Starting after about 8:20.

I’m thinking they are both probably right.

A panel of reproductive rights activists come together to discuss access to abortion in current events , clinic escorting and some common religious and non-religious arguments against abortion. Our panel consists of clinic escorts – including one panelist who volunteered before FACE laws went into effect (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances), health care professionals, an author and several bloggers who write about reproductive rights. Our panelists hail from Minnesota, Kentucky, Virginia and Ireland.

Photo Credit: Morten Watkins via Compfight cc

This is the year in which the Right Wing carried out the most anti-woman campaign ever since suffrage, or at least, so it would appear, along with a continued attack on non-hetero persons. A defining moment in this campaign occurred in February, when the Republican controlled House carried out a nearly comical hearing on women’s reproductive rights.

Three Democrats walked out of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on religious liberty and the birth control rule on Thursday to protest Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) refusal to allow a progressive woman to testify in favor of the Obama administration’s contraception rule. The morning panel at the hearing consisted exclusively of men from conservative religious organizations.

“…where are the women?” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked Issa before walking out of the hearing after the first panel. “I look at this panel, and I don’t see one single individual representing the tens of millions of women across the country who want and need insurance coverage for basic preventative health care services, including family planning. Where are the women?”

The progressive woman mentioned was Sandra Fluke, who was shortly to be denigrated by the intellectual leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh. On February 29th, Limbaugh called her a slut on the grounds that she wanted, according to him, the government to subsidize her sex life. Subsequent to this event, we saw Republicans running for their party’s nomination and other Republicans running for various seats in Congress and state legislatures making a series of anti-woman and pro-rape comments. This was the culmination of events over the last two years, when dozens of anti-abortion and other anti-women’s health laws have been proposed, many enacted.

In February, Republican Congressman Ron Paul, while running for President, said of forced sexual intercourse, “If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen.” It is not clear why. In August, Republican Congressman Todd Akin claimed that in cases of “legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” But apparently, rape does sometimes lead to pregnancy; Republican candidate Richard Mourdock, Indiana, said in October that a pregnancy caused by rape is “something that God intended to happen.”

In October, Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon, Connecticut, said of the problem of health insurance funding morning after pills, “It was really an issue about a Catholic church being forced to offer those pills if the person came in in an emergency rape” indicating a confusion over the use of the terms “emergency,” “hospital,” and “church.” And, in a case of confusion of cause, effect, intentionality and more generally the use of verbs, Wisconsin Republican state rep Roger Rivard stated in December 2011, “If you go down that road some girls, they rape so easy.”

Paul Ryan, who came pretty close to becoming the man a heart beat away form the Presidency, along with the aforementioned Todd Akin and 214 other Republicans co-sponsored the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” prohibiting abortions except in instance of an act of forcible rape or incest with a minor.

And so on.

The result of this all out “War on Women” by the Republican party was that it totally backfired. Not only did the head of the ticket fail with the election of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but the following also happened:

• 7 of 12 Republicans who made dumb-ass comments about rape and women’s reproductive health lost.
• 2 out of 3 single women who voted this year picked Obama over Romney
• All told, there have been 42 women in cabinet level positions ever. The number under Obama is 20.
• A record 97 women will be in the 113th Congress, of which the vast majority are pro-choice in one form or another.
• New Hampshire will send the first ever in the nation all female Congressional delegation to Washington this year.
• Four states (Hawaii, Massachusetts, North Dakota, and Wisconsin) will send their first female Senators to Washington this year.
• This year’s senate will have its first openly gay person, and first Asian woman. New Hampshire’s state legislature will have the highest elected out transgender person.
• Twenty-nine women of color will serve in this year’s new Congress.
• Of the 184 women who ran for congress this years, half were elected; one in three newly elected members of Congress this year are women.
• Overall, the 113th congress will include the most female members ever.

I, for one, welcome our new female overlords.

This story, which is probably mostly true but also labors under the confusion of hyperbole and political wrappings linked to the whole abortion debate, is being used now in Minnesota to prop up anti-women’s health legislation that is sure to be vetoed by our governor. Legislators admit that nothing even close to this has ever happened in Minnesota, but insist that the legislation addresses things that could happen at any moment. The truth is, the legislation does not address the Pennsylvania issues at all, because they are already addressed by existing statute, regulation, and practice. What happened in Pennsylvania seems to have been a breakdown in the system, not a failure to regulate.

From our local CBS affiliate:

The House measure requires a physician to be in the room when a woman takes an abortion-inducing drug, like RU486. Supporters are calling it a women’s health issue.

“If the argument is that we are going to let women take a drug and all of a sudden this will go away, this is a very serious and dangerous drug and we just don’t want to take this lightly,” said Rep. Joyce Peppin of Rogers.

Huh?

Experts tell us that RU486 does not require this kind of management, and that this legislation is clearly an attempt to step on women’s reproductive and health rights. In an increasingly popular form of legislative stupidity shaming, an amendment was introduced to require the presence of a doctor while a man takes a pill for erectile dysfunction, and that men be required to undergo counseling before being vasectomized.

Having no sense of humor, legislative Republicans defeated those amendments.

Anyway, Constance Johnson understands this bill better than the people who introduced it, and applying the fierce logic of reductio ad absurdum (which is a spell learned in Wizard school) to add the amendment to the bill depicted in the photograph provided here.

It inserts the phrase “provided, however, any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.”

Obviously this is a first draft of the amendment because it is impossible for a man to deposit one sperm at a time. The amendment must be rewritten to read: “provided, however, any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against a whole bunch of unborn children.”

This is not the first time we’ve seen the Reductio Curse used against a Republican bill (something similar happened recently in Indiana with a Creationist bill). And I hope it is not the last.

Senator Johnson writes up her experience here.

“No clue.”

Here’s what happened. Hackbarth was spotted in security cameras changing jackets, and that’s how the security people saw the gun strapped to his belt. The called Saint Paul police (this was the clinic in the Highland Park neighborhood, which is a very different place than Hackbarth’s district) who arrived on the scene shortly, spotting Hackbarth at a nearby intersection. They busted him, took his gun, and let him go. This happened several days ago, and yesterday he came by the police headquarters to pick up the pistol. For some reason that is when the story broke.

Hackbarth told the police that he had a girlfriend. They had only seen each other a couple of times, having met on line. He did not have a phone number or email address for her since they had only communicated via the dating web site. He had reason to suspect, he told police, that she was seeing another man, and had come down to Highland Park to spy on her in order to see whether or not he was being lied to.

A guy from up ’round Bethel or Elk Lake would need a map to find his way to and around Highland Park. The binoculars make sense if you are going to spy on someone. The pistol … well, he carries that all the time, and he does have a permit for it. Why park in Planned Parenthood’s lot? Well, it was just an empty lot and he needed to stop somewhere for a few minutes, to change his jacket and stuff. Why the second clip of ammo for a different caliber gun, also found in his pickup truck? I’m not sure that question has been asked.

The whole situation is just a little strange. Was he staking out the Planned Parenthood facility for some terroristic reason? The police thought that a possibility, that’s why they took the gun. Was he stalking a woman whom he barely knew? Well, either his story indicates that he was, or his story is a rather lame excuse for why he was in the Planned Parenthood lot. The police also thought he was a bit “stalky” … another reason to interview him and take his firearm.

And the Republican Leadership in the Minnesota House also think this is a bit strange, and have suspended Hackbarth’s planned and current leadership roles until this is all figured out.

The police claim that Hackbarth indicated he was jealous of another man dating his ‘girlfriend,’ but he denied that to the press. The police state that he appeared angry and dangerous at the truck they stopped his truck, but Hackbarth appears to be reasonably contrite and calm when interviewed by the press. Here are some of Hackbarth’s statements to the press:

I have a permit to carry legally. I carry my gun all the time. I have never had an incident and everything is perfectly legal and above board.

We have to air our dirty laundry? My wife and I are going through a divorce we are separated. We’ve been separated for about a year and a half now.

She [his alleged girlfriend] gave me some line of baloney, and I thought, ‘well, she’s fibbing to me.’ You could tell, and I thought, ‘well, I’m going to check it out.’ and I went there to see if she was around and her vehicle was not there. And I was just checking on her.

Hackbarth has a routinely Republican voting record (against study of iron range miner’s cancer, against the bonding bill which mainly benefits the University and various educational facilities, against stem cell research, against abortion and choice) except in a couple of interesting areas. Republican leaders voted for K-12 background checks for coaches, Hackbarth voted against that, and voted against a bill that would have pulled the state out of a federal ID program, while Republican leaders seem to have supported that initiative (so he’s for a federal ID)*.

Sources

• Armed MN Lawmaker Detained Near Planned Parenthood
• Minn. Lawmaker Wears Gun Outside Abortion Clinic
• Hackbarth loses GOP leadership roles for now
• Minnesota legislator stopped with gun near abortion clinic suspended from leadership position
• Rep. Tom Hackbarth’s loaded gun seized by cops near Planned Parenthood
• State Rep. Caught with Loaded Gun on Planned Parenthood Property