Moderate? No Moderates here when we are talking Women's Rights

by Gary Berg-Cross

The Ohio House recently voted to strip Planned Parenthood of $1.3 million in funding and, sent the bill to Ohio Gov. John Kasich to sign into law. 

On Sunday, John Kasich he did just that - signed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood in Ohio.  He has Conservative support:

Asked if signing this bill will help with Kasich's conservative credentials, Senate President Keith Faber, R-Celina, said ‘he has a long track record of being pro-life.’"

But he did draw condemnation from..... well Democrats, but also women. And there was more context from the Psychological slip-of-the-tongue realm.

Speaking about his early days running for office in the Ohio Legislature, Kasich also referred to women "who left their kitchens" to help him.

Recalling the roots of his early days of campaigning, while at a town hall at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia,  he rhetorically asked "How did I get elected?” His answer may be shrouded in memory of when America was Great - 

"Nobody was -- I didn't have anybody for me. We just got an army of people, who, and many women, who left their kitchens to go out and go door to door and to put yard signs up for me. All the way back, when, you know, things were different." and a question from a town hall attendee who brought up his comment about “kitchens.”

Yes it was different then.  Neither of these played well with the many women who have more to do than kitchen work and appreciate Planned Parenthood.

Women are aware of the bigger picture as brought to life in Jill Lepore's (Harvard College Professor) Feb. 1 New Yorker article called “Baby Doe.”

It starts out like a punch in the gut:

'Last June, a woman walking her dog on Deer Island, in Boston Harbor, came across a black plastic garbage bag on the beach. Inside was a very little girl, dead. The woman called for help and collapsed in tears. Police searched the island; divers searched the water; a medical examiner collected the body. The little girl had dark eyes and pale skin and long brown hair. She weighed thirty pounds. She was wearing white-and-black polka-dot pants. She was wrapped in a zebra-striped fleece blanket. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said that no child matching her description had been reported missing. “Someone has to know who this child is,” an official there said. But for a very long time no one did.'

Child abuse, child neglect, child death, and the cradle-to-prison pipeline driven by poverty are all ingredients in this US reality. And especially in the US, where short of refugees, a larger percentage of people are living in poverty than in any of the developed countries of western Europe. 

But here we have Kasich and the various Republican funders, ultraconservatives,  Tea Partyers and 1 percenters who remain dedicated to defund Planned Parenthood in a political year that wants to Make America Great Again. What's Great about limiting access to contraception, or  clamping down on a women’s rights of conscience?  

Some consider Kasich a moderate.  This suggests a frightening accomodation to the rightward drift.  Or is propelled by ignorance and anger? 
It's just too far Right to be right.

For more see 
 JILL LEPORE's Birthright: What’s next for Planned Parenthood?

Abortion clinic hospital admitting-privileges laws have nothing to do with women's health or safety.

Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)

 Responded to a Washington Post, Aug 11, story “Admitting-privileges laws give abortion foes potent tool”. 

Below is the response I posted in the Post on line. NY Times, Aug 11

note there was an excellent editorial on same subject, “A Judge Rules for Alabama Women”. 

Abortion clinic hospital admitting-privileges laws have nothing to do with women's health or safety. Rather, they are gimmicks used by the misogynist Religious Right to impose their narrow medieval religious opinions on all women, to take away women's religious liberty and rights of conscience. By cutting off access to clinics these laws actually harm women's health.

These laws are based on the peculiar idea that fetuses are persons at conception, a belief that is supported by neither science nor the Judeo-Christian Bible. Scientists concur that what makes us "persons" is a functioning brain, a functioning cerebral cortex, and this is not possible until some time after 28 to 32 weeks of gestation. 90% of abortions are performed by 13 weeks, 99% by 20 weeks. Procedures after viability (23-24 weeks) are not common and are done only for serious medical reasons.

The Bible (Gen 1:27 and 2:7) has it that persons are created "in the image of God", which surely must refer to consciousness and will, not flesh and blood and DNA), and science shows that these are not possible until some time after 28-32 weeks.

These laws are Orwellian Big Brother gimmicks that are intended to elevate the prejudices of conservative male politicians over the fundamental rights of women. 

Getting United Around Winnable Battles

By Gary Berg-Cross

Rob Boston’s recent WASH MDC talk on "The Christian Nation Myth” was a real crowd pleaser and provoked some interesting Q &A and follow on discussion. One from WASH board member Stuart Jordan who noted that the total atheist-nonreligious-freethinker-humanist community in the US is still both small and diverse with some estimates around 17 -19% (Demographics of Atheism - a 2002 survey by Adherents.com, estimates the proportion of the world's people who are "secular, non-religious, agnostics and atheists" at about 14%). So one important question is how to get united on issues and be effective, something discussed at various times in this blog. Rob’s response was two-fold -on the nature of the conversation and the need to “pick battles carefully.”

The first problem is how we address people of faith. We need to dial back the message so it doesn’t sound as if people who believe in God are necessarily idiots. This is too much like a debilitating culture war in which we start out by denigrating the intellectual ability of all religious people. A tough stance may win an immediate argument but humiliating groups can also stop conversations that might be fruitful and lead to practical allies.

On the 2^nd we aren’t likely to make much progress on getting ‘In God We Trust’ off of our currency. We won’t easily reverse having the ceremonial use of ‘One Nation Under God’ in on the Pledge of Allegiance. These things will take many decades to reverse.

We should not antagonize people with issues that we can’t win in a reasonable amount of time and effort. Instead we should focus on areas like government subsidies to religious groups, faith-based initiatives that consume tax dollars that could be used elsewhere or their efforts to block the teaching of evolution.

The latter weakens school curriculums in a covert & disingenuous way, often as a effort to introduce creationism via Intelligent Design into the schools. This like the excesses to block women’s reproductive rights, abstinence only programs, & blockage of stem cell research provides natural allies to our secular humanist efforts.

Such things as special tax exemption for churches religious bothers some and will also produce allies. This increases the overall tax burden for everybody else. Enough people recognize that in the US synagogues and churches have affluent constituents that can take care of their financing.

The thing to stand up for as we gather allies is that religious groups have no right to tell us how to run our live. One this principle we can find allies in the fight for human-based rights.