#TeamUterati

Women need the media to be better at its job.

Look. If you’re going to be a journalist, you are required to provide facts. When dealing with a liar of a candidate like Mitt Romney, if you report his stated position on an issue without examining all of the other stances he has taken on that very same issue, then you are not doing your job.

To wit, Ben Feller, White House correspondent for AP is not doing his job:

Obama alluded to the provocative issue of abortion, suddenly thrust to the fore this week when Republican Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin said the female body has a way to “shut that whole thing down” when a woman is the victim of “legitimate rape.”
The Republican platform in Tampa calls for a ban on abortion with no specific exceptions for rape or other circumstances. Obama predicted that a President Romney would not “stand in the way” if Congress gave him a bill that stripped away women’s control over their reproductive health.

Romney is on record, however, as not opposing abortion in cases of rape and incest or if it will save the mother’s life.

Polling shows social issues such as abortion represent perhaps Obama’s best opportunity to draw support from Romney. Obama already holds a broad lead as the candidate more trusted to handle those social issues among Democrats and independents. The issue is one of Romney’s biggest vulnerabilities among moderate and liberal Republicans.

Romney is on record as not opposing abortion in cases of rape and incest — as of this week. But for the past five years, Romney is on record as supporting an Eggs Are People Too (“Personhood”) Amendment.

[...]

It’s funny because it’s true.

You’re welcome.

(h/t ThundarKitteh!)

Anti-choice zealots already think it well within their right to murder doctors who perform abortions (Dr. Tiller, anyone?). As it turns out, at least one individual aspiring to elected office (law enforcement, no less!) also thinks it well within his right.

Meet Frank Szabo, Republican candidate for Sheriff of Hillsborough County in New Hampshire. Frank announced today that he will stop at nothing — even deadly force — to prevent abortions from occurring in his jurisdiction (even though abortions are legal). He said he will arrest doctors performing abortions (even though abortions are legal). He also said he will do what it takes to prevent a doctor from reforming abortion (even though abortions are legal).

A Republican candidate for Hillsborough County Sheriff said Wednesday that he believes elective abortions are unlawful and he wouldn’t reject the use of deadly force to stop them.

Frank Szabo said that as sheriff, he would arrest any doctor performing elective or late-term abortions in his jurisdiction.

[...]

In the Dominican Republic, a nine-week pregnant girl was diagnosed with leukemia. The girl’s mother pleaded with doctors to “allow” her daughter to get an abortion so the girl she could begin chemotherapy immediately. “I know abortion is a sin, but my daughter’s health comes first,” she cried.

The doctors responded by forcing her and her daughter to view ultrasounds so the two women could see that the baby was healthy.

Three weeks after the girl was diagnosed, the doctors finally began chemotherapy, but still would not end the pregnancy. Ultimately, the young woman miscarried the pregnancy, hemorrhaged, and died.

She was 16 years old.

[read full post at ABLC]

[via RH Reality Check]

The one thing you can count on is that Republicans will attempt to legislate women’s body based on information that they got from an email forward from their crazy uncle Jeff:

Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri, wants to ban the morning-after pill, considering it to be a form of abortion, he told a Kansas City radio station Wednesday.

“As far as I’m concerned, the morning-after pill is a form of abortion, and I think we just shouldn’t have abortion in this country,” Akin said Wednesday, the day after his victory in the Republican primary, in an interview with Kansas City radio host Greg Knapp. Audio was posted by the liberal site Progress Missouri.

Knapp asked about Akin’s views on abortion in situations as rape and incest, or where the life of the mother is at risk.

“Well, you know, the life of the mother, the situation there is one where I think what you want to do is optimize life. You try to save the mother’s life, you try to save the child,” said Akin. “There are certain things, like you know you get a tubal pregnancy — where the child has absolutely no chance of surviving — and then you do the best you can to save the mother’s life. So, I think you optimize life, is the way I would probably describe it.”

Knapp asked again: “So just to be clear, though, you would like to ban the morning-after, totally for everyone?”

“Yeah,” Akin said. “I think that’s a form of abortion, and I don’t support it.”

The morning after pill is not a form of abortion. It never was and never will be. It does not end a pregnancy. It prevents a pregnancy from occurring.

Just stop it.

[full post at ABLC]

Thank you.

 Thanks to all of you who donated to our first Bitchfork Bonanza.***

It was a wild success and we were able to raise enough money to upgrade our server and database software. (The upgrade will take at least a week (maybe two) at which time the database will be Blazing Fast.)

A huge thanks to @ThundarKitteh, uterati warrior and Queen of bitchforks for her hard work and contribution to the cause. It is not an exaggeration to say that this server upgrade could not have happened without her.

We still need your financial support.

We are still accepting donations which will be used to beef up the database even more. We would love to upgrade the server to the next level, so that the server isn’t just blazing fast, but “Holy crap, did you see that?!” fast. Your continued financial support will help us do that.

Aside from the money raised this summer, Heather and I (with a lot of help in the initial stages from brilliant designer Amanda Underwood) have been building this project on our own dime for the past five months. It would be lovely to be compensated for our past and future efforts. Servers, maintenance, bandwidth, design, and development all cost money.  My time, Heather’s time, Amanda’s time?  All costs money.  We have worked for free because we believe in our project.

So what’s next?

[...]

Larry Pittman is the quintessential Republican: uninformed and male.

Yeah, I said it:

PITTMAN: [Planned Parenthood] is a murderous organization…getting wealthy on murder for hire. It deals out nothing but deception, death, personal devastation, and moral degradation. Never will I agree to give that bloody, indecent, immoral organization one penny. I will not be satisfied until it is outlawed.

~snip~

PITTMAN: My sources tell me that 75 percent of [Planned Parenthood’s] income comes through abortions. To say that they would try to reduce the incidence of abortion is like saying a baker would go around trying to get people to stop eating bread.

Your “sources” tell you? Seriously?

STOP GETTING YOUR INFORMATION FROM EMAIL FORWARDS.

You are not allowed to legislate women’s health based upon bullshit you gleaned from your excite.com email account. You’re just not. If there’s more than two “FW: FW:” in the subject header, check snopes.com before proceeding. Call a friend. Ask somebody. But stop legislating my body based on false information from anonymous sources.

Just stop it.

[full post at ABLC]

My latest post for RH Reality Check has been published:

In May of this year, Jan Brewer signed into law Arizona HB 2625, a bill that would allow employers to opt out of the policy under the Affordable Care Act ensuring that all insurance policies cover preventive health care services for women, including contraception, without a co-pay.

It’s a simple concept, really: contraception is health care. Health insurance plans offer coverage for health care. Ergo, health insurance plans should offer coverage for contraception. Ta da!

Laws like Arizona HB 2625 undercut this simple concept. According to supporters of laws like HB 2625, contraception is of the devil. And because the Catholic Church’s official position on contraception is that it is sinful, the Church seems personally offended at the notion that any employer be required by the government to exist in the same space as women who are using their hard-earned wages to pay for contraceptive and other health care services that are anathema to church doctrine.

A couple months ago, I published a piece that described what I saw as a dangerous slippery slope regarding Arizona HB 2625 (and laws like it), which permit employers to claim some sort of religious affiliation and thus excuse themselves from providing critical health-care services to women employed by them.

In that piece (and in the lively discussion that followed in the comment section), I noted that the exemptions provided by the Arizona legislation for “religiously-affiliated employers” went far beyond the exemptions provided by the Obama Administration to religious institutions, insofar as the Arizona law permits any employer to, essentially, pinky swear that its business is steeped in Jesus.

[...]

Here’s a video from Guttmacher Institute that outlines the economic and health benefits of contraception and family planning:

You’re welcome.

SAVE YOURSELVES.

Citizens! The birth control benefit is coming for you and your family! We are at Terror Alert Level Red:

A House Republican lawmaker likened the implementation of a new mandate that insurers offer coverage for contraceptive services to Pearl Harbor and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks against the United States.

Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly (R), an ardent opponent of abortion rights, said that today’s date would live in infamy alongside those two other historic occasions. Wednesday marked the day on which a controversial new requirement by the Department of Health and Human Services, which requires health insurance companies to cover contraceptive services for women, goes into effect.

[read full post at ABLC]