SquareState - War On Women

Legitimate rape, not the phony kind

Zappatero — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 00:24:37 GMT

As we all know, Republicans believe there are real soldiers and "phony" soldiers.

The same logic applies to rape in their minds.

It's another day, and another Cro-Magnon Republican Senate candidate opens his big, fat, ignorant, pie-hole:

"From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," said Todd Akin, Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri, said of pregnancy caused by rape. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist."

Ummmm, I know Doug Lamborn would kill all childrens' programming, but Dr. Seuss doesn't count as your reference when discussing violence against women in any way, shape, or form.

Here's some reality for just another Republican who can't stand to be near, nor can comprehend in their tiny little brains, what we who live in our God-given 3-dimensional Universe commonly refer to as "facts":

The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. Among 34 cases of rape-related pregnancy, the majority occurred among adolescents and resulted from assault by a known, often related perpetrator. Only 11.7% of these victims received immediate medical attention after the assault, and 47.1% received no medical attention related to the rape. A total 32.4% of these victims did not discover they were pregnant until they had already entered the second trimester; 32.2% opted to keep the infant whereas 50% underwent abortion and 5.9% placed the infant for adoption; an additional 11.8% had spontaneous abortion.

A Call To Arms: With Underwear

peacemonger — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:53:10 GMT

Dear Women of Colorado (And The Men Who Love Them),

While you've been busy raising your children, going to work, and caring for everyone around you, Tea Party crazies have been trying to take away women's rights and plunge us back into a previous century.

In 2010, Tea Party extremists gained power in Washington DC, and in many parts of this country. They've presented more than 1100 separate legislative provisions aimed at making women second-class citizens, of which, more than 135 have been passed. These are the kinds of things they've been trying to do:

* Defund Planned Parenthood, an organization which offers cancer screenings, mammograms, well-woman visits, contraception, treatment of STDs and family planning services.
* Slash Medicaid for 21 million poor women, so women cannot have health care.
* Prevent access to birth control and cancer screenings.
* Repeal ObamaCare, which was the single biggest advancement in women's health in generations. ObamaCare prevents discrimination based on gender, and makes sure insurance companies pay for the things woman deserve, like contraception, pregnancy services, etc.
* Make women wait days or weeks to have abortions. (Sometimes even, when waiting could cause injury to the woman.)
* Force trans-vaginal ultrasounds on women who do not need them (government sanctioned-rape).
* Make women get permission from their husbands or boyfriends in order to get abortions. (What are women and girls who are raped supposed to do?)

Republicans on the radio continue to use the airwaves to insult women, degrade women, and abuse women. Remember Rush Limbaugh who called college student Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute eleven times, simply because she had premarital sex with her fiance? How about the conservative radio talk show host who told a father he should have a friend rape his daughter to make sure she didn't turn out to be a lesbian?

Colorado women and the men who love them will not stand for this lack of respect for women anymore. Join us in a revolt.

Show up to their offices, and make them talk to you. Send them your (clean) underwear to remind them you exist, you vote, and (over your dead body) will they continue to abuse, degrade, mock and insult women in Colorado. Bring your daughters, and granddaughters, and their girlfriends with you.

Picket outside their office with signs, banners, and underwear flags. Call them, fax them, email them, show up to meetings, and generally hound them, until they get the message that they need to go back where they came from.

Raise money for the candidates who seek to replace them (the good guys).
The Bad Guys

These are the bad guys who are at the top of the Republican party in Colorado, all of whom have ties to the Tea Party:

US Congressman Mike Coffman (Republican)
US Congressman Scott Tipton (Republican)
US Congressman Doug Lamborn (Republican)

Coffman, Tipton, and Lamborn are the crazy Tea Party wingnut men who need to answer to you, face to face. Here is where you can find them (taken from their own websites):

Mike Coffman

Congressman Mike Coffman
Coffman's district office is at:
9220 Kimmer Drive; Suite 220
Lone Tree, CO 80124
Phone: (720) 283-9772
Fax: (720) 283-9776

Campaign Offices
5950 S. Willow Drive, Suite 306
Greenwood Village, CO 80111

9249 South Broadway, #200-501
Highlands Ranch, CO 80129
Phone: 303-791-6453

Scott Tipton

Scott Tipton has five offices, for your convenience.
609 Main St., #105 Box 11
Alamosa, CO 81101
Phone: (719) 587-5105
Fax: (719) 587-5137

#10 West Main Street, Suite 107
Cortez, CO 81321
Phone: (970) 565-7383
Fax: (970) 259-1563

835 E. Second Avenue, Suite 230
Durango, CO 81301
Phone: (970) 259-1490
Fax: (970) 259-1563

225 North 5th St., Suite 702
Grand Junction, CO 81501
Phone: (970) 241-2499
Fax: (970) 241-3053

503 N. Main Street, Suite 658
Pueblo, CO 81003
Phone: (719) 542-1073
Fax: (719) 542-1127

Doug Lamborn

Doug Lamborn has two offices for your convenience.
1271 Kelly Johnson Blvd. Suite 110
Colorado Springs, CO 80920
Phone: (719) 520-0055
Fax: (719) 520-0840

415 Main Street
Buena Vista, CO 81211
Phone: (719) 520-0055
Fax: (719) 520-0840
(no mail delivery)

The Colorado Springs District Office is serviced by the Colorado Springs Metro Bus System. The Purple Line Stop is a short walk from the office.

Raise money for the candidates who seek to replace them (the good guys).

The Good Guys

Here are the good guys, men who treat women with the respect they deserve. Please do everything you can to help them get elected.

Candidate Joe Miklosi (Democrat)
Candidate Sal Pace (Democrat)
Candidate Dave Anderson (Independent)

Register to vote. Make sure every woman you know is also registered to vote. Then, make sure every woman you know does vote. Your life, your daughter's life, and your granddaughter's lives depend on it.

Copy this letter and hand one to every woman you know.

Thank you,
Nancy Cronk
Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother and (hopefully someday), future Grandmother

Thousands To March In Denver Saturday

peacemonger — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:23:06 GMT

Supporting Women's Exclusive Right To Make Own Decisions

On April 28th, 2012, at 9:30am, thousands of Colorado women and their family members will gather at Civic Center Park's Greek Amphitheater for a Rally to protect women's access to health care, and for the right of each woman to make her own health care decisions. State and federal legislators, musicians, poets, community leaders, and ordinary Coloradans will be addressing current legislation in Colorado and other states. Following the rally, attendees will march around the State Capitol and back around Civic Center Park to where they started.
Presenters at the Rally will include:

Human Rights Attorney Beth Klein
Musical Comedy by "The Raging Grannies"
Unitarian Universalist Reverend Dr. Nori Rost
Rosemary Harris Lytle, CO NAACP State President
House Representatives Crisanta Duran, and Lois Court
Award-winning Poetry Slam Artists, Suzi Q and Jen Rinaldi
Music By The Foxfield Four (formerly the David James Band)
State Representative and US Congressional Candidate Joe Miklosi
State Senators Morgan Carroll, Rev. Lucia Guzman, and Betty Boyd
State Senate President and US Congressional Candidate Brandon Shaffer

The Rally and March have been organized by a grassroots group of Colorado women, primarily using social media, following talk show host Rush Limbaugh's personal attack on Law Student Sandra Fluke, and Foster Friess's comment that women should "put an aspirin between their knees" as a form of birth control. According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than 1100 separate provisions were presented in state legislatures across the country in 2011 which attempted to limit a woman's family planning options or access to health care. Approximately 135 of them were passed and became law.

Lone Tree resident Jean Tinley plans to bring her whole family to the March. "Women's reproductive healthcare should remain in our hands and those of our doctors, not legislators. Family planning is a personal and private decision", she said.

"Extremists in Congress like Mike Coffman are deliberately increasing the cost of health care for millions of women. At the same time, they have let the Violence Against Women Act expire. It is outrageous" said State Representative Joe Miklosi.

For more information, contact Nancy Cronk at wearewomenco@gmail.com or visit the national website at Unitewomen.org .

Over My Dead Body (Literally)

peacemonger — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 04:37:33 GMT

Republicans have declared a War On Women, attempting to take away their right to make their own health care decisions, including the use of contraception for family planning and medical reasons. They've also introduced hundreds of bills into state legislatures across the country which attempt to introduce "personhood clauses", which encroach upon women's reproductive rights. These bills are usually presented in ways that play upon the sympathies of women, by using stories from current events. In Colorado, HB1130 uses the tragic story of a pregnant woman who was hit by a car and killed, to sneak in a definition of life as beginning with a fertilized egg.

As a suburban mother, a former preschool and religious school teacher, and one of nine children raised in a conservative home, I might have fallen for their tactics. Fortunately, I've been paying attention for too long.

If the Republicans were really interested in protecting babies, rather than playing to their base for donations and votes, they would not have exempted doctors from prosecution in the CO bill. Medical malpractice in obstetrics and gynecology is a huge problem, but they exempted doctors in HB1130. Why? Because the AMA is a large contributor to the Republican Party.

If Republicans were really interested in protecting babies, they would be making sure fewer young and poor women were becoming pregnant. How? By covering contraception under every insurance plan in these United States.

If Republicans were really interested in protecting babies, they would be investing more public funding in higher education. Women who go to college are far less likely to become unmarried mothers than women who do not.
I've shared my own traumatic pregnancy story in blogs before. What I did not share was what was going through my head in the minutes between being told my life depended on having a D&C, and actually having one. In a nutshell, I had been a stay-at-home mother of a one-and-a-half year old, married to a graduate student. I was four months into my second pregnancy when I awoke one morning in a pool of blood. At the hospital, I was given an ultrasound and told I was no longer carrying a fetus, but Gestational Trophoblastic disease.

The condition started with a molar pregnancy (hydatitiform mole, a condition where the fetus becomes crowded out by pre-cancerous tumors within the uterus which are fed by pregnancy hormones, resulting in rapid abdominal growth mimicking a normal pregnancy). I was told the ultrasound indicated the fetus was no longer viable, but in very rare instances, sometimes they still can be. Once the uterus fills with the tumors, and bleeding begins, the woman will bleed to death unless she is emergently given a D&C. While I sat waiting for my emergency surgery (I was bleeding heavily at the time), I thought of my conservative upbringing, my previous anti-abortion beliefs, and my own toddler at home, waiting for his Mommy to come home.

I knew I had no choice but to have the D&C because my life depended on it, and even in the very small chance the ultrasound was wrong about the fetus being non-viable, not having one meant certain death for me and the fetus, anyway. Still, my grief over losing a wanted pregnancy, coupled with the terror of waking up in a pool of blood, was second only to my strong sense of guilt. Although I had every reason to believe I was doing the right thing, and I had even fought for the ERA while in college , I was suffering from what mental health experts call "internalized oppression" -- the belief that somehow I wasn't qualified to make my own decisions about my own life.

I could have died that day. I could have bled to death. And if I had, my baby at home would have not had a mother.

Damn Republican legislators for making any woman value her own life less than the "life" of a handful of cells the size of a walnut. Damn Republican legislators for using a woman's personal decisions about her own life to get donors, or votes, for their own political advancement. Damn Republican legislators for valuing women below their own greedy career aspirations and the opportunity to make money as lobbyists later on.

I had that D&C, and received close monitoring from my personal physician, a radiologist, an oncologist, and an endocrinologist for the following year. I was told I might not be able to have more children because the precancerous tumors were very aggressive and advanced, and the inside of my uterus looked like it had been through a lawnmower. Fortunately, a biopsy said the tumors were benign, and I did not have any of them travel to any other parts of my body.

Two years and eleven ultrasounds later, I gave birth to Jonathan Lincoln. His name means, "A gift from G-d". Two years after that, I gave birth to Jordan Eric. Every day since then, I privately thank G-d for ending that pregnancy before I had to do it myself. Every day, I thank G-d for giving me all three of my children. Every day, I thank G-d I made the right decision; the decision to save my own life --- with no looking back.

I am adamantly pro-choice because of the many situations where it is unwise or dangerous for a woman to continue a pregnancy, and I will fight to the end for every woman to make her own health care decisions.

At the same time, I am no ogre; I do feel compassion for a fully developed fetus that could live outside the womb if it were delivered. We must find ways to have a civil, intelligent dialogue that balances the needs and rights of a woman, the educational, psychological, financial and health care needs of an infant after birth, and scientifically-proven fetal development. We cannot have this discussion as long as American society refuses to care for women and children, and continues to deny them the basic necessities of life -- food, shelter, health care, clean air and water, etc. When all sides can come together in reason, committed to caring for every person on this planet, and absent from religious dogma, maybe we'll make some headway on this issue. Until then, we must always protect a woman's right to choose.

To the Anti-choice Republicans in the CO State Legislature, if we have not yet met, I look forward to the day we do. When that happens, I will look into your eyes and ask you, "Would you really have let me die?"

Join me and thousands of other women on April 28th at 10am for a March and Rally Against the War On Women At Civic Center Park. Someday, the life you save, may be your own. www.unitewomen.org

Limbaugh Smackdown and CO Women Unite

peacemonger — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 08:20:47 GMT

When the GOP decided to create a fictitious "war on religion" to smear President Obama, and chose contraception coverage for employees of religiously-based hospitals and universities as their battle-ground, they had no idea what they were starting. Women across America realized it could potentially be a two-fer for the GOP -- not just an attack on the President's character, but also a pre-meditated, Rovian-style attempt to undermine the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

And they thought we wouldn't even notice.

"Stupid women -- too busy raising children and buying hair products to notice some of their health care benefits are being taken away", must have been their thinking.

The argument that requiring religiously-based institutions and organizations to provide contraception coverage is an affront to the First Amendment, fell on disgusted, disbelieving ears. The United States government requires people to do things that violate their spiritual beliefs every day. For example, a number of religions believe war is morally wrong, yet, every working adult is required to pay taxes which support the Department of Defense. Some religions find eating pork offensive, yet no one has declared that food off-limits under the school lunch program. Some faiths believe in healing through prayer, yet the government can, and does, require families to seek medical care for their dependent family members. With hundreds of religions in this country, and many levels of observance within each one, it is impossible to please everybody.

Freedom of Religion is a straw man argument, and American women's bullshit detectors are going off at record decibals. Add to the contraception debacle the many anti-choice bills being presented in states all over the nation this year, and you get millions of women madder than Tom Tancredo lost in the middle of a Cinco De Mayo crowd with no one willing to give him directions in English.

How angry are American women? When Rush Limbaugh personally attacked law student Sandra Fluke on his radio program last week, calling her a "slut", women took to the internet to boycott his sponsors. Within three days, he lost fifteen sponsors and two radio stations (and counting).

Meanwhile, women are organizing all over this country, in ways I've not seen since Gloria Steinem and her contempories in the 1970's. When Tea-Party Republicans held a hearing on contraception that did not include any women on the panel, Erin Nanasi posted an angry YouTube video, produced in her kitchen. Within hours, it was seen by Karen Teegarden in Birmingham, Michigan, who decided to do something about it.

Using facebook, Karen declared there would be a March against the War On Women. Word spread quickly. Within three days, organizers were volunteering to plan marches all over the nation. One of the first was Colorado, where Colorado Springs activists passed the baton to Denver activists.

Two weeks later, the National March Against the War On Women is impressively well-organized. Volunteers have emerged in every state, and the orginal organizing page has nearly 19,000 members, and it's growing rapidly. At last count, the Colorado march page has more than 700 members. Perhaps the most astonishing sign of success is that our leadership groups (made up of volunteers) has as many registered Republicans as Democrats and Independents...and some are men.

As Republican member "Jane" from Douglas County put it today,

I'm a Republican and I have always been a Republican because I believe in conservative fiscal policy. None of the Republican presidential candidates are worth taking seriously -- I couldn't vote for any of them. And, I'm a mother. I am protecting my daughter's right to make decisions about her own body. I'm thrilled to be involved with this movement.

Please join us to Unite Against the War On Women. March with us on April 28th. Show the world Americans will not tolerate women being treated as second-class citizens.

Oh, and the next time you smell Rush, just flush.