I got the following email from Mesa Mayor and (now) GOP candidate for AZ Governor Scott Smith: Friend, Today, I was honored to file paperwork to begin my campaign for Governor of Arizona. For the past six years as Mayor of Mesa, I have shown how governing using conservative principles of efficient, effective and limited … Read more
I'm about to do a post that is similar to one I did on Democratic Diva a while back but since that site is down and Brahm Resnik of 12 News in Phoenix just tweeted that Mesa Mayor Scott Smith intends to announce his bid for the GOP gubernatorial nod in Arizona, I'm going to repeat my warning:
There was a guy by the name of Pat McCrory in North Carolina. He was the Mayor of Charlotte, a medium-sized city which had enjoyed a good bit of high tech development in recent years. McCrory was considered a centrist, and was the darling of the Chamber of Commerce and media establishment types in NC. When he ran for governor in 2012, McCrory styled himself as a keen-eyed, business focused pragmatist. At debates and endorsement interviews he swore up and down he wasn't going to indulge the tea party ideologues in the state legislature. He was all about jobs jobs jobs! When he was specifically asked about abortion at one forum, he gave a one word answer – "no" – to signing any bill involving abortion into law.
So this was on Phoenix ABC15's website this morning.
TEMPE, AZ – A sexual education presentation is causing lots of controversy in Tempe and has even sparked threats of a lawsuit.
Planned Parenthood will be making their presentation Tuesday in front of officials from the Tempe Union High School District's Sexual Education Curriculum Committee.
It's not clear yet exactly what will be said during the presentation, but a group calling themselves the Alliance Defending Freedom wrote a letter to Tempe officials saying Planned Parenthood's presentation could be illegal under Arizona law.
Alia Rau of the Arizona Republic is someone I've thought of as a straightforward news reporter so I was surprised to see such a biased article under her byline. The piece is a woman-blaming mess from the title on down. More moms in Arizona skip marriage Debate over reversing the trend, providing a secure environment … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
A new study shows more abortion restrictions went into effect in the last three years than in the previous decade. States pass record number of abortion laws:
State legislatures have passed more laws restricting access to abortions in the last three years than they did in the decade beforehand, according to a new study.
The Washington Post's Sarah Kliff explains:
What made 2010 such a boom year for abortion restrictions? It’s hard to pinpoint a particular reason, but a few factors do stand out. First, Republicans took control of lots of state legislatures in the 2010 midterm elections, allowing them to pass more restrictions than was politically feasible in the past. The Affordable Care Act also ignited a fight over abortion policy, particularly whether federal funds would help pay for abortions (when Americans used their tax subsidies to purchase health insurance coverage). That fight spilled over to state legislatures – the ones that Republicans had recently come to control – and many passed laws restricting insurance coverage of abortion.
Lastly, the focus on late-term abortion, with the 20-week abortion bans, likely played a role, too. As the Guttmacher Institute reports, those bans proliferated quickly, after Nebraska passed the first such law back in 2010. While the majority of Americans do support legal abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy, support for abortion rights falls significantly when you get into second and third trimester terminations. That drop-off in public support could have laid the groundwork for the success of the late-term restrictions.