Republicans Forge Ahead with ACA Repeal, Promise to Definitely Figure Out Replacement Later

feature image via shutterstock

After years and years of railing against the Affordable Care Act and threatening constantly to have it repealed, the GOP is finally in a position to do so, and seem to be at something of a loss. After trying and failing to pass bills that would repeal the ACA during Obama’s time in office, the House, Senate and presidency are all about to be Republican-controlled, which makes this a cinch. It’s becoming very clear, however, that during the last two presidential terms, Republicans haven’t worked on coming up with what they think should be in place instead of the ACA. Was this because they never had any interest in doing the work of overhauling a healthcare system in the first place, and instead just wanted to make life as difficult as possible for Dems while whipping the GOP voter base into a frenzy over a system that many of those same voters actually rely on for coverage? Who can say! It may forever remain a mystery. At this point, Republicans have held firm to their promises to repeal “Obamacare — but without providing any plans or proposals for what they think should replace it, only repeating vaguely that some sort of replacement will come. Nevertheless, they’re still going to go ahead with working to repeal it ”by the end of the week,” according to Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell!

How would this work? Right now Republicans are pushing what they call “repeal and delay” — a bill that would repeal the ACA immediately, but with a two-year “transition period for putting in place an alternative,” during which elements of the ACA would in some way remain active. The specifics of how this would work are another thing that Republicans haven’t full articulated, except for Mitch McConnell saying on Face the Nation, “There ought not to be a great gap” between repealing the act and replacing it and that Republicans would be “replacing it rapidly after repealing it.”

US Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell has written an op-ed for the Boston Globe explaining why she doesn’t think “figuring it out later” is a great plan in this area:

Congress plans to take steps toward repealing the Affordable Care Act without any replacement. Opponents of the ACA have had six years to coalesce around a replacement plan, and they have not. Now they’re asking us to trust that they will in a few more years. But the stakes are too high to move forward on repeal without knowing what comes next. Under a “repeal and delay” scenario, health insurers would pull out of the market or dramatically raise prices. Hospitals and states would pull back on new investments as they prepare for an onslaught of uncompensated care. And if we ultimately went over the cliff, our national uninsured rate would jump from the lowest in history to higher than it was before the Affordable Care Act, according to independent experts. In every state in New England, the rate of the uninsured would more than double.

It’s not clear what the eventual proposed replacement for the ACA would be, especially since, as many profiles of Trump voters have since revealed, significant numbers of GOP voters actually rely on it, and many have pre-existing conditions that would bar them from accessing affordable health coverage if they had to return to the system of coverage that preceded the ACA. It’s not out of the question that Republicans will re-introduce a slightly modified and rebranded version of the ACA, gambling that what voters really objected to was Obama’s name being associated with the plan. For his part, Obama has said that ”If in fact the Republicans make some modifications… and re-label it as Trumpcare, I’m fine with that.”

Even if elements of the ACA are able to remain, the healthcare market would at the least still experience major turmoil in the transition period, and Medicaid would be deeply impacted. The current proposal from Paul Ryan would “reduce the federal contribution for the expansion population to each state’s standard federal Medicaid matching rate, which would be closer to 60% on average. Many states likely would end their expansions if they had to come up with the billions of dollars to replace the lost federal funding.” Losing the Medicaid expansion that was part of the ACA, which many Republicans have opposed, would result in millions of uninsured — Politifact estimates “the number of additional Americans who would lose coverage or be unable to get it for the first time would start at 19 million in the first year and increase incrementally before leveling off to 24 million within a couple of years.” (Politifact also warns that “keeping coverage for people with pre-existing conditions while repealing much of the rest of the law is not so easy.”)

And since Republicans are dedicated to trying to defund Planned Parenthood as part of their repeal effort, which would prevent the citizens who rely on using Medicaid to obtain healthcare through Planned Parenthood — primarily low-income women and women of color accessing lifesaving routine care and preventative services — from receiving affordable care. (As Planned Parenthood itself explains, there isn’t a line item in a federal budget for PP — what “defunding Planned Parenthood” means is blocking reimbursement for services provided at PP. And thanks to the Hyde Amendment, those services that can be reimbursed already don’t include abortion.) When organizers tried to deliver petition signatures asking the government not to defund Planned Parenthood to Paul Ryan’s office, they weren’t allowed to.

.@SpeakerRyan's office sent 6 security guards to block delivery of 87K #IStandWithPP petitions telling Ryan not to defund Planned Parenthood pic.twitter.com/56QHwhjR2q

— Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) January 6, 2017

At least a few Republicans aren’t wholly on board with the repeal as it’s currently being pushed; John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Snyder of Michigan have protested that many of their citizens rely on the Medicaid expansion, and that repeal without a concrete replacement plan would leave them out in the cold. There isn’t necessarily a lot of optimism around this movement; Modern Healthcare says Republican experts think this push is “unlikely to influence congressional Republicans, but there’s always some hope that more Republicans could join them — especially if their constituents call and make it clear that they rely on the ACA and Planned Parenthood, and will only vote for legislators who support them.

Be the Change: 5 Ways to Stand Up to Trump’s Tyranny Right Now

feature image via Susan Watts/NY Daily News

Welcome to Be The Change, a series on grassroots activism, community organizing, and the fundamentals of fighting for justice. Primarily instructional and sometimes theoretical, this series creates space to share tips, learn skills, and discuss “walking the walk” as intersectional queer feminists.

In the hours and days after Election Night, many of us turned to social media to find and support each other and to process our grief. Almost immediately, I began seeing people declaring that this is the time to organize and fight back. Absolutely, yes. It’s vital to our collective survival that we grow our movements to fight back against a Trump/Pence presidency.

However, I, like many, was in a dark post-election trauma fog. I was cycling between rage, depression, anxiety, and helplessness. Saturday was the first day I didn’t cry first thing upon waking up. I’m still a mess overall, but today, I’m ready to think about fighting back and organizing for change. Wednesday, I wasn’t there yet.

Many folks at the intersections of identities and communities who are under attack in the new and terrifying Trump-era are still trying just to breathe and to, quite literally, live. Many were already dealing with harassment and bigotry and fear and the ramifications of this election are further impacting everyday safety and survival. It’s OK to not be ready to organize or to not want to do so at all. As Audre Lorde famously said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

via lowendtheory

If you are ready to mobilize and take action today, please do it! We need your words, dollars, support, ideas, brains, bodies, and time! If you’re not ready today, this information is here when and if you need it. Do what feels good and right to you. Maybe that’s going to a rally or taking a leadership role in your community. Maybe making a donation or connecting via social media is more your thing. There are lots of ways to engage in activist work, both in person and from your home, and we need every one of you.

Take care of yourself and your communities first and foremost, OK? I love and support you!

Welcome to Be the Change. We’re kicking off this series on grassroots activism and organizing today, though it’s been months in the making. It feels especially relevant in this nightmarish political and cultural shitshow that is the U.S. preparing to survive a Trump regime. I was originally going to write the first post about how to become a community organizer and different types of organizing, but it feels more important to start a discussion about what we can do as activists, right now in this moment, in the wake of the apocalypse/election.

Firstly, in addition to your local anti-Trump protests and rallies, make your plans for the Trump inauguration protest in D.C. on January 21st, the Women’s March on Washington. In the meantime, here are some things you can do this week.

1. Volunteer Where You Live

Clinic escort volunteers at a Planned Parenthood health center (via PlannedParenthood.tumblr.com

Whatever issue is most important to you, now is the time to volunteer your time and talent, to find a way to show up for the causes you care most about. Whether it’s volunteering at a food bank or as a clinic escort or with your local youth group or with a crisis hotline, every bit of good we put out into the world right now helps.

Some Places to Start:

• Planned Parenthood: Become a clinic escort at your local Planned Parenthood affiliate or sign up for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund here.
• Helpers Initiative: Sign up for the Helpers Initiative to be matched with someone who needs support, launched by Straddler and queer film director, Keely Weiss.
• Volunteer Match: Find all sorts of volunteer opportunities with nonprofits in your area. Or really just call up the local organization of your choice and see if there are opportunities to get involved.
• Help Elect a Local Candidate: Call your local party headquarters and see how you can help. Local elections in 2017 won’t be as glamorous, but they’ll have a huge impact on your community. Sign up to help out with phonebanking, canvassing, and getting out the vote next year.

2. Donate Funds or Time

If you have the spare funds, money is always scarce for grassroots movements and organizations. If you’re an ally to a group, often the best and most impactful thing you can do is help fund the work that directly impacted people are doing in their own communities. Even $1 helps and you can feel good about putting your money where your mouth is. If you don’t have the funds, donating things like rides, professional services, etc. can also be helpful.

Some Places to Start:

• Help a Trans Person: Donate to help a trans person who may not be able to access proper ID documents, medical care, or medicine after January 20th. Gifts of financial or non-financial support, as well as support from licensed health professionals accepted.
• Trans Lifeline: Give to Trans Lifeline, whose lines are being overwhelmed right now. They could really use your support!
• Subscribe to Your Rights: Ali dedicated last week’s Queer Your Tech to an excellent list of orgs accepting recurring monthly donations.
• Donate to a Nonprofit or Activist Group: There are a couple lists of organizations and groups you can donate to or contact at the end of this post.

3. Share and RT for Justice

via: Bloomicon / Shutterstock

Amplify the voices of individuals and activist organizations by following them on social media and sharing their campaigns, stories, and work. It may not seem like much, but social media is a powerful tool for organizing. Case in point, the Trump campaign used Twitter to recruit and rally the grossest corner of the white supremacist internet. However, social media can be used for good, too. #BlackLivesMatter became a national movement with a hashtag. Join in tweet-ups and social media campaigns. If engaging as an ally, RT and spread the work of folks doing the work.

Some Places to Start:

• #MomentofTruth: Hollaback! launched the #momentoftruth campaign to collect and share stories from people who are witnessing a rise in hate in their own lives in the wake of this election. Share, read, RT, amplify.
• #WeWontGoBack: Join Planned Parenthood in sending the message “that you reject hate and refuse to let the next president roll back the rights we’ve fought so hard to secure.”
• #NotMyPresident: Follow and RT protests around the world under the #NotMyPresident hashtag. Join in person if you can and virtually if you can’t.

4. Create Space for Community Care

via Shutterstock

Whether online or IRL, check in with your friends, especially those likely to be targeted with violence and harassment. Self-care is important, but it’s also hard to do when you feel isolated and alone. Call your friends. Invite them over for a movie night. Host a potluck or brunch. Go to the movies. Send them texts and messages that you have their back. Learn about issues others in your community may face. Be a resource. Hug each other, virtually if necessary and IRL if possible. Share information. Send love notes.

Some Places to Start:

• Wear a Safety Pin: Some people are wearing a safety pin to show you’re in solidarity with Muslims, immigrants, POC, and all those exposed to violence after the election. Remember that a safety pin on its own can’t keep people safe; think about ways to demonstrate concrete solidarity and stand up for people in tense or uncomfortable moments as well.
• Learn About Bystander Intervention:Start with How You Can Intervene When Witnessing Racist Assaults
  by United Against Racism and What to Do If You Are Witnessing Islamophobic Harassment by maeril.tumblr.com
• Oh Shit Guide: This is a living document with info on reproductive health, healthcare, housing, food access, safety, legal issues, etc. Share it and read it.
• Concrete Suggestions in Preparation for January 2017’s change in American Government: The is a living document with loads of info about LGBT issues, immigration issues, disability issues, civil rights issues, and criminal justice issues that are cause for concern under Trump’s leadership, and ways to support as an ally (in English and Spanish). Read and share.
• OH CRAP! WHAT NOW? SURVIVAL GUIDE: Another collaborative guide to health, digital security, money, food access, legal issues, self-defense, and other important matters of survival a.k.a. “Planning for a Trump Administration When You’re Not A Straight Rich White Dude”. Check out the TL:DR Things to Do Now Checklist.
• Create a Local Resource List/Network: Share and/or create a list of resources in your community for healthcare, legal aid, food access, LGBT issues, nonprofits, activist groups, etc. Create a local network for people to offer and find local support like rides, food, a couch to crash on, etc. from each other. It can be as simple as a secret Facebook group or a shareable Google Doc.

5. Educate Yourself

via Shutterstock

Spend meaningful time learning about intersectional social justice issues and histories. The internet and the library are treasure troves of self-learning.

Some Places to Start:

• Colorlines: Race, culture, and organizing
• Black Girl Dangerous: Amplifying the voices of queer & trans people of color
• The Root: Black news, opinions, politics and culture
• Annie Lainey’s Queer & Disabled Series
• The Queer Muslim Project
• The Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project

More Resources, Orgs to Support, Places to Make Change or Give Change:

• Ways to Organize for Activists by ShiShi Rose
• What Can I Give? What Do I Need? by Solidarity Houston
• The Official #GrabYourWallet Boycott List of Companies that Do Business with and/or Back the Trump Family
• Support black-owned businesses by shopping via Support Black Owned (SBO), a “free Black and African American owned business directory and blog filled with thousands of Black, Moorish, and African American owned businesses and members spread all over the world.”
• Surveillance Self-Defense for Activists and Protestors from the Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Stand with Standing Rock by making a donation to the Legal Fund for Defenders.
• A List of Pro-Women, Pro-Immigrant, Pro-Earth, Anti-Bigotry Organizations That Need Your Support by Jezebel
• National & International Orgs to Join & Donate to if yr Scared (created and shared by a Straddler)

National Groups with Local Actions and Chapters

See if there’s a local group you can join or volunteer for:

• American Civil Liberties Union
• Black Lives Matter
• Planned Parenthood Action Fund
• Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURG)
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Have other resources, ideas, or feedback? Share them in the comments and I’ll update this list as appropriate. Also, tell me what you’re doing, what you can commit to today or in the future, to support your communities and stand up to Trump.

Ted Cruz Makes an Anti-Gay Gamble in Iowa as Trump Sits This One Out

Cruz Still Very Upset about Rainbow White House

+ In his last campaign stop in Iowa, Ted Cruz took a bold stance against same-sex marriage and LGBT rights in general, saying that the US was in a “time of crisis” regarding those issues and that his presidency “would not endorse” the SCOTUS decision on same-sex marriage, which is a bit baffling as “endorsing” SCOTUS decisions isn’t really a thing presidencies do anyway. He also argued that all the polls saying that the majority of Americans support same-sex marriage are “skewed,” because he knows that in reality Americans “overwhelmingly disagree” with it.

“It was a sad day when I saw the Capitol building all lit up in the rainbow colors,” DeLong said, referring back to June, when the White House used a colorful light display to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage across the country. “How will your faith have a positive effect? How will you light that faith to make changes?” As the audience in rural southeast Iowa applauded the question, Cruz nodded. “You’re absolutely right,” he said. “Our country is in a time of crisis. We’re losing who we are.”

this is what made Ted Cruz sad

It’s an interesting gamble to make, especially at a time when candidates are down to the wire on trying to win over Iowa caucus voters — that they’ll be drawn to anti-LGBT rhetoric, that even conservatives who don’t have kids and friends and coworkers who are out and who they care about more than Cruz. This kind of campaigning seems like it was more expected in 2008, or even 2004; we’ve seen in things like major corporations opposing Indiana’s RFRA bill that traditional GOP interests aren’t necessarily aligned with being anti-gay anymore.

There is a crowded race, though, and everyone has to do something to differentiate themselves! Is this part of Ted Cruz’s strategy for it? Possibly! Is it enough to win him Iowa? We’ll find out soon!

Other Presidential Candidates

+ Tonight — to my joy and delight — there’s another Republican debate. But Donald Trump won’t be there, because he’s mad at Megyn Kelly, and she’s going to be a moderator. That’s a real thing that adults are doing! He wants FOX to tell Megyn Kelly she can’t moderate, but so far they’re sticking with her. It seems like a deliberate message to send Trump that they don’t live by the dictates of the ratings he brings, and that they’re a network that’s at least slightly separate from the candidates and their campaigns. Traditionally it’s assumed that candidates need debates to connect with voters and poll well, but already Trump has been bucking trends as far as how that all works. How will it impact his race? I don’t know, but I’m happy to think that I might not have to watch him tonight.

+ Ten LGBT New York state officials are set to endorse Hillary for president.

+ A new ad from Jeb’s super PAC references Terri Schiavo to illustrate Bush’s commitment to the “right to life.” Michael Schiavo, Terri’s husband who survives her, is not pleased, calling the ad “disgusting.”

“It is simply disgusting that Jeb Bush and his super PAC would exploit my wife’s tragedy for his crude political gain,” Michael Schiavo said in a statement. “Shame on Jeb Bush.”

Police/Violence

Quintonio LeGrier

+ The city of Ferguson, MO reached a “tentative deal” with the Justice department to reform its police department. The updates include “bias-awareness training,” a “robust accountability system,” and “[ensuring] that police stop, search and arrest practices do not discriminate on the basis of race or other protected characteristics.” How will that last be accomplished, exactly? Not totally clear, although there would be some changes to municipal city orders, like prison time for failure to pay fines. Ferguson has until February 9 to vote on whether to accept the agreement.

+ In December, Chicago was rocked when CPD killed 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier and his neighbor after receiving a routine domestic disturbance call from Quintonio’s father. Now it seems that before the elder Mr. LeGrier called the police, Quintonio himself tried to call 911 three times, and each time the dispatcher refused to send police.

+ At least 31 female immigrant detainees who went through Santa Ana City Jail say that strip searches were used as a pretext for sexual assault on them.

One detainee said that she went through five strip searches in two months, then again every time she came back from immigration court. Another detainee said that she had to undergo ten strip searches in seven months at the facility. And women who menstruated were not provided with special provisions either, having to remove their period pad in their underwear during inspections. A 67-year-old woman also endured multiple strip searches at the jail, despite suffering a hip dislocation and pain. Even asylum seekers who survive sexual assault and rape were subjected to strip searches. Gloria Hernandez, a lesbian and a sexual assault survivor from Honduras, said that she has been strip-searched seven or eight times, which resulted in her suicide attempt at the jail.

Health/Reproductive Rights

+ It seems like all legislators can find time to do these days if they try to push aggressive laws restricting abortion access, regardless of whether or not they’ll pass. Florida is the latest on this trend, with several anti-abortion bills, including one that “would make performing an abortion a felony.” But that’s just outright outlawing abortion, that’s not possible after Roe v. Wade, is it? Well, no fear! This would still be allowed:

The bill would permit abortions under the conditions that two separate doctors confirm in writing that the procedure would be “necessary to save the pregnant woman’s life or avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman other than a psychological condition.”

PHEW.

+ The legal victory in which a PA grand jury chose not to indict Planned Parenthood and instead indicted the anti-choice activist who videotaped them under false pretenses was very inspiring — as is the fact that no investigation in any state has turned up any fault of Planned Parenthood’s — but it may not make a huge difference. Unfortunately, anti-choice GOP legislators have never been super concerned with facts, and they’re pressing forward with slandering PP on the basis of the videos in question.

Grab Bag

+ On Wednesday, authorities arrested several members of the group occupying the Oregon wildlife refuge, and LaVoy Finicum was killed. Others left the occupation voluntarily after Ammon Bundy called for them to “go home and hug your families.”

+ German LGBT groups are setting up shelters and programs for LGBT refugees, who have been victims of discrimination and physical assault.

Schwulenberatung has had to find emergency accommodation for up to 70 people, mostly gay men, in private Berlin homes because “they had strong fears in the refugee shelters or became victims of attacks,” de Groot said. Social workers and volunteers believe that the estimated number of unreported cases could be even higher. “Many homosexual refugees do not trust police,” said de Groot, because authorities in their home counties “often persecute them for their sexual orientation.”

+ Last week, Orashia Edwards, a bisexual Jamaican man, was granted asylum in the UK after fighting for three years. However, a bisexual woman from Nigeria was denied refugee status to Ireland this week after the Refugee Appeals Tribunal decided parts of her story, which included living with and having children with men who didn’t know she was bisexual and who threatened her after finding out, didn’t add up.

+ Weeks and months into the Flint water crisis, Michigan officials still aren’t saying when Flint might be able to drink its water again. No one knows where the money to replace so many pipes would come from, and even if the money was there, the massive project would take years at the very least. Governor Snyder has said he will assemble a panel of experts, though, so!

In the meantime, environmental activists are filing a lawsuit that says what’s happening in Flint has violated the federal Safe Drinking Water Act in an attempt to try to force the government to replace the pipes.

+ We’ve likely all seen the headline by now, but: after the blizzard which incapacitated much of the East Coast of the US last week, the only elected representatives and state employees who got it together to show up to the Senate were women. A glimpse into a different world.

+ In December, South Korea and Japan brokered a deal addressing the history of Japan’s forcing Korean women into sex slavery for Japanese soldiers in WWII. South Korea accepted a deal in which Japan apologizes and contributes 1 million yen to a victim’s fund, but South Korea doesn’t have any legal responsibility to make sure that the program functions, and the terms of the deal require that after this the issue is considered closed forever. The 46 surviving women of Japan’s crimes aren’t necessarily satisfied with what’s being bargained on their behalf. Two, Kang Il-chul and Lee Ok-sun, are traveling to Tokyo to demand a better apology and compensation.

“This deal has made us look like fools,” said Kang on Tuesday. “It was agreed without consulting us. How could they have agreed on this and pushed us to one side? I’m furious. ”
It is as if the Japanese government is waiting for us to stop speaking out and die,” Lee said.

US Marine Found Guilty in Jennifer Laude’s Death but Not of Murder, Given Short Sentence

US Marine Convicted of Homicide

After more than a year since transgender woman Jennifer Laude was found dead in a hotel room, a Phillippine court convicted US Marine Joseph Scott Pemberton of killing her after he found out she was trans while they were having sex. Pemberton was on leave in the Philippines after participating in joint military exercises when he met Laude and her friends at a bar in Olongapo. Pemberton was convicted of homicide — and not murder, which is a different charge — for first strangling Laude and then drowning her in a toilet bowl in October 2014. He was only sentenced to 6-12 years in jail and was credited with time he already spent in a military detention camp. The court also ordered Pemberton to pay Laude’s family 4.6 million pesos ($98,000) in damages. The family’s lawyer Harry Roque said that “this is a bittersweet victory because it is not murder.” The AP reports, “The judge said she downgraded the murder charge to homicide because conditions such as cruelty and treachery had not been proven.” Umm, I don’t understand how there wasn’t any cruelty or treachery proven when this US marine squeezed Laude’s neck and then dragged her to the bathroom where he proceeded to dunk her head in the toilet bowl and then just walked away all because he “panicked” after finding out she was trans. He testified in August and admitted to choking Laude but says she was alive when he left her in the shower.

Pemberton’s conviction is just a slap on the wrist compared to what he did to Laude and in addition to his short time, it’s unclear where he’ll spend that time since he’s under the purview of the US military. The AP reports: “The judge said an agreement between the U.S. and the Philippines was ambiguous and failed to state in which facility within the Philippine military headquarters Pemberton would be detained and which government agency would have supervision. She ordered that he be brought to the [New Bilibid Prison] national penitentiary, in accordance with local laws, until it is decided where he should be permanently held.” Pemberton’s lawyers managed to get an appeal and let him stay in military headquarters for five days until a more permanent facility is agreed upon. I mean, if this is any indication of his time locked up, the odds are in his favor being locked up in a US military prison.

International LGBT News

+ Canada will accept 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February and are giving priority to gays and lesbians, “women at risk,” families and single GBT men. The plan is to welcome 10,000 refugees by the end of December and 15,000 by the end of February. Canada plans to “invest up to $678 million over the next six years toward resettling and integrating the 25,000 new arrivals.” “We have a responsibility to significantly expand our refugee targets and give more victims of war a safe haven in Canada,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “The resettling of vulnerable refugees is a clear demonstration of this. While our plan is ambitious, it reflects Canada’s commitment to share responsibility and offer protection to those who need it. Canada must once again be regarded as the compassionate, generous country we’ve always been.”

+ Three men ages 23 to 33 were killed and five were injured at a gay festival in Acapulco, Mexico. It’s unclear if the violence was an anti-gay attack or part of the high rates of violence found in the city. Acapulco has the highest homicide rate in Mexico.

+ Transgender Bolivians can now change their name, sex and gender on legal documents, the Justice Minister announced on Thursday. The law comes three years after Raysa Torriani, the national coordinator of the Bolivian trans movement, proposed the bill to the legislative assembly.

+ Japanese city of Ta­ka­ra­zu­ka will issue certificates that recognizes same-sex partnerships which will be equivalent to a marriage license. The city will set guidelines by March so same-sex couples will be treated the same as opposite-sex married couples in regards to various services. Two other wards in Tokyo were the first local municipalities to introduce the certificate system.

Grab Bag

+ An elementary school in Wisconsin cancelled plans to read a children’s book called I am Jazz written by trans teen Jazz Jennings after a hate group got wind of it and threatened to sue the school. Mount Horeb Primary Center sent a letter to parents explaining they were going to be reading the book because the school wanted to create a more inclusive environment for a transgender student attending the school. Some “concerned parents” called anti-LGBT group Liberty Counsel who then wrote a letter to the school threatening a lawsuit if the reading wasn’t cancelled. In the letter the group misgendered Jazz and said some gibberish about the book “confusing many children” and being “false and misleading.”

+ On Wednesday, The New York Times used the gender-neutral honorific Mx. for the first time in a story about Bluestockings, a collectively-owned and volunteer-run bookstore in New York.

“Are we anarchist?” Senia Hardwick asked. “Technically, yes.” Mx. Hardwick, 27, who prefers not to be assigned a gender — and also insists on the gender-neutral Mx. in place of Ms. or Mr. — is a staff member at Bluestockings, a bookshop and activist center at 172 Allen Street on the Lower East Side.

Even though there’s been an increase in usage of the word and considerations adding it to the Oxford English Dictionary, standards editor Philip B. Corbett says the NYT probably won’t be adopting it soon since it’s still unfamiliar to many people.

+ A federal judge denied a Detroit funeral home’s second request for super personal information about a former trans employee. RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes Inc claimed they needed information about former funeral director Aimee Stephens’ transition including, “whether she still has a penis, her family medical history, and information about her previous sexual relationships” for a lawsuit brought on Stephens’ behalf by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 2014, the funeral home fired Stephens’ after she told her employers she was going to present as a woman to work. U.S. Magistrate Judge David Grand in the Eastern District of Michigan rejected the funeral home’s claims ruling the information wasn’t relevant to Stephens’s discrimination lawsuit.

+ Not a lot of gay people have gotten married in North Dakota. In fact only 60 same-sex marriage licenses have been issued in 18 out of the 53 counties in the state, The Bismarck Tribune reports.

Black High School Student Assaulted by School Cop, Bystander Who Filmed It Gets Arrested

+ A video has surfaced of Ben Fields, a school resource officer at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina slamming and dragging a black female student out of her desk. The confrontation happened on Monday because supposedly the student refused to leave class when she was told she was under arrest. WISTV, a local news station reports: “Richland County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Lt. Curtis Wilson, the female student and a male student were arrested for disturbing the peace.” A group called Richland Two Black Parents Association is calling the video “egregious” and “unacceptable.” Superintendent Dr. Debbie Hamm released a statement and said the district is deeply concerned with the videos and are working the the sheriff’s deputies for a complete investigation. Mother Jones investigated and found school cops use violent excessive force too, which has contributed to seriously injuring 28 students and killed one student in the past five years.

Niya Kenny, a student who filmed the altercation, stood up for the assaulted girl when she witnessed what happened. As a result, she was arrested too for disturbing school.

+ Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders disagreed over the motives for enacting the Defense of Marriage Act, “a 1996 law that barred federal recognition of same-sex marriage,” came to be. In an interview with Rachel Maddow, Clinton said President Bill Clinton’s motive for signing DOMA was to prevent other harmful legislation from happening.

“I think what my husband believed — and there was certainly evidence to support it — is that there was enough political momentum to amend the Constitution of the United States of America and that there had to be some way to stop that,” said Hillary Clinton. “In a lot of ways, DOMA was a line that was drawn that was to prevent going further.”

At the annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa, Bernie Sanders called Clinton’s comments a “rewrite” of history and it was “not the case” that worse legislation was to follow. Other gay rights advocates agree.

“It’s ridiculous. There was no threat in the immediate vicinity of 1996 of a constitutional amendment. It came four years later,” said Elizabeth Birch, who was executive director of the Human Rights Campaign from 1995 to 2004. “It may be that she needs to revisit the facts of what happened.”

+ Jackie Hatton-Hesketh, a 44-year-old woman from Wales, was assaulted in a hate crime while out with her partner by a group of men in July. The group of men were verbally abusing her partner when she intervened and that’s when they called her a “dirty lesbian” and began beating her up. Hatton-Hesketh curled up in the fetal position while her partner called the police. Two men were arrested and only one was convicted of assault and got away with only a small fine and a curfew. The attack has caused more damage and much more costs to Hatton-Hesketh. She’s lost money as a result of her injuries since she took time off to recover and can’t work her at her shelf-stacking job. The stress from all of this also contributed to breaking up with her partner.

+ A few days after Texas announced it would end Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, state health department investigators raided Planned Parenthoods in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Brownsville and ordered the centers to give them thousands of pages of patient information and records information.

“It is completely outrageous that Texas officials are using thoroughly discredited, fraudulent videos to cut women off from preventive health care, including cancer screening, H.I.V. testing and birth control,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.

+ Two weeks after “murderer” was spray-painted onto a New Hampshire Planned Parenthood facility, an intruder destroyed property including phones, medical equipment and computers with a hatchet at the same location. No one was hurt during the vandalism and police caught the juvenile who was responsible for the damage. This is one example of the attacks Planned Parenthood has received since Center for Medical Progress released deceiving video footage alleging PP illegally sold fetal tissue for profit.

+ Here’s something to cheer you up. Mary Numair, a woman from Portland, single-handedly broke up a anti-Planned Parenthood protest by chanting “Yeast Infections!” alongside the protestors. Numair was at work when she saw a group of protestors gathering a block away at a Portland Planned Parenthood. She crafted a sign out of discarded cardboard praising PP for “treating her chronic yeast infections [when she was] in her early 20s and uninsured” and clocked out of work early to make a point to the protestors about the work PP does beyond abortions.

Hey I just single handedly broke up a planned parenthood protest by chanting the words "yeast infections" pic.twitter.com/SKvnIi30TB

— Mary N. (@MaryNumair) October 25, 2015

+ Hillary Clinton agreed to stop accepting contributions from lobbyists and PACs for private prison companies and promised to donate any previous donations from them to charity. Civil rights groups and immigrant rights groups including ColorofChange, Black Lives Matter, Get Equal, Presente, and United We Dream pressured Clinton to stop accepting money from private prison companies. People of color and immigrants are disproportionately targeted and their lives are profited off of in private prisons.

+ April Miller and Karen Roberts, the lesbian couple who is suing Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis for denying them a marriage license despite an order from the Supreme Court, celebrated their marriage over the weekend with a formal ceremony.

+ Bhumika Shrestha, transgender activist from Nepal, became the first citizen from her country to travel abroad with a passport marking her gender with an “O” for other instead of “M” or “F.”

+ Last week in this column, I reported that five predominantly black churches have been burned in the St. Lois area since October 8th. That count is up to six now, with a seventh church — which wasn’t predominately black but located in a predominately black neighborhood — also set on fire. Police say the fires are linked. All the blazes began at the entry or door of the church.

+ A school district outside of Chicago could lose up to $6 million in federal funding after defying federal regulations to give equal appropriately gendered locker room access to a trans girl. A federal decision is expected to come in soon on whether Township High School District 211 violated a student’s rights. The school allowed the student to change in a private room area instead of the girl’s locker room.

+ Processed meat like bacon and salami can increase your risk of developing cancer just like cigarettes or other carcinogens, according to an international panel of scientists that advises the World Health Organization. The scientists pointed out “the risk of developing cancer from meat consumption still remains relatively small,” so you don’t have to freak out over occasionally eating bacon.

+ New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his administration will extend the New York State Human Rights Law to protect transgender people from discrimination in housing, employment and more. 

Paul Ryan Is In (the Running for House Speaker), Joe Biden Is Out (of the Presidential Race)

+ Paul Ryan is still many people’s favorite for House Speaker, and has decided to push ahead with his bid for the position. He’s made clear that one of his conditions for potentially taking the role is still spending time with his family, an attitude which many are noting for its irony, given that Paul Ryan and the rest of his party have consistently opposed family leave legislation for people who are not Paul Ryan. He is considered likely to be successful in his speaker bid.

+ Speaking of running for things, on Wednesday Joe Biden announced that he will not run for US President in 2016, explaining that he does not have time to plan and execute a presidential campaign given the months his family has devoted to mourning the death of his son, Beau, of cancer. Pundits have speculated that if he had run, Biden would have been drawing Democratic nomination votes primarily from HIllary Clinton.

+ Texas has cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, despite the fact that its “investigation” into CMP’s sting videos has not yet concluded. Planned Parenthood has 30 days to challenge the decision in court, which they likely will.

+ Ohio has voted to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving state Medicaid money.

Stephanie Kight, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, said the measure would leave thousands of women and men in Ohio without critical preventive services. Senator Edna Brown, a Democrat, said the cuts would fall hardest on the state’s poor residents. “There is no one, no one but Planned Parenthood in poor and African-American communities,” Brown said.

+ Ads for Thinx, the brand of underwear that allows menstruating people to forgo pads and tampons, can’t advertise on NYC subways because it uses the word “period” in its ads for its products meant to deal with periods.

+ Martese Johnson, who was assaulted and injured by multiple agents of Virginia’s state Alcohol and Beverage control because he was suspected of using a fake ID (the ID was not, in fact, fake) is now filing a $3 million lawsuit against the state agency, alleging that three officers used excessive force and unlawfully detained him. According to the Guardian, the impetus for Johnson filing the lawsuit was the revelation that none of the officers involved in his unwarranted arrest would be suspended or punished.

+ Students at Mississippi’s Ole Miss have voted to remove Mississippi’s state flag from campus because the flag design contains the Confederate flag.

+ Through the Freedom of Information Act, 400+ of Kim Davis’s emails have been released publicly. They show that while the majority of clerks in the office wanted to award marriage licenses to same-sex couples, the majority also wanted to use different forms for same-sex than different-sex couples, resistant to the idea of giving up the titles “bride” and “groom.”

+ Jae Irizarry, a trans girl, has been elected homecoming queen of her high school. Now the local paper is running a story questioning the validity of the vote that got her the role, although the validity of its sources, which includes a “source at [the school] who asked to remain anonymous” and a parent unaffiliated with the school, is unclear. The paper also published that attempts to reach Irizarry and her family for quotes were unsuccessful, but Irizarry says that they never even tried to contact her.

+ Jim Webb is dropping out of the Democratic race, but might run as an Independent. The best part of this story is the embedded tweets from the non-politician Jim Webb on Twitter, who seems to have risen to the occasion of having people confuse him for the candidate delightfully.

+ Ahmed Mohamed and President Obama have finally met — at the White House’s Astronomy Night, somewhat appropriately.

+ Brittney Cooper at Salon on why we fail Black women when we talk about gun violence without mentioning them.

Black Americans make up 14 percent of the population, and yet, of those 1,600 murders, 453 — or 28 percent — were black women. Of those 453 murders, 416 were intra-racial. Thus: Once every 19 hours a Black woman is killed by a man. Once every 21 hours a Black woman is killed by a Black man. 92 percent of the time she knows her murderer. 56 percent of the time, she is wife, ex-wife or girlfriend of her killer. The study does not account for ex-partners or ex-girlfriends, a fact which would surely make that percentage skew higher. In these incidents, the most common weapon used was a gun.

+ The Indian Health Service (IHS) has created a new policy vowing that one-step emergency contraception will be available to Native American women in IHS facilities.

+ A new campaign spotlights the fact that while domestic violence/intimate partner violence affects an alarming number of American women across the board, it disproportionately affects women living with HIV.

What Planned Parenthood Means to LGBT Women: The Roundtable

feature image via All Nite Images.

Header by Rory Midhani

Attacks on Planned Parenthood have been unrelenting for the past few months, and that means that once again women’s health is a topic of national scrutiny. But what the poorly edited, completely manipulated video footage of PP’s “wrongdoings” don’t leave room for are stories about how treasured a resource a PP clinic can be to a woman, a queer person, a poor person — every person.

In response to a national conversation that’s eclipsing the very real and very tangible need for PP’s services, women around the country have been stepping up and sharing their stories about Planned Parenthood and what it means to them. But, as often happens in conversations about sexual and reproductive health, most of the stories are by straight and/or cis women — and completely erase the very real and very tangible need queer women and LGBT folks of all genders have for their services.

So now it’s our turn! Autostraddle and A-Camp staff and family members are here to talk about what PP means to us as queer women, and why we need it to be around for a very, very long time. When you’re done reading about our own adventures in health care, share your own stories in the comments!

Laura M., Contributing Editor, 28

Planned Parenthood Locations: South Austin Health Center, Brooklyn Boro Hall Health Center

Honestly, I’d support Planned Parenthood if the only service they provided was abortions. I’ve never needed one, but part of the reason for that is that I was able to go to Planned Parenthood to figure out birth control! I don’t have a primary care physician, but I’ve been visiting Planned Parenthood centers for well woman exams and gynecological services for the past four years. I got my first pap smear at a Planned Parenthood. I got my IUD at a Planned Parenthood. I rely on them for reasonably priced, non-judgmental medical treatment, and so do thousands of other people. Planned Parenthood provides a vast array of essential medical services, and it disgusts me that anyone would want to limit access to that.

Stef, Music and Vapid Fluff Editor, 31

Planned Parenthood Location: Margaret Sanger Center

I’ve worked piles of low-wage, part-time, often cash-based jobs to scrape by over the last decade or so, and I didn’t have proper health insurance from the time I graduated college in 2004 to just about two months ago. For a very long time, Planned Parenthood was the only healthcare I could afford. Their financial office hooked me up with reproductive health Medicaid so I could receive annual exams, pap smears, HIV and STD screenings and anything else I could possibly need while I was there — I even got my IUD taken care of there. I never felt like I have at other clinics for low-income, insurance-challenged folks, where long wait times and indifferent, inattentive staff can make you feel like human garbage. I avoided doctors like the plague during this time in my life, because the care I received would almost always be prohibitively expensive and make me feel worse. On the contrary, everybody at Planned Parenthood was always friendly and encouraging, happy to answer questions or offer advice if I needed it.

Robin, A-Camp Co-Director and Photographer, 34

Being a young freelancer, I spent OVER 10 years without health insurance. I cannot fathom what my life would have been like without access to birth control and regular check-ups and pap smears that I could not afford otherwise. A PP nurse taught me how to protect myself properly when I was a freshman in college, an education I never could have received at home or at school, and I will be forever grateful for their NON-JUDGMENTAL counseling that taught me how to have a healthy sex life that I didn’t have to feel ashamed of. So FUCK anyone who doesn’t stand with women’s health and family planning.  I Still Stand with Planned Parenthood and always will. Stop believing the bullshit and educate yourself on the complexities of women’s reproductive health.

Morgan, Autostraddle Calendar Girl and A-Camp Staff, 28

Planned Parenthood Locations: Chapel Hill

Riese, CEO/Editor-in-Chief, 34

Planned Parenthood Locations: Golden Gate (now closed), Boro Hall, The Bronx Center, Margaret Sanger Center, Ann Arbor Health Center, Walker Health Center

I wrote a pretty extensive essay about Planned Parenthood in 2011 — because PP was facing a pretty heavy assault back then, too, and I wanted to do whatever I could to throw support towards the only thing the government has ever done to demonstrate any interest in my physical health. I made my first visit at 16 to go on the pill, and stayed on it for seven years, always via Planned Parenthood. For many years, the only element of my health I could afford to pay attention to was my sexual and reproductive health, because Planned Parenthood was the only health care provider I could afford to visit. I grew up in a liberal area with excellent sex ed, which means that most of my friends were on the pill — and if we’d had to go through our parents to get it, we probably wouldn’t have. That’s the stupidest part of this whole thing, that the most frequent service provided by PP isn’t abortions, it’s the methods we use to avoid ever needing one. (But even if 97%, rather than 3%, of PP’s services were abortion services, I’d still support their right to exist and deserve government funding.)

I don’t take birth control anymore since transitioning from bisexuality to lesbianism in my mid-20s, but I still go to Planned Parenthood for my exams because I trust them not to stigmatize my sexual history and to be sensitive to the needs of a queer patient. But mostly, I don’t know what I would’ve done without them as a teenager, and I’m petrified to live in a world where girls like me won’t have those options.

Regina Phalange, A-Camper, 25*

Planned Parenthood Locations: Isabella Health Center

To understand this story, you have to realize the following things about me: 1. I’m a very sex positive, open kind of person with very little embarrassment about anything most of the time, and 2. before the beginning of this story, I’d had really mediocre sex for two years. It was very sad but unavoidable at the time. So, when I started having awesome sex, there was an adjustment period and I was definitely confused about a couple things. The main one being: squirting. I had heard about squirting, and seen it in porn but had read a lot of things that kind of indicated that it was not real, and I really bought into that. The fact that it was not happening in my own life likely had a lot to do with that.

Julie Goldman, Comedian and A-Camp Talent

Without Planned Parenthood I would never have been able to remove a tumor from my puss. I don’t need birth control and I’ve never been pregnant. What I needed was low-cost subsidized care at a time when I didn’t have health insurance or an extra penny in the bank. They gave me medical attention and care and are the one place a woman and gay women and couples and all people can go without feeling judged, while being helped for a myriad of issues, the least being abortion.

Liz, Autostraddle Reader, 24

Planned Parenthood Locations: Margaret Sanger Center, Southern Finger Lakes

When I was 14 an older cousin told me about Planned Parenthood saying “If you ever need birth control or anything, you can trust the doctors there.” Ten years later, we now both work at Planned Parenthood.

The first time I ever went to Planned Parenthood I was 19 and after learning a partner had an STI, I suddenly realized that being a queer lady didn’t make me immune to STIs or HIV. I basically ran to my local Planned Parenthood in New York City in tears. I felt stupid and vulnerable and too ashamed to go to my campus’s health center. The Planned Parenthood staff very compassionately told me that since I didn’t have an appointment it would be a long wait. After bursting into even more tears, their staff referred me to a local clinic that usually serves gay men and gave me supplies and literature on safer queer sex. Even though I didn’t receive healthcare at PPNYC, the respect and compassion from their staff made me feel incredibly safe and cared for. Three years later, I spent every Saturday volunteering at Planned Parenthood of New York City’s health center, and I recently moved upstate to Ithaca and landed a position working for Planned Parenthood as Director of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes — the first PP in New York State to offer LGBTQ-specific healthcare and education. Planned Parenthood has provided me with health care and education, given me a purpose and a fight I’m passionate about, and introduced me to an amazing community of activists. I am proud to stand with Planned Parenthood and always will be.

Maddie, Contributing Editor, 24

Planned Parenthood Location: Southeastern PA

I have never been to Planned Parenthood, but just knowing it’s there makes me feel slightly less terrified of the moment in less than two years when I’m no longer covered by my dad’s health insurance. I stand with Planned Parenthood because it provides the type of care that should be the norm, not the exception, and I dream of a world where access to good nonjudgmental patient-driven care is treated as a human right, not as a commodity, and not something that can be legislated away.

KaeLyn, Contributing Editor, 32

Planned Parenthood Location: Central and Western New York

I never had to go to a Planned Parenthood as a client because there wasn’t one in the county I grew up in. I went to our small county health clinic for my birth control, instead, sneaking behind my parents’ backs to get birth control pills. But I might as well have gone to Planned Parenthood. The vast majority of their services are preventative care. Years later, after college, I worked at a Planned Parenthood affiliate in upstate New York in the public affairs department. I cut my teeth as a (paid) community organizer and advocate at that job. I discovered and embraced reproductive justice. I met some of the fiercest feminist activists. And I walked through screeching protesters every day on my way in, which you get used to as a staff member, honestly. But it never got easier for the patients, who were there for their birth control or exam or STD test or to have an abortion. Some patients would give the protesters the finger. Some would try to hide their face. Some would cry. We had clinic escorts who met patients outside and provided a friendly face. Our facilities manager put up tall hedges at the entrance to create a literal barrier. But there was no way to escape the shame and stigma being hurled through those bullhorns.

It doesn’t baffle me that we are still fighting for Planned Parenthood, because the vocal minority who values religious ideals over people’s lives is still out there. Shouting. Hurling shame and stigma. However, I’m tired. I’m tired of having to fight for the basic right to healthcare, for people to be able to make their own medical decisions without government interference, and for an organization that just wants to provide life-saving, life-affirming healthcare. I wish we could stop talking about reproductive healthcare as a polarizing political issue. No other healthcare area is politicized like this and it has everything to do with sexism and patriarchy.

I hope for the day when cultural stigma around abortion is gone, when sexual healthcare is as straightforward and apolitical as going to the dentist, and Planned Parenthood can do their work in peace.

Emily, A-Camper, 28

Rebel Girls is a column about women’s studies, the feminist movement, and the historical intersections of both of them. It’s kind of like taking a class, but better – because you don’t have to wear pants. To contact your professor privately, email carmen at autostraddle dot com. Ask questions about the lesson in the comments!

9 Lies They’re Spreading about Planned Parenthood (and the Facts to Fight Them With)

As part of the ongoing effort of many people and organizations to discredit, defund and destroy health provider Planned Parenthood, there have been a series of videos, speeches, debate allegations, investigations and hearings into the embattled women’s health institution. Most recently, PP President Cecile Richards was called to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform committee on Tuesday. In the midst of all this, there have been a dizzying amount of myths, misconceptions, misunderstandings and outright lies spread about Planned Parenthood and its employees. Here’s what people have been claiming about Planned Parenthod and the truth behind the reproductive health hyperbole and half-truths.

1. Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissue (“dead babies”); the videos prove it

Truth: No, it doesn’t. Planned Parenthood engages in donation of fetal tissue for research; it’s acting legally under the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act, which allows for research on voluntarily donated human fetal tissue, including tissue from abortions. Passed in 1993, the bill was voted for by many Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, current Republican Senate Majority Leader. The same bill allows for organizations that donate fetal tissue to be reimbursed by the research institutions they work with in order to recoup costs. FactCheck.org talked with Jim Vaught, president of the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories and formerly the deputy director of the National Cancer Institute’s Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research, who told them that:

“$30 to $100 per sample is a reasonable charge for clinical operations to recover their costs for providing tissue.” In fact, he said, the costs to a clinic are often much higher, but most operations that provide this kind of tissue have “no intention of fully recovering [their] costs, much less making a profit.”

Even if the CMP videos weren’t heavily edited to be misleading and weren’t potentially illegal to film in the first place, the conversations and actions they depict just aren’t illegal, or anything that hasn’t been happening in medical communities for decades. The recent investigation by Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster found no wrongdoing on Planned Parenthood’s part, and no illegal sale of fetal tissue.

For further explanation on why this is a myth, check out FactCheck.org’s coverage and Media Matters.

2. Cecile Richards apologized, which is the same as admitting PP sold fetal tissue

Truth: Cecile Richards did make a video apology, but it was for the fact that PP employees depicted in the CMP videos were having a “clinical discussion in a nonconfidential, nonclinical setting.” She did not at any point apologize for selling fetal tissue illegally, because it did not happen.

3. Planned Parenthood uses federal and/or taxpayer funds to perform abortions

Truth: Nope. The Title X Family Planning federal grant program does not allow any funding for abortion. The Hyde Amendment restricts the use of Medicaid funds to pay for any abortion services that aren’t related to rape, incest, or saving the life of the mother. Planned Parenthood is an organization that provides abortion, and it is an organization that receives federal funding in the form of Medicaid, but it is not an organization that, categorically speaking, funds its abortion services with federal money. Here’s the relevant text of the Hyde Amendment:

SEC. 506. (a) None of the funds appropriated in this Act, and none of the funds in any trust fund to which funds are appropriated in this Act, shall be expended for any abortion. (b) None of the funds appropriated in this Act, and none of the funds in any trust fund to which funds are appropriated in this Act, shall be expended for health benefits coverage that includes coverage of abortion….

SEC. 507 (a) The limitations established in the preceding section shall not apply to an abortion— (1) if the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest; or (2) in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness, including a life endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed.

4. The government writes a check to Planned Parenthood every year that we could be spending on other, more important things

Truth: The money that Planned Parenthood receives from the federal government comes primarily in the form of Medicaid reimbursements for health services provided; it’s not sent in the mail once a year as a charitable donation. The government isn’t deciding to award that money to PP when it could be deciding to award it to someone else; the money is mostly linked to individual patients who seek services or treatment, and if they were forced to seek treatment elsewhere, it would not mean that millions of dollars of federal money would suddenly be freed up for cancer research or anything else.

5. Planned Parenthood practices “partial-birth abortion” which causes great pain to fetuses

First, we have to talk about the term “partial-birth abortion” — it was coined as a political wedge by a the National Right to Life Committee, not a doctor. The medical procedure it describes is called by actual doctors a “dilation and extraction,” and all it means is that the body of the fetus is intact when removed from the uterus of the person having an abortion. Although abortion opponents often claim that these procedures occur in the third trimester of pregnancy, when a fetus could viably live outside the womb, this is extremely rarely true. Most dilation and extraction procedures are performed in the second trimester, and may be a response to a health concern that would ordinarily kill the fetus, pregnant person, or both. (There are potentially fatal health problems, like fetal hydroencephaly, that can’t be detected earlier than the second trimester.)

As for the claim that fetuses feel pain during dilation and extraction procedures, there doesn’t seem to be evidence that this is true. In a medical article examining the truth of conservative legislator’s claims that fetuses aborted at 20+ weeks experienced pain, it was found that “evidence regarding the capacity for fetal pain is limited but indicates that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester.”

6. Planned Parenthood spends federal and donation money frivolously on non-medical expenses

Truth: According to its annual report, Planned Parenthood does 65% of its spending on medical services, and 81% of its spending on programming & services when you include “non-medical programming” like sexuality education — the kind of programming that can help reduce unplanned pregnancies and thus the demand for abortion. Despite Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s claims that PP “[spends] millions on political activities, lavish parties, travel and health care expenses overseas,” it seems that their spending on fundraising — 5% — pales in comparison to their spending on providing healthcare primarily to low-income women.

Graphic via Planned Parenthood’s Annual Report

Another hot topic of contention at the hearing this week was Cecile Richards’ salary, which tax returns showed to be in the $500,000 range. Richards doesn’t dispute this, but as other legislators like Rep. Carolyn Maloney pointed out, it’s not an unusual salary for the president of a large national organization. Her salary also isn’t funded with federal money, and the committee “[has never] questioned male CEOs compensation package in any hearing regarding any for-profit corporation led by the committee.”

7. Planned Parenthood’s data shows that its non-abortion health services are declining rapidly while abortions are skyrocketing

Truth: The graph that’s linked with this claim, which was shown by Rep. Jason Chaffetz during the court hearing and which he claimed was based on Planned Parenthood’s own reported data, was almost immediately shown to be actually based on “data” from Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group. Here’s what the faulty graph looks like:

Javier Zarracina created an accurate graph for Vox using the actual data. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s also misleading that the purportedly damning graph only contrasts abortion services and cancer screening services, as if those are the only two things Planned Parenthood does; Timothy B. Lee notes at Vox that when you include all the other non-abortion services PP provides, like STI treatment and contraception, “The overall number of non-abortion services provided by Planned Parenthood barely changed at all, going from 10.29 million in 2006 to 10.26 million in 2013.”

8. Other resources will fill the gap if Planned Parenthood is defunded

Truth: While there are other resources for pregnant people, Planned Parenthood is a unique organization that provides a wide range of health services to a wide range of people, and isn’t replicable by other already-existing organizations. Abortion opponent Gianna Jessen claimed that “We often hear that if Planned Parenthood were to be defunded, there would be a health crisis among women without the services they provide. This is absolutely false. Pregnancy resource centers are located nationwide as an option for the woman in crisis.” Even if we accept this as true, the pregnancy resource centers she talk about won’t provide what PP does, including:

+ breast exams
+ Pap tests
+ educational programs and outreach
+ tests and treatments for STIs
+ contraceptives and other services to prevent unwanted pregnancy before it happens
+ informed-consent model hormone treatment for transgender clients
+ anemia testing
+ cholesterol screening
+ diabetes screening
+ general physical exams
+ flu vaccines
+ support in quitting smoking
+ high blood pressure screening
+ tetanus vaccines

The fiction that Planned Parenthood is nothing more than a one-stop shop for abortions feeds the fiction that pregnant women can easily be provided other options, but the largest demographic of people who rely on Planned Parenthood’s services isn’t pregnant women who want to terminate their pregnancy, but low-income people who don’t have access to and/or can’t afford other providers of medical care, even general healthcare that has nothing to do with reproductive health. If Planned Parenthood disappears, the effect isn’t going to be that pregnant women just have to drive to a different building in town to figure out their options; the effect will be poor people getting ill and potentially dying of diabetes, breast cancer, and illnesses they could have been easily vaccinated for.

9. Planned Parenthood is lying when it says it provides healthcare beyond abortions because it doesn’t have mammogram machines in its clinics

Truth: Not having mammogram machines in their facilities is actually totally normal for a healthcare provider — your general practioner and family doctor probably don’t have them either. Mammogram facilities have to be accredited by the American College of Radiology, and it’s common procedure for any doctor, whether they work at Planned Parenthood or not, to assess a risk of breast cancer in their office via a manual breast exam and then refer the patient to another location if they think a mammogram is necessary. Regular mammograms are generally only recommended for women over 50, which is a small portion of Planned Parenthood’s patient base. Plus, as mentioned above, cancer screening is only a portion of Planned Parenthood’s services, even if it’s sometimes the only one people remember outside of abortion services.

There Won’t Be A Government Shutdown Over Planned Parenthood (Yet)

feature image photo credit Lawrence Jackson

+ It looks like the US federal government isn’t going into a shutdown, at least not yet. Congress has voted to extend funding for the federal government through December.

If you’re outside the US and are like “why would your federal government be shutting down, that sounds alarming,” or even an American with the same question, you can read about the phenomenon in more detail here, but basically: a “government shutdown” occurs when different parts of the government, like the President and one or more chambers of Congress, cannot agree on how federal money should be allocated before the end of the budget cycle. Since an approved budget plan isn’t enacted, many federal agencies don’t have access to federal funds and can’t function. This is possible in the US because the branches of government are separated, and can’t necessarily override one another if they disagree. The budget disagreement at hand right now is over whether the government should defund Planned Parenthood.

A shutdown doesn’t mean that the government stops doing stuff or that anarchy reigns; many federal agencies keep operating, but also many civilian federal employees aren’t allowed to work and aren’t paid for the duration of the shutdown. Lifehacker has an explanation of what a government shutdown would mean for the average US citizen.

(Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

Law & Order

+ The New York Times has an examination of how the fight for non-discrimination ordinances that cover sexual orientation and gender identity is increasingly becoming a local one, not a statewide legislative push.

+ If you’ve been following the career of Arizona’s Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose claim to fame is a deep passion for racially profiling Latinos and pushing the envelope of inhumane prison conditions, you might be interested in this story where his ex-lawyer talks about how determined Arpaio was to continue his racist policing.

Casey said he told Arpaio repeatedly of the difference between illegal immigration, a civil offense, and actual illegality — that is, breaking a law enumerated in a criminal code.

“If you have a truck with 16 [immigrants] in the back, and they tell you they’re here illegally, and they give a hand gesture to indicate their defiance, you still cannot hold them, you cannot detain them, they’re gone. Released,” Casey said he told Arpaio. “You’re borrowing trouble if you hold them.”

The sheriff, Casey said, would instead seek all exceptions to the rule, looking for loopholes to continue to conduct traffic stops despite Snow’s order.

+ New York City has joined the federal surveillance program “Countering Violent Extremism”, a program with disproportionately targets Muslim youth for surveillance even though, as Feministing points out, “three-fourths of law enforcement agencies in America list right-wing extremists as their biggest threat.”

+ The mother of Jeremy McDole, a wheelchair-using black man killed by Delaware police, was arrested for threatening the woman she believes called 911 on her late son.

Order in the Court

+ This Oregon bakery was ordered by the court to pay $135,000 to a lesbian couple they refused to provide service to; now they’re refusing to do that, too.

+ If you’re big on SCOTUS deep cuts, you might remember some guy shouting anti-gay stuff during the Supreme Court arguments on same-sex marriage.

A Q&A regarding Mr. Grogan on the SCOTUSblog liveblog during the oral arguments.

Today, we unexpectedly get some closure on that: Rives Miller Grogan, apparently an experienced shouter at public political events, has plead guilty to the shouting in question and faces up to one year in prison.

Research and Data

+ New research finds that school “districts that have a higher proportion of white students get substantially higher funding than districts that have more minority students.”

+ HRC has a new report on bisexual visibility in the workplace.

Grab Bag

+ Did Kim Davis meet with the Pope this week? Kim Davis’s lawyer says so, and the Vatican says it “does not deny the meeting took place”.
Unsurprisingly, LGBT Catholics are not thrilled, especially since LGBT advocates were denied an in-person meeting with the Pope.

“It was a kick in the stomach this morning,” said Nicholas Coppola, a Catholic New Yorker, referring to the meeting between Kim Davis and the pope at the Vatican Embassy in Washington. “I was the most hopeful with this pope and so this has been the biggest letdown.”

+ After facing public criticism, Whole Foods will stop selling goat cheese and tilapia produced with prison labor.

+ A Detroit Black Lives Matter mural, and an explanation of why it doesn’t say “All Lives Matter.”

+ Nicolle Gonzales (Diné) and Brittany Simplicio (Navajo/Zuni) are planning the first-ever Native American birth center.

“There is this huge disconnect between the cultural teachings and our bodies as women. [I want] to advocate for taking back our teachings about our bodies that our ancestors knew before the boarding schools or Indian Health Services came,” says Gonzales. “I’ve worked at Indian Health Services. I was not happy with the care that the Native women were receiving there. I needed to do something to step up and support Native women.”

+ Elizabeth Warren exposed a self-serving corporate-complicit think tank, and now the scholar in question resigned.

+ Caitlyn Jenner will not be charged for the car crash on the Pacific Coast highway last year.

+ Skylar Marcus Lee, a 16-year-old trans activist, took his own life this week. He is mourned by his community in Madison, WI, and a memorial service will be held on Friday. He was a beloved youth leader who wrote and spoke powerfully on LGBT rights and racial justice.

+ Southerners on New Ground (SONG) attempted to make a statement at North Carolina Durham Pride in solidarity with #SayHerName, and had the mic taken away from them. Here’s their statement on what happened:

“A large #BlackLivesMatter Contingent made up of approximately 50 local activists and organizers with groups including Southerners on New Ground, Queer People of Color Coalition, El Cambio, and Get Equal was forcibly silenced and removed as they attempted to march in the NC Pride Parade, held annually in Durham, NC. The group began the parade with a banner that read, “No Pride for Some of Us Without Liberation for All of Us: We Can’t Breathe.” They were greeted with enthusiastic support of Pride Parade attendees as they marched through the streets chanting “Say Her Name” and “Black Lives Matter.” As registered Parade participants, the group was allotted two minutes to address the audience at an announcing venue located at the intersection of Main & Broad Streets. Spokespeople for the group approached a Pride Committee official who was serving as parade mc and requested use of the microphone, which they intended to use to amplify a statement of solidarity with countless murders of black queer and trans women as contingent members joined arms in a show of solidarity. The Pride Committee official handed over the microphone, but not before requiring that the group not “say anything offensive.” They began to read the prepared statement: “We disrupt your Pride so that you are reminded that our Pride also matters and that we are proud of our roots. We are proud to have ancestors and kindred in folks like Miss Major, Storme DeLarverie, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson who actively demonstrated what resistance meant by putting their bodies and their lives on the line for our collective survival.” At that point, the Pride Committee Official physically interrupted contingent spokesperson Laila Nur, a queer black woman, local organizer, and musician — by stepping on her feet and then snatching the written statement and microphone out of her hands. The #BlackLivesMatter contingent was then surrounded by Pride Security and Durham Police and told that if they did not leave the area they faced immediate arrest.”

Thought You’d Enjoy This

+ Indiana’s Memories Pizza, which vowed to never cater a gay wedding, appears to have now catered a gay wedding unwittingly.

+ This is a dude who was invited on live television to talk about Edward Snowden and just talked about Edward Scissorhands instead.

Daily Fix: House Passes Two Anti-Choice Bills, Really Really Wants to Defund Planned Parenthood and More News

+ It’s Bisexual Awareness Week! The Movement Advancement Project has an infographic for you called “Snapshot: Bisexual in America” that details how stigma, legal inequality, and lack of bisexual-specific data impact bisexual peoples’ health, safety, employment, and economic security. You can also read a full summary analysis of issues facing bisexuals in America on their site.

+ Trans woman Shadi Petosky, a writer/producer for Puny entertainment, was detained at the Orlando airport on Monday after TSA found an “anomaly.” She live tweeted what happened. She says she was stopped, patted down, locked in a small room, and was then told to get back in the scanning machine “as a man” or “it was going to be a problem.”

https://twitter.com/shadipetosky/status/646053501055987713?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

After she missed her flight, she had to rebook and at one point was asked to leave the airport. You can read most of her live tweets in chronological order at Vox or just head over to her Twitter.

+ Tiffany Santiago, 27, and her mother were attacked in a restaurant by a belligerent trio spewing gay slurs. “As soon as I sat down, I heard the word ‘lesbian,'” Tiffany Santiago told The New York Daily News. “My mother and I look very close in age. They must’ve thought we were on a date.”

Tiffany Santiago via WCBS

They were having dinner at Bar Kogi on Second Avenue before 1 a.m. on September 12th when the assault took place. The three suspects, two women and man in their mid-30s were sitting a booth directly behind them and throwing balled up pieces of wet napkins and lemon wedges at the women. Santiago’s mother confronted them and that’s when the suspects threw her to the ground. When Santiago came to defend her mother she was thrown across the restaurant, resulting in a wound on her knee that required six stitches. Santiago and her mother sustained other cuts and bruises from the assault. The suspects have not been found.

+ Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, two New York legislators, are trying to designate Stonewall Inn as the first national park honoring LGBT history. “When we look at our country, we have recognized women’s rights, civil rights, all kinds of rights,” Gillibrand said. “The time has come to give this part of our history an imprimatur of national importance.” They’re going to ask President Obama to declare Stonewall a monument and then later, push for a congressional vote to make it a national park.

+ Military officials denied Chelsea Manning’s request to grow her hair and she is being forced to keep her hair short. She intends to fight the decision. “Even though the military agrees that allowing Chelsea to grow her hair is a critical part of her treatment plan, they continue to deny her basic human and constitutional rights,” ACLU attorney Chase Strangio said in the statement. “When we filed our lawsuit a year ago, Chelsea had already waited more than a year for even minimal care to treat her gender dysphoria.” Last month, Manning faced indefinite solitary confinement when she received infractions for inane things like possessing expired toothpaste and “prohibited” reading material. She ultimately lost recreation privileges for 21 days instead, but it was a small victory; the infractions will show up at any subsequent hearings and could affect how long she stays at a high-security prison.

+ Prince William attended an anti-bullying workshop at a British school on Monday and spoke out against homophobia for the first time. Alongside staff from the Diana Award, he took part in a session to provide students with practical tips on how to prevent LGBT bullying and cyber bulling.

+ On Friday, the U.S. House passed two anti-choice bills: one that could take funds away from Planned Parenthood for a year unless it stops performing abortions altogether (even though federal funds don’t go towards abortions) and another that could have adverse effects on doctors who provide abortion services. Rep. Diane Black (R-TN), who introduced The Defund Planned Parenthood Act, said the bill would strip away federal funding for a one year, enough time to Congress to complete investigations on the organization. The bills came out of the accusations made by an anti-choice group who presented highly edited and deceptive videos as evidence that PP was selling fetal tissue, when that wasn’t true. Rep. Trent Franks’ Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act would add criminal penalties to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002. The bill was inspired by the belief that PP allows infants to die after being born alive following an abortion, which is unsubstantiated. RH Reality Check says advocates are really concerned what this bill could do to healthcare providers. “Advocates argue that Franks’ “born alive” bill would have a chilling effect on doctors because of its vague language that doesn’t offer clear medical guidance, and that it’s not necessary because the law already allows criminal charges for killing an infant.” In the end, it’s easier to promise to defund the organization than to do.

+ In an effort to illuminate what verbal and non-verbal cues count as sexual consent to older teens and young adults, Planned Parenthood created a new video series to “model what consent is and what it looks like in a variety of scenarios among different couples, including same-sex couples.”

+ Scott Walker has officially dropped out of the presidential race. This might be the time when they all start dropping like flies? Walker said the field was so crowded that candidates started making personal attacks instead of issues that matter to voters. “To refocus the debate on these types of issues will require leadership,” Walker said. “I encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same so that the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive, conservative alternative to the current front-runner. This is fundamentally important to the future of the party and, more importantly, to the future of our country.” He also said a bunch of confusing statements and didn’t do very well in debates; he ultimately polled very low within his party.

+ A Texas judge issued a historic ruling and recognized the common-law marriage of two women, Sonemaly Phrasavath and Stella Powell, who got married in the state in 2008 when same-sex marriage wasn’t legal. Powell died of colon cancer in 2014, leaving Phrasavath to fight with her wife’s family for her estate and for their marriage to be recognized by the state. Phrasavath and Powell’s family reached a settlement but Attorney General Ken Paxton objected to it, saying it could lead to confusion of past cases and creating new conflicts. But on Tuesday Travis County Probate Judge Guy Herman approved the settlement and removed the attorney general as a party to the case.

+ Presidential candidate and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Justice is Not For Sale Act, which would ban government contracts with private prisons. The bill would require the government to directly oversee correctional facilities, rather than contracting them out. Sanders said in a statement:

“In my view, we need bold change in our criminal justice system. As a first step, we need to start treating prisoners like human beings. Private companies should not be profiting from their incarceration.

Our emphasis must be on rehabilitation, not incarceration and longer prison sentences. The basic decisions regarding criminal justice and public safety must be the responsibility of the citizens of our country and not the investors in private corporations.”

+ Police in Stockton, California are being investigated for an incident where a black teen was accused of jaywalking and when he ignored an officer’s demands, the officer beat the teen with his baton and then was joined by eight other officers to “apprehend” him. The ordeal was caught on video and published on Facebook.

Daily Fix: The Season of GOP Debates Is Upon Us and More News

It’s news time! It’s time for the news.

Republicans

+ The Republican National Committee’s resolutions committee rejected two different anti-gay resolutions, one of which would have tried to force schools who acknowledge homosexuality in their curriculum to “also include the harmful physical aspects of the lifestyle” and one of which encouraged states to try to make laws nullifying the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality.

+ The first GOP debate of the election season will start tonight at 9 pm eastern time, featuring the top ten candidates out of the 11 thousand people running for the Republican nomination.
Gawker has a rundown of those participating. Rachel Maddow had some thoughts on FOX’s attempt to make it look like the choice of which ten people they gave a platform to was objective.

+ Jesse Benton, a staunch ally of Rand Paul and head of a super PAC supporting him has been indicted on charges of secret payments to a former Senator. Benton paid senator Kent Sorenson thousands of dollars to switch his official endorsement from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul. It doesn’t seem like Paul’s camp is going to necessarily distance him from Benton in light of the indictment.

Police/Prison/Violence

+ You may have read about Charly Keunang and his untimely death at the hands of police in Riese’s Things I Read That I Loved. His family is now filing a lawsuit against the city and the police department.

+ In a really alarming story, there’s recorded audio of a white Alabama police officer, Troy Middlebrooks, who talks about his personal vendetta against a black male resident, how much he wants to kill him, and how he’s thought about how he would cover it up to make it look like the resident had attacked him first. The police chief confronted with the audio reportedly claimed that his officer “…was just talking, he didn’t really mean it.”

+ Piper Kerman of Orange is the New Black testified before Congress about the experiences of incarcerated women, including the sexual abuse to prison pipeline and the challenges faced by women after leaving prison. You can also read her full testimony.

Order in the Courts

+ A federal appeals panel ruled that Texas’s voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by discriminating against black and Latino voters. The voting law in Texas isn’t overturned entirely, but voting rights advocates are excited at the legal precedent this creates for the application of the Voting Rights Act, and hope this is a step forward in ensuring greater voting access for all.

+ Former Fox News football analyst Craig James alleges that he was fired for his strident anti-gay beliefs. A quick poll of people who live in my apartment suggests that he was maybe just not a great football analyst or person. He’s now suing for $100,000 in damages because he believes his religious liberties were “trampled upon.” For the record, this is the statement he believes he’s being punished for (in addition to one where he says being gay is a choice):

“I think right now in this country, our moral fiber is sliding down a slope that is going to be hard to stop if we don’t stand up with leaders who don’t go ride in gay parades,” he said during one Republican candidate debate, according to Kera News. “I can assure you I will never ride in a gay parade.”

Grab Bag

+ In a story that’s becoming increasingly frustrating and farcical, a district attorney in Texas has committed to investigating Planned Parenthood along with the Texas Rangers and Houston PD, in response to the Center for Medical Progress’s heavily edited videos which depict Planned Parenthood employees engaging in 100% legal activities. The investigation is proceeding despite the fact that Planned Parenthood only operates fetal tissue donation programs in five states, and Texas is not one of them.

+ The drugs that can be used to prevent HIV infection, PrEP, aren’t finding a foothold with gay and bisexual Latino men as much as they are with other groups. Only 52% of GB Latino men said they saw themselves as being good candidates for the medication, compared with 82% of non-Hispanic whites. This is alarming especially because Latino men are at disproportionate risk for HIV, making up 21% of new infections despite making up only 17% of the population.

+ Two West Point graduates who were married to each other in 2013, making them the first same-sex marriage at West Point, were the targets of an anti-gay attack in a Manhattan store. The assailant hit one of the men in the face, although they were able to defend themselves. The suspect has not been caught and the NYPD is investigating the attack as a “bias assault.”

+ A couple in Missouri was excited to have their wedding ceremony at the Ridge Haven Chalet, only to find that the owner won’t let a same-sex ceremony be performed there. Unfortunately, because Missouri lacks anti-discrimination laws dealing with sexual orientation, this is completely legal.

+ The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has released a new report, “American Experiences vs. American Expectations,” which discusses the experiences of marginalized groups in the workplaces. The findings include the fact that black, Latino and Asian-American workers are more likely to be in management or supervisory positions than they were 50 years ago, but are still disproportionately likely to hold service positions and low-paying “labor” positions. Women as a group are statistically much more likely to hold managerial positions than people of color as a group (although of course those groups aren’t mutually exclusive), with women representing 38.57% of managers; women also now make up more than half of professional jobs that require degrees or certifications.

Daily Fix: Senate Democrats Blocked a Republican Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood and More News

It’s time for the news!

+ Here’s some good news for once! Senate Democrats blocked a vote on Monday that would’ve taken away federal funds from Planned Parenthood. But it was a pretty close call with a vote of 53-46, Republican supporters only needed 60 votes to advance it to the Senate floor for debate. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Joni Ernst, would have prevented Medicaid reimbursements and federal family planning funds from going to Planned Parenthood, who uses these funds to subsidize non-abortion health services for low-income patients. The bill was pushed forward after heavily edited, undercover videos surfaced of Planned Parenthood doctors discussing the donation of fetal tissue for scientific research. Republicans claimed the video was evidence Planned Parenthood was selling fetal parts for profit. The full, unedited video doesn’t show any illegal activity by the organization.

India Clarke via facebook

+ Keith Gaillard, a 18-year-old Tampa resident, has been charged with murder in the death of India Clarke, a 25-year-old trans woman of color. Gaillard turned himself in to Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office last week. Police declined to talk about a motive but believe Gaillard knew Clarke. NBC reports:

“Detectives found a fingerprint on a cigar wrapper inside Clarke’s car, and Gaillard’s public Facebook profile allegedly showed him showing off a small-caliber revolver, the sheriff’s office said.

A witness told investigators that Gaillard had a .22-caliber revolver, and that he told the witness, ‘I think I killed someone,’ according to the sheriff’s office. Another witness allegedly told investigators that Gaillard said, ‘that was me,’ when asked about the body found the park, the sheriff’s office said.”

+ A teen lesbian couple were attacked by two women in an anti-gay crime at the Six Flags New England theme park in Massachusetts. The couple, both students at Bryant University in Rhode Island, were kissing and embracing on a bridge connecting the Six Flags pickup area to Main Street in Agawam, when a woman stopped and stared at them. One of the victims asked her if there was a problem, which the woman replied “No, I’m just waiting for my kid.” As the couple walked away, the woman said, “I wouldn’t care about your gay asses anyway.” The couple ignored her last comment but the woman began to yell anti-gay slurs at them. The couple turned around and one of them asked her what her problem was and “got in her face.” At this point the woman began punching the victim in the face and then kicking her and pulling her hair as she lay on the ground. Meanwhile, another woman punched the victim’s girlfriend and pulled out a knife. The suspects fled the scene once a crowd gathered but they were quickly apprehended in the parking lot. Damarielys Mukhtar, 29, and Nikia L. Butt, 27, were charged with assault and battery and a civil rights violation with injury. Mukhtar faces an additional charge of assault with a dangerous weapon.

+ For about two hours yesterday, more than 30 demonstrators shut down a major intersection in Seattle to denounce a system that provides incentives to detain immigrants. Trans and/or Women’s Action Camp joined with NWDC Resistance and the Not1More movement to protest the terms of ICE’s contract with Geo Group, a private company that operates a detention center in Tacoma. The contract guarantees 800 beds be filled at any time which leads to racial profiling by ICE agents and gives them incentives to fill quotas. The protestors blocked the intersection of Madison Street and Third Avenue, near the ICE office. No arrests were made.

+ Five national organizations released a new guide called “Schools in Transition: A Guide for Supporting Transgender Students in K-12 Schools” in order to provide school officials and parents with information to better support their transgender students. The Advocate reports:

“The authors of Schools in Transition say it contains legal information, research-supported guidance, and real-life narratives from students and educators, spread over six chapters. It addresses basic concepts of gender, advice on approaching unsupportive parents, as well as information regarding the dangers of marginalization in school.”

+ The New Yorker profiled Darren Wilson, the police officer who murdered Michael Brown. Jezebel breaks it down for you:

“The biggest takeaway from the piece seems to be that Wilson had the opportunity to be a dumb kid but didn’t give others like Brown the same chance. And he still doesn’t think race had anything to do with it.”

+ Six people were stabbed, including one 16-year-old girl who was left dead, at Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade last week. The man charged with the attack, Yishai Schlissel, an Orthodox Jew, was convicted of stabbing three people at Jerusalem’s Pride parade in 2005. He was recently released from prison after serving a 10 year sentence for the attack. After his release, Schlissel returned to his hometown where he distributed hand-written pamphlets in which he called on faithful Jews to risk “beatings and imprisonment” for the sake of preventing the parade. Police and authorities are under fire for failing to keep Schlissel away from the parade especially since Schlissel hinted he would strike again with his pamphlets.

via The Times of Isreal

Shira Banki, the teen girl who died of knife wounds on Sunday, was remembered by her loved ones as someone full of love and tolerance. “Our Shira was murdered simply because of the fact that she was a happy 16-year-old girl, full of life and love, who came to support her friends and everyone else’s right to live as they please,” her family told The Jerusalem Post. Thousands of Israelis demonstrated across the country to protest the antigay stabbings.

+ Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced last week that the Department of Education and the Department of Justice are beginning a pilot program to give eligible incarcerated students federal funding to get a college degree in an attempt to lower the rate of recidivism. This is the first time since 1994 financial aid is available to state and federal prisoners. These future grants will most likely have a huge effect on people of color, since they are more likely to be incarcerated than white people and less likely to attend college.

Daily Fix: Ray Tensing Is Indicted for Murder of Sam DuBose and More News

Here’s your news of the week!

Police/Violence

+ A week ago in this column we talked about the killing of Sam DuBose, who was shot while inside his car by University of Cincinnati officer Ray Tensing after being pulled over for not having a front license plate. Since then, Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Deters has indicted Tensing on murder charges. Body camera footage of the incident contradicts Tensing’s account of what happened; Tensing claimed that DuBose had put the car in motion and was trying to “run him over,” but the footage doesn’t support this.

“People want to believe that Mr. DuBose had done something violent towards the officer — he did not. He did not at all. I feel so sorry for his family and what they lost, and I feel sorry for the community, too,” Deters said.

DuBose’s funeral was on Tuesday; his family and over 500 other people attended his service, at which he was remembered as “the guy in the room ‘who on your worst day is going to make you smile.'”

+ Raynette Turner, a 44-year-old mother of eight, was found dead in police custody this week. She felt ill in custody on Sunday, and was taken to the hospital, where she was treated by doctors and released; on Monday she was found unresponsive.

The woman’s husband, Herman Turner, told Westchester News 12 he wanted answers — and he said he wasn’t getting any. “I can’t get any answers from detectives, anyone,” Herman Turner told the website. “She was a wife. She was a mother. She was mine.”

Vernon Turner with a photo of his late wife. Photo credit Joe Marino, New York Daily News

+ Also on the list of people who have died in police custody this week is Sarah Lee Circle Bear, after reporting pain to guards and being told to “quit faking.” When Circle Bear persisted in asking for medical attention, prison staff physically picked her up and moved her to another cell but didn’t find anyone to provide treatment for her; she was later found unresponsive. Sarah Lee Circle Bear was a 24-year-old Lakota mother of two.

Sarah Lee Circle Bear

+ In Chicago, an ordinance has been proposed that would “strengthen oversight of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) by increasing data transparency, in regards specifically to stop and frisk tactics utilized by the CPD.”

Under the STOP Act, the CPD would have to collect and share data on all the stops that it performs, including the demographic information of those stopped, the reason for the stop, the result of the stop, the location of the stop, and the badge numbers of the officers involved in the stop. Officers would also be required to give receipts to those they stop.

This information would be compiled and shared quarterly, and go on to be reviewed and used to evaluate the effectiveness of certain programs.

+ The details of the grand jury investigation that led to Daniel Pantaleo, the officer responsible for Eric Garner’s death, being found not guilty will not be released to the public.

+ An Ottawa mural created by artists Allan André and Kalkidan Assefa to honor Sandra Bland was defaced with the words “All Lives Matter” overnight, meaning the mural wasn’t even up for a full day. The mural has since been restored with some changes.

Law and Order

+ At the New York Times, Sandy Keenan writes about visiting the University of Albany to see how New York’s new affirmative consent law is working in practice.

I approached another table at the Campus Center — three juniors whose fondness for pickup basketball had brought them together as freshmen. None were aware of the consent decree. With some keyword coaching, Malik Alexander found the policy announcement in his old emails and read it aloud. He had his buddies’ attention.

Mr. Alexander warmed to the idea: “This sounds like something that should be done by everyone in everyday life anyway. I’ve always been more of a consensual sort of guy.”

Kevin Miranda shook his head. “I think that could be difficult in practice,” he said. “Can you at least use body language instead of always having to ask out loud?” Yes. California’s definition and the revised language going into effect in the fall in New York are clear on this point. Body language and physical clues (say, a clear nod) would count, but both warn that consent can be revoked at any time.

+ Migrant women released from detention in South Texas earlier this month are still being forced to wear ankle bracelets.

The Associated Press reports that ICE is imposing an unusual set of conditions on the women, according to American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), who sent an open letter to ICE along with several other immigration nonprofits. While they await asylum hearings, an immigration judge offered the women the choice to pay a bond or wear an ankle monitor. But AILA lawyers say that even women who paid the bond are being forced to wear the monitors, which are bulky, extremely visible, need to be charged often, and carry a heavy stigma.

+ The founder of Deti-404, a Russian website for LGBT teenagers, has been fined 50,000 rubles ($839 US) for violating Russia’s “gay propaganda” laws.

+ Matt Salmon, a Republican congressman from Arizona, has introduced legislation concerning fraternities that would provide more protection for students accused of sexual assault, as well as safeguarding Greek organizations from being forced to go co-ed. The bill would require schools to report all reported instances of sexual assault to law enforcement, unless the victim provides a written statement saying they don’t want to go to the police. If passed, the bill could be harmful to sexual assault survivors, who are often re-traumatized by the involvement of law enforcement and who may belong to communities which have historically been harmed by law enforcement and have reason to wish to avoid them. The bill would also conflict with the requirements of Title IX, so we’ll see how that works out.

Planned Parenthood

+ Planned Parenthood faces one of its most urgent challenges right now; as yet another heavily edited video from the Center for Medical Progress circulates, this one attempting to imply that Planned Parenthood was paid for the “sale” of fetal tissue, Rand Paul is leading a push in the legislature to defund Planned Parenthood entirely. Right now Planned Parenthood receives somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million annually; because of the Hyde Amendment, virtually none of that can go to abortion services, and is almost entirely spent on preventative health services for low-income women, ranging from mammograms to general health screenings. Furthermore, the practices for which CMP is trying to smear Planned Parenthood are entirely legal; a bill passed in 1993 legalizes the donation of fetal tissue from legal abortions to research, and allows for costs of gathering and transporting the tissue to be reimbursed. Frustratingly, several prominent Republicans who are now opposing Planned Parenthood, like Mitch McConnell, actually voted for this bill. Republicans need to gather 60 out of 100 votes in the Senate in order to defund Planned Parenthood, and the vote could happen as early as Monday. If this doesn’t sound like something you want, consider calling your Senator’s office and reminding them of the importance of funding healthcare for low-income women.

+ If I had to read this headline, so do you: “Marco Rubio invokes Cecil the Lion in Planned Parenthood controversy.”

Grab Bag

+ This is an interesting little tidbit if internal House politics interest you; a piece on the odd Republican out, Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who launched a one-man bid to remove John Boehner as the House speaker.

+ On Monday, a working group at the Pentagon will begin figuring out a plan for dismantling the ban on openly trans people serving in the military.

+ In a study that confirms what many know from lived experience with the school-to-prison pipeline, researchers find that when black students misbehave at school, schools are more likely to call the police. In contrast, white students are more likely to be offered medical intervention and/or put into special needs programs.

Supreme Court Rules “Free Speech” More Important Than Safe Access to Abortions, Healthcare

Feature image via Fibonacci Blue/Flickr

The Supreme Court has struck down a Massachusetts law establishing a 35-foot “buffer zone” around abortion clinics, stating that it violated the free speech rights of the groups who often picket outside them. It also cast doubt on a prior Supreme Court decision, issued in 2000, upholding much smaller “floating buffer zones” in some states. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered today’s unanimous opinion, which focused on public streets and sidewalks as “traditional public fora” to which anyone should have access.

“Even today, they remain one of the few places where a speaker can be confident that he is not simply preaching to the choir,” Roberts said in the opinion. “With respect to other means of communication, an individual confronted with an uncomfortable message can always turn the page, change the channel, or leave the Web site.”

But the point for Massachusetts lawmakers, who created the law in 2007 to replace an existing 6-foot floating buffer zone, was to create a safe space for those who would change the channel if they could. Before the law was enacted, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley told NPR earlier this year, the 6-foot zone was not enough to protect those entering and leaving the clinic. “On a day-to-day basis there was an issue of safety, of people trying to get in the clinic being approached” and “physically harassed,” she said. Protesters would slip literature in through car windows as they drove by, and both pro-choice and anti-abortion groups would crowd walkways as patients and doctors attempted to get to clinic entrances.

So for every grandmotherly part-time prison chaplain who expresses her wish to “walk and talk gently, lovingly,” with those considering abortion, as this case’s lead plaintiff stated in January, there are dozens or even hundreds of anti-abortion protestors who show up with other motives. They’re there to intimidate and harass clinic patrons, whether by yelling about murder or pelting women with baby doll parts or videotaping everyone who enters the clinic or harassing building owners and their families even away from the premises. It’s hard to anticipate at what point passion for a cause will tip into outright aggression, but I should hope we can keep it at least 35 feet away from patients who are already facing a huge decision and being threatened and intimidated.

In contrast, here are a few places where it is illegal to stage a protest: in the Supreme Court plaza, outside polling places on election day, near funerals and at the Super Bowl. Public places like roads and sidewalks are generally open for picketing, but there are many cases in which that space becomes protected. And generally speaking, if your expression of free speech involves completely blocking a roadway or building entrance, you become a safety hazard and can be removed by the police. The idea that we should create safe zones where someone’s right to free speech can’t interfere with someone else’s right to freedom of action isn’t a crazy or unusual one. It’s one our government exercises all the time.

For all their talk of wanting to comfort and counsel scared women, anti-abortion groups do a whole lot of outright harassing. People who visit clinics report feeling intimidated and scared, even if they’re visiting for a reason other than abortion. The Massachusetts government tried to solve this problem not by shutting protesters up completely, but by moving them a little further away from clinics. They tried to create a space where fear and intimidation could be mitigated, and they did so specifically because the existing space was not being respected. By striking down the 35-foot buffer zone, the Supreme Court has told people that they do not in fact have the right to make a personal medical decision without facing harassment, ridicule and personal attack.

Women aren’t the only people who get abortions, but this news brings to mind some of the #YesAllWomen conversations about safety and self-determination in the face of aggression. Those who visit abortion clinics are asked to wade their way through crowds of people shouting at them, throwing things, videotaping them and calling them names. That hostility is directly triggered by an action they have taken, and they are told it’s what they deserve for making a certain decision. They are treated with suspicion and condescension, and their decision is thrown in their faces as if they don’t know its consequences. It’s enough to intimidate even someone who is completely confident in their decision to get an abortion, and enough to break someone who is even a little hesitant about the procedure.

Yes, people who oppose abortion are allowed to do so, and allowed to tell others that they do. But when their methods reach the level seen at clinics across the country, we must ask ourselves: Should their right to express an opinion supersede a patient’s right to safety, both physical and emotional? Unfortunately, today’s Supreme Court decision declares that for people who need to access an abortion, it does.

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Just Lost: Texas Women Are Down but Not Out

This past weekend, my girlfriend and I had self-care Sunday, where we listened to Selena and cleaned my apartment because it was necessary. The verdict of the Trayvon Martin case was basically the last straw after so many instances in the past month of our government’s disregard for human rights.

If you are a Texan, the past few weeks have been especially heartbreaking for you because Texas Republicans suck and finally managed to push their ideals down Texans’ throats. After Gov. Rick Perry signed HB2 into law this morning, Texas is now one of the most restrictive states when it comes to abortion rights. HB2 outlaws abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, shuts down all but five abortion clinics in the state and tightens guidelines when it comes to abortion drugs. It’s a law that undoubtedly affects so many in the state: low-income, working class, people of color.

HB2 is a continuation of Texas’s already very restricted access to healthcare. In 2011, during the last legislative session, Texas cut funding to any clinics that had ties to abortion services or providers (even though the funds did not go directly toward abortions) as well as non-abortion affiliated clinics, resulting in nearly half of women’s health clinics around the state to close. Also, Gov. Rick Perry rejected additional Medicaid funds from Obamacare. So getting affordable and safe healthcare in Texas was already hard enough without this new bill.

Now, HB2 requires abortion clinics to meet the same standard as Ambulatory Surgical Centers (same-day surgery centers), which will force 37 of 42 abortion providers to close. These clinics don’t just provide abortion services, but vital healthcare services needed by many in the queer communities including STD screenings, cancer screenings, HIV testing, and pregnancy testing. With only five open abortion clinics between San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas, it makes it significantly more difficult for folks living in rural and border towns to make a multi-day trip to one of these major cities at least three hours away.

Texas isn’t the only state in the battle for reproductive justice—it seems like restricting reproductive rights is a trend these days. North Carolina legislature is currently trying to pass their own stringent abortion laws by attempting to attach them to unrelated bills. In Wisconsin, a judge blocked a new abortion law that “bans doctors who lack admitting privileges at nearby hospitals from performing abortions.”

Source: jessicawluther.com

Sen. Wendy Davis and her snazzy Mizuno shoes became superstars overnight after her 11-hour filibuster in late June. But we also need to give props to a team of kickass women of color in the House of Representatives (Dukes, Farrar, Gonzalez, Allen, González, and Thompson) who were key players in the battle against SB5 that helped delay the vote on the bill, ultimately helping to kill the bill for a period of time.

And we also have to applaud the Texans who organized, protested, shared their testimony and made their voices heard at the capitol. What actually killed the abortion bill the first time around was the citizen’s filibuster: the pro-choicers sitting in the gallery and waiting outside in the rotunda—“the unruly mob”—made so much noise they drowned out and delayed the vote. I’ve lived in Texas all my life and it’s been a red state for as long as I can remember. Rick Perry has been the governor since I was 9. (I was in third grade!) So when I saw people actually speaking out and protesting against the Texas government, it was amazing.

Source: John Anderson

Wendy’s filibuster, with the help of the citizen filibuster, killed the bill by delaying the vote until after the first special session officially ended. Unfortunately it didn’t stop there, because Perry called for a second special session. This time around there were more anti-abortion people (blue shirts) present at the capitol than there were at the time Wendy filibustered. Testimonies were made by both sides of the argument (including some outrageous ones from men) at the committee hearings. The Texas House debated HB2 for 10.5 hours before it was eventually passed to the Senate. While the Senate debated SB1, Texas DPS confiscated tampons, and not guns, for safety purposes of course. It didn’t matter, Texas’s view of safety is skewed. After all, the abortion bill finally passed and the message was a clear abrasive assault on Texans’ choice.

During my time at the capitol protesting SB5 during the citizen filibuster and at a pro-choice rally the night HB2 passed, I was happy to see the hundreds of queer faces, young women and men, and people of color wearing orange. But at the same time, I was well aware that those most affected by this legislation were not present. The women who live along the Texas-Mexico border, poor women of color, the Latin@s who make up the majority of the population in Texas, who have the highest birth rate and are the most uninsured population, were not at these protests or rallies or even thought about in our government. They live hundreds of miles from the state capitol and can’t take time off of their job to share their testimony. I was also sad to see the lack of Spanish-speaking media (or mainstream media) coverage during the events at the capitol which is probably the only way these groups would know what was happening.

Even though this bill still passed, I felt there was an awakening in Texas. Activism and awareness were stirred in many Texans’ hearts and it sprung up new organizations like the Feminist Justice League. This is just the beginning.

Obama Supports Planned Parenthood, Trusts Women

There’s been plenty of coverage of the Republican Party’s recent “war on women” — from their gazillion violating and unconstitutional attempts at restricting abortion access to their reluctance to continue supporting the Violence Against Women Act. Maybe you even remember how Republicans waved around the threat of shutting down the US government via lack of funding because it was that important to them to keep Planned Parenthood from doing its work. So it’s a nice thing, in the midst of a constant deluge of news about politicians who are willing and even enthusiastic about throwing women and other marginalized communities under the bus in order to further their own interests, to see someone who’s willing to stand in solidarity with women instead. Which is what President Obama is doing with the statement that he recorded in support of Planned Parenthood and those it serves:

In culture wars where a sharp dividing line is drawn, political instinct often calls for tiptoeing around it — the way many politicians do when talking about, say, marriage equality. “I have the utmost respect for my gay friends, and that’s totally unrelated to my belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.” It’s almost shocking, then, to hear a politician (our President, even) take such an unapologetic stand: saying that “Planned Parenthood will continue providing care no matter what,” and affirming that some decisions are “best made between a woman and her doctor” are a decision to stand decisively on one side of the line in the sand as far as women’s health. Obama reminds us that Planned Parenthood provides dozens of services besides abortion, and for many women serves as crucial preventative care. Anyone, a politician or otherwise, who wants to inhibit women’s access to that is also opposing basic health and equality for half of America. It’s good to know that even if sometimes it feels like no one else in public office understands that, at least our President does.

America Now More Pro-Equality, But Not More Pro-Choice: Figuring Out What Gays Did Right In 2011

It’s almost the end of 2011, which means that among the year-end lists will be a certain amount of jockeying for “which group has made the most progress.” Who has more rights than they started out with, and who has less? Did we lose electronic privacy rights, but gain economic and financial literacy? This year, one comparison seems fairly clear: the queer community has seen the repeal of DADT and major progress on the repeal of DOMA, whereas more than 80 abortion-restricting laws were enacted across the US in the same timespan.

Gay rights and reproductive rights are both divisive issues, but also tend to appeal to the same groups of people, and politicians often support one if they support the other. Why the disparity? At Salon, Irin Carmon makes the case that gay activists have brought pressure to bear on politicians at every level that reproductive rights activists should consider emulating.

It seems that everywhere the Republican hopefuls go, they’re confronted by supporters of gay rights, who may or may not themselves be gay. And every time it happens, their equivocations or evasions or sputtering give birth to another viral moment, primed for Facebook sharing and coalescing around the view that the Republicans are hopelessly out of touch on an issue of growing consensus… You know what I’ve never seen someone confront a Republican candidate about, with maybe one exception? The fact that four of them have signed the so-called Personhood pledge to wholly ban abortion and many common forms of birth control, or that five of them have vowed to defund Planned Parenthood, which provides basic health services to literally millions of women under the Title X program.

Of course, there are some major differences between the struggle for equality for queers and the struggle for women to be able to make their own choices about their bodies — the first fights against a prejudice centered around sexual deviance, and the latter combats the deeply held cultural belief that women aren’t qualified to make decisions about their own sexuality or bodies. While the two issues may seem like concepts both liberals and conservatives should just fall in line on, there may be more complex differences in how the public and individual politicians respond to those two culturally embedded concepts. For instance, the (generally pretty liberal) Religious Society of Friends supports gay marriage almost unilaterally, but also frequently opposes abortion rights because many members feel it constitutes a level of violence that they categorically don’t support. It’s hard to pick apart the extent to which personal experiences and prejudices, both in voters and elected officials, might lead them to support one set of rights and try to take away another.

But perhaps more important than figuring that out is noting, as Carmon does, that “this is not a women versus gay people dichotomy.” Most obviously, because women and gay people are not separate groups; in fact, roughly half of gay people are women, and not-insignificant percentage of women are gay or queer. Queer people also need reproductive rights, and queer women also need access to abortions; they’re not separate issues. An attempt to take away reproductive rights is an assault on all Americans, not just straight women. But it’s also not a dichotomy for a deeper reason: because while you can make the argument that all inequality is interrelated, the oppression of queers and women is especially linked by the disapproval and distaste of the patriarchy. While there are huge differences in the ways that both forms of marginalization are experienced, they’re both based in the belief that people who identify outside of heterosexual masculinity, whether they be straight or queer or trans just cisgendered females, aren’t trustworthy or deserving of agency or power.

We Won a Thing: Mississippi Votes Against Classifying All Embryos As People

This was a big election week, with lots of great wins for people who care about all things good like reclaiming union rights in Ohio and recalling Russell Pearce, that guy who came up with that  “papers please” law in Arizona.

And then there was the exceptional failure of the Mississippi “Personhood Amendment.” Rejoice!

Now, let’s talk more about what the religious right is trying to do to get all up in your reproductive rights and take away access to basic healthcare for women.

Back in July Carmen gave us a marvelous overview of the ongoing attack by the GOP and religious right to women’s reproductive health.  The Mississippi “Personhood Amendment” is the most dramatic of these efforts. The amendment goes so far as to ban abortion even in the case of incest and rape and would ban some forms of birth control by redefining a “person” to include “every human being from the moment of fertilization.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights further explains the reach of the “Personhood Amendment” (I’ve bolded one of the most important aspects of this for lesbians):

The amendment also could affect a wide range of other medical care, including many common forms of contraception, in-vitro fertilization, stem cell research, and medical treatment of pregnant women. Hormonal contraception that may prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg, such as IUDs, could be banned. Physicians would likely stop performing in-vitro fertilization, in part because the process involves the creation of some embryos that are ultimately discarded or damaged.

The thought was that if the amendment could pass anywhere, the conservative electorate of Mississippi would be the ones to do it.  Fortunately 58% of voters said, no thank you very much I would not like to vote all my reproductive rights away if that’s ok with you.

Mother Jones reports on the failure of the amendment:

The primary reason for the measure’s failure was overreach. In recent weeks, opponents of the measure made the case to the public that it wasn’t really just about abortion, but could also have far-reaching impacts on birth control, in vitro fertilization, and a doctor’s ability to provide care for pregnant women. Nsombi Lambright, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, pointed to the many grassroots and medical groups that got involved in the debate that were outside of the traditional abortion rights supporters like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. In the past weeks, those groups were also knocking on doors, appearing in public forums, and making phone calls.

This is definitely a victory for women’s rights, although reading reporting coming out of the anti-abortion community, it seems like they’re actually responsible for a significant chunk of their own defeat. Amanda Marcotte parses the difference between the anti-choice and “pro-life” camps which likely hindered the success of the amendment.

Writing for The Washington Post Jacques Berlinerblau calls those from the Christian religious right who supported this amendment, “the most swashbucklingest social movement out there”.  Berlinerblau continues, “They will pull out all the stops, give you the razzle dazzle, double-down on doubling down. And, yes, they will be back, bigger and better than ever.”

Well, I know some swashbuckling feminists who would disagree.

For more information about the history of birth control and abortion and how this issue has  become so politicized, listen to this recent Fresh Air interview with Jill Lepore, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of the recent piece Birthright.

Everything You Need to Know About the GOP’s War on Women’s Rights, Reproductive Health

I’m being sarcastic when I say I’m surprised that Republicans across the nation are using their positions of power to take valuable health care resources away from women in their states. In fact I’m totally just kidding. I’m not surprised at all.

In fact, this make 100 percent sense since the GOP has been waging war on women for quite some time now. And it’s still about the same thing: reproductive justice. And I’m calling it that because I get it, sometimes it is weird that queer women care about abortion, but the ability to control our bodies is getting serious: bills that de-fund Planned Parenthood and are called “The Heartbeat Bill” are coming to state politics near you. This isn’t just about abortion: it’s about the fact that our bodies are being controlled and policed by bodies that don’t look, sound, or live like us. And they aren’t on our side.

Elections are coming this November and the United States looks like this:

(In case this is hard to decipher, deep purple means bans on abortion already exist. Lavender means abortion coverage is in danger. And grey means it will be soon.)

I’m going to cover abortion bans state-by-state that are happening right now, right this moment, to bodies in that state.

Kansas Almost Lost All Its Abortion Providers

New licensing regulations in Kansas were shutting down abortion clinics and putting Kansas at risk of becoming the first state in which zero abortion providers exist.

This is obviously because zero unplanned pregnancies and zero cases of pregnancy from rape and incest will occur in Kansas this year, right? Like, that’s the only way, right?

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed a law early this June forcing abortion providers to meet new regulations – a ton of them. They include provisions on the size of Janitor’s Closets, and the temperature. The checklist is over 200 items and 30 pages long. And abortion providers had until July 1 – two weeks from when the new guidelines were released – to meet them all.

Luckily at the very last minute, U.S. District Judge Carlos Murguia issued an order to temporarily block Kansas from enforcing new rules for its abortion providers.

Planned Parenthood was able to snag a license late Thursday but The Center for Women’s Health had doctors cancel the inspection because “they know they won’t get approved.” But Dr. Herbert Hodes and his daughter, who run the center, disagree, and their lawsuit is what inspired Murguia’s temporary block.

And it might be causing a tide of similar lawsuits from the other applicants:

The suit calls the new rules “ambiguous and unclear” and says the law imposes, “burdensome and costly requirements that are not medically necessary or appropriate and that are not imposed on Kansas medical providers performing other comparable procedures.”

Anti-choice activists say that the clinics are just trying to get around the law because they all failed to meet “minimum health and safety standards.” Obviously abortions can’t safely be performed in a facility that doesn’t have a toilet in the staff dressing room.

Aid for Women is expected to file its own lawsuit today, and the Overland Park Planned Parenthood is considering doing the same, even though its license application is still pending. All three abortion clinics are in the Kansas City area, and an attorney representing the Center for Women’s Health notes that if they’re shut down, the nearest location for a woman to receive a first-trimester abortion would be Columbia, Missouri, and the nearest location for a second-trimester abortion would be St. Louis. That means a woman living in central Kansas would have to drive about six hours or eight hours to get a safe and legal abortion.

Six or eight hours to get a safe and legal abortion. Does that sound like zero?

Texas Wants Planned Parenthood to Work Hard for the Money

The reason Kansas’ government is using a 200-item checklist to take abortion care away from women is because it’s difficult to actually straight-up defund a Planned Parenthood. That sounds surprising, since so many Planned Parenthood attacks have occured recently. But federally, blocking Planned Parenthood money is very hard, because PP provides much more than abortions. Plus, there’s that whole Hyde Amendment thing that makes federally funded abortions impossible, not that any lawmakers have heard of it. And in Texas, PP patients have been paying for their own abortions since 2005.

Planned Parenthood, in fact, actually provides many women in Texas access to cancer and diabetes screenings. And since it’s all they could get, Texas lawmakers passed two measures this month eliminating those by getting rid of the state’s family planning program. That’s not zero abortion clinics: that’s 300,000 women losing access to life-saving resources at reasonable costs.

Texas Governor Rick Perry reduced the state budget for family planning from $111 million to $37 million. Obviously not a big deal. And then this Monday state lawmakers put Planned Parenthood on the bottom of a new tiered distribution system for those funds. So what does this mean for horrible cancer and diabetes screening providers Planned Parenthood? Well:

“It doesn’t completely defund us, but it puts the agency in a position where they have to put us third in line for the money,” said Yvonne Gutierrez, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of South Texas. “And it’s not only us that’s in the third tier — it’s all the traditional family planning providers that don’t provide comprehensive care, many in rural areas. So it’s the hard to reach population that’s really being affected by this.”

Texas Planned Parenthood offices have two avenues through which they receive state and federal money: the Women’s Health Program (WHP), which is funded by Medicaid, and the state family planning program, which is funded by the Title X federal grant program. In addition to putting private providers like Planned Parenthood last in line for Title X funds, GOP lawmakers inserted language into the new Medicaid bill that will prevent WHP money from going to any entity that provides abortions or is affiliated with an abortion provider.

Half of 120,000 low-income women that use the WHP do so through their local Planned Parenthood clinic. Does that sound like zero or like 60,000 women who can’t afford other forms of care and now have nothing to rely on?

And even what they rely on is running short as Republicans cut back on medical providers across the state:

“If they’re gonna kick Planned Parenthood out of the program, then all of these women going to a Planned Parenthood clinic are gonna have to go to another provider — and these providers are already operating at capacity,” Gutierrez told HuffPost.

Texas is probably breaking federal Medicaid rules by discriminating against Planned Parenthood – and if the state is found guilty of doing so they’ll lose up to 150 million federal family planning dollars. It’s a lose-lose, and guess who isn’t winning? Women.

The Only Good Thing in Texas now is that the Center for Reproductive Rights has filed an injunction against the state for its abortion practices, outlined in new, recent legislation. Thank Whoever, because Texas abortion providers are now required to give women sonograms prior to their procedure and describe their fetus in great detail. Clearly this is to make the process more streamlined, efficient, and pleasant for women. I think the best part is when she gets to listen to the heartbeat. And of course there is now a waiting period, of up to 72 hours.

The lawsuit accuses the state of imposing political requirements on doctors, thus “hijacking” the patient/doctor relationship. (Doctors who do not comply will be stripped of their licenses.) Oh, and they think the new regulations are sexist. Cross your fingers and keep them crossed, because this lawsuit might make bring an end to a recent tidal wave of mandatory sonogram laws across the nation.

Ohio Seemed Irrelevant Until “The Heartbeat Bill”

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news in this case. It’s really bad news. It feels overwhelming, right? But don’t worry. The people trying to take women’s health care away are also responsible for this badly-produced, way-too-dramatic ad about how a fetus that isn’t a baby yet has a heartbeat and therefore you should buy balloons for them. It’s tacky, so I feel bad. It just could have been so much better if it had never happened at all:

The Ohio House passed this bill 54-43, and it’s the most restrictive abortion law on the books. Detection of a heartbeat? That does not sound like Roe v. Wade. And that’s probably because the lawmakers working on it are blatantly ignoring the existing precedent from the 1973 case, which is viability, and are instead calling on fetuses to testify about abortion in court.

The state senate is next, and then the Governor’s desk. I hope that by this point you understand what I’m trying to say. Governors suck. And so do these measures.

Two representatives in the state said it right about this one:

Said pro-choice State Representative Connie Pillich on the floor, “The only jobs this bill will create is back alley butchers who are sharpening their knives,” according to Planned Parenthood of Ohio’s Twitter feed.

And another representative addressed anti-choice members: “You should feel uncomfortable about this vote. A fetus now has more rights than a woman.”

Indiana Isn’t Defunding Planned Parenthood… Yet

GOP Presidential Candidates Unanimously Ensure Gay Apocalypse, Bachmann Fears Lesbian Attack

The Daily Beast has a new profile on GOP Presidential contender Michele Bachmann, Enemy Number One of the Gays, and it’s really scary. I mean — it’s not as scary as being in a bathroom with a lesbian and a nun, but scary.

Speaking of being in a public restroom with a lesbian and a nun — apparently Michele Bachmann has experienced that horror first-hand.

See — back in April 2005, state senator Michele Bachmann held a constituent forum which was attended lesbian named Pamela Arnold (PAM! = lesbian name) who had some questions about Michele’s feelings on gay rights. But when same-sex marriage came up, rather than answering the question, Michele made like a nervous twelve-year-old girl and ditched the meeting altogether, running immediately into the bathroom.

Arnold, who’d come to the meeting specifically for these answers, followed her into the bathroom. Arnold was accompanied by another middle-aged woman, a former nun.

I’ll let The Daily Beast take it from here:

Bachmann washed her hands and Arnold looked on, the ex-nun tried to talk to her about theology. Suddenly, after less than a minute, Bachmann let out a shriek. “Help!” she screamed. “Help! I’m being held against my will!”

Arnold, who is just over 5 feet tall, was stunned, and hurried to open the door. Bachmann bolted out and fled, crying, to an SUV outside. Then she called the police, saying, according to the police report, that she was “absolutely terrified and has never been that terrorized before as she had no idea what those two women were going to do to her.” The Washington County attorney, however, declined to press charges, writing in a memo, “It seems clear from the statements given by both women that they simply wanted to discuss certain issues further with Ms. Bachmann.”

Well! I think it’s safe to say that Bachmann is probs a closeted homosexual, ’cause anger like that tends to be rooted in self-loathing, but moving on; Michele Bachmann says things that seem crazy to us but make sense to Christian Conservatives, apparently, which seems like not a HUGE deal until you realize how many Evangelicals are out there. According to the PEW Report, 26.3% of Americans are affiliated with “Evangelical Protestant Churches.” Next up is 23.9% Catholics, followed by Mainline Protestant Churches (18%), Unaffiliated (16%) and “Historically Black Churches” (6.9%). Jews and Mormons tie at 1.7% each.

Five out of seven GOP presidential hopefuls spoke out against marriage equality at the debate on Monday night. Furthermore, five out of seven would reinstate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

++

So! Which of these Republican options scares you the most? So far Mitt Romney’s Most Likely to Succeed because that’s exactly what we need, a Mormon in charge of the entire freaking country.  The Log Cabin Republicans report that 31% of gay people vote Republican — but that applies to all elections, not just the presidential race. It’s worth mentioning that the Republican affiliation with the Extreme Christian Right and its dependence on that voter base is a fairly recent phenomenon. In other words: it doesn’t have to be this way. Social conservativism is not an inexorable element of the Republican agenda. It’s just become that way.

Michele Bachmann

+ “The immediate consequence, if gay marriage goes through, is that K-12 little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural and perhaps they should try it.”

+ Being gay is “not funny. It’s a very sad life. It’s part of Satan.”

+ “Don’t misunderstand. I am not here bashing people who are homosexuals, who are lesbians, who are bisexual, who are transgender. We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life and sexual identity disorders.”

+ Michele Bachmann hates gay people SO much that she’s no longer close with her lesbian stepsister.

+ Planned Parenthood is “the LensCrafters of abortion.”

+

Ron Paul:

+ Pro-life, says abortion is murder and life begins at inception
+ Against federal funding for organizations that “promote abortion”
+ Thinks the government should “stay out of the gay and lesbian agenda.”
+ Voted “yes” on banning gay adoptions. (Actually is against all adoptions.)
+ Marriages should be extracted from government involvement altogether.

+

Herman Cain:

+ Pro-life.
+ Describes Planned Parenthood as “planned genocide.”
+ “Fierce opponent of same-sex marriage and civil unions” but believes it should be left up to the states.

+

Newt Gingrich:

+ Pro-life
+ Would hold doctors rather than mothers accountable for abortions.
+ Opposes domestic partnership benefits for same-sex couples
+ Opposes gays and lesbians adopting children
+ Wants a constitutional amendment to protect marriage.

+

Mitt Romney:

+ Supports abortion rights in the case of rape or incest
+ Believes the national standard for marriage should be between a man and a woman, but domestic partnerships should be recognized in a way that includes health benefits and rights of survivorship.
+ “Feels that same sex marriage would destroy not only the culture of America but also irreparably damage the education system and thereby children.”
+ Is against gays & lesbians serving openly in the military.

+

Rick Santorum:

+ “Santorum is possibly the most fervent top-tier anti-abortionist left in the presidential race.”
+ Opposes same-sex marriages because they “crave society’s acceptance of gay’s ‘bad behavior.'”
+ Opposes adoption by same-sex couples.
++

Tim Pawlenty:

+ Pro life, right to life should extend to the unborn.
+ Gay marriage should be banned with a constitutional amendment.

Basically, if a Republican wins in 2012, we’re completely and totally fucked. What about the prospective candidates not at Monday’s debate?

Tom Miller: Marriage is between one man and one woman.

Vern Wuensche: Believes same-sex marriage should be banned and civil unions should not be allowed. Also against adoption by gay couples and in faovor of a Federal Marriage Ammendment.

Sarah Palin: Doesn’t support anything beyond “traditional marriage between a man and a woman” and, puzzlingly, says her “support for same-sex marriage continues only as long as it does not redefine the traditional definition of marriage.” Supports Family Research Council and other anti-gay interest groups.

Of course let’s not forget our gay boyfriend Fred Karger, my favorite Republican candidate of all Republican candidates who’ve ever run for president ever. Well, Abe Lincoln did some rad stuff I guess, but I want Fred Karger to be in charge of something.

Even though Fred Karger probs won’t be invited to any debates, he’s still doing what he can by filing a complaint against Mitt Romney for voter fraud.

I present your moment of Zen: