The lesser of two evils?

If the Green Party's presidential candidates had been listed on the Oklahoma ballot, I would have voted for Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala.

Given Oklahoma's extremely restrictive ballot access laws, the only two choices I had were Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Obama is the lesser of two evils by a large margin. Romney demonstrates a complete lack of core integrity, a willingness to shift from progressive to extreme conservative opinions based on whatever is popular at the moment, and an alliance with the most regressive economic and political forces in the United States.

Nevertheless, I wish I'd had the option to vote for Jill Stein today. For one thing, living in the reddest of red states, I know that Oklahoma will go solidly for Romney. Given the reality of the way the Electoral College operates, a vote for anyone else is a protest vote. I would like my protest vote to be for the candidate I prefer.

As Doug Henwood put it in a recent post for The Nation:

...I wish, just once, an endorsement of a Democratic presidential candidate coming from the left would mull over some serious structural issues that are at stake.

There are certain eternally recurrent features of these endorsement editorials, and they are depressing. The shortcomings of this year’s Democrat are acknowledged, only to be dismissed, because this is always the most important election since 1932, or maybe 1860. If the Democrats lose, brownshirts will move into the Oval Office. It will be repression and immiseration at home and aggressive war abroad. Sure, there will be some repression, immiseration and war even if the Dem wins, but see above re dismissal of shortcomings.

The persistence of the pattern is no exaggeration. Here’s something from a 1967 essay by Hal Draper on the imminent 1968 election: “Every time the liberal labor left has made noises about its dissatisfaction with what Washington was trickling through, all the Democrats had to do was bring out the bogy of the Republican right. The lib-labs would then swoon, crying ‘The fascists are coming!’ and vote for the Lesser Evil.”

And what is the consequence of that swoon? Draper’s answer: “the Democrats have learned well that they have the lib-lab vote in their back pocket, and that therefore the forces to be appeased are those forces to the right.” Almost every editorial urging a vote for this year’s Dem will lament the rightward move of our politics without ever considering the contribution of such calls to the process.

In other words, the Democrats will continue to ignore and disrespect the progressive vote, because they've learned that they can get away with it.

I would much prefer to have the opportunity to vote for candidates who actually respect my views.

Michigan, the Oklahoma of the north?

Thanks to Kansas National Organization for Women for a link to this post from Jezebel about an extreme anti-choice bill that has since been passed by the Michigan House of Representatives. Among other provisions, the bill would ban all abortions for any reason after 20 weeks of pregnancy. There are no exceptions.Not even if the life or health of the pregnant woman is endangered by the pregnancy. Not even if the fetus has such serious problems that it will never be able to live outside the womb.

To add insult to injury, according to Jezebel, two pro-choice female legislators have been banned indefinitely from speaking on the House floor. One of these legislators, Democrat Lisa Brown, apparently gave offense by using the word "vagina" in her floor speech opposing the bill.

JOS of Feministing reports that the bill passed on June 13 by a vote of 70 to 39 after only 20 minutes of debate. The anti-choice Michigan Senate is likely to consider the bill in September

Besides the ban on all abortions after 20 weeks, the bill is what pro-choice advocates call TRAP legislation. According to the National Abortion Federation, the acronym stands for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. The goal is to drive abortion providers out of business under the pretense of regulating clinics to make sure they meet proper medical standards.

According to Feministing blogger Chloe, the Michigan bill includes:

: state-mandated scripts for doctors that masquerade as faux concern for women who are being coerced into abortion, new TRAP laws to make insurance more complicated and expensive for providers, stricter regulations for clinics, new rules about the disposal of fetal remains that would affect women who have miscarriages as well as abortions, and a new measure requiring the presence of a doctor for a medical abortion in a state where many women rely on tele-med prescriptions because so few counties have a provider on the ground.

Chloe provided a link to the text of the bill, and recommended reading the ongoing coverage of the Michigan situation by Angi Becker Stevens at RH Reality Check. Robin Marty, also of RH Reality Check, wrote another excellent analysis of the bill.

Michigan state lawmakers seem to want to vie with the Oklahoma Legislature for the honors of producing the most extreme and ridiculous laws to limit women's lives and freedom. Of course, in Oklahoma, valiant and well-organized activists managed to defeat one of the worst anti-choice bills considered in the recent legislative session. Maybe our Michigan sisters will be able to do the same.

Oklahomans unite against War on Women at 4/28 rally

This afternoon I took a brief break from the end-of-semester madness to enjoy an hour or so of sanity at the Oklahoma Unite Against the War on Women rally at the state capitol. This was part of a nationwide day of events in support of women's liberation from an increasingly obnoxious right-wing backlash against our well-being and freedom.

I estimated that about 300 people, mostly women but some men, attended the event in front of the capitol's north steps.

When pregnancy begins

Hat tip to Planned Parenthood of Oklahoma for a link to this informative post about how pregnancy happens and how the extreme right intentional distorts this information to limit women's reproductive freedom.

Correction--down to the wire April 26

I mistakenly posted that yesterday was the last day that the Oklahoma House could hear SB 1433, the bill that would declare fertilized eggs to be persons. (Once upon a time we had a "personhood bill" for adult women. It was called the Equal Rights Amendment, and unfortunately it didn't pass, in Oklahoma or the nation.) I finally made it down to the capitol last night after an emergency tweet asked for supporters when Rep. Reynolds attempted an obscure parliamentary maneuver to bring SB 1433 to a vote. It failed! Things are looking good for the bill to finally go down today, but the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice--which has played such a crucial role in stopping this monstrosity--is still calling for supporters to join the Pink Wave at the Capitol today. You can follow how things are going on Twitter, or you can even listen to the Oklahoma House live.

Down to the wire on April 25th

The anti-choice backers of Oklahoma Senate Bill 1433 were angered by the reported death of the bill that would declare that a fertilized human egg is a person with all of the rights thereof. Yesterday, the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice and others worked to stop the consideration of SB1433 and reported that the bill was still dead, replaced by a non-binding resolution that was passed by the OK House. Today is the last day for bills that originated in the Senate to be heard on the House floor. Anti-choice activists were not appeased by the passage of the non-binding resolution, and according to newsok.com, pressure is growing on lawmakers to hear SB 1433 while they still can.(Hat tip to Oklahomans Against the Personhood Act for the link.)

The daring pro-choice Pinkwave is still making its presence felt in the House. I tried to join them on my way to work, only to discover that the House is in recess until 1:45 today. You should join them if you can, or consider calling your representative.

Finally, good news from the OK Legislature

The Tulsa World reported this morning that SB 1433, the so-called "personhood bill" will not get a vote in the Oklahoma House. House Speaker Kris Steele described this decision as representing the collective will of the Republican caucus. The extreme right-wing Rep. Randy Terrill said it was "stunning and unbelievable" that the bill wouldn't come up for a vote. Whatever. The bill would have declared that from the moment a human egg was fertilized, it had all the rights and privileges of a person. (Unlike the adult female human who carried it.)

Kudos to the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice for its hard work in stopping this nonsense.

And when do women get to be persons?

I have been too immersed in my schoolwork to give more than passing attention to the daily news. This is not entirely a bad thing. I really don't think it is necessary for me to keep track of every time some wingnut patriarch celebrity or right-wing Republican legislator says something truly stupid about a woman, women, or women's rights. Such nincompoopery has been so widespread for so long that it is hardly worthy of notice, and frankly, some of the nincompoops seem to thrive on the attention, any kind of attention. It's probably a good thing that my attention has been focused on Information and Communications Technology and Management of Information and Knowledge organizations instead.

I do regret that I can't keep up with the anti-woman shenanigans of the 2012 Oklahoma Legislature. This is not merely some kooky talk radio show that a person can turn off. These people are passing actual laws, and one of the laws that they seem poised to pass is called The Personhood Act, which would declare a fertilized egg to be a human being, with all of the rights and privileges of any other citizen or resident of Oklahoma.

I've found what looks like a pretty good explanation of the situation on a blog called God Discussion, including the text of the bill that's making it's way through the Oklahoma Senate. God Discussion reports that House already passed a similar bill on Tuesday.  As other commentators have noted, this is a law that would ban many forms of contraception. The creative and courageous Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice held a "Barefoot and Pregnant" rally at the state capitol in Oklahoma City, and is leading the campaign against the Senate bill (and against a possible ballot measure that would add this type of language to the Oklahoma Constitution). OCRJ also provided this link to help you take action to defend women's control over our own bodies and our own lives.

Not so long ago, the US Supreme Court decided that corporations are persons. The Oklahoma Legislature wants to declare that fertilized eggs are persons. I would like to know when women get our chance to be persons, too.

Kansas health board pursues Tiller colleague

Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was murdered by a pro-life zealot in 2009. Tiller was often demonized because he was one of  the very few late-term abortion providers in the US. These abortions were not provided for frivolous reasons, however. A typical client might have discovered that the fetus suffered such a serious abnormality that it could not survive outside the mother's body.

Now, as Kate Sheppard reports for Mother Jones, the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts is considering whether to yank the medical license of Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus, who certified the medical need for abortions performed at Tiller's clinic. This board has been stacked with anti-choice activists appointed by Republican Governor Sam Brownback. Sheppard writes:

One time, Neuhaus evaluated a 10-year-old girl who had been raped by her uncle, which is one of the files the medical board is investigating. This girl was tiny, maybe 4'8", Neuhaus recalls. There had already been a police investigation, and the uncle was in jail, but it took until the third trimester for the girl to make it to the clinic. "For them to belittle it, to say that its okay for a 10-year-old have a kid by her uncle, and no harm is going to come from it, that's just beyond the realm of decency," she says.

Not all of those details were in the paperwork, however, because Neuhaus says she knew that records weren't truly confidential given the anti-abortion leanings of Kansas law enforcement officials. "I chose to sacrifice details," Neuhaus says. "I risked nothing but my license. I didn't compromise their health care."

At the clinic, Neuhaus' decisions were made in a place that was constantly under threat. Tiller was shot in both arms outside the facility in 1993. To enter, patients had to go through a metal detector. For a while, Neuhaus says, she wore a bulletproof vest to work. She even carried a .40 caliber pistol in her scrubs for a short period and took up target practice. "I was a reasonably decent shot," she says. "I would not have had too much trouble shooting one of those people if I had to." There were also bomb threats. But as time went by, she got more comfortable with the situation: "I think at some point, you get used to it, and you don't have anxiety."

Pink Wave at the Oklahoma State Capitol, May 12

This is what pro-choice activism looks like:

The Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice and Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma were among the sponsors of The Pink Wave.

Good news and bad news

Bad news first. The National Partnership for Women and Families reports that the US House has passed a draconian piece of legislation to drastically reduce both public and private insurance for abortion.Among other things, the report says that HR 3 would make permanent the Hyde Amendment prohibition on public abortion funding for poor women and prohibit the District of Columbia from using local funds to pay for abortions. Up until this time, the Hyde Amendment has faced renewal each year.

The good news is that House Republicans seem to have backed off on their plan to privatize Medicare. Thanks to Women's eNews on Twitter for pointing me towards that news item.

Anti-choice bills advance in Oklahoma, other states

The National Partnership for Women & Families: has the sad details.

Even abortion rights opponents agree THIS is unconstitutional...

...according to the National Partnership for Women & Families.

A great reason to get out on Saturday night

 It's been fun, but Snowpocalypse 2011 seems to be almost over. By Saturday, roads should be open and life should be almost back to normal (at least for a little while). If you're in Oklahoma City, or can get to Oklahoma City, here's a great way to celebrate: OKC's own Lauren Zuniga will be the featured performer at a poetry cafe at Church of the Open Arms on Saturday night (that's Feb. 5th) from 7-9 p.m. The poetry cafe is a benefit for the Oklahoma Coalition For Reproductive Justice.

January 22nd marked the 38th anniversary of the 1973 US Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which for the first time guaranteed women in the early months of pregnancy the right to obtain an abortion. Both nationally and in Oklahoma, that right is under increasing attack. In 2010, the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice formed to defend abortion rights, and met with a surprising degree of success. The poetry cafe is free, (and there will be refreshments), but if you can make a donation, 100 percent of all money collected will go to support the work of OCRJ.

In the interests of full disclosure, I ought to say that I am one of the poets who will be reading that evening.

Hope to see you there.

Worth considering

Over at thenation.com, Katha Pollit argues that the flexibility of prochoice feminist leaders allowed the president's healthcare bill to pass, and that in return, there ought to be a Payback for Prochoicers.

Feminist abortion activist Jody Howard dies

Our Bodies Ourselves on Facebook has posted a link to the obituary for Jody Howard at chicagotribune.com. Howard was a co-founder of "Jane," the abortion service provided by the Chicago Women's Liberation Union before Roe v. Wade legalized the procedure.

According to the obituary, Howard became a feminist at Michigan State University,.After graduation, she moved with her husband to the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. She became involved in a variety of progressive causes, including the Chicago Women's Liberation Union and the American Civil Liberties Union. She was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease while pregnant with her daughter. She needed an abortion for health reasons as the result of a later, unexpected pregnancy. In order to get a legal abortion, she was required to go through two psychiatric evaluations. This experience helped to inspire Howard to co-found Jane.

A forceful advocate for causes she backed, Ms. Howard "had a great deal of personal charisma and (at the same time) could offer a very nice analysis of the issue," [former Jane member Martha] Scott said.

With her daughters, Ms. Howard participated in a blockade of the Rock Island Arsenal to protest war. At an ACLU fundraiser at Hugh Hefner's Gold Coast mansion, she showed up with small pictures of naked men that she posted here and there.

"She was escorted out," her ex-husband said.

A commenter on Our Bodies Ourselves Facebook post pointed out that more information about Jane can be found at this page on the Chicago Women's Liberation Union herstory site.

Worth noting

TPM LiveWire covers the controversy over the decision of CBS to air an anti-abortion ad from Focus on the Family. This after CBS has consistently refused to accept "issue ads" from progressive groups.

Jill on Feministe also has an interesting analysis.

To read the mainstream media spin in the Tim Tebow / anti-abortion ad controversy, you’d think that we Hysterical Feminists ™ were at it again, getting whipped into a censor-happy frenzy just because some lady decided to have a baby.
The issue, though, isn’t that we disagree with Pam Tebow’s choice (although it’s worth pointing out that she had a choice she now wishes to take away from other women, and that the choice she made — to continue a pregnancy after she became ill while on a mission trip in the Phillipines — isn’t actually available to most women in the Phillipines, where abortion is illegal and most procedures happen clandestinely); it isn’t that we don’t think anti-choice ads should be allowed on the air; it isn’t that we think anti-choice views should be censored. It’s that CBS has, for the past few years, regularly rejected ads from left-of-center organizations — MoveOn.org, PeTA, and the United Church of Christ. CBS was clear that it did not accept ads on contentious or controversial subjects such as, apparently, democracy, animal rights and gay rights. But an ad about abortion, from Focus on the Family — one of the most radical, right-leaning organizations out there? Apparently totally fine.

Kansas City man convicted in death of Dr. Tiller

Thanks to the Kansas National Organization for Women on Facebook for linking to a report in the Kansas Free Press that a Kansas jury has convicted Scott Roeder for the murder of Dr.George Tiller. Sentencing is scheduled for March 9th, The Huffington Post also has a report on the case.

Dr. Tiller and Professor Frye

Today, on the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the National Abortion Rights Action League is sponsoring Blog for Choice Day.  According to the Blog for Choice web page, "In honor of Dr. George Tiller, who often wore a button that simply read, `Trust Women,' this year's Blog for Choice question is: What does Trust Women mean to you?

Dr. Tiller, of course, is the Kansas abortion provider who was murdered by an anti-choice terrorist last May. Dr. Tiller was often villified by right-wing Christians because he was one of the few doctors in the country who would provide late-term abortions. To the Christian Right, the only reason that a pregnant woman would end a late-term pregnancy was because she was an irresponsible blood-thirsty fiend intent on murdering her unborn baby (or perhaps was being forced to murder her baby by a fiendish blood-thirsty relative). Real life, of course, is more complicated.

I suspect that there are indeed cases -- particularly in fundamentalist families in which pregnancies "out of wedlock" are considered shameful -- where a pregnant woman chooses, or is forced by her family, to abort a viable late-term fetus. I suspect that this secret, shameful family history is part of what motivates some anti-choice activists. But in most cases, when a woman ends a late-term pregnancy, it is because continuing the pregnancy would seriously endanger her health, or because the fetus has a serious condition that would doom it to a brief and very painful life. By oversimplifying the issue of late-term abortion, and exaggerating its frequency, the anti-choice movement hopes to turn the public against abortion rights in general.

The button that Dr. Tiller wore was meant to say that women, in general, are reasonable people, and not bloodthirsty fiends. We can be trusted to make decisions about  what goes on inside our bodies. Why would anyone argue otherwise?

Tulsa native Marilyn Frye suggests an answer in her essay Some Reflections on Separatism and Power. First, Frye notes that both feminist and anti-feminist literature seem to agree that males and females live in a parasitic relationship -- "a parasitism of the male on the female... that it is, generally speaking, the strength, energy, inspiration and nurturance of women that keeps men going, and not the strength, aggression, spirituality and hunting of men that keeps women going." She says that it is this analysis that accounts for right-wing panic over the issue of abortion.

The fetus lives parasitically. It is a distinct animal surviving off the life (the blood) of another animal creature. It is incapable of surviving on its own resources, of independent nutrition; incapable even of symbiosis. If it is true that males live parasitically upon females, it seems reasonable to suppose that many of them and those loyal to them are in some way sensitive to the parallelism between their situation and that of the fetus. They could easily identify with the fetus. The woman who is free to see the fetus as a parasite might be free to see the man as a parasite. The woman's willingness to cut off the life line to one parasite suggests a willingness to cut off the life line to another parasite. The woman who is capable (legally, psychologically, physically) of decisively, self-interestedly, independently rejecting the one parasite, is capable of rejecting, with the same decisiveness and independence, the like burden of the other parasite. In the eyes of the other parasite, the image of the wholly self-determined abortion, involving not even a ritual submission to male veto power, is the mirror image of death.

Another clue here is that one line of argument against free and easy abortion is the slippery slope argument that if fetuses are to be freely dispensed with, old people will be next. Old people? Why are old people next? And why the great concern for them? Most old people are women, indeed, and patriarchal loyalists are not generally so solicitous of the welfare of any women. Why old people? Because, I think, in the modem patriarchal divisions of labor, old people too are parasites on women. The anti-abortion folks seem not to worry about wife beating and wife murder-there is no broad or emotional popular support for stopping these violences. They do not worry about murder and involuntary sterilization in prisons, nor murder in war, nor murder by pollution and industrial accidents. Either these are not real to them or they cannot identify with the victims; but anyway, killing in general is not what they oppose. They worry about the rejection by women, at women's discretion, of something which lives parasitically on women. I suspect that they fret not because old people are next, but because men are next.

To the Christian Right, the parasitism of men upon women is ordained by God and unavoidable. To me as a radical lesbian feminist, it is obvious that men really are quite capable of taking care of their own physical and emotional well being, and it is neither necessary nor right for them to control women's bodies and lives.Once the rest of the world figures that out, the world will be a very different and much better place.

Bad news from DC, good news from Oklahoma

Blogger Robin Marty tells all in a reproductive rights news roundup at RHRealityCheck.org. An Oklahoma law that would require women seeking abortions to answer more than 30 invasive questions has been blocked again for the time being. Marty also has more information on the abortion compromise that gained the vote of conservative Democrat Ben Nelson for the health insurance reform bill. This is the compromise that allowed Democrats to win a key procedural vote at one o'clock this morning, virtually guaranteeing passage of the Senate bill by Christmas Eve.