Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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My heart sank when I read this article.  The fight to end legal abortion and intentional motherhood is clearly about women being relegated to baby machines.  First, they focused on closing the clincs.   Now they're challenging the pill by defining personhood as an "egg".  Does that mean I'm guilty of murder when I get my period?  And what about sperm?

A resurgent movement to place "personhood" measures on state ballots across the nation to ban abortion and comprehensive reproductive care could have far more sweeping implications than the trial balloon Colorado voters soundly defeated last year.

Far from being dissuaded by the 3-to-1 loss from their 2008 campaign to confer zygotes with legal rights, abortion opponents are regrouping with a broader initiative that purports to address life span issues, from conception to death.

Betty and I feel that we should target Randall Terry the founder of Operation Rescue (the group responsible for publishing George Tiller's name, address, and where you could find him on a sunday morning) and paint "killer" on his house in red paint.  According to the NY Times, the anti-abortion forces have nothing to do now that Tiller is gone:

For the first time in years, only a Wichita police car has been waiting outside the abortion clinic of Dr. George R. Tiller, who was shot to death a week ago. Gone are the trucks bearing enormous images of bloody fetuses, the signs offering the home addresses of clinic workers, the crowd of protesters yelling to women as they enter.

Before Dr. George R. Tiller was killed, his Wichita clinic was a regular target of abortion protesters, including this man wielding a cross at a demonstration in 2006.

Over almost 20 years, a vocal, diverse constellation of anti-abortion forces has grown up in this conservative city with an intensity rarely seen elsewhere, converging around Dr. Tiller's practice. With his death, its future suddenly seems uncertain, too.

This episode is dedicated to the life and work of Dr. George Tiller and all those who've fought to protect our reproductive rights and support intentional motherhood. It's time to revive feminism...this time by honoring pussy power. Here's the link to the book A New View of a Woman's Body:

I found this on Susie Bright's blog. She found it on John Cole's Balloon Juice, which she found through Bitch PhD's blog.

"In 1994 my wife and I found out that she was pregnant. The pregnancy was difficult and unusually uncomfortable but her doctor repeatedly told her things were fine. Sometime early in the 8th month my wife, an RN who at the time was working in an infertility clinic asked the Dr. she was working for what he thought of her discomfort. He examined her and said that he couldn't be certain but thought that she might be having twins.

"We were thrilled and couldn't wait to get a new sonogram that hopefully would confirm his thoughts. Two days later our joy was turned to unspeakable sadness when the new sonogram showed conjoined twins. Conjoined twins alone is not what was so difficult but the way they were joined meant that at best only one child would survive the surgery to separate them and the survivor would more than likely live a brief and painful life filled with surgery and organ transplants.

Now we know why they have to bus in to New York AND THERE ARE SO MANY LATE TERM ABORTIONS:

It's about intentional motherhood people.  Can we finally stop guilting young women who have to make tough decisions and make nonsurgical abortions available so they don't have to risk their lives? 

Unwed pregnant teens and twenty-somethings who attend or have graduated from private religious schools are more likely to obtain abortions than their peers from public schools, according to sociological research published in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

"This research suggests that young, unmarried women are confronted with a number of social, financial and health-related factors that can make it difficult for them to act according to religious values when deciding whether to keep or abort a pregnancy," said the study's author, sociologist Amy Adamczyk, an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

I remember when you had to go to a clinic and get a prescription for Plan B.  If you don't take it within the first 72 hours, then it won't work so it's critical that young women get access immediately.  A big thank you to my favorite branch of government - the Judiciary - for letting the scientists make the decisions at the FDA:

Seventeen-year-olds will soon be able to buy the "morning after" emergency contraceptive without a doctor's prescription, because the Food and Drug Administration bowed to a judge's order yesterday.

Reversing a contentious policy of the Bush administration, the FDA said in a brief statement it will not appeal a judge's order that overturns restrictions limiting over-the-counter sales of so-called Plan B to women 18 and older.

A big thank you to the ladies of feministing for introducing me to Exhale an amazing organization that has created an after-abortion counseling talkline.  It's free, confidential, and available 24/7. 

They just won't give up the fight against intentional motherhood. Abortion opponents are pressing state and local governments to stop sending taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood, arguing that the nonprofit group has plenty of cash and shouldn't be granted scarce public funds at a time of economic crisis.

Planned Parenthood receives about $335 million a year -- a third of its budget -- from government grants and contracts to subsidize contraception, sex education and non-abortion-related health care for poor women and teenagers.