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Women’s Bill of Rights, and more

by Dan Burns on April 10, 2013

538554_417321918296055_196601040368145_1516637_2083533339_nRep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced a resolution that could be termed that, though it’s not the official title, in the U.S. House in late February. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) is a co-sponsor. This is from an email I got, from UltraViolet, a tremendously righteous advocacy organization.
 

The last two years have seen nothing but a constant assault on women’s rights–everything from blocking our access to abortions, to allowing our employers to make our health care decisions, to the insane idea that rape victims can’t get pregnant.
 
In fact, the last two years saw a record-breaking number of attacks on women’s access to health care.
 
Now, some leaders in Congress are finally showing what it means to be pro-woman. The Women’s Bill of Rights has been introduced in Congress by progressive champions Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Rep. Gwen Moore and Rep. Louise Slaughter. It covers everything from ensuring equal pay for equal work, paternal leave and paid sick days, and increasing access to reproductive health care and birth control.

…READ MORE

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Anti-choice provision dropped from MN health exchange

by Dan Burns on March 17, 2013

rightsConservaDems did what they could, but, thankfully, our majorities are just big enough.

 

The Health Insurance Exchange (HIX) is getting close to a governor’s signature. It has passed the House and is expected to pass in the Senate. With Governor Dayton’s signature, the health exchange will be law.

 

It is not a perfect bill, but a lot of things went right in the process.

 

First, the House had tacked on some abortion language via an amendment. That got stripped in committee and although there was an attempt to reissue the amendment in the House and send it back to committee, it was not successful. That was important.

 

(mnpACT!)

 

For those appalled and disgusted by the continued War on Women, this is very much tempered by what’s been going on across the northwest border.

 

Arkansas’s “heartbeat” ban was modified to begin at 12 weeks of pregnancy in order to force it through the legislature for approval. No such machinations were necessary in North Dakota, where anti-choice legislators eager to enact any restriction they could find chose to propose a straight ban that would make abortion illegal at the point that an embryonic heart beat can be detected. That would be around six weeks or even earlier via vaginal ultrasound, and less than two weeks after a woman has missed her period.

 

For any woman, trying to verify a pregnancy, set up an appointment, and jump through any of the hoops necessary to obtain an abortion in less than two weeks after a missed period would be a hardship. But for the women of North Dakota, where the sole clinic offering abortions is on the east end of the state, straddling the Minnesota border, it would be virtually impossible. And that’s just what politicians are hoping for. This session already involves, among other things, bills that would ban “abortion” at conception (even though you can’t have an abortion before you are pregnant), as well as some forms of birth control.

 

(RH Reality Check)

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Unconscionable poverty levels among older women

by Dan Burns on March 15, 2013

This is from about a year ago. Presumably there will be a new study out soon. It’s unlikely that anything has changed much. If anything, probably for the worse, given rising food and energy costs.

 

Using the Elder Economic Security Standard Index, which defines the basic expenses facing retired adults over the age of 65, the organization’s researchers found that an older adult required from $19,100 to $29,000 a year, depending on the individual’s housing situation. Forty-nine percent of white women and 61 percent of older Asian women were unable to meet their monthly expenses for housing, food, health care and other necessities. Three out of four African-American and Hispanic women had insufficient funds…

 

The report found that the annual income of the typical older woman was $14,000, compared with $24,300 for men. Retirement income of women was less because they had worked in low-wage industries and were paid less (than) in male-dominated fields.

 

And what would conservatives do about not just this, but to women’s access to resources and opportunity in general?

 

The latest Ryan budget puts a tight cap on the area of the budget that funds vital supports for low-income girls and young adults, like nutrition assistance for expectant mothers and their children, child development, childcare, and education assistance. Adult women struggling to feed their families would see their food stamp (or SNAP) benefits cut. Changes to Medicaid would jeopardize women’s access to affordable health care and long-term care — making matters worse for women doing their best to care for themselves, their children, and their aging parents — and turning Medicare into a voucher program would shift costs onto senior women, jeopardizing their future economic security.

 

Shifting gears, I found this to be rather compelling.

 

In his profile my husband says he’s divorced, which is sort of true, but not really, because neither of us has even filed yet. We have been separated a few years though.

 

I’m barely on Match.com. I keep getting emails with photos of possible matches, and encouragement to complete my profile so others can find me. Out of curiosity I sometimes click on the photos in the emails and read the profiles, but I haven’t contacted anyone. They all seem nice enough, but I think it might be because I can’t tell who’s nice enough and who’s not.

 

From my husband’s photos and info, he seems like a great guy.

 

I’d never be able to tell he’s the kind of guy who’d kick a woman a week after she’s had a baby, or drag her around by her hair, or hit her or spit on her or swing a chair at her or choke her or scream at her about how deformed she is.

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MN House votes to restrict reproductive rights

by Dan Burns on March 6, 2013

I’ve expressed concern, before, on this site, that Conservadems would screw everything up, once the GOP was, deservedly, rendered essentially powerless in state governance. The primary basis for that was of course experience of how Conservadems screwed us all, at the national level, in 2009-10. Sure ’nuff:

 

One (amendment) that did pass was introduced by Faribault DFL Rep. Patti Fritz, which said no health plans sold on the exchange could provide coverage for abortion unless the procedure was needed to prevent the death of the mother or in cases of rape or incest…

 

If the abortion restrictions make it into the final version of the legislation, they might draw a veto from Dayton. An administration spokeswoman said that, “The governor has a long record of supporting a woman’s right to choose. We look forward to seeing the final version of the exchange bill.”

 

The federal health care law permit states to prohibit plans on the exchange from providing abortion coverage and at least 17 states have enacted legislation to restrict abortion coverage.

 

(MPR)

 

Some Democrats are proving very problematic on rational gun laws, too, despite overwhelming public support for common-sense measures.

 

I’m fairly certain that we’ll get a little bump in tax rates on the rich, this session, but quite possibly not much else of the change that’s needed. A**holes. Hopefully I’m wrong.

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Real VAWA passes U.S. House

by Dan Burns on February 28, 2013

On Thursday, by a vote of 286 to 138, the House passed the bipartisan Senate-approved version of the bill — one that includes added protections for LGBT, Native American, and undocumented victims of domestic violence. All 138 votes against the bill were Republicans.

 

A watered down Republican version of the bill, which was offered as a substitute amendment, failed to garner enough votes to slow the process. It was struck down by a vote of 257 to 166. Sixty Republicans voted against their own party’s replacement measure.

 

Think Progress

 

Once again, the somewhat-less-insane minority of the GOP caucus in the House broke from the numerically dominant crazies, and teamed with Democrats to pass key legislation. (They did the same thing with the debt ceiling tax cliff and Hurricane Sandy relief.) Part of the calculation is certainly political, though I like to think that there still are some Republicans that are motivated, at least on occasion, not only by some degree of rationality, but even empathy and other normal human feelings. In any case, it will be interesting to see whether this repeats as a way of dealing with the sequester.

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War on Women builds in the Upper Midwest

by Dan Burns on February 25, 2013

The War on Women proceeds, vehemently and shamelessly. It’s at least as bad as it was before the election. It seems that the crazies know, or rather crudely sense at some level below conscious comprehension, the way bugs do, that the current socio-political environment in the U.S. may be their last chance. Here’s a sampling, just from states in the Upper Midwest:

 

- The North Dakota Senate has passed a 20-week ban.

 

- The South Dakota House passed an extended waiting period; weekends and holidays would no longer count toward the current three-day delay.

 

- You may not have known that, last year, Wisconsin law making medication abortions harder to access went into effect. Planned Parenthood’s court challenge is pending.

 

- Michigan has a raft of brutal new assaults on choice, thanks to its infamous lame-duck session.

 

- After all that, this might lighten your mood, maybe just a little.

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Violence Against Women Act passes Senate

by Dan Burns on February 13, 2013

I follow politics, and in the contemporary U.S., that unfortunately means that I have no choice but to follow conservative politics.  Which means that I see a lot of pathetic, despicable stuff.  But rarely as, and never more, pathetic and despicable than this.

The conservative grassroots is pushing lawmakers to vote against the Senate’s reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which has 62 cosponsors and is slated for a final vote early this week.

Heritage Action and FreedomWorks, two well-financed right wing activist groups, are lobbying to scuttle the reauthorization. In short, they lament the expanded provisions, which beefs up funding for local law enforcement to prosecute domestic abusers while expanding coverage to gays, illegal immigrants and Native Americans. They claim VAWA hasn’t proved to be effective and argue that federal funding for law enforcement is both redundant and unconstitutional…

“Under VAWA, men effectively lose their constitutional rights to due process, presumption of innocence, equal treatment under the law, the right to a fair trial and to confront one’s accusers, the right to bear arms, and all custody/visitation rights,” the group wrote. “It is unprecedented, unnecessary and dangerous.”

It so happens that the VAWA passed the U.S. Senate today.  The linked article has a little photo group of the 22 Senators that voted against.  Note the ignorance reflected in those vile faces, the narcissism, the fear, the greed…

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McCollum pushes for VAWA

by Dan Burns on January 30, 2013

From last week:

Congresswoman Betty McCollum (MN-04) joined Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-WI) and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI) in introducing the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization (H.R. 11). This bill reauthorizes protections and services that have been responsible for a 50 percent reduction in domestic violence. H.R. 11 also provides better assistance to abuse victims…

(from McCollum’s statement)”Now is the time for House Republicans to stop obstructing and support the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.”

The atrocious behavior of House Republicans in this matter is well known.  It’s unclear, whether that will change for the better.

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Why I’m pro-choice

by Dan Burns on January 22, 2013

(Today is NARAL’s eighth annual “Blog for Choice” day.  This year, participants are being asked to share their stories about why they’re pro-choice.)

I have an unusually copious and accurate memory, and I retain a vague but definitely real recollection of being at Catholic Mass, as I was every week with my family, the Sunday morning after Roe v. Wade was handed down. I was eleven, and in the congregation; it wasn’t my turn to be an altar boy, that week. And while I certainly can’t reproduce his words, I know that there wasn’t shouting and ranting on the part of the priest.  A grim determination, to see this purported horror righted, and soon, was what came through.

I don’t think that I really knew what was going on, with the abortion thing.  But if conservatives were against abortion, than so was I, because I was definitely a hard-nosed little conservative.  I eagerly read the Reader’s Digest and the American Legion magazines that were delivered monthly to the door, and spent many fascinated hours piecing together those little plastic models of warplanes and battleships. Your typical small-town boy from the Upper Midwest, I suppose, except that I read a lot more, and without much of an understanding of editorial bias.

More below the fold.
My political views didn’t make their great leap leftward until my junior and senior years of high school, and though I’ve thought about it long and hard, I can’t precisely say how and why that happened. I do know that it had a lot to do with a growing realization of how things really work in this world, and of the vast chasms between the pious platitudes that many proclaimed in church and elsewhere, and the ways in which they really behaved. But a lot of it was probably more or less subconscious, grounded in a general sense of compassion and indignation at unfairness. Over the years, plenty of other progressives who grew up conservative, with whom I’ve discussed this matter, reported similar experiences.

The point of these autobiographical notes, in this context, is that I can’t identify a particular experience or realization that made me the (vehement) pro-choicer that I’ve always been as an adult.  Some of it certainly has to do with my scientific understanding of how bizarre it is to claim that an insensate lump of protoplasm is somehow endowed with “rights” surpassing those of the woman in whose uterus it happens to be. And another part of it is grounded in an understanding of the horrors that result when full reproductive choice is not legally available.

But there’s no “eureka” moment that I can share and – this is the real point – that might work to persuade others. I think that it’s mostly just believing in basic human rights, like those of women and girls not to be used as man-serving baby boxes, or those of anyone not to be forced into wars. (I drew that parallel deliberately; both are grounded in “I/we control/own everything of yours; your life, your health, your reproduction, everything.”) And I don’t know of a way that works, on a large scale, for getting through to reactionaries with all of that. Crude dogmatism and cognitive rigidity, in unfortunately massive quantities, really are among the greatest challenges of all to overcome. But, progress has been, and is being, made.

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Firing up more attacks on choice

by Dan Burns on January 10, 2013

Actually, it’s more of the same.  The zealots are possessed of nothing if not brute, unreasoning stubbornness.  Here’s a list of efforts at the federal level, with #1 being:

H.R. 23: Sanctity of Human Life Act

H.R. 23 is as extreme as it gets. A “personhood” bill to define life as beginning at fertilization, this measure could ban abortion with no exceptions, block access to forms of birth control, and outlaw medical treatments such as in vitro fertilization or the treatment of pregnant women with cancer. Voters in conservative states like Mississippi and Colorado have already rejected this extreme and dangerous measure by overwhelming margins, but that didn’t stop Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) prioritizing this for the first full day of session.

And regarding the states.

“They are relentless in their efforts to ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade,” NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan told Mother Jones, noting that 21 states have legislatures and governors that oppose abortion rights. “It’s tough to stop anything when the entire government is controlled by anti-choice politicians. In those 21 states, it’s going to be heartbreaking to watch what they’re going to advance the next legislative cycle.”


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