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27Mar2011
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27Mar2011
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27Mar2011
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Today, as the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case brought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood against the Affordable Care Act, hundreds of rights’ activists from women’s, LGBT, faith, youth and other groups rallied outside in the unseasonably cold weather and snow to show their support for the ACA’s contraception health coverage rule.
A bad Hobby Lobby decision would empower corporate leadership to make determinations about their employees’ health care decisions, allowing business owners’ religious views about family planning to burden decisions that employees are entitled to make for themselves. Starting very early this morning defenders, of the Affordable Care Act stood at the steps of the Supreme Court to declare that women’s health care is not their boss’s business.
Take a look below at the scene today at the Supreme Court.
NARAL Pro Choice America and Planned Parenthood Presidents Ilyse Hogue and Cecile Richards
♥♥♥♥♥
Thanks to all the ladies who got out there in the cold to rally for our rights!
Peace & Love to all of you!
Blog me.
BLOG UPDATE:
The blog url address, that has changed from .com to .net. The new address is blog.michellemoquin.net. So, although there is a redirect from blog.michellemoquin.com to blog.michellemoquin.net, please take note and change your bookmarks bar to go directly to blog.michellemoquin.net.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog.If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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Readers: As you probably have guessed, everything was not working correctly in blogsville. We were still experiencing some migration challenges still from moving from one server to another. However, I am HOPEful that this is now resolved…although no promises… Keeping our fingers crossed. :)
As far as the blog url address, that has changed from .com to .net. The new address is blog.michellemoquin.net. So, although there is a redirect from blog.michellemoquin.com to blog.michellemoquin.net, please take note and change your bookmarks bar to go directly to blog.michellemoquin.net.
I HOPE that is clear.
Now onto today’s write. There’s only a few more days until the March 31 deadline to enroll in health insurance or pay a fine. So, if you haven’t done so already, get on it.
We’ve been talking about the Affordable Care Act a lot this month, and we will continue to do so as the days tick away until the March 31 deadline to enroll in health insurance or pay a fine. With just 12 days left, more and more people are signing up for coverage and the word is spreading about affordable care. Here’s what has been going on:
5 million have now signed up for private insurance in the state and federal marketplaces. On the heels of last week’s announcement that 4.2 million had enrolled through the end of February, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday that enrollment has now passed the 5 million mark. That’s 800,000 additional enrollments in just over two weeks – almost the same as the entire month of February. Enrollment is increasing rapidly as the deadline approaches, and it will continue to do so in the remaining days. This is in addition to the millions who are gaining coverage through Medicaid and the 3.1 million who have coverage by staying on the parents’ plan.
1 million have signed up for coverage in California. California has been a leader in helping to implement the law, and as a consequence has seen a huge number of people benefitting from the law. The state’s insurance exchange, Covered California, passed a million people enrolled on Saturday—one-fifth of all sign-ups nationwide. “We are pleased and privileged to be helping a million people find the peace of mind that comes with having insurance,” the exchange’s Executive Director said. “But we’re not stopping at a million.”
Celebrities line up to lend their voices to enrollment efforts. Ever since President Obama sat down for the hilarious “Between Two Ferns” interviewwith comedian Zach Galifianakis, the administration has rolled out numerous other celebrity voices to spread the word about the law. LeBron Jamesrecorded a public service announcement in which he reminded his audience, “You never know when you might take a hit.” A number of celebrities’ momssat down to ask, “Seriously, do you want your mothers to have a nervous breakdown? You need health insurance.” And famed NCAA basketball coaches Geno Auriemma and Roy Williams recorded a video to kick off a different kind of bracket – the sweet 16 reasons to get covered. Obama willmake his first appearance as President on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” tomorrow to tout the law.
Report finds sports injuries that are common among young people cost thousands. Many of the “young invincibles” who don’t think it’s worth it to enroll in health care coverage might want to think again. Accidents happen, and when they do health care can be costly. A broken arm, for example, costs an average of $7,700.
Meanwhile, as millions of Americans get access to health insurance for the first time, Republicans in Congress continue their repeal-at-all-costs approach. Their latest anti-Obamacare bill would cause a spike in insurance premiums up to 20 percent and leave 13 million fewer Americans with insurance. And while the GOP keeps insisting it will provide an alternative to the ACA, you shouldn’t believe the hype. The New York Times even called out their latest gambit for what it was: all new talk, but no new ideas. The only plan they agree on is to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
BOTTOM LINE: While Republicans keep trying to figure out ways to repeal the ACA and go back to the days when insurance companies were in charge of your health care, the new health care law’s successes march on. Insurance sign-ups passed another historic threshold Monday, with 5 million now covered. And there are numerous outreach efforts to keep the momentum up through the March 31 deadline to enroll.
*****
Readers: I look forward to seeing your comments. Thanks for your patience. As always, so happy you are here.
xox
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog.If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)
President Obama released his administration’s fiscal year 2015 budget requesttoday. It serves an important purpose in detailing the administration’s vision for investing in the future of the country and establishes an important contrast with Congressional Republicans. The latest GOP salvo in the budget wars, offered by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) yesterday, was filled with what we’ve come to expect:another attack on decades of successful anti-poverty programs. President Obama’s, meanwhile, contains a number of pro-growth policies and investments that will help create an economy that works for all Americans, not just the wealthy few. Here are five of the most important:
1. Expands the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The President’s Budget doubles the maximum credit from $500 to $1,000 for 13.5 million low-income childless adults, putting more money back in the pockets of low-income working Americans. The credit has also been extended to young workers aged 21 to 24, adding further support to those individuals at the start of their careers.
Some conservatives have countered the progressive campaign to raise the minimum wage by saying that the EITC is a better alternative to help low-income workers. While the President and the progressive community have no intention of stopping the fight for a higher minimum wage, in this budget Obama has called their bluff in his expansion of the EITC — how will Republicans respond?
2. Significantly Extends The Child Tax Credit. Childcare be often be so expensive for families with young children that it can keep a parent from working full-time. The President’s Budget would extend the Child Tax Credit, particularly for families with children under age five. According to the White House, about 1.7 million families would benefit from the expansion in 2015, receiving an average tax cut of $600.
3. Invests $302 Billion Over Four Years In Transportation Infrastructure. As America’s roads and bridges are falling apart, the President’s focus on transportation infrastructure in this budget took a critical step forward in two ways. First, it draws almost half of the budget request–$150 million–directly from new revenues earned through closing tax loopholes. Second, it prioritizes “fix-it first” investments: those highways, bridges, roads, subways, bus services, and more, that are among the most in need of repair.
4. Promotes Smart Fiscal Responsibility. The budget predicts the following savings from smart policies:
$402 billion in additional health savings from the Affordable Care Act as well as innovations for Medicare and Medicaid;
$650 billion over a decade by creating a smarter, more efficient tax code including closing corporate tax loopholes and implementing the “Buffett Rule” so that millionaires pay no less than 30 percent of their income;
5. Reiterates Support For Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Immigration reform is a no-brainer, estimated to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion and increase economic growth by $1.4 trillion over twenty years. It is supported by the vast majority of American interests: businesses, faith leaders, labor unions, many Republican lawmakers, and most important almost 9 in 10 voters. And it would help more than just the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country — it would have huge benefits for American workers as well.
BOTTOM LINE: The President’s budget is a bold progressive document that calls for an end to an era of austerity by investing in working Americans and strengthening the economy for everyone and not just the wealthiest few. Republicans, even while finding that many anti-poverty programs are actually very effective, continue to castigate many low-income Americans and remain opposed to commonsense polices that would spur the economy and reduce the deficit.
*****
Blog me.
Howie: Yes, it made me happy too. Let’s expect that will be the end of it. With respect to your post, I have read writes about the beloved bees and their plight is tragic not just for them, but as you mentioned, for our future too. Will something be done? I HOPE that answer is yes and the bees get the support that is needed.
Peace & love….
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog.If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)
Well…some of you may have clicked over to my blog yesterday, and “just noticed” that my blog had drastically changed. I apologize for that. If you were panicking, you can only imagine what I was going through when the change occurred. My web guy was changing all of my sites from one server to another (which I thought was going to be a piece of cake and so I didn’t even mention it to my readers), and we ran into some technical difficulties.
So…in the interim of getting it moved, he put up a temporary site (many of you may have seen it for about an hour yesterday), as a placeholder as he was uploading the blog, to let all of my readers know that we were in the middle of maintenance, and to please be patient. Then to make matters worse, in the process of moving the blog, because the blog has so much content, my web guy was being challenged at getting it all uploaded and moved to the new server. It simply was not uploading with any speed and half way through the upload it would come to a complete halt.
So…in the interim of figuring out how to get it moved to the new server, as it was apparent that it was going to take a lot longer than expected, and I was concerned about you, my readers, not being able to comment or converse with me and the other readers, he took down the temporary site, and put up the blog, which is still on the old server. At this point I am leaving it there since it is now working perfectly fine.
Thank you again for your patience and understanding. And for being here with me. This is probably more info that you needed or wanted to know but I wanted to keep you informed since I am sure it was quite surprising to go to my blog and not see what you usually see.
Now…If that’s my biggest challenge for the day, I have no reason to complain. The Doctors in this write, well…they have good reason – they are hated and their lives are threatened daily. And the women…well, they just want to exercise their legal right and do what they feel is best for their bodies.
Here’s the write from Think Progress: It’s a long one so grab yourself a cup of coffee.
You received years of specialized training in a field that you’re passionate about. You’ve decided to work in an area of the country where you feel you can make a difference. You have a family, and you’re primarily concerned about helping other families thrive. But at every turn, the state is enacting more barriers to your professional success. Your job options are limited because you’re not welcome in some American communities. And sometimes, protesters show up outside of the home you share with your children, shouting that they hate the work you do.
You’re on the front lines of the abortion wars.
The politicized debate over reproductive rights is typically framed as a tug of war between life and choice, women and babies, pregnancy and abortion. Although it’s no question that women’s bodies have become a battleground, there are other foot soldiers in this fight who don’t always enter the national conversation. The medical professionals who risk their jobs and their lives to perform legal abortions are under siege.
ThinkProgress spoke to eight individuals who either perform abortions for their patients or operate a clinic where abortions are offered. Some preferred to speak under pseudonyms, and others agreed to use their real names. They face unique challenges depending on which state they call home, but their stories all include a common thread. They want to help women — help them choose the best type of contraception, help them have healthy pregnancies, help deliver their babies, help them decide how many children to have, and help them beat cancer. They’re frustrated that they’re singled out, dealing with personal and professional hurdles that no other type of doctor is forced to experience.
They’re also not naive about what’s at stake in their daily lives.
“Let’s put it this way. You probably interview other professionals for news stories all the time and you never have to worry about whether you can identify their name, or the institution where they work,” Dr. David Eisenberg, a doctor practicing in St. Louis, pointed out to ThinkProgress. “It’s very clear to me that the work that I do puts me at risk on many levels. I’m willing to take these risks, but it’s ridiculous they exist in the first place.”
Casualties in the anti-abortion war
Exactly 21 years ago, Dr. David Gunn was shot three times in the back outside of his abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida. According to media reports, a 31-year-old abortion protestor yelled “Don’t kill any more babies!” before opening fire at point-blank range. Gunn had been operating a clinic in Pensacola for just over a month before he was killed; it bore no signs advertising what type of services it provided.
Gunn was the first doctor to become a casualty of the movement that calls itself pro-life. Since then, there have been seven more. In order to commemorate Gunn’s memory, reproductive rights advocates now mark the date of his death, March 10, as the National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers. Activist groups encourage people to send thank you cards to the people who risk their lives to do this work, an effort that abortion opponents typically mock.
“Everyone who does the work we do can’t forget the things that have happened, and the people who have been murdered and attacked,” Dr. Christopher Estes, an abortion provider in Florida, told ThinkProgress. “But I don’t let it stop me from doing what I do.”
“There can be backlash, and there are consequences. Hopefully they’re minimal — someone doesn’t want to invite you to a dinner party — but they can obviously also be much more serious,” Dr. Stephanie Long, a doctor from California, added.
Long noted that the people who do this work are very aware of which areas carry the highest risk. Before she moved to California, she trained and practiced in Idaho and New Mexico. There weren’t necessarily robust support systems there. She knows people who stopped providing abortion care in Idaho because it was too difficult for them. After all, if you’re the only abortion doctor within hundreds of miles, your clinic is on opponents’ radar, and your profile will likely be raised in the anti-choice community.
“There are big barriers for those in small communities. There’s a lot of fear for what someone might say to your family or your children. You’re not as anonymous as you are in a big city — if you’re walking into a town of 2,000, everyone knows who you are and recognizes you in the grocery store,” Long explained. “There’s a certain point along the path, when you’re picking different jobs, you realize that if you work at certain clinics, your name will be out there. You have to decide if you’re okay with that.”
“For a lot of people, they don’t want to deal with the hassles, they don’t want to become a target, they don’t want their clinic to be picketed. For most doctors, it’s not an ideological issue; it’s a practical issue. This work is hard,” Dr. Jennifer Rojas, which is not her real name, told ThinkProgress.
Rojas prefers to remain anonymous because elevating her profile is a threat to her professional life. She practices in Texas, where a new state law is forcing dozens of abortion providers out of work because they can’t comply with a regulation that requires them to obtain admitting privileges, which is essentially a superfluous partnership with a local hospital. It’s hard enough to get these admitting privileges as it is, and many doctors are unsuccessful. But becoming a target of local anti-choice groups can make it even worse. That can lead certain hospitals to refuse to work with you.
In Ohio, another state with some of the harshest abortion laws on the books, Dr. Kate Davis is similarly wary to elevate her profile. She decided not to publicly identify herself becauseOhio Right To Life, the most prominent anti-abortion group in her state, already knows who she is. Her name is on their website; they send letters to her home. “They’re praying for me. I get Christmas cards. Stuff like that,” she said.
Davis isn’t necessarily intimidated by the abortion opponents in Ohio. But, like Rojas, she’s well aware of the vast ripple effects of being targeted by the country’s network of anti-choice groups. Protesters will often try to get abortion doctors evicted from their clinics, either by pressuring their landlords or by lobbying to rezone the local area. They’ll implore other medical professionals to refuse to work with the doctors who provide abortion care. And they’ll direct their attention to the hospitals where abortion doctors work, flooding the institutions with phone calls and letters. Davis doesn’t want to invite those type of “shenanigans,” as she calls them.
“They can do whatever they want to do to me. But I don’t want other people who didn’t choose to do this work to have to deal with this,” Davis said.
A new kind of anti-abortion harassment
Merle Hoffman owns one of the oldest abortion clinics in the United States. Choices Women’s Medical Center was founded in New York in 1971, when abortion was permitted in that state but hadn’t yet been legalized across the country. At this point, she’s seen it all.
“I’m in my 43rd year of doing this work,” Hoffman explained in an interview with ThinkProgress. “I’ve seen the ebb and flow over the decades — I’ve seen the murder of my friends, I’ve seen bombings and harassment, and I’ve personally been evicted from previous buildings because of protesters. I once had armed guards in front of my clinic for three months. Providers have had to endure every type of bullying and harassment.”
Although abortion clinic violence makes the headlines less frequently than it did 20 years ago, and there have been a few pieces of legislation enacted on the state and national levels to protect clinics and staff from harassment, that doesn’t mean the issue has gone away. In some ways, abortion providers are more at risk than ever before, now that state legislatures are effectively targeting them.
“Over the last 30 or 40 years since Roe, the different ways that abortion opponents attack safe abortion care have really changed over time,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, the founder and CEO of Texas’ largest independent abortion provider, Whole Woman’s Health, told ThinkProgress. “In the 1980s and 1990s, there were a lot of clinic blockades and bombings. Then they started specifically targeting physicians — there were a lot of murders. Now, you’ve seen a change in the approach. We have this new front of anti-abortion harassment through the legislature and through the court system.”
Abortion opponents have been working to make it too difficult for doctors to provide abortion care by enacting dozens of complicated state-level restrictions that dictate how these services may be performed. Once state legislatures pass tighter restrictions, anti-choice activists can start filing complaints alleging clinics are breaking the new law and endangering their patients. Sometimes they’ll conduct undercover “stings” — posing as a minor trying to get an abortion without telling her parents, or pretending to be a woman forced to have an abortion against her will — in an attempt to catch the clinic staff making a wrong move. Ultimately, they’re hoping to trigger the state’s agencies to step in and conduct surprise inspections. It’s expensive and time-consuming for clinic staff to continue refuting these false claims.
“The state is really a tool of the anti-abortion movement in this scenario,” Hagstrom Miller noted. She’s been personally impacted by this dynamic. Just last week, Hagstrom Miller announced that she will be forced to close two of her five clinics because she can’t afford to keep them operating under Texas’ restrictive new law.
Meanwhile, abortion doctors have no choice but to do their best to navigate a web of complex state restrictions, even if it goes against their best medical judgment. Many of these state laws carry harsh penalties, like thousands of dollars in penalties and decades in jail, and doctors have to protect themselves.
“Every time I perform an abortion, I have to offer the woman the ability to see or hear the heartbeat of her ‘unborn human individual,’ which is what the law states it must be called,” Dr. Kate Davis, whose work in Ohio forces her to navigate several incredibly restrictive anti-abortion laws, told ThinkProgress. “I need to tell her the probability of this pregnancy going to term if she chooses to continue the pregnancy and doesn’t have the abortion. I need to do this both verbally and in writing. From my medical point of view, this is totally unnecessary. But I’m doing it so I don’t get fined, or charged with a misdemeanor or, heaven forbid, a felony.”
Another one of Ohio’s laws prevents Davis from performing later abortions, even in cases when a woman’s pregnancy has gone terribly wrong and her fetus won’t survive. In those cases, her hands are tied and she’s forced to refer her patients to a different doctor out of state.
“Some of the only complaints I get from patients are when I have to turn them away. When I tell them, I’m sorry, I can’t help you, I know how to do the procedure and I could do it safely, but I can’t,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking. People are begging you — as a physician, you know you can help them, but the only reason you can’t is because of a state law.”
‘If I don’t do it, who will?’
Considering the challenges, it’s perhaps no surprise that this country faces a serious abortion provider shortage. The National Abortion Federation (NAF) estimates that the number of abortion providers in the U.S. has dropped 37 percent since 1982. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has warned that “the availability of abortion services is in jeopardy” because of this growing lack of available doctors. Indeed, according to one recent study, 97 percent of OB-GYNs have had patients who have come to them for an abortion — but only about 14 percent of those doctors actually knew how to perform one.
That’s partly because some doctors decide they don’t want to deal with the hassles from anti-choice protesters, or the risks of navigating anti-choice laws. But it’s also partly because of structural barriers that exist within the medical community itself.
Many doctors don’t learn enough about abortion care while they’re in medical school — a 2009 study found that a third of medical schools don’t talk about elective abortion at all during the first two pre-clinical years. And as an increasing number of abortion clinics are being forced to close, and as hospitals have eliminated abortion from the services they provide, students in residency are losing out on opportunities to train. For instance, the doctors training in one of the 600 Catholic-affiliated hospitals across the country are barred from doing abortions. Even if new doctors do enter the field with the knowledge and the desire to practice abortion care, it’s often difficult for them to find a job that allows them to do that work.
So, when asked why they continue to do this difficult work, a common theme emerged among the abortion providers who spoke to ThinkProgress. They all said they don’t really have a choice. They know they’re part of a shrinking pool of people who can help women safely and legally end a pregnancy.
“Coming in as a new physician committed to reproductive rights makes it really difficult,” Long, the provider who trained in rural Idaho, noted. “But it’s not just a commitment in words. It has to be a commitment in actions. If I’m not going to do it, there aren’t a lot of other people who will.”
Davis, the anonymous doctor from Ohio, agreed. “I always knew that if I was going to be an OB-GYN, I would be obligated to provide abortions. The field is dwindling, and the providers we have are graying. If I don’t do it, who’s going to do it?”
“As I saw the increasing restrictions on abortion care, well, I came to this from a point of social justice. Since I have the skills to do this, then why wouldn’t I do it? Being in a state like Texas, where access is such a huge issue, it’s become 90 percent of what I do by default,” Rojas explained. “There aren’t that many people to do it. I couldn’t imagine leaving this, no matter how hard it is, because every day I see these women and I think — where else would they go?”
Luckily, there’s some slow progress emerging in this area. Over the past two decades, abortion rights advocates have been laying the groundwork to begin reversing the doctor shortage. The national Ryan Program, which was founded in 1999 and now has dozens of locations at medical schools across the country, is a central part of that effort. It provides critical financial support for OB-GYN departments, and helps them integrate abortion into the rest of family planning training. And local chapters of Medical Students For Choice are supporting individuals who want to become abortion providers.
A new wave of instructors is helping contribute to this shift, too. Doctors like Estes and Eisenberg, who have transitioned into academia and are committed to teaching their students about abortion services as simply another part of reproductive health care, are changing medical schools from the inside.
“People like me are taking on academic roles and roles in medical education. We’re making sure that students receive appropriate education about family planning care and abortion,” Estes, who works at an institution in Florida that’s home to a Ryan Program, noted. “I’ve been fortunate enough to wind up in a situation where I do an awful lot of teaching and I have some control over the curriculum. I put abortion back in, where it belongs. At the very least, students get to see the truth about it, and not have it hidden away like something we should all be ashamed of.”
Brave enough to speak out
Ultimately, abortion providers are caught in somewhat of a Catch-22. In order to preserve their professional and personal safety, they’re often reluctant to speak publicly about their work. But being forced into silence isn’t a great option, either. That ends up having larger consequences for society’s overall approach to issues of abortion rights, and prevents some of the experts in this space from being able to advocate for their work.
Dr. Gretchen Stuart, an abortion provider in North Carolina who was one of the lead plaintiffs in asuccessful lawsuit against the state’s forced ultrasound law, pointed out that even the doctors who feel very strongly about wanting to help change restrictive laws are hampered by the threat of potential consequences.
“Personal safety was certainly a consideration when I decided to be the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. Fortunately, I haven’t had any problems,” she told ThinkProgress. “But you can see that this has a profound impact on the willingness of abortion providers to speak out on behalf of themselves and their patients.”
“We’re sometimes the quietest when we need to be the most vocal,” Dr. Stephanie Long agreed.
Ultimately, the stigma and shame around abortion will persist unless more of the people who have personal experiences with it feel safe enough to share those stories.
“When people ask, what can I do? Well, here’s what you can do. You can help remove the shame, and help women come out of the closet about the fact that they’ve had an abortion,” Merle Hoffman, the CEO of Choices, said. “The biggest weapon in the other side’s arsenal is shame and stigma. The first step is to normalize this.”
“I keep myself ‘out’ about my career and what I do, because if we all hide away and don’t talk about it, this stigma won’t get any better,” Estes explained. “We need to be vocal and educate people about this — abortion is not a terrible social ill, it’s just a part of women’s health.”
That’s the biggest takeaway that the abortion providers who agreed to be interviewed for this story wanted to communicate. They’re not on some sort of evil crusade to harm women. They’re not interested in taking advantage of their patients or talking them into ending a pregnancy. In fact, since most of them are OB-GYNs who provide the full spectrum of women’s health care, they emphasized that caring for pregnant women and delivering babies is one of the greatest joys of their work. They simply don’t see that as separate from helping women exercise their reproductive freedom in other ways, like having a safe abortion.
“The other side tries to vilify doctors and make us into these horrible people,” Dr. Kate Davis said, noting that abortion opponents are sometimes surprised that she seems so nice. “We’re just like anyone else. We’re just trying to take care of our patients.”
*****
Readers: Thankfully for women, we have doctors that are commited to taking care of their patients’ needs, and supporting a woman’s right to choose by committing themselves to women’s rights, even as they are harassed and their lives are in danger. It is just sickening that they are treated this way, and they have to endure this when they are doing what is legal and right for women.
And it is sickening that women have to endure public shame about having an abortion, or even wanting one. Ladies, I am here to tell you that having an abortion is nothing to be ashamed about. You know that it is my opinion that you have every right to do what you wish with your body. This is a normal part of women’s health, and we should be supported in our decisions.
It is perfectly acceptable if you are one who does not agree with abortions – you have the right to choose not to have one. But please do not put your values or beliefs upon someone else and prevent them from their freedom of choice either. Women need to support each other in this, because men will continue to try and take away our freedoms. The men don’t need our help. In fact, women need our help and were asking men to support us as well, in making sure that we are able to get the safe and supported assistance we need when making choices that affect our lives.
This is just another huge reason why we need to be very verbal in getting those that oppose our rights, OUT this November. It is no time to be lazy and it is time to ban together and support your sisters in their freedom to choose.
Peace & Love…and Freedom of choice.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog.If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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If you don’t know who the Billionaire Koch brothers are, it’s about time you get to know them and their agenda for the 2014 elections and beyond.
From The Washington Post:
Harry Reid may not be afraid of the Koch Brothers. But he’s trying to make Democrats very afraid of them.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is a bit of a one-note Johnny these days.
There’s a problem in Washington? To hear Reid tell it, it’s the fault of Charles and David Koch, the libertarian-minded brothers who have bankrolled a slew of ads slamming vulnerable Senate Democrats via Americans for Prosperity, one of their many quasi-political entities.
Reid was at it again Thursday morning on the Senate floor, vilifying the Koch brothers for, roughly, everything that’s wrong with America. Here’s part of Reid’s speech:
I’m not afraid of the Koch brothers. None of us should not be afraid of the Koch brothers. These two multi-billionaires may spend hundreds of millions of dollars rigging the political process for their own benefit. And they may believe that whoever has the most money gets the most free speech. But I will do whatever it takes to expose their campaign to rig the American political system to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
Reid has demonstrated that commitment repeatedly in recent weeks, using the Senate floor as a staging ground for attacks that he will almost certainly will keep up. What’s Reid’s end goal? In his ideal world, to make the Koch brothers household names — and, in the tradition of the villainizing of Mitt Romney during the 2012 campaign — a living, breathing symbol of a view of government and society built on inequality. Again, Reid from earlier Thursday: “It would be a terrible thing to allow the Koch brothers to buy Congress. But it would be catastrophic to allow that Koch Brothers Congress to devastate the American middle class with their richest-take-all policy agenda.”
Reid’s ideal world as it relates to the Koch brothers isn’t going to happen. Or, at the very least, it’s not going to happen before the 2014 elections. Why? Because the average person has no idea who they are.
There’s very little polling on the two men but even a Democratic-aligned firm like PPP found that 47 percent of its sample had no idea who the Kochs were. Here’s Democratic pollster Geoff Garin in an interview with the Associated Press on that topic: “Garin says Americans, when given this basic information, believe the brothers are trying to elect a government that helps them at the expense of less wealthy people, who would fare better under Democratic policies.” The problem of course is the “basic information” caveat; such a statement assumes that voters will being paying close enough attention that information on the Koch brothers — whether served up by Reid or by any number of Democratic candidates and groups – will influence their votes. And, if past is prologue, the average voter simply doesn’t pay that much attention.
That’s not to say that simply because Reid’s ideal scenario won’t comes to pass that his Koch Brothers strategy is without merit for Democrats. Because, while the Kochs aren’t broadly known in the electorate, they are already relatively well known — and disliked — by Democrats. (A majority of Democrats — 51 percent — had an unfavorable opinion of the Kochs in that PPP poll.)
While passion in politics occasionally comes from a positive message/messenger — that’s what happened for Obama the candidate in 2008 — it occurs much more often as the result of negative influences. We all love to hate a good villain. And that’s why Reid is trying so hard to make the Kochs into just. The more he talks about the Kochs, the more — he hopes — rank and file Democrats get fired up to turn out to stick it to the Kochs. And the more — he hopes — major Democratic donors open up their checkbooks to counter the Kochs spending. (One liberal donor — Tom Steyer — is already pledging to spend $50 million of his own money to promote candidate supporting climate change, a fact Republican were all to quick to point out in the wake of Reid’s latest anti-Koch brothers speech; “the only person who has ever put Congress up for sale is Senator Reid and his fellow Senate Democrats,” said Republican spokesman Jahan Wilcox.)
Reid might not be afraid of the Koch Brothers. But he is hoping he can convince Democrats to be very, very afraid of them.
*****
Readers: Reid may be a one-note Johnny, but he has good reason to be. This won’t be the last we hear from Reid nor from myself when it comes to the Koch Brothers. Unfortunately, I believe that one of the most important things in this article that was said is true, and it needs to be changed:
Remember that the single biggest problem Democrats face heading into the November midterms is that their base just isn’t all that excited about voting. Republican base voters, by contrast, are on fire about the prospect of turning out in the midterms to send a message to President Obama. That energy disparity is a major problem.
Yes it is, and we need to make that gap disappear. Between now and November of this year, you can count on me to practically being a one-note Johnny as well…because I have good reason to be. If we sit on our laurels like the last midterms, you can count on this country going to shit in the proverbial hand basket because Obama will not be able to do anything if we lose control and hand over the keys. And we all know what that will look like if the repubs are in control. If you think it’s bad now with everything I’ve been posting about the repubs, it will get a lot worse. A LOT.
I cannot stress this enough over the next 6+ months but I am sure going to give it my best. We need to be on it. We Dems need to rally our base like we’ve never rallied them before. I’m issuing a clarion call to all Dems to get active and get involved. And of course vote. Am I stressing this too early? Maybe. But believe me, this won’t be the last time I ask you to vote in the midterms, before November rolls around. I will be a constant reminder of how important it is and I will be continually reminding you of what the Koch brothers and the repubs are doing, right up to election day. I want the elections to come and go and not have to say, “I told you so.” So…Are you with me?
What do you have to say? Blog me.
HAPPY ST. PATTY’S DAY!
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog.If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)
