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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 7/2/13

What's Wrong With This Picture??

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Message Kathy Malloy
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Source: Mike Malloy

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Ohio's sneaky passage of radical anti-abortion legislation today (buried in a budget bill) is the latest attempt at the age-old tradition of chest-thumping, rattle-shaking, knuckle-dragging male dominance over the mysterious, frightening magic of female fertility.

Once again, a group of white men are deciding what they will allow women to do with their bodies. Isn't this getting a bit old?

Today's passage of HB 59 will defund Planned Parenthood clinics, reallocate family planning funding to right-wing "crisis pregnancy centers," strip funding from rape crisis centers that give their clients any information about abortion services, impose harsh restrictions on abortion clinics that will force many of them to shut down, and require doctors to give women seeking abortion information about the presence of a "fetal heartbeat."

Taken together, the budget amendments ensure that Ohio now has some of the most stringent abortion laws in the nation.

These men never pass legislation to care for these fetuses once they're actually babies, right?  Where's the plan for that? Are they going to take them home and feed and raise them? Or are they going to continue to cut and slash so-called "welfare" programs, head-start funding, educational opportunities, and scholarship grants?

Love the fetus, hate the baby. Way to go, Kasich.

Not to be outdone, back in the great state of Texas, Gov. Rick "Goodhair" Perry isn't giving up on the medieval abortion bill that would close scores of clinics across Texas. These clinics, ironically, provide much-needed prenatal care and other medical services like PAP smears and mammograms. But no matter, there are microscopic clumps of cells at stake.

Forget the fact that Perry has signed off on the execution of more full-formed adults than any other governor (in any state) in history. He's alllll about the sanctity of life, which only GOD can control.

Does Jesus prefer lethal injection or electrocution? So hard to know the mind of the Almighty and His powerful swift sword.

Perry is upset by the pro-choice protesters who have gathered around the State House as the legislators are gaveled in. He calls them "anarchists."

TruthOut has the story:

"The victory in Texas on Senate Bill 5 -- the successful filibuster by State Senator Wendy Davis and the crowd of pro-choice Texans who packed the Capitol to stand with her, who shouted down the vote in what Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst petulantly called 'Occupy Wall Street tactics' -- may be short-lived, as Governor (and failed Republican presidential candidate) Rick Perry has already declared that he's calling another special legislative session to pass the bill.

"As if that's not enough, Perry gave a speech Thursday at the National Right to Life conference and used Davis' personal life as an example of someone who was 'born into difficult circumstances,' the daughter of a single mom and a teen mother herself.

"Perry's immediate need not just to argue with Wendy Davis and the people who stood with her but to shame them personally, to tell a crowd that 'The louder they scream, the more we know that we are getting something done' is just the latest reminder of what this kind of anti-abortion politics is really about: power. It's not just a tactic to move toward banning abortion slowly, inch by inch, hoping that we don't notice our rights disappearing. This strategy of passing more and more restrictions on how and when and where and with whose permission one can obtain an abortion is itself a method of demonstrating and reiterating power over our bodies; it's a sharp reminder that they exercise this power largely because they can. Because as members of a privileged class -- economically and politically as well as by virtue of race and gender -- they will wield that power, not for our own good but in spite of our desires, and the more we scream the more pleasure they take in their victory. The discipline, Perry's comment shows, is the point."

So far -- at least in Texas -- the power of the many has prevailed over the power of the few (mainly wealthy, white men) who would control our every female bodily function in their never-ending quest to dominate women and other minorities.

May they continue to fail, famously.

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Kathy Malloy Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Kathy never expected a career in radio as a talk show producer. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Kathy was completing her nursing degree when in 2001 - in an emergency - she was asked to fill in as the producer of Mike's program. Within a few (more...)
 
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