The Guttmacher Institute has released a new report:

The recession has put many women in an untenable situation. They want to avoid unintended pregnancies more than ever, but are having trouble affording the contraceptive services they need to do so," says Dr. Sharon Camp, Guttmacher president and CEO. "The very providers these women turn to in times of crisis are themselves struggling to make ends meet. It is time to bolster the nation's family planning system to help women avoid unintended pregnancies and the unplanned births and abortions that would result."

The nation's publicly funded family planning centers provide contraceptive services and related health screenings to women across a broad socioeconomic spectrum, and these centers are the primary safety-net providers of these services to economically disadvantaged women. Compared with Americans overall, women of reproductive age are more likely to lack health insurance, and lower income and younger women (those 29 and younger)-who are already at the greatest risk for unintended pregnancy-are even less likely to be insured.

Why the hell aren't Stupak, Pitts, Vitter, and Nelson sponsoring amendments to solve this problem?

Recession Puts Strain On Family Planning Centers As Demand Rises And Resources Shrink [Guttmacher Institute]

The undercover video, organized by the group Live Action, of which Lila Rose is president, and posted on Michelle Malkin's blog, purports to catch Planned Parenthood employees in a variety of lies. Below, we break down some of Live Action's claims.

Claim 1: Planned Parenthood lied about the distinction between a fetus and a baby.

Abby Johnson, the Planned Parenthood director-turned-anti-abortion activist, says, "Planned Parenthood really tries to instill in their employees and the women that are coming in for abortions that this is not a baby." Obviously, the fetus/baby distinction is a key part of the abortion debate. A Planned Parenthood doctor does appear to muddy the waters a bit when he says on camera that a fetus becomes a baby "when you're like seven months pregnant or so. Six, seven months pregnant." This does indeed sound arbitrary and confusing. Another Planned Parenthood employee gives a better response:

A fetus is what's in the uterus right now. That's not a baby. A baby is what's born at forty weeks.

No matter what you believe about abortion, "fetus" is the correct medical term for the developmental stage between embryo and birth. If anti-abortion activists don't want to use it, that's up to them — but it's not a lie.

Claim 2: Planned Parenthood misled women about the risks of abortion.

The video shows the Planned Parenthood doctor telling his patient that an abortion at around ten weeks is "very, very safe. Safer than having a baby, actually." Michelle Malkin calls this "abortion-first 'counseling' by a "ghoulish abortionist." Here's the most recent data: in 2002, the CDC recorded 9 deaths out of 845,573 abortions. That's a little over 1 in 100,000. Also in 2002, the CDC recorded 8.9 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births. So, at least in 2002, carrying a child to term was about 9 times more dangerous than having an abortion. Of course, we might be able to reduce maternal mortality if we implemented the "Demcare" Michelle Malkin hates so much. But for now, the idea that abortion is safer than having a baby isn't "abortion-first" rhetoric — it's the truth.

Claim 3: Abortion is an industry designed to help organizations like Planned Parenthood make money.

In the video, Abby Johnson says Planned Parenthood is "really trying to increase their abortion numbers because that is the most lucrative part of their business." This claim is common — back in 2008, an ad for Republican Senate contender Steve Pearce called Planned Parenthood "a billion-dollar abortion business." Here's what FactCheck.org has to say about that:

That's misleading. Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit organization with gross revenues of nearly a billion dollars, but abortions account for a small fraction of the services it provides – 3 percent in 2006, according to the group's annual report.

It's important to reiterate that Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit, so nobody's getting rich off the abortions it provides. And especially in the wake of Dr. Tiller's murder, you'd have to be crazy to become an abortion provider for the money. The occupation isn't particularly lucrative, especially given the constant risk of social stigma, property damage, psychological trauma from dealing with protesters, and even death. But of course, Lila Rose and Michelle Malkin aren't interested in portraying the difficulties faced by those who continue to offer women reproductive choices despite mounting obstacles. They're interested in demonizing those people — even if they have to stretch the truth to do it.

Predators Of Planned Parenthood, Pt. 99,997 [Michelle Malkin]

Although nothing about the truck — which is used to advertise for a strip club — is illegal, some commissioners fear that it could cause accidents. • In 2005, Melanie Dawn Williams went into premature labor and ran a red light on the way to the hospital. Two police officers chased after her, followed her into the hospital, and tackled her in the emergency room. The over-zealous cops then dragged her outside, where they proceeded to handcuff her. Eventually a nurse found her, and brought her back in for medical care. Williams now says she may sue for unlawful arrest. •  A British woman has received a £75 fine for littering after she was caught throwing bread to ducks. "I do not intend to pay the fine," she said. "I'm going to fight this to the end." •  A 56-year-old Oregon man has been charged with making threatening calls to a local Planned Parenthood. Gregory Paul Freeman reportedly threatened to blow up the clinic. They also received a voice message that said: "Uh, please go ahead and dial the, uh, United States of America, because I'm going to burn your abortion clinic down because you are a baby killer and you hate babies." •  In the past year the pay gap between men and women in Britain has fallen - but only by 1%. There still remains a 16.4% gap in the U.K. If improvement continues at this rate, it will be 17 years before women receive equal pay. •  The Maryland university system has opted not to police porn on college campuses. They voted unanimously to reject the policy, on the grounds that it would hinder free speech and suck up too much funding. • Former CIA agent Valerie Plame lost her appeal to declassify part of her memoir Fair Game. Plame and her publisher sued the CIA in 2007 to block the agency from blacking out the dates she worked there, but the appeals court ruled that, "Because Ms. Wilson is obligated by a secrecy agreement with the CIA not to disclose information, the district court correctly ruled." • Weston General Hospital in England has banned pregnant women with a BMI of more than 34 from giving birth at the hospital, forcing them to travel 20 miles to the nearest maternity ward. The hospital claims it's not equipped to handle complicated births. "Our foremost concern is for the safety of mothers who deliver here and their babies," said a spokesman. "Mothers with a high BMI are at increased risk in labour of bleeding, needing an instrumental delivery or complications, such as the baby's shoulder becoming trapped behind the pubic bone." • French art expert Pascal Cotte analyzed the Mona Lisa with a special camera and found she used to have eyebrows and a wider smile. He says da Vinci painted some details on top of a glaze that was meant to make the portrait look 3-D. "That could explain why the eyebrows have disappeared – they have faded because of chemical reactions or they have been cleaned off," said Cotte. • University of Haifa researcher found that the hormone oxytocin, which affects trust, empathy and generosity, also affects opposite behaviors, like jealousy and gloating. "Subsequent to these findings, we assume that the hormone is an overall trigger for social sentiments: when the person's association is positive, oxytocin bolsters pro-social behaviors; when the association is negative, the hormone increases negative sentiments," said lead researcher Simone Shamay-Tsoory. • A British woman saw a suspicious message pop up on her husband's computer so she pretended to be a 14-year-old schoolgirl and contacted him on the internet from another computer in their house. He asked her to meet for sex and "used a webcam to film himself carrying out acts of indecency," which she could see on her screen in the other room. He was found guilty of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child and making and possessing illegal images, and his wife left him. •

The evening seemed to focus on how we talk about feminism, perhaps because it's what all three panelists (that's not them in the pic) do in their jobs, but also because issues of language and rhetoric are a really important part of being a feminist in the larger world. The conversation touched on blog comments — which all three agreed were like a more public version of 1970s consciousness-raising groups — before zeroing in on the word "feminist" itself. Valenti said she embraced the word, and that there was no point in picking another, less loaded term because "I think any word you use to talk about women's rights is going to become a dirty word." Feldt concurred: "the first thing people do to you when they want to diminish you is they diminish you with language."

Unfortunately, the panelists seemed to feel that a successful diminution had occurred in the linguistic fight between words "pro-choice" and "pro-life." Harris said she had stopped using the term "pro-choice" in writing because "we lost that rhetorical war" — because anti-abortion advocates had successfully cast "life" as representing the moral high ground, and "choice" as somehow frivolous. I get what she was saying — I, in fact, stopped using "pro-life" in writing a while ago, in response to a consciousness-raising comment on this blog, no less. But I still use "pro-choice," because even though the opposition tries to frame the term as superficial — like choosing between different flavors of gum — I think it still stands powerfully for a woman's right to self-determination and autonomy. And I think that any substitute term — Harris mentioned "pro-abortion rights" and "pro-reproductive rights" — will be demonized just as "pro-choice" has been. To paraphrase Valenti, any word you use to talk about a woman's control over her own body is going to become, for some people, a dirty word.

In some ways, the highlight of the evening for me was when a college student asked how she could explain her views to her non-feminist friends without "coming off as a caricature of myself." I'm a lot older than her, and this is something I still struggle with. It's also something I feel a little bit guilty about — now that I'm a professional feminist, maybe I shouldn't be worrying about how I come off. But Valenti took her question seriously, saying it was actually one she was asked all the time. She told the young woman that "pop culture is a great entry point for these conversations," and she's right — as a shared language, movies and TV and even gossip can be a way not only for feminists to start a conversation with not-yet-feminists, but for young people still experimenting with feminism to hone their views. When I first started blogging, I wrote a lot about Kate Moss and the Olsen twins, and although most of what I wrote looks sophomoric now (and sometimes, unfortunately, mean), it was a way for me to get comfortable having opinions and making them public. I still don't like making a harsh distinction between "fluffy" and "serious" subjects, and I think Valenti's right that an ostensibly superficial conversation about some celebrity or movie can actually lead into a real discussion of values.

Harris, too, had a suggestion for the student — "be yourself." She apologized for the cheesiness of her tip, but she had a good point — teaching your friends about feminism can be as much about modeling behavior as it is about explicitly explaining your political views. Just by admitting that you're mad when you're mad, and not saying you agree when you don't, and refusing to body-snark on yourself and other women, and generally standing up for what you know is right, whether it involves women or not, you can show everyone you know that (to quote a T-shirt Valenti name-checks in Full Frontal Feminism) "this is what a feminist looks like" — and you'll make feminism look pretty good. In fact, even though I still have it from time to time, I do think the worry about looking like "a caricature" comes from feminism's enemies, from people who think a woman criticizing anything is cartoonish and shrill. For these people, just as "feminism" and "pro-choice" are dirty words, speaking up may be a dirty act, no matter how you do it. But for, I hope, a larger number of people, women and men, speaking up is just something they aren't familiar with yet, something they haven't quite learned to do. I hope the college student who so handily voiced my worries last night keeps on showing them how.

Planned Parenthood NYC Action Fund [Official Site]

The reader, who asked that we keep her anonymous, wrote (link ours):

I read your story and I live in College Station. I had an abortion at the Bryan Planned Parenthood location in July and she was my "counselor"....meaning she took me in the little office, I told her I was pregnant and wanted an abortion and she helped me pick which method (the pill...I was about 4.5 weeks) and schedule my appointment. This PP only does abortions on Saturdays with a doctor that comes in from Houston. She was there both the Saturday I was given the pill and the next Saturday when I had to come in for my follow-up ultrasound, so I'm not exactly sure how she could have thought an abortion meant you were going to shit rainbows. I can honestly say I am completely shocked. I was 21 and an atheist, and I didn't have any moral conflict about what I was going to do and I told her that. She was very understanding and matter-of-fact. I even started to cry (mostly because I was worried about what my boyfriend would say) and she comforted me. Her office was covered in pro-choice bumper stickers and buttons, and she didn't push the issue when she asked if I wanted to know about alternative choices. I also saw year about two years ago for birth control, so she has at least been there that long.

The most striking part of the e-mail is its mention of ultrasound — Johnson said she changed her position on pregnancy termination after seeing such an ultrasound, but our tipster isn't the only one to point out that this sounds a little implausible. Writing at Double X, Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte says,

Johnson's story fits way too neatly into a bunch of easily disproven anti-choice myths, the main one being that all it takes is one glance at an ultrasound to cause someone to "realize" that hey! abortion removes a fetus from your uterus. [...] After all, your average person in the United States has seen probably hundreds of sonograms in their lives, and most of them show a fetus at gestational age well beyond the point that most women get elective abortions. If you compare the ultrasound taken prior to an elective abortion, the feeling is actually one of being underwhelmed, because there's not much there compared to the ones we're used to seeing. The anti-choice sentimental devices rely therefore on ignorance more than illumination-their own mistaken understanding of what goes on in an abortion clinic.

While the story Johnson is now telling does seem like a well-crafted anti-abortion fable, it doesn't ultimately matter so much what caused Johnson to change her mind about reproductive rights (though it is worthwhile to note, as Broadsheet's Lynn Harris does, that many women change their minds in the other direction every day). What does matter is whether she's now slandering Planned Parenthood. Marcotte thinks she may be. She writes, "Johnson's accusation-that her branch was trying to discourage contraception to up the number of abortions-fits into a long-standing, demonstrably false anti-choice myth about Planned Parenthood, which is that they are a profit-making business that makes most of its money off abortion." This accusation was the most disturbing thing about Johnson's story, and some speculated that Planned Parenthood's restraining order against Johnson was a desperate attempt to keep such mercenary practices under wraps. But as Marcotte points out, Broadsheet's Tracy Clark-Flory looked at the restraining order, and found that it was issued pretty much for exactly the reasons we guessed: namely, a doctor was at risk.

According to Clark-Flory, the order accuses Johnson of copying confidential files after Planned Parenthood initiated a performance review of her, and of passing personal information — including home address — about an abortion provider to the anti-choice group Coalition for Life. It doesn't sound like Planned Parenthood is trying to silence a turncoat with inside information about its evil schemes. Instead, the organization appears to be protecting its employees from the threat of harassment — or, in the wake of abortion provider George Tiller's murder, worse.

Questions about the ultrasound story aside (Clark-Flory, too, wonders "How many pamphlets and protest signs displaying extremely graphic images (far more so than an ultrasound) must have been shoved in her face over the years?"), the reasons for Johnson's decision to leave Planned Parenthood aren't for us to judge. But as her public profile rises — Clark-Flory writes that she's soon to appear on The O'Reilly Factor — many people will take her for an authority on the inner workings of Planned Parenthood. If Johnson really is guilty of both misrepresenting Planned Parenthood's tactics and leaking confidential information (she denies the latter), then she not only doesn't deserve to speak for her former organization, but she's not a valid advocate for the anti-abortion position. Principled anti-abortion advocates should be just as skeptical as pro-choicers are of Johnson's story — if they stand for morality, they shouldn't want a liar on their side.

Former Planned Parenthood Director Telling Fishy Story [Double X]
The Conversion Of A Pro-Choice Warrior [Broadsheet]
"I Used To Call Myself Pro-Life" [Broadsheet]

Feeling an inevitable attack from Joy Behar's progressive lips coming on, Elisabeth backpedaled a bit, saying the decision is "never an easy one, mark my words."

Joy did have something to say - it just wasn't what Elisabeth was expecting.

For some people, believe it or not, Elisabeth, it is a very easy decision. I know that's hard to understand, but there are people who do not think anything of it.

Speaking from personal experience, that's true. At the same time, just because someone doesn't get all precious about terminating a pregnancy doesn't mean that she did it for "superficial reasons". Or that she should be forced to look at pictures of, well, anything.

Johnson says she changed her mind about abortion after watching an ultrasound of the procedure. "I just thought I can't do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that's it," she told KBTX's Ashlea Sigman. However, she also says she was disturbed by a change in Planned Parenthood's business model. She claims she was pressed to get more "abortions in the door" because "the money wasn't in family planning, the money wasn't in prevention, the money was in abortion." She's now a supporter of the anti-abortion group Coalition for Life, and Planned Parenthood has filed a restraining order against both Johnson and the Coalition. The order doesn't forbid Johnson from praying or protesting on the premises, but it does say that "Planned Parenthood would be irreparably harmed by the disclosure of certain information."

Opponents of abortion — at least, those who comment on Breitbart.tv — see the restraining order as "cultish" behavior and evidence that Planned Parenthood is guilty of malfeasance. One says, "It's going to hurt their reputation if she talks? Well, isn't that a damning statement in & of itself?" The allegation that Planned Parenthood was trying to do more abortions just for the money is disturbing, and I hope it isn't true. But Planned Parenthood wouldn't have to be guilty of anything so mercenary for Johnson to be able to harm it — she could, for instance, disclose details about patients or donors that would enable anti-abortion activists to harass them, not only causing Planned Parenthood's donation base to shrink but also scaring women away from exercising their reproductive rights. If I was a patient at Planned Parenthood, I would want to know that, should the director of the facility have a "change of heart," my confidentiality would still be protected.

Johnson says that since leaving Planned Parenthood, "I feel so pure in heart. I don't have this guilt, I don't have this burden on me anymore that's how I know this conversion was a spiritual conversion." She's entitled to her opinion, and to live her life as she sees fit. But she's one person, and her story doesn't prove, as one conservative blog claims, that the country is turning against abortion because "improved imaging techniques have verified the humanity of gestating life." Nor does everyone who does what she once did live with a constant sense of guilt or "burden." Many people feel "pure in heart" through supporting reproductive freedom, not protesting against it, and while Johnson deserves the right to speak for herself, she doesn't speak for everybody.

Planned Parenthood Leader Resigns After Watching Ultrasound Of Abortion Procedure [Breitbart.tv]
Planned Parenthood Director Leaves, Has Change Of Heart [KBTX]

• Despite earlier reports, Cheyvonne Molino, a woman who knows Garrido and the girls says they never acted robotically and didn't wear prairie dresses. • President Obama and Megan Fox are both experts at packaging sound-bites according to The Huffington Post because they each have made similar statements in different interviews. Yesterday when asked about claims that those who dislike him are racist, Obama told both George Stephanopoulos and John King basically, "Are there some people who don't like me because of my race? I'm sure there are." In a Rolling Stone interview Fox talked about her "powerful, confident vagina," and she told Cosmopolitan, "Women hold the power because we have the vaginas. If you're in a heterosexual relationship and you're a female, you win." Maybe their respective thoughts on racism and vaginas are just very consistent. • Between 14 and 23 percent of pregnant women experience a depressive disorder during pregnancy and 13 percent took anti-depressants in 2003. According to a new study short-term neonatal irritability and neurobehavioral changes were linked to maternal depression and anti-depressant treatment. • In the video at the link, a local Florida station, reports that parents are complaining about billboards in 16 cities that say "sex without consent is rape" that are paid for with federal tax money because the ads force them to discuss sexual violence with their children. • Many skin care products and cosmetics contain alcohol and pork products. Aside from being gross, this means Muslim women who keep Halal can't use them. After converting to Islam and finding few cosmetics options for Muslim women, a former makeup created OnePure, a cosmetics line approved and certified by the Malaysian Islamic Authority. • An AP investigation found that baby formula companies are aggressively promoting formula over breast-feeding in Vietnam. Formula companies have paid doctors to push their products and advertised formula for babies between six and 12 months even though Vietnam's law prohibits advertising formula for children under age one. • In a New York Times profile, Beth Kaplan, the president of GNC says, "I need to be part of a big organization, and my kids get it. I was at Bath & Body Works when my father died, and I struggled with being away from home. I resigned and thought my boys would be thrilled. My younger son, who was 8, was so excited that he jumped into my arms. My older son said, 'But Mommy, I really liked that job.'" • Sixty-eight of the 72 known people 110 and older are female, even though there are more boys than girls born each year. Part of the reason may be that men are five times more likely than women to die by firearms, men are more susceptible to fatal conditions like cancer and heart disease, and men are more likely to ignore emotional problems and are nine times more likely to commit suicide between the ages of 75 and 79. • According to government estimates more than 16 million Japanese women, or one quarter of the country's female population, are 65 or older. The country is anticipating a shortage of workers as the population ages. • The Australian Fair Work Ombusdman's office has found that women are being fired for taking maternity leave and being told to quit if they can't juggle work and family. In one case, a woman saw her position being advertised in the newspaper eight months into her maternity leave and was told she couldn't come back. In another case a woman's boss shifted her from five eight-hour days to four 10-hour days so she couldn't drop her kids off at day care, and told her to quit if she didn't like it. • The Pasco, Washington planning commission voted down a proposal to allow a Planned Parenthood in town because they say it would attract too many protesters. Anna Franks, president of Planned Parenthood of Central Washington says the decision was political: "What we have here are protesters protesting against Planned Parenthood that there may be protesters at our clinic." The county has one of the highest teen pregnancy and STD rates in the state. •

Richards - the daughter of the late Texas governor Ann Richards, and the former deputy chief of staff to Nancy Pelosi - is also the head of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, its advocacy and political arm. She spoke with Doree Shafrir about grassroots organizing, why it's important to have moderate Republicans in Congress, and how Planned Parenthood helps women worldwide.

You've had a lot of jobs. Why did you want to work for Planned Parenthood?
I went to Planned Parenthood in college as a patient. I had been on a board of Planned Parenthood. I have two daughters. In some ways it just was the right thing to do. I used to organize low-wage women in a lot of industries, and they're our clients in a lot of Planned Parenthoods and so it's a part of the big picture of my work for all my life. Planned Parenthood Federation of America is this incredible organization that is a legacy organization – it's 92 years old – and yet, as relevant today as it was when Margaret Sanger started it. And the potential to sort of put my energy into this is very exciting.

So what are some of the things that you wanted to do when you started?
Well, I knew that there was a real interest by the organization in trying to kind of leap forward, and think about how do we look and feel and who do we work with and who are our patients today and who our patients were. I didn't come in with some preconceived notion of what that looked like, it's just that I knew there was some work we needed to do. And I think the other side of it was, we'd been kind of taking a beating for a long time from the extreme right. And I think they had been, to some extent, in the driver's seat about defining who we were and what we do, and it was time for us to really go back on the offense and talk about the important healthcare we provide, the education we provide, and sort of what we are as a movement. So I just finished three years, and now we're in this moment in the country where there really is an opportunity to both expand what we do as a service provider but also rebuild a movement. So it's turned out to be a good time.

You started in February of '06. So, obviously George Bush was still in office. What were some of the things that Planned Parenthood did to help Obama get elected?
When I first came in, in sort of preparation for '08, the Action Fund worked a lot of governor's races. For women, and for women's healthcare and for young people, actually, a lot of the decisions that get made happen in the state legislatures and the governors' [offices]. I thought it was really important to be able to demonstrate that you can be pro-choice and pro-Planned Parenthood and get elected governor in the heartland of the country. The Action Fund worked with governors' races in Iowa and Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin – to really say, these are states where it's about as middle-of-the-country as you can get. And in fact we were successful in electing folks and really, I think, the folks that were elected ran on the fact they were for women's health and for women's life.

So that kind of led into the '08 election, which was the Action Fund's opportunity to focus particularly on women voters, because there's a lot of independent women voters who very much support Planned Parenthood for a whole host of reasons – not very political reasons, just that's where they went for healthcare. It was called the Million Strong Campaign, and the idea was to try to target one million women voters, and make sure that they were registered and informed about the presidential election and that they voted. So in addition to that, the Action Fund focused on these voters, and we did a lot of mobilization on the ground level in our states. Because the incredible thing about Planned Parenthood is we're in every state. We're not just in blue states or just red states or just in in-between states. We're everywhere. And our folks really rose to the occasion.

What does grass roots mobilization entail?
There's definitely a lot of door-to-door, I knocked doors in a lot of states, and a lot of Action Fund folks did. Many of them had never really taken part in that kind of electoral activity. The most important work you can do as a grassroots organizer or advocate is have a face-to-face conversation. Like, phoning is fine, mail is fine, internet is fine, but it's literally those conversations that really influence whether people vote and how they vote. And the great thing is since New York wasn't a contested state, a lot of folks bused in from New York to Pennsylvania, a lot of folks from Massachusetts who went to New Hampshire. So it was really an opportunity for everybody to literally be on the ground. We did a lot of volunteer phone-banking, because the technology now is amazing. You can really focus on the folks that you need to talk to. Obviously, it was an incredibly exciting election both in the Action Fund and across the country because in the amount of just volunteerism and people feeling like they had some stake in the outcome. It's been a long time.

I was reading a profile of you in the Washington Post from probably two or three years ago, and one thing that struck me about it was, you had spoken to a group of women, and they were saying that they never really thought about choice as the pivotal issue for them when they were voting. They were like, "Well, we always end up voting for the pro-choice candidate, but it's not my issue." It struck me that that is an issue that that's a pivotal issue for the anti-choice people.
Right. It's kind of like all they talk about.

So how do you then turn that into a pivotal issue for women?
Well, it's funny. Usually if a candidate's anti-choice, there's a whole lot of other things that they are as well. So for example with John McCain, it wasn't simply that he was anti-choice, but that he had never supported family planning, he wasn't supportive of comprehensive sex education for young people, a whole lot of other things we worked on. In some instances, it's sort of the whole package. Being anti-choice just tells you a lot about a candidate, even if that isn't the only issue you vote. So I think it's kind of filling in the whole picture. If someone is that out of touch about women's health and women's rights, then they're probably not gonna be that good on other issues you care about.

But what about anti-choice Democrats?
Obviously they've always existed. But I'd say that, actually, if you look at the last election, that the vast majority of new members of Congress that were elected in the Democratic Party, were pro-choice. And the only thing that's sort of an unfortunate outcome about all this, and I think particularly in that way in an election that was such a sweep, is that pro-choice Republicans in Congress largely have been defeated now. If they were in a swing district, a more moderate district, and they were moderates, then the Democratic sweep kind of took them out of office. So I think if there were a place where there's a real opportunity to rebuild is with Republicans who are what I think of as old-style Republicans.

Like the Maine senators.
Exactly. Certainly, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Mark Kirk in Illinois. There are some Republican Congress people from Connecticut who were pro-choice. And I think it's, you can see, I think there's a real struggle within the Republican party now. You look at these town hall meetings and you think, "Oh my god, is that how you want to be defined? This is your party?" I'm very hopeful that there's this kind of emergent, moderate Republican strain. You see it written about all the time—folks are saying, "We don't want to be a party of only one hard-right point of view on women's rights."

Would you say that that's one of the major challenges the organization is facing now that Obama is in the White House?
It's definitely an opportunity. To me, it's an opportunity to say, women's health shouldn't be a political issue. It should be everybody's issue. So I think there's a way to try to take it out of that intense political realm and say actually if you care about women's health, women's well being, there's a whole host of things you can work on with Planned Parenthood. I'm actually excited because some ex-members of Congress, Republican members of Congress who are pro-choice, are now working with the Action Fund on trying to re-establish a pro-Choice Republican base in America. I think there's a real appetite for that. And particularly, look: women who are elected to office, they in particular understand, this is a women's health issue, it shouldn't be a partisan issue. I think the party is gonna have to do some sorting out here about whether they want to be a big tent again.

You just wrote on the Huffington Post about Bob McDonnell. And that he's a really viable candidate.
He is. But you know, it's so interesting. Obviously he's running for governor of Virginia, and has kind of made his entire career out of fighting against women's rights. Certainly against choice. And yet, now that he's running in this big high-stakes, high-profile election, he's trying to completely distance himself from that, and say, "This election shouldn't be about social issues, it should be about economic issues." Meanwhile, he hasn't done anything on economic issues his entire career. It's all been about trying to restrict access to abortion. You know, he doesn't even support family planning. So it's a question of whether or not women and other folks in Virginia are actually going to learn enough about Bob McDonnell to understand how far off to the right he is on some pretty basic issues.


What a danger.
Yeah. But you know, that's why these governors' races are really important, because that's where so many decisions get made about access to health care, about what's taught at schools, about family planning.

What do you think some of the misconceptions people have about Planned Parenthood are?
Well, the biggest misunderstanding about Planned Parenthood is literally who we are and what we do. We are the largest reproductive healthcare provider in the country, we see about three million patients through our clinics every year, and the vast majority of them are low-income, and mainly young. We're kind of the entry point for a lot of women in this country, where they first go to get counseling about family planning and those kinds of things. Ninety-seven percent of our work is preventive care—contraception, STI testing and treatment. We do cervical cancer screenings, we do breast exams. Last year we did 1.3 million cervical cancer screenings as an example. The thing that's great about a Planned Parenthood clinic is that a woman may come in because she really needs birth control, she knows she needs to take care of her birth control, but she may not have the money or just the inclination to get the rest of the preventive care she needs. So the great thing is, once you go to Planned Parenthood, she can go ahead and get her cervical cancer screening, her breast cancer screening. And that's actually how we catch a lot of sort of pre-cancerous situations for women who might otherwise say, "Well, I can't afford that," or "I'm not gonna do that now."

And payment is on a sliding scale.
Yes. It really varies state to state, because each state is a little bit different in terms of even how states fund family planning services. We're always looking to expand more into areas where there's the most unmet need. The other thing, when you say, what are the most common misconceptions, or maybe things that people don't know, is we're the largest sex-educator in America. So we work with thousands of young people who are trained at Planned Parenthood to work with their peers and teach them about safe sex, and prevention, about getting tested for STDs. And for me, that's some of the most exciting work we're doing. We're really trying to change healthcare for this next generation of young people in America.

Were there laws or regulations passed during the Bush administration that you are actively trying to overturn?
There were a lot of things done during those eight years. It wasn't a high point for women's healthcare, that's for sure.

Or sex ed.
Or sex ed, no. One of the things most representative of this shift and why it was so important to elect a new president is the Global Gag Rule, which had prevented funding for a number of family planning providers around the world. It was overturned, I think, the third day in office by President Obama. And that has implications internationally, for obviously just millions of women. Then we've been really pleased that this president has taken a totally different approach to sex education, which is that we should teach abstinence, absolutely, but you've also got to teach comprehensive sex education. During the last few years, we've seen this country with the highest teen pregnancy rate in the Western industrialized world, and we have now one in four teenage girls in America has a sexually transmitted infection. So this is like, it's not just a theoretical problem, it's a healthcare problem. I'm excited that this president, he doesn't just talk the talk, he actually is making things happen.

And how are you guys involved in the current healthcare reform debate?
Like 24/7. I mean, this is the biggest opportunity for the women that not only that we see, but that we would like to see or that we'd like to be able to get affordable health insurance, to finally get covered in this country. So we've been focused on two things. One is just to make sure that reproductive healthcare is part of the healthcare package – and the second is that women's healthcare providers are part of whatever exchange is developed. If a woman gets an insurance card, she can take it to any family planning clinic, she can take it to any community health provider, and she can get contraception.

What states right now are sort of turning back the clock, in terms of family planning…? The ones that are not progressive, that are becoming less progressive, that you're working on.
Well, there's a couple of states that we're just constantly suing, where there's just always litigation, and you'd have to say the top of the list are South Dakota and Kansas. So we just won a really important case in South Dakota actually, about the South Dakota law that had been passed about instructing doctors what they had to tell women who came to them seeking an abortion, and like 90 percent of this was struck down. That was a really important case within the state of South Dakota, but it was also important in principle—you can't have state legislatures getting in between doctors and their patients, and telling doctors what they have to say to their patients.

And then Kansas as you know has just been a really difficult place for women and for women's health. I mean, most people know of it because of Dr. Tiller's assassination, but it for many years, has just been a place where it's been really tough for women to access all kind of reproductive healthcare.

Is there a legacy of your mom you carry with you?
It's interesting, it was her birthday September 1st, so I've been thinking about her this week. I just dropped my daughter off at college, and I was thinking, God, I wish mom had been here, because she was really many things, and I'm sure people have their own feeling about Ann Richards as they have certain memories about her. But women's rights—for her, that's it. That was the most fundamental issue, and even though she worked with a million things, she cared so much about women individually taking care of themselves, whether it was taking care of their health or taking care of their finances, or going to school. Right before she died, she opened The Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, a public junior high and high school in Austin, Texas. ‘Cause for her, she just wanted women to keep moving forward. And honestly, she got more radical, the older she got. I just think she became – and maybe because, you know, you keep doing this work, and at some point, you think, "God, are things are going to change?" – I think that was probably a radical thing for her. I think after she got out of office, everyone wanted her to come and campaign for them. I don't care if you lived in Montana, Nebraska, or Oregon or whatever, and she only had one requirement of the folks she would go and campaign for, and that is you had to be 100 percent pro-choice. And if you weren't, that was it, she was moving on. So she really lived her beliefs. So it's wonderful to be at Planned Parenthood doing the work that she did all her life and felt so strongly about.

And it must have been challenging for her in Texas.
Yeah, you know, it was funny about Texas, she was always too liberal for Texas. There was no way to get around it. I always feel like her election was this one progressive moment in Texas where the stars and the moon and everything aligned. A day earlier or a day later, it might not have happened. But they still continued to like her, even after George Bush beat her. It's just that she was too progressive, which I hate to say. I think the state's kind of moving in the right direction. But she was always just a little bit out in front of where the electorate was.

Who are some of the women in the next generation that, you know, you see as kind of coming up?
Well, I guess I'd say rather than specific names, I would say I spend a lot of my time here working with teens and young people that are the next generation. So we're reaching pretty much down into the folks that are, to me, the future of Planned Parenthood, not only patients but leadership, volunteers, employees. And I see at least in the area we work in, I'm just blown away by the young people I meet, who even at a very young age, are asserting their responsibilities for their peers. I was just in New Mexico, which has a very high teen pregnancy rate. It's a wonderful state, but you know, there's a lot of poverty. And at the dinner I went to, we were awarding this group of really young women in their high school who had taken it upon themselves to become sort of peer educators, because they were really worried about the teen pregnancy rate in their high school. And that year there was not a single teen pregnancy in that high school. And these young women, they didn't wait to ask for permission. They saw this problem, and they took ownership, and I see that all over the place. We just brought two underage teenagers to Capitol Hill to lobby on healthcare needs and getting sex education. We got meetings with members of Congress we've never seen before, because you bring a young person from their district, folks are gonna make time in the schedule. And many of these kids had never been out of their home city, much less gone to Washington, and to see them in three days go from getting off the plane to lobbying a member of Congress, it was pretty intense.

Who are some of your mentors? You talked about your mom, but who were some of your mentors as you were coming up in the movement?
Well, I guess definitely Mom had the most influence on me, and largely because she just believed you just had to get out there and do stuff. I think that folks, though, who influenced me the most were the women I worked with when I started as a union organizer back when I got out of college. I worked with garment workers around the border and I worked with hotel workers in New Orleans, and these were women who – despite enormous odds, lack of income, many of them juggling being a single parent – they just got out there, and at that point we were organizing for healthcare coverage and better wages, and they risked everything, and they were just incredible. And many of those women I remember from every town I ever worked at, so I guess that's who I would say were my mentors. If there was one sort of people that I think of when I think about doing this work every day, it's about those women that I worked with in the early years, and seeing their courage, their belief that they were doing this even if never benefited them but for their kids or for their community.

Who are the female politicians you've been following?
The great thing is now there's a whole bunch, though I will say I was just with Barbara Mikulski, who's now the dean of women in the Senate. So she's seen it all, right? She was back there in the days when she was it. And she just did a really important thing for women—women all across America should be thanking Mikulski, because she got a women's healthcare amendment into the healthcare reform bill. So I'm particularly fond of Barbara. But there's also a lot of up-and-comers. One colleague, Donna Edwards, who's a new Congresswoman from Maryland, who everyone should watch. She came to Congress for a purpose. She's wonderful. Chellie Pingree, from Maine, also a new member of Congress who's really great. These are women who have already lived a life and done a lot of great progressive organizing and advocacy and now have chosen to go to Congress to sort of continue that work. So they're really grounded. Jan Schakowsky, who I just have enormous respect for, who started out as a mom who was fighting for food safety in Chicago, now is one of the leading members of the United States Congress. And I can't close without mentioning m old boss, Speaker Pelosi, who unbelievably sort of leads what is very much the ultimate sort of old boys' network. And I have enormous respect for her, and you know I think you see with Nancy, much like I think you saw with now-Secretary of State Clinton, the unbelievable bias of the media against women in politics. And the fact that she continues to hold her own, and I think really forward progressive values and hold that Caucus together – amazes me.

Obviously giving money is always welcome, but what are some of the other ways that women can get involved in Planned Parenthood?
Well, I think that absolutely getting involved politically is critical. And the great thing again is that even if you live in a state that's relatively progressive, there are so many ways now to get involved in affecting elections in other places, even if it's doing volunteer phone-banking, traveling to help, you know, talk to voters, so I would really encourage folks to sign up for the Action Fund, on the Action Fund site, and become a volunteer that way. And I think right now, because we're sort of in this moment, it is so important that every woman in America lets their member of Congress and their Senator know that women can't be left worse off after healthcare reform than they were before. And that means we need to have our full reproductive rights and healthcare covered, and we need women's healthcare providers as part of the healthcare network in America. Literally, if every single woman who read this did that, that would be an enormous thing. And I know I sometimes think people think it doesn't really matter, and you look at all the stuff that's going on, but folks pay attention. And they really pay attention when people personally take time. Sending an e-mail is fine, but when you actually make a phone call to an office and say, "This is what I'm calling about," believe me, I go to those offices all the time, they absolutely are keeping track.

I saw that you're on Twitter.
Yeah. We're doing the Twitter, we're doing the Facebook. We partnered with MTV this last spring on helping young people get tested and treated for STI's, and the great thing is when we can kind of co-brand with other sites where young people are coming, and MTV was thrilled because they were saying, "Look, we got all these kids coming, and the thing they want to know about is they don't want to get pregnant, and they want to know about STD's, and so you all have the information, we've got the traffic, let's get together."

How involved are you internationally?
We are actually really involved. We fund programs in 11 countries – in Africa, Asia, and in Latin America. Our providers in this country do a lot of sort of exchange of information and ideas and capacity between the states and other countries. And again, it's sort of not just a North-South, it's a South-North thing too. I was down in Ecuador visiting this program there that we've supported and have partnered with for many years, and I met with their teens, like our peer educators here. In Ecuador, because a lot of them out in the rural areas, they really have a list of clients for whom they help them get birth control, they help them get testing if they need it, other kinds of healthcare. So they've taken it like another step further than we have in this country, so I think there's just things we can learn from each other when we talk about, how do we improve healthcare outcomes for women and for young people?

Where in the world are women most at risk now
It's hard to say. It's hard to pinpoint one place. Obviously, some of the worst healthcare outcomes are now in some of the countries of Africa, where we're dealing with issues of maternal mortality, related to unsafe abortion, and certainly, the rise of not only HIV-AIDS, but other STD's. That's why policies in this country are so important, because there's this enormous ripple effect. I don't know if you saw the article by Nick Kristof in the Times Magazine, about this thought, which is just so right, which is if you invest in women, it has all kinds of residual great benefits for society. And in fact, Secretary of State Clinton, who came and spoke to Planned Parenthood in the spring, really made the same point, which is, if you look at the countries where women have the best access to health care, access to family planning, and rights, they're the countries with the least amount of economic instability, the least amount of terrorism, a whole host of issues. There is just a very strong case to be made if you can help women with planning the number of kids that they want and allowing them to voluntarily have the family of their choosing, and access to work and the other things that they need, all of society benefits. And where you don't, you have the very worst outcome.

Is there anything else that we haven't covered that you think you want to mention?
Well, the only other thing that I've been really interested in and that we've invested a lot of time and energy in is making sure that the internet is providing all the ways for young people and women to get the healthcare information they need. Young people come to us online and ask the very same questions that kids were asking when I was in high school. Like, "My boyfriend and I had sex but I heard you couldn't get pregnant the first time," or, you know, whatever, just make up the myth. So I think that I'm really excited about Planned Parenthood online because to me, it's a place where, even if you're a kid sitting in East Texas, where you can't talk to your parents and you don't want to talk to anybody at school, you could at least go online and get the information you need, and if you need it, find out how to get birth control, how to get tested if you might have an STD. That's the most hopeful thing about the future—both the young people that I think are now infusing this movement with new energy and the fact that technology is just going to help us leap forward.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America [Official Site]
Planned Parenthood Action Fund [Official Site]
Cecile Richards' Twitter [Twitter]

Related: Virginia Women: Get Back in That Chastity Belt! [Huffington Post]

It's believed that Suman suffers from a hormonal imbalance, but her family has been unable to afford to travel to Calcutta for expert medical treatment. WWKAD? What Would Katy Abram Do? • Margaret Bush Wilson, a civil-rights activist and head of the Missouri NAACP, has died in St. Louis at the age of 90. • Jose Garcia-Perlera, who tied up and gagged widows living alone in a series of attacks in 2007 and 2008 in Maryland, was sentenced today to life in prison without the possibility of parole. • The mom in North Dakota who was busted (heh) for breastfeeding while intoxicated can't stay out of trouble: She's been arrested twice since her sentencing. • Poor Tyler Barrick and Spencer Jones. They paid a Utah newspaper to run their wedding announcement, only to have it rejected. The same-sex couple were legally married in California in June and wanted the announcement to run in Jones' hometown before a family get-together next week. "After all, our marriage is just as real and legal and entitled to celebration as any of the others that are announced each week in the pages of The Spectrum," Jones wrote to publisher Donnie Welch. Welch replied: "This simply is not true. While that may be the case in some states it is not the case in the state of Utah. As our policy is to run marriage announcements recognized by Utah law, I have made the decision not to run the announcement." • Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota has asked a judge to prevent the state from suspending its license to perform abortions in Sioux Falls. • A 35-year-old woman known only as Carole — a convert to Islam — was banned from her local pool in Paris for trying to go swimming in a "burquini." She bought the garment because: "it would allow me the pleasure of bathing without showing too much of myself, as Islam recommends." But officials claim the "burquini" is a possible public health risk. Daniel Guillaume, a regional official in charge of swimming pools, says: "These clothes are used in public, so they can contain molecules, viruses, et cetera, which will go in the water and could be transmitted to other bathers." • "Everybody used to say how radical I was. I just thought I was pragmatic." — Billie Jean King, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Wednesday, the "the highest honor a civilian can receive in the U.S." • Scary, but not surprising: Pregnant women who underwent female genital cutting as girls are at increased risk of needing an emergency Cesarean section or suffering serious tears during childbirth. • Filament, a UK magazine for women featuring semi-naked men, is have problems pleasing its audience, which wants pictures of erect penises; its printers, which refuse and object to working with such content; and distributors which won't handle a women's magazine with a man on the cover. Writes Kristina Lloyd, "When set against the plethora of men's lifestyle and top-shelf magazines featuring scantily clad and open-legged women, the struggles faced by Filament highlight a deeply entrenched sexism: Men can look at women but women cannot look at men… The sexism is in the inequality. • Wow: Women's boxing will be added to the 2012 Olympic Games. Boxing was the last all-male Olympic sport.

[Philadelphia, August 12. Image via Getty]

PHILADELPHIA - AUGUST 12: Attendees wait in line for a town hall meeting being held by U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) August 12, 2009 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sestak, who has announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Arlen Specter, organized the town hall meeting to speak about health care reform. (Photo by Jeff Fusco/Getty Images)

[Breitenbach Breuberg, Germany; May 25. Image via Getty]

Teenage girls of the Georg-Ackermann-School in Breitenbach Breuberg, western Germany, practice on May 25, 2009 in their classroom the handling of a newborn baby with a baby-simulation-doll. The young girls will be in constant contact with the baby-simulators over the next few days. The dolls hide a complex computer system, which realistically imitates the behaviour of a baby and controls the reaction of the 'parents'. With this project, the information centre for pregnancy, family and sexuality wants to avoid unwanted teenager pregnancies and tries to create an awareness for the responsibility of a child within adolescents. AFP PHOTO DDP/ TORSTEN SILZ GERMANY OUT (Photo credit should read TORSTEN SILZ/AFP/Getty Images)

"Contact Judy Blume with your complaints about her support for Planned Parenthood." Of course, LifeNews put a "spin" on the facts:

Blume notes how more woman are seeking abortions form Planned Parenthood because of the difficult economy and she urges readers of the email to use that as a reason to support the abortion business.

Not accurate! Blume wrote:

If you know a mother who is struggling to raise strong, independent, and confident children in the face of unbelievable odds... Say thanks. Say thanks this Mother's Day with a gift that honors her courage by making a donation to Planned Parenthood in her name. I guarantee you that she'll be pleased. I know I would be.

It's not easy to be a mother these days. And right now - with more and more women seeking care from Planned Parenthood health centers - we need to do all we can to support them. By honoring a mother in your life, you'll be making a gift to millions of mothers and families who seek care from Planned Parenthood. That's a gift any mother will appreciate.

Because Planned Parenthood is not an "abortion business," it is a reproductive health organization which offers contraceptive (birth control) services; emergency contraception; screening for breast, cervical and testicular cancers; pregnancy testing and pregnancy options counseling; testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases; sexuality education, menopause treatments; vasectomies and tubal ligations. And abortions. Which are a woman's right to obtain.

Some LifeNews readers must have contacted Judy Blume's publisher, because Planned Parenthood sent out a new letter claiming the author has been "inundated" by "hate mail and phone calls" from "anti-choice extremists." Right now, PP is the only source on this, although there are some rumblings on a few Catholic blogs.

Though Planned Parenthood is a non-profit organization, and funding is always important (it has received donations from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), there is a whiff of manipulation in its follow up email, which toys with the recipient's emotions; the emails we received read, "I do not like people hatin' on Judy!" and "They're being mean to Judy Blume!" Cecile Richards of PP wrote, "When it comes to Judy Blume... well, I can't stand by and do nothing. I just can't. Please, let her know how much we appreciate her courage! Spread the word. Please send an e-mail to friends, and post this message on your social network, blog, and twitter." Consider it done.

Judy Blume's Letter, Stand Up For Judy Blume [Planned Parenthood Action Center]
Children's Author Judy Blume Seeks Donations To Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz [LifeNews]

The price of birth control at family planning clinics and college health centers shot up following the passage of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, a federal law designed to save taxpayers money on Medicaid reimbursements for drugs reports U.S. News and World Report. The bill dissuaded drug companies from offering discounts to clinics, and for the past two years many women have been paying up to 10 times more each month for contraception.

Most clinics began offering cheaper generic versions of birth control pills, but there's no generic version of NuvaRing or the patch. Some colleges stopped offering hormonal contraceptives because they could not afford to keep a supply.

The "Affordable Birth Control Act," which was passed by the Senate earlier this week, was signed into law as part of the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Bill. It allows pharmaceutical companies to offer the discounts again at no cost to taxpayers, but there's no guarantee that they will reduce their prices. When asked if it would cut prices, a spokeswoman for Schering-Plough, which makes NuvaRing, said, "We're looking into it. It's something we would definitely like to support." Even if companies do decide to offer discounts again, the cheaper birth control probably won't be available to students until next year because clinics still need to renegotiate their contracts with drug companies and sell off their old supplies.

Planned Parenthood issued a statement praising Congress for passing the bill, saying, "We applaud Congress for righting a wrong that has restricted access to basic but critical preventive health care services, and left millions of women at risk of unintended pregnancy." Planned Parenthood and several other women's health groups have been lobbying Congress to reverse the 2005 bill, organizing petition drives and meeting with members of Congress.

As part of the campaign, Planned Parenthood organized a meeting between Senator Harry Reid and Nonie Wainwright, a University of Nevada graduate affected by the bill. Wainwright wrote a blog post last week about the meeting, saying, "It was a little intimidating to talk to a U.S. senator about birth control, but Sen. Reid was great." Wainwright explained that, in addition to preventing pregnancy, as a competitive swimmer, birth control helps her regulate her cycle and compete year round. In 2006 her monthly prescription went from $15 a month to $50. "I recall having to decide between paying for groceries or for birth control - decisions no male athlete would ever have to make," she said.

Cheap Birth Control (Once Again) For College Women [U.S. News And World Report]
Spending Bill Reduces Cost Of Birth Control Pills On Campus [U.S. News and World Report]
Planned Parenthood Press Release [Planned Parenthood]
Nonie Wainwright's Blog [RH Reality Check]

The Journal reports that Planned Parenthood gets $335 million a year from the government, which is a third of its budget, and it also had a $115 million budget surplus last year. Indiana abortion foe Scott Tibbs tells the Journal,"The money needs to go to local organizations that actually need it and don't have the backing of a multimillion-dollar organization."

As has been noted before, less than 3-5% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion related, and Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards says that in times of economic turmoil, people need Planned Parenthood's health care services the most. It's "a lifeline for millions of people," Richards tells the Journal, especially for those who have lost their health insurance along with their jobs.

It's unclear whether the lobbying efforts of groups like the Family Research Council will be successful in getting local governments to cut back on their Planned Parenthood funding; however, in the past few weeks, Atlanta and Sarasota area Planned Parenthoods have seen their local government funding scaled back. Sarasota's funding was cut from their sex-ed program, and former Sarasota county commissioner Paul Mercier says to the Journal, "It had nothing to do with Planned Parenthood's mission…It had everything to do with them not needing the funding."

Abortion Foes Open A New Front [WSJ]

Earlier: Planned Parenthood Indiana Offends The Baby Jesus, Michelle Malkin

• An amusement park in South Korea schooled 30 female and male wannabe-Santas today on what it takes to be Santa Claus. • An Illinois woman who recently finalized her divorce claims that her ex-husband and his girlfriend broke into her house over the weekend and stole half of her king-sized bed as well as some electronics. • Captain Kate Philp of the British Army became the first female soldier to lose a limb in Afghanistan when she lost half of her leg following a blast that killed another soldier. • A report on Tuesday of a fetus in a trash bin behind the Gulfcoast Ultrasound Institute in Florida turned out to be a training tool for doctors and nurses to perform ultrasound procedures. • Nancy Kerrigan will star in an ice skating TV special, Holiday Celebration on Ice, which will air on Sunday on NBC. •

[Image via Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando.]

1. Planned Parenthood: "Heartless" The Planned Parenthood spot is much more scripted, interspersing shots of a rape survivor telling her story with voiceovers about the Wasilla policies and pictures of McCain's and Palin's floating, disembodied heads. At the end, the woman says "It scares me to death" to think that a hospital might have charged her for a rape kit. My first thought was: you were raped and that's what scares you to death? Really? It's not a good thing, goodness knows, to be charged for one's rape kit and I'm not saying that it didn't cross my mind that I didn't really want to be calling my insurance company to be pre-approved for an ER visit, but "scares me to death"? It's that kind of hyperbole that makes the ad easily dismissed.


2. Women Against McCain Palin: "Choice?" This WAMP ad shows a young woman barely holding back tears as she explains that she was raped and got pregnant — and that Sarah Palin wants the government to be able to force her to carry the pregnancy to term. It's not flashy, it doesn't feature floating heads or voice overs, and it isn't remotely hyperbolic. It's a far better ad because it doesn't appear to be using a woman's somewhat unrelated story to make a policy point — the woman in the Planned Parenthood ad didn't have to pay for her rape kit, so it's a tenuous connection to the policy Planned Parenthood and many of us object to.


3. Women Against McCain Palin: "Family Values" This ad, featuring the mother of an underage rape victim, is also strongly worded, though not quite as powerful. It also, notably, makes the point that "Sarah Palin thinks the government knows better than we do," which is the conflict inherent in the Republican party ideology of small government and the religious right's ideology of forcing the government to impose their religious views on the larger society.


Am I more comfortable with the last two ads — which were not, I'd like to stress, made by the Obama campaign — than I was with the rumored, unscripted one I initially wrote about? Sure. I don't think it would have been a good place for the Obama campaign to go, but the WAMP ads came out well without seeming exploitative. Now, if we could just politically get past the idea that there are morally defensible abortions (which implies that there are morally indefensible abortions), I'd like to do that, too. But this, at least, is a start.

Choice? [YouTube]
Family Values [YouTube]
Heartless [YouTube]
"Governor Palin....I Should Have A Choice About This" [DailyKos]
Women Against McCain Palin [SaysMe.tv]