Turn it up...bring the meme...

This is a neat little meme I picked up visiting Last Left Turn Before Hooterville, a blog run by another Valley liberal.

Quoth Alicia: "Find your 23rd blog post ever. Find the fifth sentence of that 23rd post and tell us what it is just to see how relevant it's remained."

Neat, and it's also very Discordian too. I approve. Here goes...

From MsGeek.Org, 1/14/2004:

"A barefoot-and-pregnant woman having babies every 9 months is also likely to be tied down to home and hearth, with none of the "uppity" ambitions that give these (mostly) men fits. She's also likely to die young, too."

Regrettably, this fifth sentence continues to be relevant, 1 1/2 years later. (Mas o menos) Especially with Chief Justice Roberts (gak!) in, and Judge Alito looking like a shoo-in to become Associate Justice Alito. (gak!) Excuse me while I barf....ah, that's better.

I have heard more than a few people on Daily Kos talk about how we should be inclusive of anti-choicers who are otherwise congenial to Democratic ideals. They cite the example of Senator Harry Reid, who is at once anti-choice but also pro-everything else we Dems are for, and has been effective in his leadership of Senate Dems. However, the issue of choice, of reproductive freedom and female autonomy, is a big one.

For one of my political heroines, Emma Goldman, it was a central issue. Yeah, this image is huge and the writing is a little hard to read, but this scan from a defunct LA newspaper, and I like the historical connection.



"Every woman should have the right to say whether she shall have a child or not. Motherhood should be a voluntary act; not the act of a slave." -- from the article.

Motherhood should be a voluntary act. However, if you are poor in America, particularly poor in America and in a Red State, Roe v. Wade might as well be already struck down. Gabriela Flores went to jail for four months after causing a miscarriage by ingesting misoprostol, a cancer drug related to RU-486. South Carolina has laws against "illegal abortions." Ostensibly the law was passed to punish back-alley abortionists. However, it was in this case used as a club to beat down a poor, undocumented immigrant. Because a legal abortion at her stage of pregnancy was illegal in the state of South Carolina, she would have to travel to Charlotte, North Carolina, three hours away from where she lived, and pay $700 for the procedure. $700 which is like $7 Million for a poor woman with no health insurance and a $150/week gross salary. She was sprung from jail, but the charges are still current, and she could be put back in jail if convicted.

This is happening right here, right now, in America. WAKE THE FUCK UP, grrls! Alito -- or should I say Scalito because he and Scalia are two of a kind -- is an UNACCEPTABLE choice to sit in the same chair as the retiring Justice O'Connor. He is too extreme. He is an "extraordinary circumstance" and should have the shit filibustered out of him. And every other candidate for the court should be filibustered until an acceptable moderate candidate is proposed. Hey, the longer we drag this out, the longer O'Connor continues to sit on the court. If the GOoPers pull their "nuclear option" bullshit, the public will not be with them. The bastards will all be outtahere come 2006 anyway, Goddess willing.