have explicitly defined abortion for the first time in a federal law or regulation as anything that interfered with a fertilized egg after conception. But both supporters and critics said the regulation remains broad enough to protect pharmacists, doctors, nurses and others from providing birth control pills, Plan B emergency contraception and other forms of contraception, and explicitly allows workers to withhold information about such services and refuse to refer patients elsewhere.

Just how far does this regulation go? The same WaPo article gives us a clue:

But critics said they remained alarmed at the scope of the regulation, which could apply to a wide range of health-care workers. For example, the regulation would cover "participating in any activity with a reasonable connection to the objectionable procedure, including referrals, training, and other arrangements for offending procedures.

In other words - if your job is to clean the tools used in an operating room after a patient has had a vasectomy or a tubal ligation, you would be protected from any punishment if you flat out refused (on grounds of conscience) to clean those tools because you disagreed with that patient's right to get that procedure.

Here's the language from the actual rule:

Assist in the Performance means to participate in any activity with a reasonable connection to a procedure, health service or health service program, or research activity, so long as the individual involved is a part of the workforce of a Department-funded entity. This includes counseling, referral, training, and other arrangements for the  procedure, health service, or research activity.

Which facilities would be affected by this new rule?

Hospitals, nursing homes, physicians offices, Offices of Other Health Care Practitioners, Outpatient care centers, Medical and Diagnostic Laboratories, Home Health Care Services, Pharmacies, Dental schools, Medical schools, Nursing schools, Occupational Therapy Schools, Optometry Schools, Podiatry Schools, Pharmacy Schools, Public Health Schools, Residency Programs, Health Insurance Carriers and 3rd-Party Administrators, Grant awards, Contractors, and State and Territorial governments.

Daily Kos diarist, Malacandra gave us an idea as to exactly how this kind of law could be interpreted in a widely missed diary last week, Bush Administration to protect Vegetarians of Conscience. Can you imagine going to the butcher to get some sirloin for dinner and being told that you'll have to go elsewhere because the butcher is a vegetarian? And that their job is protected - even though they refuse to perform that job - because of a law that protects their "freedom of conscience"??

How many women will be put at risk due to this new regulation because they will be unable to get access to birth control - which isn't solely used for preventing pregnancy. According to the Center for Young Women's Health, birth control is prescribed for a wide variety of medical problems:

Adolescent girls and young women are frequently prescribed oral contraceptive pills for irregular or absent menstrual periods, menstrual cramps, acne, PMS, endometriosis, and hormone replacement therapy. For example, girls diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) (a hormone imbalance which causes irregular menstrual periods, acne, and excess hair growth) are prescribed oral contraceptives to lower their hormone levels back to normal and regulate menstrual periods. Girls with acne that is not responding to simple measures are often prescribed hormone pills. Girls whose ovaries are not producing enough estrogen (because of anorexia nervosa, excessive exercise, or damage to the ovaries from radiation or chemotherapy) often take oral contraceptive pills to replace estrogen. Girls with endometriosis are also often prescribed oral contraceptives, in cycles or continuously, to suppress the condition.

The CDC gives us a sense as to how many people would be affected by this rule:

In 2002, 98% of women who had ever had sexual intercourse had used at least one method of birth control only 7.4 percent of women who were currently at risk of unintended pregnancy were not using a contraceptive method.2 The most popular method of birth control was the oral contraceptive pill, used by 11.6 million women in the United States, followed by female sterilization, condoms, male sterilization, and other methods of birth control.2

98% of women have used a method of birth control - and this regulation could result in refusal of access to health care for every single one of those women depending on how they access that birth control.

• The ACLU has a letter you can send.


• Planned Parenthood has a letter you can send.


• NARAL has a letter you can send.

I urge you to sign and send every one of them - and pass every one of them along to every single family member and friend you know.

We have 19 days. After 19 days this regulation goes into effect and every single health care worker in the United States will be able to refuse any woman health care based on their own personal moral views.

NARAL provides us with a few specific results this regulation could have:

-- This regulation could undermine good state laws that require hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape survivors and ensure that pharmacies fill women’s prescriptions for birth control.

-- The proposal could allow health-care corporations (hospitals, HMOs, and health plans) to refuse to provide services or make referrals for birth control.

-- The proposed regulation could affect Medicaid and the Title X family-planning program. For instance, staff at clinics or health-care plans that contract for Medicaid services could refuse to provide contraception.

The ACLU provides us with a link to the PDF of the rule here if you'd like to read it yourself.

If this rule takes effect, I wonder what other health care procedures and medications providers could begin to deny patients because of their own personal conscience...the list could extend well beyond birth control or abortion. Just think of all the different religions out there and the wide variety of procedures people object to based on those religious beliefs.

Please take action today and please ask everyone you know to join you. This rule has the potential to eliminate access to healthcare for women all over the country - and will very likely hit women in less populated areas the hardest. Some women simply don't have the option to "find another provider" in their area. Some women don't have the option to "find another pharmacy" in their area. We must do everything in our power to stop this rule before it takes affect.

If you aren't concerned, you damn well should be.

Update: Junkyard Dem has added a link to Digg. Please Digg this story up. The more who learn about this rule and take action, the better.

Yes, Virginia, EVERYTHING can be outsourced to India

I have one of those freebie subscriptions to Information Week that go on forever and serve mostly to add to the paper coming into the house. Most of the time, IW has at least one article on how you can save your company money by shitcanning those greedy Americans and farming out your programming (and in creasingly your remote data center administration) to other countries, primarily India, where you can pay peanuts and not have to worry about pesky things like health insurance and 401(k) plans that interfere with your ability to give your CEO a forty kazillion dollar pay package and make Jim Cramer and Larry Kudlow happy.

But why stop at sending corporate jobs to India? Why not outsource the very work of replacing ourselves as well? Yes, folks, foreign adoption isn't enough, because it doesn't serve the needs of western people to perpetuate their gene pool -- something an adorable Chinese baby just doesn't do. Now the hard work of pregnancy is going to India too:

An enterprise known as reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding business in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have recently been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe, as word spreads of India’s mix of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices.

Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some states and some European countries, was legalized in India in 2002. The cost comes to about $25,000, roughly a third of the typical price in the United States. That includes the medical procedures; payment to the surrogate mother, which is often, but not always, done through the clinic; plus air tickets and hotels for two trips to India (one for the fertilization and a second to collect the baby).

“People are increasingly exposed to the idea of surrogacy in India; Oprah Winfrey talked about it on her show,” said Dr. Kaushal Kadam at the Rotunda clinic in Mumbai. Just an hour earlier she had created an embryo for Mr. Gher and his partner with sperm from one of them (they would not say which) and an egg removed from a donor just minutes before in another part of the clinic.

The clinic, known more formally as Rotunda — The Center for Human Reproduction, does not permit contact between egg donor, surrogate mother or future parents. The donor and surrogate are always different women; doctors say surrogates are less likely to bond with the babies if there is no genetic connection.

There are no firm statistics on how many surrogacies are being arranged in India for foreigners, but anecdotal evidence suggests a sharp increase.

Rudy Rupak, co-founder and president of PlanetHospital, a medical tourism agency with headquarters in California, said he expected to send at least 100 couples to India this year for surrogacy, up from 25 in 2007, the first year he offered the service.

“Every time there is a success story, hundreds of inquiries follow,” he said.

In Anand, a city in the eastern state of Gujarat where the practice was pioneered in India, more than 50 surrogate mothers are pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Britain and elsewhere. Fifteen of them live together in a hostel attached to the clinic there.

Dr. Naina Patel, who runs the Anand clinic, said that even Americans who could afford to hire surrogates at home were coming to her for women “free of vices like alcohol, smoking and drugs.” She said she gets about 10 e-mailed inquiries a day from couples abroad.

Under guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research, surrogate mothers sign away their rights to any children. A surrogate’s name is not even on the birth certificate.

This eases the process of taking the baby out of the country. But for many, like Lisa Switzer, 40, a medical technician from San Antonio whose twins are being carried by a surrogate mother from the Rotunda clinic, the overwhelming attraction is the price. “Doctors, lawyers, accountants, they can afford it, but the rest of us — the teachers, the nurses, the secretaries — we can’t,” she said. “Unless we go to India.”

It's hard to know where to begin on the many appalling aspects to this. There's the obvious one of exploiting poor women, but there's also the whole Handmaid's Tale aspect to women being kept in special hotels as incubators for Westerners, where they live under rules that keep their Sacred Wombs™ free of Bad Things like alcohol and tobacco. There's the ethnic/racial aspects of dark-skinned women being used as incubators for Caucasian babies (note how these surrogates don't provide the eggs either).

What does it say about the Americans and Europeans who are perfectly able to justify this kind of exploitation with warm fuzzy thoughts that they're helping these women to eat? The article goes on to say that of the approximately $30,000 that is paid for Indian surrogacy, the actual surrogate woman only gets around $7,500.

That, folks, is exploitation, I don't care how many pictures of happy American couples with babies they couldn't have otherwise you show me.

It's unfortunate that the article focuses on one couple in Israel, leaving the door open to the "Rich Jewish Princesses Who Don't Want to Ruin Their Figures" image and thus exonerate the many Americans and Europeans who are going in for this practice.

It's easy for me to judge, because I was mercifully spared the kind of baby madness so many women go through that makes women resort to desperate measures to have a baby. So I'm not necessarily opposed to reproductive technology (though I question how much of the American health care dollar it warrants). Given how American surrogate contracts have gone (such as the Baby M case), it's understandable that those who want to use this method to reproduce want the person who went through the pregnancy to be as far away as possible. And I'm in no way certain that a woman who needs to carry a baby for others in order to eat and put a roof over her head is exercising anything resembling free will. But if you're going to start outsourcing pregnancy to the developing world, at least make sure the woman herself is handsomely paid, not the middlemen who seem to be making the real bucks off this kind of womb-selling.

The Vanishing

Callous as it sounds, I was dismissive and indifferent when I first heard about Amy Winehouse's problems. Y'know, the usual stuff you see in the tabloids: the ever-present glass of booze in her hand, incoherent at interviews, not showing up at concerts. Unfairly, I assumed she was going to be another casualty of the "sex 'n' drugs 'n' Rock & Roll" lifestyle". Oh well, it's her choice.

Fuck it, I thought to myself. The silly little bitch will either figure it out or she won't. Compounding my idiocy, I placed Winehouse in the Bad Girls Behaving Badly Club, sharing headlines and rehab stories with whiny losers like Nicole, Lindsay, and Paris. I was having one of my rare Republican moments and I'm ashamed because, of course, people and things are never that simple.

What changed my mind was the "Before" and "After" photographs I saw of Amy Winehouse's drastic weight loss, and I realized that other things were going on in her head. I realized that the troubled British singer was a victim of the cruel propaganda that Body Nazis torment women with in this culture, and Winehouse was just doing what she was told to do. Guys in Rock & Roll can get away with having a beer guy. Women can't. When Ann Wilson from the group Heart gained weight, she remembers being harassed by audiences, the record company, and her own band. Eventually, Ann got a surgeon to put a big rubber band around her stomach. Winehouse just used alcohol, cigarettes, and heroin.

Before, some idiots probably called Winehouse "chubby". Oooh, scary! Afterwards, some idiots gazed covetously at her emaciated frame and probably asked, "What diet is she on?"