a strong contender for "best idea ever" has appeared

in my small linkspam of earlier today, i linked to the opencongress report on the vote to defund planned parenthood. i am not going to go into the reasons why this vote was stupid, meaningless, and counterproductive to actually improving things for anybody in this country, but behold, it is as though the Gods of Internet Feminism heard and were moved by my unvoiced cries of woe.

thus i present to you: http://boehnerforpp.tumblr.com/

You can donate as little as $5, or as much as you want! For every person who does this, John Boehner will get a card saying a gift has been made to Planned Parenthood in his name.

i would also suggest making donations in the name of antichoice congressthings, especially your own, if you have been cursed with one as i have.

reminder: find and contact any congressperson here

honor killings: coming soon to a south dakota near you!

mother jones reports:

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of “justifiable homicide” to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state’s GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state’s legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person “while resisting an attempt to harm” that person’s unborn child or the unborn child of that person’s spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman’s father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.

all flippant one-liners aside, though: what the fuck?

if you click over, you will see that rep. jensen's response to the internet at large asking that very question is "it's only if the person being justifiably homicided is trying to commit a crime!" and that sounds great until you remember that this is a state that actually had a total abortion ban signed into law in 2006.

i've had this article kicking around my inbox with a "blogqueue" tag for the past week and a half while i tried to decide exactly what i wanted to say. i still can't really organize my thoughts about it; just rereading it now has made me sort of sick to my stomach.

all of these efforts to make abortion more difficult, dangerous, and expensive are textbook studies of the law of unintended consequences. a zygote is a legal person? whoops, a woman who miscarries has just committed manslaughter. your daughter wants an abortion? south dakota wants to make it legally justifiable for you to kill whoever's taking her to the clinic and every person who works there.

i have a lot of trouble believing that anyone could be evil enough to intend these effects. but honestly? i think evil would be a much more comfortable explanation. as it is, the conclusion i keep drawing, over and over again, is that these statutes come into being not because antichoicers are evil, or even because they're stupid. it's because they don't care.

they don't care that pregnancy can kill us. they don't care that even with all contraceptive due diligence, accidents still happen. they don't care that an egg can't tell your boyfriend's and your rapist's spermatozoa apart. they don't care about the millions of single mothers living in poverty, and they don't care about the millions of children in the foster system who despair of ever finding loving families.

misogyny is undoubtedly evil, but the thing about an oppressive system is that it makes tons of people, who given the choice would not choose to be oppressors, complicit in oppression. and the rhetoric about protecting life -- in which my esteemed congressman is apparently so well-versed -- is a smokescreen that exists to maintain that complicity. and it is a mistake to tar all antichoicers with the same brush. possessing the privilege of being insulated from poverty, the fear of sexual violence, and inadequate health care doesn't make someone a bad person; only refusing to own it does. and if someone doesn't care about you, it is wrong to condemn them without giving them the chance to care by using your voice.

so i guess what i'm trying to say is hooray for mother jones. hopefully that article will separate a few more of the well-meaning but ignorant prolifers from monsters like phil jensen.

more fun with congressthings!

so mr. canseco wrote me back. and by "wrote me back" i mean sent me an "i'm sorry you're pro-choice :(" piece of shit form letter.

Dear Rachel:

Thank you for contacting me to let me know of your opposition to H.R. 3 the “No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Act.” While we don’t see eye-to-eye on this issue, I appreciate having the benefit of your thoughts on this issue.

It is my ardent belief in the sanctity of life and the right to life for every unborn child. I am a strong believer that life begins at conception and that innocent lives must be protected. Our Founding Fathers believed that all Americans have certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that these rights must be protected. As a Member of Congress, it is my duty to defend the rights of all Americans, especially those who cannot stand up for themselves.

As you know, the “No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Act” (H.R. 3) would establish a government-wide prohibition on the use of federal funds for abortion. This legislation ensures that millions of Americans who believe in the sanctity of life do not see their tax dollars used to destroy innocent life.

Again, thank you for contacting me. In the future, if there is anything else with which I may assist you, please feel free to contact me. To keep track of what is happening in Congress, I encourage you to visit my website at http://canseco.house.gov/, my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/RepCanseco, or follow me on my twitter site http://twitter.com/RepCanseco.

Sincerely,
Francisco “Quico” Canseco
Member of Congress

and because i am objectively better than he is, i wrote him a response. too bad i couldn't add "and if you would actually engage with my arguments this time that would be great, thanks in advance" to the end.

this is so difficult. how utterly insulting to be told that we as women matter less than any potential lives we might temporarily house in our uteruses, and then easily dismissed or ignored when we protest this indefensible injustice because we...have uteruses. it's like a grandly unfunny chicken-or-egg question, except that you can't look clever by remarking that dinosaurs laid eggs.

i don't know, maybe i'd be less bitter if i were talking to a woman.

Mr. Canseco,

Thank you for taking the time to write me back. I appreciate the response.

I do not appreciate, however, having my concerns about the rights of rape survivors dismissed with a list of pro-life platitudes.

You say that as a member of Congress, it is your duty to protect those who cannot protect themselves. I strongly agree with this precept, but if I may be so bold, do you extend that duty to all of the oppressed and voiceless? Because I see no reason why women who are victims of rape, poverty, and utterly inadequate education are less deserving of your protection than the unborn.

I am aware and extremely thankful that the "forcible rape" language was removed from H.R. 3, and I assume that change extends to H.R. 358, which duplicates it in its original form as accessible online. But there is a much larger issue at play here: is it really just to legislate safe and legal abortion out of the reach of the women who need it most, when that action may destroy their lives? Ensuring that women in poverty will remain there by denying them access to the contraceptive of last resort, especially when taken in concert with denial of access to decent preventative care, seems to me to be a poor way to represent them in government. If you are going to pledge to protect the sanctity of life, perhaps it would be wiser to begin with persons who are biologically independent.

And finally, while I respect your dedication to the founding principles of this nation and that references to the Declaration of Independence play well with your base, I must remind you that the Declaration does not and has never carried the force of law -- and even if it did, nowhere in that august document are fetuses mentioned. And furthermore, I implore you to consider how your rhetoric concerning the Life and Liberty of the unborn negatively affects the Safety and Happiness of 51% of your constituency.

Rachel K. Clair

his note had typist's initials at the bottom, like an old-school memorandum. i should have shouted out to him/her.

so, uh. A.F., do you actually believe all the fuckery he makes you type?

letter: no taxpayer funding for silencing rape survivors

Mr. Canseco,

It is a terrible and terribly unfortunate fact that we live in a society where one in four women will experience sexual assault during her lifetime. And even more unfortunately, we live in a society that does everything it can to demean, belittle, dismiss, and silence those 25% of women who experience rape and sexual assault.

Regardless of one's personal politics with regard to reproductive choice, it is absolutely reprehensible for a government which is meant to protect all of its citizens -- and which fails utterly to do so for as many as 85% of the rape victims who have the courage to demand justice -- to abet the evils of rape culture. The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion's artificial distinction between "forcible rape" and "all other kinds of rape which are no less rape because the victim was unable or unwilling to fight back" is nothing less than that -- a clear message to women that Congress does not care about us or our dignity not just as women, but as human beings.

As your constituent I urge you to vote against this message and to encourage your colleagues to do the same. This is not a partisan issue. This is not a religious issue. This is an issue of basic human decency.

Rachel K. Clair

to contact quico canseco (r), 23rd texas district: here

to find and contact any other congressperson: here