State news and more state news. Kansas and Ohio are trying to ban abortion without outright banning it, and Texas and Wisconsin join the growing list of states that are defunding family planning.

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Links in this episode:

Dramatic readings of pathetic misogyny

Ohio house passed “heartbeat bill”

More on the “heartbeat bill” 

Kansas is going to regulate abortion out of existence

Rachel Maddow on the ridiculous regulations

The war on contraception comes to Texas

Defunding in Wisconsin

Bill Donohue equates marriage and PIV intercourse

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be discussuing how Ohio and Kansas are both trying to ban abortion without banning abortion, and Texas and Wisconsin are joining the growing list of states defunding Planned Parenthood.  Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones will also be on to provide more detail on the Kansas situation.

Since most of this podcast is going to be a downer, I thought I’d point you to a place where you have some laughs.  Some funny folks have decided to do dramatic readings from anti-feminist and anti-woman message boards, and posted the results on YouTube.

• misogynists *

I really love the guy who is mad because he can’t just go to the pound and buy a woman who will love you like your dog does. How oppressive. Link in the show notes!

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I wish I could be the bearer of good news on the reproductive rights front on this show, but sadly the news has been nothing but bad lately.  Anti-choice legislators are circling closer towards creating a case that could become a direct court challenge to the right to abortion, and they’re doing so with the hope that the ever more conservative Supreme Court will reverse Roe v. Wade.  The most obvious challenge to legal abortion is winding its way through the Ohio legislature.  Even just a month ago, the ridiculous “heartbeat bill” in Ohio looked like it wasn’t going to move towards a vote, just last week the Ohio house suddenly decided to pass it. 

• abortion 1 *

I’m unsure what the geniuses who put this together think makes this something that will reverse precedent better than just an outright ban on all abortion, but I’m sure there’s some kind of rationale going on here.  What this bill does is functionally ban all elective abortion, since while heartbeats usually don’t begin very early in pregnancy, there are cases where they can.  But more importantly, what doctor is willing to risk it? Enforcement of this strikes me as a nightmare.  And since it takes time between getting pregnant and getting the abortion, it’s basically a ban.  You have to learn you’re pregnant, make a decision, call the clinic, raise the money to pay for it, etc.  By the time you actually have the abortion, a few weeks have passed, and obviously the anti-choicers are hoping that by that time, there’s a heartbeat.  Or they can claim there was one, even if there wasn’t. A doctor can write on the pad that there was no heartbeat at 8 weeks, but I’m going to guess that the right wing nuts who wrote this bill aren’t going to believe you.

But the whole point of this is to precisely that, to ban all abortions and challenge Roe v. Wade.  Which is really bad not just for women, but for Ohio, as this legislator notes:

• abortion 2 *

If this passes, it will cost the state a ton of money in defending it.  It’s clear that antis hope that by banning abortion without banning abortion, they’ll somehow find a way for the court to okay abortion bans without directly overturning Roe.

The most irritating thing about all this is how the people who are opposed to human rights and who never find a racist or sexist law they don’t love turn around and pretend that they’re on the side of the angels when they’re oppressing women.  Such as Ohio legislator Matt Huffman playing like attacking women is the same as opposing slavery.

• abortion 3 *

You have to wonder if people who resist actual human progress in every way believe their own nonsense.  Probably.  There’s a real shamelessness on display when people who oppose women’s rights, who oppose economic justice, who oppose racial justice, and who oppose gay rights start playing like they’re Martin Luther King.  Who they would probably be demonizing if he were still alive.

In Kansas, anti-choicers are using a different strategy to ban abortion without directly banning it, which again could create a strategy for banning abortion that the Supreme Court would okay.  In this case, it’s a matter of harassing clinics with B.S. regulations that will shut them down completely. 

• abortion 4 *

Basically the regulations are medically unnecessary and burdensome past the point of being something anyone can actually provide.  Gov. Sam Brownback has already said the point is to run all abortion providers out of the state. Rachel Maddow describes some of the regulations, so you can see how ridiculous are.

• abortion 5 *

And that’s just the half of it.  They require a separate bathroom for the doctors, the public, and two for the patients.  They require a 50 square foot room for the janitorial services.  It’s basically about making sure that unless your clinic is built into a vast mansion, you can’t perform abortions.  And it looks like all three clinics in the state will be closed down.  With the Center for Reproductive Rights, doctors in Kansas are suing to stay open.  Next up, Kate Sheppard will be on to explain this in more detail.

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insert interview

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More bad news, I’m afraid.  The state by state defunding of Planned Parenthood is continuing a rapid pace.  Conservative lawmakers can’t be bothered to care about unemployment or the foreclosure crisis, not when they know that there’s women out there who are just having sex.  Without getting pregnant.  Like this was the 21^st century or even the 20^th century. Some people are also avoiding STDs.  They can’t be having that. Texas now is the biggest state to look for ways to take away women’s access to contraception.

• planned 1 *

And now for the inevitable he said/she said media coverage that doesn’t actually include who is telling the truth because god forbid they reveal the facts and be perceived as taking sides.

• planned 2 *

Sadly, they really avoid the facts. They do note that over 95 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services are not abortion, but they don’t actually address the claims made by anti-choicers that contraception funds abortion.  This is a lie.  Abortion patients have to pay for the procedure.  That’s where the money comes from.  Contraception actually cuts off abortion funding because women who don’t get pregnant aren’t having abortions, duh.  If anything, abortion helps subsidize contraception. The fact of the matter is that the anti-choice movement is pushing for this because they oppose contraception, full stop.  The abortion nonsense is just nonsense. 

Texas is the biggest, but in Wisconsin, there’s a sense of Gov. Walker destroying as much of the state as he can before the voters call an end to the party. Walker signed a bill that would cut off funding to Planned Parenthood.

• planned 3 *

That was the newest video blogger at Feministing who goes by the name Nineteen Percent.  The bill also dramatically cuts Wisconsin’s BadgerCare family planning program.  Again, I think it’s important to realize this all has nothing to do with abortion.  This is 100% about sex and about how anti-choicers think women should not be having sex.  And that if they do, they should be punished with unwanted childbirth.  Or STDs.  Or even death, which after all will be the result if women miss Pap smears due to lack of funding and have cervical cancer that goes undetected until it’s too late. 

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, the marriage is just a very tame porn edition.  Bill Donohue continues to get invited on TV even though he defended priests who raped minor boys.  And he continues to say things that are just absolutely defenseless. This is his argument against legal gay marriage.

• Donohue *

You know, this is not only homophobic but just anti-human in general. Donohue would have you believe that where a man sticks his penis on occasion is the sum total of a marriage.  I’m sure most married straight people would disagree, and say instead their marriage is about love and support and even that their sex lives are about more than depositing sperm where it might have a chance to meet an egg.  Also, and I hope this would go without saying, it’s perfectly legal and normal for people to have penis in vagina intercourse without being married, a fact that seems to have passed Donohue’s attention.