COVID-19 & Healthcare

Speaking truth to power at the Texas Lege

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Yet another hero emerges from the resistance to the Christian Taliban's war on women in the Republic of Texas Gilead. We need more people like Sarah Slamen who are fearless and willing to speak truth to power. Ann Richards and Molly Ivins would be proud of this fearless Texan woman. Texas woman pulled off Senate floor after fiery testimony against abortion bill:

Sarah Slamen left her home in central Texas at 5:30 a.m. Monday to
testify at the Austin Senate against the state’s controversial abortion
bill. She didn’t get to speak until 11:00 pm that night, after listening
to hours of what she described
as a “parade of anti-choice zealots and misogynists.” By the time she
was called, Slamen had scrapped her prepared speech about Gov. Rick
Perry’s sister’s ties to surgical centers and doctor-owned hospitals that would benefit from the bill’s passage, and went for the senators themselves.

“Thank you for being you, Texas legislature,” Slamen said. “You have
radicalized hundreds of thousands of us, and no matter what you do for
the next 22 days, women and their allies are coming for you. Let’s start
down the line. Senator Campbell, you’re an ophthalmologist. So I won’t
be making you the expert on reproductive health. We can give you all the
children with chlamydia and herpes in their eyes, since we don’t have
Sex Ed in this state.”

Video below the fold.

hanger

Anti-Choice ‘Onslaught’: GOP-Led State Legislatures Debate 300 Bills to Restrict Abortion Access (video)

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Signs940-sig-sm72by Pamela Powers Hannley

Words like “onslaught,” “unprecedented,” “extremist,” “dangerous,” “unconstitutional,” “medically unnecessary,” “unscientific,” and “draconian” have been used to describe the Republican Party’s nationwide push to limit women’s healthcare, stop women from choosing to have safe, legal abortions, and close abortion clinics through over-regulation. In the first six months of this year, states have passed 106 provisions related to reproductive health, including 43 that specifically restrict abortion access.

In recent weeks, high-profile, anti-choice legislation in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina,  Wisconsin, and North Dakota has made the news.  Thanks to a one-woman filibuster by Texas State Senator Wendy Davis and hundreds of pro-choice protesters watching in the Legislative chambers, Texas is the only Republican-controlled state government in that list that didn’t pass and sign into law anti-choice legislation this spring. (Of course, Texas Governor Rick Perry– vowing to end abortion in Texas altogether– has called for another special session of the Republican-dominated State Legislature to fix that, and Democrats have little hope they will be able to stop the legislation a second time.)

These Republican-led states join others like Arizona and Virginia who passed anti-choice legislation in recent years. Nationwide, 13 states now have highly restrictive laws limiting women’s reproductive healthcare and access to legal abortions, resulting in half of American women of reproductive age living in states that are outwardly hostile to their health. Nationwide, 300 anti-choice bills are being debated. In addition, US Senator Marco Rubio and Arizona Congressman Trent Franks have introduced anti-choice bills in the Senate and House of Representatives; a ban on abortions after 20 weeks has already passed the Republican-controlled House. More details about the extent of this battle after the jump.

Perry & Kasich: War on Women Heats Up in Texas & Ohio

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Texas-obby Pamela Powers Hanley

Teapublican Legislatures in Texas and Ohio have been working diligently in recent weeks on sexist laws aimed at the suppression of women.

Last week Texas State Senator Wendy Davisbecame a nationwide feminist hero when she single-handedly filibustered and stopped anti-choice, anti-woman legislation that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks and effectively close all but 5 abortion clinics in the state of Texas.

In response to Davis and the thousands of pro-choice protesters who flooded Austin yesterday, Governor Rick Perry vowed to ban abortions in the state of Texas and called another special session. The sole purpose of this new 30-day session is to pass the same anti-choice bill that failed last week, thanks to Davis and cheering pro-choice protesters inside the Legislative chamber.

Meanwhile in Ohio, another Teapublican Governor, John Kasich– surrounded by other old white men– quietly signed  one of the most draconian, anti-choice, anti-woman bills in the country this week. The Ohio legislation requires women seeking abortions to have a vaginal ultrasound (even if the woman doesn’t want one), defunds Planned Parenthood, requires stricter controls on abortion clinics which will cause some of them to close, and redefines pregnancy to begin at fertilization. (If some of this anti-woman nonsense sounds familiar, it’s because Arizona and other Teapubican states passed similar legislation in recent years.)

Perry and other anti-abortion zealots paint this fight as a religious war to protect the unborn. This is hogwash. The War on Women’s reproductive rights is a war of suppression. More on this and proposed laws to regulate sperm donors after the jump.

Ohio Tea-Publicans restrict women’s reproductive health care

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

While all eyes were on Texas last week and the people's filibuster led by state Sen. Wendy Davis, Tea-Publicans in Ohio demonstrated how to get things done in the dark while no one is paying much attention. Like cockroaches.

Former FAUX News host and Governor of Ohio, John Kasich, signed into law an appropriations bill this week that contains some of the most onerous and restrictive anti-women's reproductive health measures in the country. I fail to see how these substantive legislative measures are germain to an appropriations bill — perhaps this is grounds for a legal challenge — but that is how Tea-Publicans roll in Ohio. Surrounded By Men, Ohio Governor Signs Stringent Abortion Restrictions Into Law:

Flanked by a group of other male officials, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed a contentious two-year budget bill
into law on Sunday evening. The governor vetoed 22 amendments to HB 59
before approving it, but he left intact several provisions that will severely limit women’s reproductive access.

The new budget, which takes effect on Monday, includes at least five
new anti-abortion provisions. HB 59 will defund Planned Parenthood
clinics, reallocate family planning funding to right-wing “crisis pregnancy centers,”
strip funding from rape crisis centers that give their clients any
information about abortion services, impose harsh restrictions on
abortion clinics that will force many of them to shut down, and require
doctors to give women seeking abortion information about the presence of
a “fetal heartbeat.”

Taken together, the budget amendments ensure that Ohio now has some of the most stringent abortion laws in the nation.

Kasich-budget-e1372680186570
So how exactly does this help GOP rebranding after its War on Women?