Anti-choicers protest the pill, complaints about Sonia Sotomayor reaching new levels of incoherence, and Plan B is easier for 17-year-olds to get, but it’s not enough.

 

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When Abortion Was Illegal

IWF vs. Sonia Sotomayor

Really?

 

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be interviewing Joy Baynes about the increased availability of Plan B, and why it’s not enough.  Also, anti-choicers protest to ban the pill, but they’ve changed their excuse a little bit.  And the Independent Women’s Forum shows how the complaints about Sonia Sotomayor are incoherent.

Thanks to blogger Hugo Zoom for posting the documentary "When Abortion Was Illegal".  I haven’t seen this before, but it’s quite powerful.  

• illegal abortion *

What’s particularly distressing is when they read the death confessions they extracted from women dying from botched illegal abortions.  It was a common practice.  Sexual women weren’t allowed to die in peace with clear consciences, but were exploited by withholding care until they gave up the man who got them pregnant and the abortion provider.

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The American Life League, in an effort to show how crazy the anti-choice movement really, really is, went ahead with another protest not of Roe v. Wade, but their ultimate aim, which is for an overturn of Griswold v. Connecticut.  They call it the Pill Kills protest, and they have it every year around the anniversary of the 1965 case that legalized contraception across the country.  What’s interesting about this is the Pill Kills group, which is an offshoot of the American Life League, has been trying to refine their message, making it increasingly disingenuous.  Obviously, the reason they don’t like the pill is because they object to its efficacy.  Since it works so well, fewer women are punished with unintended pregnancy for the crime of having sex.  

But since sex is so universally popular, they can’t just say what they think about the pill, of course.  Since anti-choicers have exactly zero objections to lying about anything to further their aims, the American Life League has been trying out a few different lies about the pill in order to scare people away from it.  Last year, the big lie was that the pill kills zygotes.  

* pill kills 1 *

I guess the combination of the overwhelming evidence against this claim plus the fact that they really can’t convince people that zygotes are the same as 5-year-olds has caused them to rethink that lie.  Now they’re lying and claiming that the pill should be banned because it kills women.  I combed the entire Pill Kills website, and all the claims that were in print there were that the pill will pretty much certainly kill you with a stroke, but if you’re one of the few lucky ones to survive that, then some mysterious pill-related death will get you.  God will have you pay for sex with pregnancy or death, ladies, your choice.  

Of course, the sliver of truth here is that the pill isn’t safe for women who are stroke risks, especially smokers and especially overweight smokers.  This is true, but relative to most prescription medicine, the pill is actually pretty safe, much safer than most drugs, which is why a one-time dose was approved for over the counter sales in the form of emergency contraception.  But reading this site, you’d think that no other drug in the history of the world had side effects.

But they’re not too interested in facts, as this lecture from anti-choice nut Dr. Lynn Kerr demonstrates.

• pill kills 2 *

Blah blah blah, the pill "breaks" you because it alters your body chemistry.  By this logic, cholesterol controlling medication and insulin for Type I diabetes are also bad drugs because they counter your body’s "natural" inclinations.  But what I really like is that anti-choicers are so obsessed with punishing women for sex that they are willing to object to the entire concept of preventive medicine.  Doctors are only to look for disease once it’s too late and fix it.  Unless of course, it’s pregnancy-related disease, in which case anti-choicers would welcome you to die, because therapeutic abortions are out of the question, too.

But I want to see anti-choicers really live up to this mantra.  No more regular check-ups.  No more cancer screenings, nutrition advice, and even exercise should be frowned upon.  Prevention is immoral and unnatural and a sign that doctors are out to get you, right?  Then act like it.

Of course, it’s not an anti-choicer gathering unless they’re squawking about natural family planning, the favorite form of making it nearly impossible to avoid pregnancy, especially if your partner is being especially whiny and entitled.  I’ve heard it touted as a cure for all sorts of things, but leave it to anti-choice nuts to claim it solves menstrual problems that the pill is so good at fixing.

• pill kills 3 *

Anything, anything, anything but putting a 15-year-old on a pill that might mean that she doesn’t have a baby as a side effect.  Well, of course, anti-choicers aren’t thinking that far ahead.  They hear the words teenager and pill next to each other, and no matter what the context, they think, "Young women are having sex and getting away with it! Stop the madness!"  And that’s the end of their thinking.  But really, I love how he thinks girls and their mothers have to go through months of hell and quackery treatments to address symptoms that could safely be addressed with the pill.  Because the alternative is she might have sex without getting pregnant, and if you don’t want a pregnant teenage girl, than I just don’t know what’s wrong with you.

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• insert interview *

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To no one’s great surprise, the Independent Women’s Forum, who claims to be so very pro-woman, isn’t very pro-Sonia Sotomayor.  So much so that they’re not aware of what kind of contradictions that you get into when you try to claim that while you’re very sure that it’s entirely possible for there to be a qualified woman, but you know damn well that you will claim that any woman picked will have just been selected because she’s a woman.  So, here’s Allison Kasic spouting a subtle but interesting self-contradiction.  

• sotomayor 1 *

Okay, so essentially she’s saying this isn’t a surprise, because Sotomayor has been the favorite for this seat for practically forever.  And she’s right, actually!  I know, it’s rare, but in this small case she’s right.  Sotomayor has more federal bench experience than any of the other justices on the Supreme Court had before they were appointed, and she’s known as a stickler for precedent and generally pretty moderate, so a safe pick.  Most qualified, supposedly least controversial, a perfect pick, right?  So why then does Kasic follow it up with this?

• sotomayor 2 *

I love it.  It’s like she’s saying, "As a woman, I’d theoretically like to see women get these jobs, but in practice I’m always going to imply strongly that your womanhood means that you aren’t qualified."  Which of course, is the position IWF has to take to keep the funding coming. The contradiction here is that before she set up the women-can’t-really-be-qualified gambit, she confessed that Sotomayor was the favorite because if anyone can claim to be the most qualified, it’s Sotomayor.  So, which is it?

Kasic then makes a rousing call for getting away from identity politics and talking about merit.  

• sotomayor 3 *

Call me a cynic, but I had to stop here and laugh and laugh.  The people making an issue out of identity politics are conservatives, not Sotomayor’s defenders.  Conservatives are race-baiting and using anti-choice code phrases like "judicial activism", which are supposed to arouse their anti-feminist base.  Doesn’t get more identity politics than that.  And the reason they’re doing it is because he merits and temperament are pretty much above reproach and they know it.  

As if to prove how full of it Kasic is, the interviewer immediately asks a question designed to appeal to the most brutish of white guy identity politics.

• sotomayor 4 *

Did Kasic mention that Sotomayor is Latina?  Did you get that?  Did you realize that means she’s not a white man?  Do you realize that this means that a man who is white will NOT be getting the seat?  Are you angry yet?  

That’s how conservatives avoid playing cheap identity politics.  After they do a little of that, they avoid getting hit by cars by running around on the freeway during traffic.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, the Fred Phelps edition.  I usually try to avoid Phelps, since he’s a marginalized wacko, and not mainstreamed at all like the people who excused Dr. George Tiller’s murder.  But since his church bothered to write a song, I thought I’d share it.  

• god hates the world *

Okay, I wouldn’t say they "wrote" it, because it’s an obvious plagiarism of "We Are The World".  But considering how hateful they are, that seems like a minor issue.