On July 13, the Texas Senate passed an anti-abortion bill that promotes unforn fetuses over the rights of adult women.
The bill was passed in a vote of 19-11.
The law:
- Bans abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, four weeks earlier than the standard set by the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade.
- Requires all clinics to become ambulatory surgical centers, even if they do not provide surgical abortions.
- Requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals within 30 miles of the facility.
- Allows abortions only in surgical centers.
- Requires abortion providers to administer the abortion-inducing medication RU-486 in person, rather than allow women to take it at home.
Democrats countered that childbirth is more dangerous than abortion and there have been no serious problems with women taking abortion drugs at home. They introduced amendments to add exceptions for cases of rape and incest, and allow doctors more leeway in prescribing abortion-inducing drugs.
The right-wing Republican majority overruled these proposed changes–and sent the bill to rightist Republican Governor Rick Perry to sign into law.
On July 17, Planned Parenthood informed staffers that three of its facilities in Texas would be closing–a major goal of the legislation.
So what’s behind all this fetus fanaticism?
Several factors.
First, there is an energized constituency for politicians willing to wave this red flag. Almost every major Republican Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan has tapped into this voting bloc. And each has found plenty of votes to be gotten from it.
Second, many fetus fanatics are more than a little obsessed with sex. These are the same people who, in Victorian times, used “white meat” when ordering a chicken breast and “dark meat” when ordering a chicken thigh.
Third, many fetus fanatics are flat-out hypocrites. For example: Representative Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), an anti-abortion, “family values” doctor, had an affair with a patient and later pressured her to get an abortion.
Fourth, many fetus fanatics feel guilty about their own past sexual transgressions-–especially if these resulted in pregnancy. And they want to prevent others from living the same life they did.
Fifth, many fetus fanatics embrace contradictory goals. On one hand, most of them claim they want to “get government off the backs of the people.”
That usually means allowing corporations to pollute, sell dangerous products and treat their employees as slaves.
On the other hand, they want to insert the government into the vagina of every woman. That means empowering State and Federal authorities to prevent women from getting an abortion-–even in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
Sixth, many fetus fanatics simply dislike women. They fear and resent the women’s movement, which has given women the right to enter the workforce and compete directly with men.
And what they hate most is the legal right of a woman to avoid becoming pregnant via birth control-–or to abort the result of a male’s sperm if they do.
They see this as a personal rejection. Perhaps it reminds many of them of their own failures in romance/marriage.
The Right is made up overwhelmingly of white males. And many of these men would feel entirely at home with a Christianized version of the Taliban. They long for a world where women meekly cater to their every demand and believe only what their male masters approve for them to believe.
The trouble for these men is they don’t speak Arabic.
Seventh, many leaders of the fetus-fanatics movement are independently wealthy. This means that even if abortion could be outlawed for the vast majority, they could always bribe a willing doctor-–here or abroad-–to perform such an operation on their wife, daughter and/or mistress.
For them, there is always an escape clause.
Eighth, many fetus fanatics are not truly “pro-life.” They totally oppose abortion under most-–if not all–-circumstances. But they also fully support capital punishment, going to war for almost any reason, wholesale massacres of wildlife and despoiling of the environment, and even nuclear war.
And many of those who fanatically defend the right of a fetus to emerge from the womb just as fanatically oppose welfare for those mothers who can’t support that newborn.
Ninth, many fetus fanatics believe that since their religion teaches that abortion is wrong, they have a moral duty to enforce that belief on others.
This is especially true for evangelical Christians. These are the same people who condemn Muslims-–such as those in Saudi Arabia-–for segregating women, forbidding them to drive and forcing them to wear head scarfs or chadors-–loose, usually black robes.
But while they condemn Islamics for their general intolerance of others’ religious beliefs, they lust to impose their own upon those who belong to other churches. Or who belong to no church at all.
Tenth, many fetus fanatics are just as opposed to birth control as they are to abortion. Thus, when Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke asked Congress to require insurance companies to cover birth control, Rush Limbaugh branded her a “slut” and a “prostitute.”
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ABORTION CAUSES DROUGHT (REALLY!)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on July 1, 2015 at 1:03 pmBureaucracies are not made up of robot-like machines. They are comprised of flesh-and-blood men and women.
That includes even the most important bureaucracies–such as those of the House, Senate and White House.
And as much as Americans like to believe their elected leaders always behave rationally and intelligently, they don’t. In fact, they can’t.
In a democracy, those who hold public office reflect the values of those who sent them there.
The issue of climate change/global warming vividly illustrates this truth.
From 2012 to 2014, more than 9,000 scientists published research about climate change. Each report reached the same conclusion: Climate change was manmade.
Yet during that same period, 23% of Americans–one in four–said they didn’t believe in climate change, according from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communications in January, 2013.
Meanwhile, the winter of 2014-15 was the warmest on record worldwide, according to a report released by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on March 18.
For meteorological record-keeping purposes, NOAA defines winter as lasting from December through February in the Northern Hemisphere.
During those months of 2014-15, the temperature was 1.42 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average for all land and ocean areas. This topped the previous warmest winter of 2007 by 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit.
Global temperature records are available for the period 1880-2015.
California, for example, is now entering its fourth year of extreme drought–its worst in a generation.
The state’s Save Our Water’s campaign is urging Californians to “Let It Go” by limiting outdoor water use and letting lawns turn brown during the summer, while saving water for trees and other important landscapes.
Click here: California Drought
And when people reject science, they usually fall back on superstition for their “solutions” to life’s problems.
One of these is Republican Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, who represents Kern County in Central California.
Shannon Grove
Grove has a unique explanation for California’s worsening drought: Climate change/global warming has nothing to do with it. It’s God’s wrath over legalized abortion.
Speaking before the California ProLife Legislative Banquet held in Sacramento on June 8, Grove said:
“Texas was in a long period of drought until Governor Perry signed the fetal pain bill,” she told the audience. “It rained that night. Now God has his hold on California.”
Grove was referring to House Bill 2, a Texas bill banning abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, four weeks earlier than the standard set by Roe v. Wade. It’s based on the unproven assertion that fetuses can feel pain after 20 weeks.
In addition, the bill:
“This is the infallible word of God,” Grove said, holding a Bible above her head as attendees clapped. “I fear Him more than I fear anyone.”
Among her audience at the Grand Hotel were anti-abortion activists and clergy, including Catholic Bishops for Life, Pray California, Californians for Life and the California Republican Assembly.
Grove serves on the Agriculture Committee in the California State Assembly.
And in a June 11 post on her Facebook page, she wrote:
“I believe–and most Americans believe–that God’s hand is in the affairs of man, and certainly was in the formation of this country.
“The Founders put God in the center of this nation by recognizing Him as a giver of our rights.
“Is this drought caused by God? Nobody knows.
“But biblical history shows a consequence to man’s actions; we do know for sure that California’s water shortage crisis has been compounded by liberal politicians’ poor decisions – not properly managing our water resources and refusing to build water storage for decades.”
But not all anti-abortion activists don’t agree with Grove’s theory.
“We are huge fans of Shannon Grove and all her efforts in Sacramento on behalf of life,” Marylee Shrider, executive director of Right to Life of Kern County, told The Bakersfield Californian.
“That being said, we have not made a connection between the drought and abortion here in California.”
Pro-Choice Kern County called her comments “absolute lunacy” and created a mock-up of a T-shirt: “I made a desert with my abortion and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
Grove isn’t alone in believing that God’s displeasure lies behind the drought.
Another is Bill Koenig, the conservative editor of World Watch Daily. God, he asserts, is righteously enraged at California’s acceptance of same-sex marriage and abortion.
“We’ve got a state that over and over again will go against the word of God, that will continually take positions on marriage and abortion and on a lot of things that are just completely opposed to the scriptures.”
Abortion is a ready culprit for natural disasters–in the sermons of fundamentalist preachers.
Evenaglist Pat Roberts blamed abortion for Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
And Steve Lefamine, the director of Columbia Christians for Life in South Carolina, agreed with Robertson that abortion caused Hurricane Katrina.
In an interview with the Washington Post, he claimed that when he viewed the full-color satellite map of the hurricane, he saw an 8-week-old fetus in the image
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