Unless invited, please stay out of my vagina

Which of these statements are true?

A. The sun revolves around Earth.

B. Masturbating gives you warts and makes you blind.

C. Abortions may cause breast cancer.

D. The Pill may cause prostate cancer.

E. Recreational sex is bad. 

Of course, since you are smart and well educated and better informed than certain male legislators in this country, you have correctly decided that all the above statements are false! Yet A. and B. were once believed, D. is ridiculous but you can find a study that links The Pill usage with increased prostate cancer, however the connection is spurious. And E ? Well, certainly the man above would tell us "recreational" sex is bad. C. That abortions raise the probability of breast cancer has long been found to be false but the Republicans like to keep it in circulation, just as the medieval mind had trouble accepting the idea that the Earth is not the center of the universe, evidence to the contrary.

Lorraine Dusky

Despite this, last week the New Hampshire state house passed a bill that requires women who want to terminate their pregnancies to be informed that abortions have been linked to "an increased risk of breast cancer." As one Democrat woman, minority leader Terie Norellie observed, the legislature was making it a felony for a doctor "to not give a patient inaccurate information about abortion." Absurd, yes.

GOP WADES INTO DEEP ... PELVIC POLITICS
Yet New Hampshire is far from alone with a pack of patriarchal politicians pursuing pelvic policies:

In Colorado, the Republican majority in the House is attempting to make both termination of pregnancy in some circumstances and the use of the morning after pill a first-degree homicide. The bill would confer "personhood" on a newly fertilized egg. This is weird because the morning-after pill does not prevent implantation of a fertilized embryo; the most recent study indicates it works much like birth control pills, preventing the embryo from being fertilized.

In Arizona, pending legislation passed by Republicans would require employees (that is, women) whose employers object to birth control on "religious or moral" grounds to explain exactly why they need to take the pill for reasons other than contraception, such as monthly acne or to dissolve a cyst. That means the employee (that is, a woman) would have to explain to her boss why she needed to take the pill. I can see that everybody would be comfortable with that. Perhaps the women could come with pictures or other supporting materials.

A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to "accuser." But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain "victims." Obviously no one in this guy's family (that he is aware of) has ever been an "accuser" in a rape.

In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that could make it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, that's for real.)

Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids. Let's hear it for The Adoption Option.

Republicans in Congress have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life. (Also real.)

Maryland Republicans ended all county funding for a low-income kids' preschool program. Why? No need, they said. Women should really be home with the kids, not out working. At the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool. Let's hear it again for The Adoption Option.

Republicans are pushing to eliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. However, Republican Dan Burton (IN) has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can't make this stuff up; no one would believe you.

Idaho’s state senate voted today to force women to undergo an invasive trans-vaginal ultrasound (as well as a regular non-invasive ultrasound) in order to terminate a pregnancy, the eighth state to do so. More than 110 state House members were co-sponsors of the “Women’s Right to Know” bill, as it was called, which was modeled on the law already in effect in Texas. Virginia's similar requirement for a medically unnecessary and invasive procedure will go into effect in July. The current hubbub over these procedures led to some of the legislatures backing down: a similar bill in Pennsylvania has been tabled. The guv doesn't see any problem, however. Any woman who objects to the procedure, well, "you just have to close your eyes," advises Gov. Tom Corbett. He didn't say anything about bringing ear plugs, because the bill does require women listen to the fetal heartbeat.

Talk about government intervention...this, ladies, it is, right up your vagina.

The Republican senator who proposed the Idaho bill, Chuck Winder, is now explaining why he believes abortion shouldn't be allowed for rape or incest, and wants the doctor to quiz the woman seeking to terminate a pregnancy to make sure she is not saying it was the result of a "rape" when it wasn't.

REMEMBER THE LADIES....
Other than adoptee rights, First Mother Forum generally tries to stay away from political issues, but the recent attacks on a woman's right to control her own body remind me of how I landed, er, here as a first mother dating from the Sixties. Birth control then was iffy, and not even legal for all until a Supreme Court case, Griswold v Connecticut, made it so in 1965. These spiritual savants of today--Republicans and male--who are dictating public policy would have us return to this antediluvian mindset regarding women and their bodies. And I am plenty ticked off!

Are they using birth control?  Image: ABC News

These warriors against what some call "recreational sex" got all hot and bothered when the Obama administration mandated that all employers (except churches, parishes, synagogues, mosques, etc.) offer contraception under their health insurance plans. We are talking universities, schools, hospitals--big employers, that is, and often the only employer in town for, say, the women in food service or on the cleaning staff.  Though most of these institutions have been offering contraception for years as a health-care benefit, the Catholic Conference of Bishops decreed that was no longer acceptable, not even if their insurers took on the cost of the contraception. They claimed "religious discrimination" as their religion forbids any artificial contraception, despite the practices of 98 percent of all women, regardless of their beliefs or membership. (Despite Rome's best efforts, Catholics use contraception at the same rate as the rest of the female population.) Once the Catholic bishops got involved, evangelicals and their Republican legislators on the state and federal level jumped on the let's-lord-it-over-the-ladies band wagon.

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum is among the bunch, despite a recent avowal from his wife that he will not outlaw contraception. He might not send women to prison for using the pill, but he would make it damn hard for poor women to get. Romney? As governor of Massachusetts, he supported Planned Parenthood; now he wants to eliminate all funding. Women who want "free stuff" like contraception, he has said, should vote "for the other guy." The women who go to Planned Parenthood for services like breast cancer screenings and vaccines?  Romney tells them they can go elsewhere--although he doesn't say how they're going to get these services if they're poor. Gingrich? When George Stephanopolous asked him in a debate about contraception, the recent Catholic convert got all huffy, said the question was out of order, and refused to answer. We would have liked to hear his response, not just a lot of bluster and brimstone. 

ANTEDILUVIAN ANTICS OF THE FAR RIGHT
Once the current contraception commotion erupted, it brought into relief the anti-abortion statutes that some 31 states have put in place making it extremely difficult, prohibitively expensive and entirely unpleasant for women to get an abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute. South Dakota, for instance, has one abortion provider for the entire state (and it's a big state). Nonetheless, it also requires a 72-hour (three day) waiting period after you see the doctor, plus you have to listen to a doctor tell you that you may be more susceptible to breast cancer if you go through with this procedure. 

This law is currently tied up in litigation. But while they're waiting, doctors are still required to question a woman about her religious background and how she thinks her family would react to the decision to end the pregnancy. This is after she's already heard the required cant against abortion at a counseling center. How are those questions any of the state's business? Oh, you're just a woman so the state can invade anywhere it likes. Your personal beliefs. Your Aunt Ida's opinion. Your vagina.

What about men's "right to know" about the counter-indications of say, Viagra? Some women in a few states have proposed such bills, with one in Ohio requiring a stress test every 90 days, and a long talk with a sex counselor about why you need the little blue pill. Oh yes, the bill would require that a man seeking medical assistance for his erectile dysfunction also needs a note from at least one of his sex partners about why he needs help in that department, but that's another story. 

As for the breast cancer/abortion link mentioned in the beginning? We thought that was debunked ages ago. Well, once upon a time, some half-assed study did connect the two; however, later, larger and better-designed studies proved that NO SUCH LINK EXISTED. Yet the doctors in New Hampshire could be mandated to read medically incorrect information to their patients. Talk about government interference! Talk about idiocy. As for the connection between The Pill and prostate cancer? Same kind of study as above; yes someone found that nations with a high use of birth control pills among women also have a rate of prostate cancer in men--but nobody is claiming that one causes the other. Going out on a limb here, it's probably that in sophisticated and wealthier countries where birth control pills are in greater use, more men are tested for prostate cancer and bingo! a connection.

GOP, GET OUT OF MY BED
Faced with a choice between science and religion, science is losing, at least with the Grand Old Party that has become home to evangelicals, the Catholic hierarchy, all sorts of religious zealots who wish to invade women's bodies and control them. These are the very same folks who talk about too much big government intervention in our lives, but they mandate an unnecessary probe into our bodies. We must remember that this is the same country that legalized Prohibition (1919-1933), making drinking alcohol of all kinds illegal. This is the granddaughter of a small town bootlegger writing here. Grandma made gin in the bathtub, and I will go on opposing this current invasion of women's sexual privacy until I breathe my last breath.

One can hope that this ridiculous step backwards into a time-machine circa 1900 is but a momentary blip on the horizon that will fade soon. Let the Catholic bishops and evangelical preachers and all other religious leaders who espouse control over women's bodies practice birth control themselves. In fact, that just might lead to fewer adoptions, which we are all for. But let my sisters go. Let women be free to control their own bodies, their own lives. Let government stay out of our bedrooms, our thoughts, our vaginas.--lorraine

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I am recovering from rotator cuff surgery last Tuesday but typing is still a trial and very tiring. The tear was larger than the doctor expected--five centimeters. There is not much pain but it is exasperating as my arm is immobilized, and in a huge sling that looks like a commando operation. I am learning how to write with my left hand, which I supposed is a good thing. But I need a shower and I want a trip to the beauty salon! But my blood has been riled by what has been going on all over the country, and in DC. The coming election is very important for women, more so than since...er, 1973.

From FMF:

An aspirin for birth control? We are not laughing
Bishops bally-hoo over birth control is a blow against my freedoms
To understand ourselves, we must know where we came from