feminist blogs

Seriously? I mean...seriously?

Mother Jones blogger and columnist Debra Dickerson, responding to the NYT piece on the future of abortion providers, writes that young feminists should "blog less and work more." Ya know, because young women don't actually do anything. (Ahem.)

But you young chicks maybe need to go the Northern Exposure route, sending folks to med school in exchange for a few years running an abortion clinic. That feminist fire in the belly? I gotta say: Pole-dancing, walking around half-naked, posting drunk photos on Facebook, and blogging about your sex lives ain't exactly what we previous generations thought feminism was. We thought it was about taking it to the streets.

Yeah, taking it to the streets is something young feminists never do.

Dickerson seems to have a penchant for calling young feminists "pole dancers" and "chicks", so I'm loathe to take her too seriously...but there is something so infuriating about someone with a progressive platform like Mother Jones promoting the most hackneyed stereotypes of young feminists and young women. (Courtney via email has two questions for Debra: How many abortions have you provided? And do you know any young women?)

Harsh, you say? Uninformed? OK. Tell me exactly what today's feminists are doing for the struggle.

I think maybe we should tell her. Please go comment at MoJo and tell Dickerson what young feminists are really like. (Couldn't find her email address...)

Related: Elisabeth Garber-Paul at RH Reality Check also weighs in.

On Wednesday, Joe from Amplify attended the abstinence-only lobby day on Capitol Hill, and has now written a blog post about all that he saw.

While I would admittedly hate to see what kind of propaganda an abstinence-only organization would spread if they managed to attend a pro-choice lobby day — putting aside for a moment the horror they’d express while reporting a few truths — Amplify is really good at doing its research and getting their facts straight.  And anyway, what is reported in this blog post seems to not stray a whole lot from abstinence-only teaching materials.

So head on over now to see what the abstinence-only proponents are spouting, and how they’re (desperately) strategizing. I particularly love the bit about “the promiscuity lobby.” Golden.

The new blog Akimbo of the International Women's Health Coalition has a great post and video up about how despite female condom's bad rep, they're getting great feedback from the countries that IWHC works in.

(This is not to mention the FDA's recent announcement of the approval of the new female condom, FC2, which is a thinner material and hella cheaper.)

Check it.

From The Los Angeles Times:

The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously today to suspend a county contract with Planned Parenthood to provide health education for thousands of teens and preteens because the nonprofit organization offers abortions.

The decision to suspend the $291,788 education grant came after nearly two hours of impassioned public and board member discussion. Planned Parenthood's curriculum includes discussions about birth control alternatives, such as types of contraception and abstinence, as well as about sexually transmitted disease.

None of the Orange County money is used to fund abortions, said Jon Dunn, CEO and President of Planned Parenthood for Orange and San Bernandino counties.

You can tell the board how you feel about it via an online comment system or just give board chair Patricia C. Bates' office a call at 714-834-3550.

The New York Times had an interesting article last week about passing the reproductive rights torch.

While I found the piece thought-provoking, there's a lot that I take issue with. (Outside of the fact that yet again an article on women's rights is relegated to the Style section.)

But here is the question: As Ms. Baker's generation approaches retirement -- women whose commitment to abortion was forged in the pre-Roe v. Wade days -- will younger women take their places at the clinics?

"We worry about that a lot," said Sally Burgess, executive director of the Hope clinic, who is also chairwoman of the National Abortion Federation, the main professional support group for abortion providers. "Younger women have always had access to abortion care, they don't fully appreciate the battle that was fought to have it available to them. And more important, I don't think they know how precarious the option is at this point, even with Obama's election."

"What I observe for women in their 20s and 30s -- there are fewer who really have the fire in the belly for this," she said.

Ah, the old "young women take their rights for granted" bit. Never mind that one third of the protesters at the March for Women's Lives in 2004 were under 25 years old. Let's ignore the college activism around choice issues, and the blogs and magazines run by younger women. Not to mention the amazing organizations out there. Sigh.

That said, I do understand the concern over a new generation of abortion providers - most abortion providers are over 50 years old and 2% of Ob/Gyns perform over 50% of the country's abortions. So there is a problem, obviously. But let's not resort to painting young women as politically apathetic and unaware - because they're not.

I recently wrote that President Obama was planning to overturn Bush’s last minute HHS “conscience” rule that prevents health care providers from “discriminating” against all levels of anti-choice employees who literally refuse to do their jobs, and is intended to not only restrict access to abortion, but also birth control and reproductive health care in general.

Well he’s gone and begun the process to do exactly that.  The 30 day comment period for the public to send in their thoughts on the proposed change opened earlier this week.  Which means that just like it was important for you to send in your opposition to the rule when Bush proposed it, it’s important to send in your support for its repeal now.  Not because we have reason to believe that Obama will back out of his promise, but because pro-choice causes, women’s health, and access to services needs all of the public support that they can get.

Click here to send your comments to the Department of Health and Human Services. And then, make sure to spread the word and ensure that all of your friends do the same!

Check out this headine: “N.Y. Catholics: Dems Trying to Bankrupt Church.”

Sounds pretty bad, right? I mean, I’m not a huge fan of some of the Church hierarchy’s decisions, but I have no hate for the Church itself or the people who benefit from its services or the people who frequent its houses of worship. And I certainly have no desire to see the Church bankrupted.

Except, oops: Turns out that those mean old Democrats are trying to “bankrupt” the Church by making sure it’s accountable to people who were molested by priests as children. How terrible.

The NewsMax article lists three major points of “attack” on Catholic churches:

A proposal to require all hospitals to perform abortions, or lose their state license would put Catholic hospitals out of business.

Major funding cuts for Catholic schools by Gov. David Paterson, who continues to force the parochial schools to run state-mandated programs at their own expense.

An effort by Democratic lawmakers to abolish the statute of limitations on sex abuse lawsuits against the Church, allowing people to sue over decades-old cases in which the alleged perpetrators are dead.

Let’s go through point-by-point.

1. A proposal to require all hospitals to perform abortions, or lose their state license would put Catholic hospitals out of business.

They’re talking about the New York State Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act, but that’s not at all what the Act says. That Act seeks to ensure that abortion rights will be enshrined into New York law, even if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court. It doesn’t do a whole lot more than bring state law in line with the current national standard — the law basically says that the right to use or refuse contraception, the right to abortion, and the right to carry a pregnancy to term are all fundamental and should not be infringed upon by the state. It’s a pretty tame standard, and no different from the one we’re operating under — but it’s necessary because the current national standard is fairly tenuous. Currently, New York state law treats abortion as homicide, but with many exceptions; that law hasn’t mattered since Roe qualified abortion as a fundamental privacy right, but it would start to matter again if Roe were overturned. You can read the Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act here (pdf). Nothing in the law says that Catholic hospitals (or any hospitals, for that matter) have to perform abortions. Of course, I’m of the personal opinion that if a hospital refuses to provide basic medical services to its patients, then it probably shouldn’t receive any state funding, and I would support a law requiring as much. It’s a huge problem that many Catholic hospitals won’t even terminate ectopic pregnancies — pregnancies that occur outside of the uterus, will never become babies, and risk the pregnant woman’s life. It’s a huge problem that many Catholic hospitals won’t give rape survivors emergency contraception. It’s a huge problem that many doctors at Catholic hospitals won’t prescribe birth control. I think they should lose state funding if they won’t care for their patients. But that isn’t what this law does. Not even close.

2. Major funding cuts for Catholic schools by Gov. David Paterson, who continues to force the parochial schools to run state-mandated programs at their own expense.

New York State is $13 billion in the hole. Budgets are being cut across the board, even for basics like public transportation. So while I’m always sorry to see education costs being cut, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the state to cut subsidies for private institutions when the state is already supporting a vast public school system that could use a whole lot more money. As for the “state-mandated” programs that Catholic schools are forced to run at their own expense… I suspect that means Catholic schools are expected to meet basic educational requrements. Boo. Hoo.

3. An effort by Democratic lawmakers to abolish the statute of limitations on sex abuse lawsuits against the Church, allowing people to sue over decades-old cases in which the alleged perpetrators are dead.

They actually aren’t abolishing the statute of limitations on sex abuse law suits against the Church. The proposed law — which the Catholic Church is rallying hard against — would open up a one-year window for abuse survivors to come forward and file suit. There are definitely problems with the proposal, and it would enable survivors to open up decades-old cases where there may not be adequate documentation or witnesses. Similar legal mechanisms have been used in California and Washington, and the Church did take a big financial hit. But the Church’s complicity in the sex abuse scandals helps to create a set of circumstances under which opening up this window doesn’t seem like a totally unreasonable idea; the abuse wasn’t a case of a few bad apples, it was an institutional problem that the Church itself fully enabled even when it knew better. So the idea that the Church will be held accountable even when the guilty individuals are dead or aged doesn’t bother me as much as it would under other circumstances. I still happen to think that the proposed law is problematic, but not because the Church is being “targeted” — and certainly not because it might be financially detrimental (since when is that an argument against someone’s right to sue you?).

And, call me cold-hearted, but I don’t have all that much sympathy for the Church’s complaints about how being sued for decades of sex abuse may be financially devastating. Sometimes you reap what you sow.

Thanks to Lance for the article.