Texas NOW Blog

A shocking number of women in north Texas don't feel it's worth it to cast a ballot. And apparently Texas is 49th in the nation in the number of women who vote in congressional and presidential election. How horribly depressing.

I give props to the League of Women Voters Arlington chapter and Dallas chapter for getting started studying the problem, but the rest of y'all... what the hell is up? 33% of you say you'd vote if you had more information. Is that just laziness, or do I sense a whiff of girly low self-esteem there? I'd rather it's the latter, because that I can address more easily. Listen up, ladies: go find the information. I know we're all busy and everything, but take twenty minutes and find this stuff out. It's important. The League of Women Voters does a fantastic candidate questionnaire every cycle which includes scads of useful info and usually appears in your local paper and on your local chapter's website. Go to the candidate's websites. If you trust your local newspaper, check out their endorsements. You don't have to find out everything in the world about the candidates. Check their issues positions and experience, and then make your decisions. Not so hard, right?

Then put your big-girl underwear on and get your butts to the polls. Can't make it on Election Day? Contact your local elections board about early voting or voting by mail. Scrawl your mail ballot in crayon if you have to, but vote. Women's issues only get attention when we show them how much power we have. Use that power. You know the one I mean. The right to vote, the right that so many people suffered, fought, even died for. Honor their struggle by exercising your right. VOTE.

Posted by Carrie at 1:19 AM | Permalink

Major kudos to Jordan Smith over at the Austin Chronicle for this great story on Texas state funds going to crisis pregnancy centers. I do love to see our hard-working pro-choice friends over at NARAL Pro-Choice Texas get quoted on this issue, because they've done a huge amount of work on it. And I was very glad to see Smith reference Rep. Henry Waxman's report on crisis pregnancy centers and how they spend your money to lie to women about the effects of abortion.

Lying? Surely not, you say. No, really. They're flat-out lying. The following four assertions are the most common:

• Abortion causes breast cancer. Crap. Planned Parenthood puts the smack down on this one. Don't trust them? The National Cancer Institute backs 'em up. Considering all the cultural attention paid to breast cancer, and the fact that breast cancer accounts for 1/3 of all cancer diagnoses in women and killed about 40,000 women last year, it's cruel to fudge the facts on this terrible disease to a woman who's already upset and vulnerable because of an unplanned pregnancy.

• Abortion is extremely dangerous for women. Nope. According to the most current stats on the DSHS website, there were 76,019 abortions performed on Texas residents in 2003 without a single maternal death. Zero. Nada. In 2004, Texas women had 72,440 abortions with one death. In 2002, there were 76,277 abortions and one maternal death. So in the last three years, the death rate for abortion has been 2 in 224,736 - less than .0001%, and less than 1 per every 100,000 procedures. In fact, in the 1,444,809 abortions performed in Texas between 1986 and 2003, only nine deaths resulted. So having an abortion is slightly less safe than having your appendix out - which is to say, extraordinarily so.

• Abortion makes you infertile. Nope. Big honkin' lie. The National Institutes of Health list a bunch of causes of infertility, but abortion is not among them. It's tough to find statistics on the incidence of infertility, but NIH estimates 10-20% of couples trying to conceive won't get pregnant at the end of one year. They also say that 15-20% of those couples will successfully conceive a child without seeking treatment - in other words, sometimes you just have to try for a while. So that knocks the rate of persistent infertility down to a max of about 16%. It is true that there are some rare complications of abortion that can affect fertility. But use some common sense here. One, look how rare the complications are - all of them are under 1%, most well under. Two, think about it just for a minute. About 40% of women will have an abortion at some point in their lives. If abortion reliably caused infertility, wouldn't we expect to see a lot more than a 10 or 15% rate of persistent infertility?

• Abortion makes you crazy. For years. Again, Planned Parenthood debunks this decisively. They cite authorities ranging from the American Psychological Association to former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop stating that abortion has minimal lasting mental health effects. Of course women are going to have some feelings about it. But there is no good scientific evidence to support the notion of a 'post-abortion syndrome.' The study most often cited by anti-choicers has a serious sampling flaw: it only included women who had high-stress abortion experiences. That's like going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and concluding that there is a massive epidemic of alcohol abuse. In that room, of course there is! But it's irresponsible to apply that conclusion to the general public.

The state of Texas is paying crisis pregnancy centers $5 million over two years to tell women this garbage. You know where the money came from? It's a set-aside in the family planning budget. You know. The money that should be going to fund the services that would keep women from facing unintended pregnancies in the first place!

Does all this make you mad? It infuriates me. Remember in November, people. It is a reprehensible use of state funds to pay contracting agencies to lie to citizens. Ask your candidates what their take is on this. Ask your rep if he or she voted for Senator Williams' budget rider, called Alternatives to Abortion, which started all this mess. And let 'em know you won't stand for it again.

Posted by Carrie at 1:46 AM | Permalink

What the heck is going on in Ohio? The Akron Beacon Journal reports that the Ohio state house will hold a hearing tomorrow on a bill that would outlaw abortion completely. That's right. No exception for rape, incest, or the health of the mother.

But that's not the worst part.

The bill, H.B. 228, would make it a felony to transport a woman across state lines to obtain an abortion. Not a minor. Not a child who isn't yours. An adult woman.

Clearly this is in direct conflict with Roe v. Wade. Gotta think this is meant to be a court challenge. In any case, it's way bad. Boo to you, Buckeye State.

Posted by Carrie at 5:13 PM | Permalink

From the South bend Tribune: Last week an Indiana Probate Court magistrate ordered Kim Linetty, a rape survivor, to take her three children to visit their father in prison - where he is serving time for raping her.

Although the details of Linetty's case are unusual, the debate over the
visitation rights of incarcerated fathers and the role they should play in
their children's lives is as common as it is contentious...

Why is this contentious? Well, because some states have laws dictating that parents are entitled to visitation, even when they're incarcerated rapists. And okay, yeah, fathers have rights, but come on! Can't we be creative and find a better way to handle this? Apparently not.

Continue reading "What do you mean, being forced to see your rapist bothers you? He's your boyfriend, right?" »

Posted by Carrie at 5:39 PM | Permalink

Diane Heavin of Curves recently received the Women's Chamber of Commerce of Texas 2005 Businesswoman of the Year Award. I'm not kidding. The article includes the following gem:

Diane Heavin is also a philanthropists [Ed. note: she's apparently plural, too!], providing funding for healthcare and health education for women, family abuse prevention, adoption services, and more.

HEALTH EDUCATION?! Is this a joke? Yes, all that health education is just swell. Except for the part where the Heavins donate millions of dollars to nutball anti-choicers whose idea of health education is telling pregnant women that getting an abortion gives you breast cancer. I wonder if the Women's Chamber of Commerce of Texas counted those donations in their calculations.

Here's some health education for you: ladies, please don't support businesses that give 10% of their profits to crazy people who spend their lives working to take away your reproductive rights and scaring pregnant women. It's bad for your health - in so many ways. Might I suggest you join a different women-only gym? Austin has Premiere Lady Fitness. You'll find Lady USA in several Dallas suburbs. My hometown, Richardson, has Trophy Fitness for Women. Lady of America has several locations in towns across Texas, including Amarillo, The Woodlands, San Antonio, and some D/FW area towns. Many other gyms have women-only sections, and these nice folks have a little database you can search to find one in your town. Curves has a cuter name, for sure, but they're doing us wrong after hours. Y'all go do some crunches somewhere that's not owned by people who want to keep your belly big in that one particular way, okay?

Posted by Carrie at 1:29 PM | Permalink

So it should come as no surprise to anyone who's read a newspaper in the last year that Texas' state finances are extremely tight. We're constitutionally required to balance the budget every biennium, and we've had budget cuts out the wazoo. And then we got a bunch of Katrina evacuees. God love 'em, and welcome. But Rita hurt a lot of folks in southeast Texas, and their needs have been overshadowed. They need help, too. Our senior senator went to bat for it, and according to the New York Times, oh, lordy, did something ugly happen:

Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, said he did not believe Texans needed housing money.

"Texas, in the best role of traditional Judeo-Christian charity, provided benefits," Mr. Bond said. "I think it's time we get back to being a good neighbor and not a paid companion."

Senator Hutchison, who spoke next, was not amused.

Well, hell, I guess not! Did he just call the state a whore, or its female Senator? Would he have said that if Cornyn were up next at the microphone? Way out of line, Senator Bond. Waaaaay out of line.

Posted by Carrie at 1:59 PM | Permalink

In a story so nutty it's gone worldwide, a Michigan man seeks to avoid child support because his ex told him she was infertile. Our *cough* distinguished colleagues over at the National Center for Men are, of course, providing assistance to this fellow.

Of course I don't condone lying to one's partner. But unless he managed to not be present while having sex with her, I think the child support decision has to be upheld. Reproductive rights come with reproductive responsibilities, dude. If you didn't wear a condom, then don't go crying to the courts.

Posted by Carrie at 5:38 PM | Permalink