Domestic Terrorism
A bomb was planned at the Planned Parenthood of Grand Chute, WI. For those of you who don’t know, that’s about 5 minutes from where I live.
How can a person even respond to this kind of violence that would target poor and working class women who are trying to get their health needs met in a difficult economy? How do you explain to people who would bomb a health clinic that PP clinics don’t offer abortion services in the first place? How do you respond to a group that would plan bombs and kill innocent people – theoretically, even the fetuses they say they’re protecting – and who call themselves “pro life”?
How do you respond at all?
I am at the point now where anyone who apologizes for the inflaming and incendiary rhetoric aimed at Roe v. Wade & at a woman’s right to choose is not my friend, my family, or even someone I can talk to. I understand objections to abortion; I was raised Catholic after all, & am the youngest of 6. But this language around choice, the “army of God” mentality that’s been fed to people is so hurtful, so entirely wrong and beside the point.
When will those of you who vote Republican start telling your leadership that you will not vote for them until they stop with this rhetoric and these policies that target poor women especially?
This Planned Parenthood is so easily a place I might speak at or have a student intern at. The women who go there and work there could be friends.
I don’t understand violence as a response to what is sold as a moral objection. It just doesn’t make sense.
Missing Girls
News from that radical feminist magazine The Economist states that Indian females seem to be missing:
NEW data from the 2011 Indian census show that there are now 914 girls aged 0-6 years old for every 1,000 boys of the same age, or 75.8m girls and 82.9m boys. A cultural preference for sons and the increasing availability of prenatal screening to determine a baby’s sex have helped contribute to a worsening in the ratio (from 927 in the previous census in 2001), which has been deteriorating rapidly even as the ratio for the population as a whole has improved. A decline was recorded in 28 of the country’s 35 states and territories, among which there is wide variation; from 830 in the northern state of Haryana to 973 Meghalaya in the east.
The articles goes on to point out that the Chinese are facing a similar problem.
& Here, my dear trans readers, is the problem with being born with a vagina: too often, it means you don’t get to be born at all. Granted, if transness were viewable in the womb, most trans people wouldn’t get to be born, either.
Don’t Be Distracted: Women’s Lives Are at Stake
Egypt is fascinating and amazing and cool, and it’s easy to enjoy the good news of democracy in progress.
That said, ours is being battered here in the US.
The “forcible rape” language has not yet been removed, for instance.
And health care for poor women (Title X) is on the chopping block as an “austerity measure.” Because we all know keeping poor women from contraception, HIV tests and abortion will make for a better world. Cost effective? Not at all. Better to prevent HIV and various STIs than to have to treat them later.
Write your politicians, write Chris Smith, and tell them to cut it out.
Then, join Planned Parenthood or NARAL or some other organization that will be fighting harder than usual for women’s lives and women’s health for the next few years.
January 22nd…
… was the 38th anniversary of Roe V. Wade. This article, about how anti-choice groups targeted black women with both race and gender baiting, is harrowing but essential reading.
Keep it safe and keep it legal.