"The women of Bikini Kill let guitarist Billy Karren be in their feminist punk band, but only if he's willing to just "do some shit." Being a feminist dude is like that. We may ask you to "do some shit" for the band, but you don't get to be Kathleen Hannah."--@heatherurehere


Wednesday, April 25, 2007

SCOTUS Stuff

Regarding the recent SCOTUS decision on abortion, I'll defer to my congressperson, Barbara Lee:

“The Supreme Court’s alarming decision yesterday was an attack on women, an attack on women’s rights and an attack on women’s health and it should not be allowed to stand,” said Lee. “It will send doctors to jail for performing the procedure that they believe to be the safest for a given woman it sets the dangerous precedent of substituting politics for sound medical decision making.” Lee spoke out in favor of the Freedom of Choice Act, legislation introduced today by Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) in the House and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in the Senate, of which Lee is an original cosponsor. The legislation would for the first time, codify the rights guaranteed under the Constitution by Roe v. Wade. It would bar government - at any level - from interfering with a woman's fundamental right to choose to bear a child or to terminate a pregnancy. The bill's introduction follows yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, in which the Court has, for the first time since Roe v. Wade, allowed an abortion procedure to be criminalized. “We cannot let right wing extremists take us back to the days of back alley abortions,” said Lee. “We need to pass the Freedom of Choice Act and ensure that politicians will not be able to interfere in decisions that should take place between women and their doctors.”


This probably should go without saying, but I'll say it nonetheless: This decision hurts men, too. (Pardon the heterosexist slant for a moment.) When my partner has her rights curtailed in such a way, my life is affected in huge ways, some more direct and some more indirectly.

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