Woman Arrested for Thinking About Abortion
If you find yourself wanting to dismiss the possibility that these laws will be used to jail women who miscarry or suffer pregnancy complications, consider a recent event in Iowa where a pregnant woman was arrested for falling down a flight of stairs. You read that correctly. Christine Taylor fell down a flight of stairs after having a fight with her husband on the phone. When she went to the hospital–to makes sure the fetus was okay–she was arrested under one of the many state laws that grant fetuses rights separate from the mother. In this case, Iowa has a “feticide” law that pertains to the second trimester and beyond, and since Taylor confessed that she had contemplated abortion but had chosen to have the baby, the nurse and doctor at the hospital decided to phone the police and accuse her of trying to terminate her pregnancy illegally. She was eventually not charged, but in light of these events, any notion that a law such as this will be used for any other purpose but to harass and punish women should be disregarded.
[ ]…Iowa is far from the only state where even pregnant women who want their babies are being punished and controlled with laws that establish a separate personhood and rights for a fetus. Nebraska banned abortions after 20 weeks on the unscientific grounds that fetuses feel pain at that gestational age. Shortly thereafter, Danielle Deaver discovered at 22 weeks she had a pregnancy that could not result in a living baby. Banned from having an abortion, she was forced to give birth to a baby that lived for 15 terrible minutes before dying. The notion that either mother or child is well served by this law should be dashed, and the brutal sadism of such laws immediately apparent.
The example of conservative support for egregiously intrusive big govmint into people’s lives would easily make a subject theme for a blog all it’s own. Hand in hand with this new round of Republican attacks on women and reproductive rights is their attacks on actual children. As long as you’re a zygote or a mass of cells you’re holy. Asssoon as you’re born, you’re put on the social-Darwinism roller coaster from hell. So much for the sisterhood, South Carolina’s new conservative governor Nikki Haley is going to get those miserable little rug rats, the elderly, the working poor and the disabled by cutting their Medicaid to balance the state budget. Morality and common sense probably prevents her from raising corporate taxes a few cents instead. Arizona’s conservatives making similar cuts to balance their budgets. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is also on the punish the weakest and reward the greedy bandwagon.There is no financial crisis in America. There is a crisis in prioritizes. Corporate profits are soaring. The wealthiest 10% of the population still owns 75% of America’s assets. Yet the working poor and middle-class are being asked to pay and sacrifice. Someone is redistributing wealth and it is not to America’s workers.
How Dumb Are We? – NEWSWEEK gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. Citizenship Test–38 percent failed. The country’s future is imperiled by our ignorance. Not a particularly difficult test.
The British tabloid The Daily Mail is not too far away from being the Brit version of the National Enquirer. If they’re making this up or exaggerating what they claim to know, at least they’re showing some imagination, MI6 puts gun to generals’ heads: Our spies phone Gaddafi’s men direct to warn: Defect or die
British intelligence is warning Colonel Gaddafi’s generals that it could be fatal to remain loyal to the Libyan leader.
MI6 spies and military officials are contacting commanders in Tripoli trying to persuade them to defect, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Their message is blunt: ‘General, we’ve got the GPS co-ordinates of your command post. They are programmed into a Storm Shadow missile. What do you want to do?’
As Gaddafi vowed to wage a long war with the ‘crusader alliance’, British officials said the intelligence services had the telephone numbers of many key military officials in his regime.
French war jets have already slightly exceeded their mission. So to a degree worth shedding tears over, but you get the feeling that Gaddafi’s headquarters will be designated a vital air mission communication hub destined for the aforementioned missile. This morning some news reports said Gaddafi’s soldiers were changing into civilian clothing to avoid attack and to report the dead as proof of humanitarian violations.
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Good post on the Triangle factory fire, whose anniversary is this week, Triangle: Remembering the Fire
The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who either died from the fire or jumped to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent immigrant Jewish women, age 16-23. Many of the workers could not escape the burning building because the managers had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits. People jumped from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.
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