Are you listening? Do you hear? Read my lips soon there will be no abortions in states controlled by Republican legislatures. Over the last decades, abortion rights have been chipped away. The remaining few are now being hit with a large sledge hammer. Unconstitutional laws are passed that take away a woman’s right to choose. Fetal heartbeat detection is propelling the laws. Hear a heartbeat, restrict abortion.

States are vying for the most restrictive abortion laws. It does not seem to matter that in Roe vs Wade the time limits had to do with viability and established 24 weeks as the time factor. Apparently, now a fetus can survive even before it is conceived, according to some of the personhood laws or weeks before a woman even knows that she is pregnant. In early March, the Arkansas legislature overrode Governor Beebe’s veto to pass one of the strictest abortion laws in the country. The Human Heartbeat Protection law says that once a heartbeat is detected (around 12 weeks using an abdominal ultrasound) abortion is banned.  

After Arkansas passed this law, the North Dakota legislature surpassed Arkansas by sending the governor two new anti-abortion laws and considering two Personhood bills. One of the laws bans abortion at 6 weeks and the other prevents abortion based on genetic defects or fetal abnormality. One of the personhood measures would ban abortion completely and the other would complicate birth control, stem cell and invitro fertilization.  In fact the laws are so extreme that a group of Republican legislators are protesting the laws. Rep. Kathy Hawken (R-Fargo) is outraged by the attacks on women. She says that the focus is on the unborn while neglecting protections and help for the born. This past week, Governor Dairymple signed into law the most restrictive abortion laws in the country - essentially banning abortion from the state.

Legislators in Kansas were spurred into action and are planning a massive attack on women’s rights. A veritable omnibus of anti-woman legislation. These laws will outlaw abortion by defining life at conception, tax abortion services and providers, make doctors give false information about abortion, have no exceptions for rape or incest and will not allow sex education in schools.

Heartbeats and fetal pain laws push the accepted time limits for abortion. They use pseudo-science as their basis and have no regard for established law. These "right-to-lifers" callously make their laws based on their own belief system and show no concern for the women who are having their right to choice, privacy and health taken away. They are interested in the "unborn." But once the unborn is born many of them want to cut all health care, education and support for them. And the woman or the family are not even a part of the contemplation. There is nothing subtle about their goal -- they want to do away with the right to choose for all women.

We need to stand with the protests in Arkansas and North Dakota. We need to help JAC elect leaders at the federal level who will support and advance a pro-woman agenda.

In the last weeks of the 2012 elections, I am flummoxed at the new Mitt and the way many of my smart, educated, caring friends have eagerly bough into the latest form of Mitt.

For months Mitt ran as severely conservative.  When asked by Governor Huckabee about personhood, he declared he was in favor of and would support a personhood amendment which says life begins at conception.  From the moment the sperm hits the egg, it is a life with rights to property, life and any liberties guarateed under the 14th amendment.  During debates he proclaimed he was pro-life with no exceptions.  And then when the winds shifted, when women became the next group to help his march to the Presidency.  Now he says that he knows of no legislation against abortion that would require anything of him.  And what about personhood?  HR 358 (known as the "Let Women Die" Act), HR 3, HR 1?  Ahhh, those pesky laws passed by the House in the last session but not even heard in the Senate.  In the last few weeks, he moved in favor of abortion in the case of rape, incest or the mother's life.  How does he reconcile that with personhood?  With his earlier statements?  Oh, just trust what he is now saying to appear moderate.  How did that work out in Massachusetts where he ran as pro-choice and then vetoed stem cell legislation?

In the early days of running for office in Massachusetts, he was for Planned Parenthood.  Now he is against it - he says on Day 1 he will defund it.  Moderate Mitt, he may be, but he is not for women's health.

Now my friends tell me they think he will not overturn Roe v Wade.  Even thought he still says that he will appoint Supreme Court Justices who will overturn Roe v Wade and send it back to the States.  Currently 30 states have laws restricting abortion, in some it is impossible to have a legal abortion.  Women's health, reproductive rights and medical privacy hang in the balance.  How can anyone trust someone who has no core?  Romney will say something one day and the next day his handlers or he change it.  The only thing that is certain is that he will change his beliefs and say anything to gain power.

The Mitt that I watched though every Republican debate, listened to in many interviews and read about is not the person that I want to be the leader of America.  He is not a man with a core belief system except in the power of his dollar and in his arrogant belief that just because he says it, we should trust him.  I don't trust him to deal with China, with Iran, with our friends, with our allies, with Israel, with the UN.  Whenever he ventures into foreign policy, he offends even our friends.  He talks before he thinks and does not seem to understand the language of diplomacy.

I just hope that my friends will believe their ears and rethink the "Moderate Mitt" before voting.  Women and America need another four years of Obama, not a shape-changer in chief.

In response to recently proposed legislation aimed at stating life begins at conception and others requiring invasive testing to make sure women "know the facts" prior to having an abortion, several state lawmakers around the country have introduced bills to ensure that men are informed of importance of medical testing for erectile dysfunction and the dangers its treatment can pose, as well as legislation requiring testing prior to a vasectomy. 

On Tuesday, Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner (D-Cleveland) will introduce a bill aimed at cracking down on prescription drugs like Viagra that treat erectile dysfunction. Turner’s legislation would make men jump through certain hoops — such as psychological screenings — before they could obtain the meds. The bill follows FDA recommendations to determine the underlying causes of erectile dysfunction — but that’s certainly not the only reason Turner is putting the measure forward.

“All across the country, including in Ohio, I thought since men are certainly paying great attention to women’s health that we should definitely return the favor,” Turner told TPM. Her bill is one of several pieces of legislation offered over the past several weeks by women lawmakers eager to prove a point about the raging contraception debate.  Their bills seek to regulate men’s sexual health, from Viagra to vasectomies, just as Republican-led state governments and Congress have zeroed in on access to abortion and family planning care.

 

Turner’s bill mimics language found in Ohio’s so-called Heartbeat Bill, which passed the Ohio state House and is now pending in the Senate. The bill would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, sometimes as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Turner’s bill, she says, offers men a taste of their own medicine — it would require physicians to inform patients in writing of the risks involved in taking erectile dysfunction drugs and requires men to sign a document acknowledging the risks, just like the anti-abortion bill does.

Read more at Talking Points Memo

Mississippi voters overwhelmingly rejected the 'personhood" amendment last year; this year their Legislature will bring it up as a bill.

Voters soundly rejected the so-called "personhood amendment" with 58% of the vote in November, but anti-abortion advocates say they have hope in the Capitol.

"We're going to work with the Legislature and reach out to Mississippians," said Personhood Mississippi leader Les Riley of Pontotoc.

Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who first expressed concern over the initiative but eventually said he voted in favor of it, repeatedly has said he thought the effort would be more successful in the Legislature.

Read more at USA Today

In a radio forum organized by Personhood USA and other anti-choice organizations, four of the seven Republican presidential candidates reaffirmed their stance to promote fetal "personhood" if elected.

Four of the seven Republican presidential candidates reaffirmed their pro-life positions and pledged to protect fetal "personhood" both legislatively and constitutionally Tuesday night.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry participated in the "pro-life teletown hall" organized by Personhood USA and other pro-life groups. The call came less than a week before the Jan. 3 Iowa Republican caucus, where anti-abortion and Christian voters are expected to play a significant role. More than 40,000 largely anti-abortion listeners tuned in on the radio or called in to the forum, according to the organizers.

The candidates took questions from some of the listeners as well as from Personhood USA's CEO Keith Mason, while syndicated conservative radio host Steve Deace served as moderator of the forum, which was broadcast on his program and 88 radio stations nationwide.

Read more at Huffington Post

For the second time this week, a Nevada judge has struck down an "egg as person" attempt.  Earlier this week, he rewrote a ballot initiative to make sure voters understood the ramifications of the Personhood and how it would affect birth control, in vitro fertilization and ectopic pregnancies.  Wednesday, he declined to allow an anti-abortion petition to be circulated because it is too vague.

An anti-abortion petition is so vague that it cannot be circulated among voters, a judge ruled Wednesday.

District Judge James Wilson granted an injunction that prevents Personhood Nevada from circulating its petition.

The decision came after a 45-minute hearing during which Personhood lawyer Gary Kreep repeatedly failed to state the purpose of the petition.

At one point, he said it would prevent "discrimination against the unborn" and at another noted it might stop rationing of health care for senior citizens that could occur under "Obamacare." He added he would have to "speculate" on the petition's possible effects.

Kreep's coy responses to Wilson did not help his cause. The judge listened only briefly to arguments by American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Alexa Kolbi-Molinas before granting the injunction she and Planned Parenthood had sought.

Wilson said state law requires the purpose of a petition must be clear so that voters understand what they are signing.

Read more at Las Vegas Review-Journal

Proponents of a measure that would ban abortions by giving equal rights to fetuses have been cleared to gather signatures in California, the secretary of state's office said Friday.

The push comes on the heels of a similar effort rejected by voters in Mississippi earlier this month. Mississippi's measure would have banned abortion, and could have deterred doctors from doing in vitro fertilization. It also could have made some birth control illegal.

Union City-based California Civil Rights Foundation must collect more than 807,000 signatures by April to qualify for the November 2012 ballot, the secretary of state's office said.

Yesterday Mississippi voters defeated the proposed Personhood amendment, which would have stated a fertilized egg was a full person, outlawed abortion, and potentially banned many forms of birth control and invitro fertilization. While this is a huge victory for reproductive rights, the push is on to put the measure on the ballot in other states as well. 

If Mississippi can’t pass a Personhood amendment, can any state? Those who put major political and financial muscle behind Initiative 26 — rejected last night by an astonishing 58 percent of the state’s voters — must be second-guessing their antiabortion strategy this morning. Petition drives are underway to get life-at-fertilization measures on the ballot in several other states.

But Mississippi seemed the natural place to go — the most conservative state in the nation, which also elected Phil Bryant, the Republican lieutenant governor and co-chair of the Yes on 26 campaign, to succeed Haley Barbour as governor. This would be the man who Monday evoked the Jews of Nazi Germany “being marched into the oven,” and who said of 26′s opponents, “the evil dark side that exists in this world is taking hold. And they’re saying, what we want you to be able to do is continue to extinguish innocent life. You see, if we could do that, Satan wins.” Oppose 26, Bryant argued, and “you’re on the side of the lie. You’re on the side of taking the lives of innocent children.”

Apparently, at least some of them were also on the side of electing Phil Bryant, since he got 61 percent of the vote last night. Awkward.

Read more at Salon.com

With new legislation and amendments being brought up for votes, what does religion really say aout abortion?  A Rabbi and an Minister weigh in.

Pro-lifers are having a busy month. There is the Personhood amendment set to pass November 8th in a general election vote in Mississippi, with support from Democrats and Republicans, which ould define human life as legally beginning at fertilization. This would render all abortions and morning-after pills illegal, and, according to some, could result on bans of certain birth control pills and in-vitro fertilization.

And just a few weeks ago the House of Representatives passed H.R. 358, the Let Women Die Act 2011 which would prohibit women from receiving coverage for abortion from any insurance policy even using their own personal funds, and allow hospitals or doctors to deny women both abortion and referral even in situations where the woman's death is imminent from a pregnancy gone terribly wrong.

The Personhood movement, as well as the anti-choice movement, in general, says that they are trying to comply with divine law, as opposed to civil law, and relies upon portions of the Christian and Hebrew Bibles to make that claim. But when I decided to take a look at the texts they say inspire these “divine” laws, I couldn’t find one place that unequivocally said that life begins at conception. Befuddling! And so I decided to email two smart women who know this stuff way better than I do, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights–North America, and Reverend Chloe Breyer, executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York, to help clear up what exactly these portions do and don’t say about when life begins. Well, it looks like some Mississippians could use a Sunday school refresher course before they go using their divine interpretations to change our civil laws. Not that Americans are supposed to be using divine law to inspire civil laws anyway (See: Constitution).

Read more at RH Reality Check

Voters in Mississippi will decide on a ballot measure on Nov. 8th that could redefine what a "person" is, giving legal rights to fertilized eggs, potentially outlawing birth control and IVF.

A ballot measure going before voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8 would define the term “person” in the State Constitution to include fertilized human eggs and grant to fertilized eggs the legal rights and protections that apply to people. It is among the most extreme assaults in the push to end women’s reproductive rights.

The aim is to redefine abortion and some of the most widely used forms of contraception as murder, obliterating a woman’s right to make childbearing decisions under the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.

Besides outlawing all abortions, with no exceptions for rape or incest or when a woman’s life is in danger, and banning any contraception that may prevent implantation of a fertilized egg, including birth control pills, the amendment carries many implications, some quite serious.

Read more at The New York Times

Mississippi is set to vote on Initiative 26, or the Personhood Amendment, on November 8, which if passed could outlaw birth control and certain forms of IVF.

Dr. Freda Bush has a warm, motherly smile. In her office just outside Jackson, Miss., she smiles as she hands me a brochure that calls abortion the genocide of African-Americans, and again, sweetly, as she explains why an abortion ban should not include exceptions for rape or incest victims. The smile turns into a chuckle as she recounts what the daughter of one rape victim told her: “My momma says I’m a blessing. Now, she still don’t care for the guy who raped her! But she’s glad she let me live.”

Bush is smiling, too, in the video she made to support as restrictive an abortion ban as any state has voted on, Initiative 26, or the Personhood Amendment, which faces Mississippi voters on Nov. 8. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor, black or white, or even if your father was a rapist!” she trills. But Initiative 26, which would change the definition of “person” in the Mississippi state Constitution to “include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the equivalent thereof,” is more than just an absolute ban on abortion and a barely veiled shot at Roe v. Wade — although it is both. By its own logic, the initiative would almost certainly ban common forms of birth control like the IUD and the morning-after pill, call into question the legality of the common birth-control pill, and even open the door to investigating women who have suffered miscarriages.

Personhood amendments were once considered too radical for the mainstream pro-life movement, but in the most conservative state in the country, with an energized, church-mobilized grass roots, Mississippi could well be the first state to pass one. Initiative 26 even has the state’s top Democrats behind it.

Read more at Salon.com

After trying to repeal abortion access and gutting sex education, next on the list is birth control.

First they came for abortion, but I didn’t care because abortion was for sluts. Then they came for sex ed, but I didn’t care because the kids can learn all they need to know at home. Then they came for birth control, but… Wait a minute! Birth control? They’re coming for birth control? I need that! For nearly a decade prochoicers have been warning that abortion foes were gearing up to go after contraception, but the possibility of losing birth control was too far-out for most people to take seriously. And you know prochoicers—they’re always crying wolf. Well, wake up, sleepyheads, it’s happening.

After the Senate rejected a House attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, Republican Representative Cliff Stearns, chair of the energy and commerce subcommittee, demanded that PP turn over reams of documents going back twenty years. The official purpose was to see if PP’s abortion services, which cannot receive federal funds, are sufficiently segregated from its contraceptive and other health services, which do receive federal dollars. Since Republicans believe this separation is impossible—money is fungible, and all that, except when it goes to a church for supposedly nonsectarian social services—who knows what Stearns and Co. will decide counts as evidence?

Meanwhile, House Republicans continue their attempts to ban federal support for PP, this time through a draft bill on agency funding that would also completely defund Title X, the government’s main family-planning program. Title X, which provides family planning services to more than 5 million mostly low-income people each year, has nothing to do with abortion, which kind of proves that the “fungibility” issue is just a fig leaf. (Bill supporter and Tea Party Caucus member Denny Rehberg, a Montana Republican who opposes raising taxes on the wealthy—did I mention that he’s the twenty-fourth-richest member of Congress?—claims that zeroing out birth control funds for poor women is necessary to lower the deficit. Because what could be cheaper than babies?)

Read more at The Nation

Voters in Mississippi will be voting on a state Constitutional amendement determining "personhood" in Novermber, based on a recent court ruling.  If adopted, this will mean abortion and many types of birth control could become illegal in the state.

Mississippi voters will be allowed to vote on an initiative that seeks to reverse abortion rights by redefining the term "person" to apply at the moment of conception.

The state's supreme court refused to block the amendment, which will now appear on the general election ballot on 8 November. A majority of the justices said they could not rule on whether measures were constitutional until voters of the legislature had had a chance to pass them.

Civil rights campaigners criticised the court ruling and described the measure as "harmful to women".

Read more at The Guardian