Why make an exception for rape and incest?

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Civil Rights, politics, Sex

I always look for­ward to Dr. Mar­ty Klein’s Sex­u­al Intel­li­gence newslet­ters, so I was tick­led to see one in my inbox today. But one of the head­lines took me by sur­prise: End Rape & Incest Excep­tions to Stu­pak Abor­tion Ban. Dr. Klein always has excel­lent analy­ses, and this one is no excep­tion.

If you’re against repro­duc­tive choice for so-called “moral rea­sons” (as if any­one get­ting an abor­tion or sup­port­ing its legal­i­ty isn’t “moral”), be con­sis­tent. If killing a fetus or even a fer­til­ized egg wan­der­ing around a wom­an’s body is the same as killing a per­son (the posi­tion of every anti-choice activist), why should it mat­ter how the fetus or fer­til­ized egg got there? Why is a fetus’ right to live dimin­ished because its father was a rapist or a sadist? After all, we don’t say the chil­dren of such men have few­er rights than oth­er chil­dren.

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Read more | Comments (7) | December 4th, 2009

Stupak is back! Time to call your legislators again!

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Civil Rights, politics

This time it’s in the Sen­ate, folks. In case you just crawled out from under a rock, I’m talk­ing about the Stu­pak-Pitts amend­ment to the Afford­able Health Care for Amer­i­ca Act that was orig­i­nal­ly intro­duced in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bart Stu­pak of Michi­gan and Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Joseph Pitts of Penn­syl­va­nia, along with a long list of Con­gressper­sons. The bill tried to keep any fed­er­al funds from being used to pay for an abor­tion, but was also word­ed in such a way that it would have pro­hib­it­ed women from pur­chas­ing pri­vate cov­er­age to cov­er abor­tions. That’s a ridicu­lous restric­tion on the repro­duc­tive free­dom of every woman who needs health care, and an even fur­ther eco­nom­ic restric­tion on what pri­vate cit­i­zens can pur­chase with their own funds. Women would be los­ing cov­er­age they have now!

The let­ter I sent to my Sen­a­tors last month was, like every­thing I send to Sen­a­tor Isak­son, not read as far as I could tell, because his office just respond­ed with a form let­ter bab­bling about his reli­gious beliefs. That’s a bit bet­ter than Sen­a­tor Cham­b­liss’ office, at least, which does­n’t even do that much. Still, that form let­ter was some­thing of a straw break­ing this par­tic­u­lar camel’s back, and it inspired me to write anoth­er let­ter back to Sen­a­tor Isak­son, one that he has­n’t respond­ed to at all. I’m not ter­ri­bly sur­prised, as I asked that he not respond at all if his only response was going to be anoth­er form let­ter. Still, writ­ing it pre­pared me, to a cer­tain extent, to respond to the alert going out about the renewed Stu­pak amend­ment, which is why I men­tion it here.

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Read more | Comments (1) | December 3rd, 2009