The Kennedy Retirement and the Radicalizing of the Supreme Court

Posted on September 11, 2018 by Rachel Port

Protesters swarmed Washington, DC, to voice their opposition to Brett Kavanaugh.

When Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, alarms went up about overturning Roe v. Wade, which would make abortion once again illegal in many states. As shown in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, in which Kennedy provided the decisive fifth vote overturning Texas’ draconian laws limiting abortion access, one justice can preserve the right to abortion. But Kennedy also voted with the majority in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, when the Supreme Court upheld a state’s right to impose extra requirements — mandatory counseling, waiting periods, etc. — on those seeking abortions. So, while he was willing to curtail access, he never was willing to overturn Roe v. Wade altogether.

In Brett Kavanaugh’s twisted worldview, paperwork is the true burden, while an unwanted pregnancy is not.

But Kennedy was the last independent conservative on the Supreme Court. Anyone Trump nominated was going to be on the far right because he was using the Federalist Society’s list compiled by Leonard Leo. Not quite a kingmaker, but definitely a justice-maker, Leo is also responsible for Justices Roberts, Alito, and Gorsuch.

But some on the right have some doubts about Kavanaugh. In response, the National Review emphasizes Kavanaugh’s judicial defense of “religious freedom.” (Nothing shows the real danger Kavanaugh poses like pundits on the far right reassuring other conservatives.) They lauded Kavanaugh’s ruling in favor of the Trump administration in the case of Jane Doe, the teenage immigrant the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) tried to stop from having an abortion, as “the latest in a long, unbroken line of consistent decisions on issues of religion and abortion.” Continue reading →

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

Posted on January 19, 2018 by Stacey S.

I’ve talked about the high rates of maternal mortality among black women many times on this blog before. Yet still I was surprised and horrified to hear that Serena Williams, a woman with significant privilege and resources, could have easily ended up a statistic after the near-death experience she had giving birth to her daughter. (Vice)

The crude and overt racist in the White House made some truly abhorrent comments last week, condemning countries and continents with majority black populations as “s**thole countries” while wondering aloud why more people from places like “Norway” don’t immigrate to the U.S. Well, Slate has delved into the differences between how our country treats women and families and how Norway treats women and families, and it’s enlightening to say the least. (Slate)

Our xenophobe-in-chief is also “poised to overhaul the HHS civil rights office as part of a broader plan to protect health workers who don’t want to perform abortions, treat transgender patients seeking to transition or provide other services for which they have religious or moral objections.” I have a moral objection to health workers not wanting to treat other human beings who need health care! Health care is a basic human right! (Politico)

College campuses in California could see expanded access to abortion for its students. A first-of-its-kind bill in the California legislature would require student health centers at California public colleges and universities to dispense medication abortion. (Rewire)

The California story is good news because more and more information is emerging to show that medication abortions are safe and effective, and have very low rates of complications. (The Lily)

Some other potential good news: Arizona could become the 10th state to bar mental-health professionals from practicing “conversion therapy,” making attempts to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity illegal. A new bill was introduced into the Legislature last Friday, and we hope with all our hearts it passes! (AZ Central)

The Trump administration is determined to push Title X off the rails and once again, the health care of millions of citizens is at risk. (The Hill)

Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican weasel who considers himself “pro-life” (so much so that he has never fostered or adopted any children in need), recently urged us to “have more babies,” but is still playing hardball over funding health insurance for children who’ve already been born. The Democrats need to take a stand and stop.this.madness. Period. (Splinter News)

When the likes of Mr. Ryan and other opponents of “entitlements” slash assistance for families in need, everyone suffers as a result. Recent research out of the University of Kansas shows a direct link between a family’s ability to access government assistance, such as TANF, and foster care cases. (Rewire)

After losing several court battles in relation to their attempts to bar undocumented immigrant teenage girls from having abortions, the the Trump DOJ has showed its cruel and vindictive true colors. They recently tried to reveal an undocumented teen’s abortion to an uncle who threatened to “beat her” if she terminated her pregnancy. The fact that these people are monsters should be lost on no one at this point. They are fully aware this girl is under a direct threat of violence and instead of protecting her, they’re intentionally putting her at risk of physical harm from an abusive family member. They want this girl punished for having the abortion they tried to prevent. This should chill you to the bone, folks. Seriously. (Slate)

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

Posted on December 15, 2017 by Stacey S.

I love to start the rundowns off with happy news, and the departure of an anti-choice zealot from office is always a happy occasion!

When news broke last week that AZ Rep. Trent Franks was resigning from Congress, it sent shock waves through the state of Arizona. To hear that he had reportedly been hounding female members of his staff to serve as pregnancy surrogates for him and his wife was stunning for many reasons:

1. Ewwwww, this is your boss asking you to have his baby. ACK! NOT NORMAL! AND GROSS!

2. Surrogacy contracts are illegal in Arizona.

3. Trent Franks is “pro-life” and surrogacy is almost surely not in line with “pro-life ideals.”
All of that aside, we should mark the demise of this horrible man by reminding you all of just how terrible he truly was. The one instance that sticks out most in my mind? When he said that more black babies are “devastated” by abortion than slavery. What a repulsive, malicious, and sickening thing to suggest. That blacks are better off suffering through a lifetime of brutality, torture, and subjugation than never having been born. Adios, Trent, you will NOT BE MISSED, fella! (Rewire)

We think this is great news, but for some reason, the teen abortion rate dropping in Colorado by 64 percent isn’t causing jubilation among the anti-choice crowd. Anyone else find that weird? (HuffPo)

I don’t know about you, Dear Readers, but yesterday’s plea from that creepy little GOP weasel, Paul Ryan, for Americans to “have more babies” for economic reasons REALLY ticked me off.

This rich pipsqueak (who whines incessantly about people sometimes needing to draw upon government “entitlements”) sits in total opposition to EVERY policy that would entice people to have more children: universal health care, free or low-cost access to higher education, better funding for public schools, paid family leave, extended social services, a livable minimum wage for all, subsidized childcare, etc. … He and his Republican cohorts are literally opposed to ALL of that which makes having a family less insurmountable.

It’s hypocritical and callous to try to shame people into having “more babies” when he and his party go to extreme lengths to ensure people have NO financial safety net or governmental aid to rely on when they need it. Let’s hope the rumors of this jerk leaving the Senate in 2018 are true. Maybe he can find it in his icy heart to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program before he goes. It’s in danger of leaving millions of children without insurance otherwise. I mean, come on. The health of all the babies he wants us to have has to matter to him, right? (Splinter News)

There have been a lot of headlines lately about the correlation between birth control pills and cancer. But left out of many of these news stories is the fact that hormonal birth control can also protect against certain cancers. Like everything, have conversations with actual medical professionals to figure out what’s best for you! (NY Times)

There may be hope that 45’s attempts to overturn Obamacare’s birth control mandate will fail! (Reuters)

As an Ohio native, I must say I’m horrified at how virulently anti-choice the state seems to have become in the 12 years since I left. Currently, a bill is headed to the governor’s desk that would ban abortion in the event a fetus is diagnosed with Down syndrome. Doctors who perform an abortion while aware of the diagnosis would lose their medical licenses in the state and face a fourth-degree felony charge. Is there any chance that maybe the men behind this bill are parents or adoptive parents of children with Down syndrome? I’m guessing no, but it’s nice to know they value the lives of these children. We can only hope that since they are taking families’ choices away, they will somehow provide meaningful support each time one is born rather than adopted. (Scientific American)

Remember how all the lying liars in the GOP claimed that they could defund Planned Parenthood and “community health centers” could easily absorb our clientele and do our work better than us? Welp, the lie detector determined that was a lie. Planned Parenthood will have to start taking on more patients in a suburb near St. Louis because St. Charles County will no longer offer treatment and exams for sexually transmitted diseases through its public health department. And mind you, this is despite increasing STD rates in that county. Unfortunately, the county’s clinic is closing now and re-opening in 2018 with a reorganized clinic model “formulated to reduce expenditures and generate opportunities to increase revenues …” So basically, STD testing and treatment, while a public good, hasn’t been good for their bank account so they’re giving the job to us. Planned Parenthood is here and ready for you STL folks. (STL Today)

And lastly, I just want to shout out to my peers and fellow black women in Alabama. They turned OUT in the special election this week and helped Democrat Doug Jones win a seat in the Senate! To quote Cosmo, “White women preferred the accused child molester.” And I have nothing further to add. (Cosmopolitan)

What’s in a Name: Repealing the Affordable Care Act

Posted on March 27, 2017 by Rachel Port

Supporters drop off petitions and rally at Rep. Martha McSally’s Tucson office, March 15, 2017

As this post goes to press, word has come that Speaker Paul Ryan has pulled the American Health Care Act, being unable to muster enough votes to pass it. So we have escaped that disaster, and it appears no attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act will proceed in the near future. But the fight is not over. Aspects of this bill will come up in other forms and we will have to be vigilant. But this is a victory for activism, so many thanks to all of you who made phone calls, demonstrated, told your stories, and reminded the Republicans that destroying something is not the same as governing.

So as you read this, realize what we have escaped, and what we need to watch out for as we proceed.

People were going to die. But the free market would have triumphed.

Republicans called it Obamacare, and used that name as a slur to run against President Obama in 2012. It didn’t win that race for them, but there are enough people in this country for whom the name Obama is enough to damn a program. One woman, whose son lost his job and had his monthly insurance premium fall from $567 to $88, attributes that decrease to the tax credits in Trump and Ryan’s new American Health Care Act. You know, the bill that never passed. In actuality, her son became eligible for a subsidy under Obamacare — the Affordable Care Act — which is still the law.

Paul Ryan and his cronies in the House of Representatives hated the Affordable Care Act before it was written. They hated it even more when it passed and more than that when it was implemented.

What did they hate about it? Continue reading →

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

Posted on February 3, 2017 by Stacey S.

A note to our dear readers: One of the things I will begin highlighting in our rundowns in reference to anti-choice legislators will be whether they have a personal history of adopting or fostering children in need.

On any given day, there are nearly 428,000 children in foster care in the United States.

Unfortunately, there are simply not enough families willing or able to provide homes for these children.

Legislating women’s bodies does nothing to help children in need.

Oddly, nearly all of the white, wealthy, highly privileged men who make laws limiting what women can do with their reproductive organs under the guise of being “pro-life” have never adopted or fostered an actual child.

It strikes me as not only hypocritical, but also as a supreme moral failure from a group of Christian men who speak so passionately about the value of an embryo’s life and fight relentlessly to preserve it. Interestingly, anytime I try to find something positive one of these “pro-life” men has done for children in need after they’ve been born, I come up with … nothing. Continue reading →

Tom Price, Secretary Against Health and Human Services?

Posted on January 17, 2017 by Rachel Port

Protesters at Sen. McCain’s Tucson office, December 20, 2016.

On December 20, I took part in a demonstration opposing changes to Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We gathered outside Sen. John McCain’s Tucson office and told our health care stories. Almost all of us were women, but our stories included issues like the cost of diabetic testing supplies and insulin, the difficulties with employer-provided health plans that don’t allow specialized testing and care outside of their network, the prohibitive cost of medication for chronic conditions like AIDS, and my story of a CT scan (which I could only afford with government assistance) for something unrelated that found my kidney cancer. We were unable to meet with anyone from the office, but the written stories were given to staff and a later meeting was set up.

Tom Price is among those who could do the most harm to the greatest number of Americans.

I begin with this story because Tom Price, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, doesn’t think the government has any place in our health care system. He fits very well among Mr. Trump’s choices to head government departments and agencies, a group of people who don’t believe in the work of their respective departments: Jeff Sessions for attorney general, who was denied a federal judgeship because of his racist comments and judicial overreach as Alabama’s attorney general; Scott Pruitt, who has sued the Environmental Protection Agency 13 times because he opposes regulations and doesn’t believe in climate science, to head that agency; Betsy DeVos for secretary of education, who has no background in education and has spent millions of dollars lobbying to get money away from public schools; and Rex Tillerson, who worked all his life for Exxon, which had a large deal with Russia put on hold by sanctions imposed after Russia annexed Crimea, as secretary of state, with the ability to lift those sanctions. And that’s just a sample.

Since 2009, Price, an orthopedic surgeon, has been a member of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a group whose members sign a “declaration of independence” renouncing payments from third-party payers, whether government or private insurers. Their journal has published articles opposing taxes on cigarettes, linking abortion and breast cancer, doubting whether HIV causes AIDS, and opposing mandatory vaccinations. They oppose regulating medical practice even as far as hospital peer reviews, and are fiercely for free-market medicine. Continue reading →

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Stacey S.

Time to call your senators!

Happy 2017, readers! I hope the first days of this new year have brought you happiness, love, joy, and hope.

Not that you needed a reminder, but we are mere days away from having a narcissistic, Twitter-addicted, habitual liar, and numbskull as our president.

Everyone knows he’s a prolific teller of untruths, including the Washington Post, who gave “The Donald” ALL THE PINOCCHIOS for his bazillion lies in 2016. Hope they’re ready for another blockbuster year! Actually … #MakeThatFour (WaPo)

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has hijacked Donald Trump’s campaign slogan and flipped the script to reveal the truth — by repealing the Affordable Care Act, Trump and the GOP want to “Make America Sick Again.” (Politico)

Ugghhh. Paul Ryan … what can we even say? He has sucked in the past, he sucks at the present, and he will continue to suck in the future. He spearheaded last night’s repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which will strip Planned Parenthood of all federal funding. And the irony is, the funding he wants to strip from us DOES NOT GO TOWARD ANY ABORTIONS. The Hyde Amendment banned federal monies going toward abortion care in 1976. The money Speaker Ryan wants to rob from us is Medicaid payouts for low-income patients who receive preventive and diagnostic care and low-cost or free condoms and contraceptives. This is heartlessness and cruelty on a savage level. So today, our advocates are hand-delivering 80,000 petitions to Ryan’s office to express just how furious we are! (NY Mag) *Sadly though, we could lose our federal funding as early as next month*

Sen. Robert Stivers (R-Kentucky) is championing a 20-week abortion ban in the state because he thinks when women consent to sex, they also consent to pregnancy. Guess a-freaking-gain, pal. (Raw Story)

A federal judge in Texas decided that doctors, who take an oath to help people and never cause harm, can deny patients care on the basis of gender identity and history of abortion. (Rewire)

Mississippi legislators = a bunch of bigots who want to make hatred of LGBTQ folks an actual religion. (Slate)

The National Institutes of Health is entering the first-ever worldwide clinical trial of an HIV vaccine! (NBC News)

In 2016, 57 percent of American women of reproductive age lived in a state considered either hostile or extremely hostile to abortion rights. Just think about the magnitude of that statistic. Most of us live in a state that wants to take away our right to a safe, LEGAL medical procedure. (Guttmacher)

106 lawmakers asked Trump to repeal the Hyde Amendment. Brace yourselves: He won’t. (NY Mag)

Texas’ craptasic governor, Dan Patrick, wants to pass a “bathroom bill” similar to North Carolina. But this one only targets trans women and girls because, according to his preposterous, archaic logic, men “can defend themselves.” (Texas Tribune)

As a matter of fact, six states are now working on this “bathroom bill” nonsense. (Time)

Did women break new ground in 2016? Slate delves in with an astute analysis. (Slate)

One ground we didn’t break? We still make up the majority of low-wage workers in this country. (NY Mag)

Our relentlessly fearless president, Cecile Richards, gave an interview to Rolling Stone promising to continue to fight the hostile political climate that threatens the health and very lives of our patients. (Rolling Stone)