Woke up this morning and matttbastard and Sylvia were already ahead of me on this one:
The Utah House of Representatives will hear a controversial proposal that could hold physicians responsible for homicide if they perform abortions deemed illegal by the state.
Under current state law, abortion is allowed only in cases of rape or incest, if the fetus cannot survive outside the womb or is unlikely to survive, or to save the mother’s life or preserve her health.
Abortions that don’t meet any of those standards can result in third-degree felony charges.
Under House Bill 90, sponsored by Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clinton, physicians who perform illegal abortions could be charged with second-degree felony criminal homicide…
Ray’s bill states that, to justify an abortion, two physicians would have to separately determine a fetus has a birth defect that would prevent it from surviving outside the womb, but Hodo said it may still force women to give birth to children who have no chance of long-term survival…
Rep. Phil Riesen, D-Salt Lake City, cast the only vote against the measure. He said women should be allowed to make their own choices, and expressed frustration with the overall nature of the abortion debate in the Legislature.
“It’s analogous to charging people with crimes because there are accidents at four-way intersections, when we have the technology and the knowledge to prevent those accidents by installing traffic lights,” Riesen said.
Yeah. Um, Utah state leg? Fuck right off. You can tell ‘em what you think here, at their website.
Note, also, that it’s the doctors being charged. Not the women, because women clearly don’t have enough agency to make their own choices. Doctors (obviously gendered male) must make the choices for them.
It shows Obama once again willing to be nonpartisan and appoint Republicans to his cabinet, giving him the moral high ground against obstructionists.
It takes another Republican out of the Senate, and though he’s one who could probably be pulled into a Democratic majority on some bills, having a Democrat appointed by New Hampshire’s Democratic governor would be the magic 60–if they ever get around to seating Al Franken.
And Gregg should jump at it, since New Hampshire’s trending Democratic and he’s unlikely to be reelected. Plus, he’s actually, y’know, qualified for the job.
My only question is: How quickly can we make this happen?
So on the “What Now” subject: The economic stimulus bill is up before Congress this week and it’s going to have a rough time in the Senate. The House has the votes along party lines, but the Senate, well, you know the score.
If you’re like me and you live in a state with a rational Republican senator, email/call/picket his or her office (I’m thinking Specter–my Senator–the two from Maine, Voinovich…you know what I mean.) Harass the hell out of ‘em. Flood their offices. We need this passed and we need it now.
I’d prefer if we could get this back in, but Obama had to at least look like he was willing to compromise. If the Republicans keep stonewalling, we need to remind ‘em who won this election.
We all do a lot of talking and writing, some of it can certainly go in the direction of elected officials. If one of those people isn’t your Senator, fake some sort of a connection and go for it. State you were born in? State where your grandma lives? State you slept in once on an all-night booty call? Whatever.
This guy is slick. Really slick. Either that or he really believes his bullshit.
He came in with his talking points, for sure–”The fix is in…” “Saints and Mother Teresa,” “I was just trying to help people!”
But Maddow sits back and lets him hang himself. (Metaphorically!) She even offers him a way out–though it’s not really, because we’ve all heard the tapes, so he can’t really deny it. Instead, he raided an Obama speech for his talking points, but he ends up tripping over his words.
Also, one more reference to breast and cervical cancer and I’m filing a sexual harassment suit.
After a long conversation with one of my favorite bloggers, I realized that I should spend less time feeling guilty about not being back in New Orleans, and more time actually following what’s going on down there.
It’s about friggin’ time. This fall will mark four years since Katrina, and according to the article, “[Army corps of enginieers] officials have said there’s a backlog of projects ready for construction that totals more than $65 billion.”
Let’s get on it, shall we? Let your Senator know you support funds for rebuilding the Gulf, as well as many other infrastructure-related projects.
I used to be a rock writer on a much more regular basis. I got piles of promo CDs in the mail to review, and I was far more involved with the new music that came out.
These days, well, politics (and comics) take up much of my time, and communications theory takes up the rest. I don’t see nearly enough movies, and I miss that rush that comes with discovering a new band, the thrill of a truly great song.
I don’t have a top ten list for the year–I don’t think I even bought ten albums that came out this year. I revisited the past a good bit (hello, The Smiths binge), and I mixed the soundtrack to my life out of the music I already had.
I did pick up a few great records. TV on the Radio, “Dear Science” and Santogold’s self-titled record. Hell, I even liked Scarlett Johansson’s Tom Waits covers.
But I realized the other day that there’s really only one album that is truly associated with this year in my head.
The Hold Steady, “Stay Positive.”
Ironically, recommended to me by a friend whom I often criticize for being too negative, this record is a breath of uncynical love–the band’s MySpace page bills them as “a joyful noise” and it’s true. They’re completely devoid of obnoxious rock star posturing, even at their most anthemic (”Constructive Summer” was indeed the soundtrack to the best summer I’ve had in a really long time).
I joked that this might be the first Obama-era album, but it’s really more than that for me. It’s my hopeful record–one I downloaded on a whim off eMusic and burned to a CD and listened to over and over again in the car until my sister and her boyfriend wanted to kill me. It’s got all the dreams of months spent split between the campaign trail, the university, and running around New York City in as little clothing as I could legally wear to keep the sweat to a minimum.
There’s as much Bruce Springsteen story-of-America love in this record as there is punk rock (”Raise a toast to saint Joe Strummer/I think he might have been our only decent teacher”). The songs are about love and loss and friends and beer, sex and nightclubs and getting older and the things that still matter no matter how much of the scene we outgrow. They’re loaded with deliciously specific details and beautifully universal lyrics that cut to the core and leave visuals that linger for days (”Now I’m not really sure we were lovers/Or if it was just some kind of car crash,” “If I cross myself when I come/Would you maybe believe me?”).
There’s an elegiac tone in this record, a bit of mourning for a lost youth, but at the same time an embrace of the things that really, deep-down-in-your-bones matter. And a way to look forward, get older, and actually do something with yourself.
Writing about rock can kill the pure joy of it, but sometimes it’s so good that I just have to spill all over the page about it. I don’t know if this is the best album that came out in 2008, but it’s the one that most embodies 2008 for me.
It’s officially Blog for Choice day again, and in the afterglow of the Obama administration, it might be easy to think that we don’t have to worry about Roe v. Wade anymore. That things are great, time to go back to being happy.
Not yet.
The balance of the Supreme Court is still weighted in the wrong direction. We still have a lot of work to do, and yes, we’ve taken a step in the right direction.
Choice also means more than maintaining Roe v. Wade. As Sylvia wrote, we need to fight for comprehensive sex education. We need the right to choose not only when we will or will not have a child, but when and how we will be sexual, and we need to know that no one but ourselves has the right to judge us for those choices.
My top pro-choice hope for the Obama administration is of course overturning the global gag rule. We’ve seen and heard much about it, but it remains undone–for the moment. And I can hope that moment won’t last much longer.
But I want much, much more than that.
I am celebrating still, beaming at the television at the mention of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But I do not forget that there is still work to be done, that the inauguration of Obama was the beginning of a journey, not its end, and a call for us to work harder, because look, after all, at what we’ve already achieved.
So today, I think about the choices that have opened up to us in the past few days, and about the ones that are still in danger. And I prepare for the fights ahead.
You may have already read these as they came in, but I’m organizing them here in order, partly for me, and partly for anyone who doesn’t read my Twitter feed but wants to see how my inauguration trip went.
