"What is happening in Jackson today is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany!"
That is the rhetoric of Rev. Flip Benham of Operation Save America. Benham was protesting in front of Mississippi's last abortion clinic, an accounting of which, Abortion Under Siege in Mississippi, is in today's Salon from Michelle Goldberg. It is a MUST read.
"The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," and asked the arresting officer, "Are you a Jew?"
That is the drunken rhetoric of Mel Gibson, according to an Associated Press reporter.
The Rev. Flip Benham is right. Gibson, whose father denies the holocaust, is wrong. The holocaust happened, and the Jews were not responsible.
Editor's Note: Andrea Lynch, who has been blogging from Brighton, England, since joining Rewire, will now be blogging from Managua, Nicaragua. This is her first post from Latin America, and we're glad her travels were safe. Our goal at Rewire is a mix of domestic and international postings that compare and contrast policies in the US and abroad, and the reality of how some of our policies affect the lives of people elsewhere. If you have ideas for coverage about either domestic or international issues, please contact us.
Greetings from Managua, Nicaragua—the gorgeous, chaotic, unpredictable, sweltering Central American city where this blogista will be composing her dispatches from now until April 2007. I arrived here on Thursday to begin a nine-month research collaboration with the feminist NGO Puntos de Encuentro (“Meeting Points” or “Common Ground” in Spanish) as part of my masters degree in Participation, Power, and Social Change (try explaining that one in a crowded bar in a language you’re still learning to speak). I’ve never been to Nicaragua before, and although I spent four years working for a U.S.-based international organization, this is my first time living in the developing world. It’s also my first opportunity to see, day to day, how people experience their sexual and reproductive lives in a context completely different from the one where I grew up; and my first chance to witness how current and historical U.S. policies shape daily realities in another country.
Last week, Senator Joe Lieberman (CT) was asked by a New York Times reporter what he thought of Michael Schiavo, husband of the late Terri Schiavo, campaigning for Ned Lamont. Lieberman replied, it was time “for politicians to let Terri Schiavo rest in peace.” It was as callous as his suggestion that a rape victim be turned down for emergency contraception, despite the defense of Senator Boxer (CA) that Sen. Lieberman was misunderstood.
Speechless. It left me speechless when I read that, remembering that Lieberman could not stop talking about Mrs. Schiavo when his ideology blinded him to the reality of her medical condition, and kept him on every talk show seemingly nonstop discussing her case.
In 1972, the year before the Supreme Court handed down its historic Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion in the United States, the debut issue of Ms. Magazine published a petition signed by 53 well-known American women declaring that they had had abortions-legal or not. The campaign was designed to draw attention to the fact that making abortion illegal does not stop women from seeking abortions-it just puts women's lives at risk. By signing their names, these 53 American women challenged the stigma associated with abortion, and made a critical contribution to the struggle for its legalization.
In Pennsylvania, where there is a hotly contested Senate race between two anti-choice candidates, we'd expect to find editorials supporting the Senate's action this week on the Teen Endangerment Act. The Lancaster New Era couches this, as do supporters of the bill, as an issue of parental notification and NOT as placing limits on abortion rights.
They couldn't have created a more ridiculous "stickman" argument:
Sarah M. is a college student working in Washington, D.C. this summer. We're excited to have her working with us on Rewire for the month of August!
Currently there are an estimated 750,000 people displaced in Lebanon, with no end to the violence in sight. Of those 750,000, statistics suggest that slightly over half are women and girls.
Those of us who have watched popular medical dramas, or those of us who have followed humanitarian crises in the past, know that babies do not stop being born when there is an upheaval—natural or man-made. Women do not suddenly stop needing reproductive health care. People still have sex and family planning is still necessary. Miscarriages still happen and complications in birth do not wait.
The HPV Vaccine is the topic of an opinion piece today by James Waggoner of Advoates for Youth in the Washington Post. He calls for a common sense approach, based on sound science, that would vaccinate young women with this cancer preventing, thus life-saving, medicine. He writes in opposition to the Family Research Council, which argues the "pro-life" position is not to encourage vaccination, but keep it voluntary.
One would think all parents could agree on vaccinating their children against one common cancer, as the HPV vaccine does. But social conservatives oppose this because they fear it will make young people more likely to have sex. Hypocrisy abounds. Some experts have suggested making the vaccine mandatory and we agree.
The word was that the Bush Administration would make it’s decision last month about whether to release the money Congress intended for UNFPA this year. But they seem to be on the slow boat to China determining if the dollars should flow. Maybe that is because UNFPA has been slow to spend any money in China this year, which gets in the way of the Administration’s excuses. The Administration uses UNFPA’s program in China as the reason to not fund voluntary reproductive health programs in over 140 other countries. Makes it sort of tricky to dress your political act in policy clothing if there aren’t any threads to wear.
Ian recently wrote about the Teen Endangerment Act, and as the New York Times points out today, the act will endanger many young women ... though it is doubtful that's what its supporters intended when naming the bill. In addition to calling the bill "mean" the editorial states:
The underlying intent of the bill’s sponsors was to score pre-election points with social conservatives who are looking for reassurance that the Republican majority still cares about the abortion issue, and to do it in a way that would not alarm moderate voters who believe that parents should know if their child is pregnant and considering an abortion.
Not only did the Senate endanger young women with this bill, but as Ellen Marshall wrote, they also turned down an amendment that would have promoted medically accurate sexuality education that has been proven to delay sexual activity and thus reduce abortion. Double whammy, keep kids uninformed and uneducated, then limit their options when they find themselves in trouble.
Monday was my quintessential intern experience. Advocates for Youth rounded up interns from organizations across the city and had us join forces to lobby for the Protection Against Transmission of HIV for Women and Youth Act of 2006, better known simply as PATHWAY.
I was excited as Monday approached. I was going to lobby. I was going to talk to the representatives. I would persuade them with jargon like PEPFAR, socially responsible spending, micro-lending, and female-initiated methods of prevention. I would reason with them on a personal level and try to show them what I considered to be the error of their ways. For a second, I think I probably convinced myself that my group would simply have to educate them on the scope of the epidemic in order to convince them to co-sponsor. It never occurred to me that lobbying would be hard and probably unsuccessful.
