Crisis Pregnancy Center lies debunked by medical professionals

"In 2003, the National Cancer Institute concluded after extensive research that having an abortion or a miscarriage in no way increases one’s breast cancer risk. Despite this, more than 15 states have considered laws that would require doctors to give this inaccurate information to women seeking abortions.

The American Psychological Association also released a statement saying there is no credible evidence that abortion causes mental illness, but that the stigma and lack of social support surrounding abortion can have a negative effect on mental health.

These lies are exposed time and again, but continue to influence legislation and public opinion."

Read more: http://msmagazine.com/blog/2015/01/13/exposing-the-junk-science-of-the-anti-choice-movement/

On Hobby Lobby, health care, and how working women will win this battle

On June 30, five Supreme Court justices determined that privately-held corporations – which constitute 90% of businesses in the US - can legally force their religious views on their employees, and circumvent federal laws that apply to every person in the United States.

The ruling in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. case. sets a dangerous precedent for any "closely-held corporation" to limit employees' access to healthcare based on an employer’s personally-held, non-medical, ideological beliefs.

Hobby Lobby sued for the right to refuse coverage for IUDs and “morning-after pills” for their female employees.  Company owners believe these medically-safe contraceptives to be "abortifacients;" however, they actually work by preventing ovulation and, therefore, do not inhibit implantation. This medical fact has been confirmed by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical Association, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, The International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, among others.  The majority of abortion opponents in the medical community have accepted this conclusion.

In 2012, evangelical bioethicist Dennis Sullivan, the Director of Cedarville University's Center for Bioethics in Cedarville, Ohio, reviewed emergency contraceptive research for a peer-reviewed article in “Ethics & Medicine.” He found no evidence that Plan B causes abortions.  "There's no evidence of that effect," he said. "Our claims of conscience should be based on scientific fact, and we should be willing to change our claims if facts change."

Of note: Hobby Lobby has chosen to continue to provide coverage for vasectomies for male employees and, through its 401(k) plan, will continue to invest in the manufacturers of the same birth control it refuses to cover for its female employees.  

This overt sexual discrimination has not gone unnoticed by Congress.  

Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), and Mark Udall (D-CO) have introduced the "Protect Women's Health From Corporate Interference Act" to restore previous contraception-access rules that existed before the Hobby Lobby decision. 

This bill will restore the original legal guarantee that women have access to contraceptive coverage through their work-based insurance plans, and will protect coverage of other health services from employer interference as well. 

This bill also includes the original exemption from the contraceptive coverage requirement for houses of worship, and an accommodation for religious non-profits.  

The bill has been endorsed by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, Black Women's Health Imperative, Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR), Global Justice Institute,  Institute for Science and Human Values, Law Students for Reproductive Justice, Methodist Federation for Social Action, Metropolitan Community Churches, National Council of Jewish Women, National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, National Partnership for Women and Families, National Women's Law Center, People For the American Way, Physicians for Reproductive Health, Population Connection Action Fund, The Center for Women Policy Studies, The United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society, The Women's Business Development Center, and Women's Law Project, among others.

Companion legislation will be introduced in the House by Reps. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Diana Degette (D-CO), and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY).

In addition, the Senate Judiciary Committee will conduct a hearing on July 15, regarding S.B. 1696, referred to as the “Women’s Health Protection Act.”

When workers pay a premium for workplace-based health insurance, they should receive full coverage.  Preventive health benefits should not been defined by Congress, government bureaucrats, or CEOs - but by medical researchers, doctors, nurses and medical professionals.  

Religious freedom is a founding principle of American liberty – but when this freedom is twisted into something it is not, the results are overt oppression and discrimination, subjugation of the laws of the land, and potential threats to the health and well-being of millions of people.  Citizens must act to restore balance and fairness for those who seek genuine religious freedom, and for those who are at risk of becoming casualties of an erroneous legal precedent.  

-DLH

Why Don't Their Heads Explode?

(c) by Mary Griggs - 11/3/2012

I’m baffled by the number of contradictory thoughts that many anti-abortionists can hold without their heads exploding.

The first one is the relative value of life.

These men know women – in most cases were born of and raised by women, are married to women, have women coworkers and advisors. Yet for all their interactions, they don’t give as much weight to living, breathing women as they do to the potential life in these women’s wombs.

Leonard Pitts wrote a powerful column the other day in which he asks if women’s lives are not as sacred as the fetus they carry:

"It doesn’t seem to be, at least, not in the formulation embraced by the Grand Old Party. In that formulation, women are bystanders to their own existence, their individual situations subordinate to a one-size-fits-all morality, their very selves unimportant, except as vessels bearing children…

Mourdock and other conservatives frequently tout the sacredness of life, but they seem to have a rather narrow definition thereof. They seem to consider life sacred only until the umbilical cord is cut."

Exactly – these folks are not pro-life. They are only pro-birth.

Perhaps the most insidious contradiction about these pro-birthers is that they are trying to stop abortions. If they were really trying to reduce what they call a holocaust, they would immediately join Planned Parenthood in reducing the need for abortions.

In 2008 alone, nearly 10 percent of unmarried women ages 20 to 29 experienced an unintended pregnancy. About half of unintended pregnancies in this age group end in abortion, according to a study released April 24, 2012 by the non-profit Guttmacher Institute.

When researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine offered 9,256 mostly low-income women and teens free birth control, the number of unplanned pregnancies in the group fell to between 60 and 80 percent below the national average.

Receiving free birth control made teens – a group at particularly high risk for unintended pregnancies – 1/6th as likely to get pregnant. The teen birth rate among study participants was 6.3 per 1,000 women, a huge difference from the national teen birth rate of 34.3 per 1,000 women.

Likewise, the abortion rate among women in the program was 4.4 to 7.5 per 1,000 between 2008 and 2010. In the United States as a whole, there were 19.6 abortions per every thousand women. That’s a 62% to 78%  difference.

The World Health Organization reports on this connection: The most dramatic decline in abortion incidence occurred in Eastern Europe, where abortion is legal and safe. Since the fall of Communism, the rate fell from 90 per 1,000 women to 44. The decrease coincided with substantial increases in contraceptive use in the region.

These statistics are repeated across the planet – in Uganda, where abortion is illegal and sex education programs focus only on abstinence, the estimated abortion rate was 54 per 1,000 women in 2003, more than twice the rate in the United States (21 per 1,000 in 2003). The lowest rate, 12 per 1,000, was in Western Europe, with legal abortion and widely available contraception.

In defiance of these facts, these extremists fight against health care reform and that includes decrying any sort of contraception mandate. As part of the federal health care legislation, insurers now have to cover eight kinds of women’s services – everything from contraception to domestic violence counseling – without charging co-payments, deductibles or any other cost to the patient and it is driving the bishops and tea-baggers batty.

It is remarkably simple – many women seek abortions because of an unintended or unplanned pregnancy. The best way to reduce unintended or unplanned pregnancies is to improve access to affordable and effective birth control.

Save the heads. Support the fundamental right of each individual, throughout the world, to manage his or her fertility and watch the abortion rate drop.

LA Republicans want to abolish our First Amendment rights

Intimidation Attempt to Public
May 20, 2012 12:10 pm

Rep. Abramson’s Failure

 by CB Forgotston

Rep. Neil Abramson

Rep. Neil Abramson, an otherwise intelligent attorney, has proposed a House Rule allegedly to prevent intimidation of leges. See HR 46 here.

What Abramson proposes is really an effort to intimidate the public and overrule our First Amendment Rights.


Here’s the abstract from the proposed rule:

Provides procedures for the House of Representatives to censure or discipline
nonmembers for behavior which constitutes an attempt by the nonmember to compel,
coerce, or intimidate the member with the intent to influence the member’s conduct in relation to his position or duty.

No rule needed
There are already laws on the books to deal with intimidation of public officials. See R.S. 14:122.2.

No definitions

There is no definition in Abramson’s proposed rule as to what constitutes “compelling”, “coercion” or “intimidation”. There’s a fine line between what a lege may consider compelling, coercion, intimidation and what others of us consider grass-roots lobbying.

It could easily be argued that any citizen, grass-roots lobbying group, blogger, talk radio host and certainly every paid lobbyists could be charged with trying to influence a member’s conduct. Even a newspaper editorial writer, columnist or reporter could be charged with trying to influence a lege.

Upon a written complaint by a lege, a citizen can be hauled before a lege committee, put under oath, questioned, and judged.  If the citizen is found guilty by the leges, they can be prevented from appearing before the lege.

Guilty as charged

I hereby plead guilty of attempting to influence the leges by compelling them to vote against HR 46.  -C.B.

My thoughts on equality...

Equal rights are equal rights, and everybody deserves them - regardless of what the POTUS or talking head du jour says.

The politicians who promote pro-hate legislation are the very same guys who claim to be freedom-loving, neighbor-protecting, Christian values-having "Jesus freaks." There's your hypocrisy.

Creating laws that oppress the freedom of others has always been the historical bane of our country's existence...and the ultimate irony of our codified American stance on liberty & freedom.

We would all be better served by focusing our energies on important issues that are keeping us unemployed, poor, uneducated and dying. ~DBE

Photo:  DBE

Call your local State Farm agents. Tell them you want the company to Ditch ALEC!

More evidence your activism is working! 

ALEC has announced that it is disbanding its "Public Safety and Elections Task Force," the working group responsible for advancing model legislation like the controversial Voter ID and "Shoot First" gun laws that have proliferated around the country. 

Of course the move is a transparent attempt to stem the hemorrhaging of support ALEC's facing, thanks in large part to our efforts, but it's big symbolic victory and shows we have them on the defensive. 

ALEC's trying to whitewash their role pushing extreme legislation that endangers the safety and lives of Americans -- but we won't let them. 

ALEC now claims they will only focus on legislation that will 'put the economy back to work,' but will they work to undo the immense harm that have already caused? 

And it begs the question of how they will use a so called 'jobs agenda' to justify laws -- which they presumably will still be pushing -- that undermine workers' rights, privatize public education, and make it harder to hold corporations accountable for poisoning our air and water or selling us dangerous and defective products. 

We will continue to work with our friends to shine a light on ALEC's agenda and hold members accountable for supporting that agenda.

In another major victory, Blue Cross Blue Shield became the latest company to pull out of ALEC. We are going to keep up the momentum by turning the focus of our next round of grassroots pressure on State Farm.

Please use the link below to find the State Farm agents near you -- contact one or more of the agents directly and tell them you want the company to stop supporting ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.

http://www.statefarm.com/agent/results.xhtml?ak_proof=1&zipCode=71104-3130

You can use the same call report form you've been using for calls to State Farm and Johnson & Johnson executives to let us know how your calls go.

Hopefully this local, bottom-up grassroots pressure will be what it takes to make State Farm join Blue Cross, McDonald's, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Intuit, Mars and the other companies who have so far said "enough" to ALEC's destructive right-wing agenda.

Thank you for your activism!

Forget the Money, Follow the Sacredness (How People Become Sheeple)

March 17, 2012, 6:15 pm

By JONATHAN HAIDT

"Despite what you might have learned in Economics 101, people aren’t always selfish. In politics, they’re more often groupish.

When people feel that a group they value — be it racial, religious, regional or ideological — is under attack, they rally to its defense, even at some cost to themselves. We evolved to be tribal, and politics is a competition among coalitions of tribes.

The key to understanding tribal behavior is not money, it’s sacredness.

The great trick that humans developed at some point in the last few hundred thousand years is the ability to circle around a tree, rock, ancestor, flag, book or god, and then treat that thing as sacred.

People who worship the same idol can trust one another, work as a team and prevail over less cohesive groups. So if you want to understand politics, and especially our divisive culture wars, you must follow the sacredness."

Read the entire op-ed here.

Q&A with Laurie Penny

Image via @PennyRed

"The freedom that's offered to everyone under the terms of neoliberalism [is] freedom for a few to self-actualize in an extremely narrow, homogenous way by shopping and consuming, whilst the rest of us work long hours for low wages or no wages.

Freedom from economic exploitation isn't the sexy kind of female empowerment, but without it we won't be moving forward.

And the way in which women's labour is used and abused—the concentration of women in low-paid or unpaid caring and domestic roles, for example, is not only one of the things that sustains patriarchy, it also sustains capitalism.

Without the work that women do for free, the markets would be on their knees in a day. And yet, it just goes to show that there is, in fact, plenty of work out there, it's just that most of it is being done by women, for free.

There used to be a serious campaign for wages for housework—imagine if we had that kind of economic analysis of feminism today!"

Read the entire interview here.