Padaviya

Several prominent newspapers chose not to publish a series of Doonesbury comics because they address forced ultrasound legislation. But in the new media world we live in, their decision not to publish the comic strips ensures they will be much more widely read. 

And you can help!

Let’s make sure these are among the most seen Doonesbury comics ever.

Here’s a short link to use for this comic: http://bit.ly/yGkt65

Here’s a short link to use for this comic: http://bit.ly/AoliCI

Here’s a short link to use for this comic: http://bit.ly/xcBF6G

Here is a list of the media outlets who refused to publish these comics.  Take a couple of moments to post the comic in their comment sections, Facebook pages and Twitter streams.  You’ll have to “like” the media outlet on Facebook to post on their pages… a small price to pay for activism! 

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The Los Angeles Times refused to publish the Doonesbury comics in their comics section, where people would look for them. They published them, but in their op-ed section. We know, we know - we don’t see an “opinion” either. 

You can post on their Facebook wall here, comment at their website here or you can click this button to tweet at them: 

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The Houston Chronicle in Texas (!) likewise refused to publish the comics in their comics section. Instead, they moved the strips to their “Outlooks” page, where no one would know or care to look. If any publication should be publishing these comics on their front page, it’s any publication located in Texas!

You can post on their Facebook wall here, comment at their website here or you can click this button to tweet at them: 

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The Athens Banner-Herald in Georgia refused to publish the comics because the editors “thought there was a real possibility that readers might confuse the topic of this week’s ‘Doonesbury’ with Georgia’s proposed abortion legislation.” Umm, all the more reason to discuss the issue in your paper!

You can post on their Facebook wall here, comment at their website here or you can click this button to tweet at them: 

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The Oregonian refused to publish the comics because they “went over the line of good taste and humor.” Yeah, maybe, but only because forced ultrasounds and shaming of women goes over the line of good taste and humor. 

You can post to the Oregonian’s Facebook page here, comment at their website here or you can click this button to tweet at them: 

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The Indianapolis Star declined to publish the strips in print. You can post to their Facebook wall here or tweet at them here:

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The Arizona Star likewise declined to publish (in print). You can post to their Facebook wall here or tweet at them here: 

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The SC Herald refused to publish the comics because the editors were “concerned about the graphic content.” How this excuse applies remains unclear.

You can post to the SC Herald’s Facebook page here  or you can click this button to tweet at them:

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The CA Reporter refused to publish the comics because “[e]ditors believe [cartoonist Gary Trudeau] has expressed that opinion in a manner that skirts, if not crosses, the boundaries of good taste expected in a family newspaper.” Because good taste would obviously be to encourage anti-choice legislation, duh.

You can post to the CA Reporter’s Facebook page here or you can click this button to tweet at them:

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The Ocala Star Banner is not running the series of strips.  Hit up their Facebook wall here and tweet them:

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The UT Standard-Examiner refused to publish the comics because the ”language in the original strips was not appropriate for a comic that could be viewed by children.” Tell that to Rush Limbaugh. This is a political comic strip and “slut” is a political word, these days.

Tweet at the Standard-Examiner here:

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The Press of Atlantic City refused to publish the comics because ”Texas abortion cartoons venture too far for the comics pages.” That’s really not an explanation.

You can post to the Press of Atlantic City’s Facebook page here.

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The Gainesville Sun in Florida refused to publish the strips. Find them on Facebook here and tweet at them by clicking here:

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The St. Paul Pioneer Press refused to publish the comics in print because “[t]he editors have decided the commentary in some panels is inappropriate for the comics section in the newspaper.” Not this again - what’s the criteria for “appropriate” comics?!

You can post to the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ Facebook page here, comment at their website here or you can click this button to tweet at them:

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The Fort Worth Star Telegram refused to publish the comics in print, and today published an article stating that “the reason for not printing the strip has nothing to do with left- or right-wing politics. It has everything to do with civility and consistency.” Come on, really?

You can post to the Fort Worth Star Telegram’s Facebook page here, comment at their website here or you can click this button to tweet at them: 

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The North Carolina News & Record and the Winston-Salem Journal (both smaller NC newspapers) refused to publish the strips in print. You can post to the Winston-Salem Journal’s Facebook site here. You can tweet at the News & Record here:   or at the Winston-Salem Journal here: 

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The Utica Observer-Dispatch refused to publish the strips in print. You can post to their Facebook page here, comment on their website here (registration required) or you can click this button to tweet at them:  

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The Tallahassee Democrat refused to publish the comics in print, and no one will say why. According to one reader, “Thus far, [there has been] no disclosure about its decision either in the paper or online.” After all, TD, you wouldn’t want to say the wrong thing.

You can post to the Tallahassee Democrat’s Facebook page here or you can click this button to tweet at them … 

Editor’s note: This article was amended at 10:33 a.m. on Monday, March 5th to correct an error of omission. An earlier draft with the link back to Style Weekly was lost and has now been re-inserted. The original reporting on this story comes from Style Weekly.

You might think that the right wing in this country was getting the message that women will no longer stand for legal, verbal, and physical abuse and harassment, especially by elected officials.  You would especially think that would be the case in Virginia where former Vice Presidential aspirant Governor Bob McDonnell, who is contemplating signing into law a forced ultrasound bill after doing women a “favor” and taking out the forced trans-vaginal ultrasounds initially required, has been widely pilloried.  You would also think the right-wing would be cautious after a week in which the seemingly untouchable Rush Limbaugh has, as of this writing, lost seven corporate sponsors over his debasing remarks about Sandra Fluke.

But you would be wrong. 

Because, you see, women in this country are so dangerous, their sense of entitlement as citizens so incredibly threatening to the peace of the republic that state police in riot gear were sent to remove peaceful protestors this past weekend. According to a news article in the Richmond independent news source Style Weekly:

Photos by Scott Elmquist, Style Weekly

“About a thousand women’s rights protestors descended on the state Capitol Saturday afternoon to protest anti-abortion legislation in the General Assembly, and then things got ugly,” reports Style Weekly’s Vernal Colman.

“About 20 State Police officers, many in swat gear with face shields and body armor, were called in to assist Capitol Police in controlling the crowd. Some of the State Police officers wore green camouflage and carried rifles and canisters of tear gas (no tear gas was used, however). After being warned to vacate the south steps of the Capitol, police officers arrested 31 people — 14 men and 17 women — on charges ranging from unlawful assembly to trespassing, according to Capitol Police.”

The rally ended a raucous two weeks in the statehouse, with anti-abortion legislation generating national headlines in a Republican-controlled General Assembly. While legislation granting unborn children “personhood” status was shelved until next year and a bill requiring invasive, transvaginal ultrasounds prior to abortions was watered down at the request of Gov. Bob McDonnell, women’s rights protestors descended onto Capitol Square nonetheless.

Photos by Scott Elmquist, Style Weekly

Colman continues: Organizers for the event, Speak Loudly With Silence, say that an estimated 1,000 people participated in the rally, which also involved members of the Occupy Richmond movement.”

Claire Tuite says that the arrests were not planned. When the protestors emerged on the Capitol, some made an “autonomous decision” to “occupy” the steps of the Capitol building.”

“This was a peaceful protest on taxpayer-funded property,” Tuite says. “We have every right to be here.”

Josh Kadrich, one of the organizers, says a small group broke off from the larger crowd of protestors, determined to make it to the steps. They blew by the cops standing on the steps leading towards the capitol. Others joined in. “Eventually, there were around 400 people sitting on the steps of the capitol in silence to protect women’s rights,” Kadrich says.

Then State Police, many officers in riot gear, showed up. The protestors were asked to leave and given a countdown as to when the police would begin making arrests. Some complied peacefully. Others locked arms and resisted.

Photos by Scott Elmquist, Style Weekly

Colman writes: “Molly Vice, press liaison for the group, says the arrests “shames lawmakers for passing regressive legislation that usurps the good judgment of women on their own health care for the state’s.

“It’s an outrage,” she says of the ultrasound bill. “We’re here … to tell truth to power that infringing on women’s health is not okay. Not this year or the next.”

For more photos from the rally, visit Style’s facebook page.

Apparently, Virginia’s state legislators and governor can occupy your body and your uterus, but you can’t occupy your state capitol.

Follow Jodi Jacobson on Twitter, @jljacobson

The year 2011will be remembered by reproductive rights supporters as the year that the anti-choice movement really turned up the aggression, destroying the objections of moderate liberals who thought that pro-choice activists were being hysterical little ladies with our constant warnings about anti-choicers.

Up until late 2010, you could still find many a liberal who would argue that conservatives “don’t really” want to ban abortion, but instead dangle the promise of doing so in front of a bunch of religious zealots to get their votes. Now those liberals realize the religious zealots actually exert quite a bit of control, in both their direct control over the Republicans and their ability to make the Democrats jump around nervously.

Up through 2010, you could find many liberals who would laugh condescendingly when you would point out that the anti-choice movement not only wants to ban abortion, but has an eye out for destroying access to contraception, as well. No one is laughing at the supposedly hysterical ladies anymore. Turns out, we were right all along, and everyone knows it, including the White House.

There’s much that can be said about the escalating attacks on abortion access, which seemed especially over-the-top in a nation gripped by economic crisis that needs to be dealt with immediately. Irin Carmon did an excellent round-up of that story at Salon, and is on this week’s podcast talking about the same.  As she explains, many anti-choice efforts in that direction were surprisingly useless at the end of the day, since they’ve been tied up in court or, as in the case of the personhood amendment in Mississippi, simply voted down completely.

What I want to comment on for my last column of the year is the war on contraception, since 2011 was the year where it went from a series of skirmishes over contraception access to all-out war. Let’s be clear; anti-choice activists have always opposed contraception. But they were always wary of being outed to the public at large as anti-contraception, which meant that their attempts to discourage the use of it were somewhat stymied.

Under the Bush administration, they scored some victories by mandating anti-contraception propaganda (misleadingly called “abstinence-only education”) in schools, preventing emergency contraception from being sold over-the-counter without age restrictions, and defunding international spending on family planning that had nothing to do with abortion. Two of those victories have turned to losses. Abstinence-only especially turned out to be a joke; while anti-choicers were able to secure an apparently much-desired uptick in the teen pregnancy rate, it seems like it was mostly a blip in what is a longer trend of teenagers being more responsible about contraceptive use. It also seemed, until very recently, that anti-choicers would also lose on emergency contraception.

The election of Obama and the rollback of anti-contraception propaganda, however, seems to have set the anti-choice movement off. Even though most of them will still deflect if asked directly in mainstream media if they oppose contraception, they basically stopped trying so hard to manage mainstream perceptions of themselves as somehow just great lovers of fetal life, and are coming out with their anti-sex, misogynist agenda. The word “abortion” gets thrown around a lot, but the actions of the anti-choice movement this year made it crystal clear that it’s not about abortion, but about punishing women who have sex, full stop. Here’s a list of examples of how:

1) The Planned Parenthood federal budget stand-off. When House Republicans threatened a government shutdown if Title X funding for contraception and reproductive health services wasn’t stripped from the budget, the word “abortion” was tossed around a lot. Maybe some fools bought that story, but for most of us it was obvious that it couldn’t be about abortion. After all, no Title X funds can go to abortion services. It was clearly an attack on contraception access for those who couldn’t pay out of pocket, fitting with previous anti-choice hostility towards contraception.

2) The defunding of family planning clinics on a state level. House Republicans may have lost the funding battle on a federal level, but there’s been much more success depriving women of access to contraceptives and related services on a state level. For instance, under Rick Perry’s leadership, Texas has been so successful in stripping funding from family planning clinics that the state can expect to see a 22 percent increase in its abortion rate. Other anti-choice-controlled states are making the move to dramatically increase the unintended pregnancy rate, with Wisconsin adding cancer screenings to the list of subsidized services they are stripping from women of the state.  Sure, all these moves will dramatically increase the amount of money the states have to dish out for Medicaid, but women are punished for having sex with unintended pregnancies and cancer, which is all that matters to the anti-choice movement.

3) Personhood amendments. Mississippi very nearly passed an amendment that would define fertilized eggs as persons in their state, which would be an effective ban on abortion, IVF, stem cell research, and providing many forms of emergency medical assistance to pregnant women. Anti-choicers also clearly hoped it could be used to ban the pill, even though the only demonstrable mechanism that the pill uses to prevent pregnancy is to suppress ovulation. The amendment didn’t pass, but anti-choicers managed to get many news anchors, pundits, and even feminists to erroneously claim that the pill works by killing fertilized eggs. (All available evidence shows that it works by suppressing ovulation, and the possibility that it may make it slightly more likely for an egg not to implant than usual is speculation.) Getting that misinformation into the public was a huge rhetorical victory for those who have an eye out for banning female-controlled contraception, and returning control over women’s bodies to men.

4) The open fight over the HPV vaccine. The HPV vaccine couldn’t have less to do with fetal life, embryonic life, or even the life of fertilized eggs. But since those things don’t really matter to the anti-choice movement—which is primarily motivated by the desire to punish women who have sex—the HPV vaccine was resisted by anti-choice activists from the get-go. This war has been going on mainly out of the  view of the mainstream media, until 2011, when Rick Perry’s competition for the Republican nomination decided to make an issue out of his previous support for the vaccine. Michele Bachmann particularly made a giant fuss over the supposed evils of letting the sexually- active avoid death from cervical cancer. While the vaccine isn’t contraception, the controversy was yet another example of how anti-choicers are dispensing with the bad faith arguments about “life,” and openly fighting any tool women can use to be safe while being sexually active.

5) The fight over insurance coverage of contraception. In 2011, the Obama administration decided to add contraception to the list of preventive services that will eventually be covered fully without a co-pay by insurance companies. Naturally, this caused a fight with anti-choice activists, who are now looking for ways to chip away at the decision by carving out exemptions for Catholic-run universities and hospitals. (Who are required to cover contraception by the federal government anyway.) This fight couldn’t have less to do with “abortion”, but is just about maximizing the number of women who get pregnant against their will by making contraception needlessly expensive.

6) The Plan B debacle. Anti-choice activists lost most of their battles, except for the state-level destruction of access to contraception. However, they learned as the year wound down that persistence pays off: The Obama administration handed them an enormous victory when HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the FDA’s decision to allow Plan B to be sold over-the-counter without age restrictions. By keeping Plan B out of the hands of minors, especially those in consensual and age-appropriate relationships, and by making it much harder for women of all ages to get it, the administration helped the anti-choice movement in its goal of keeping this country’s unintended pregnancy rate sky high. Sure, that also means our abortion rate continues to be sky-high, but as this year has definitively shown, the anti-choice movement doesn’t care about preventing a single abortion, if doing so would get in the way of punishing women for having sex.

“Canada’s contribution will not include funding abortion” in G-8 programs

OTTAWA — The Conservative government has declared that it will not support foreign-aid projects that include abortion.

“Canada’s contribution to maternal and child health may involve various interventions, including family planning, which includes the use of contraceptive methods. The details remain to be determined; however, Canada’s contribution will not include funding of abortions,” Bev Oda, the federal minister of international co-operation told reporters in Halifax Monday after she arrived for a meeting of G8 development ministers.

Her comments followed a similar statement by Conservative MP Jim Abbott, her parliamentary secretary, in the Commons.

“Canada’s contribution to maternal and child health may include family planning. However, Canada’s contribution will not include funding abortion.” MP Jim Abbott, parliamentary secretary for international development, announced in the Commons on Monday.

The announcement puts Canada at odds with the United States and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – who spoke out for financing abortion when she was in Canada last month – as well as several of Canada’s G-8 partners.

The declaration came as a surprise, since the Conservative government has so far tried to avoid taking any categorical stand on abortion in its new, foreign-aid focus on maternal health. Repeatedly, for months now, ministers have insisted that the government doesn’t want to reopen a debate that has been hugely divisive in Canada.

But Dimitri Soudas, spokesperson for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, told reporters on Monday that the decision is in line with a recent vote in the House of Commons, when a majority of MPs voted against supporting abortion as part of Canada’s foreign-aid focus on maternal health.

It was a Liberal attempt to embarrass the Conservatives into supporting abortion, but it backfired when more than a dozen Liberal MPs were absent or opposed, and now seems to have paved the way for the extraordinary declaration by Harper’s government on Monday.

Soudas left open the possibility that other G-8 countries might want to finance projects that include abortion, but Monday’s declaration means that Canada will not be part of those aid programs.

Soudas would not say whether this meant that Canada would wind down any current support for abortion-related aid – as former U.S. president George Bush did during his eight years in office. President Barack Obama reversed that order – known as the “gag rule” – within days of assuming office in 2009.

NDP leader Jack Layton says that Canada has now put itself on Bush’s side of this divide.

“It’s picking up the banner that George Bush used to carry and I think that that’s not something that would be supported by the majority of Canadians, that’s for sure,” Layton said.

Abortion as part of foreign aid been a simmering issue in Canadian federal politics since January, when Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff challenged Harper to back up his maternal-health promises at this year’s G-8 summit with a guarantee that abortion would be part of any help to women in developing countries.

Initially, Harper’s government said that Liberals were just playing politics with the abortion controversy, but it now appears that the Conservatives have decided to draw a firm line against any foreign aid that would help women obtain abortions.

Abbott and Soudas insisted that Monday’s announcement is consistent with the government’s insistence that the abortion debate not be reopened, but Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said that by making this decision, the government has indeed put the issue back on the political agenda.

(I’m so ashamed of my government.)

Canada is ready to finance family planning measures in developing countries, but not abortion.

The Minister of International Cooperation of Canada Bev Oda made this clarification in the context of a meeting aimed at preparing for the G8 summit in Toronto in June. The Minister said her country takes the internationally accepted definition of family planning. This means contraception, but not abortion.

“We’re not debating abortion,” she said at a hastily convened press conference in Halifax. “We are trying to clarify (the term) of family planning.” Ms. Oda was later rushed to a private dinner in honor of heads of delegation at the residence of the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia.

In January, the Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper announced he wanted to put the issue of maternal and child health a top priority of the G8 meeting. Since then, questions abounded about whether this initiative will include funding for family planning programs for women in developing countries.

Various ministers have spoken on the topic. Finally, Mr. Harper told the Commons that he was not going to go back on the debate on abortion. He accused opposition parties of wanting to make waves in this case.

Written by Armen Hareyan

In 1999 the Economist named it the most important scientific advance of the 20th century, but Gloria Steinem, one of the era’s most influential feminists, calls its impact “overrated.”

In “Remember Roe!” Sarah Kliff makes a disconcerting assertion that young women of the post-Roe v. Wade generation are apathetic towards reproductive rights and therefore, potentially responsible for current and future rollbacks. Our experience with advocates across the country paints a very different picture — particularly when you start asking the question, “Which young women?”

It wasn’t really much of a choice for her. Her boyfriend said, “If I find out you have an abortion, I’m gonna kill you.” She was 18, had just gotten into college on a full scholarship and didn’t want to have a baby.

She did have the baby. Her boyfriend attended the delivery against her will and she ran away from him a few days after the birth. Unfortunately, her story is not that unusual.

ust in case society needed another way to measure a woman’s worth, now the price of her eggs can be calculated based on her SAT scores. Yes, according to a recent Georgia Institute of Technology study, for every hundred points a woman’s SAT score increases, she’s offered $2,350 more in compensation for her eggs.

Aaron Levine, who directed the study, analyzed more than 100 ads looking for egg donors placed in college newspapers and found not only that compensation drastically increased for higher SAT scores, but also that 27% of couples were asking for specific appearances and ethnicities.

Dear Bart,

Welcome to the club.

I ran an abortion clinic for nine years and have defended clinics across the nation. I’ve worn a bullet-proof vest just to go to work. My car was routinely vandalized. My house was firebombed. I was stalked. I received so many telephone death threats–including one delivered to my kid when I couldn’t come to the phone–that I considered them routine.

And it wasn’t just me who was threatened. My son was shot at. My husband was routinely targeted. My kids grew up never opening or even touching any packages that came in the mail, dealing with harassment at Sunday school and elsewhere, and always watching their backs.

The story of Joan, a 22-year-old unmarried and unemployed lady is also instructive. Quite recently, she was rushed into a hospital in Lagos, with a referral from another private hospital. Doctors said she presented with classic symptoms of suspected termination of an unwanted pregnancy.

The procedure was reportedly carried out at a chemist shop during which she bled significantly. A day after the abortion, she developed abdominal distension which progressively increased in size and was painful. She was nauseated and was passing frequent stools.

Carol Jordan, a 32-year-old pharmacy technician, was living in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1999 when she became pregnant. She’d already decided against abortion, but she was struggling financially and her boyfriend was unsupportive. Looking through the Yellow Pages for help, she spotted an ad under “crisis pregnancies” for Bethany Christian Services. Within hours of calling, Jordan (who asked to be identified with a pseudonym) was invited to Bethany’s local office to discuss free housing and medical care.

When Jordan called Bethany’s statewide headquarters one night, her shepherding mother answered, responding coldly to Jordan’s lament. “You’re the one who spread your legs and got pregnant out of wedlock,” she told Jordan. “You have no right to grieve for this baby.”

The debate over health care reform also brought a traumatic unity to my life. In 1969, without warning, my husband abandoned my three young girls and me, stranding us without financial support. A few weeks later, I learned I was pregnant. I made the difficult decision to have an abortion. In the pre-Roe world, I was forced to get permission for the abortion from the man who had deserted us (and had now removed us from his health care policy) as well as from an all-male hospital review board. More humiliating were the questions they asked: was I capable of dressing my children or satisfying my husband sexually. The episode propelled me to the front ranks of the pro-choice movement. Never did I imagine I would have to choose between the two social causes.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL - Amnesty International has called on US President Barack Obama to tackle soaring rates of maternal mortality and pregnancy-related complications that particularly affect minorities and those living in poverty. In it´s report Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA, urges action to tackle a crisis that sees between two and three women die every day during pregnancy and childbirth in the USA.