I read this this morning and thought it was worthy of sharing. The state legislators have since passed a law forbidding this but it begs the question: Did murder victims or their families have to pay for autopsies? Apparently, rape wasn't a crime worthy of investigation unless the victim had insurance.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/52266.html

The House passed an anti-abortion bill in Louisiana by a margin of 85-17 that goes as far as rejecting exceptions for rape and incest.

http://www.leesvilledailyleader.com/articles/2006/06/02/news...

The bill contains language allowing for medication to be used to block fertilization, therefore apparently eliminating the need for exceptions.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco says she will sign the bill when it comes to her desk, but at a rate of 85-17, it seems that the bill is nearly in place.

What has happened to abortion rights? Have we been sleeping? With all the women who have had abortions and those who haven't but support the right, how has progressed this far? I mean, I'm really wondering here. This is insane. According to the article, 11 states have introduced similar bills. Where is the outrage? I'm sickened. Is there anyone out there listening?

I don't know if this has been posted here yet, but I thought I'd pass it along as it is the most frightening information I've seen in months.

From Savage Love (Dan Savage):

STRAIGHT RIGHTS UPDATE: After tossing nearly half of last week's column away on a straight rights update, it was my intention to give it a rest. In fact, every time I write one of these I think, "Banning abortion, evicting unmarried straight couples and their children, moving to ban birth control—things can't get any worse, can they?" Oh, but they can: Not satisfied with meddling in the lives of the relatively small percentage of women who are pregnant, the American Taliban is moving to regulate the lives of all American women.

"New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves—and to be treated by the health-care system—as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon," reports the Washington Post. "[T]his means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control... [I]t's important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed."

Color me paranoid, but ordering American women to regard themselves as "pre-pregnant" because they may harm a fetus they don't know they're carrying opens the door to prosecuting women who harm their fetuses by failing to regard themselves as "pre-pregnant." How long until "women should... refrain from smoking [and] maintain a healthy body weight" becomes "women must..." Does that sound paranoid? Well, so did a war on contraception once.

Oddly enough, Bush's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't urge straight men to regard themselves as existing in a perpetual state of "pre-fatherhood." Smoking, obesity, asthma, and diabetes could seriously hamper a man's ability to do the heavy lifting that comes with fatherhood. But Bush's CDC doesn't seem that interested in regulating the behavior of all those fat, smoking pre-fathers out there.

Gee. Isn't. That. Weird.

There is a bright side in the CDC's announcement: If we're going to regard all females as pre-pregnant, then we can, as my friend Gomez points out, regard all virgins as merely pre-fucked.

mail@savagelove

I don't know if this is national, so I thought I'd post it up.

Dairy Queen has a commercial where a young couple is daydreaming over some ice cream. The man dreams the soon-to-come baby is a boy and the woman dreams that *she* is holding the video camera and coaching the birth while the man suffers labor and yells into the camera "You did this to me!"

heh.

Bill Napoli, the South Dakota state senator who gave a very explicit example of who should now be able to get an abortion in South Dakota, sucks. I am helping G00gle b0mb him with this, and you should too. Click the link!

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/billnapoli/

And since I didn't know what G00gle b0mbing was, I'm gonna assume some of you don't either. It's when you link to something a million times so that it becomes the first result in G00gle. So, when you search for Bill Napoli you'll get the link about napoli being a new name for brutal rape as a result. Right now it's the first thing that comes up when you search for his name.

Click through! Repost!

ETA: someone pointed out that it's best not to use the proper spelling of "G00gle" in these posts since then they can write algorithms to disallow the results. So I've edited the entry.