When 2 = 1, B = A

Washington State Plan B Ruling: Federal Judge Says State Cannot Force Pharmacies To Sell Plan B

By GENE JOHNSON 02/22/12 07:32 PM ET

TACOMA, Wash. — Washington state cannot force pharmacies to sell Plan B or other emergency contraceptives, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, saying the state's true goal was to suppress religious objections by druggists – not to promote timely access to the medicines for people who need them.

U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton sided with a pharmacy and two pharmacists who said state rules requiring them to dispense Plan B violate their constitutional rights to freedom of religion because such drugs can destroy a fertilized egg, which they consider equal to abortion.

Washington's rules require that pharmacies stock and dispense drugs for which there is a demand. The state adopted the dispensing regulations in 2007, following reports that some women had been denied access to Plan B, which has a high dose of medicine found in birth-control pills and is effective if a woman takes it within 72 hours of unprotected sex.

State lawyers argued that the requirements are legal because they apply neutrally to all medicines and pharmacies, and because they promote a government interest – the timely delivery of medicine, including Plan B, which becomes less effective as time passes.

But Leighton ruled that the state allows all sorts of business exemptions to the rules. Pharmacies can decline to stock a drug, such as certain painkillers, if it's likely to increase the risk of theft, or if it requires an inordinate amount of paperwork, or if the drug is temporarily unavailable from suppliers, among other reasons.

"The most compelling evidence that the rules target religious conduct is the fact the rules contain numerous secular exemptions," the judge said. "In sum, the rules exempt pharmacies and pharmacists from stocking and delivering lawfully prescribed drugs for an almost unlimited variety of secular reasons, but fail to provide exemptions for reasons of conscience."

The decision comes as contraception has been debated in political and health care circles around the nation. A controversy erupted this month when religious groups protested a new federal rule that required church-affiliated universities, hospitals and nonprofits to include birth control without co-pays or premiums in their insurance plans.

The outcry prompted President Barack Obama to change the rule to shift the burden from religious organizations to insurance companies. Lawmakers in a few conservative states have taken up the fight with proposals that serve as direct challenges to Obama's ruling.

Leighton, in his decision Wednesday, did not strike down Washington's rules, but said simply that the way they were applied to the plaintiffs in this case was unconstitutional.

The state remains free to try to enforce the law against other pharmacies that violated the stocking and dispensing rules, whether for Plan B or other drugs; it remains unclear whether courts would reach a similar conclusion if pharmacies objected to selling other drugs for religious reasons.

"I remain concerned about the impacts on patients if pharmacies are allowed to refuse to dispense lawfully prescribed or lawful medications to patients," said Gov. Chris Gregoire, who insisted on the dispensing rule's adoption. "I am especially concerned about those living in rural areas, many of whom may have few alternatives and could suffer lengthy delays in receiving medication or go without entirely."

The judge, an appointee of President George W. Bush, first blocked the state's dispensing rule in 2007. But a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel overruled him, saying the rules did not target religious conduct. It sent the case back to Leighton, who held an 11-day trial before reaffirming his original decision.

Further appeals were expected, both from the state and from groups that intervened on the state's behalf. Before taking more than an hour to read his 48-page opinion in court, Leighton acknowledged that he crafted it for the benefit of a "skeptical" appeals court.

The interveners included women who were denied timely access to Plan B when they needed it – one of whom cut short a vacation in central Washington to return home to Bellingham, where she knew she could obtain Plan B from her regular pharmacy – as well as HIV patients, who argued that if druggists could refuse to dispense Plan B for religious reasons, some might also refuse to dispense time-sensitive HIV medications.

"The question really is whether the patient's rights come first or the pharmacist's rights come first," said Andrew Greene, a lawyer for the interveners.

Assistant Attorney General Rene Tomisser said Leighton's ruling was "more detailed" but made the same mistake he made in 2007.

Margo Thelen, of Woodland, one of the pharmacists who sued over the rules, said she had to leave one job because she refused to dispense Plan B – and now she can continue working at her new job without fear of being fired.

"Speak to anyone who shops in a pharmacy," she said. "Their product isn't always available."
Two Supreme Court cases guide judges in determining whether laws that infringe upon the free exercise of religion are legal.

In one, the court held that the state of Oregon could outlaw the use of the hallucinogenic peyote for everyone, even though some groups might use it in religious conduct.

In the other, the court held that a city in Florida could not outlaw animal sacrifices for religious purposes, while allowing the slaughter of animals for food, hunting and pest eradication.

Leighton said Washington's rules are akin to the Florida case. Though they appear to be neutral by their plain language, the state allows pharmacies not to stock or sell drugs for various business reasons, he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/23/washington-state-plan-b-ruling_n_1295585.html

We Are... We Will Be... We Are

WE WILL BE/ WHO WE WANT/ WHERE WE WANT/ WITH WHOM WE WANT/ IN THE WAY THAT WE WANT/ WHEN WE WANT/ AND THE TIME IS NOW/ AND THE PLACE IS HERE + THERE + HERE + THERE/ NOW NOW NOW...
from We Will Be by Lubaina Himid, 1883 (Working on finding an image :)

 
His Power
He Tames What is Wild

The Hunt 

Is it by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and

immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with

the thought of annihilation when beholding the milky way?

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick  

And at last she could bear the burden of herself no more. She

was to e had for the taking. To be had for the taking.

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterly's Lover  

She has captured his heart. She has overcome him. He cannot tear his eyes away. He is burning with passion. He cannot live without her. He pursues her. She makes him pursue her. The faster she runs, the stronger his desire. He will overtake her. He will make her his own. He will have her. (The boy chases the doe and her yearling for nearly two hours. She keeps running despite her wounds. He pursues her through pastures, over fences, groves of trees, crossing the road, up hills, volleys of rifle shots sounding, until perhaps twenty bullets are embedded in her body.) She has no mercy. She has dressed to excite his desire. She has no scruples. She has painted herself for him. She makes supple movements to entice him. She is without a soul. Beneath her painted face is flesh, are bones. She reveals only part of herself to him. She is wild. She flees whenever he approaches. She is teasing him. (Finally, she is defeated and falls and he sees that half of her head has been blown off, that one leg is gone, her abdomen split from her tail to her head, and her organs hang outside her body. Then four men encircle the faun and harvest her too.) He is an easy target, he says. He says he is pierced. Love has shot him through, he says. He is a familiar mark. Riddled. Stripped to the bone. He is conquered, he says. (The boys, fond of hunting hare, search in particular for pregnant females.) He is fighting for his life. He faces annihilation in her, he says. He is losing himself to her, he says. Now, he must conquer her wildness, he says, he must tame her before she drives him wild, he says. (Once catching their prey, they stop on her back, breaking it, and they call this "dancing on the hare.") Thus he goes on his knees to her. Thus he wins her over, he tells her he wants her. He makes her his own. He encloses her. He encircles her. He puts her under lock and key. He protects her. 

(Approaching the great mammals, the hunters make little sounds which they know will make the elephants form a defensive circle.) And once she is his, he prizes his delight. He feasts his eyes on her. He adorns her her luxuriantly. He gives her ivory. He gives her perfume. (The older matriarchs stand to the outside of the circle to protect the calves and younger mothers.) He covers he with the skins of mink, beaver, muskrat, seal, raccoon, otter, ermine, fox, the feathers of ostriches, osprey, egret, ibis. (The hunters then encircle that circle and fire first into the bodies of the matriarchs. When these older elephants fall, the younger panic, yet unwilling to leave the bodies of their dead mothers, they make easy targets.) And thus he makes her soft. He makes her calm, He makes her grateful to him. He has tamed her, he says. She is content to be his, he says. (In the winter, if a single wolf has leaped over the walls of the city and terrorized the streets, the hunters go out in a band to rid the forest of the whole pack.) Her voice is now soothing to him. Her eyes no longer blaze, but look on him serenely. When he calls to her, she gives herself to him. Her ferocity lies under him. (The body of the great whale is strapped with explosives.) Now nothing of the old beast remains in her. (Eastern Bison, extinct 1825; Spectacled Cormorant, extinct 1852; Cape Lion, extinct 1865; Bonin Night Heron, extinct 1889; Barbary Lion, extinct 1922; Great Auk, extinct 1944.) And he can trust her wholly with himself. So he is blazing when he enters her, and she is consumed. (Florida Key Deer, vanishing; Wild Indian Buffalo, vanishing; Great Sable Antelope, vanishing.) Because she is his, she offers no resistance. She is a place of rest for him. A place of her making. And when his flesh begins to yield and his skin melts into her, be becomes soft, and he is without fear; he does not lose himself; though something in him gives way, he is not lost in her, because she is his now: he has captured her.

Our Nature

What is Still Wild in Us

Now we let the blood of our mother sink into this earth. This is what we will do with our grieving. We will cover her wounds with mud. We will tear leaves and branches from the trees and together pile them over her body. The sky will no longer see her fallen thus. we will pull grass up by the roots. We will cover her. Thus, as we do this, we know her body will melt away. And only her bones will remain. But these we will take. Still feeling her absence, we will cradle her tusks in our trunks, and carry them to another ground. And thus will this soil be absolved of her death, and the place of her dying be innocent again, and thus her bones will no longer be chaffed by violence done there. But though all traces of her vanish, we will not forget. In our lifetimes we will not be able to forget. Her wounds will fester in us. We will not be the same. The scent of her killer is known to us now. WE cannot turn our backs at the wrong moment. We must know when to trumpet and charge, when to recede into denser forest, when to turn and track the hunter. We feel the necessity of these acts in us. We will pass this feeling to our young, to those who follow in our footsteps, who walk under our bodies, who feel safe in our presence, who did we not warn them , did we not each them this scent, might approach this enemy with curiosity. Who imitate our movements and rely on our knowledge; we will not allow them to approach their enemies easily. They will learn fear. And when we attack in their defense, they will watch and learn this too. From us, they will become fierce. And so a death like this death of our mother will not come easily to them. This is what we will do with our grieving.  They will know whom to beware and whom to fear. And this hatred that began to grow in us when we saw her body fall will become their hatred and no man will approach them safely. No man will come near them and live. We will not forget and this memory will protect them.  What they have learned from us, all that we have taught them so that they can survive, how to suck up water into their trunks, how to pull down leaves from trees, how to life with their tusks, and dig holes by the river with their feet, all this they will pas on, and generation after generation will remember the scent of this enemy. This is how long our grieving will last. And only if the young of our young or the young of their young never know this odor in their lifetime, only if no hunter approaches them as long as they live, and no one with this scent attempts to capture them, or use them to his purpose, only then will the memory of this death pass from our hide. Only then will those wit the scent of her killer be absolved, as the soil is absolved, of her blood. Only then, when no trace is left of this memory in us, will we see what we can be without this fear, without this enemy, what we are.  

 There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.  

~Madeleine K. Albright

Forest

The Way We Stand

The poor little working-girl who had bound strength to gather

up the fragments of her life and build herself a shelter with them

seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existance.

Edith Wharton, The House Of Mirth 

The bank was dense with magnolia and loblolly bay, sweet gum

and gray-barked ash... He went down to the spring in the

cool darkness of the shadows. A sharp pleasure came over him.

This was a secret, lovely place.                                                             

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

The way we stand, you can see we have grown up this way together, out of the same soil, with the same rains, leaning in the same way toward the sun. See how we lean together in the same direction. How the dead limbs of one of us rest in the branches of another. How those branches have grown around the limbs. How the tow are inseparable. And if you look you can see the different ways we have taken this pale into us. Magnolia, loblolly bay, sweet gum, Southern bayberry, Pacific bayberry; wherever we grow there are many of us; Monterey pine, sugar pine, Torrey pine, Western red pine, Jeffry pine, bishop pine. And we are various, and amazing in our variety, and our differences multiply, so that edge after edge of this endlessness of possibility is exposed. you know we have grown this way for years. And to no purpose you can understand. Yet what you fail to know we know, and the knowing is in us, how we have grown this way, why these years were not one of them heedless, why we are shaped the way we are, not all straight to your purpose, but t ours. And how we are each purpose, how each cell, how light and soil are in us, how we are in the soil, how we are in the air, how we are both infinitesimal and great and how we are infinitely without any purpose you can see, in the way we stand, we each alone, yet none of us separable, none of us beautiful when separate but all exquisite as we stand, each moment heeded in this cycle, no detail unlovely.    

  

Natalie Jeremijenko: Tree Logic, Mass MoCA, ongoing

pp 103-105, 217-218, 220-221 of Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her by Susan Griffin

Then and Now

Archives (Her Vulva)

...We know that relying solely on argument we wandered for forty years politically in the wilderness. We know that arguments are not enough... and that political force is necessary.

Christable Pankhurst, speech delivered at 

Albert Hall, March 18, 1908

Who were those for whom we fought? I seemed to hear them in my cell, the defenseless ones who had no one to speak for their hungry need.  The sweated workers, the mothers widowed with little children, the women on the streets, and I saw that their backs were bent, their eyes grown sorrowful, their hearts dead without hope. And they were not a few, but thousands upon thousands.

Lady Constance Lytton, on her conviction for

"disorderly behavior with intent to disturb the peace," 1909

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Body is a Battledground) 1989
"In the embattled late 1980s, during the censorious 'culture wars' in the US provoked by right-wing politicians in alliance with religious fundamentalists: the worsening AIDs crisis: and retrogressive legislation on women's rights. Kruger showed her solidarity with a number of graphic activist groups, such as Gran Fury, by producing posters and other artefacts for direct action use. This work was used as the rallying poster for the 1989 pro-choice march on Washington and was subsequently adapted for the promotion of women's rights in other countries." - Art and Feminism, Phaidon

We were never told of the existence of this movement. The existence of this movement was denied to us. We believed we were the first to want to act. We thought we were the first to refuse to submit. I remained there until the Wednesday evening, still being fed by force. I was then taken back to the same hospital cell, and remained there until Saturday, October 2, about dinnertime, I determined on stronger measures by barricading my cell. I piled my bed, table and chair by jamming them together against the door. They had to bring some men warders to get in with iron staves. I kept them at bay about three hours. The denial of this movement was not called a lie. The denial of this movement was never spoken. No one ever spoke of this movement as existing or not existing. I walked quietly onto the stage, took the placard out of the chair and sat down. A great cry went up from the women as they sprang from their seats and stretched their hands toward me. It was some time before I could see them for my tears, or speak to them for the emotion that shook me like a storm. We are told that we are unique in history. That our history has been a history of passivity. We are to be blamed for our passivity, they say, we are our own oppressors. For our sufferings, they blame our passivity. The women were treated with the greatest brutality. They were pushed about in all directions and thrown down by the police. Their arms were twisted until they were almost broken. Their thumbs were forcibly bent back and they were tortured in other nameless ways that makes one feel sick at the sight. We say we have discovered action in ourselves. We say we are determined, even if we are the first. We have been prepared to sacrifice our safety of life and limb. We have been prepared to do these things because we believe in our cause. We say this not to boast of it, but to claim that we have the same spirit that the reformers of all ages have had to show before they could win success. But we say we do not believe we were the first. We say this is not possible. We discover the old papers. We read the old accounts. These have been hidden from us, we see, for a reason. I wrote on the wall:

To defend the oppressed

To fight for the defenseless

Not counting the cost.

pp 211-213, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Insider Her, by Susan Griffin

UC Davis Pepper Spray Peaceful Protestors. Before, During and After, Full Close Up Video 

'It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."' 

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 16 April 1963

Our Ancient Rages or Rebirth

Cataclysm

we have given until we have no more to give;

alas, it was pity, rather than love, we gave;

now having given all, let us leave all;

above all, let us leave pity

and mount higher

to love - resurrection.

H.D., "The Flowering Rod"

You call me a thousand names, uttering yourselves.  

Earthquake, I answer you, flood and volcano flow - the Warming.

This to remind you that I am the Old One

who holds the Key, the Crone to whom all things

return.

Robin Morgan, "The Network of the Imaginary Mother"

This story is told to us about the mountain. That one day suddenly and with no cause fire began to pour from her. That those living trustingly at her sides were frozen in their steps by the hot ash which she gave off, that without any warning a terrible death issued from her and stopped a whole city. That at that moment when she chose to strike, food was being set forth on tables and daily life continued innocently. Thus when we are shown the form of the dog whose agony was preserved forever in this ash, we see why she cannot be trusted.

They asked her to feel sorry for their plight. They told her how it was hard for them to cry. How dominance had been expected of them. They said that they knew no other life than the one that they were taught. That hence they were not responsible for what they did or said. They said that such changes as she was requiring of them were impossible. That their bodies could not be otherwise. That one could not change overnight. That these matters she spoke of so bluntly were subtle and complex. That she must be more patient. That she made them feel guilty. That guilt kept them from moving. She was bringing them to tears, they said: "Pity us." Couldn't she see that they had tried? Couldn't she see she was asking too much of them? Be fair: "You are unreasonable," they told her. But she answered them, "You have called me unreasonable before."

Yet beneath this layer of ash, which the rain made into mud, and the sun dried for centuries, we find another story. We discover that the ash did not come suddenly and all at one moment. But first a black cloud appeared in the sky above the mountain. And that afterward ash fell over the city for two days, until the sky became darker an darker, and the ash piled thicker and thicker. That those who perished would not leave, but chose to stay in their houses, to guard their possessions; that the dog who died in that agony was chained to the door; that those who died, died struggling for breath poisoned from her fumes, that only at the last moment must they have wanted to flee, only then believed in the power of this mountain to change their lives.

And she said she was tired of this old dialogue. Whenever she heard that cry, she said, of guilt, whenever she heard them moan for patience, her jaw closed. She could feel her face redden, and the back of her spine was rigid. She was certain she would explode. Yes, she said, she had grown unreasonable. "And I don't want to hear, " she barked, "any more of your reasons." She had been patient, she growled, too long.  "Do you know what the cost of this patience has been?"she yelled.  This dialogue is over, she shouted, and she vowed the old drama would not be played out again. "I will give you no pity," she said. She did not feel pity now, she bellowed.

Searching beneath the volcano, beneath the ocean floor, tracing the movements and the history of the movements of the earth, we find cause for the fires. We say beneath the earth is a flowing rock. We say this flowing rock rises to the surface, and we say the rock on the surface sinks toward the core of the earth, becoming molten and then hard and then molten again in turn. And we say also that there are breaks in the surface of the earth, places where the depths are uncovered, and it is at these broken places that the rock is transformed, and the surface of the earth is made. Where change takes place, we say, and where the earth is replenished we find volcanoes.

And so her anger grew. It swept through her like a fire. She was more than shaken. She thought she was consumed. But she was illuminated with her rage; she was bright with fury. And though she still trembled, one day she saw she had survived this blaze. And after a time she came to see this anger-that-was-so-long-denied as a blessing.

And we learn also that the coral reefs were made by coral fixing themselves on the bases of old volcanoes, worn down by the sea. And the lava which flows from volcanoes, we say, becomes a rich soil where luxuriant forests grow.  

pp 183-185 of Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, by Susan Griffin, 1980.

Silencing is bad for the Soul

The Breakdown Comes, Lady Pink in collaboration with Jenny Holzer, 1983 spray enamel on canvas 120” x 120”, in a private collection

'The breakdown comes when you stop controlling yourself and want the release of a bloodbath'

http://www.pinksmith.com/index.html

I can't count on my fingers and toes how many times I've bit my tongue because it was expected of me to not stand up for myself.  Eventually I stopped biting my tongue.  But there is still that anger and frustration when I do stand up for myself, but someone around me dismisses it. Says, "you've got to learn to let it go." No, actually I don't. There is no letting go of the feeling of being silenced. Of the years of disinterest in everything I've done, and everything I am.
In the 6th and 7th grade I took up drums, which I liked more, and was better at, than the flute that I played previously.  A boy in the band, in the percussion section with me, would hit me with the drumsticks. Often on my legs. He would hit me with sticks of  solid wood. I complained, and cried, but I can't remember anyone taking up arms over it. Eventually I came to the conclusion that if I no longer wanted to suffer such abuse that I would have to give up playing drums. Which is exactly what I did.  I remember wanting to paint. I took a class and enjoyed it and was praised momentarily for what I did.  I expressed interest in learning more, but no one encouraged me, so I gave that up too. Now I study art history.
I remember a few years ago my little cousin getting a drum set.  He clicked the drumsticks together and banged away, and when we went to see our grandparent's, our grandfather showed my little cousin of four how to hold the drumstick.  I seethed. I had no such moment with him, but I held my tongue.  At my grandparent's again, my brother and I came for dinner.  My brother had the opportunity to go traveling in Europe after high school and see all the museums that I still have yet to visit.  He learned a lot from those museums about Renaissance art and how it transitioned into Mannerism and then Baroque, but when I went to explain something in more detail, I was brushed off. So I held my tongue again. Despite having spend the last 6 years studying art history, apparently I had nothing to contribute.


My life has taught me that I  have one of two options to choose from:
When I was 13 I chose to give up rather than fight for myself.
Now that I am 23 I choose to fight rather than give up on myself.
This is my roaring. This is my breakdown.
I will not accept this silencing, this abuse, this lessening.
I will accept nothing less than rapt attention.  

     

What I read this evening: Standing up, Shouting Out

Women protest anti-abortion legislation in Virginia

Published February 20, 2012 | Associated Press

Hundreds of women locked arms and stood mute outside the Virginia State Capitol on Monday to protest a wave of anti-abortion legislation coursing through the General Assembly.
Capitol and state police officers, there to ensure order, estimated the crowd to be more than 1,000 people -- mostly women. The crowd formed a human cordon through which legislators walked before Monday's floor sessions of the Republican-controlled legislature.
The silent protest was over bills that would define embryos as humans and criminalize their destruction, require "transvaginal" ultrasounds of women seeking abortions, and cut state aid to poor women seeking abortions.
Molly Vick of Richmond said it was her first time to take part in a protest, but the issue was too infuriating and compelling. On her lavender shirt, she wore a sticker that said "Say No to State-Mandated Rape." Just beneath the beltline of her blue jeans was a strip of yellow tape that read "Private Property: Keep Out."
One organizer said the event took root, was organized and publicized almost wholly through Facebook and other social media after last week's votes on landmark anti-abortion bills racing through a legislature dominated for the first time by conservative Republicans.
"We could feel that there was a lot of outrage and emotion and people talking about these issues," said Sarah Okolita, a Virginia Commonwealth University graduate student who helped arrange the Monday morning event.
The protest also came as Virginia's highly partisan debate over abortion legislation moved into the realm of comedy and national pop culture when a segment on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" lampooned ultrasound bills sponsored by Del. Kathy Byron, R-Campbell County, and Sen. Jill Vogel, R-Fauquier.
Initially, participants were kept off the interior of Capitol Square. They stood in a queue that stretched nearly three blocks on a sidewalk along the eastern perimeter of the Capitol campus. Later, after many legislators had already taken the 170-yard walk from their office building to the Capitol for their 11:30 a.m. caucus meetings and floor sessions afterward, they were allowed to take up positions inside Capitol Square.
Two or three deep, protesters lined both sides of the primary sidewalk from the General Assembly Building toward the Capitol's west door.
Reaction from legislators varied, largely based on party affiliation.
"God bless y'all. You're doing the right thing," Del. Algie T. Howell, D-Norfolk, said as he walked past the unspeaking throng.
Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, acknowledged it was "an impressive crowd."
"So there's opposition to this measure. So what's new about that?" said Marshall, the sponsor of the "personhood" legislation that could outlaw all abortions and, critics claim, some forms of contraception in Virginia if the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion is reversed. The bill passed the House on a vote of 66-32 and is pending before the Senate Education and Health Committee.
Both chambers have passed legislation that would force women seeking abortions to first undergo an ultrasound examination to determine a gestational age for the fetus. In the procedure, a wand-like device is inserted and used to send out sound waves.
Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, a socially conservative Catholic, has said he will sign the ultrasound bill, but has taken no position on Marshall's personhood bill, a spokesman said last week.
At Monday's protest, the ultrasound bill provoked more scorn than Marshall's.
"My decision to come here today is based on the fact that what states do impacts the rest of the nation," said Carole Lewis-Anderson, who traveled snow-covered roads from Washington, D.C., for the Presidents Day event. "To be able to intrude into a woman's body by law? That's beyond belief!"

URL

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/02/20/women-protest-anti-abortion-legislation-in-virginia/

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/02/20/women-protest-anti-abortion-legislation-in-virginia/print#ixzz1myquboc5

Our Memory

Records (Her Womb)

From the evidence adduced on trial, it appeared that Miss Ashe went to the establishment of Howard... about the middle of January 1858, for the purpose of having abortion procured, supposing herself pregnant, by a young farmer, by whom she had been employed during the previous summer; that a bargain was struck between the reputed father of the child and Howard, by which he was to perform the desired service for the sum of $100.
Report of a trial for criminal abortion
C.P. Frost, M.D., of St. Johnsbury, Vermont

The "immorality" of women, favorite theme of misogynists, is not to be wondered at; how could they fail to feel an inner mistrust of the presumptuous principles that men publicly proclaim and secretly disregard? They learn to believe no longer in what men say when they exalt women or exalt man: the one thing they are sure of is this rifled and bleeding womb, these shreds of crimson life, this child that is not there. It was at her first abortion that woman beings to "know."
Simone De Beauvior, The Second Sex

Her sister swore that she witnessed every operation. She testified that the doctor operated three times with instruments. (She could not describe the instruments minutely. She did not know how many there were.) She said water discharged from her sister's body (for tow or three hours, she said). She said on the next day, he operated again. (She said he used two or three instruments.) She said her sister did not cry out, but gave other evidence, she said, of considerable pain. There was now a discharge of blood, she said. On the night of the same day, Saturday, she reported, he operated again. After this, her sister did not sit up, she said. He used instruments again, she said, and also his hand.  This time a child was delivered about two-thirds grown, she said. She said her sister continued to bleed for a few days. That she lived from that Saturday to the next Friday evening, that the last two or three days of her life she was delirious and picked at her clothes.IT is said from the body of the dead woman no proof of innocence or guilt can be issued. We go back. We ask what happened then. We find no mention. No reference. No book. Books out of print. Lost, destroyed. Pages torn away. Days missing. We find documents. She finds letters. Diaries. Stories are repeated. We discover she was operated on four times before she died, we discover a hairpin was removed from her bladder, we read they took salts of lead, copper, zinc and mercury, we read they let themselves fall down staircases, we read she injected vinegar into the bladder, we read her womb was perforated by a knitting needle, by a probe, we read hemorrhage, we read inflammation, we read that she drank a solution of soap and then ran for a quarter of an hour, we read she remained for hour days in her room bathed in her own blood with no food and no water we read that the doctors would do nothing for her pain we read that she gave birth along that the infant was found dead beside her nearly dead body that she was sentenced to death, we read pain, we read illness. We can tell you something of what they went through, we say. Standing in the pharmacy, she was afraid they would know she was hemorrhaging. From the records, we say, we can guess what she felt. So that her screaming would not give her away, she began to sing. From the records She spend the night on the floor rocking in agony, biting her teeth into the flesh of her palm so she would not awaken them we can tell you what we know. The past is a hard stone within us. On this subject we have become unmovable, implacable. There is no way of convincing us otherwise, we say, and what is stone becomes wood that ages and resonates: we know what we know.

p 214 to 216 of Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, by Susan Griffin

Monday Morning Roaring

State sponsored rape: Vaginal probes in Virginia, virginity tests in Egypt

• By Michael Stone, Humanist Examiner

 State sponsored rape in Egypt and Virgina demonstrate dangers of religious extremism.

In Virginia state legislators want to force women seeking an abortion to suffer the indignity of a medically unnecessary vaginal probe. In Egypt military police force women protesters to suffer the indignity of a virginity test.
In both instances, a woman is being punished - forced to endure sexual penetration and humiliation in order to satisfy religious extremists. In both cases, religiously motivated punishment takes the form of state sponsored rape.
In Virginia, Republican legislators are promoting a draconian measure to require women seeking an abortion to undergo a medically unnecessary and invasive procedure known as a transvaginal ultrasound.
The bill was passed by the Virginia Senate two weeks ago, and will be voted on by the state house on Monday. The measure is expected to pass.
There is no medical reason for the transvaginal ultrasound. There is no medical reason to force a woman to be penetrated by doctor as a prerequisite for pregnancy termination. There is no medical reason for this state sponsored rape.
Ultimately the purpose of the bill is not medical, but political. The legislation is meant to humiliate, harass and intimidate women who choose to exercise their right to reproductive freedom. The legislation represents an attempt by religious conservatives to keep women in their place.
Religious extremists in both Virginia and Egypt are determined to punish women for daring to challenge a conservative religious orthodoxy that seeks to deny women basic rights.
In America, the war on women is being led by Republicans, and driven by Christian extremists. The so called “pro-life,” anti-abortion forces are determined to humiliate and abuse any woman who dares to challenge their religious convictions.
Whether it is Muslims in Egypt, or Christians in Virginia, the tactics are the same. Virginity tests or vaginal probes, forcing a woman to have something put inside her vagina against her will is rape.  It makes no difference if the state sponsored sexual assault is motivated by Muslim or Christian conservative values, either way it is wrong, and unacceptable.

Secular beliefs | February 19, 2012

Michael Stone

Humanist Examiner

Continue reading on Examiner.com State sponsored rape: Vaginal probes in Virginia, virginity tests in Egypt - National Humanist | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/humanist-in-national/state-sponsored-rape-vaginal-probes-virginia-virginity-tests-egypt#ixzz1myl5642p

Introduction

In light of the recent events in Virginia regarding anti-abortion legislation, and having recently finished reading, Women and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her by Susan Griffin, I have decided to start this blog to hopefully illustrate to women who may otherwise feel excluded from, or that feel that the feminist movement doesn't represent them, the necessity in fighting for our rights.  At a moment when we made strides for marriage equality, but seem to be losing ground with regard to our reproductive rights - I hope this blog will illustrate what the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."  It is my hope that this blog will provoke, inspire and rally women throughout our Nation and the World. Through the juxtaposition of news articles, passages from Women and Nature, and visual imagery I hope that we will find in each other common ground too often hidden behind colors, flags, religion and sexuality, and stand up for ourselves and for our children, our daughters, as our predecessors stood up for us.

"These words are written for those of us whose language is not heard, whose words have been stolen or erased, those robbed of language, who are called voiceless or mute, even the earthworms, even the shellfish and the sponges, for those of us who speak our own language."  

Borrowed from the dedication page of The Roaring Inside Her, by Susan Griffin, 1978.
Published by Harper & Row Publishers 

I will state my case here for using large sections of your fine book that may stretch the limits of fair use. I have my own voice, it is both the voice every college student in America is entitled to, that the internet grants me, of remix and mashup, and my professional voice as an Art Historian/Critic in training. I lean on a combination of your voice, Susan and my internet voice because of the power in the union, because your work should be read by more people and this is one way of making it possible. I use your voice because we share the same goals, and I hope for that you will forgive me and support me.


I encourage everyone to support Susan's treatise by buying a copy at your local bookseller, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1578050472/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller= or http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/women-and-nature-susan-griffin/1102215121