States continue Radical christianist assault on Women’s Health
Posted: June 27, 2011 Filed under: abortion rights, right wing hate grouups, Violence against women, Women's Rights | Tags: fetal pain myth, Planned Parenthood, restrictions on abortion rights, Wisconsin 36 Comments
In an appalling attack on women’s right to abortion and basic health services for poor women, Republicans in many states have injected personal religious agendas into budgets and laws. It was just announced that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has defunded the state’s Planned Parenthood clinics as a result of budget deficits created by excessive tax cuts. Planned Parenthood Clinics in Wisconsin provide preventative services. Loss of these services will undoubtedly cost women their lives and the state much larger bills in the long run. This is clearly nothing but a religionist agenda and an attempt to coerce state law into compliance with radical christianist concerns.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a budget Sunday that cuts education and health clinics — including Planned Parenthood clinics — to plug a $3 billion shortfall without raising taxes, AP reported.
The two-year, $66 billion budget passed in the state legislature without a single Democratic vote.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America denounced the budget, which eliminated state and federal funding for the organization’s clinics.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin says it has 27 health centers across the state, which provide birth control, cancer screenings, annual exams, and sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment to 73,000 patients every year.
Wisconsin is the fourth state to target Planned Parenthood because of conservative-led objections to the group’s abortion services — even though they are funded separately and make up a small fraction of the services Planned Parenthood provides.
“If organizations want to do that, we’re not saying they don’t have the right to do that under the law. While we disagree with abortions entirely, they do have that right,” Wisconsin’s Channel3000.com quotes Julaine Appling of Wisconsin Family Action as saying. “We don’t have to use taxpayer money to do that.”
The budget eliminates state and federal funding to nine Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin health centers in small communities and cuts off 12,000 women who do not have health insurance from getting preventive health care, the group said in a statement.
“The budget also threatens Wisconsin’s BadgerCare family planning program, which currently helps more than 53,000 women and men get preventive health care at providers throughout the state, including Planned Parenthood. According to the Department of Health’s own estimations, the BadgerCare family planning program saves Wisconsin nearly $140 million per year,” Planned Parenthood said.
Radical christianists are also driving a number of laws with no medical or scientific basis outlawing abortion procedures after 20 weeks on the ridiculous and unproven notion that nonviable fetus can ‘feel’ pain. Again, this is clearly driven by an attempt to impose radical christianist law on our country.
Last fall, Danielle and Robb Deaver of Grand Island, Neb., found that their state’s new law intruded in a wrenching personal decision. Ms. Deaver, 35, a registered nurse, was pregnant with a daughter in a wanted pregnancy, she said. She and her husband were devastated when her water broke at 22 weeks and her amniotic fluid did not rebuild.
Her doctors said that the lung and limb development of the fetus had stopped, that it had a remote chance of being born alive or able to breathe, and that she faced a chance of serious infection.
In what might have been a routine if painful choice in the past, Ms. Deaver and her husband decided to seek induced labor rather than wait for the fetus to die or emerge. But inducing labor, if it is not to save the life of the fetus, is legally defined as abortion, and doctors and hospital lawyers concluded that the procedure would be illegal under Nebraska’s new law.
After 10 days of frustration and anguish, Ms. Deaver went into labor naturally; the baby died within 15 minutes and Ms. Deaver had to be treated with intravenous antibiotics for an infection that developed.
Ms. Deaver said she got angry only after the grief had settled. “This should have been a private decision, made between me, my husband and my doctor,” she said in a telephone interview.
Based on current knowledge, medical organizations generally reject the notion that a fetus can feel pain before 24 weeks. “The suggestion that a fetus at 20 weeks can feel pain is inconsistent with the biological evidence,” said Dr. David A. Grimes, a prominent researcher and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “To suggest that pain can be perceived without a cerebral cortex is also inconsistent with the definition of pain.”
In one recent review, in March 2010, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Britain said of the brain development of fetuses: “Connections from the periphery to the cortex are not intact before 24 weeks of gestation and, as most neuroscientists believe that the cortex is necessary for pain perception, it can be concluded that the fetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation.”
Observations of physical recoiling and hormonal responses of younger fetuses to needle touches are reflexive and do not indicate “pain awareness,” the report said.
Six states have no passed some form of these laws. It is crucial that women realize that these laws are based on radical religious views and not science. The doors to these laws was opened by none other than Supreme Court Justice Kennedy who has no background in medical science but has been drug into considering religious positions instead of law by several supreme court justices that allegedly have connections to the religious cult Opus Dei.
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Chipping Away at Abortion Access
Actually I’d argue they are based on the pretzel twisting logic that fundamentalists often regularly engage in. As a Christian I do not believe in death, not beyond the physical sort anyway. If a fetus dies, it’s soul would still be living and would reside in heaven. The only thing lost in actuality is the potential of that being to impact lives, in either a positve or negative way.
But if a mother is denied pre-natal care, the child could be born with development disabilities, cognitive disabilities, and other developmental problems. How is that loving the unborn child?
It isn’t loving or christian. That’s why I say that liberals have failed when it comes to the whole abortion debate. They’ve allowed the GOP to frame it falsely. First off, it shouldn’t be pro LIFE(as in their is only one life involved)- It’s PRO- LIVES. The mother and the fetus are intertwined. A fetus is completely dependant on the female that shares it’s body with it. With the sharing comes risks-
Up until recently childbirth was the leading cause of mortality for women. Carrying a fetus to term carries a huge risk. For that reason alone it needs to be voluntary.
Second off, if you are Christian then you believe in life everlasting. An innocent soul does not die but goes to heaven and resides with the father.
Then there is the whole “God’s will” thing. Well if we’re going on that then we ought to be able to exempt the fundamentalists from ANY health care. They can pray themselves better and if they don’t get better then I guess it was “God’s will.” Get pnuemonia- don’t take an antibiotic because otherwise you’re interfering with “God’s will” he apparently “wanted you sick.” Of course, fundy logic doesn’t go that far because then MENFOLK might die. “God’s will” only applies to hapless females dontcha know?
I could SHRED most of the right side of the aisle’s debate in a minute. So could most of the people I know. which leads me to believe that the Democrats could too, they just don’t want to.
Cwaltz, I totally agree with you. Especially that the Dems have completely dropped the ball and let the Repubs run with it.
I say they are pro-death. They are killing women AND children AND babies with their ridiculous, heartless laws.
This is crazy-making:
So, the baby died and the mother suffered needlessly because of these f*cking sanctimonious *ssh0les who claim they are supporting “life.”
That’s not life. THAT IS DEATH.
Maybe they have the psychological advantage. For example, the term “pro-choice.” As in, “Please, O male masters, give us a choice.”
I like more arrogant slogans such as:
Real Women Do Not Get Drug Around By Male Laws.
I don’t blame anyone if she gets drug around by male laws against her will, but maybe women need more of an Attitude to overcome male psychological advantage.
What do I think? I think this has nothing to do with the love of children – zip, nada, nil – because if it did there would be no children living in poverty or suffering the pain and indignity of child prostitution and there would be no children being married off to old men or boys being raped and sold as slaves and there would be no slavery.
It’s all about power and envy. A lot of men need to have absolute control. Women and children and gays are commodities that have monetary value so keep them coming cause we wouldn’t want the well to run dry. There is no humanity nor is there any christian thinking in the way that Christ would approve in these decisions – just venal greed about ruling and control. Not all men buy into this scenario and unfortunately not all women deplore it, but those who do are on a crusade to remake the world in their image. Sad about the women who buy into this crap – they think they are immune but they are not. They are willing dupes – judas goats.
Hey this is very OT but I thought some of the readers would want to know. Blagojevich to hear verdict in corruption trial | abc7.com
The jury has come in with verdicts in 18 of the 20 charges.
GUILTY: Rod Blagojevich guilty on 11 counts – Naperville Sun
BREAKING: Blago guilty on 17 counts – CNN Political Ticker – CNN.com Blogs
I have to say that while I tend to agree with your opposition to laws that whittle away at the right to an abortion, it always annoys me to hear about how this all the fault of “Radical Christianists.” Yes, religious people tend to be more opposed than secularists to abortion than as a rule, although I have even met a few anti-abortion atheists. In any case, it is certainly not an exclusively “Christianist” phenomenon. To take just one example, India, a primarily Hindu country, also outlaws abortions after the twentieth week for similarly nonscientific reasons.
http://reproductiverights.org/en/press-room/gynecologist-challenges-indias-abortion-law
Moreover, Israel, which is not a Christian country, outlaws abortions except under four sets of circumstances: (1) when an abortion is necessary to save the mother’s life or health (physical or psychological); (2) when an abortion is undertaken to prevent the birth of a severely abnormal child; (3) when an abortion will terminate a pregnancy conceived in rape, incest, or outside of marriage; and (4) when an abortion is undertaken by a woman over the age of 40 or under the minimum age for marriage.
In fact, according to the following Wikipedia article, among the world’s religions only Unitarians are wholeheartedly pro-choice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_abortion
I personally think aversion to abortion and the creation of laws that constrict abortion rights go deeper than mere religious indoctrination. But it invariably takes on a religious coloring that corresponds to the dominant religion of the society. To claim otherwise strikes me as plain wrong.
I think it goes deeper too. I think it goes back to male indignation at the thought that women should have such power over life and death. So instead they assign the right and power to a male “god” who is a thinly disguised version of themselves.
I get your argument but I’m not seeing where radical religious extremists in other religions impact our laws in the U.S. U.S. common law was designed to be distinct from all religious law. If any of those other religions become a problem in our country, then I’d say that’s as relevant as anything. Any patriarchal religion looks to control women and children through coercion and force. What’s germane here is when they manage to inflict their mythology in a systemic way and again, for this country, we suffer from acts of christian extremism. I agree, however, that all patriarchal religions if placed in the position to control women will do so. We have a universal problem with laws defined by myth created by iron age men.
When I see the term “christianist,” I think of it as applying to extreme right-wing evangelicals who really are a cult, distinct from traditional Christian churches–which focus on spirituality rather than politics and especially trying to force their beliefs on the society as whole.
I think we do agree on most of our points then. I guess I don’t like the term “Radical Christianist” for the same reason I don’t like the term “Radical Islamist.” I think the terminology can be off-putting and doesn’t adequately describe the forces that produce these radical beliefs.
I also think that the reason so many religions take an anti-abortion stance has to do with a deepset human instinct that seeks to ensure proliferation of the group, an instinct that gets coded into religious belief. It goes beyond being merely being a legacy of patriarchal religious cannon as a means to control women. I also suspect that the fact that so many people find themselves out of work and lacking a solid footing in society makes many people more prone to hold anti-abortion views. Some people fear, perhaps rightly, that the Powers That Be would be ever so happy to see them drop off the face of the planet. Thus they find consolation in the religious doctrines that hold all life is sacred and pregnancies should not be terminated even if circumstances argue against having children.
I say all this even though I personally believe in very liberal abortion laws. When I listen to ideologues like Alex Jones rant against abortion, I know that this is what they are selling. I just think that we need to be sensitive to this when we frame our arguments for women’s reproductive rights that include broad access to safe abortions.
There are also “deep seated” urges not to bring children into unsafe situations. In animals sometimes offspring are even reabsorbed into the female’s body after being implanted. In humans, an estimated 50% of all conceptions (meaning implantation in the uterus) result in spontaneous abortion. Throughout known history, women have aborted and even practiced infanticide. This still happens. There are descriptions of abortion and infanticide in the Bible, in fact.
I feel the same BB. I think of alot of the dogmatic folk that don’t seem to really have paid much attention to what Christ actually did and said according to the Bible(and I don’t even see the Bible as necessarily something that should be taken as sancrosanct.) Jesus Christ was a great man who did great things. It’s almost sacrilege to hear people say he would have supported the war(Really? The guy who wouldn’t let his disciples lift a hand to defend him would advocate war?) Or that he would stand judgement on gays or women who chose to abort a fetus(Again, really? The guy who told folks who were going to stone someone to death would be leading the charge to condemn these people? Really? Or the guy who said remove the beam from your own eye before concerning yourself with the splinter in your neighbors)) Or that he would have been hunky dory with rich people tax cuts at the expense of the poor and the sick. (easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle then rich to enter heaven.)
I frankly refuse to relinquish THAT JesusChrist to these fanatics. His teachings deserve better.
Men, not only women, have been big practicers of infanticide. As a matter of fact, in ancient Greco Roman times, a father was allowed to kill his own child without legal repercussions.
I think I agree with all of you. And perhaps I should reconsider my aversion to the term “Radical Christianist.” If it doesn’t bother cwaltz, whose deeply held Christian beliefs have long impressed me and informed my thinking on religious matters, then it shouldn’t bother a nonreligionist like myself.
Christian extremism is what’s fueling the debate. The fact that these extremist are set in their minds what they believe is what everyone should believe makes them act out and banned together like they do. People who don’t have this extremist thought more than likely think that these PLUBs opinions are wrong, but they have every right to believe the way they do. The difference is the christian extremist do not even acknowledge the “idea” that any person can have or believe anything different then them. (And it isn’t just Christians, it is all and any of the many forms of extremist thought.)
Using the budget deficit as justification to cut funding, or making a claim that closing clinics because they do not meet the same regulations as a hospital is in the best interest of the woman, are all bullshit. There has to be something deeper that is bringing all the anti-woman legislation. Why else would the equal pay legislation and other “things” like this still have not passed. (By other things, I mean any of the anti-woman laws or bills that do not specifically deal with abortion.)
gov. should not even be in this.. 👿
The part that kills me is these are the same people who insist the government shouldn’t regulate business because it screws things up. Yeah great, let’s give them control over an issue that has meant the life or death of women for centuries instead. How stupid is that! If supposedly they are “too incompetent” to handle regulating BP or GE then why the Hades would they belong regulating my uterus?
More pretzel twisting logic…..at it’s finest.
Not sure that “radical” is the right adjective here. In the sixties, Christian groups that opposed the Vietnam war referred to themselves as “radical” (okay, maybe not the World Council of Churches or the Quakers, I really don’t remember) and considered the word to be related to “radish” with the meaning of getting at the “root” of core Christian beliefs about justice. As that time it was definitely a left-wing term. The corresponding right-wing term was “reactionary”, not terribly resounding but more printable than “bat-shit crazy”.
extremist might be more appropriate. I just want to find some term that delineates people who find spiritual solace in belief systems from those whom religion is an addiction that can be used it to ruin other people’s lives
Dakota, “bat-shit crazy” I think we have a new phrase to add to our categories. 😉
And in using extremist as a description is what I use to describe anyone who’s beliefs are the only beliefs that matter, in that they force it on other people. It does not necessarily denote the religious kind of bat-shit crazy, but then on the other hand, when someone believes in something to such extremes, it becomes sacred to them like a religion. And that goes for all kinds of extremist from both the left and right.
I think “bat-shit crazy” is a perfectly useful term. What it actually refers to is the transmission of rabies virus through bat guano, and some of these right-wing religious fanatics certainly act as though they had CNS infections.
Well, here’s a little ray of hope from North Carolina:
Gov. Perdue Vetoes Extremist H.B. 854
Oh, and speaking of religious extremists catch this one:
This woman lives in a world where she has her own set of “facts”.
That’s fantastic!
Of course, this may well mean that someone on Bachman’s staff is trying to undermine her candidacy by feeding her lines to choke on. But frankly, I really don’t care.
She suffers from the worst case for a bat shit crazy woman. She really needs help.
and of course, crazy Pat Robertson on NY’s expanding the marriage franchise to GLBT:
Robertson: God Will Destroy America For Marriage Equality
Guess Pat doesn’t know that “GOD” destroyed Sodom for not being charitable enough with their riches.
And how does your god feel about blood diamonds, Pat?
Goodness gracious, it appears that Pat is not as well versed in history as he though, or perhaps he knows that most people today have no historical knowledge? Geebus, the man is a horrible example of so called Christianity. Somebody best tell him about Plato and Socrates and Alexander the Great and Julius, and Marc Antony and Oscar and Dante and Michalangelo and Leonardo and I could go on forever and a day. There has been not one civilization in history that has survived the exermination of even a small percentage of it’s population, however there have been immensely successful civilizations that have decided that the sate has no place in the bedrooms of their subjects.
Shakestweetz Melissa McEwan
Servicemembers are still being discharged under DADT while the “certification” loophole subverts full repeal: bit.ly/j5QAzQ
The Democratic Party and the assault on public workers
http://tinyurl.com/453n3rx
Last Thursday, the Democratic-controlled New Jersey Assembly passed a sweeping package of pension and health care cuts and attacks on government workers’ bargaining rights drawn up by Republican Governor Chris Christie. Leaders of the state Senate, also controlled by the Democrats, said they would quickly adopt the same bill and send it to the governor’s desk to be signed into law……