Tag Archives: Maryland

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

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  • The POTUS, who is so pro-life he hasn’t fostered or adopted any children in need, has signed legislation that allows states to withhold federal Title X funds for family planning services from clinics that also provide abortions. But thankfully, the change won’t impact Arizona. (AZ Central)
  • For women in other states: Please know, we are listening and we know what’s at stake for all of you. We’re fighting. (Bustle)
  • Impoverished minority women will be ESPECIALLY endangered by this legislation: 80 percent of women who rely on Title X funding are well below the poverty line, and 21 percent are black and 32 percent are Latina. (Ebony)
  • Will absolutely all of my rundowns during this bleak era of GOP dominion include yet another story about how they’re trying their best to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and make us all poorer and sicker and closer to death so rich people can have tax cuts? Signs point to “yes.” (WaPo)
  • The list of the 25 cities with the highest STD rates doesn’t include anywhere in Arizona. Let’s keep it that way? (Insider Monkey)
  • California could be the first state in the country to require its public universities to offer abortion pills on campuses. (Mercury News)
  • Attorneys general from 16 states came out Thursday in support of a Planned Parenthood lawsuit challenging an Ohio law that would deny state and federal funds to organizations providing abortions. (HuffPo)
  • The zero-copay birth control we’ve come to enjoy via Obamacare is still the “law of the land,” but for how much longer? (Rewire)
  • Why does America offer only five versions of the IUD when Britain has 22??? (The Atlantic)
  • Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, who is so pro-life he hasn’t fostered or adopted any children in need, got his you-know-what handed to him by constituents at his town hall last week! (AZ Central)
  • Television is a treasure trove of lies. Abortion depicted on the small screen is 20 times deadlier than in real life, where it’s actually safer for the woman than childbirth. (Slate)
  • New Maryland Bill Would Require Domestic Abusers to Wear GPS Trackers. (NY Mag)
  • Maryland is on a roll! Victims In Maryland No Longer Have To Prove They “Fought Back” For Their Rapes To Be Crimes. (HuffPo)
  • With all of the “out and proud” anti-choice zealots in our government who are proud to admit they think women should be forced to give birth whether they wish to or not, the last thing we need is a phony, wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing turncoat like Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner. He claimed to be pro-choice on the campaign trail in 2013, so why in the hell is he now indicating he will veto a bill protecting the right to choose and permitting coverage of abortion in state health plans and Medicaid? Can the pro-choice voters of Illinois spearhead a gubernatorial recall over this? (Rewire)
  • It would do Gov. Rauner a lot of good to remember that abortion is a matter of economic life or death for women and use the power of his office to help rather than hurt the economic fates of women. (Rewire)
  • “Dystopian” doesn’t even BEGIN to describe how the world would look without Planned Parenthood. (HuffPo)

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

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  • ribbonsThe imbeciles in the state of Kentucky are trying to say that a ban on gay marriage isn’t discriminatory because it bars both gay and straight people from same-sex unions. To me, this is akin to saying you’re going to ban breastfeeding in public places, but you’re going to ban both men and women from breastfeeding, and thus, it’s not discrimination against women! See, magical thinking! No logic necessary!! (ABC News)
  • Arizona Republicans are such big fans of lying that they’ve passed a law that requires doctors to lie to women about abortions being reversible. (The Guardian)
  • Tampons may one day help detect endometrial cancer. (Smithsonian Mag)
  • Why settle for No. 3 when you can strive for No. 1? Apparently, Texas isn’t satisfied having *only* the third highest HIV infection rate in the country, so they’ve cut funding for HIV screenings in favor of abstinence education. Makes all the sense in the world, doesn’t it? #CompassionateConservatism (RH Reality Check)
  • Looks like the fate of Texas will soon be very similar to that of Scott County, Indiana. Planned Parenthood was the county’s sole provider of HIV testing, but the state cut funding and several clinics were forced to close. They’re now suffering an HIV outbreak that its governor has called “an epidemic.” (HuffPo)
  • Speaking of Indiana, their ”religious freedom” bill caused a huge ruckus this week. But instead of just repealing the stupid thing, they’ve “revised it” to ban businesses from denying services to people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. (IndyStar)
  • Wow, so Indiana just keeps on delivering the worst of the worst, don’t they? Purvi Patel has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for feticide and “neglect of a dependent” for having a miscarriage that may have been caused by an abortion pill. She’s not the first woman to face such charges, and these predatory, intrusive laws pretty much guarantee she won’t be the last. (MSNBC)
  • We often hear about what miscarriages cost women emotionally, but what about the financial cost? It’s pretty steep. One woman’s miscarriage cost her tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. (Slate)
  • Maryland has opened an abortion clinic that’s being compared to a “spa.” Naturally, women being able to receive kindness and comfort while undergoing a completely legal medical procedure has some people outraged. (WaPo)
  • The Navajo Nation is being referred to as a “condom desert.” (Al Jazeera America)
  • Hard to express how heartbreaking a read this last piece is — women in abusive relationships suffer in ways many people just can’t fully grasp. They are more likely to contract HIV and less likely to use birth control. And when they do use birth control, it often has to be done via “secret” methods. (Jezebel)

Book Club: Outlaw Marriages

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Sally Ride, the famous astronaut who passed away in July from pancreatic cancer, left an unexpected gift to America’s youth. In her obituary, it was revealed that Ride, the first American woman to travel into outer space, had been in a committed, same-sex relationship for 27 years with her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy. Having quietly come out, she now serves as an important, high-profile role model for LGBTQ youth.

Although it became public knowledge too recently to be included, Ride’s story mirrors those found in a recently published collective biography by Rodger Streitmatter. Outlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples (Beacon Press, 2012) visits the topic of same-sex marriage in the United States, covering 140 years of history in 15 marriages, from 1865 to 2005.

Marriage practices have taken many forms across time and across cultures.

Streitmatter, a professor of journalism at American University in Washington, D.C., profiles the marriages of luminaries ranging from poet Walt Whitman to screen star Greta Garbo, bringing his subjects to life in stories that can be fascinating, poignant, and even humorous. The 15 marriages he chronicles were “outlaw marriages,” because “each pair of men and each pair of women defied the social order by creating sub-rosa same-sex marriages long before such relationships were legally sanctioned.” Continue reading →