Category: Women’s Rights

By East County Magazine / Originally published May 6, 2012

Congressional candidate Denise Moreno Ducheny has chastised her opponent, Senator Juan Vargas, for voting against a woman’s right to choose. Vargas voted in opposition to Senate Bill (SB) 1338 (Kehoe) during last week’s Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee. The final vote on the bill was 4-4 with one Senator not voting, effectively killing the bill in committee.

Half of California’s counties currently have no abortion provider, including Imperial County, which Vargas seeks to represent in Congress. SB 1338 would have allowed an estimated 24,000 trained nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives and physician assistants to provide non-surgical, first-trimester abortion.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / April 15, 2012

A few days ago, between classes, I ran to the Women’s Room, previously known as the Lady’s Room — until we were liberated from ladylike notions. Or so we thought. Maybe they’ll redo the door signs if Mitt Romney wins the presidency.

In the meantime, I had to get to class, but having birthed a child and lived half a century I had a greater need to pee.

Which I did, surprising myself with a faint moan I had neither intended to release nor felt vibrating past my gullet. Too distracted to give it much thought, I exited the stall, washed my hands, poked at a loose strand of hair, and then I noticed:

Four stalls, three empty. Three sinks. One pregnancy test package insert on the counter. And one faint moan that might have been mine, but was not.

When I was of traditional college age, I invested no thought in motherhood, other than to declare myself unfit for it for several years, and then disinterested for many more. I did, however, eventually succumb to the grandiose and mundane thoughts of parenting, so I found a proper partner and engaged in the physical performance of a lifetime, repeatedly reconfiguring my body to accommodate a growing second. And I never quite managed to put myself back together again. I don’t care what the glitterati say; we are never who we were before producing a child, physically and otherwise.

Ashley Judd’s ‘puffy’ appearance sparked a viral media frenzy. But, the actress writes, the conversation is really a misogynistic assault on all women.

By Ashley Judd / The Daily Beast / Originally published April 9, 2012

The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted.

Michael Moore, Chris Hedges, and others to address press following hearing

At 9:00 AM this Thursday, March 29th at the Southern District of New York Federal Courthouse, multiple plaintiffs will testify in support of a worldwide lawsuit against the United States government over the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The NDAA, also known as the “Homeland Battlefield” law, permanently suspends due process and Habeas Corpus for persons accused by the federal government of being involved in hostilities against the United States, or being an “associated force” of terrorists.

by Abby Normal

I feel myself up quite regularly. It’s quite natural, really as most medical resources say I’m supposed to do a monthly breast self-examination starting after the age of 20. Granted, there was few-year period where I neglected my cancer detecting duties, but I can officially tell you I’m back on track.

I also regularly visit my gynecologist, which is not nearly as much fun as feeling myself up. In fact, the sight of that little three-by-five reminder card can downright put a damper on the day.

CSUSM: The results of electing inaction

By Kit-Bacon Gressit / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / March 17, 2012

Better election fraud than rape. That’s what I always say. Not really. That’s what I’ve been saying since Friday, when I learned that Cal State University San Marcos (CSUSM) student Matt Weaver was arrested. But he was not arrested for repeatedly promoting rape (along with homophobia, misogyny, pedophilia and racism) in the pages of The Koala, the privately-owned, for-profit tabloid he edits and touts as a “humor” publication.* No, Weaver, who was running for president of ASI, the student government, was arrested and charged with three criminal counts associated with the elections:

1. unlawful access to a computer or database,
2. identity theft and
3. election fraud.

Here’s the gist of it: The university’s information security folks noticed suspicious activity …

This is the sixth and final day in which “Doonesbury creator” Gary Trudeau satirizes Texas’ state mandated health care requirements for women seeking an abortion. Trudeau depicts a woman in the first trimester of an unwanted pregnancy as she undergoes a state mandated transvaginal sonogram, listens to her physician provide a state mandated detailed description of her possibly 2 ½ inch fetus, and then waits another state mandated 24 hours before having the abortion.

Are these really the same people who are frothing at the mouth about “big government mandated Obamacare?” My shit detector just hit “10.”

In an interview earlier this week with the Washington Post Trudeau explains the impetus for this week’s strips:

“For some reason, the GOP has chosen 2012 to re-litigate reproductive freedom, an issue that was resolved decades ago. Why Santorum, Limbaugh et al. thought this would be a good time to declare war on half the electorate, I cannot say. But to ignore it would have been comedy malpractice.”

Here’s todays Doonesbury cartoon No. 5 for Friday, March 16th.

Jeff Light, editor of the revamped San Diego U-T, the guy who made the decision to black-out this week’s Doonsbury cartoons because artist Gary Trudeau is drawing about women’s reproductive rights, came on the OB Rag the other day and left a lengthy comment as to why he made the decision.

While we really appreciate Jeff coming onto our site – something his predecessors would never have done and which is a sign of the drastic difference he has made on the newspaper – we believe his reasoning falls flat. Here’s his comment from Wednesday in full:

You know, sometimes people with strong feelings get worked up and do things that they probably realize, deep down, are out of bounds. … So, Rush Limbaugh calls some poor woman a slut, …. To me this is all the same sort of thing.
I didn’t kill those strips for any partisan reason. I run Doonesbury every day. …

Originally posted on March 15, 2012

A few words about political cartoons, U-T’s Steve Breen, and the blackout.

Over the past few days Doonesbury creator Gary Trudeau has depicted a woman’s experience in a Texas abortion clinic. The woman has been introduced to the shaming room, pronounced a suspected slut, and has been Rick Rolled, as Governor Rick Perry casts aside the woman’s own doctor’s health assessment to present a legislative edict of his own.

Trudeau has been a comic strip artist since 1970. He is also a Pulitzer Prize winning comic strip artist ( 1975), and political satirist and social commentator. It is therefore not a surprise that his cartoons riff off of the mainstream news and delivers them up with a distinctive point of view. This is what political satirists and commentators do.

That is what U-T San Diego’s own political cartoonist, Steve Breen does—he draws political cartoons that represent his own distinctive point of view. Breen was born in 1970, the same year that Trudeau became syndicated, and he has won two Pulitzer Prizes (1998, 2009).

Picket Darrel Issa outside Shadowridge Country Club in Vista (1980 Gateway Dr.), where he is featured at a $125/person “Meet the Leaders” cocktail party (630pm) and dinner (730pm) by the Vista Chamber of Commerce.

Picket Darrel Issa

Today – March 13, 2012

5:00pm until 8:00pm

Shadowridge Country Club

Gateway Drive and Shadowridge Drive, Vista CA

We will line the public sidewalks along Gateway Drive, leading up to the Country Club entrance, and at its intersection with the busy Shadowridge Drive.

Bring your sass and creativity — we want to let the Chairman of our House Oversight Committee who held a hearing on contraception and refused to allow any women to testify in the first panel, know that we WILL be heard and seen, despite his best efforts!

Since the right-wing and their attendant press refuse to run Doonesbury all week because Gary Trudeau is focusing the strip on women’s reproductive rights, we have decided to run them – all week. Here is Day No. 2.

Comics about women’s reproductive rights simply not “appropriate”

Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau takes on Texas’ controversial abortion laws this week, but you won’t see them in our big bold San Diego U-T. U-T editor Jeff Light joins a number of equally feckless editors in places like Kansas City, MO, pulling the strip completely, or providing “replacements.” Father knows best…

In today’s Doonesbury strip, a Texas woman walks into an abortion clinic and is introduced to the shaming room.