Thursday Reads: Sophia Loren, the Zombie Brain, the War on Women, and Much More
Posted: February 16, 2012 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, Greece, Human Rights, morning reads, U.S. Politics, Violence against women, War on Women, Women's Rights | Tags: Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Birth Control, Carlo Ponti, Cary Grant, contraception, eurozone crisis, fetus fetishists, Greek riots, lapsed Catholics, MEP Nigel Farage, Sophia Loren, state sanctioned rape, transvaginal ultrasound, Vanity Fair, zombie brains 45 Comments
Good Morning!!
The news has been so depressing lately that I thought I’d at least start out with something nonpolitical. Last night I read a fascinating interview with Sophia Loren from the new Vanity Fair. Loren talked about her painful childhood:
Raised in Pozzuoli, a small town of fishermen and munitions workers outside of Naples, Sophia experienced some of the worst privations of the Second World War—terror, bombing, starvation. Born in a charity ward for unwed mothers in Rome on September 20, 1934, Sofia Scicolone was taunted throughout her childhood for being illegitimate. Her mother, Romilda Villani, was a proud beauty who returned to her family home in Pozzuoli to live down her shame; in Catholic Italy then, being an unwed mother was not just a scandal, but a sin. They moved in with Romilda’s parents, an aunt, and two uncles; Romilda soon had another child with Riccardo Scicolone, who still refused to marry her and who would not even give Sophia’s younger sister, Maria, his name. Now eight people shared their apartment. Until she left Pozzuoli, Sophia never slept in a bed with fewer than three family members.
By 1942 they were starving, living on rationed bread, hiding from the air raids at night in a dark, rat-infested train tunnel, full of “sickness, laughter, drunkenness, death, and childbirth,” as she described it in A. E. Hotchner’s 1979 authorized biography of her, Sophia, Living and Loving: Her Own Story. Romilda foraged for food for herself and her two daughters, but Sophia was so skinny her school-mates called her “Sofia Stuzzicadenti”—toothpick.
Romilda was so beautiful that people mistook her on the street for Greta Garbo. She was once offered a screen test in Hollywood, but her mother wouldn’t allow her to go to Hollywood. So she became a stage mother.
Sophia Loren in 1950
At 14, Sophia blossomed. “It was as if I had burst from an egg and was born,” she often likes to say. Suddenly, she started hearing wolf whistles when she walked down the street. Romilda entered Sophia in a beauty contest—Queen of the Sea and Her Twelve Princesses. They had no gown for her to wear, so Sophia’s grandmother pulled down one of the pink curtains in the living room—like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind—and made an evening gown. Romilda took Sophia’s scuffed black shoes and applied two coats of white paint to them. When they showed up, Sophia was intimidated by the more than 200 contestants in their real gowns, jewels, and flowers, but when it came time to parade in front of the judges, she comported herself with serene dignity. She was chosen as one of the 12 princesses, winning $35, a ticket to Rome, and several rolls of wallpaper, which the family happily used to cover the cracks in the plaster of their apartment caused by the wartime bombing.
And the rest is history. Go read the article. It might make you feel more cheerful than the political news. I’ll leave it to you to read the part about Sophia and Cary Grant and why she turned down his marriage proposal to stay with her much older, shorter lover Carlo Ponti.
Next up is an article from last October that I just happened upon a couple of days ago. If you have a somewhat warped sense of human like I do, you’ll get a kick out of it: How to Survive a Zombie Attack
A fight-or-flight primer to outliving the urban undead. Hey, it might even help us deal with the Republican presidential candidates. My favorite part is the explanation of the zombie brain by two neuroscientists.
“Zombies have attention-locking problems. When they see something, they fixate. It resembles damage to the parietal lobe (1)—a condition called Bálint’s syndrome. So a zombie will fixate on you, but if you can distract it, it might lose track of you entirely. Zombies are stiff and have balance problems because of damage to the cerebellum (2). It’s the same way you feel when you’re really drunk—you’re suppressing the cerebellum too.” —Timothy Verstynen, Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition
“In a human, the brain stem, at the top of the spinal cord, is responsible for the core functions of life—respiration, heartbeat. But since zombies don’t breathe or have heartbeats, the core function of the zombie’s existence is controlled by the part of the brain that controls appetite: the hypothalamus (3). If you hit a zombie right between the eyes with enough force, you can go straight back horizontally into the hypothalamus.” —Bradley Voytek
Getting back to true life horror, Dakinikat sent me this article from The American Prospect by Sally Kohn. It’s about Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York who is going be made a Cardinal soon–undoubtedly a reward for leading the war on American women. On the occasion of his promotion Dolan plans to give a speech about the need to attract lapsed Catholics back into the fold.
Kohn wonders why Dolan and other church leaders are determined to “go to the mat” over contraception. She writes:
As an organization, the Catholic Church is in decline. And there’s nothing like feeling (or creating a feeling of being) under attack to revive the bonds of association….a majority of Catholics believe that a woman can have an abortion and still remain a good Catholic. And as other studies have shown, 98 percent of Catholic women of reproductive age have used contraception, directly going against Church teachings. And now, by large margins—including a two-to-one margin among women—Catholics support the president’s “accommodation” with religious groups. Through the eyes of the Church, this is not just a threat to the sanctity of life. This is a threat to the authority of the Catholic Church in America.
Maybe instead of preparing a speech lecturing lapsed Catholics about their spiritual infidelity, Archbishop Dolan should examine his faith’s lack of fidelity to the modern needs of its followers. A religion that seems more interested in protecting abstract beliefs about conception than the very real health and well-being of women, that seems far more faithful to doctrine than science, that protects abusive priests while preaching against the sexual freedom of others, might feel marginalized not by any presidential administration but rather by its own narrow theology. The Catholic Church attempting to reassert its authority by hammering on the very sort of antiquated, anti-contraception dogma that has alienated so many people of faith is about as strategic as trying to win an election by alienating women voters.
I was out for much of the day yesterday, and when I returned home the first thing I read was Minx’s evening reads. In the post she mentioned “transvaginal ultrasound,” without further elaboration. I figured it must be a reference to some horrible news story, so I googled it. It seems that the state of Virgina (along with Texas and Iowa) has decided to use this medical procedure to torture women who dare to consider getting abortions. Andy Kopsa at RH Reality Check calls it “state sanctioned rape.” In the article Kopsa reproduces a facebook discussion of the Texas law she had with some men on Facebook awhile back:
This is the relevant passage from a my piece written for The Frisky on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade:
Last week I got into a heated exchange with a group of men on Facebook about abortion. It was regarding the Texas law requiring a woman view an ultrasound prior to getting an abortion. The man starting the thread praised the Texas Supreme Court for upholding the ultrasound law.
This opinion piece from The Houston Chronicle (via AlterNet) gives you an idea of what a the government mandated ultrasound law in Texas could mean:
According to the Guttmacher Institute, 88 percent of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Because the fetus is so small at this stage, traditional ultrasounds performed through the abdominal wall, “jelly on the belly,” often cannot produce a clear image. Therefore, a transvaginal probe is most often necessary, especially up to 10 weeks to 12 weeks of pregnancy. The probe is inserted into the vagina, sending sound waves to reflect off body structures to produce an image of the fetus. Under this new law, a woman’s vagina will be penetrated without an opportunity for her to refuse due to coercion from the so-called “public servants” who passed and signed this bill into law.
Under the Texas penal code penetration of a woman’s vagina without her consent is sexual assault. In other words, it is rape — which is punishable by imprisonment.
In my bizarre Facebook exchange mentioned above, a man brazenly told me rape by the state was analogous to paying taxes, “If you want to talk about government rape, let’s talk about paying taxes to the IRS!”
Here’s a description of how the test is done:
You will lie down on a table with your knees bent and feet in holders called stirrups. The health care provider will place a probe, called a transducer, into the vagina. The probe is covered with a condom and a gel. The probe sends out sound waves, which reflect off body structures. A computer receives these waves and uses them to create a picture. The doctor can immediately see the picture on a nearby TV monitor.
The health care provider will move the probe within the area to see the pelvic organs. This test can be used during pregnancy.
Does the legislation specify how the woman is to be forced to put her feet in the stirrups and hold still while her vagina is penetrated against her will? Will women be tied to the examination table with their feet chained to the stirrups? Or is the plan to give the woman some kind of drug to keep her from resisting? I really think these questions need to be answered.
Charlie Pierce has some more good questions:
Where in the hell are the doctors? Where in hell is the AMA?
Women are being required to undergo a medically unnecessary, personally violative procedure without their consent. (An amendment to require consent unsurprisingly failed in the legislature.) Doctors simply should refuse to conduct this procedure as a violation of their duties as physicians. The AMA should back them legally all the way up to the five wise souls in the big marble building. It should also sue the Commonwealth of Virginia, and McDonnell, until their eyeballs bleed. Doctors should speak out boldly, and without fear, about being used as middlemen in the relentless war on women being waged on several fronts by the anti-choice communities. It’s time for being a physician to mean more than the fact that you get a new Lexus every year. Any doctors in the peanut gallery who think I’m wrong about this should chime in down in the comments.
Hey, I have a notion. Demand a “conscience exemption” from the requirements of this act of medical barbarism. Those seem to be all the rage these days.
There’s an article at The Daily Beast on why the Mormon Church won’t stop baptizing Holocaust survivors and other people who never wanted to be Mormons.
An unwieldy genealogical database operated by the LDS church called Family Search is at once a public registry for ancestry research, calling itself the “largest genealogy organization in the world,” and a receptacle for church members to nominate deceased individuals to receive baptism rights. The lack of policing of its users and content may be partially to blame for some continued posthumous baptisms of Holocaust victims and perhaps for the mistaken request for a baptism of the very-much-alive writer, Elie Wiesel.
Regular checks of Family Search by a researcher who has been called the “Erin Brockovich of posthumous genealogy,” Helen Radkey, revealed the baptisms of the Wiesenthals and the alleged targeting of Wiesel. Also a disaffected Mormon, Radkey is sure the church does not want the secular public meddling in the “junkyard of records,” which contains millions of names of living and dead….
Mormons must “perform vicarious temple ordinances for their own deceased family members,” through entering them on Family Search. Since there is no monitoring of entries, Radkey says, they can include anybody, alive, dead, or imagined, despite church rules against entering non-family people. However, Family Search does instruct specifically that LDS church members do not submit for posthumous baptism “celebrities or Jewish Holocaust victims.” Still, Radkey said she has found in her scouring of the registry everyone from Jesus Christ to 9/11 plane hijackers to Mickey Mouse. She says sometimes baptisms occur of names that are misspelled or changed purposely to game the system, say, Jeus Christ without the first “s.”
Someone needs to ask Romney about this at the next debate. Calling Rick the Dick….
In international news, riots continue in Greece as the government forces “austerity” on the people who didn’t cause the financial crisis in order to save the hides of those who did cause it.
Greek lawmakers on Monday approved harsh new austerity measures demanded by bailout creditors to save the debt-crippled nation from bankruptcy, after rioters in central Athens torched buildings, looted shops and clashed with riot police.
The historic vote paves the way for Greece’s European partners and the International Monetary Fund to release $170 billion (€130 billion) in new rescue loans, without which Greece would default on its mountain of debt next month and likely leave the eurozone — a scenario that would further roil global markets.
Lawmakers voted 199-74 in favor of the cutbacks, despite strong dissent among the two main coalition members. A total of 37 lawmakers from the majority Socialists and conservative New Democracy party either voted against the party line, abstained or voted present.
Some journalists are wondering if it could happen here. You’re damned right it could!
I’m going to end with this video I found at Zero Hedge. It’s commentary Member of Parliament Nigel Farage on the sadistic torture of the Greek people by European leaders.
I wish we had some members of Congress who would speak out like that!
What are you reading and blogging about today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
NW Luna
peggysue22
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
I read the Loren article in Vanity Fair aw well. But look at the back page where they ask a celebrity to answer the Proust questions and Esther Wiliams is featured. She is now 90 years old! Wow!
I kind of think that whatever they manage to “dig up” on Santorum isn’t going to matter that much. His insanity seems to have captured the hearts and minds of the Lunatic Fringe simply because he “is not Romney”.
Why Santorum said that JFK did more harm to this country, than any other President, I just wanted to kick his teeth out of his mouth. I am very proud of JFK, the Irish Catholics (and you might want to know that I grew up in the Irish Channel) should not vote for Rick the Dick.
Here is a man that raves about his father being Italian and serving his country, but when it comes to the Irish JFK who served this country, who wrote his book about PT 109, and who took a bullet through the head for this Country, how dare any veteran vote for Santorum……
Where are those Irish voices, those veterans, they need to voice their rejection of this kind crap.
I agree, Fannie. Santorum is evil incarnate as far as I’m concerned.
Great post BB, Love the Sophia Loren story…
Have you ever seen Two Women with Sophia Loren? That is one powerful movie: IMDb – Two Women (1960)
This line from the movie after both mother and daughter are raped by soldiers in a church:
They had it on TCM a couple days ago, I know you don’t get that channel BB but if you can download this film here, watch it. La Ciociara (Two Women) : Carlo Ponti : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
Those transvag ultrasounds are horrible. I have had many of them and talk about discomfort. The fact that they put a condom on the wand and lube it up before sticking in up your cooch is one literal form of the GOP screwing women left and right. But like you said, raping is really what this forced procedure is…
I’ve told my doctor and some of the nurses when I have had that procedure done…geez, you don’t even buy me dinner first.
Oh Minx. You’ve been through so much. But Charlie Pierce is right. Why aren’t doctors and the AMA screaming about this?
I’ve been wondering the same thing about the AMA. Where the hell are they? Are they afraid that the PLUBs might start targeting doctors again or is it greed driving their silence, because more procedures means more money?
I just sent $25.00 to the Elizabeth Warren campaign.
Our junior senator, Scott Brown, is one of the co sponsors of a bill that would allow employers with “religous beliefs” to override healthcare issues to be exempt from coverage since it would encroach upon their “sensibilities”.
MA women should be aware of the obscene rule, as well as men out there who may one day find themselves in need of a vasectomy but are turned down because it “offends” some nutjob practicing his/her religion in the public square.
We keep asking how far these wingnuts will go and every day they hand us another atrocity in their war against women by pointing to some ghostly Man in the Sky in defense.
I heard about that. What a pig! I hope that news about Brown is spread all over the state.
With so many Colbert fans here: Colbert Report Suspends Production | Stephen Colbert | Mediaite
They’re saying it’s a family emergency. I hope his kids are OK.
Just saw tweet saying Colbert’s mother is very ill…
Thanks for the info!
I apparently live in a cocoon of my own making.
My commenting is more or less confined to blogs that essentially share my point of view and they number no more than 4-5.
However, I did venture forth and found myself reading comments on blogs that I found amazing to behold. The contorted attempts and twisted reasoning many commentators employ to validate their choice for the GOP candidates.
Much of it stems from a visceral hatred for Obama. This hatred allows them to overlook the radical attempts spreading across this nation to strangle collective bargaining, attack women, villify gays, deny healthcare, abolish social security, privatize government services, protect the rich, stifle voter rights, denounce the poor, and put the environment in jeopardy.
And all because of the hatred towards Obama. Little outrage is expressed over GOP policies or the “war on women”. It is simply the vitriol against the current resident of the WH because a clear thinking person, IMHO, would have much difficulty defending or finding solace in what the present Republican Party represents.
I am no fan of Obama. I did not support him. As far as I am concerned he has done a rather piss poor job of defending the Democratic Principles that have been attacked from the Right.
But to offer support from an opposition party as crazy and detrimental as this one has displayed since 2000 right up until the 2010 midterms with their “slash and burn” tactics, their over emphasis on religion, their inability to even make a half ass attempt to serve this nation, it boggles my mind.
Better I should remain within the confines of like minded thinking than to read some of the dumbest excuses on record that put forth the idea that a GOP win would offer more in the long run when the final barriers of the separation of church and state topple altogether.
Then where will we be?
I’ve long wondered why there is such hatred of Obama. It’s not about what us Hillary supporters object to or what progressives object to. It seems to me to be an obsessive hatred. The only thing that I can come up with is racism. Not that I have the corner on insight, but it just seems that the privileged white male sees his “supremacy” slipping away. First it was civil rights for African Americans. Then it was Feminists. Next it’s LGBT folks. Their world is crumbling around them. The historical Discriminators feel they are being discriminated against because they have to “share” and they don’t think it’s fair. They have enjoyed the position of what they see themselves as – benevolent despots. All of us Others are infringing upon their birthright.
Where will we be? Well we will be back in the Dark Ages as The Menz poke & prod our body cavities searching for the sign of the devil before they tie us to the stake in the town square and set us on fire. As for the men, whether they are “illegal aliens” or “colored folk”, well they’ll be lynched. It will be the Good Old Days, all over again.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of the Obama hatred from the GOP is definitely racism. The strangest cases are those who used to claim to be Hillary supporters but now are quick to praise people like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich. I can’t really find another explanation for those people either and I have to wonder why they ever pretended to support Hillary.
I am just going to blame the epidemic of craziness on Rush Limbaugh & Fox.
I think to say that the visceral opposition is racism is a bit of an oversimplification. I’m not denying that racism exists or that it is a factor in some people’s minds, but I think there are other strong feelings at play when it comes to resenting Obama. I have to consciously engage in compartmentalization in supporting him. I have to focus on the right wing bent on this country becoming a theocracy and take a stand against that. If I let my mind wander to 08, and the caucuses, and the media’s assault on Clinton, and the RBC meeting in May, I become filled with resentment again and want to lash out against those who violated my right to vote. I can’t think about that. I have to focus on state sanctioned object rape and the lunatics on the right who are the more immediate threat, because those people are everywhere, and they are effin’ crazy.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was for ALL Americans people of color and women :
Segregation was not something that just happened to African Americans, it is that little secret that no one talks about and because it is suitable or palatable to erase it from history…but we know.
The roles of women too are often over looked:
Dolores Huerta is still alive albeit Tom Horn thinks she was a ‘girlfriend’ which is shocking considering he was in charge of education in Arizona and was busy trying to erase people out of history books.
Civil Rights Act of 1875
Civil Rights acts of 1957
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Civil Rights Act of 1968
Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) in 1968 (Imagine that the Natives got their Civil Rights Act last.)
In my area desegregation didn’t happen until the 1970s and Dr. Garcia was still consulting with President Carter in the 70s about other states with similar issues, although I think we take the record for the delayed action. I guess Red, and I have a different perspective and that comes from being front and center …seeing it first hand.
I don’t have any issues with President Obama as to his color, I do have issues with his policies and the his delayed action (seems he has only begun to see issues within the past six months that are critical) that people had hoped he would address from the beginning. People stopped hoping and took to the streets to protest on their behalf…no more waiting.
Occupy Our Homes Saves the Home of a Former Civil Rights Activist
I recently spoke to my mentor (Civil Rights Activist working on documenting the African America slave trade) and was surprised to see he had the same assessment of President Obama as I did and the need to keep issues on the front (keep advocating for the people) as it is about the people and not one individual. In the end it is “We The People” that will carry us forward.
PEACE OUT
I once listened to a discussion of Conservative women — who hated Bill Clinton. I mean they HATED Bill Clinton a whole lot. These same women hate 0bama — some because of the campaign he ran against Hillary Clinton — because these women wanted to vote for a woman Prez before they died. But some of the comments I’ve read in various online political news sources (Politico and the Hill for example) — some of those comments are probably from hard core racists. Some more liberal types believe 0bama is just a tool of Goldman Sucks and Wall Street — and they hate him because he is working for the 1%.
There is a rise in racism — KKK wantobes are coming out of the closet — along with the misogynists. Haters love to find more people to hate.
I don’t doubt that there are some who supported Hillary that HATE Obama. My personal experience, however, is with one co-worker in particular. She is a die-hard Republican. Even before Obama was sworn in she had a nasty bumper sticker on her car. He hadn’t even had a chance to piss Republicans off with any policies or actions. And, obviously, she didn’t design or print the bumper sticker. I have a couple of other Republican friends and they can’t stand Obama & it’s not because of warrantless wiretapping, execution of US citizens, indefinite detention & the other stuff that bothers me. And I don’t think it’s just a Dem won the election.
It is racism to be sure.
He has been accused of being foreign born, a Marxist, communist, socialist, Muslim. His religoius beliefs have been questioned. For some reason the name Saul Alinsky is thrown into the mix to invite speculation surrounding a Jewish name.
His wife has been criticized for taking on nutrition as a project, suggesting “governement control” over what we eat. Always sly references to a conspiracy that never was.
I don’t much like him either but it is more because he has backed off the Democratic Principles most of us here prefer. The fact that he was so overhyped by the MSM in 2008 has not helped his cause since no one on the face of the earth – aside from Ronald Reagan – could live up to those presumptions.
I have no problem disliking Obama for his policies but I don’t understand for one minute where the attraction toward the GOP is coming from when reason alone tells us they are up to no good.
Santorum? Romney? Gingrich? You have to be kidding me.
Speaking of the nutrition issue, I had to laugh when Florida’s state legislature tried to pass a law restricting what folks could buy with their EBT cards. No soda, candy, chips or other junk food. Ironic? Yes. It didn’t pass, but these are the folks who despise regulation yet insist on regulating people’s behavior while deregulating corporations/businesses. Honestly, I think if Republican voters were given a “connect the dots” test – draw a line from #1 to #2 to #3 and so on – they would fail. They just aren’t capable of linear thinking, reasoning or logic. It’s all motivated by fear and/or hate. They’ve devolved into acting on survival instinct, seeing themselves surrounded by attackers everywhere who want to take all their money, stuff and then their lives.
That is my take. It is that same jingoistic drumbeat the rich always use to get their beta male serfs to do their bidding and fix their mind on the other rather than the real source of their low status and lack of power.
It’s come down to too many people doing most of their thinking with the “lizard brain” and leaving their intellect and common sense out. Fear and loathing rule the day for some of those former Hillary supporters.
Then there is the theory that supporting the Republicans this time means they’ll screw up and then next time we can have our McDreamy Democratic candidate. I don’t believe that would be the outcome for a minute but, assuming it was, I wouldn’t vote for the devastation and ruined lives that 4 to 8 years of these Theocrat assholes in power could yield. That would be incredibly stupid, unless as one of the priviledged you couldn’t be hurt by it.
“Then where will we be?”
We will be in a theocracy, I fear. As Bill Moyers has said, our nation is not yet a theocracy but the Republican party is.
Theocracy, indeed. Obama accepting the principle that religion is a valid reason to discriminate against women has put us on the on-ramp to the four-lane highway to that destination.
For a non-GOP perspective from someone whose blood boils at the mention of that lying sac, here are my feelings.
He’s advanced every Republican agenda from Day One. Torture, detention without trial, even assassination without trial, etc., etc., etc. The anti-woman fiasco is just another ongoing betrayal in an endless string of them. Like Vastleft says, “Would you rather have Gingrich deny you PlanB?” I don’t see a lot of difference, in FACT, not in speeches, between the two sides.
He’s advanced every Republican agenda without pushback from any opposition. He may not have as evil an agenda as the total crazzies, but as Black Agenda Report says, he’s the more effective evil.
George Soros actually had the best summary, talking about a Romney-Obama matchup: There’s no real difference between them, except in the crowd they bring with them.
Now, that is a real difference. It’s not nothing. For me, personally, it’s not enough. Although I read all BB’s posts about Romney. He may yet veer close enough to “too crazy.”
Santorum, for instance, is right over the line. If it looked like he was in danger of winning California, then, yup, I’d vote for the lying sac.
But short of that, I’m a conscientious objector to participating in my own destruction by participating in either of the two parties. It doesn’t mean I won’t get destroyed by whatever crap is coming down the pike, but at least I’ll know I did not go gently.
Orrin Hatch resurrects John Kyl’s claim that 95% of what Planned Parenthood does is ABORTION! And the new head of the Family Research Council agrees: http://patrickhenrypress.info/node/571941
Orrin Hatch has been targeted by the Tea Party to be “primaried” for some inexplicable reason since he is and always has been a hard core conservative.
This probably accounts for his idiocy in making that statement about Planned Parenthood that is also the target of the Radical Right again for reasons that make no sense.
It is insanity like this that is giving me agita when I see those comments to replace Obama (who should have been primaried) with this ever reaching form of religious fascism.
The whole country has gone nuts.
Orrin Hatch has been a life long career politician that should retire, he is pushing lies to hurt women’s access to health care. I got my health care via Planned Parenthood, because I was young with a young child and they offered care. I also took my baby to a pediatrician that they recommended that took payments for care and who was down the road from them.
Planned Parenthood did my work physicals for work and that allowed me to support my child and continue with school. I would often go to my appointments and as I would enter there would be a man who would yell things at you. I never said anything, and this man would be at mass on Sundays. There were no other sliding scale clinics and that is where I got my health care until I could afford health insurance. Yes, Planned Parenthood was and is a supportive service for the working poor. In those days, I think I made a little over the minimum wage and when I worked grave yard, I got a 50 cents differential, I think for the shift!?!
Men like Orrin Hatch just drool at the opportunity to attack women, that is just what he is doing, just as that man would yell at me as I entered the clinic for my medical appointments. Only 3% of Planned Parenthood services are abortion related and they now serve women and men.
https://twitter.com/#!/PPact/status/170145684966752260
I wonder what this is about…
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/02/16/426850/democratic-women-boycott-issas-contraception-hearing-for-preventing-women-from-testifying/
Just look at the picture at the bottom of the article.
😯
The Chairman of the Committee won’t let women testify because the hearing is “about religious liberty, not about contraception”?
😯
Next up, declare women are three-fifths of a person so their
ownershusbands can still claim survivor’s benefits when they die?Talk about a witch hunt going on by Rep Darrell Issa…………….he had the woman removed from the building, and said this was HIS meeting.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/rep-darrell-issa-bars-minority-witness-a-woman-on-contraception-2/
What did Pelosi think was going to happen when she stood silent when President Obama did the bidding of the Republican Party, when he signed the President Obama Stupak Executive Order? The GOP thinks they can step all over women, but the stepping started when they didn’t count Hillary’s votes in the primaries.
We need more women elected to office, as I don’t think we should be kicked out of hearing and preventing from testifying on issues that involve WOMEN, US! 😥
Just another wonderful bit of news from The Sunshine State: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/fl-house-passes-tax-cut–package-20120215,0,5001404.story
Live feed of the House hearing on contraception.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/16/watch-live-house-republicans-hold-hearing-on-contraception/
So far I haven’t seen any women on screen….
Two of the men–Dems I assume–have commented on the absence of women on the committee.
Thank you for the link. I watched for a bit, but I had to stop when the asshole from SC started ranting. Jeebus, I think back to the seventies, when it felt as if women were making real progress, and compare it to today and I just want to cry. Freedom, especially women’s freedom, is so tentative.
Let me know if you see Santorums Uterus or Issa’s Uterus that make them so qualified to speak on women’s issues.
We need to tie all these attacks on women to viagra and other treatments for ED as this is act of kicking women out of hearings as if they are SECOND CLASS citizens is simply unacceptable.
Call your congress person let them know we ARE WATCHING!
Eleanor Holmes Norton and Carolyn Maloney walked out of the hearing in protest.
http:/thinkprgoress.org/health/2012/02/16/426850/democratic-women-boycott-issas-contraception-hearing-for-preventing-women-from-testifying/
this Fugger said it’s not about women, it’s about religious rights.
their religion = slavery
We lost so much in 2008 and I am beginning to see that if we don’t push back the academics that said the set back was 24+ years for women and their rights…were right. 😥 I am so upset.
Ooop
http:/thinkprogress.org/health/2012/02/16/426850/democratic-women-boycott-issas-contraception-hearing-for-preventing-women-from-testifying/