Category: Abortions

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Abortions Donald Trump Politics

Donald Trump Supports an Easier Path for Women Seeking an Abortion

The Liberal in Donald Trump is making himself known again. Once a Democrat, the newly crowned Republican presidential candidate answered a question on “The Dr. Oz Show,” with an answer that is sure to upset many Abortion-hating Republicans.

According to the Republicans’ nominee for president, women seeking abortions should get the procedure with ease, not jumping through hoops like having to get a prescription from their doctors.

“I would say it should not be prescription,” he told the audience, adding that many women “just aren’t in a position to go get a prescription.”

The GOP’s 2016 platform says it opposes the FDA’s “endorsement of over-the-counter sales of powerful contraceptives without a physician’s recommendation.”

The comment comes days after Trump unveiled a plan aimed at making childcare more affordable for women and as he works to boost his poll numbers with women. Polls show women favoring Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, though Trump does better than her with men.

Trump has sometimes stumbled when it comes to reproductive health issues.

During the Republican primary, he was criticized for saying that, if it the abortion were to be outlawed, women should be punished for having them. He later said that providers, not women, should be the ones who face penalties.

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Abortions Politics

Wife of Anti-Abortion Lawmaker Goes Public About Having an Abortion

And her husband, the anti-abortion lawmaker says he’s “extremely proud” of his wife’s courage.

Yes, they’re Republicans!

Stephanie Chatfield, the wife of anti-abortion Michigan state Rep. Lee Chatfield (R), is speaking out about her own experience with the procedure after receiving threats from people warning they’d expose her.

“Your desire to see this story go public emboldened me to do something that I should have done years ago,” Chatfield wrote in a Facebook post published last Friday. “And no matter the intentions of anybody wishing to see this story go public, this I am certain of: God meant it for good and will glorify Himself through this.”

The post was titled “Be Pro-Life—But offer help to women in need.”

Chatfield recounted her experience of being “taken advantage of” while intoxicated at a high school party and deciding to get an abortion after learning she was pregnant three weeks later. She called her choice “the worst of my life.”

“To tell you the truth, I desperately wish that I had the courage as a teenage girl to accept and welcome my child into this world,” Chatfield wrote. “I wish that I had the same amount of courage that it’s taking me to share my story now. But I didn’t, and I made a decision that I’ve thought about and regretted nearly every day since. It’s haunted me. It’s made me weep. It’s made it difficult to look in the mirror at times. I knew that what I did was wrong at the time, but I never imagined the weight and guilt that I would carry as a consequence.”

Chatfield’s husband, who is currently up for re-election, is a stalwart opponent of abortion who voted to defund Planned Parenthood for providing the procedure. In introducing his wife’s remarks, which were posted on his public Facebook page, Lee Chatfield said he was “extremely proud” of his wife for “her courage.”

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Abortions Donald Trump michael steele Politics

Joy Reid Factchecks Michael Steele’s False Comment About Abortions On Air – Video

Former RNC Chairman, Michael Steele went on MSNBC today and was interviewed by Joy Reid on the ridiculous comments Republican leader, Donald Trump made earlier in the week, where he said women seeking abortion services should be punished.

Asked to speak about Trump’s comment and the fact that others in the Republican party want women punished for seeking abortions, Michael Steele tried to sidestep the issue, falsely stating that no one in the Republican party is advocating punishing women.

“That has not been the policy of this country to prosecute women who had an abortion, either back in the 50’s or today,” Steele said. He then went on to call the issue a “red herring,” then reiterated his stance that no one in the Republican party is pushing laws to punish women.

But Reid already had multiple headlines cued up, showing that women were already being punished, even jailed for having an abortion.

Video.

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Abortions Politics

Republican Official Blame Abortions for California Drought

Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, was one of several Republicans calling for lawmakers to reject a measure to overhaul California's enterprise zone program, during the Assembly session at the Capitol Thursday, June 27, 2013, in Sacramento, Calif. The measure AB93 by Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield, D-Woodland Hills, and supported by Gov. Jerry Brown, failed to pass on the two initial attempts, but was passed on the third vote. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

And you thought you had heard it all.

While speaking at the California ProLife Legislative Banquet last week, California Assemblywoman Shannon Grove (R) suggested a theory that the state’s worst drought in 1,200 years may be divine retribution for California providing women with access to abortions, RH Reality Check reported.

“Texas was in a long period of drought until Governor Perry signed the fetal pain bill,” she told the audience. “It rained that night. Now God has his hold on California.”

Grove was likely referring to House Bill 2, RH Reality Check noted, a Texas abortion bill banning abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, four weeks earlier than the standard set by Roe v. Wade.

Grove did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation that she made the statement at the event, but she elaborated on her theory in a Facebook comment.

“I believe –and most Americans believe –that God’s hand is in the affairs of man, and certainly was in the formation of this country,” she wrote. “Is this drought caused by God? Nobody knows. But biblical history shows a consequence to man’s actions.”

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Abortions Politics the supreme court

Twitter Users Leave Angry Messages for @SCOTUSblog – @SCOTUSblog Replies with Humor

Photo: Twitter @SCOTUSblog

People are upset, MAD I tells ya! This Hobby Lobby decision by the Supreme Court has people up in arms and they’re looking for a way to vent. So what better place to vent your displeasure than to attack @SCOTUSblog?

Well, I would attack too, except, @SCOTUSblog is not the blog for the Supreme Court. It is in no way affiliated with the United States Supreme Court Justices. @SCOTUSblog is just a blogsite dedicated to reporting on The Supreme Court’s decisions. The site is in no way responsible for the court, its failed justices or the court’s decision.

But don’t tell that to these angry Twitter users. They found the @SCOTUSblog twitter handle and they’re letting them know how disappointed and angry they are with the Hobby Lobby decision. And @SCOTUSblog is having some fun with it!

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Abortions Domestic Policies Healthcare News Politics Teaparty the supreme court Wisconsin Union Bashing

With a Court Like This, Who Needs Congress?

The Tea Party and most social conservatives can sleep easily throughout the summer now. The two Supreme Court decisions rendered on Monday should delight the right and make the inaction across the street in the Capitol seems like a mere distraction. Like a fly buzzing around the collective government heads. The conservative revolution has been won, and all it took was five justices and very little money.

In the Hobby Lobby case, the court affirmed that not only are corporations people, they also have religious rights that can be exercised on health care issues. Yes, Justice Samuel Alito did say that he didn’t expect the floodgates to open on religious issues, but just look at what the Court’s decision on marriage equality did to even conservative states. Lower courts have run riot over anti-gay marriage laws to the tune of 17 states, many of which are in the most conservative areas of the country. Does Justice Alito really think that lower courts will demure when it comes to challenges on religious grounds? I don’t.

But just as this Court has affirmed the highest aspirations of the conservative movement, and, I’m sure, cemented the idea that Madison, Adams, Jay and Hamilton would have agreed with them, they are just doing what the liberal courts did in the 1950s through 1970s. Remember that the court found a right to privacy in the 1968 Griswold case, and used that right, which appears nowhere in the Constitution, to decide Roe v. Wade. The Warren court did the same with Brown, basing it on previous, smaller cases that affirmed what the justices believed to be correct decisions.

Alito, clearly the more articulate conservative compared to Antonin Scalia, who just wants to rant, also wrote the majority opinion in Harris v. Quinn, the day’s other liberal-bashing case. Here, he and the conservative majority said that some public employees do not have to pay union fees even if they don’t want to actually join the union that represents their field. For example, in New Jersey, public school teachers who don’t join the teacher’s association still have to pay 85% of the association fees because the association represents and negotiates for these teachers. Alito created a new category of worker, a partial public employee who works for both the government and a private person who hired them, and said that this type of employee was exempt from representation fees.

This decision is not major in the sense that it covered a great deal of people, but it does open up the gates to further challenges to unions and laws that require people to pay a representation fee. The next case could give the conservatives an opening to expand the definition to part-timers or support staff or, to be honest, any other public worker. Alito doesn’t like unions. It’s not just the law; it’s personal.

While President Obama and the right wing Republicans duke it out over language and politics, the Supreme Court is moving full steam ahead to craft a country that looks more like 1814 than 2014. The biggest problem, though, is that the former generation had Chielf Justice John Marshall to guide it. We get Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas.

We lose.

You want more? That’s easy. Simply go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Abortions Domestic Policies Health Healthcare News Politics

The Abortion Freeport Doctrine

In 1857, the US Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford that slavery was legal and that slaves were property. Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, in debates with challenger Abraham Lincoln in 1858, was a supporter of popular sovereignty on slavery, That is, he wanted to let the people of a territory decide if it was to be legally free or slave. This, obviously, wouldn’t be possible given the Court’s decision because the justices said that slavery could not be banned. So Douglas came up with a dance that came to be called The Freeport Doctrine. This doctrine would allow slavery, but would encourage territories to enact high legal boundaries to its implementation, rendering it moot in practice.

Despite the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973, anti-abortion groups have stopped at nothing–not even the law–to enact high legal hurdles that inhibit the right of every women to control their reproductive lives and health choices. In one of the presidential debates in 2004, George W. Bush even invoked Dred Scott as a guiding principle for his judicial choices. Abortion equals slavery. Welcome to the Abortion Freeport Doctrine.

Three states have taken this tactic to new extremes. Texas passed an onerous law that will result in the closing of more than half of the remaining clinics in the state. Arizona passed a law, now under judicial review, that would restrict medication abortions. And Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant said today that he will sign a law that will prohibit abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and with no exception for rape or incest This is all on top of restrictive laws that have been passed, and have passed judicial muster, over the 41 years that Roe has been the law of the land. The Supreme Court is now weighing whether the Affordable Care Act can require all employers to cover contraception for all of its employees, because those companies consider some contraception to mimic abortions.

This is an emotional issue and the debate over abortion does not yield any middle ground. But we can find a way to make abortions less likely, provide contraception and sex education, and allow women and their doctors to make decisions that are in the best interests of the patient. That’s called freedom of choice and it’s something I hear a great deal about from those on the political right who want the government out of our lives, except in the bedroom. Or kitchen. Or back seat. Or…you get the point.

My solace comes from the belief that the conservative tide has crested and that we’re seeing the worst of the restrictions now. Many will stay in the most conservative states, but the idea that a women’s body is her own is pretty much a settled social idea that the court overturns at the country’s peril. It’s worth remembering that the Freeport Doctrine went nowhere. It’s also worth remembering that it took another hundred years for African-Americans to gain their full legal rights. I hope we’re not still debating the choice issue 60 years from now.

Register your comments at www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and on Twitter @rigrundfest

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Abortions Politics

American Abortion Rate Lowest in Three Decades – Thanks Obama!

The report did not say conclusively that the lowest abortion rate in over 30 years is due to the growing use of contraceptives, but come on. If you prevent the pregnancy in the first place, you obviously have no use for abortions in the future, right? It’s that simple. The report however, is trying to be politically correct. They’re not trying to anger the Republicans who, as you know, are against contraception.

Here’s a Republican talking point you’ve probably already heard – that Obama’s policies encourages abortions. Well if that’s the case, what happened here?

The abortion rate among American women declined to its lowest level in more than three decades in 2011, according to a new report released Monday that is widely considered the country’s most definitive examination of abortion trends.

The 1.1 million abortions reported in 2011 represented a rate of 16.9 per thousand women of childbearing age, down from 2008, when a similar study estimated that 1.21 million abortions were performed at a rate of 19.4 per thousand women.

Resuming a long-term downward trend that stalled in the middle of the last decade, the 2011 rate was far below the peak, in 1981, of 29.3 per thousand, according to the report from the Guttmacher Institute, a private research group that supports abortion rights.

The decline in abortions from 2008 to 2011 was mirrored by a decline in pregnancy rates. The report did not include a detailed analysis of the reasons for these trends, which pose complicated research issues.

But the decline in abortions, the researchers said, appears in part to reflect the growing use, especially among younger women, of nearly foolproof long-term contraceptives like intrauterine devices. It may also reflect the impact of the recession and economic uncertainty, which can lead to fewer pregnancies, births and abortions, according to the authors, Rachel K. Jones and Jenna Jerman.

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Abortions contraceptives Politics Republican war on women

This is how you stop the Republican #WarOnWomen

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Abortions Domestic Policies women's rights

THIS JUST IN: Republicans Have Run Amok

HEADLINE: BREAKING NEWS: THIS JUST IN: Use whichever ‘Stopper’ you prefer but the News is Official – The Republicans have Run Amok! All across this great nation, Republicans are doing the dastardly deeds of taking into Their hands, a Woman’s Right to Choose, Voter’s Rights at the Polls, gerrymandering, gay rights and more.

From Texas to Ohio to North Carolina to California, the Republicans are in a dog fight and the American Citizens are being held hostage. Texas State Senator Wendy Davis, whose 12-hour Filibuster speech on the abortion issue made even Rand Paul proud. She is locked in against one of the greatest orators of Texas, Gov. Rick Perry (Sorry, I had to do that ). Gov. Perry is undoubtedly attempting to strike down any opposition when it comes to abortions in his state. But he’s relentless in capital punishment. Last week, Texas performed execution #251, the most under any sitting Governor.

Republican Gov., John Kasich, signed stringent abortion restrictions into law on Sunday night citing it was part of his “budgetary” planning. His bill requires women to take an unnecessary ultra-sound before having an abortion, requires physicians to read a Speech written by politicians to women seeking abortions, restricts workers at rape crisis centers from sharing with rape victims their legal rights.

In North Carolina, the General Assembly was lined with protesters as the State Senate voted on and passed sweeping legislation on an abortion bill, requiring physicians to be present during the procedure. The Republican Majority, under the hush of night, slipped this provision in under a bill that would prohibit the use of foreign law – Sharia Law – in the courts of North Carolina. Even the newly elected Governor, Pat McCrory (R), seemed taken aback by Tuesday nights events leading to Wednesday mornings outcome.

“When the Democrats were in power, this is how they did business. It was not right then and it is not right now. Regardless of what party is in charge or what important issue is being discussed, the process must be appropriate and thorough”, Gov. McCrory said. Interesting, coming from a man who reduced Unemployment Benefits length from 26-weeks to 13 and the Benefits amount from a maximum $535-week to $325 a week, without, mind you, support from the Democratic minority. Oh, and by the way, HE is why the #MoralMondays Movement has begun in North Carolina. His unpopular and targeted legislation has struck a cord, even in some Republicans that voted him in. If the House approves this measure, the bill becomes law without the Governor’s signature.

In California, gay marriage is placed on hold temporarily. A conservatives based lawyers group called, Alliance Defending Freedom out of Arizona, claimed in a petition that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals acted too early in letting same-sex marriages resume. Opponents are feverishly attempting to dissuade momentum of this historic ruling by the Supreme Court last week. Kansas Republican, Rep. Tim Huelskamp, has introduced a federal constitutional amendment banning All same sex marriages nation-wide. He has compared this fight to the Roe v. Wade fight legalizing abortions.

And to finish off the Republican agenda, they are beginning to gerrymander or redistrict voting locations for their benefit. A few states, Texas and North Carolina to name a couple, have begun changing the maps in key voting districts and also have added stricter voting laws requiring All registered voters show a pictured I.D.

Yep, the Republican base is showing its hand. They are standing united in every corner of the country. From Congress, to Senate, to House, to local government, they stand united with the same message – “People be damned, it’s Our Agenda, No Compromise, No Backing Down”. But remember America, they didn’t walk into office…some of you voted them in.

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Abortions Featured Politics

Republican Representative Said Fetuses Masturbate, So Abortions Should End

I bet you didn’t know that masturbation began before birth. It’s okay, like you, I didn’t know this either. But thanks to the wonderful information provided by our friendly Republicans – you know, the same folks who taught us about legitimate rape and the ability of the woman’s body to “shut that whole thing down” if pregnancy occurs from illegitimate rape – we now know that fetuses, as early as 15 weeks old, pleasure themselves by masturbating.

This piece of info is brought to us compliments of Texas Republican Congressman Michael Burgess, who used the masturbation theory as a reason to push a bill outlawing abortions before 20 weeks. According to Mr. Burgess, if a 15 weeks fetus could feel pleasure from… pleasuring himself, then he could also feel the pain of an abortion.

The congressman explains;

“There is no question in my mind that a baby at 20-weeks after conception can feel pain. The fact of the matter is, I argue with the chairman because I thought the date was far too late. We should be setting this at 15-weeks, 16-weeks,” said the former OB/GYN during the House Rules Committee debate on the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” he continued. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

He has no doubt in his mind that this is so, so women must now give up their right to choose what’s best for their own health. Go Republicans!

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Abortions Oklahoma Politics

Oklahoma Republican Asks: “What Happened To The Republican Party I Joined?”

Oklahoma state Rep. Doug Cox (R), published a piece today in The Oklahoman. The article discussed the Republican’s unforgiving stance on abortions and not providing contraceptives to women. And in the piece, Mr. Cox asked what happened to the party he joined and wondered if his fellow Republican colleagues lives in “the real world.”

As a practicing physician (who never has or will perform an abortion), I deal with the real world. In the real world, 15- and 16-year-olds get pregnant (sadly, 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds do also). In the real world, 62 percent of women ages 20 to 24 who give birth are unmarried. And in the world I work and live in, an unplanned pregnancy can throw up a real roadblock on a woman’s path to escaping the shackles of poverty.

Yet I cannot convince my Republican colleagues that one of the best ways to eliminate abortions is to ensure access to contraception. A recent attempt by my fellow lawmakers to prevent Medicaid dollars from covering the “morning after” pill is a case in point. Denying access to this important contraceptive is a sure way to increase legal and back-alley abortions. Moreover, such a law would discriminate against low-income women who depend on Medicaid for their health care.

But wait, some lawmakers want to go even further and limit everyone’s access to birth control by allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraception.

What happened to the Republican Party that I joined? The party where conservative presidential candidate Barry Goldwater felt women should have the right to control their own destiny? The party where President Ronald Reagan said a poor person showing up in the emergency room deserved needed treatment regardless of ability to pay? What happened to the Republican Party that felt government should not overregulate people until (as we say in Oklahoma) “you have walked a mile in their moccasins”?

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