Thursday: Rally against the Federal Abortion Ban!

Earlier this morning, Bush's appointees to the Supreme Court did
exactly what he selected them to do...

By upholding the Federal Abortion Ban in its entirety, the
Supreme Court has not only supported an abortion ban with no
exception for a woman's health, it has given the green light to
the anti-choice movement's plan to outlaw abortion entirely.

In her dissenting opinion, pro-choice Justice Ginsberg, who
called the majority opinion "alarming", writes "...[T]he Act and
the Court's defense of it cannot be understood as anything other
than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again
by this Court."

If you believe that women and their doctors should never be
forced into making difficult, personal, medical decisions based
on extremist politics - then you must stand up and fight back.
Click here to find out how we're fighting back, and how you can
help. https://secure.ga0.org/02/_FAB_Upheld_mem/nPpL6NL61V5LT?.

Here's what you should know about this ruling...

:: For the first time since Roe, this ban has no exception for
the health of the woman.
:: Any doctor who violates this ban would face criminal
penalties of up to 2 years in prison, even if he/she was acting
to protect the woman's health.
:: This ban rolls back key protections that have been guaranteed
since the days of Roe v. Wade.

So how are we going to defeat this ban now that Bush's
appointees upheld it? Simple. We're starting an all-out campaign
to support the Freedom of Choice Act.

Here's how it starts: The Freedom of Choice Act is legislation
that would codify Roe v. Wade into law, and guarantee the right
to choose for generations to come. But this legislation is just
the first step. To ensure we never face an attack like this
again, we're not stopping until we've elected a pro-choice
president in 2008!

Sound impossible? You've already proven it's not.

As a supporter of NARAL Pro-Choice America, you helped send 1.4
million pro-choice Americans to the March for Women's Lives. You
helped defeat the South Dakota abortion ban. You elected 26
pro-choice leaders to Congress in 2006. You are a part of the
million-member-strong political leader of the pro-choice
movement. Together, we can make this happen, but we need your
help to fund the fight. Click here to help -
https://secure.ga0.org/02/_FAB_Upheld_mem/nPpL6NL61V5LT?.

It's up to us. We can do it. Click here to make your gift today
- https://secure.ga0.org/02/_FAB_Upheld_mem/nPpL6NL61V5LT?.

My Best,

Nancy Keenan
President
NARAL Pro-Choice America
--------------------------------------------------

Visit the web address below to tell your friends about the
Supreme Court decision.

http://prochoiceaction.org/join-forward.html?domain=development&r=PpL6NL61V5LT

If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for
NARAL Pro-Choice America's Membership Center at:

http://prochoiceaction.org/development/join.html?r=PpL6NL61V5LTE

Read the decision. You still have a right to an abortion! However, per Roe v. Wade, the state has a compelling interest in the fetus when it is viable, which, per the law, is the third term. You can still get knocked up and aborted, you just can't wait too long.

I understand that you want to legalize partial birth abortion. My question is when it is not ok to have an abortion? One child just lived after being delivered at 20 weeks or so. Thus, there was a second trimester viable life. Is it ok to abort those ones?

Washington D.C. don't represent you or me, it never has, it ain't about to. Cut the cord! Their draconian backward misgynistic laws should not have any jurisdiction here.

And many second and third trimester abortions happen because of significant fetal malformation- additionally, because 85% of the counties in the US HAVE NO CLINICS, women who want first trimester abortion's cannot get them. Lack of access is one of the top reasons women have abortions within the second trimester.
So really the right wing manouvering by anti-choice activist and thier political allies have forced thousands of women into second trimester abortions(or frankly, illegal abortions)
Women who have had abortions are a silent majority(I think)...I really wish every woman who has had one would committ themselves to meanignful acts of activism.

The issue is not that the ruling bans all abortion (although it is a clear and dangerous step in that direction). The issue is really that there is not health acception. You, your friend, you sister... gets pregnent w/ no intention to abort. During week 13 of her/your pregnancy she/you find/s out her/your health is in very serious danger. In the majority of these cases, women choose to abort. Now they cannot. You must risk those health issues... possible neurological issues but no death so its ok. Read the dissent. Look at the faulty congressional findings. Then post.

How did the past few years of rule by the illegal war criminal GW Bush regime proceed to revoke the rights of the people and replaced by fascist religious dogma??

Let's not kid ourselves, these revokations over a woman's right to choose is part and parcel of the religious right's takeover of the US population via the illegal GW Bush regime occupation in Washington DC. Pat Robetson, Jerry Falwell, John Hagee and many other right wing evangelicals funded the GW Bush campaign and now call the shots from the far right. Sounds like the US is following the lead of Saudi Arabian Royalty, mysogyny, homophobia and fundamentalism under patriarchal royal decree!!

We have thus far achieved (under Christian right rule);

Zionist Christian support of military escalations between Israel/Palestine in preparation for "Second Coming, Rapture", etc.. (ie., potential for man made nuclear hoolocaust in Middle East), discourage any attempts at peace between Palestinians and Israelis..

Denial of global warming/climate change on effecting greater storm surge, loss of protective wetlands (due to petroleum canals) leading to flooding of 9th ward neighborhood; instead declaring Katrina in New Orleans an "Act of God" punishing New Orleans residents for being (?homo?)sexual beings!!

Homophobia and ban on gay marriage, no benefits for domestic partners, etc..

Now the steady attack on a woman's right to choose. Anti-abortion strategy of the Christian right (mostly evangelicals) is mirrored by the Catholic Church in South America preventing distribution of birth control methods for people. What do overpopulation, lack of education and slavery have in common??

Under GW Bush regime's Patriot Act, DHS surveillence state, we witness suppresion of U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights that guarantees people the freedom to participate in their democratic government, provided that we remain a democracy under the GW Bush regime (Ha Ha! yeah, right! Little sarcasm there, eh?) and are allowed the freedom of assembly, protest without being attacked by helmeted riot police!!

Suppression of science and stem cell research. While remaining aware that biotech corporations engage in far riskier genetic experiments unleased into the world, the Christian right instead demonizes the scientists promoting human stem cell research, the most ethical and accurate method of discovering cures for many human diseases (even though prevention of disease by eliminating known toxins from our collective environment remains a top priority!!) without resorting to the cruelty and inaccuracies of animal testing..

Promoting "Border wall" fence hysteria by ignoring the effects of NAFTA/WTO/PPP on displacment of Mexican ejido farmers and creating conflicts between north and south, Spanish/English linguists and ignoring the plight of multilingual indigenous peoples on both sides of the fence caught in the middle, often facing cultural genocide (assimilation into Euro-centric Christian monotheism) by being forced to migrate into maquiladora sweatshops or plantation agribusinesses follwing land theft by corporations. Here we see a collusion between the right wing Anglo evangelicals and the right wing Spanish Catholic church in escalating poverty and land theft to promote a class of perpetual debt slaves who are caught between nations..

These problems and many more are all a result of influence by the Christian right evangelicals on the policy makers in the GW Bush regime.

Freedom of religion under Bill of Rights and US Constitution demands that the Christian right back off with their illogical agenda in the US or we can have a coup here in north america. Just wait til Mayday when your ports get shut down and the interstates are blocked by throngs of people with linked arms. Bridge out, people! Time for a detour!!

By all means please attempt to secede from the Union. If only to give the rest of the State of Denial (read CA) a chance to see the ramifications of full out rebellion. Which by the way the Leftists/Liberals/Communistas/Democrat Party would lose because of their aversion to the 2nd Amendment.

You can get an abortion in the 13th week. The ban is partial birth abortions where the fetus would otherwise be delivered alive. So some counties do not have abortion clinics, drive. What do you want, federal abortion clinics in every county?

takes place against a backdrop of limited access. Most women have to drive more than 100 miles.
That's a hardship for working women. I don't think you(the previous poster cares) but many of of do and have taken the time to undertsand why driving that far, possibly over state lines is an undue burden and is sometimes impactful on the womens health.
But you don't care about that, either(her health).
If ANY of you idiots understood the process of preganancy, you'd understand that because of preganancy progressive nature some problems can't be discovered until the women is in the second trimester. Fetal malformation which is one of the reasons women get second and third term abortions isn't discoverable until the malformation is detectable. Get it?
THis is bullshit paternalism at it's worst and needs to be actively resisted.

According to the decision, you can still have your second trimester abortion. You just need to kill the fetus before it is partially delivered. Id. at 6. The decision only upholds the ban on partially delivering a fetus and then killing it. The decision is very clear.
So you have to drive a ways. Whose problem is that?

So when is it not OK to have an abortion. Should you be one week, one month... from full term and decide that you want a partial birth abortion? When is it ok?

The problem is that the Court has turned away from historical protections for women’s health, the Court adopted additional protections for “potential life.” Kennedy wrote in the majority decision: “Casey reaffirmed . . . [that] the government may use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman. A central premise of the opinion was that the Court’s precedents after Roe had ‘undervalue[d] the State’s interest in potential life.’” While the Court has previously recognized that the government has an interest in protecting potential life, never before has the Court held that that interest, prior to viability, should trump a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy, particularly if her health is endangered.

The Court’s adoption of anti-choice rhetoric as fact is particularly distressing. The dissent explains:

The Court’s hostility to the right Roe and Casey secured is not concealed. Throughout, the opinion refers to obstetrician-gynecologists and surgeons who perform abortions not by the titles of their medical specialties, but by the pejorative label ‘abortion doctor.’ A fetus is described as an ‘unborn child,’ and as a ‘baby,’ second-trimester, previability abortions are referred to as ‘late-term,’ and the reasoned medical judgments of highly trained doctors are dismissed as ‘preferences’ motivated by ‘mere convenience,’.

The Court even went so far as to validate abortion opponents’ unscientific and unsubstantiated views about abortion’s effects, while simultaneously acknowledging it had no data on which to base that conclusion.

The “source” the Court cites for this unquestionably non-legal proposition is a brief filed by an anti-choice law firm in support of its efforts to re-open and overturn the Court’s decision in Doe v. Bolton, Roe’s companion case. Worse, the Court does not even attempt to offer a legal explanation as to how the fact that a woman might regret her choice to have an abortion should justify endangering the health of other women for whom it may be medically necessary to have a type of procedure now outlawed by the Federal Abortion Ban.

Only after expanding the protection for “potential life” to the detriment of women and endorsing the flawed congressional findings does the Court, 31 pages into the opinion, turn to the issue of women’s health. Justice Kennedy rather dismissively minimizes women who may need a banned procedure to protect their health, focusing instead on the wide range of cases in which the ban could apply:
We note that the statute here applies to all instances in which the doctor proposes to use the prohibited procedure, not merely those in which the woman suffers from medical complications. It is neither our obligation nor within our traditional institutional role to resolve questions of constitutionality with respect to each potential situation that might develop.
In fact, Supreme Court precedent has consistently resolved similar issues regarding an abortion restriction’s constitutionality by examining the potential implications of the law on women and declared such laws unconstitutional when they presented a threat to women’s health – including the one at issue in Stenberg, which was very similar to the Federal Abortion Ban.

Which brief was filed that falsely claimed that all women suffered regret? Where can I find it?

Women began to protest against Bush policy.

There is a picture:

http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2234924860085648198urCUGM

Its time for women to TAKE back our bodies without asking men for permission. Read A Womans Book of Choices to teach and learn Menstrual Extraction (safe up to 7 weeks) and visit http://www.sisterzeus.com In the 1970s women were helping women do menstrual extraction at home in self help groups. Its time for todays young women to learn REPRODUCTIVE SELF DEFENSE. Then it wont matter if the boyz repeal Roe. They can take their woman hating laws and shove them!!!!