Monday, December 7, 2009
Gr!
After reading an entry by one of my fave female bloggers and being thoroughly disgusted, I went on a rampage and found this self-defense org that deals with all aspects of violence against women. I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanna bring Defend Yourself here, so check them out!!
-xenia :)
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Reproductive Wrongs
There is more hope now because Stupak-like language is apparently not in the Senate bill, but that doesn't mean the Stupak-Pitts amendment can't find its way into the final health care bill that comes out of Congress.
On November 7, reproductive rights and women’s health care in America took a saddening and devastating hit with the passing of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the House's health care reform bill, sponsored by Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) and co-sponsored by Representative Joe Pitts (R-PA). This amendment ensures that women who receive health insurance coverage in the new health insurance exchange system would not have insurance coverage of abortion services if they receive any affordability tax credits, or government subsidies to fund their insurance plan. This legislation also effectively imposes a ban on abortion coverage within private insurance companies that enter the exchange, potentially taking away existing coverage from women who have plans already covering the procedure, as 85% of private insurance plans do. The House’s health care reform bill passed through as an almost entirely Democratic effort, with 39 Democrats and every Republican except 1 voting against it, demonstrating that most Democrats supported some effort to provide quality, comprehensive, and affordable health care to many Americans. In the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, however, 64 Democrats, 62 of which were men, sided with every Republican except 1 (who voted Present) to single out women's health care and reproductive health as different and less valid than other aspects of heath care.
In addition to devaluing women's health, this amendment is an overtly classist attempt to make abortion a luxury available only to wealthier women who are able to fund the procedure out of pocket and without insurance coverage. This is nothing new- access to reproductive health services has been varied depending on one’s socio-economic status for numerous years, due to the Hyde Amendment of 1976 that bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life. But the Stupak-Pitts Amendment goes even farther; it not only bars coverage of abortion services for women receiving insurance coverage through the public option, but also for anyone who has even a portion of their health insurance plan funded through affordability tax credits. In an attempt to lure in the millions of formerly uinsured Americans that will be able to afford private health insurance through affordability tax credits, private insurers will be disuaded from offering coverage of abortion.
Although abortion is a contested issue and something many individuals oppose on moral and religious grounds, it remains a legal procedure and the most common minor surgical procedure in the U.S. As Lois Capps (D-CA) pointed out, the Stupak-Pitts Amendment is the only language in the House's health care reform bill that imposes restrictions on coverage of a procedure and rations care. So what is the Republican and “Conservadem” solution for women who want coverage of reproductive health? An “abortion rider,” which equates to asking women to invest in the likelihood of having an unintended and unwanted pregnancy. Anti-choice members of Congress know that few women will buy this coverage, and that it would be too expensive for many low and middle-to-low income women, and thus abortion riders will become less and less available within the health insurance exchange.
While abortion remains legal, we are now one step closer to women’s reproductive rights and health care being restored to its pre Roe v. Wade days, where exercising agency over one’s body and reproduction meant risking social stigma, disease, infection, and death. By passing the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, we as a country do shame to the nearly 70,000 women that die every year from illegal, botched abortions because they are not fortunate enough to live in a county that values them as human beings.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Rachel Maddow on the "bologna" (baloney?) lies of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
BURN begins @ about 2 minutes. I'm not a fan of Gov. Rendell saying Democrats would be "dumb and unfeeling" to compromise health care reform over the Stupak Amendment, but at least there's some good clarification here as to why Stupak is much, much worse than the Hyde Amendment and why the Capps Amendment should have been enough.
THIS IS SO COOL.
Women on Waves @ Feminists for Choice
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
What does "pro-choice" mean? Is "pro-abortion" a bad word?
Stupak Amendment & Miscarriages
Monday, November 9, 2009
"Roman Times" (Originally titled "Rape is not Negotiable," which was wayyy better)
When did rape become negotiable and the legitimacy of sexual assault claims become a point of contention?
It seems like a ludicrous notion, but the prevalence of this pro-rape mentality becomes clear by observing the numerous and growing examples of rape denial, apologism and ignorance.
Last month, director and actor Roman Polanski was arrested for drugging and raping a 13-year-old child in 1977, a sentence he escaped for more than 30 years by fleeing the country. Seems like a no-brainer, right? He raped a child, fled the country, failed to pay his victim in an out-of-court settlement when she sued him in 1988 and denied his victim any justice for more than three decades. But 138 individuals in the film industry, including big names like Woody Allen and Martin Scorcese, signed a petition against his arrest. The media coverage focused on Polanski’s experience as a Holocaust victim, which does not take away from the reality of his crime. The Feminist Majority Foundation, an otherwise laudable organization, discredited the importance of the incident because it happened many years ago and Polanski has had a tough life.
How do we settle sexual assault claims made against companies funded by government defense contracts? These companies control whether their employees can bring cases of sexual assault to court and may force victims to resolve their allegations only in private arbitration.
Jamie Leigh Jones, an employee of Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad was gang raped, locked in a shipping container and threatened with job loss if she reported the incident to her company in 2005. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations Bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies that prohibit employees from reporting their sexual assaults and bringing their cases to court. A vote against this would essentially be a vote supporting rape, so who in their right mind would vote against this?
Oh, that’s right, 30 senators — all who happen to be white, male Republicans. It is incredible to see this kind of victim-blaming among our elected officials in Congress, a place where legislators are increasingly willing to overlook grave human rights injustices to push their own agenda and political ideology.
Rape culture is cultivated when these things occur and people do not take sexual assault and violence seriously. One in six women and one in 33 men are sexually assaulted in their lifetime, and college-aged women are four times more likely to be assaulted, with 73 percent of victims knowing their assailants. We can no longer stand back idly while our elected officials, our celebrities whom we fund when we buy a movie ticket and our larger culture that we help define normalizes and excuses sexualized violence.
Find the contact information of the legislators who voted against Sen. Franken’s amendment and let them know you do not support their actions. Support organizations that work with victims of sexual assault and violence. Have discussions with friends, family, professors and classmates about rape culture and the unacceptability of sexual assault.
As individuals helping to shape the future of our world, we have the power to emphasize that rape is always a crime and never negotiable.