Enter your username and password.
New York, 8:50 PM
Thu Nov 12
73 posts in the last 24 hours

Tip your editors:
tips@jezebel.com
Editor-in-Chief:
Anna Holmes
Email | Twitter
Deputy Editor:
Dodai Stewart
Email | Twitter
Senior Contributing Editor:
Tracie Egan
Email | Twitter
Contributing Editors:
Anna North
Email | Twitter
Sadie Stein
Email | Twitter
Reporter:
Irin Carmon
Email
Editorial Assistant:
Margaret Hartmann
Email | Twitter
Contributors:
Jenna Sauers
Email
Rich Juzwiak
Email | Twitter
Lizzie Skurnick
Email
Interns:
Katy Kelleher
Twitter
Please enter your email address to have your password reset.
Registering will give you a user profile and the ability to add other users as friends. To become a commenter, however, you need to audition.
Want to know more? Consult the Comment FAQ and legal terms.
You don't need to login to comment. Just enter your email address below.
See how your address will be displayed in the Comment FAQ.
12:57 PM
12:46 PM
A lot of people are refusing to actually look at this amendment for what it is, and instead concentrate on the notion that public funds shouldn't go to anything the public doesn't (by a majority, apparently) agree with. Which is all well and good until you realize that's insane. If this amendment was about refusing to cover heart surgery because half the people don't agree with organ transplants on a moral level, I doubt anyone would think that was acceptable.
This is about abortion. It's not about how public funds should be used or the acceptable role of government or whether tax money should go to things we personally don't like. It's about finding whatever way they can to chip away at choice. And in this case, effectively doing away with it for anyone who doesn't have means. It might as well be the Poor Women Don't Get to Have Choice Amendment.
This effectively says we will cut funding, and therefore access, to a legal medical procedure if enough people don't think you should have it on personal moral grounds. That should be terrifying.
We should be deeply worried about anything like this, especially when it's a redundancy (Hyde already severely restricts federal funding of abortion). Like the 'Partial birth" abortion ban, these things are not done in a vacuum.
This healthcare plan is not so incredibly awesome that it's worth throwing poor women's personhood and uteruses under the bus. #abortion
11:41 AM
Senate Dems: Quit pandering and make good on your promises. If you fuck us on healthcare by watering-down everything relevant, we will not forget it. Cowards. #abortion
10:54 AM
10:48 AM
11:08 AM
see this excellent article [mypage.direct.ca] #abortion
11:11 AM
10:40 AM
If after the bill's passed and he's flying sky high on approval ratings and Dems are about to wipe the floor in the 2010 elections and THEN they're like 'psh abortion whatevs' I'll be pissed. I wish people would aim as much vitriol at the Americans who keep reelecting these buffons rather than at the 1/3rd of the governmental branch that promised not to be like George Bush and do whateverthefuck they please. #abortion
10:46 AM
10:49 AM
11:19 AM
@WashingMyHair: If it gets the rest of America health care, to me it's worth it. Governmental funding for abortion is nearly nonexistent and there's hardly a guarantee that the amendment will stand in the final bill anyway now that Obama has expressed disapproval. I'm a pro-choice individual who only got health care 4 years ago and firmly believe this is MORE important than having the perfect feminist bill. #abortion
12:30 PM
I think that's short sighted, honestly. Access to choice should be a fundamental aspect of a public healthcare option for women. Hyde already limited federal funding, so not only was this redundant, but it's an active restriction of access to a legal medical procedure masquerading as a funding measure. That incredibly dangerous.
I don' t think anyone is arguing about this being the perfect feminist bill. Unless it was actually universal healthcare, that would be impossible.
But letting reproductive choice be something only those with means can afford because we let it go in the public option is irresponsible. It's precisely because poor women who can't afford healthcare also need access to this procedure that this matters so much. Otherwise we're allowing moral outrage to dictate the ability for other women to have body autonomy.
It's not worth it. #abortion
02:32 PM
02:44 PM
If the administration had tried to muscle anything through immediately and they would have been shut down so hard by both Republicans and the media. At least the American public has had several months to watch the Republicans flail in the wind, exposing them for the party of 5 year olds they are. Public support of the bill has INCREASED as this charade has gone on, it did not start out high at all. #abortion
10:39 AM
10:36 AM
10:37 AM
Yes. #abortion
10:42 AM
10:51 AM
10:56 AM
11:02 AM
11:54 AM
01:49 PM
It would have been nice if they would have at least linked public plan to Medicare. Costs are aimed approximately at moon-trajectory right now. You can stay ahead of the cost curve with tax hikes as long as you can, but... #abortion
10:22 AM
I can't remember what happens on the show, but I remember watching it and realizing just how powerless I am to actually do anything about the slow erosion of women's rights. The republicans are clearly not interested in women-as-humans, so that's not an option. But the ones who are supposed to be for abortion, pro-women-as-people, pro-women's rights, are just fucking us over. And we can't do a fucking thing about it. Don't vote for Obama? Even if you vote for a more liberal candidate, it's basically like voting for a republican. Like everyone who voted for Ralph Nader instead of John Kerry, and they were accused of letting Bush win. It's like--I don't want someone as centrist as Barack Obama as my president. He's a perpetual capitulator, he's not going to get rid of women's rights, but he's going to let women's rights disappear and get killed by those he wants to bi-partisan with. But I don't actually have a liberal, progressive option. I have crazy-fucker-conservative, or centrist. Those are my options.
Seriously if I could live in this world without being a member of a country, I would. I seriously want to give up my American citizenship in protest. But there's nowhere for me to go. #abortion
11:04 AM
11:10 AM
[www.actblue.com] #abortion
01:06 PM
06:11 PM
She was winning more voters, but then the Obama/Pelosi contingent, with the DLC, awarded her delegates, and disputed delegates to Obama and forced her out of the race.
The Democratic party is not the party of women. They take us for granted year after year, as they pretend to pander to us. I'm voting Green until they stop pushing candidates like Obama over candidates with principles. #abortion
10:21 AM
10:28 AM
10:28 AM
10:21 AM
:( #abortion
10:12 AM
No, they won't. They haven't for a long time.
Democrats : abortion :: Republicans : gay marriage
Both use the issue to get people riled up, but then kind of let it fall to the wayside. I don't think, for instance, that the national GOP gives a rat's ass about gay marriage beyond that it's right up there with screenings of The Passion of the Christ when it comes to mobilizing Christian crazies en masse. A lot of Democrats seem to use abortion in much the same way.
Although, at least, Republicans are way more successful at banning gay marriage than Democrats are at securing abortion rights, so it's hardly a perfect analogy. But still, I think it fits. #abortion
11/09/09
In many ways, I hope the Republicans (Dems, too) can be less of a platform-party and more of a party of issues; If 3rd parties can never fully realize strength in America, the next best thing, to me, would be a variety of individuals in each party that held integrity, compassion, justice, intelligence, and objectivity in high esteem.
I know... Keep dreaming. #womeninpolitics
11/09/09
11/09/09
A hyperrich white young attractive blonde woman who got an instant platform in the national media because her father is a conservative Republican Senator realizes that some women have it hard. News at 11! #womeninpolitics
11/09/09
11/09/09
11/09/09
Also, I know you may not feel like one, but please: you're 20 years old. You're a woman. Not a girl. Referring to yourself as a girl is probably unconscious, but think about how that impacts how people perceive you, and other 20-year-old women. #womeninpolitics
11/09/09
@amandavmead: Nothing you just said is inconsistent with anything I said. So, um, okay? Yes I do judge her. #womeninpolitics
11/09/09
While MM definitely speaks from a place of (largely unexamined) privilege, you can see she's trying to leave her shelter and slowly get a grip on the world (the world world, not the world invented by the likes of Michelle Bachmann, R-Crazytown) -- even if she's not straying too far from the tent.
I think she's a ninny, but I have to admit I sort of stand behind her stated mission to reform (or at least youngify) the GOP from within. Not that I think it will work. But it's like when my parents wouldn't pull my brother out of Boy Scouts over the gay scoutmaster case, because they reasoned that if all the liberals left the BSA in protest, the organization would have no one left interested in changing its policies. #womeninpolitics
11/09/09
Look, I don't hate the woman, she's not the antichrist, she's not the worst Republican of the bunch, and I hope to heaven that she can convince some of those nutjobs of basic things like "gay people deserve human rights". But I don't like her, and I find that every time she makes the news she speaks from a position of such oblivious, blind privilege that it sets my teeth on edge. #womeninpolitics
11/09/09
11/09/09
11/10/09
11/10/09
More importantly, there's nothing at all about Meghan McCain that says she's trying to pop the "bubble" of her privilege. Where did you get that idea? The way she fell ass-backward into her sinecure? Her self-appointed position as Important Republican Voice? (As much as the Rs do need better voices and serious reform, it takes a hell of a lot of chutzpah to think of yourself as the go-to person to reform one of America's two major political parties before you've ever even held down a job.) Her privilege is entirely unexamined. Realizing that there is such a thing as sexism is not the same as examining your own privilege. And yes, if you are among the most privileged people in the world and don't ever take the time to reflect on that reality or acknowledge its benefits, I will be tempted to villify you. That's the kind of attitude that allows blatant disregard for the less fortunate, and "she didn't ask to be a billionairess" doesn't negate the need for self-awareness with me.
And lastly, I was talking about entry into the real world when I said she's at least 5 years behind her cohort. We both know that there're many people who never think about sexism (though these people are very rarely women), so I surely didn't mean to imply that everyone is an informed feminist by 25. But when you factor in people that start working straight out of high school and people that work their way through community college and/or college, yes. She's very far behind her peers in re: dealing with the real world. #womeninpolitics
11/09/09