yesterday's child |
my blog: http://yesterdays-child.blogspot.com/ |
What the fuck is this shit. Get yourself together, America. What happened to family values? America, WHY U NO MAKE ME PROUD?
Samhita dropping knowledge at Feministing about the ban on face veils in France. (via jessicavalenti)
Ann Romney (via whoneedsfeminism)
This woman could be the First Lady of the United States, and frankly, I’m terrified.
(via calculatorsandcupcakes)
Uh… No Ann. We’re not with you.
It’s 1978, five years after Roe v. Wade. I’m 38, I have four sons — the oldest is 17, the youngest is turning 12. I’m at school, getting a B.A., and I’m loving it.
I’m about two and a half months pregnant.
I don’t want this child. […]
So I’m on my way to Planned Parenthood to have a legal abortion. My husband drives me there — this is a serious matter for both of us, but we absolutely agree it’s my decision to make. We have been conscientiously using contraception and it’s failed us this time.
I’m pregnant but I’m not trapped.
All I had to do was call the clinic and make an appointment. I don’t have to be ashamed or terrified, because brave women before me fought to make abortion legal, have gone public with their stories of shame and terror and made sure that no woman ever again has to die from a back-alley abortion or bear an unwanted child.
We park and walk up to the entrance. No running the gantlet between pickets shouting at me that I’m a murderer, no fear that someone will throw a bomb. The receptionist takes my name and says, “You just have to talk with a counselor first.” I don’t mind, I figure it’s part of the procedure. I tell the counselor I already have four children and I don’t want any more. I’m on a different track now. She nods understandingly and says they’ll be ready for me soon. No judgment, no showing me pictures of fetuses, no trying to make me feel guilty. She just wants to be sure I’m sure.
And of course, I am.
It’s really not so bad; in fact it’s not as invasive as going for monthly checkups when you’re pregnant. They’re kind, they tuck me up under a blanket and say my husband can pick me up soon and take me home. I’m fine.
Our insurance company reimbursed us for most of the costs of the abortion. Because I was lucky enough to be able to, I sent that check for several hundred dollars as a donation to Planned Parenthood. I was grateful to the organization. I wanted Planned Parenthood to be able to continue to offer access to a range of health care services to all women. Having the abortion released me from the burden of the added mothering I could no longer undertake and allowed me to do the best mothering I could.
"Susan Heath: No One Called Me A Slut (via pantslessprogressive)
(via lipstick-feminists)
Elizabeth Banks: I Thank Birth Control Pills for My Son
Just over a year ago, my son Felix was born via gestational surrogacy. He came out of me nine months early and because of my broken belly, his babycake was baked in a wonderful angel’s oven and now — I can’t believe it — he’s a year old and walking. He has expanded my capacity for joy a thousand-fold.
His life would have been much harder to come by if not for the birth control pill. How’s that, you ask? Well, it’s a simple fact: The pill is used for many situations that have nothing to do with the prevention of pregnancy. The pill was prescribed to me when hormonally induced migraines kept me locked up in dark rooms for days at a time. It was prescribed to me to regulate insanely painful cramps every month — cramps so painful that I often vomited.
And here’s a little secret I am happy to blow the lid off of: The pill is often prescribed during the IVF (in vitro fertilization) process to help MAKE BABIES! That’s right, women dealing with infertility are often put on the pill to help regulate a cycle so that they might have a more successful IVF. The pill is used to manage ovarian cysts, endometriosis and other conditions too. Not to mention, it helps couples plan for wanted children.
Obviously, I’m not a doctor. I’m just a woman grateful for my necessary and very helpful medication. And I’m sure glad I don’t have to discuss any of these conditions, including infertility, with my employer.
A girlfriend and I recently wondered what would be more mortifying: having to tell her male employer she needed birth control to mitigate a heavy flow or just bleeding all over herself in the office?
So with that image in mind, I encourage all women — and the men in their lives — to protect access to birth control, and encourage our politicians to take women’s health issues out of the political process.
For more information, please visit the most comprehensive and willing advocates for women’s health in America: www.plannedparenthood.org.
I love this woman.
(Source: lizcrissplanty, via rabbleprochoice)
All of the Doonesbury texas abortion cartoons
Part of a Doonesbury comic strip about a piece of Texas abortion legislation signed into law by Rick Perry in May of 2010. Several US newspapers, like the Kansas City Star, are refusing to run the comic at all, while others are putting it in the editorial page instead of the comics page. This portion does not show all of the cartoon, which includes the woman being asked: “Do your parents know you’re a slut?” The cartoon ends with a nurse preparing the transvaginal ultrasound, saying “By the authority invested in me by the GOP base, I thee rape.”
In an email with the Guardian, cartoonist Garry Trudeau wrote in regards to the last piece of the cartoon: “That falls within the legal definition of rape. Coercion need not be physically violent to meet the threshold. Many people here are now referring to trans-vaginal sonograms as ‘state rape’. That seems about right to me”
Read the rest of Trudeau’s correspondence with the Guardian in this article.
(via robot-heart-politics)
An Ohio State Senator is turning the tables on men seeking to regualate women’s access to reproductive health. Sen. Nina Turner (D-Cleveland) has introduced legislation regulating men’s access to erectile dysfunction drugs. The Dayton Daily News has the details:
Before getting a prescription for Viagra or other erectile dysfunction drugs, men would have to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency, if state Sen. Nina Turner has her way.
The Cleveland Democrat introduced Senate Bill 307 this week.
A critic of efforts to restrict abortion and contraception for women, Turner says she is concerned about men’s reproductive health… Turner said if state policymakers want to legislate women’s health choices through measures such as House Bill 125, known as the ‘Heartbeat bill,’ they should also be able to legislate men’s reproductive health.
Turner’s bill tracks FDA guidelines which recommends doctors determine whether the root cause of men’s sexual disfunction is physical or psychological. She describes her bill as an effort to “legislate it the same way mostly men say they want to legislate a woman’s womb.”
There have been similar efforts in other states. An Illinois bill would require men to watch a “horrific video” on the side effects of Viagra. In Virginia, Sen. Janet Howell (D) submitted a bill requiring men to undergo adigital rectal exambefore recieving a prescription for erectile disfunction drugs.
Conservative commentators such as Sean Hannity have dismissed the comparison, claiming that Viagra — unlike birth control — treats a “medical problem.” Most women, however, use birth control for medical purposes other than family planning.
THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT
lets wait for folks claiming misandry in 3…2…1.
Why would anyone call this misandry? That right there is equality!
Me and Sandy were just talking about all the men in women’s wombs, I like this a lot. *claps*
Sadly i have a feeling this will fail like similar ones before it.. but i applaud the attempt!!
(via vexedvagabond)
(via ‘Doonesbury’ creator Garry Trudeau discusses divisive strips about abortion - The Washington Post)
“I chose the topic of compulsory sonograms because it was in the news and because of its relevance to the broader battle over women’s health currently being waged in several states. For some reason, the GOP has chosen 2012 to re-litigate reproductive freedom, an issue that was resolved decades ago. Why [Rick] Santorum, [Rush] Limbaugh et al. thought this would be a good time to declare war on half the electorate, I cannot say. But to ignore it would have been comedy malpractice.
Texas’s HB-15 [bill] isn’t hard to explain: The bill says that in order for a woman to obtain a perfectly legal medical procedure, she is first compelled by law to endure a vaginal probe with a hard, plastic 10-inch wand. The World Health Organization defines rape as “physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration — even if slight — of the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an object.” You tell me the difference.”