About that Supreme Court Ruling

I've written a quick piece on this week's wretched Supreme Court ruling on the Hobby Lobby  and women's right to healthcare. It's entitled "Supreme Court to women workers: 'Make me a sandwich'" and it's over at Kasama. It begins,

The religious beliefs of business owners are more important than the health of women workers. That was the gist of a ruling out of the US Supreme Court on Monday, on the last day of the court's annual session. The court pretty much told women they should put up with whatever their bosses think is best for them, because the bosses have "sincerely held" beliefs about what is best for the health of their female employees.

In a familiar 5 to 4 vote, the court divided along conservative and liberal lines, with the court's three female justices leading the dissent. The ruling was on a case brought by the Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft-supply stores run by right-wing fundamentalist Christians. Forced by Obamacare to offer standardized health insurance to their employees, Hobby Lobby's owners objected to having to cover birth control expenses, supposedly against their religious beliefs. No allowances for the religious beliefs or non-beliefs of the covered employees were made, and, ironically, the Hobby Lobby owners raised no objection to insurance coverage of erectile-dysfunction drugs like Viagra. Women's gynecological health was completely trivialized as something entirely subject to whim. Previously, religious organizations were granted exemptions to birth-control coverage; this ruling was the first to extend those exemptions to “family” or “closely-held” businesses. Hobby Lobby may be family-owned, but it has almost 600 locations and over 20,000 employees. The ruling is also considered a blow to Obamacare, though in truth it just seems to make make it even more obvious what a pathetically pale imitation of actual universal healthcare Obamacare actually is.

Read the whole piece and let me know what you think!

Defensive Voting?

International Women's Day, 2012

In getting used to the idea that women's rights to control their own bodies, including the right to have abortions, would remain a social battleground, I can't say I ever really expected the field of battle would actually shift backwards. But so it has done, and now it seems that even women's right to contraception is under attack. At the extreme end may be the putrid neanderthal spokesasshole Rush Limbaugh and his verbal assault on Ms. Susan Fluke, suggesting she was a "slut and prostitute" and out to get the government to support her licentious lifestyle, but at the other end are all manner of politicians including both Republicans and Democrats who think that it's high time that society controls women's genital organs. Apparently the small government types have problems with regulation of pollution and corruption but no problem at all with regulation of women's bodies. That they yearn for a time when women were nothing but baby machines says so much about their general worldviews.

I counter this 1950s style assault on women with a classic propaganda image from the other 1950s, the era of Soviet/Chinese solidarity against the American-led Cold War. Against a field of multilingual banners labelled "Peace," a Chinese and Russian woman gaze determinedly and resolutely against all odds. One boldly grasps a red banner, and yet almost tenderly they grasp hands between them. While certainly representing a different shade of stereotype, these women know that even peace is something that might require a battle to defend. And there remains so very very much to defend.

Happy International Working Women's Day. Stand shoulder to shoulder with your sisters.

The Right Wing's Prescription for Women

Planned Parenthood has been a target of the right wing for years. The current congress has gone to great lengths to demonize the private non-profit agency which provides millions of women, poor and otherwise, with health services including contraception and abortion. For all the insistence on the part of the rightwingers that the issue is preventing government-funding of abortion, the facts show that this is a smokescreen. There's a pie-chart floating around that clearly shows that abortions represent a small portion of Planned Parenthood's services. Given the legal hostility from many Republican and Democratic congresspeople in recent years, Planned Parenthood has worked very hard to follow the letter of the law and isolate the federal funding it gets from those abortion services. But it's futile to present either of these facts to the foes of Planned Parenthood, because the truth is that abortion is only the tip of the iceberg of their objections.

The rightwingers claim they are waging a battle based on moral and religious opposition to abortion based on the "sanctity of life." But what is actually quite clear is that these right wingers are actually waging a battle against something much bigger. And this is revealed by the current controversy over the initial Obama administration insistence that healthcare reform means that religious employers must include access to contraception in the insurance plans they offer to non-clerical employees like the teaching and medical professionals who work for churches and hospitals run by religious institutions. While it seems tragically likely that the Obama administration will concede this argument, the current controversy forces the right wing to admit that contraception itself is their actual problem, even knowing that contraception is a proven abortion preventative. Yes, that's right, the right wing does not want women to have access to the means to control their own bodies.

The right wing wants to defund Planned Parenthood not out of concern for some moral abstraction, but because it wants to preserve the dependency of women, especially poor and working-class women. The Sarah Palins and Michel Bachmanns of the far-right fringe notwithstanding, independent women who are not dependent on men are societal threat to the way the far right wants the world to look. And more fundamentally working-class women who rely on the affordability that government-funded healthcare provides are to them simply expendable.

The recent flap over the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure's shameful temporary plan to withdraw financial support of Planned Parenthood is illustrative. The Komen Foundation is less an institution concerned with women's health than a money-making scheme, a front for fake concern about the inadequate funding of women's healthcare. Forget how an organization allegedly concerned about women's health could sponsor pink buckets of the Colonel's greasy chicken, how could an organization allegedly concerned about women's health, full of smart people who know every last detail of those financial distribution pie-charts, claim that pulling the plug on poor women getting breast screenings could have anything to do with abortion at all? Who actually believes that? Only right wing ideologues with an agenda, that's who.

Here's the truth: This is yet another front on the class war being waged by the privileged classes on regular people. They don't want to pay for abortion, for contraception, for breast screenings, because they don't want to fucking pay for anyone's healthcare at all. Well, except their own.

Funny, it always comes down to the same problem....and the same solution.

Republicans to Rape Victims: F**k You

Everybody knows that the Republicans believe in individual rights for "we the people." Except, of course, when it comes to rights for people other than rich white men, who, as we all know, are the only people who count. It was good enough for the framers of the constitution, right?

High on their list of rights to roll back is the right of women to control their own bodies, which puts legal abortion front and center. Hoping to further erode the landmark Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion in the U.S., Republicans have come up with a shocking and disturbing plan of attack: they want to redefine rape, in effect decriminalizing "nonviolent" rape so that even fewer poor women who are victims of crime can count on government assistance to terminate the resulting pregnancies. The laws now on the books -- which I disagree with -- try to limit federal funding of abortion; hypocritically these laws recognize that pregnancies resulting from violence should be special cases. But even that level of sensitivity is too much for the Republicans. If it's not "violent rape," hey, it's no big deal! That woman has no right to have her insurance pay for abortion!

Mother Jones spells it out: with legislation introduced in Congress "last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to 'forcible rape.' This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible..." It's called the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," it has 173 Republican co-sponsors and weeper of the house John Boehner says it's a priority.

According to Planned Parenthood: "Republicans took control of Congress on a promise to create jobs, but instead, one of their first acts is to take away health insurance benefits that the majority of women currently have. The true intent of Congressman Chris Smith’s bill is to end insurance coverage for virtually all abortions, including private insurance coverage that Americans pay for with their own money, even in cases involving the most severe dangers to a woman's health."

The issue is simple. The Republicans want to turn the clock back to the days when abortion was illegal. To do so they are willing to redefine rape to make some of it, in effect, less criminal. All those "mamma grizzlies" notwithstanding, this legislation just goes to show their blatant disregard for the fundamental humanity and equality of women. This legislation is part of a broader assault on legal abortion itself, and ultimately on the constitutional civil rights that protect all of us non-rich-white-men.

Back in the early sixties my parents were part of a network that took in single unwed mothers who knew they would be unable to keep their children. The network placed these young pregnant women in settings that would allow them to safely get away from their lives, have their babies, give the children up for adoption, and then return to their lives without stigma from their communities. It was one of the many work-arounds to abortion being illegal, the worst of which of course was the back-alley coat-hanger abortion which often resulted in death or serious injury to the pregnant woman. Those days must not be allowed to return.

Echoes of a Past Life - Pro Choice Is Pro-Life

Abortion is the cultural wedge issue that does not die. Somehow it has even managed to become one of the issues so far derailing meaningful healthcare reform as conservative lawmakers seek to prevent women from having abortions on the government's tab. I feel very strongly that abortion is, indeed, a woman's right to choose. One of the most worthy charitable organizations is the heroic Planned Parenthood, and I recommend you join me in donating to their work.

Below is a piece I wrote in for Our Pagan Times, the newsletter of New Moon New York, an open Pagan circle, back in 1992. At the time I was editor of this group's newsletter, and as editor I was eager to make the newsletter more than just a networking tool but a forum for discussion. I don't remember exactly what provoked this particular article, but I believe I was surprised to find out that not all the Pagans I met were pro-choice. The piece concludes with citations from a number of sources respected by NeoPagans; all still quite interesting to me. Yes, that's my Pagan pseudonym. Sigh.

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Pro-Choice Is Pro-Life
by Moonchild
from Our Pagan Times, Vol. 2 No. 4, April 9992 (1992)

This year may be a crucial one for women's right to abortion. Abortion was legalized in the United States by the Supreme Court's 1973 decision Roe v Wade. Now, due largely to the mobilization of Christian fundamentalists, that decision is closer than ever to possible repeal.

How do we as Pagans approach this question? Is there a contradiction between supporting abortion and our recognition that all life is sacred to the Goddess? Is this a subject to be discussed as though we have something to apologize for?

It is my belief that Pagans must support abortion rights, and do what we can to defend and extend Roe v Wade. I believe this not only because the separation of Church and State that Roe v Wade promotes helps our own freedom of religious expression, and not only because it allows women -- and not the state -- to determine the affairs of their own bodies, but because we, as proponents of the sacredness of life, and recognizing the interconnectedness of all life, should accept the termination of pregnancy as a completely natural, moral and acceptable choice for a woman to make.

Certainly abortion is less than perfect. It can be a dangerous, often dehumanizing medical procedure. It is too often a substitute for education and a symptom of blatant irresponsibility. That abortion has become a major method of birth control says volumes about the sorry state of human consciousness about our own relationship to the future of our planet and species. But all that said, it is a method for maintaining life's balance.

Abortion and infanticide (which, despite having witnessed some truly terrible "terrible twos," I do not endorse!) are natural phenomena among other species. We must confront our own "animalness" to accept that, just like animals eating their own young when their food supply becomes incapable of sustaining their survival, we can turn to abortion when the prospects of nurturing a meaningful life for a child are poor.

Indeed we need not feel a contradiction in our "life-affirming" path and a defense of abortion rights.

To contribute to an understanding of this question I conclude with quotes from several important Pagan statements on abortion:

"In a world already bursting with too many bodies, forcing a woman to bear a child under adverse circumstances shows a violent disregard for the sanctity of life and disrespect for the Goddess, women and the environment. True 'right to life' concerns the quality of existence, before and after birth, as well as the health of the overall web of life, already stressed by human over population." (from the Church of All Worlds Encyclical on Reproductive Rights, reproduced in Green Egg 1991)

"But where does it say that every little soul that manages to land in a fertilized egg is entitled to occupancy? Abortion is the prerogative of the Dark Mother; she aborts us monthly; it is called menses. The shadow of motherhood is abortion, which is also our responsibility, making the choice of life and death as much a part of the Goddess as her life-giving good nature. The Fates take into consideration woman's choice when they decide how and when we come into this life. What good is it to be born if you never have an opportunity to thrive, only to suffer?" (from "The Grandmother of Time," by Zsuzsanna E. Budapest, 1989)

"[All religions have a sacrificial nature.] The priests of Christianity..have unvaryingly sacrificed the mother rather than the child.... Artemis, while inspiring respect for animal and vegetative life, permits the hunt, provided we respect the rules and rituals that justify the human in nourishing himself by the sacrifice of animal life. The same reasoning applies to a fetus in most religions pertaining to the Mother Goddess, because it seems self-evident that she who has the power of giving life should also have the power of giving death.... [Regarding an unwanted pregnancy] if one values the integrity of life, one must sacrifice the fetus already marked by the rejection and hostility of those who should receive it with love." (from "Pagan Meditations" by Ginette Paris, 1986)

"The opposite of life is not death, but to become a mechanism. Women forced against their wills or instincts to give birth like breeding machines in the name of 'the sacred fetus,' is a travesty of life... 'Sacred beings' do not pass through breeding machines.... If the mother is not a sacred, autonomous being, then the fetus is neither sacred nor autonomous. If the mother is a sacred, autonomous being, then she makes her own choices about what she brings, or does not bring, to birth. Sacred, holy life is not born from machinery.... We must extricate ourselves from the machinery, which is not truly either life or death, but the absence and the travesty of both." (from "The Great Mother" by Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor, 1987)