Deanie's Blue Inkblots

REPUBLICANS: HAVE YOU NO SENSE OF DECENCY?

2012-03-02T22:14:06Z

UPDATE posted at end.

It's hard out there for a woman.

"This is scary!" cried a conservative woman friend of mine. "Listening to these Republicans scares me."

She was referring to the many and various anti-woman policies coming out of the Republican party, the knee-jerk support automatically being pronounced by the leading Republican candidates for the presidency, and now, the poisonous venom being directed toward women everywhere from the Right-Wing media.

I have seen backlashes against women's rights in the past; certainly in the 80's following the many strides that had been made by women in the 70's. And I saw it when Bill Clinton became president and made the remark that he fully intended to involve his wife in his work because she was brilliant--something, by the way, that she has proven many times over--but the hysteria that poured forth from the Republican Party in response, the Hillary-hatred I witnessed then, was unbelievable.

But what I have seen in the past two weeks, the concerted effort to oppress, bully, humiliate, and shame women that has not only been promoted by the Republican Party and their candidates, but has not even garnered so much as ONE man or woman of courage to step up and denounce the worst of it, is unprecedented in my lifetime.

I thought the state-sanctioned rape of women by vaginal probes that has been already passed into law in states like Texas and Iowa, and has been put forth as bills in dozens of other states, was hard enough to believe.

Then I saw an entire political party and all their spokesmen attempt to deny women access to birth control, not from the STATE, but from their own employers!

In Texas, at least a dozen--and more every day--Planned Parenthood clinics have been closed in recent months. I know women who rely on those clinics to get pap smears, mammograms, STD testing, and birth control--women who have no interest in getting abortions. Those women are now shut out of any access to reproductive health.

So, say they do get health insurance from their employer. Say they work for a local, rural, small-town hospital. Say that hospital gets into financial trouble. Say it is bought by a chain of Catholic-run hospitals.

And say the new owners now refuse to permit their employer-based health insurance to cover birth control or other reproductive health procedures--such as tubal ligations, vasectomies, dilation and cuterage for ectopic pregnancies, emergency abortions to save the life of the mother, and so forth.

What then? Where do families go? What do they do?

Polls reveal that some 98% of CATHOLIC women do not follow the precepts set by the old white men who run their religion. That means that 98% of Catholic women use some form of birth control. Local priests know this, and they look the other way.

In fact, some six-in-ten of those polled, including Catholics, support the contraception rule put forth by the Obama administration, especially with the new compromise that puts the responsibility on the insurance companies rather than the employers.

I am not a Catholic, and I do not live in a Catholic-leaning area. I do, however, live in a rural area. I have friends who are nurses, and they are Protestants. Some attend church and some do not.

Why should the CATHOLIC CHURCH tell THESE WOMEN what to do with their own bodies? How to plan their own families?

As former conservative anti-abortion crusader, Frank Schaeffer, pointed out in the Huffington Post, this is the same church--and these are the same Catholic church bishops--who covered up decades--if not centuries--of sexual molestation and child abuse at the hands of Catholic priests, who were merely moved from diocese to diocese rather than removed from the ministry, which created many more thousands of victims. Some of these same child-molesting priests were even promoted. How many became bishops?

And not only that, but I know many women who do not rely on the birth control pill to prevent pregnancies, but because their physicians have prescribed them for other medical problems. Some women have highly irregular periods, and they go on the pill for a few months so that they can get them regulated, which would help them to become pregnant when they are ready. Some women are literally crippled by menstrual cramps every month, and rely on the pill for relief.

What are THESE women to do?

Republican Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas had an idea. If those women want birth control, he said, ignoring three years of grim unemployment statistics, they should "get another job."

The law recently put forth by Republicans, however, the Blunt-Rubio amendment, went MUCH FURTHER than just preventing a woman from having health insurance cover her IUD. Instead, it said an employer could refuse health insurance coverage for ANYTHING they considered against their "MORAL CONVICTIONS."

Let's examine that for a moment.

What if an employer of a small business believes that AIDS is caused by immoral behavior, and therefore, prevents his employees for receiving treatment through their health insurance policies?

What if an employer is a Jehovah's Witness, and their religion forbids blood transfusions? Would that mean that employer could refuse insurance coverage for life-saving blood transfusions for their employees?

What if an employer believes that poor physical fitness leads to weight gain, and so refuses a whole slew of policies, for treatment of diabetes, heart disease, or even breast cancer?

THIS MEASURE CAME WITHIN *THREE VOTES* OF PASSING. Three Democrats crossed party lines to vote for it. Every Republican senator voted for it. If the Democrats had not held a slender lead in the United States Senate, this would now be law.

It's worse than that, though.

Somehow, the idea has taken hold in the consciousness of Right-wingers that the only women who want and need access to birth control are unmarried young women. Rick Santorum is on the record opposing birth control as "against the natural way of things." If he is opposed to birth control for MARRIED COUPLES--then what do you think he, and his rabid followers, think about single women who use birth control?

I'll tell you what they think. They think exactly what their primary Party leader and spokesman has said on the air in his radio show to MILLIONS of listeners.

When a college student testified before congress that it was prohibitively expensive for college women to afford birth control without help from their health insurance companies, Rush Limbaugh called her a "slut" and a "prostitute."

He seemed to take some personal umbrage to this brave young woman, who is a law student at Georgetown University, and proceeded to behave as if HE were being asked to pay for her birth control.

According to Ed Schultz on The Ed Show, Limbaugh's program is broadcast to something like 600 radio stations, and 20 MILLION listeners.

Think about that.

The next day, he said that, since she was a slut and a prostitute, then she needed to "give us something back" for paying for her birth control. She should make an online sex video, he said, "and let us all watch."

As for other students, he mocked that he would gladly provide Georgetown University with "all the aspirin it wants"--so that these young coeds could, presumably, hold the aspirin between their knees.

He even said that he figured this woman--again, identified by name--was "having so much sex it's amazing she can still walk."

In other words, Keep your legs shut, you whores, you sluts. Because if you are a young woman having sex, you are obviously a whore.

By the next day, Limbaugh asked the woman, again by name, "Who bought your condoms when

you were in the sixth grade?"

THIS SHOULD BE A WATERSHED MOMENT FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

On June 9, 1954, Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, after 30 days of hearings on the infiltration of Communists into all aspects of American life, demanded from Joseph Welch information on a young lawyer from his firm, who, like Welch, was a graduate of Harvard Law. As McCarthy openly accused the young man of being a Communist, Welch bristled, saying, "Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do injury to that lad."

When McCarthy pressed the case, Welch insisted they go no further, claiming the young man's entire life was being compromised and saying, "Let us not assassinate this young man further."

But when McCarthy steadfastly ignored Welch and continued to harrangue him for further information, Welch said loudly, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

That moment was not just a watershed moment for the country, it was also a death-knell for McCarthy's career. Within three years, he was dead of alcoholism, and the witch-hunts for Communists under every rock ceased.

This should be such a moment.

The policies that deny women and the men who love them all dignity and decency are bad enough.

But for this standard-bearer of the Republican Party to be allowed to continue his despicable, reprehensible attacks on an innocent young congressional witness WITHOUT ONE REPUBLICAN COMING FORTH TO DENOUNCE HIM OR HIS WORDS...THAT, in itself, should tell the American people everything they need to know about the Republican party as they choose statehouse representatives, U.S. congress people and senators, and the president of the United States.

REPUBLICANS: HAVE YOU NO SENSE OF DECENCY?

Are you all so terrified of this bully that you would cower in the corner and permit him to destroy an innocent young woman--and thereby, besmirch the names of women everywhere--and SAY NOTHING???

DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THAT WOMEN WILL NOT REMEMBER THIS?

Do you really think that by claiming it's a matter of "religious freedom," that people of good conscience and integrity would forget this assault on the character of this country?

HAVE YOU DEGENERATED SO FAR AS A PARTY THAT YOU CANNOT EVEN DEFEND THE HONOR OF A YOUNG WOMAN WHO IS BEING DAILY, SYSTEMATICALLY, TORN ASUNDER BY YOUR OWN RINGLEADER?

Why is this man still on the air?

Clearly, like Joe McCarthy, he feels invincible, indestructable, untouchable.

But even Rush Limbaugh needs sponsors. It's time we learned who they were. It's time we wrote to those sponsors, signed petitions against those sponsors, boycotted those sponsor's products.

Here is a list of those sponsors, with e-mails, addresses, and phone numbers.

It's time women everywhere RISE UP against these unfair, unwarranted attacks, RISE UP against verbal abuse and bullying, RISE UP against policies that would deny us freedom to discuss our own health with our own private physicians, paid for out of our own pockets to our own health insurance companies, RISE UP against invasive procedures dictated by the state that basically amount to rape.

This is a come-to-Jesus moment for the Republican Party.

There can be no excuses for what is happening right now that diminishes, disrespects, and demeans women.

And if the Republican Party cannot police its own in defense of women everywhere, then they most certainly do not need to remain in the kind of power that dictates women's health and personal freedoms to them.

Make no mistake. This has nothing to do with religious freedom.

It has everything to do with women's freedom.

And right now, the only freedom we've GOT is in the voting booth. EXERCISE IT.

UPDATE:

Left-Leaning Liberal Lady has an updated list of Rush Limbaugh sponsors, including those who have pulled their ads.

ThinkProgress also has a list of sponsors who have either pulled their ads or are considering it; the difference is that ThinkProgress has printed their comments when doing so.

Here is where you file a complaint with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission)'s Consumer & Government Affairs Bureau. It's very quick and easy.

THE VAST RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY

2012-02-28T21:32:25Z

As first Nebraska, then Louisiana, then Texas, then Iowa, then Virginia, then Alabama--and no doubt others I don't know about yet--either passed transvaginal ultrasound laws or submitted the bills to committee or scheduled votes on them; and as first Mississippi and then Georgia and then Oklahoma and others I probably don't know about tried to pass so-called "Personhood" laws or amendments or put them up for popular vote (which would give full rights to a fertilized egg and consider any kind of birth control that would keep the egg from attaching to the wall of the uterus to be, basically, murder and therefore banned); and as first Wisconsin and then Florida and then several other states started putting forth legislation that would bust unions...if you are like me, you began to wonder...What is this, the domino effect?

Do these states pay so much close attention to one another that they are copying each other's legislation?

Like...to the LETTER?

Or could there be another explanation...Nah...that would be too paranoid, wouldn't it?

I mean, the Right wingnuts are always sending around hysterical viral e-mails chock-full of conspiracy theories (Obama is a secret Muslim!)--and we don't want to be crazy like them, do we?

Wasn't it embarrassing enough that we had Truthers who were lumped into the same crazy-category as the Birthers, right? So we have to be sensible and quit conjuring monsters where there are only shadows.

I mean, there's not REALLY a "vast, right-wing conspiracy"...is there?

Never mind that when now Secretary of State, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton first made that notorious statement on a morning television program, Newsweek magazine came out a couple of weeks later with a chart detailing the nefarious connections between various Right-wing millionaires, functionaries, and politicians that all led to the same end: Removing Bill Clinton from the Oval office before his second term ran out--whether the majority of American voters who had put him there wanted them to or not. And they almost succeeded, but for one vote, cast by Vice President Gore.

Such howling and caterwauling arose from the Right after Ms. Clinton's remark that it was eventually tossed off as a joke by most in the media.

But the cascade of Right-wing legislation that is being funneled through statehouses all over the country and eventually into the United States House of Representatives--which is controlled, at the moment, by the extreme Right-wing of the Republican Party--and the stark similarities between the bills begs the question:

Is there a central clearing-house, run by uber-conservatives, that literally writes model bills, submits them to friendly Republican legislators who are fluffed-up beforehand by generous campaign contributions, aids the legislators in streamlining the model bill for his or her own state, and then smooths the way in advance for the bill's passage?

It turns out, there is, and it's even got a friendly name: ALEC. ALEC stands for: American Legislative Exchange Council.

This is the vision of ALEC as stated on their website:

A nonpartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers who shared a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty. Their vision and initiative resulted in the creation of a voluntary membership association for people who believed that government closest to the people was fundamentally more effective, more just, and a better guarantor of freedom than the distant, bloated federal government in Washington, D.C.

Although ALEC insists it is "nonpartisan," the truth is that ALEC was started all the way back in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the Heritage Foundation and is responsible for coining the phrase, "Moral Majority."

Nothing non-partisan about THOSE guys.

In fact, of the 23 members of ALEC's Public Sector Board, only three are Democrats. And of the 72 state chairmanship seats--only THREE are held by Democrats.

I guess this is how they get away with claiming "non-partisanship."

Originally, ALEC was created to help defeat the Equal Rights Amendment (mission accomplished!), but over time, he grew into a very clever boy.

As the American Association for Justice puts it:

Over the years, ALEC’s mission evolved from promoting a socially conservative agenda to advocating for pro-business, free market doctrines. ALEC began courting corporations and their contributions, touting its ability to bring legislative leaders and corporate executives together.

As the mission of the organization changed, Weyrich’s name was dropped from references to the group’s beginnings, and ALEC subtly moved away from some of its more extreme stances on social issues. Instead, ALEC executives focused on the issues concerning the corporate sponsors with the deepest pockets, mainly tobacco, energy and pharmaceutical companies.

Today, Washington, D.C.-based ALEC serves as the ultimate smoke-filled backroom, where corporations gain access to legislators and get the laws they write enacted throughout the country. Former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, a major force in ALEC’s rebirth as a corporate front, outlined the process, saying, “I always found new ideas and then I’d take them back to Wisconsin, disguise them a little bit, and declare that it’s mine.”

Corporations pay up to $50,000 for membership to ALEC, and legislators as little as $50. They are wined, dined, treated to vacation trips, and handed model legislation that they can submit without doing any kind of research or other work. In one case, a state congress woman simply handed in the model legislation to the committee without even bothering to tailor it for her own state--thus revealing the true source of the proposed law.

As ALEC has grown in size and power, the organization has set up ten Task Forces. The American Association for Justice enumerates them:

These task forces include Civil Justice, Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development, Education, Health and Human Services, International Relations, Natural Resources, Public Safety and Elections, Tax and Fiscal Policy, and Telecommunications and Information Technology. In each task force, “[l]egislators welcome their private sector counterparts to the table as equals, working in unison to solve the challenges facing our nation.”

According to ALEC’s 2010 Legislative Scorecard, 826 pieces of ALEC legislation were introduced in statehouses around the country in 2009 and 115 were enacted into law.

As more ALEC laws are passed, more state legislators are courted. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, ALEC actively chases after conservative lawmakers with more than just "dinner and a movie"--they also donate MILLIONS to campaigns. Donations that come from ALEC originate with such corporations as Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Chevron, BP North America, Koch Industries, and many others.

Not only does ALEC cultivate state legislators, but they put forth presidential candidates as well. Rick Perry, for one, according to the Institute on Money in State Politics, was a former member and alumni of ALEC:

The American Legislative Exchange Council has given more than $2 million to support Gov. Rick Perry and a total of more than $3.8 million to 21 Texas elected officials, all Republicans, according to an analysis by the National Institute for Money in State Politics. Of the $516.2 million given over the past 20 years, corporate donors spent $228.3 million on campaigns in support of issues on ballots in various states. Another $202.1 million went to candidates and $85.8 million went to almost exclusively Republican state committees. Perry was, by far, the most popular donor target in Texas.

Texas is not the only state bought and sold on the auction block by ALEC, of course. Ohio, for example, according to PR Watch, "runs deep" with ALEC influence. Common Cause identifies Minnesota as another state owned by ALEC.

I think you can safely assume that if a state is dominated by a Republican government, either in the gubernatorial office, and/or in the statehouse, then ALEC is a major player in submitting and passing conservative legislation such as the union-busting laws we've seen in Wisconsin and Florida and the anti-immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama. In Texas so far, Progress Texas, People for the American Way, and the Center for Media and Democracy have put together a list of specific laws passed in Texas, pretty much under the radar, that were engineered by ALEC--the most eye-opening of which is the new Voter ID law, which has been repeated nationwide in other Republican statehouses.

ALEC laws cover a broad spectrum, and one of these is in the field of education. ALEC has sponsored a number of laws nationwide that force schools to teach climate denial. The course materials provided are put together by Exxon-Mobile, among others.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has put together a complete report on ALEC's meddling in not just environmental matters, but any kind of conservative legislation favored by the Right Wing of the Republican Party:

Nonetheless, most Americans undoubtedly would be shocked to learn that many of the state laws under which they live and work have actually been written by major U.S. corporations not by the state legislators they have elected to represent them. As this report documents, this approach to lawmaking at the state level has been championed and carried out over the years by the American Legislative Exchange Council. Through ALEC, corporations pay to have their special-interest legislation promoted to state legislators across the country.

And if you suspect that the Koch brothers have more than just a $50,000 membership in ALEC, you would be right, as reported in The Nation:

The Kochs have not just multiplied the wealth of their dad; they’ve repackaged and amplified his worldview. David’s latest venture, Americans for Prosperity, subsidizes the Tea Party movement, which repeats this “socialist” smear. Charles is a member of the exclusive Mount Pelerin Society, inspired by Frederic von Hayek’s antisocialist polemicThe Road to Serfdom. Through the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the Institute for Humane Studies administers the Hayek Fund for Scholars and sister programs to fund academics and staffers for like-minded groups across the country. “Charles G. Koch Fellows” and interns stock ALEC, and have gone on to direct ALEC task forces.

A recent editorial by the New York Times details the flood of Right-wing legislation coming out of state houses, suppressing voter ID, making guns plentiful just about everywhere, and erect legal obstacles and challenges to President Obama's Affordable Care Act that reformed health care in this country. Nearly all the states have had laws submitted nullifying the one requirement that would enforce health care reform--the mandate. These laws are based on models put together in the ALEC corporate headquarters in Washington, D.C.

As the Times puts it:

There is nothing illegal or unethical about ALEC’s work, except that it further demonstrates the pervasive influence of corporate money and right-wing groups on the state legislative process. There is no group with any comparable influence on the left. Lawmakers who eagerly do ALEC’s bidding have much to answer for. Voters have a right to know whether the representatives they elect are actually writing the laws, or whether the job has been outsourced to big corporate interests.

The fact that there is no group on the Left with anywhere NEAR this kind of power says that there is only one way that we can effectively fight this scourge on our democracy, and that is by exercising our vote, by working for Democratic candidates who, while they may accept corporate donations to their campaigns, are not so cookie-cutter owned by the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy that they simply automatically accept model bills put before them, rubber-stamp them, and turn them into laws that ruin life for the rest of us.

We can volunteer for Democratic candidates for state representatives as well as United States representatives from our states, and United States senate candidates who have not been bought and sold on the Koch Brothers auction block.

Now, at the opening of this blogpost, I mentioned the vomit-wave of anti-women legislation being regurgitated from various Republican statehouses in recent weeks--legislation referred to by a friend of mine as "staterape."

A cursory check of the ALEC website reveals no legislation specific to transvaginal ultrasounds or other anti-abortion bills.

But you have to look CLOSER.

Success, as they say, breeds success. Whether fostered and funded by ALEC, I do not know, but an organization calling itself the Bioethics Defense Fund (Law in the Service of Life)--has followed the blueprint put forth by ALEC on the corporate level and applied it to the Right-wing Right-to-Life legion.

Like Alec, BDF offers not just "models" for the kinds of oppressive laws we've seen in the past few weeks, but also offers legal guidance in order to enable a cooperating state legislator to tailor the model law to that of his or her own state:

READ THE BILL: Read the BDF-drafted "Ultrasound Before Abortion" bill signed into law by La. Governor Jindal. Due to variations in state law, it is important for legislators to contact BDF for customized drafting assistance.

The law, according to BDF, "gives women two chances to choose life."

After her forced transvaginal ultrasound, the state must provide women their "second chance" to "choose life"--they can be forced to view the ultrasound images, or they can be forced to hear a description of what is on the screen, or they can be forced to accept a picture of the ultrasound image.

Check your own state--especially if it has a Republican-dominated House. See which option YOU get to "choose."

Some of you may be saying, What MORE can we do to fight this takeover of our democracy by Right-wing theologians and corporate robber-barons? How can we fight such entrenched interests?

After all, we're only The People.

A group that has grown out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which calls itself Shut Down the Corporations, has called for a National Call to Action tomorrow, February 29, 2012.

Their website details many actions that have been successfully undertaken by activists throughout the decades who have taken on entrenched corporate interests and managed to wrestle our democracy back into our own hands.

See if you can find an action to join in an area near you.

There are dramatic actions that can be taken--strikes, blockades, shut-downs, and sit-ins, and there are more quiet actions that simply do what the media has failed to do for the past 38 years--SHED LIGHT ON THE COCKROACHES.

This website, ALEC Exposed, is the most thorough and complete resource you will need to find out exactly what is going on, not just in our nation, but in your own state. There are links, Tweet-feeds, Facebook pages, in-depth articles from all kinds of media outlets, information, and guidance provided by ALEC Exposed. Much of the information I got for this blogpost came from this resource.

I must admit, that while putting this together, I started to feel overwhelmed and depressed, feeling like David against a humongous Goliath, wondering if we would EVER be able to make possible the impossible task of undermining this Right-wing juggernaut and bringing sanity and sound democracy back to our country.

And then I got to thinking about how impossible it had seemed that a black man with the middle name of "Hussein," who was running against the most sophisticated political machine of our generation--the Clintons--just for the nomination--how impossible it seemed that he would ever become president.

And as if on cue, the president chose that moment of my despair to give one of the most rabble-rousing, inspiring, on-your-feet speeches of his presidency--his speech today to the United Auto Workers of America convention in Washington, D.C.

The speech is a half-hour long, and worth every minute, but in the final moments, the president leaned over the podium and said, "If you've got just an ounce of fight left in you, I've got a TON of fight left in me."

And I thought, yeah, every fight we've waged--from health care reform to ending the war in Iraq--has seemed impossible at the outset.

But we joined together, and not just Democrats, but Independents and moderates and disgruntled Republicans and people who just supported Barack Obama and had no particular affiliation--we all joined together and we FOUGHT for what we knew was right.

We can win this fight. I'm in it to win it. How about you?

Rick Perry's Texas: STATE-SANCTIONED RAPE OF WOMEN

2012-01-11T00:20:54Z

According to a law passed by a Tea-Bagger Texas statehouse and signed as an "emergency measure" by Governor Rick Perry, and mis-presented to the public at the time the bill was passed, along with the 5th Circuit's decision that this procedure CAN proceed even as the law itself is being appealed--women can now be legally raped in the state of Texas if they see a physician about getting an abortion.

By "rape," I mean that the sonogram which is required by this law for all women seeking abortions in the first 10 weeks--which nearly all women now do--is not a "jelly on the belly" procedure, as State Rep. Carol Alvarado pointed out, in which you take off your clothes, put on a flimsy gown, climb up onto a cold table, have some colder jelly smeared on your stomach, and then wait while a technician or doctor rolls the wand around and interprets the picture that appears on the computer screen.

At the time this bill was being debated and passed, the Texas media simply reported that women would be required to get a sonogram if they wanted an abortion. As a Texas woman, I wasn't pleased about that but I wasn't rendered apoplectic the way I was today when I found out that the sonogram which is required is actually a "TRANS-VAGINAL" procedure.

I have had a trans-vaginal sonogram. My gynocologist requested it when, during a pelvic exam and yearly pap smear, she thought she might have encountered a uterine tumor, and we needed to find out for sure. Of course, I agreed. In a trans-vaginal sonogram, first of all, you have to go without urinating for hours in advance so that the image is more clear. This is extremely uncomfortable. It means that you have to show up at the hospital, take off your clothes, put on a flimsy gown, and climb up onto the table while, at the same time, urgently feeling the need to urinate.

Then, they shove that sonogram wand UP YOUR VAGINA and dig it around in there while you try frantically not to pee on the technician. It is painful. It is uncomfortable. It is embarrassing. In my case, I had a male technician, and a female nurse did not accompany him into the sonogram room. Now, I must say that he was incredibly kind and very professional, but it was a STRANGE MAN who was sticking a COLD WAND up into my vagina and poking it around inside of me while he looked at the computerized images on the screen and I ground my teeth to keep from wetting myself.

"The law establishes new ways to shame and humiliate women," said Karen Hildebrand, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood, West Texas," but does nothing to protect women and teens from unintended pregnancies."

Let's say you are a 13 year old girl and you were raped by your uncle. You and your parents agree that an abortion is the best thing for your situation. YOU HAVE TO BE SUBJECTED TO YET ANOTHER FOREIGN OBJECT BEING SHOVED UP YOUR VAGINA--possibly by a strange man.

Even if your reason for getting an abortion is not related to rape or incest--let's say you have been, at one time in your past, a victim of rape yourself. Let's say that, in the attack, the rapist shoved a beer bottle or a broom handle up your vagina as part of the attack. NOW, you are being forced to have a plastic bottle-like object poked into your vagina AGAIN.

As to the matter of cost. DOES THE STATE PAY? I can't find an answer to that question with a cursory Google-search, but if they DON'T, then what do you do if you do not have health insurance?

If you live in the state of Texas, where a full 25% of the public do not have health insurance, the odds are good that, should you be subjected to this medically unnecessary procedure against your will and without your consent (which meets the definition of rape), you will have to pay hundreds of dollars because it is considered an outpatient surgical procedure, since you have to have it done at a hospital.

So...let's say they are triumphant! You decide not to have the abortion. DOES THE STATE OF TEXAS GIVE A FLYING DAMN WHAT HAPPENS TO THAT BABY ONCE IT EXITS YOUR WOMB?

The state of Texas, which insisted that abstinence-only be taught in sex-education classes at the high school and junior high level, has ONE OF THE HIGHEST RATES OF TEEN PREGNANCY IN THE COUNTRY.

It has one of the lowest rates of CHILDREN'S HEALTH INSURANCE in the state. It has one of the highest rates of poverty, the highest rates of minimum-wage jobs that do not provide health insurance benefits and do not support a family, and one of the lowest standards of education in the country.

The Republican statehouse that insisted on ramming through this obscenity of a law, also slashed the state's budget for WIC--Women's, Infants, and Children's nutritional programs, food stamps, Aid to Dependent Children, Children's Health Insurance, and Medicaid--all programs which are designed to help pregnant women and young mothers.

Rick Perry was so damned and determined to show that he had balanced the state's budget when he launched his doomed presidential race that he forced through massive budget cuts in areas that could ill afford it, plunging MILLIONS into premature poverty--including many, many mothers of young children.

Most of the jobs he likes to brag were created in his state are minimum-wage jobs, so if a mother wants to support her children and can't find a decent job, she must work two or three minimum-wage jobs to feed her family, and who provides child care? Not the state, which slashed that budget as well.

So, WHAT IF SHE WANTS TO PREVENT AN UNPLANNED PREGNANCY in the first place? Shouldn't that make all those so-called "PRO-LIFERS" happy? Not if she can't afford hundreds for a visit to the OB/GYN and birth control pills or devices. Her only option is to go to Planned Parenthood for her women's reproductive health needs--her pap smears, STD tests, pregnancy tests, birth control, and PRE-NATAL CARE.

But Gov. Perry, aided and abetted by the sanctimonious, self-righteous Republicans in the statehouse, CLOSED PLANNED PARENTHOOD CLINICS all over the state and have vowed to eventually close them all.

It's just a matter of time before these religious zealots close in on various forms of birth control as well as abortions--already, pharmacists who have religious views against birth control do not have to fill prescriptions for birth control pills, and more and more evangelicals are considering birth control itself to be against the laws of God. As one spokesman from the World Congress of Families put it, "American evangelicals have unwittingly traded the Virgin Mary for Margaret Sanger."

REALLY? So, if you take the Pill, you are desecrating the VIRGIN MARY???

At least one evangelical Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, has already vowed that, if elected president, he will outlaw federal funding for birth control, and several of them, including Mitt Romney, have supported various "Personhood" amendments, which state that any effort to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to a womb wall, such as IUD devices or some birth control pills, are considered on par with abortion and are banned in that state.

One of my Facebook friends described this as "religious persecution." When you think about it, that's exactly what it is. A small minority of far-right evangelical Christians have rammed through an obscene violation of a woman's privacy between herself and her physician in the most intimate of ways, and if allowed to continue, will eventually ban even a woman's right to prevent pregnancy.

Because this law in Texas and other states does not stop with having a wand shoved up a woman's vagina--AGAINST HER WILL AND WITHOUT HER CONSENT--no. The doctor THEN has to force her to listen to his or her description of what he or she is seeing on the computer screen, force her to listen to the heartbeat if there is one, and then, there are scripted remarks he or she is required to say.

Doctors have challenged this in court. God forbid we infringe on a doctor's paternalistic relationship with his or her patient. Lower courts have ruled that they don't have to say what the Republican statehouse demands.

But they still have to DO it. Women, they say, don't have to listen. I'd like to know how that could be. A noisy iphone and earphones, perhaps? She lies there, naked and vulnerable, her legs spread, a technician's hand up her vagina, and somehow she's not supposed to listen to remarks scripted for the guy by Republicans in the state capitol.

So that she can obtain a CONSTITUTIONALLY LEGAL PROCEDURE.

It is an OBSCENITY. It is a VIOLATION. It is STATE-SANCTIONED RAPE.

Women in this state and others who have rammed through or are considering such a measure should RISE UP AND BE HEARD. They should FIGHT BACK. And for the love of God, VOTE.

ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES, AND SOMETIMES, THEY CAN RESULT IN YOUR HAVING SOMETHING SHOVED UP YOUR VAGINA AGAINST YOUR WILL AND WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.

Vote Democratic and stop this madness and mysogeny.