Email from a Balloon Juice reader:
I live in DC. It’s a unique situation in that we are not a state and do not have traditional voting representation in Congress, yet we pay federal taxes. Our local budget also must be approved by Congress. There has been a lot of outcry locally about the way DC was used as a bargaining chip in the negotiations to avoid a government shutdown last weekend, specifically the reinstatement of the ban on abortion funding for low-income women. The very real effects of that ban are already taking hold, as 28 local women who were scheduled for abortion procedures today were informed last night that as of midnight, Medicaid could no longer be used to pay for the procedures:
The compromise reached last week by President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner to reinstate a ban on D.C.’s ability to fund abortions for low-income women has, so far, been enveloped inside a bubble of political rhetoric. But the very real effects of the ban have started to take hold: 28 women who were scheduled for abortion procedures in the District today were informed by a local clinic last night that, as of midnight, they would be unable to rely on D.C. Medicaid to pay for those procedures.
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The DC Abortion Fund, an all-volunteer operated organization which has provided guidance to D.C. area women regarding abortions since 1995, sent out an emergency call late last night to raise funds for the 28 women. DC Abortion Fund’s Tiffany Reed says that the emergency campaign has been relatively successful to date.
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“We’ve raised over $3,965 so far in the last 12 hours,” Reed told DCist via email. “We’re still working to fundraise for the women who are scheduled today and then we have women scheduled Friday and Saturday who are just now being notified they can’t use their Medicaid.”…
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“We’re doing a big push to get these women seen through the weekend, since they won’t have adequate time to fundraise hundreds of dollars on their own in time,” Reed added.The good news is that a local all-volunteer group has been doing emergency fund-raising (and doing it well, it seems) to assist these women, but… this is only the beginning. I expect to hear a lot more stories like this (though I don’t really expect to “see” them, as this is the kind of real-world cause-and-effect story the Very Serious people in the media village rarely want to touch).
Abortions are extremely time-sensitive medical procedures — a delay of even a few weeks greatly increases the complexity, the risk, and the cost. Playing funding games on the floor of the house isn’t going to ‘save (potential) lives’, it’s just going to complicate lives that are already in existence, as Boehner’s Battalion know very well. The mostly-male national legislators playing games with these women’s lives have gone full-bore Conan the Barbarian; what they want is to “drive their enemies before them… and hear the lamentation of the women.”
Corner Stone
Just mind boggingly awful. Making grand bargains with lives that don’t belong to them.
sgwhiteinfla
I hope everyone saw Rachel Maddow’s segment tonight exposing how pro lifers are using state legislatures to pass laws limiting abortion rights in an effort to get Roe Vs Wade overturned. It was shocking to say the least.
15 states now have or are in the process of passing these laws, one of which would ban abortion after 6 weeks or so, and the pro choice groups are so scared of the Roberts court that they arent even challenging them lest the litigation reach the Supreme Court. This even though just about all legal scholars agree that they are unconstitutional.
freelancer
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with this country?! If men were the gender to get pregnant and carry children, abortion would be about as controversial as fucking vasectomies are now. That is to say, federal money would be spent on it with no protest, the individuals undergoing the procedure wouldn’t be singled out for harassment by religious zealots, and doctors performing the procedure wouldn’t be hunted down by batshit balding pudgy American terrorists.
I weep.
Ronc99
This news makes me wish that rectroactive abortion could be forced today on every Republican alive and all the Democrats that hide behind them!!!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
It’s a shandah, that in an allegedly free country, we have religious fundamentalists who care only about life before it crosses that cervical rubicon, and once it can tote an M-16, forcing women to bear children they are unequipped to care for. Yet those fundamentalists will do not one whit to help those women they forced to give birth. It’s a disgrace, and I am ashamed to call myself American, because I am apparently powerless to prevent such hypocritical tyranny of the “faithful.” Ohio is a state with “heartbeat” legislation under consideration.
Ron
Unfortunately, the plan is working. Nobody wants to challenge one of these laws because they’re afraid of a SCOTUS ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. I think as a country, we may just be screwed by the religious right and the teahadists.
justawriter
Jon Stewart: “(Ryan’s) budget plan is so far right, I wouldn’t fuck it with Barry Goldwater’s dick.”
I just had to share that.
AAA Bonds
We’re still bombing in Libya, by the way.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hM3VyhXoC_FSqRRycYTOeByAn6tg?docId=CNG.02e59dd6cb2c6353408522f79d0dd27f.31
AAA Bonds
Bombs! America is droppin’ them, from our F-16s. They said we stopped but we didn’t. Whoops!
dirge
This seems like the kind of thing that socially responsible blogs with a history of successful fund-raising sometimes set up fundraisers for.
If you know anybody like that…
Caroline
It’s just more of the “war on women” that the GOP has been waging. Here in GA we had a legislator write a bill where a miscarriage would be considered murder and punishable by death. Of course, Obama signed onto it so he’s part of the problem too.
No one of Importance
But at least all those men with those very moral positions on abortion have been able to exert their rights over a woman’s body, as is undoubtedly their due, because men pay child maintenance and have parenting roles (unlike all those lazy wuthless women). This means they have more say in whether a woman acts as an incubator than the woman does.
Oh wait. Men can’t get pregnant, and women are the only ones who are affected by this stupidity. Again.
John Boner should never get a fucking say in any of this. No man should.
Dr. SkySkull
“The mostly-male national legislators playing games with these women’s lives have gone full-bore Conan the Barbarian”
Hey, don’t trash Conan; his creator, Robert E. Howard, had infinitely more respect for women than any GOP member of Congress today — and he lived in *Texas* in the early 1900s.
Corner Stone
Why would the R’s even include this as a demand? Just because they can, or is there more significance to this locale?
And why would anyone agree to leave it in? What’s the calculus that says X women in DC = worth no shutdown ?
Keith G
@Corner Stone: I hope the first fund raising letter went to a Barak Obama.
opie jeanne
@justawriter: I love that.
tkogrumpy
In my darker moments I wonder why it’s illegal to threaten the life of a congresscritter.
opie jeanne
@No one of Importance: Seriously. What is wrong with these people???
wasabi gasp
@opie jeanne: You knew Barry Goldwater?
tkogrumpy
@freelancer: I believe that I was the first man in Massachusetts to get a vasectomy paid for by BCBS.
Martin
@Corner Stone: Because they can.
Ruckus
@Corner Stone:
Martin left out a bit.
Because they are complete fucking assholes… and they can.
Mike in NC
Hey now, it takes an enormous amount of courage to be a conservative male who knows best how to tell all those sinful women how to live their lives!
Nate-Dawg
Wait, how can Medicaid fund abortions in D.C. anyway? I thought Hyde amendment would prevent that? Were these scheduled through the life, incest, or rape exception?
ranger3
You lose this argument time and time again because you are so dishonest with yourselves about the reality of the issue. Most pro-lifers are women. Period, end of discussion. Men don’t care about this issue as much as women, one way or the other. And women are more likely than men to be pro-life. These are facts, and you need to start dealing with them.
Liberals marginalize themselves in many ways, but the left’s affinity for misandry and assigning the worst possible qualities exclusively to men is IMO their most unattractive tendency. It isn’t so much evil, sexist male pigs who are the problem as it is all those judgemental, power trippin’ bitches that are driving this thing.
So get over your knight-in-shining-armor hang up. You’re not protecting a bunch of innocent women from evil male oppressors. You’re being used as a pawn in a fight between women, about women. Personally, I think Roe vs. Wade is a reasonable legal decision for settling the moral dilemma posed by the issue of abortion. I also think restricting funding for legal abortion is counter-productive. However, I have no illusion that those most invested in this debate are evil bitches who hate men and wish to establish some form of matriarchy on society, however much their vision of such a matriarchy might differ.
That’s my opinion, anyway. Reasonable poeple might have honest disagreement with it.
No one of Importance
@ranger3:
Please send photograph of Boehner’s vagina to illustrate your point.
Use the camera in your tinfoil hat.
Sly
@Corner Stone:
They get to put “stopped abortions in D.C.” on their campaign literature.
Bob Barr did the same thing in 1998 when he blocked D.C.’s medical marijuana ballot initiative. Exit polls showed that the measure passed overwhelmingly, so Barr attached a rider to an appropriations bill prohibiting D.C. from spending any money to count the vote. When that didn’t work, he used another rider in 2000 that overturned the initiative all together. Throughout the process he bragged to the knuckledraggers back home in East Yahwehstan about what a tough guy he was for keeping people with glaucoma in abject misery.
Incidentally, the only time I ever applauded gerrymandering was when that fuck lost his seat after the Georgia legislature redistricted in 2002.
Sly
@Nate-Dawg:
Medicaid is not entirely funded through Federal taxation. The rider forbids D.C. from using its local contributions to Medicaid for abortion services.
henqiguai
@Caroline (#11):
Really ? The President signed onto a piece of Georgia State legislation ?
Caroline
Not GA but DC. The DC issue is what Obama signed off on.
brendancalling
these women, if forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, should take advantage of DC’s safe haven laws (pardon the blogwhoring). Every police station, fire station, hospital, emt, and even the capitol police have to take it, you can drop it off anonymously, and you cannot be prosecuted. You don’t even have to provide medical history.
Drop the baby off with the capitol hill police, and let them deal with it.
JCT
NARAL pro-choice needs to get involved with some serious fund-raising to develop a set-aside to supplement the clinics in DC. I’ve donated to them for years, I’d be willing to “earmark” contributions for this.
Such slimebags these anti-choice crusaders. Of course they also voted down support for low income women and CHILDREN. Hooray for consistency.
R-Jud
@freelancer:
“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be the eighth sacrament.”– some guy
WereBear
@brendancalling: I’m not sure if this is snark, or not.
The reason I’m pro-choice is that we are talking about bundles of cells that are only potentially babies.
What you are proposing to abandon to an uncertain fate are real babies; anyone with a functioning soul is going to regard them differently.
And should.
Lost Left Coaster
Thank you Anne Laurie for covering this and publicizing the efforts to raise money for women who need help paying for their abortions. I’m a resident of DC, and I think I speak for a lot of my friends and neighbors here when I say that issues like this make me feel nauseous. We just feel so powerless here when Congress decides to use us as a punching bag. It’s even more sickening when they interfere with a vital public health issue like this.
@ranger3: I’d just like to echo the comment after yours up there and ask you to point out where these state and federal legislative bodies are that are overwhelmingly dominated by female lawmakers and are trying to take away reproductive rights. I’m not aware of any legislative bodies in the USA that have anti-choice majorities composed of women. In fact, on a national level, there are really only a handful of women in Congress who are anti-choice. The loudest and proudest of the anti-choicers are men.
And seriously, misandry? Seriously? You nearly tilted your troll hand there, I’m afraid. Or all of us here are a bunch of men-haters? I for one don’t hate myself; I do have contempt for my fellow men who do not respect women’s rights, though.
Campionrules
@WereBear:
Ehh I hate the whole potentiality argument. Under that idea you’d basically not be able to make a moral argument as soon as the fetus reaches viability – something that with advances in medical technology seems to be getting younger and younger. I prefer the a modified Singer ethical view where you need to weigh the preferences of the woman against the child and where the determination of personhood is the key cut off point. Where personhood ‘attaches’ seems to be the real key and could arguably be up 18months after birth. The Dutch have a protocol for this for infants born with crippling disabilities or disease, where the parents in conjunction with their doctors can opt for euthanization.
Lawnguylander
@WereBear:
He’s done his research and I think he’s serious:
I begin to suspect that some people you find out there are not as concerned with the welfare of the least vulnerable as they say they are.
Paul in KY
@ranger3: I think you’re wrong. IMO, most pro-lifers are men. they may browbeat their female chattel to go along, but the ones frothing at the mouth most about it are ‘technically’ men.
The Raven
@ranger3: “Most pro-lifers are women.”
I guess the Catholic priesthood doesn’t count, and the men who believe their parish priests. Or all those male pastors of right-wing Protestant churches and their congregations.
WtF?
brendancalling
@WereBear:
that is sort of the point, but I am also semi-serious.
What do you think happens to a child that is unwanted by its parents, that the parent is forced to bear due to reactionary laws? I will tell you: that child is at increased risk for abuse and neglect, while its parents are at increased risk for mental health problems and depression. Or as the bumper sticker says “abortion stops a beating”.
Contrary to what lawnguylander says, giving an unwanted baby to the state is most definitely demonstrating care for the most vulnerable, by giving it to the authorities through a law that helps prevent these unwanted children from being dumped in garbage cans or left on street corners (which is why these laws were developed in the first place).
Mr Boehner and his ilk, if they think about it at all, are more concerned that recreational sex have a punitive consequence. No one loves a baby that’s imposed on them like some kind of criminal sentence, which is what the DC abortion ban effectively does. In effect, Mr. Boehner and the GOP are taking the mother’s choice away and making it THEIR choice. Since it’s THEIR choice, it’s THEIR responsibility.
Lawnguylander
After real-life women with pregnancy crises hear of your plan for them to carry babies to term and then abandon them, I don’t think they’ll see you as a knight in shining armor. They’d probably cry at the very thought.
brendancalling
Hi, Lawnguylander: are you stupid?
My “plan for them to carry babies to term and then abandon them” is a nothing but a response to the GOP’s POLICY of “carry the baby you don’t want to term because we won’t let you have an abortion”. It’s not a plan, you moron. It is a suggestion for a way around being forced to raise a child you didn’t want to begin with. Voluntary. No one’s being coerced into giving up a baby. It’s a response to coerced pregnancy.
Come visit me in Philadelphia and ride the subways: I can show you all the unwanted children. They are easy to spot by the way their mothers drag them along like luggage, slap them in the face when they talk, and mutter “shut up motherfucker” when they utter so much as a peep.
Corner Stone
@Paul in KY:
Of all the wingers I know, and unfortunately I know too many, the most vocal and virulent are all men. (edited ~ on this issue)
Lawnguylander
@brendancalling:
I’ll pass on riding the subways of any city with a guy who constructs revenge fantasies on his own behalf that only come to fruition if some poor women are willing to bear the costs. If you decide to hang around some abortion clinics in D.C. and sell your plan to women in a bind, let everyone know how they receive you. But, seriously, don’t do that. It would be mean.
No one of Importance
You know, I was right with you on the idea that women forced to give birth should force the state to take those children and care for them if the state values them so highly – although adoption/surrender is in no way emotionally equivalent to abortion and causes far greater and long-lasting psychological damage than termination.
But then you had to talk like a fucking fool and make ridiculous assessments about women and their desire for children based on parents struggling in a stressful situation with stressed out kids…and somehow I just lost all interest in all you have to say.
When you can demonstrate to me that all parents who wanted to have kids have magically well-behaved children and are perfectly in control of their tempers and manners at all times concerning the aforesaid perfect children, and no parents of children who were ‘oopsies’ are loving patient caregivers, then you might say something worth listening to. Until then, you should shut your cakehole in shame at your bigoted ignorance.
Forced birthers are more than happy to advise women who can’t have abortions that they can always adopt the child out (unless of course, the child is a little too ‘near’ for nice white middle class adopters). Surrendering the child to a safe haven is no different in ‘uncertainty’ than going through the adoption process. It’s utterly cruel and unconscionable to tell women they can’t abort for moral reasons, then apply moral judgement for them taking a responsible route to give their unwanted child the best chance they can.
As women reading this will have confirmed for them once again, we’re damned in men’s eyes what ever we do. Abort – we’re murderers. Surrender – we’re heartless. Raise kids we can’t afford and can’t deal with (and we knew that before the birth) then we’re subjected to every Tom, Dickwit and John Boehner telling us what failures we are.
I notice brendancalling doesn’t ask himself why those terrible mothers are struggling with unwanted kids on their own – where are all those men who insist they have ‘rights’ when the kids are being little toerags? Yeah, nowhere to be seen. As usual.