Making Headlines

Remember when this guy

And the award for Best Shit-Eating Grin goes to....

said this thing: There is no such thing as a medically necessary abortion, LOL.

He was laughed out of Abortionland. Perhaps more importantly, he was laughed out of the 8th district of the state of Illinois. Tammy Duckworth, FTW!

And not a moment too soon. Consider Ireland, where you can't get an abortion to save your life (LITERALLY). This story is blowing up all over, about a woman who was denied a life-saving abortion while suffering a miscarriage and septicemia. Because Ireland is a life-loving country, they made her wait until the fetus died naturally, by which time her infection had wreaked havoc on her body and, soon after, killed her.

I don't really have much to say. I am completely heartbroken and ENRAGED over this, but the only thing we can do is keep whack-jobs like Walsh and Akin and King out of office. We did a fairly good job last week, and hopefully we can continue to set a global example. Not that I think the US is exemplary in securing the right to choose, but I gotta say: thank goodness I'm not in Ireland.

Whee! Now Let's Get On With It.

via

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

Plea from My Nerves on Election Day

Please vote, y'all. This brown woman's knuckles are turning white from the tension.

I don't even know if anyone DOESN'T vote because everyone on my facebook feed is already showing off their poll sticker and I'm feeling like a lazy ass for not having gotten to my station yet. (I'm heading there now!) But just in case anyone reading this was like "well, I dunno, maybe I won't bother this year because it's raining and the line is three hours long and I'm sure my district won't be swung one way or another by my vote," I'm writing this to implore you, do it anyway.

I was going to say, do it for me, but really won't you do it for us all?

Vote for the candidates and amendments and propositions and initiatives least likely to wreak havoc upon us -- upon our reproductive rights, of course, but not just that: also our access to health services, our ability to afford survival, our attempts to keep our families together and well-fed and well-educated and safe, and the respect we need from society to make our own choices in peace.

2011 and 2012 have been rough on this front; the years leading up to an election usually are. It would be easy to dismiss our politicians' hundreds of anti-choice bills of 2011 as transparent distractions from their daunting mandate to fix the economy...except for the actual damage these policies would do (or have started doing) to individuals, families and society. So we have had to play defense, and it sucks. How many times did we find ourselves "celebrating" with the chorus, "Hooray, we made a horrible bill slightly less horrible before it became law."

We're as tired of living on the defensive as you are. And the day after the election (or whenever the vote-counting dust settles) we'll be back, up and at 'em and energized to push forward for something positive.

Until then, please go to the polls and cast your vote to minimize today's potential damage.