Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman hates illegal immigrants, especially pregnant women.

Gov. Heineman really does not want any “anchor babies” in his state:

Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman vetoed a proposal to restore Medicaid-funded prenatal care for illegal immigrants on Friday, but the initiative could still survive if the state legislature rejects his move next week.

And, what is his reasoning?

Heineman, who is anti-abortion, also said he had “grave concerns” that some funding could go to abortion provider Planned Parenthood and that Nebraska could become a sanctuary for illegal immigrants because no bordering states offered similar coverage.

Let’s go over that again: he’s vetoing Medicaid coverage for prenatal care for undocumented women, because Planned Parenthood provides prenatal care.

He doesn’t like abortion, but he also doesn’t want undocumented women having babies in his state, and he is afraid that if he does not join neighboring states in a race to the bottom, then additional money will end up with Planned Parenthood because they care about pregnant women and their eagerly awaited babies far more than Dave Heineman does.

 

Breaking news: Abortion STILL does not cause breast cancer.

I am still not 100% healthy and snark-ready, but since I am alert enough to troll Facebook, I will make a little addition to this post here, from way back.

Via Facebook, Defund the Komen Foundation gives us this tidbit, from a retired cancer researcher:

“Recently at a conference I spoke with the person who discovered BRCA1, and she laughed and said that it [the abortion/breast cancer link] was indeed bullshit, because he hadn’t corrected for age. In the study that the guy cited, the women who had abortions had the procedures done when they were young but then had children later in their lives. The comparison population was women who had children when they were young, and there is a degree of protection against breast cancer afforded from having children at a young age (believed due to hormonal changes that accompany lactation). When one corrects for the age of childbirth in the guys data, the difference disappears. So abortion had no effect on breast cancer at all; it was the effect of when the women had children.”

Yet that initial, incorrect story persists, because it fits the meme.”

Yeah, the meme is that being in control of your fertility is associated with a somewhat higher lifetime risk of certain cancers. And yet, women continue to use birth control, as if we have priorities in life aside from placating the Booby Spirits. Those fickle demons are unreliable, and their rewards are no substitute for having ownership over our lives.

The British Journal of Psychiatry should be embarrassed.

PZ Myers shows us the fiasco of a putative meta-analysis of mental health risks of abortion, published by the British Journal of Psychiatry and torn apart by Jim Coyne at Psychology Today. The problems with the analysis are briefly summarized as follows:

1. The author has a conflict of interest on the subject, as she is an anti-abortion advocate, and failed to disclose this in her submission to the journal.

2. The analysis used 22 studies, half of which were conducted by the author herself. She did not disclose which studies were excluded and why.

3. Her own studies used in the analysis range from unreliable to meaningless.

Since when did scientific rigor ever get in the way of a good scare tactic? Coyne helpfully quotes National Right to Life News as summarizing conclusions such as:

“Women who aborted have a 55 percent higher risk of mental health problems compared to women with an ‘unplanned’ pregnancy who gave birth.

Yeah, I just love the scare quotes around “unplanned.”

NRtLN’s summary conflates the comparison between women who have aborted vs. not aborted, with those who have aborted vs. given birth. It confuses an outcome for a given pregnancy with lifetime experience. IOW: it is possible for a woman to have at least one abortion AND have at least one live birth. The majority of women having a first abortion are already mothers, and many others have children later.

If what they mean by “aborted vs. given birth” is the comparison of women who’ve had at least one abortion with those who’ve had at least one live birth and no abortions, then they should freaking well say so, and furthermore, they need to limit the comparison to women who became pregnant when they didn’t want to. Since this is an organization that uses scare quotes around unplanned pregnancy, such respect for confounding factors is probably too much to ask.

Anti-choice bill has idiotic name.

Our old buddy Rep. Trent Franks (R-idiculous) is riding that hobby-horse again, using his highly salaried time in Congress to write bills to combat problems that don’t exist.

The Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011

…

restricts sex-selection abortion and race-selection abortion, and the coercion of a woman to obtain either. The woman seeking an abortion is exempted from prosecution, while abortion providers are held to account.

Right. There’s a real epidemic of abortion providers rounding up pregnant women and coercing them into aborting their female and/or black fetuses. Sure.

The use of Frederick Douglass’s name in the bill’s title, however, is especially hilarious. From what I recall of his writing, the rape and forced breeding of enslaved women was one of the horrors of slavery that he set out to expose. I don’t think he would have been on-board with this legislative hand-wringing over black women having too much abortion access.

I’ll say it again: Trent Franks does not care about black people!

 

Water is dry, rock is soft, the fetus is separate.

Via the Charlotte Observer via Robin Marty, the Law of Life Project is bringing us expert witnesses who use language like this:

Seeking to intervene in the case are Dr. John Thorp, an obstetrics and gynecology professor at UNC-Chapel Hill who contends in a declaration that the requirements in the new law represent the standard of care in the field; Dr. Gregory J. Brannon, an obstetrician who says a woman can’t be considered informed about abortion without being told that the “tissue to be removed is a separate, unique living human being who is genetically different from the mother”; and Dr. Martin J. McCaffrey, a UNC-CH professor of pediatrics who counsels women about high-risk pregnancies.

Their treating pregnant women like oblivious morons would be a lot more palatable if they didn’t do it by lying through their fetoscopes.

Dr. Brannon apparently thinks,

a woman can’t be considered informed about abortion without being told

He thinks women seeking abortions are so unfathomably ignorant that they’re not aware that the critter growing inside the uterus is a human fetus. Look, Dr. Brannon: we all know what pregnancy means. We all know that there is an organism growing inside which could, if uninterrupted, eventually emerge as a baby. That’s the point: these women are getting abortions because they don’t want the babies.

So he wants them to be told that,

the “tissue to be removed is a separate, unique living human being

What is it with the pro-quantity movement and their love of this transparently dishonest talking point of the “separate, unique living human being”?

Sure, it’s living, and it’s human. I don’t dispute that. My left kidney is also living and human, and it’s a lot more useful to me than an unwanted fetus would be.

But in what parallel universe is a fetus a “separate” human being from its mother?

Again, we seem to be missing the point of why an abortion takes place. If the fetus were separate, there would be no pregnancy. Mammalian reproduction would be radically different if fetuses were not absolutely dependent on staying firmly attached to their mothers’ uterine walls and living on a steady stream of maternal blood. If that fetus is so “separate,” then it can just go its own way and take care of itself, rather than putting its mother’s health at risk by leeching her nutrients and playing havoc with her hormones.

Indeed, if the fetus is “separate,” then what exactly does the word “separate” even mean?

And then there’s this last talking point:

who is genetically different from the mother”

Translation: “That fetus isn’t just a part of your body because there was also a man who put sperm in your vadge, so that baby is also his, and it wouldn’t be fair to kill his baby just because you couldn’t keep your legs shut.”

 

Personhood USA insecure about America’s manhood

Anna North at Jezebel shares with us this charming quote from Gualberto Garcia Jones, director of Personhood USA:

Increasingly, the American people are being treated paternalistically by a government, media and public sector elite that stands in direct opposition to our traditional American values.

Using the courts as its instrument, this American elite has emasculated a once independent America.

The “American people” here apparently does not include women who are or may become pregnant, or pro-choicers of any description. “Traditional American values” means women must live and die at the mercy of sperm-meets-egg. The distinction between “the American people,” meaning those who oppose reproductive freedom, and the “American elite,” referring to those who trust women to plan their own families, is useful in parsing the “emasculated” bit.

If masculinity is defined as having a certain relationship to women, specifically as being in control of them, them it makes perfect sense to view reproductive rights as emasculation. The right to effective contraceptives and safe abortion gives women a degree of control over their lives that allows them to approach their relationships with men on their own terms. It helps women finish their education, travel, work as many hours as they need, advance their careers, and put money in savings. It gives women the autonomy to make plans for the future, which may or may not include any particular partner. It means a woman can date, or not, sleep around, or not, and enter a committed relationship, or not. While leaving an abusive relationship tends to be complicated no matter what, it is far more feasible for a woman who isn’t pregnant or caring for a small child. It won’t protect her from rape, but it prevents a rapist from forcing her into motherhood.

Ergo, yes, contraceptives and abortion do reduce men’s ability to keep women under control. If “manhood” means the females are at your mercy and “independence” means you can force them to bear your children, then, yes, birth control is emasculation.

What a harsh, joyless view of life that is, to say a man isn’t really a man unless he gets to push a woman around.

I’m hearing on Twitter right now that the Personhood Initiative is losing in Mississippi. I guess a whole lot of MS men are more secure in their masculinity than the dudes at Personhood USA.

 

Mention rape survivor and Cardinal makes no sense.

Can someone please tell me whether this is sloppy journalism, or just a case of the Cardinal behaving nonsensically at the intersection of abortion rights and rape survival?

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago is apparently doing a mea culpa after attempting to shame Illinois’s pro-choice Governor:

“I deeply regret that,” George said Sunday afternoon, en route to Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, where he was scheduled to present awards to parishioners for their dedication to ministries. “A rape victim demands all the respect and sympathy that anybody can give.”

Sorry, what exactly is going on? What did Governor Quinn do to get the Cardinal all torqued off at him in the first place?

George, leader of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Chicago, and the five other bishops who oversee the church in Illinois released the statement Wednesday criticizing Quinn, a Catholic, for his plans to present an award Nov. 17 at the annual luncheon for the Personal PAC. The statement said Quinn had “gone beyond a political alignment with those supporting the legal right to kill children in their mothers’ wombs to rewarding those deemed most successful in this terrible work.”

So, first of all, Cardinal George is annoyed at Governor Quinn for being pro-choice; that much has been going on for a while. We’ll be having none of this “thinking for yourself” or “forming your own opinions on controversial issues” as long as you call yourself a Catholic; that independent-thinking nonsense is for those who we know are going to Hell anyway. The new development was that the Governor was presenting an award at a luncheon for Personal PAC, which is dedicated to electing pro-choice candidates to office in Illinois. Hence, the woman-erasing language of “supporting the legal right to kill children in their mothers’ wombs” when the Cardinal decided this was a step too far.

With me so far? Good.

This is where it gets tricky:

Quinn defended his decision to honor Goodman, whom he described as “a strong advocate of helping rape victims all over our state and the country.”

And that is when the Cardinal suddenly started backpedaling like a cyclist who missed his turn:

“I am not sure what we would have done,” he said. “If we had known this, that it was in fact an award to a rape victim, I think our own conversation would have been very different.”

I think what happened is that Personal PAC is hosting the luncheon, but the award isn’t really for supporting pro-choice candidates, it’s in honor of Jennie Goodman’s advocacy on behalf of rape victims, and Cardinal George didn’t want to be seen beating his fists on the floor over an award going to a woman who’s known as a defender of rape victims. It’s bad PR, you know.

Although, this is where Cardinal George’s language gets even creepier. Governor Quinn makes it about her advocacy in helping rape victims. Cardinal George makes it sound more like she deserves their respect simply for being a rape victim. It has nothing to do with anything she’s done and everything to do with what someone else has done to her.

Come to think of it, that actually tracks really well with womb-control logic. It’s all about taking away the woman’s agency. Her body does not belong to her. If she doesn’t get a say in whether to give birth, then there’s no reason why she should decide to have sex. It’s ultimately the same idea.

 

Emancipating zygotes from the women who carry them

Sikivu Hutchinson has a new post up about the dubiously named Personhood Movement, and she raises a tricky question:

One of the most reprehensible arguments that the personhood campaign makes to bolster its cause is a comparison between egg rights and the movement to abolish slavery. The California campaign’s website cites Joshua Giddings, a 19th century American anti-slavery legislator who held that “God” as “author” of all life grants the inalienable right to life to every being. Following this argument it is unclear who is exactly “enslaving” pre-implanted fertilized eggs. Is it potential mothers who arrogantly lay claim to their own bodies? Is it the state for failing to protect the right of pre-implanted fertilized eggs to implantation? By cloaking its propaganda in the rhetoric of civil and human rights the movement avoids delineation of the real life consequences for women, once again reducing them to vessels with no agency, right to privacy or control over their own bodies.

This is indeed a head-scratcher: who is responsible for the supposed enslavement of zygotes?

“They just picked on the wrong guy this time.”

Todd Stave, son of an abortion provider and landlord to Dr. Carhart’s clinic in Germantown, draws the line at anti-choice crazies showing up at his daughter’s middle school:

Rather than be intimidated or back down from this bullying, Stave chose to give anti-choicers a taste of their own medicine. He started taking down the names and phone numbers of the people who called him in protest and had volunteers call those people back to “thank them for their thoughts and tell them, ‘No, he will not be shutting Dr. Carhart down,’” Rachel Maddow reported last night. (Legally, he couldn’t do that even if he wanted to.) Stave also set up a website that responds to anti-abortion protesters and offers resources for victims of their bullying.

Watch the video of his appearance with Rachel Maddow. This is what courage looks like.

 

How Not to Act Like a Pro-Choicer: Innocent Babies

When you’re involved in a debate—or better yet, just a conversation about a particular woman who’s had an abortion—we on the pro-choice side of the spectrum will much more easily accept your good faith if you do not comment, “But the baby is innocent.”

Yeah, about that? It’s not that we dispute that the fetus hasn’t done anything wrong. The fetus didn’t have a say in where, when, by whom and in what manner it was conceived. We know that. By arguing towards the “innocence” of the “baby,” (note: fetus and baby are not interchangeable) you imply that the abortion is about punishing the fetus for being conceived in the wrong person at the wrong time.

Of course the fetus is a helpless bystander in the circumstances of the unwanted pregnancy, and of course the fetus could grow into a darling, lovable infant if its mother decided to maintain the pregnancy to birth, but for now, in the first trimester, we’re talking about a non-sentient, obliviously developing little critter without the slightest inkling of its own existence. The idea of “punishment” is perfectly unrelated to anything a fetus could experience. It makes about as much sense as punishing someone’s gall bladder. No, there is no dispute over the innocence of the fetus. It’s not about punishing the baby that could have been born. It’s about letting the woman get on with her life.

Furthermore, nobody cares what you, personally, would have done in that woman’s place. It’s all nice and fine if you cannot imagine ever terminating your own pregnancy if you were to find yourself in that situation, but when we’re looking at a woman who has faced a (multiple!) pregnancy conceived by rape when she already had two children who needed her, your declaration that you would never respond to the situation (which you have so far never experienced) the way she did, provides no useful information. One might get the impression that you merely want to show her that you’re a better person. Particularly when we’ve seen what such what-if statements actually yield.