Tag: reproductive rights

Republicans Propose “Rape by the Government” Legislation

~ Clarissa ~ 21 Comments

Please, somebody, remind me what do you call the action of penetrating a person against their will?

And on a 63-36 vote, the House passed a bill that requires women to have a “transvaginal ultrasound” before undergoing abortions. . .

The ultrasound legislation would constitute an unprecedented government mandate to insert vaginal ultrasonic probes into women as part of a state-ordered effort to dissuade them from terminating pregnancies, legislative opponents noted.

“We’re talking about inside a woman’s body,” Del. Charnielle Herring, a Democrat, said in an emotional floor speech. “This is the first time, if we pass this bill, that we will be dictating a medical procedure to a physician.”

Once again, penetrating people against their will in return to giving them access to a medical procedure. What is the correct terminology for that?

Think of the most recent medical procedure you have had. How would it make you feel if the doctor had told you, “I’m sorry, the government doesn’t allow me to tend to your medical needs until I insert this device into your vagina / anus. There is absolutely no medical need for this violation but our legislators think it will be cool to stick things into you in response to you daring to request this completely legal medical procedure.”

And the most hilarious thing that this legislation is being introduced by the very people who yell and scream about how intrusive the government has become. Somebody wake me up because this has got to be an especially bad nightmare.

Who Wants to Control Women’s Bodies?

~ Clarissa ~ 28 Comments

Here is a completely shocking story about a horrible vile monster of a woman who refuses her raped daughter a Plan B pill in order to brag about it online to her equally monstrous friends.

Now repeat after me: the anti-choice movement is not about men wanting to control women’s bodies. It’s about a bunch of vile freakazoids wanting to control women’s bodies.

Who Is a Real Abortion-Promoter?

~ Clarissa ~ 9 Comments

Yes!

“In a long-anticipated decision that will affect millions of women’s ability to pay for contraception, the Obama administration announced on Friday that it would not allow religiously affiliated employers such as universities and hospitals to deny full birth control coverage to the women they employ.”

Note how it’s the “abortion-promoting Liberals” who celebrate this decision. A decision that will help reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. And the supposedly anti-abortion Conservatives, where are they? Are they cheering as well?

I guess not.

And For the Especially Clueless: Ron Paul Is NOT a Libertarian

~ Clarissa ~ 39 Comments

He is a fake Libertarian who is supported by Fundamentalist Evangelicals and is interested in nothing but promoting their savage and barbaric beliefs:

When GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul was asked today about Tuesday’s federal court ruling upholding an aggressive new sonogram law in his home state of Texas, the congressman said the requirement that women seeking an abortion first get a sonogram “should always have been a Texas state position.’’

What are the chances that the guy who supports the governmental intrusion into your body will be opposed to the governmental intrusion into your bed, your bank account, your smoking, drinking and reading matter, etc.? Seriously, how clueless do you have to be not to notice that this Ron Paul character supports an extremely powerful state apparatus that will police your body parts like there is no tomorrow?

Yes, he pretends he will legalize pot. And that makes him yet another candidate who lies through his teeth to get elected. Just think about it: how likely are his Fundamentalist backers to allow him to move even an inch in that direction? And if he is in favor of the government controlling what happens inside of your body, how can he possibly be against, say, mandatory drug tests? It isn’t logical, folks. You want to mandate sonograms, you can’t oppose mandating drug tests. Nobody would be able to make an argument supporting the former but opposing the latter.

It is so annoying to see smart, well-read, politically conscious people swallow Ron Paul’s lies and not see that he is in no way different from the fanatical Huckabee, to give just one example.

So whenever you are tempted to take this Evangelical clown seriously, ask yourself the following: Ron Paul wants the government to rummage in women’s vaginas. What does this tell us about his general attitude to an extremely powerful and intrusive government?

Don’t start typing out a response immediately. Just think about it for a moment. And now consider the following question:

Brian Williams should ask him tonight at the debate whether he would agree that a state government has the right to demand pat-downs at its airports. I’d be curious to hear the answer.

If Ron Paul says no, he is a hypocrite of enormous proportions. If he says yes, then he recognizes he favors an all-powerful government whose right to police your body is inviolate.

It makes a lot more sense to support a candidate who is both pro-sonogram and pro-drug tests because such a candidate is at least trying to be consistent.

I just had a grad student offer me a long rant on how Ron Paul is a good candidate because he supports withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. I agree that Ron Paul may attempt to stop waging a war in Afghanistan. (And we all know that he will fail completely in that effort, don’t we?) I also know, however, that he will wage a war against his own people. Women, you know, are people, too. And I consider invading women’s uteri an act of aggression.

Where Is Russia Headed?

~ Clarissa ~ 18 Comments

Russia is not going in a good direction, people. A scary brand of religious fanaticism is promoted by the government that refuses to respect its citizens in any significant way and offers religious hysteria as compensation for depriving people of their most basic rights. The results of the so-called democratic elections are falsified and everybody knows it. (Everybody, that is, except American journalists who keep screeching about “democracy in Russia”, as if it weren’t the greatest joke of the recent decades.) The country produces nothing and only manages to keep afloat by exporting oil. My readers are an intellectual bunch, so I won’t explain why an economy that is tied to a single natural resource is hopeless.

Russia’s official ideology is profoundly racist. There is a widespread hysteria around the supposedly imminent extinction of the white people and the terrifying spread of the brown folks of scary and barbaric ethnicities. The Russians seem to have forgotten that only seventy years ago, Hitler was planning to exterminate all Slavs as an inferior, barbaric race. The so-called “demographic crisis” is discussed in the Russian media in such dramatic ways that you’d think the planet was on the brink of extinction as a result of depopulation (rather than the opposite.)

The Russian authorities are worried that the Russian women don’t procreate enough to make up for the advent of the brown people*. So they do all they can to force women into procreating. A while ago, I reported on the ridiculous campaign that attempted to shame women into having more children. As was to be expected, this was immediately followed by an assault on women’s reproductive freedoms. A piece of legislation is now being pushed through Duma (the Russian joke of a Parliament) that will impose waiting periods women have to submit to before getting an abortion and that will allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions on religious grounds**.

During the waiting period, a psychologist and a social worker will persecute women who seek abortions, telling them ridiculous fairy-tales about how they will be psychologically damaged for life if they refuse to have an unwanted child. This is a very poor country, mind you. Just think about how dedicated its government must be to the cause of stripping women of their reproductive freedoms if it’s willing to waste money on psychologists and social workers whose only job will be to hound women who request abortions.

Even though the healthcare system in Russia is free, abortions are now to be excluded from the list of free services. As a result, rich women will be able to be in control of when and whether they give birth, while indigent women (of whom Russia boasts staggering numbers) will be forced to procreate or seek clandestine, dangerous abortions.

There are millions upon millions of orphans in Russia. These children live in horrible conditions. Some are kept in orphanages that are so bad it would break your heart to see what they look from the inside and to hear what the poor kids kept there have to go through. As a result, many kids run away. They become homeless and are exploited in all kinds of ways by adult criminals.

The government that has done nothing to help these kids is now forcing indigent women to bring even more unwanted miserable babies into the world.

If this sounds completely nuts, I want to remind you that Russia imposes an obligatory period of military service on all its young males. Except, of course, the rich ones who can pay a bribe and get out of the military service obligations.

*If you are shocked by the rhetoric, that’s good. On my blog, at least, you’ll hear the actual terminology that is used in Russia to discuss these issues. The mainstream media in the US are so dedicated to promoting the myth of the democratic Russia that you don’t get to hear the truth from them.

** In the context of Russian history, this is the funniest thing anybody could suggest. After decades of complete and utter atheism during the Soviet era, people who are of the age that allows them to be doctors cannot possibly be religious in Russia today.