Whee! Now Let's Get On With It.

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Y'all, I am SO RELIEVED. My nerves thank you. Stupid Akin and Mourdock lost their stupid races, and so did stupid Romney. We get to keep expanded health insurance coverage (no pre-existing condition exclusions for me or Desembarazarme!) and copay-free contraception (my neighbor is looking into IUDs as we speak!), we sent many of the frightening rape apologists home, and we don't have to fear uber-conservatives being appointed to the Supreme Court in the next four years (the Arizona 18-week ban is rising through the appeals process right now, eek!).

Note I'm breathing a sigh of relief, not whooping for joy. To me this election represents a pause in the current onslaught -- a shutting-down (ha) of the presumption that anti-choice and anti-justice ideas have momentum -- but not progress in itself. Last night's votes did bring unexpected joy: we got to see several states protect marriage equality (Maine Maryland Minnesota Washington), one state elect the first openly-gay US senator ever (Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin), and one state elect an all-woman Congressional delegation for the first time ever (New Hampshire). But when it comes to the overall status of reproductive justice, I'm still feeling tentative.

We haven't accomplished progress in one night, but maybe now we can forget about those clowns and their circus and get back to work. I don't want to get TOO excited (GOP-controlled House of Representatives) but maybe Obama really will push for some serious advances now, like progressives have hoped all along, feeling so frustrated. Maybe we'll find a way to expand health insurance to ALL people, maybe EC will be available over-the-counter for everyone (and regular oral contraceptive pills too, please!), maybe provider "conscience" will be taken seriously and will also protect those who conscientiously DO provide, and maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe we can combine all our strength and push someone to do something about the Hyde Amendment (update: hey look, Abortion Gang explains!).

It's time, right?

Now...does anyone want to email Barack?

Otherwise I'm just gonna copy/paste this blog post that I just spitballed, and you'll have the embarrassment of being represented by an email written with way too many parenthetical expressions and words in all-caps. The clock is ticking!

xoxoxoxoxoxo,
Placenta Sandwich

When is enough enough?

I remember back in 2008 when some reporter dared to ask Sarah Palin if she was a feminist. I'm pretty sure she said yes, and came up with some jibber-jabber about how just because she's anti-choice doesn't means she's anti-woman, and how the Republican party can actually become the Party for Women.* I think around the same time, John McCain's heavily made-up daughter made a similar plea for women to look to the Republicans to fulfill all their womanly needs and desires. For a while it had seemed, for better or for worse (and likely for the worse), that Republicans wanted to reach out to women and improve their lives. Yes we (Republi)Can!

Fast forward four years, and I can't believe my freaking ears with all this hateful, anti-woman speak being tossed around. And I find it hard to believe that Todd Akin, Steve King, and others are simply so bad at politics that they can't control their verbal diarrhea. I think these people REALLY BELIEVE the nonsense they're promulgating, and it frightens me. I'm scared to think that if I were raped and went to my local congressman he might tell me one of the following: a) I wasn't "legitimately" or "forcibly" raped; b) I can't have an abortion in the event that I become pregnant; c) but don't worry, because when a woman is raped her body has mechanisms to "shut that whole thing down". Maybe I could at least take my story to King, who has never heard of a person getting pregnant through rape, because he's "open to discussion" about that kind of thing. WHAT'S TO DISCUSS?!?!?!

So, I remain thoroughly unconvinced that the Repubs are a party in any way responsive to the needs of women. When you try to tell someone about one of the most serious issues affecting women since the beginning of time, and they don't believe you, then we're dealing with some serious troublemakers. I can't believe any woman would be a Republican after this. All kinds of women get raped, regardless of political affiliation. I hope the women on the right are doing something about this, because the men sure seem not to give a damn who does what to you. I can't believe they're driving me to this point, but I'm starting to wish these neanderthals would face assault. Maybe not "legitimate rape", but just a good fondle would drive the point home of how horrible it is, even without having to deal with the whole pregnancy thing. 

Oh wait, that doesn't actually happen. NM.  

*Now that I think about it, SP did charge women for their rape kits in Alaska, right?