This week in the War on Women

The bad and the ugly:

• Rush Limbaugh is, yup, still an asshole.
• Indiana wants to force doctors to lie to their patients:
  

  One of the other legally contentious laws that will soon take effect in Indiana has gotten little attention in comparison. The law would require doctors administering an abortion to tell women that life begins at fertilization and that a fetus can feel pain at or before 20 weeks gestation.

  It's not true, of course, but why let truth get in the way of an anti-woman agenda?

• American anti-choice crazy goes global.
• Dan Rottenberg, editor-in-chief of Broad Street Review, says CBS journalist Lara Logan deserved to be sexually assaulted because she once wore a low-cut dress:

  ... having stumbled across a CBS publicity photo for Lara Logan, I can?t thinking that women also need to take sensible precautions before they?re victimized. ... Yes, yes, I know: Each of us wears many personas. A woman journalist like Lara Logan should be able to celebrate herself as both a journalist and a woman, even a sexy woman. But the operative word in that sentence? should? is the sticky point.

• Rinse, repeat, and retch:
  

  A new anti-abortion billboard campaign is set to make an appearance in Los Angeles soon. The billboards are an almost word-for-word copy of the controversial Heroic Media campaign targeting African-American women.

  This latest campaign, however, targets Latinas. The billboards feature the silhouette of a baby with the words, ?the most dangerous place for a Latino is in the womb? featured in English and Spanish next to the image. The Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles is claiming ownership of these particular billboards.

  (h/t Elisa)

• Last week's story about Jennie L. McCormack, an Idaho woman charged with a felony for performing an unlawful abortion?and now facing up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine?is not an isolated incident. Looks like back-alley abortions are back:

  While horrific, McCormack?s case is not unique. In recent years, several women have been arrested on suspicion of causing their own abortions, or attempting to. Most have come from conservative rural states with few clinics and numerous restrictions on abortion. In America?s urban centers and liberal enclaves, the idea of women being prosecuted for taking desperate measures to end their pregnancies might seem inconceivable, a never-again remnant of the era before Roe v. Wade. In fact, it?s a slowly encroaching reality.

• Metaphor FAIL of the week, courtesy of Louisiana State Rep. John Labruzzo (R-of course).
• Ugh:

  A New Mexico man's decision to lash out with a billboard ad saying his ex-girlfriend had an abortion against his wishes has touched off a legal debate over free speech and privacy rights.

  The sign on Alamogordo's main thoroughfare shows 35-year-old Greg Fultz holding the outline of an infant. The text reads, "This Would Have Been A Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To Not KILL Our Child!"

  Fultz's ex-girlfriend has taken him to court for harassment and violation of privacy. A domestic court official has recommended the billboard be removed.

  But Fultz's attorney argues the order violates his client's free speech rights.

  This Fultz guy Rev. Greg Fultz has a history of violent rhetoric on Twitter about the ex-girlfriend who dumped him. (Gee, can't imagine why she didn't think he was a catch.)
  

  • "What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing. She's already been told twice."
  • "What does a battered woman do when she comes home from the hospital? The dishes, if she knows what's good for her."
  • "What do you do if you see your ex running around in your front yard covered in blood and screaming for help? Stay calm, reload, & try again."
  • "It's not that I regret meeting you, it's that I regret not running you over with my car before you walked out on me."

  But apparently, his Twitter fantasies didn't quite get the message across, so he needed to put up a billboard to accuse his girlfriend?who, by the way, says she had a miscarriage?to accuse his ex of murder. Naturally, the "pro-lifers" think it's a great idea. Because nothing says "pro-life" like fantasizing about murdering your ex.

• Some people like to say the wage gap between men and women is a myth. Here's reason 4,324,991 why they're full of shit:

  A woman graduating with a bachelor's degree last year earned a median starting salary of $36,451. For a man, it was $44,159. When you calculate a lifetime of percentage raises and compound interest, that nearly $8,000 difference is staggering.
  

  And before the wage gap mythers start sputtering that it's just because women choose to go into lower-paying fields, or they lack the same work history and experience because they've taken time off from their careers to raise families, don't worry?the study took all that crap into account. Sorry, mythers, but the wage gap is real.

• Although it's not as bad for skinny chicks:

  According to a study in the Journal of Applied Psychology, women who are "very thin" earn nearly $22,000 more than their "average weight counterparts."

  ...

  And not only are women earning less if they are of average weight, they are actually punished if they are overweight; Forbes reports that "'Heavy' and 'Very Heavy' women lost over $9,000 and almost $19,000, respectively, than their average weight counterparts."

  And here's the punchline:

  The study showed that when men gain weight, their paychecks don't suffer the same way women's do.
  

• In case you missed it, Massachusetts state Rep. Ryan Fattman (R-Of course) thinks rape victims should just keep their mouths shut if they're here illegally. As Joan said:
  

  So it's free rein for rapists, provided they prey only on women who might be undocumented. Cuz, hell, they deserve to live in fear.

• First they came for abortion, now they're coming for contraception:
  

  Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the influential anti-abortion group the Susan B. Anthony List, made an extraordinary claim to defend her support for defunding Planned Parenthood: contraception, which Planned Parenthood provides, goes hand-in-hand with abortion.

  During a Catholic activism panel she declared, ?Every year that contraception and family planning increases, the abortion rate also increases in direct proportion. [...] This is an undeniable fact.?

  Yeah, it's an undeniable fact in the way that it's totally and completely untrue. But then, anti-choicers aren't exactly known for making factual statements.

• Remember, it's all about concern for women, right?

  Kathleen Prieskorn gasped in shock as her medical nightmare began. Still reeling from the heartbreak of an earlier miscarriage, Prieskorn was three months pregnant and working as a waitress when she felt a twinge, felt a trickle down her leg and realized she was miscarrying again.

  She rushed to her doctor's office, "where I learned my amniotic sac had torn," says Prieskorn, who lives with her husband in Manchester, N.H. "But the nearest hospital had recently merged with a Catholic hospital?and because my doctor could still detect a fetal heartbeat, he wasn't allowed to give me a uterine evacuation that would help me complete my miscarriage."

  To get treatment, Prieskorn, who has no car, had to instead travel 80 miles to the nearest hospital that would perform the procedure?expensive to do in an ambulance, because she had no health insurance. Her doctor handed her $400 of his own cash and she bundled into the back of a cab.  

  Save the fetus, screw the woman.

• And yet Mr. Rick "Frothy Mixture" Santorum still insists that women's health is a "phony" excuse for an abortion.

And now for some good news:

• Muslim women are fighting back against violence:

  A British Muslim women's group has launched a "jihad against violence", in a bid to reclaim the term jihad from extremists.

  The campaign, launched by Inspire at City Hall in central London on Sunday, aims to combat all forms of violence but with an emphasis on crimes, including terrorism, domestic abuse and female genital mutilation, that some perpetrators attempt to justify in the name of Islam.

• Not every abortion is a tragedy:
  

  I know how far out of our society's collective comfort zone it is to hear a woman say that she feels happy about her abortion, but I do.  My feelings go far beyond the simple relief that many women describe.  I am actually grateful for the experience itself and for the fact that, by sharing my story with others, I can be an ambassador for reproductive freedom.

• And here's something unusual?an anti-choice story with a happy ending:
  

  Holding aloft crosses aimed at pro-choice activists and signs depicting infant children--"Take my hand, not my life," one read--a group of Catholics celebrating the American Life League's annual "Protest The Pill Day" unwittingly helped raise $6,710 to provide packs of pills to poor women in North Texas. Instead of organizing a counter-protest or even disseminating educational information to contradict ALL's claims about the dangers of contraception, Planned Parenthood of North Texas simply asked supporters to pledge donations for every protester rustled up by the anti-choice group. Thanks to ALL, more than 600 women will get free pills so that they can continue to make reproductive choices for themselves.

  
  

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/lVK4Ic0vVOY/-This-week-in-the-War-on-Women

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