autonomy

Targeting: The U.S. Senate and The U.S. House

Started by: Feminist Majority Foundation

Dear Congressional leader,

I am outraged that fake clinics, or so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), deceptively advertise as comprehensive women’s health clinics, provide false and misleading information about birth control and abortion and often receive federal funding.

A Congressional study found that 87% of so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers provide false and misleading information by telling women that abortion is linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, infertility, and mental illness including suicide, and tell women that condoms won’t protect against sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. The American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the World Health Organization all dispel these false claims.

Furthermore, the Hatch Amendment to the health care reform bill reinstates $250 million in federal funding, over five years, for failed abstinence-only Title V programs. Fake clinics, or so-called CPCs, in states that opt into the Title V program will be able to receive millions of dollars in federal funding and this is an outrage!

I urge you to support federal legislation that would stop fake clinics’ deceptive advertising practices, require that medically accurate information is provided, and eliminate ALL federal funding for fake clinics!

[Your name]

For more information, please visit Feminist Majority Foundation.

Defending my irresponsible, abusive, gender-stereotypical coming-out story

Note: this post is a bit feminist-theoretical.

I try to think seriously about about all comments on my work, but I usually just brush off the snide ones. Every once in a while, though, one arrows through and hits me where I'm vulnerable and shakes my confidence, and if it's nastily phrased, then it hurts all the more. Seeps into me like poison.

Yep, this is another post about my S&M coming-out story, published in February by "Time Out Chicago". (I've received some questions about when I'm going to start officially blogging for "Time Out" -- the answer is that we're still negotiating the terms of my blogging contract and I'm not sure when we'll be done. I think we both really want this professional blogging gig to happen, so I'm confident that we'll work it out, but it might take a while.)

Here's a brief one-paragraph synopsis: my coming-out story talks about how I got drunk with a man named Richard at a party when I was 20; he started hurting me intensely; and I really got into it. I'd known a little bit about the existence of BDSM for a while -- had experimented with light BDSM before, in fact -- but this experience was much more intense, and in particular led me to the realization that I needed very dark and tearful masochistic encounters. As an independent, rational feminist, it was difficult for me to come to terms with my desires. It didn't help that Richard and I weren't well-suited romantically, although we were well-suited on an S&M level. Adjusting took a long time; but after seeing a Kink Aware therapist, coming out to my parents, exploring BDSM on my own terms, and having BDSM relationships with non-Richard men who suited me better romantically, I feel pretty much at peace with my BDSM identity.

By Armin Rosen

NEW YORK, Mar1, 2010 (IPS) - Last fall, the push to reform healthcare in the United States was all but hijacked by one of the country's most passionate recurring cultural debates.

On Nov. 7, 2009, Congressmen Bart Stupak, a liberal Democrat, and Joseph Pitts, a conservative Republican, sponsored a stipulation in the healthcare reform bill that would severely limit federal funding for abortions in a reformed healthcare system.

If Barack Obama's comprehensive reform bill were passed, consumers would be able to buy discounted health insurance from an index of government-subsidised providers. But under the Stupak-Pitts amendment, an insurer could only be included on the index if its plans excluded abortions from its coverage.

The amendment passed, 240-194, and the debate over health care reform turned into a debate over abortion rights. Suddenly, a vote for reforming health care was also a vote for curtailing lower and middle-income access to abortions in the United States.

Wendy Chavkin, a professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, is a member of a group of academics that authored a position paper on the place of reproductive health in the healthcare reform process.

By Nitin Jugran Bahuguna

NEW DELHI, Oct 22 (IPS) - It has been more than eight years since the January 2001 earthquake struck the Indian state of Gujarat, but Hansa Rathore still cannot quite shake off memories of that not too distant past — all because it left her a widow.

Twenty-nine-year-old Rathore was just one of thousands of women widowed in the deadly earthquake, one of the worst in India's recorded history. The disaster that left nearly 20,000 people dead in its wake changed her life forever.

"My mother was widowed in the same calamity; my house was destroyed and I had no means to feed my nine-month -old son," she recalls.

She soon learned what it meant to survive in a cloistered conservative community that socially ostracised widows, imposing cruel restrictions on them. "I got no help from my in-laws and was forced to shelter literally in the open, rigging up a makeshift room with sacks and a tin roof. I had no access to work, food or health services for my son, who became very ill," she states.