Tag Archives: CHIP

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

Posted on by

Greetings, Dear Readers! Highlighting the hypocrisy of Republicans is a regular occurrence on this blog, so we’ll start this post off with yet another example of how their words don’t always match up with their actions.

  • You’re familiar with CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, correct? For those who aren’t, CHIP is a federally funded program that provides health insurance to 9 million U.S. children whose families earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to pay for health insurance. Additionally, 370,000 pregnant women receive care under CHIP.

    Well, the funding for that program expired on September 30. And our Republican-controlled congress is in no hurry to do anything about that. They are, however, working ULTRA diligently to rush through tax cuts for the richest Americans ASAP.

    The health and lives of almost 10 million Americans is hanging in the balance! Where are our “pro-life” leaders when we need them? Preparing to fork over barrels of cash to the wealthy. (WaPo)
  • BTW, this dumb-ass tax cut bill has “personhood” language in it! (Snopes)
  • Also, Ivanka should stop pretending this dumb-ass tax cut bill will help women and families! It won’t! So girl, give it up! (American Progress)
  • Roy Moore’s allegedly prolific history of preying upon teen girls as an adult may take a back seat to the issue of abortion in this month’s Alabama Senate race. It’s not all that surprising, really. Republican legislators and voters often prove to value unborn, potential children over actual ones who’ve left the womb. (Buzzfeed)
  • Alex Azar, Trump’s pick for Department of Health and Human Services secretary, thinks that an employer’s personal views about birth control should take precedence over a woman’s needs, aspirations, potential existing health issues, financial and mental fitness for a child, and RIGHT to control her own body. Alex is a moron and a misogynist. He’ll be right at home within the Trump Administration. #BirdsOfAFeather (Newsweek)
  • Nineteen Democratic state attorneys general disagree with Alex Azar. In a brief filed earlier this week, they argue that “allowing employers with religious or moral objections to contraception to block their employees from receiving coverage violates the constitutional separation of church and state and encourages illegal workplace discrimination against women.” We agree! (Bloomberg)
  • Not only does sexual education need to be more comprehensive and robust, it also needs to be FAR more inclusive of LGBTQ students. (Refinery29)
  • Notre Dame reversed its decision regarding birth control coverage in its health plans. They better keep it that way, dammit. (NPR)
  • Could not agree with this article more: Adoption Is Not a Universal Alternative to Abortion, No Matter What Anti-Choicers Say. (Rewire)
  • Despite their best efforts, the Trump Administration lost its fight to keep Jane Doe, a migrant teen, from having an abortion. But those vindictive goons are still fighting — to stop other pregnant teens like her from obtaining abortions, and to get the Supreme Court to sanction the lawyers who challenged the administration. UGH! (Mother Jones)

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

Posted on by
  • Earlier this week, the tools in Congress voted to ban abortion at 20 weeks. They totally, ignorantly ignored the fact that many fetal anomalies cannot be discovered until past that period in a woman’s gestation. Alexis Miller, who was overjoyed to be pregnant, is one of those women and her story of needing a late abortion is powerful. (Time)
  • More Congressional tomfoolery to report on this subject. These morons justified their vote to criminalize abortion after 20 weeks by using the awful mass shooting that took place a few days ago in Las Vegas to illustrate how much they value life and “have” to protect it. Really? How about passing some restrictions on guns, then? How many 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old children died in Sandy Hook? Why do these lawmakers value an unborn fetus the size of a kidney bean more than they do living, breathing human beings??? (Think Progress)
  • Studies indicate that black women have fewer sexual partners and are more likely to use condoms than white women from similar economic backgrounds. And they are not members of the highest-risk demographic: gay and bisexual men. So why are black women in Philadelphia at a higher risk of contracting HIV than their white counterparts? (Philly.com)
  • One thing I never hear anti-abortion folk (who cling to the term “pro-life”) cry over? The fact that the U.S. infant mortality rate among black babies is more than twice as high as it is for white babies. How can you be “pro-life” and never put your advocacy efforts toward helping born children survive? It’s baffling, isn’t it? Luckily, some people DO care, and many cities are turning to doulas to help these babies survive. (WaPo)
  • Anyway, while the folks in the House were passing an abortion ban because they care so much about babies, children, and “life” … they let the Children’s Health Insurance Plan expire, potentially leaving millions of poor children without any health insurance. I guess it’s OK if already-born children suffer and die since technically they’re out of the womb? (HuffPo)
  • Republican hypocrite Tim Murphy, who is SO pro-life he’s never fostered or adopted any children in need, is resigning from Congress after the news that he urged his mistress to have an abortion became public. Murphy, a House Pro-Life Caucus member, voted this week to restrict abortion AGAIN and has a lengthy record of similar votes. The hypocrisy, while not at all stunning, is infuriating. This wretched human being has done everything in his legislative power to take away women’s choices and dominion over their bodies under the guise of valuing life. Yet when a life that HE helped create threatened to disrupt his double life, he was all too willing to terminate it. Good riddance to this trash legislator. Pennsylvania deserves better. (Politico)
  • Could male birth control finally be on the horizon, like, for real?! Maybe! The creators of a male birth control gel (which will be applied on the shoulders, of all places!) designed to inhibit sperm production — while maintaining healthy testosterone levels in the bloodstream — will soon start recruiting 420 couples from around the world to enroll in a new clinical trial. (Scientific American)
  • Rewire has a heartbreaking write-up on the first victim who lost her life due to the Hyde Amendment. Rest in grace, Rosie Jimenez. (Rewire)
  • STDs are at an ALL-TIME HIGH in this country right now! (Time)
  • The Ontario government has introduced groundbreaking legislation that will create protest-free buffer zones around abortion clinics, the homes of doctors and staff, and even pharmacies and offices that provide pills used to terminate pregnancy. Yasss Canada! Kudos to you! (Toronto Star)

Abortion: 1 in 3 Speakout

Posted on by

Here we stood, a score of women at the U.S. Capitol, there to share our personal abortion stories privately with lawmakers and online with the public on March 21, 2017. We were storytellers in the fifth annual “1 in 3 Speakout: Stories from the Resistance.” Our goal — to put a human face on abortion; said in another less ladylike way, to get in our representatives’ grills. We were all darned tired of being characterized by ignorant anti-abortion advocates as shadowy, irresponsible, hypothetical women.

“Hey, talk to us,” we demand of our lawmakers. “We’re real people.”

First, we took our rally to the Capitol steps. Just as crowds began to gather, no doubt curious about our megaphone and pointing to our “I HAD AN ABORTION” and “I STAND WITH 1 IN 3” signs, we were shooed away by police to the more distant location shown in the above photo. We had been in the path of — you guessed it — President Trump’s motorcade. He was making his last-gasp attempts to salvage the Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare. How appropriate to see, just days later, his plan aborted. Continue reading →