seperis | in case this was up for debate or anything

Update:

On March 14, 2012, Texas will effectively strip one hundred and thirty thousand (130,000) women of baseline health coverage with the end of the Women's Health Program. This is after the October's slash and burn that stripped 2/3 of the budget devoted to women's health. The federal Title X is barely hobbling, and I'm not sure, but I think we had a woman called a slut on national radio and told she should broadcast her sex life publicly if she wants subsidized birth control.

I wouldn't characterize this as a war on women. This is more what I think we'd call a 'rout'. In fact, hands up, on a glance, I think we're tragically unaware we have already lost.

I read this in the Times today and thought of things I've seen you say.

Hell and damnation.

Welcome to International Women's Day.

It's so depressing that legislation like this has a majority. They don't even need to pretend that they care about women's health. You wouldn't think it possible with about half the population being female. >:(

I mean, here in Germany you have the same kind of rhetoric that the health insurance shouldn't finance "lifestyle choices" (i.e. contraception or abortion for family planning, also it's an official goal to increase the birth rate), but because it looks bad if you deny hormonal medication for illnesses or abortions needed to save a woman's life, they made rules that health insurance would cover both if prescribed for medical reasons. So they cover their bases in that nobody can accuse them that they deny covering necessary medical care, but at the same time stay in the clear ideologically with conservatives. (I don't think even the Catholics are against taking hormones for medical reasons with the mere side effect of contraception, are they?) Obviously what some would see as insurance fraud is possible in that you can find sympathetic doctors who prescribe you the pill to "regulate serious menstruation side effects" or something like that even if your menstruation is actually normal, but still in theory the public health insurance doesn't support preventing the contraception of children.

Hate to say it, but that attitude is far more enlightened than what you see in the States here. Also, the Catholic bishops here have no shame. They apparently don't care what your medical needs might be. They have been pushing support for various bans on coverage, including those weird personhood bills which really don't make any allowance for women to get any kind of hormonal pills regardless--it's a no go if, in any way, the drug can be used as contraception, among other medical needs. That's if you could even find a provider who would prescribe it for you, and a pharmacy which would fill the scrip. To the best of my knowledge the bishops also were in favor of the various versions of the "Let Women Die" bill at the national level too.
I'm pretty sure the German conservatives would push it to this same extreme if they felt they could get away with it. What I'd love to know is the difference in what's stopping them, and how we could import some of it here!

Sorry to just butt in, but I really would like to add something here.

I think what you have to consider is that German conservatism is not the same as US conservatism.

Politically, the largest German conservative party, the CDU (Angela Merkel's party), would be around as conservative as the US Democrats. There is also the CSU, which is the Bavarian only version of the CDU, but in my opinion, they could at the most be compared with the more liberal part of the Republicans.
So this I'm pretty sure the German conservatives would push it to this same extreme if they felt they could get away with it. ... I'm sure there would be some members of the CDU or CSU who would try to push the issue, but there would never be a majority for it, not even in their own parties. And not because they are not sure if they could get away with it, but because it's just not what they believe in.

As as whole, Europe is a whole lot more liberal than the US. I suppose what we consider normal political stances would be considered radical left in the US. I am not sure why that is though.

Also an addition in regards to contraceptives: Health insurance covers it for every young woman up to her 20th birthday. Women on benefits have to pay for their contraceptives after they turn 20, but I think I remember some discussion to change that to health insurance.

OH good--and thank you!! I hope this remains the case in future for Europe!
BTW, I would never have believed things would get so whacky here, and I thought it was pretty bad back 20 years ago. Nixon and Reagan would be pretty liberal Republicans these days, and possibly blue dog Democrats.

Nixon and Reagan would be pretty liberal Republicans these days, and possibly blue dog Democrats.

Seriously? Wow.
I hope Europe never goes the way of the US, but there's something like a saying in Germany: We are in ten years where the US is now.

However, I think the main difference between the US and most of Europe is that the US only has two major parties. That means those parties have to cover a lot of ground in regards to voters and opinions.
Germany for example has the CDU/CSU, the Social Democrats, the Liberals (FDP), the Greens, the Left (the follow-up party of the former East German single political party SED), the NPD (the real right wingers), and the newest addition for around three or four years, the Pirate Party.

For some reason, instead of moving to extremes, the main German parties (except the NPD) are more and more meeting in the middle-left in regards to political opinions to cover more voter ground, while the Republicans in the US seem to be moving more and more to extremes. Maybe to be seen different from the Democrats? I have no idea, I just find it scary.

SRSLY. True.
Also, this vid just might make people feel a bit better. Plus, reminders of what *else* these jerks would like to outlaw for us.

http://youtu.be/IYQhRCs9IHM

This.

Like the comment above said, conservatism is quite different here than in the US. I think the German conservative party, while it has technically a "Christian" in its name, is in practice not so wedded to religion as the US. Overall people are less religious (I suppose all the radical sects were persecuted and emigrated to the US), so while there is less strict separation of church and state on paper, most influential are moderate church positions in a few large denominations rather than fundamentalists. I mean, being an atheist is not really a drawback for holding high political office here, and over a third of the people don't have any religious affiliation. And if you look at the Christian conservative party (which is about 50% Catholic, 30% Protestant, 15% non-religious, and the rest other religions in its members), the Christian movements that were fundamental in its founding were social Christianity, like they even started out with a program of "Christian Socialism" and while they drifted away from the socialist part really quickly towards a social market economy ideology and are mostly economically liberal these days, they aren't for small government, unchecked capitalism or such. Meanwhile the conservative party that is more libertarian, not extreme like the US variant, but wants free markets, less taxes, less social safety nets, personal liberty etc. is not that socially conservative because they put the emphasis on the personal liberty part. The multi-party system allows parties to be more fine grained and somewhat ideologically consistent. So in general there are less internal contradictions, so the individual parties are somewhat "purer", but because you need formal coalitions to govern, pragmatic compromises are made formally in coalition agreements and expected.

I don't quite agree with the commenter above that Germany is more "liberal" than the US. It's more a case of being more "collectivist", e.g. the principle that the state has the duty to redistribute wealth and take care of individuals is only contested in its degree, not fundamentally, and there is less religiosity, but not necessarily less social conservatism. For the mainstream here is quite pro-life compared to the US abortion rights as they are on paper, so the starting point of the pro-life position that fetuses deserve protection even against the right of the woman to her own body is barely contested here. Here you can't get abortions after week 12 unless your health is in danger (no blanket exception for rape or incest, you can only try to make a mental health case, like a professional thinks that you might become suicidal if forced to continue the pregnancy or something like that), there is the requirement to get pro-life counseling independent from your doctor (the law explicitly states that the goal is to pressure the woman continue the pregnancy because the fetus at any stage has a right to life independently from the woman's right and only exceptionally dire circumstances should allow abortion), there's a three day waiting period after that, and there are protections for fertilized eggs so that reproductive medicine is limited because they can't just be frozen or destroyed or such, etc. (no implanting of more eggs than could be carried to term either). Abortion for non-medical reasons isn't even technically legal, just not punished in the first twelve weeks. (A social-democratic/green government tried to make abortion simply legal in the first trimester when the abortion laws had to be harmonized after reunification, but the highest court scrapped that as unconstitutional, similarly that court decided that the constitutional marriage protection meant that gay unions couldn't be completely equal, so now we do have gay "life-partnerships" but some tax discrimination and homophobic adoption laws. Though it should be noted that the "marriage protection" in the constitution here didn't originate as an anti-gay thing, but was a reaction to the history of Nazism, intended to protect marriages from the state.)

But on the brighter side, there is much less of a radical pro-life fringe that threatens the life of abortion providers and assassinates them, and while practical access to abortion varies, especially in rural areas, I haven't heard of serious practical problems for anyone to find abortion providers (of course even in rural areas the distances are far smaller than in the US).

And the policies continue support children once they are born, i.e. you do get money every month for each child you have plus tax incentives that are even more than the cash option for richer people, there are relatively long, paid parental leaves with job guarantees, you have a right to a childcare place once the child is one (which iirc is the fully paid parental leave time, though you can stretch it longer to up to three years with partial pay during the time), and these days the state will pay for most of that childcare if you are working or studying (there is some copay, especially if you don't want just half-days but childcare for ten or twelve hours a day, but that tends to be income staggered, like in my state you'd pay something like 50 euro per month if you are poor). And of course children are covered by your government mandated health insurance, you will have free visits from the midwife to help all new parents, and there are lots of local programs to help new parents if they feel overwhelmed or are at special risk.

All of which only helps marginally since the whole culture of employers and society is not all that child and family friendly, and you can regulate only so much on paper (having children is still a major poverty risk), so despite all this the German birth rate remains among the world's lowest. (There is a lot of rhetoric about the shrinking population as an economic threat and such, hence all the flailing to get people to reproduce.)

Thanks for giving a really differentiated explanation. I will shamelessly link to this.

All of which only helps marginally since the whole culture of employers and society is not all that child and family friendly, and you can regulate only so much on paper (having children is still a major poverty risk), so despite all this the German birth rate remains among the world's lowest.

True, and there is a slew of underlying issues at work -- many of them slanted quite differently from issues in the US or even other European countries.

edited at: (too fast, too fast) Date: 2012-03-09 06:06 pm (UTC)

Seconding this, thank you ratcreature!!

Grrr and argh. *smites*

No man has the right to tell a woman what to do with her body.

unfortunately it looks like a hell of a lot of men believe they do.

I can only hope that in a few years, thousands of grieving fathers and husbands (and sisters and mothers) will be switching their voter registration to D. Unfortunately it will be a few years and several thousand women's lives too late.

In the Texas media echo chamber coverage we see now, future widowers won't know that D could be a different choice. You're not going to hear an alternative view of how different it could be. As in the 18th century, women die and "that's just how things are."
The alternative is to bloody well (and I use the word advisedly) and kick their tea party asses in the elections. That's going to bbe harder because of the redistricting cheats and the ways they've devised to prevent legitimate voters for going to the polls.

The people affected by this will never run for office or have the money to run for office or political clout. The men and women who make these kind of rules believe in their hearts that if they need something like an abortion, it's different, but other people don't. It really is literally something that will not affect them even a little ever.

I do wonder how much of the money stripped from womens' services would never touch getting Viagra for men.

NPR today was reporting on attempts to suggest the food stamp program was rife with fraud, and use that as an excuse to cut back funding for it. When, actually, studies showed it was possibly the least fraudulent of all federal giveaways these days. Grrrrr indeed.

Ugh. That's just horrifying.

The one thing that gives me hope this year is knowing -- just based on the shitty field of Republican presidential candidates we've had, as all the smart and/or sane ones chose to stay the fuck home this year and wait for 2016 -- that the Tea Party Republicans have pissed off great swathes of the country since the 2010 election and there's going to be one hell of a backlash this November. And here they go attacking the rights of half the country, just in case some people might have forgiven and forgotten their shenanigans from last year. The Moral Majority doesn't realize how much of a minority they really are -- and I think this year is when they really take things too far and find out how drastically they've overshot what the American public is willing to stand for.

2012 we hunker down and wait for November. 2013 is when things should start actually improving.

Truth, dat. Or, as Picard would say, "Make it so!"

It's honestly shocking to me how this keeps happening and happening and happening.

I read through something like sixteen articles from Texas papers about this today. I mean, I'm waiting for someone to question that pesky suffrage issue now.

I'm waiting for it.

I had a fury meltdown last night. In Virginia, the governor signed state-sanctioned rape into law yesterday. In Georgia, state-employed women can't get contraceptive coverage or abortion coverage even in the case of rape. In Arizona, it's okay for doctors to lie to women if they think the truth will contribute to their decision to get abortions. In New Hampshire, the House just approved "conscience policies" for reproductive health insurance coverage.

WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT.THE.FUCK. WHAT CENTURY ARE WE LIVING IN?

Please God, let this be the last dying breath of those suppurating wounds on the butt of society, the white male Republican.

Lastly,

http://favianna.typepad.com/faviannacom_art_activism/2012/03/take-ur-conservative-laws-and-go-f-yourself-3-new-posters-for-the-woman-bashing-year.html

WHAT. I don't even...HOW IS THIS SHIT REAL. I mean. For fucks sake. All that just hit my insta-rage button like WOAH.

awesome posters, sent the link to some folks as will enjoy it. thanks!!

these fuckheads aren't just an embarrassment to mah gender, they're an embarrassment to our fucking *species*.

fuck these cave trolls, and fuck the prehistoric sheepherders whose mores they represent. may all their genitive organs rot and fall off. painfully, with extreme prejudice.

I hereby apologize for the assholes among us.

Yeah, I was stunned that the state I live in - where I work and pay taxes - now won't cover contraceptives for me & the women working alongside me. Cause heaven knows it will be cheaper to pay for extra pregnancies and family leave time for all these women, not to mention our subsidized day-care. Which we need because we state workers haven't had a raise in 5 years.

I'm so grateful I have never once felt that way.

The women are going to have to rise up and take over - although some of those bills were suggested by women (what woman would ever do that to another woman is beyond me).

*sighs* It just makes the short story that

amand_r wrote, seem even closer to coming true.

http://amandaching.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/67/

I have no words. Oh heavens. *sigh*

Seriously, HOW ARE WE DOING THIS ALL SO WRONG?

In a way I think this is what happens when people take things for granted. And there is a certain element of taking-for-granted that has gone on. Women need to rise up and fight because we have to realise that those who oppose us will do pretty much anything they have to in order to return things to 'the way they were'.

I'm having a moment, after reading this, where there are not ENOUGH words and the idea of saying these words makes me exhausted.

I'll tell you a story. When I was 19, my birth control method failed, and I got pregnant. It took me about 3 months to catch on, for reasons I'm about to explain.

I'm diabetic (type 1) and for my body hormonal fluctuations really, REALLY fuck with me. Without hormonal contraception, my menstrual cycle varies and it is not uncommon to have a period every 3-4 months instead of every 23-28 days. During the 3 months that it took me to realize what was going on, I kept having really nasty insulin reactions that very nearly killed me. I could barely function on a day to day basis. When I had the chance to confirm what I was starting to suspect, I realized I would have a series of really tough decisions to make.

It would not have been possible for me to carry a child to term without having it kill me. That was obvious. It was not me versus some unknown child. It was me realizing the limitations of my body and how it was coping with this meant that I would very likely not survive the experience, and it was equally likely that these issues were causing tremendous damage to this potential human being as well.

I chose to have an abortion, and fortunately, that was an option I could choose. It was not an easy option, and I'll freely admit that I spent the entire procedure in tears. Not for ideological or political or morality-based reasons, but because this was me on this table, making a choice I felt was necessary to survive. Doesn't mean that I liked the choice, or the mistakes I felt I had made to create the situation where it was a necessary choice. It meant this is where I was, and I'd accept the consequences of being here and learn from it, to the best of my ability. I was able to find, after about a year of trial and error, a more effective method of birth control than condoms-only. I do not regret having an abortion, and I do not believe having one makes me a lesser human being.

My body has not changed much since this happened, in terms of this issue. And what I'm hearing, loud and clear from these idiot politicians, is that I'm a carrying case for a pregnancy. Full stop. It doesn't matter that it would very likely kill me, or do irreparable harm to the child that resulted (assuming one did). I don't get to make that choice now, because someone else has made it for me. I'm not allowed the option to get on that table, make a choice, and deal with the consequences.

This is my story, and one scenario of many that would put a woman on that table. And I support every single one of them who has made that choice, regardless of what brought her to that point. It's a tough place to be, and the last thing she needs when she gets there is a bunch of judgmental assholes making her feel worse for being there. Or telling her she is not allowed to be there, because now she has a community property uterus, and the community says no. Fuck that. My body, my choice.

http://nrrrdy-grrrl.livejournal.com/382029.html#cutid1

In case you didn't know, I read your post several times. It helped. Thank you for writing it.

I hate the idea of a smart gal like you despairing.

*hugs you* I bookmarked it for this week, since testing starts and WHP ends. I figure re-reading will be required.

I'm still interest in interviewing you as an author of note, you know.

What I want to know is who are all these women who, in Rush Limbaugh's words, are having so much sex that they need to have someone else pay for their contraceptives (because, yeah, we all know that you have to take more pills if you're having more sex, right? *rolling eyeballs*) - who are we having this sex with? Wouldn't that be men? And wouldn't you think that responsible men would want to have the women they love covered by health care, so they don't have unexpected pregnancies? So that these men don't have to support kids that they can't afford? Are these women having sex in a vacuum (or perhaps WITH their vacuums) so that these men can afford to get all holier-than-thou and say they shouldn't need anything but the rhythm method? I see all these guys preaching abstinence to women, probably looking at their daughters and saying "not till you're married, young lady! and then only if you are lying on your back, thinking about God, and making babies!" - are they preaching the same thing to their sons? Are they practicing abstinence themselves?

And how many of them have prescriptions for Viagra? Which - hey, they don't need! Because surely if they need Viagra, they are too old to be making babies, and that's the only reason to have sex, right?

Women should go on strike - no sex for any men anywhere until funding is restored and the laws are changed.

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