Stopping the Asshat Express.

bostonwalkforchoice:

These stories explain why we need late-term abortions to be available everywhere and why we need more men like Dr. George Tiller.

 On Sunday May 30th, a man walked into a church in Wichita, Kansas and shot to death Dr. George Tiller. Dr. Tiller was volunteering as an usher that Sunday, so he was standing in the lobby of the church when the gunman entered. Unfortunately, Dr. Tiller’s death didn’t really come as a surprise; his medical practice centered on performing abortions, particularly late term abortions, and he’d been attacked before. Regardless of the near constant threats and harassment he received, Dr. Tiller was committed to his work. Why? Because he believed that “abortion is a matter of survival for women.”

It was for me. In October of 2004, I was pregnant with my sons Nicholas and Zachary. With great joy and expectation, my husband, my best friend, and I visited my doctor for a normal growth ultrasound. I was nearly 23 weeks pregnant, hovering at the start of the third trimester. Within moments it was clear something was wrong; one of the boys was still and had no heartbeat. When I met with my doctor, routine screening revealed the worst: the symptoms I’d been experiencing that I thought were normal with a twin pregnancy were actually evidence that I was sick — very, very sick. I was immediately admitted to the hospital with severe preeclampsia, and though my doctors tried mightily to slow the progression of the disease, by the morning of October 27, 2004 a group of doctors stood at my bedside and delivered the worst news I’d ever received.

I was in advanced kidney failure. My blood pressure was skyrocketing, and it could not be controlled with medications. My liver was beginning to decline. The horrific headache I was experiencing could no longer be treated with pain medications because they were afraid it would depress my ability to breathe when I began to have the seizures they expected at any moment. I would soon likely suffer a stroke or a heart attack. In other words, I was going to die unless the pregnancy was terminated. Immediately.

rabbleprochoice:

stfusexists:

If you can spare a few dollars, please donate to the Dr. Tiller Memorial Abortion Fund. Let’s carry on Dr. Tiller’s legacy of helping pregnant persons in need without judgment or shame. 

This is such a wonderful idea. If you can donate or just want to spread the word, please consider giving what you can or reblogging.

Love,

Rabble

azspot:

1. Poor people don’t pay taxes. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Chuck Marr and Brian Highsmith provide the definitive takedown of this myth.

2. The U.S. suffers from high taxes. As measured in terms of total tax revenue as a share of overall GDP the average tax burden for countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2008 was 44.8 percent. The U.S. — 26.1 percent. The U.S. pays less taxes, as a share of GDP, than Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Austria, France, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Switzerland and Japan.

3. U.S. corporations are over-taxed. Actually, as measured in terms of share of GDP, the U.S. has the lowest corporate tax burden of any OECD nation. While the official tax bracket may seems high — 35 percent — if one takes into account various loopholes and tax dodges, the effective tax rate is considerably lower, or around 27 percent, which comes in as slightly higher than average for OECD members. And according to ace tax report David Cay Johnston, the bigger you are, the less you pay — the effective tax rate for the biggest U.S. corporations is only about 15 percent.

In light of ongoing efforts to restrict women’s access to abortion in health care reform, it is sometimes easy to forget that many women already face nearly insurmountable obstacles to obtaining abortion care. This is particularly true for the more than 200,000 servicewomen currently serving in the armed forces, as well as military dependents. These women face not only a funding ban, which prohibits military insurance from covering the cost of any abortion, except for those necessary to save a woman’s life, but a ban on using military facilities, as well: Even if they pay with their own money, and no federal funds are used, servicewomen and dependents cannot obtain abortions in military treatment facilities, unless they disclose that the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest.

A recent article by Kathryn Joyce, Military Abortion Ban: Female Soldiers Not Protected by Constitution They Defend, which tells the story of a marine named Amy*, puts the plight of military women into stunning focus. Amy was stationed in Fallujah when she realized she was pregnant. Fearful of being ostracized by her male comrades, Amy did not report that her pregnancy was the result of rape. But after her attempt at a self-abortion, using herbs she purchased over the Internet and a sanitized cleaning rod for her rifle, went horribly wrong, she finally went to a military hospital. Shortly thereafter, she was charged under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for having violated the prohibition on having sex in a war zone. She was fined $500 and given a suspended rank reduction.

Most of us think that unsafe and illegal abortions, at least for American women, have been relegated to the pre-Roe era. But this is not so for the hundreds of thousands of women who have volunteered to serve in our military, and for the wives and daughters of soldiers stationed abroad. As the debates over health care continue, we will likely hear about lawmakers’ efforts to maintain the “status quo” when it comes to abortion funding. We would do well to remember what this “status quo” all-too often looks like.

*not her real name

And sometimes it seems to me like people would rather that war remain silent, that we not discuss the costs of war. War is a very abstract thing for many civilians in the United States right now. Many people don’t know servicemembers, let alone servicemembers who have been killed in action. Many people seem to prefer to keep it that way; the war is routinely pushed to the back pages, these days, the casualty counts sink to the lesser-seen portions of the newspaper. We do not even acknowledge our war dead when we talk about things like the tremendous advances in traumatic brain injury treatment, some of which were won at the cost of soldiers’ lives (members of the military in general, throughout history, have made immense contributions to trauma medicine and medical developments that save the lives of civilians every day).