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Why do we have an abortion rate 20% higher than France’s (and more than twice as high as Germany’s), especially considering most doctors here won’t perform them? The answer is any country that has universal health care, where contraception is free, where child care is free or inexpensive, where there is less poverty because people don’t become bankrupt over medical bills — those societies are simply going to have fewer unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.

And there the mask gets pulled off the Bart Stupaks and the “Christians.” If the statistics show that countries with government-provided universal health care and nearly-free abortions are, in fact, the countries with the fewest abortions, then why on earth wouldn’t the Right be the first in line to support universal health care?

Because it isn’t about “universal health care.” It’s about controlling women, period. It’s about sticking your nose in other people’s business. It’s about pushing your religious beliefs on everyone else because voices in your head tell you your Jesus is The One — even though your Jesus never said one single solitary word in any of the four gospels of the Bible about abortion or fertilized eggs being human. You’ve just gone and made it up about “life beginning at conception.” Jesus never said that. The little voice in your head said that, the same little voice that wants your grubby paws on women’s uteruses. You need help. Please get some help and leave the rest of us alone, Mr. Stupak and friends.

Michael Moore: My Congressman, Bart Stupak, Has Neither a Uterus Nor a Brain (via veruca-assault)

I wish I could reblog this 1,000 times.

(via evangotlib)

I am…not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions….But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
Thomas Jefferson, 1816
 (via ardenashley)
newyorker: In this week’s issue of the magazine (the Style Issue), Pari Dukovic’s Portfolio of the emerging punk culture in Burma follows Calvin Tomkins’s piece about the upcoming exhibition at the Met’s Costume Institute “Punk: Chaos to Couture.” As the introduction to Dukovic’s photographs explains, Punk in nineteen-seventies New York tended to be more concerned with aesthetics than with politics. It was spare, nervy music created in reaction to the embarrassing excesses of arena rock. Often, the “establishment” it railed against was your mom, or your school principal. (The final scene of the Ramones’ movie “Rock ’n’ Roll High School” is Vince Lombardi High exploding in flames.) Decades later, a punk diaspora thrives around the world. In Myanmar, a small punk community that stayed underground through decades of military rule is beginning to emerge. Click-through for more, plus a slideshow of Dukovic’s photos: http://nyr.kr/YNc5aT
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newyorker: In this week’s issue of the magazine (the Style Issue), Pari Dukovic’s Portfolio of the emerging punk culture in Burma follows Calvin Tomkins’s piece about the upcoming exhibition at the Met’s Costume Institute “Punk: Chaos to Couture.” As the introduction to Dukovic’s photographs explains, Punk in nineteen-seventies New York tended to be more concerned with aesthetics than with politics. It was spare, nervy music created in reaction to the embarrassing excesses of arena rock. Often, the “establishment” it railed against was your mom, or your school principal. (The final scene of the Ramones’ movie “Rock ’n’ Roll High School” is Vince Lombardi High exploding in flames.) Decades later, a punk diaspora thrives around the world. In Myanmar, a small punk community that stayed underground through decades of military rule is beginning to emerge. Click-through for more, plus a slideshow of Dukovic’s photos: http://nyr.kr/YNc5aT
Zoom
newyorker: In this week’s issue of the magazine (the Style Issue), Pari Dukovic’s Portfolio of the emerging punk culture in Burma follows Calvin Tomkins’s piece about the upcoming exhibition at the Met’s Costume Institute “Punk: Chaos to Couture.” As the introduction to Dukovic’s photographs explains, Punk in nineteen-seventies New York tended to be more concerned with aesthetics than with politics. It was spare, nervy music created in reaction to the embarrassing excesses of arena rock. Often, the “establishment” it railed against was your mom, or your school principal. (The final scene of the Ramones’ movie “Rock ’n’ Roll High School” is Vince Lombardi High exploding in flames.) Decades later, a punk diaspora thrives around the world. In Myanmar, a small punk community that stayed underground through decades of military rule is beginning to emerge. Click-through for more, plus a slideshow of Dukovic’s photos: http://nyr.kr/YNc5aT
Zoom

newyorker:

In this week’s issue of the magazine (the Style Issue), Pari Dukovic’s Portfolio of the emerging punk culture in Burma follows Calvin Tomkins’s piece about the upcoming exhibition at the Met’s Costume Institute “Punk: Chaos to Couture.” As the introduction to Dukovic’s photographs explains,

Punk in nineteen-seventies New York tended to be more concerned with aesthetics than with politics. It was spare, nervy music created in reaction to the embarrassing excesses of arena rock. Often, the “establishment” it railed against was your mom, or your school principal. (The final scene of the Ramones’ movie “Rock ’n’ Roll High School” is Vince Lombardi High exploding in flames.) Decades later, a punk diaspora thrives around the world. In Myanmar, a small punk community that stayed underground through decades of military rule is beginning to emerge.

Click-through for more, plus a slideshow of Dukovic’s photos: http://nyr.kr/YNc5aT

For shits and grimaces, I will, for a moment, entertain Paul’s ostensible premise that a fetus has the equivalent value of the born uterus-having person carrying it. Great. So what? My life, right now, is not so precious that any other human being could be compelled to use their body to support mine for the next nine months (at least). No other human being is obliged to give up an organ for me, even if it would save my life. Nor bone marrow, nor blood, nor skin. People who are forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term are being asked to do something no other people are asked to do for another person, which exposes the truth of the anti-choice position: Fetuses are valued more highly than the people who carry them.

This legislation does not more highly value the potential life of a fetus. It devalues the life of women and other people with uteri.

Shakesville: Rand Paul: Champion of “Freedom”

(via veruca-assault)

youdontlooklikeafeminist: stfusexists: thegoddamazon: anarcho-queer: New York Millionaire On Trial For Keeping A Slave In Her Mansion Millionaire socialite Annie George, 40, went on trial Tuesday for allegedly keeping an undocumented immigrant as a “slave” in her upstate New York mansion. According to CBS 6 in Albany, Valsamma Mathai, 49, testified Tuesday that she was held in the 30,000 square foot, 26-bedroom Llenroc Mansion in Rexford, New York for six and a half years as she worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and slept in a walk-in closet. Mathai, an undocumented immigrant from India, said she was picked up at a New York bus station by George’s late husband Mathai Kolath George, who spoke her native tongue and offered a job that would pay $1,000 per month — a significant raise over the $100 per month she was making. When she arrived, however, Mathai claims she did not have her passport or visa, and soon discovered she wasn’t allowed to leave. It wasn’t until the National Human Trafficking Resource Center received a tip from the woman’s son, who prosecutors said recorded a conversation with George, that agents came to her rescue. A criminal complaint was filed last March. George is facing a charge of harboring an undocumented immigrant, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. 10 years max? TEN YEARS? For enslaving a woman? That is completely unacceptable. That shit should be 25 to life.  Ooookay, problem. This horrible human mess kept a woman as a slave in her house, and was charged with harbouring an illegal immigrant? Seriously? That’s the charge? That should not be the charge. Reasons? I have 2: 1) Providing shelter to someone who is undocumented shouldn’t even be a thing that send someone to jail. 2) SHE KEPT A WOMAN AS A SLAVE! Whether that woman was an undocumented immigrant or not, she was kept against her will as a slave! The charge should be kidnapping. Or something else that actually fits the crime. Like, oh, I don’t know, SLAVERY, which is, you know, illegal. 
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youdontlooklikeafeminist:

stfusexists:

thegoddamazon:

anarcho-queer:

New York Millionaire On Trial For Keeping A Slave In Her Mansion

Millionaire socialite Annie George, 40, went on trial Tuesday for allegedly keeping an undocumented immigrant as a “slave” in her upstate New York mansion.

According to CBS 6 in Albany, Valsamma Mathai, 49, testified Tuesday that she was held in the 30,000 square foot, 26-bedroom Llenroc Mansion in Rexford, New York for six and a half years as she worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and slept in a walk-in closet.

Mathai, an undocumented immigrant from India, said she was picked up at a New York bus station by George’s late husband Mathai Kolath George, who spoke her native tongue and offered a job that would pay $1,000 per month — a significant raise over the $100 per month she was making.

When she arrived, however, Mathai claims she did not have her passport or visa, and soon discovered she wasn’t allowed to leave.

It wasn’t until the National Human Trafficking Resource Center received a tip from the woman’s son, who prosecutors said recorded a conversation with George, that agents came to her rescue. A criminal complaint was filed last March.

George is facing a charge of harboring an undocumented immigrant, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

10 years max? TEN YEARS? For enslaving a woman? That is completely unacceptable. That shit should be 25 to life. 

Ooookay, problem. This horrible human mess kept a woman as a slave in her house, and was charged with harbouring an illegal immigrant? Seriously? That’s the charge?

That should not be the charge. Reasons? I have 2:

1) Providing shelter to someone who is undocumented shouldn’t even be a thing that send someone to jail.

2) SHE KEPT A WOMAN AS A SLAVE! Whether that woman was an undocumented immigrant or not, she was kept against her will as a slave! The charge should be kidnapping. Or something else that actually fits the crime. Like, oh, I don’t know, SLAVERY, which is, you know, illegal. 

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