Today in Wilco Tango Bloody Foxtrot?!

If signed into law, Arizona’s House Bill 2263¹ will make a pregnant minor “prove by clear and convincing evidence that she is mature enough to get an abortion without her parents’ consent.”

If they are so skeptical of the maturity of the girl, then why the hell do they THINK SHE CAN RAISE A CHILD?

The mind reels.

Technorati Tags: abortion rights, political asshattery

1. Thanks to Sassywho for the link. [↩]

Sen. John McCain, he of the 25-year anti-choice voting record, is now the Republican nominee for president.

Because it’s only ok to terminate a pregnancy if the mother lives in a resource-rich country.

As everybody knows by now from the “good luck with that in 2008″ YouTube video making the rounds, McCain also thinks it’s just hunky-dorey if we stay in Iraq for another 100 years.

The war is already costing us $275 million per day. That’s $4,100 per household, in case you were wondering exactly what that means to you. Add to that tally the lives of almost 4,000 U.S. soldiers and 700,000 Iraqis. So far.¹

I have nothing deep or pithy to say about all of this - it speaks for itself anyway. No use trying to out-stink a turd.

I just wanted to take a moment to implore you, dear Righteous Rib and free Citizen of this U S of A:

Come election day, please do everything in your power to prevent another four years of this bullshit. It’s gone on way too long, and I’m tired of America stinking up the planet.²

Technorati Tags: John McCain, Republicans, Democrats, anti-choice, abortion, Iraq War

1. Taken from the National Priorities Project. [↩]
2. The title of this post is humbly stolen from Bush v. Choice. [↩]

Please Don’t Feed the Fat People

It’s a three-way tie for the highly competitive title of Retard Of The Day:

Congratulations to the three legislators from Mississippi who came up with House Bill No. 282 which would make it a crime to serve food to an obese person.

You know, I’m not real, er, big on the so-called “Fat Acceptance” movement, which I think is misguided most of the time.¹ But I would cheerfully help them squash the air out of the public servants who thought up this ignorant waste of government paper.

Technorati Tags: House Bill No. 282, obesity, idiots in politics

1. Among other things, their literature says “all eating disorders begin with a diet.” Puh-leez. [↩]

Because thirty-six years ago, “choice” was just another word for nothing left to lose.

I couldn’t find the place at first. I drove around and around, checked my directions a dozen times, but it wasn’t there.

At the spot where the clinic was supposed to be was a building that looked exactly like the 1970s-era apartments I lived in when I was a kid - the kind of building that looks like a motel, with stairways on the outside leading to each floor.

Not knowing what else to do, I parked and walked over to the building. The doors all had numbers on them, but no signs. Windows were closed.

I checked the suite number I had been given, then followed the doors until I found the one marked 213. It was tucked far back from the street. I tried the door handle. Locked.

I must have the wrong directions, I thought. I was just about to leave when I saw a sign in the lower corner of the window, so small you’d miss it if you weren’t looking for it: Women’s Health Clinic.

I pushed the door buzzer and a woman’s voice answered, “Yes?”

“I’m here for an eleven o’clock appointment,” I said, and gave her my name.

The door knob clicked and I pushed it open. The waiting room was tiny, empty, and eerily silent. No patients wandered in and out. No sounds of sick kids crying in exam rooms or medical personnel talking in the halls. Not even any musak playing.

The rather grim-looking woman behind the reception desk looked up as I entered. She handed me paperwork to fill out and return. Soon a nurse called my name and we went through a door into the bowels of the clinic.

In another tiny white room with two chairs and a rack of literature, the nurse and I discussed the purpose of my visit. She asked me a few questions, but it was clear early on that I was well-informed and had made up my mind, and she didn’t try to dissuade me. She actually seemed a little relieved and I could tell she was skipping entire sections of a well-rehearsed speech.

Finally she explained the procedure to me briefly, then told me the doctor would see me now.

We went to a tiny exam room, where she handed me a paper gown and left. As I undressed, I looked around. The room seemed over-stuffed with furniture and equipment, but that was probably because it was so small. There was nothing unusual about the room’s contents, I thought, until I noticed the contraption in the corner.

It looked like an alien, with a dull green reservoir and a long tube snaking out the side, and I admit I did not relish the thought of playing Ripley.

The doctor entered a few minutes later. He was short and stocky, with dark hair and mustache. He spoke very little to me and made no eye contact. His movements were brisk and he performed his exam at lightening speed (compared to others I’ve had, anyway). He confirmed the diagnosis, turned on his heel and left.

I got dressed and after a few minutes, the nurse came for me and we went back to the reception desk so I could make my next appointment. I told Grim Lady I wanted to have the medical procedure.

“You are just in time,” she said. “One more day and you’d have to have the surgical.”

I nodded, remembering the alien.

She clicked her pen and scribbled on her calendar. “August ninth.”

I smiled at the irony. My birthday.

Grim Lady gathered up some paperwork and handed it to me. I took it and turned to leave.

“Wait, one more thing,” she said, handing me a bulky manila envelope. I looked at her quizzically, but she dropped her gaze and busied herself with her work.

As soon as the door shut behind me, I opened the envelope. Inside was a VHS tape labeled “From Conception To Birth, A Fetus’s Journey.”

On the way to my car, I dropped the tape into a street corner trash can.

—

Two days later, on my birthday, I came back to the clinic and got a shot in my hip. I returned a week after that for the final step: two tablets placed as close to my cervix as the doctor could get them.

As I sat up on the exam table, the doctor took me by the shoulders and for the first time, he looked into my eyes. I saw compassion in his.

“OK?” he said.

I smiled and nodded. He let go of me and walked out.

—

Not so long ago, the health care clinic I went to and the procedure I paid for were illegal. In a town like Salt Lake City, with its uber-conservative origins, they are still at risk of annihilation in some way or another.

A sobering thought for me, a thirty-something Seattlite who took for granted her shiny liberal bubble until she left it.

What would it be like to be an unhappily pregnant kid living in a community so filled with misogyny that its “women’s” clinics must be hidden to keep from being bombed?

What would it be like to go to work each day knowing that you could be shot at with jihad-like zeal by people who pledge to love thy neighbor?

What would it be like to be a doctor whose patients often have such guilt and fear that you must distance yourself from them, allowing only a brief moment at the end to show you care?

Today I’m Blogging For Choice in the fervent hope that these questions will someday soon be made unthinkable, just as 35 years ago, “Pregnancy or jail and possibly death?” was for me.

Never forget how precarious Roe v. Wade really is. Use your vote to make sure a woman’s right to sovereignty over her own body remains the law.

Technorati Tags: abortion rights, Blog For Choice

Almighty God: 1, Adopted Babies: Zero

Any fucktard can be a judge, but only believers can be adoptive parents.

In an extraordinary decision, Judge Camarata denied the Burkes’ right to the child because of their lack of belief in a Supreme Being. Despite the Burkes’ “high moral and ethical standards,” he said, the New Jersey state constitution declares that “no person shall be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience.”

Bitch, please.

Technorati Tags: adoption, theocracy as government, poor New Jersey

“Dick Cheney Eats Kittens”

– bumper sticker of the day

Fred Thompson: Viva Viagra

Technorati Tags: Rachel Maddow, Fred Thompson

It’s not too late to do the right thing.

Photo: A Neighbor’s Wishful Thinking, 05/24/07 7:30 am, WA

Silly rabbit, Copernicus is for Jews!

So as you know, last Friday didn’t start out well for me, confronted as I was with the fact that over half the population of my country thinks Fred Flintstones really existed.

Still, there was something kinda funny about it - I mean, these are probably the same people who believe scientists have drilled a hole to Hell in Siberia and that calico cats are a sign of the devil.

Unfortunately, my comic relief didn’t last long. I just had to keep surfing until I found this at ACS Blog:

A memo being distributed by conservative Georgia and Texas legislators argues that teaching “evolution science” is unconstitutional because the Theory of Evolution originates in an 2000 year-old but newly-rediscovered Jewish conspiracy.

For two days, I have tried to laugh about this one, too. But it ain’t happenin’.

In case you missed it, these are our elected officials in government disseminating this stuff. As in, the people who run our country. Like, right now. Fucking hell.

Call me sensitive, but the last politician who talked shit about Jews ended up murdering millions of them.

The memo references The Fair Education Foundation, an organization which also says the idea that the earth revolves around the sun is a big fat Kabbalistic lie.

God had a much simpler design, theorizes their site:

“Levitating Globe: An electromagnet and computerized sensor hidden in its display stand cause the Earth to levitate motionlessly in the air.”

Could God have engineered something like that for the real Earth?

OK, maybe this is getting kinda funny.

“Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn’t misuse it”
- Pope John Paul II

Technorati Tags: evolution, creationism, religious fundamentalism in government, antisemitism, Copernicus, American Constitution Society

Evolution, my foot.

Well, maybe our feet, but definitely not our brains.

Consider if you will these statistics I read this morning in the most recent issue of Archeaology Magazine:

49% of Americans do not believe humans evolved over millions of years

51% of Americans believe humans and dinosaurs co-existed

This before nine this morning. It was rather enraging, so I employed my usual coping strategy: take it out on the nearest person.

Uppity: [stomping in]

Kevin: What now?

Uppity: [yelling] “Fifty-one percent of Americans believe humans and dinosaurs co-existed!!”

Kevin: Well, yes. I had a dinosaur as a schoolboy. His name was Dino.

Uppity: [sigh]

Kevin: Later, I had a car that I had to move with my feet.

Uppity: [stomping out]

Kevin: [calling after me] My wife’s name was Wilma!

Technorati Tags: evolution, creationism, religious batshit, dinosaurs