April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

health

pssst…Right wingers…over here

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Right wingers like to paint doomsday scenarios of Canada’s Health Care system. Pointing to our neighbours to the south they wail about personal responsibility and the way it should be. I’ve never understood personal responsibility and health care..you do get that catch a cold is just a phrase…right?

Over at the Apophatic Attic there is a post comparing the the Canadian and US health systems and guess what? You are actually paying fewer tax dollars and reaping more rewards under the Health Care Act. Bet that’s a kick in the head.

I never realised the US government pays for ANY health care, let alone 45% of total health care expenditures. I thought, due to my leftist prejudice, that the government just left sick people completely at the mercy of the private sector. So for a moment I was pretty impressed. But then math kicked in again, just as it did when I was contemplating Labour’s welfare reform plans.

70.2% of $3463 is $2431.03
45.1% of $6347 is $2862.50

What does this mean?

The US government already spends $431.47 more per capita on health care than the Canadian government.

Read it and be educated.

“Totoo po iyon. Iyon po ang ginagawa ng mga babae sa amin kapag ayaw na nilang magkaanak”

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When one middle-upper-class lay Catholic woman official vehemently disputed the national abortion statistics and denied the frequency of the practice, one by one the grassroots women stood up and countered her assertions, replying respectfully but firmly that abortion was indeed occurring in their parishes. “Totoo po iyon. Iyon po ang ginagawa ng mga babae sa amin kapag ayaw na nilang magkaanak” [It’s true. That’s what women do in our place when they don’t want to have any more babies”], she said.

SOURCE

Poor women in the Filipines struggling to raise many children on little money, and without access to birth control are using abortion as birth control. In the year 2000 an estimated 473,400 women had abortions (including natural and induced.) of those 105,000 had complications and 12,600 died. These stats may be on the low side however as the subject is clouded in silence. As one women opined, “Sino ba namang babae, Ma’am, ang magpapalista na nagpa-aborsyon siya?” [“Ma’am, what woman in her right mind would report that she had an abortion?”]

Filipinos over the age of 15 are required to take an eight-week course on Catholic sexual teachings, after which they can buy a card showing they have completed the course and are eligible to receive the sacraments. Those without such a card have been denied communion and burial. Some priests obtained lists of women who had had IUDs inserted and instructed them to remove the devices

SOURCE

Church indifference to women, to women’s emotional and physical health, and reproductive issues can be seen clearly and starkly in this quote;

The Catholic campaign against emergency contraception has made it unavailable in most Catholic hospitals, even when such a hospital is the only one available in its area and the person requesting EC is not a Catholic. The most brutal example of Catholic clerical insensitivity to women is the church’s opposition to the distribution of EC to refugee women from Kosovo who had fled to camps after having been raped in the war. This view of the woman made pregnant by rape in war is also illustrated by the appeal in 1993 by Pope John Paul II to Bosnian Muslim women who had been raped to turn their rapes into acts of love by “accepting the enemy into them” and carrying their pregnancies to term.

This is what life is like for women in El Salvador

Abortion was thus defined in El Salvador as murder from the first moment of conception. The abortion provider faces a prison term of 6-12 years, those who help her face 2-5 years, and the woman herself faces 2-8 years for abortion in the first trimester and 30-50 years if the abortion occurs after the first trimester. Under these laws numerous women who had abortions have been imprisoned. One was imprisoned for 30 years for abortion of an 18-week fetus, even though she has three small children who are dependent on her as their sole parent. Most of those who are prosecuted are poor women. The rich continue to have options to fly to Miami or visit a well-paid private doctor. But the poor resort to back-alley abortionists, who often leave them with severe injuries. If they go to a hospital with such injuries, they are taken into custody and examined for evidence of abortion. Women in El Salvador have fallen under a reign of terror in which they and their doctors and friends are at risk of prosecution if there is any indication that they have sought abortion

Some may say these are third world countries with third world policies. While that may be true, they do not differ in having poor people who are subject to different treatment. i.e. Anti-choice groups in the states trying to have contraception and reproductive treatments taken off insurance and out of medicare programs. Thus forcing poor women to have no choice but self induced abortion. Calls for abstinence are ridiculous not only because you have no right to police someone else’s genitals but because the vast majority of these women are in long term relationships or marriages.

Religious groups who feel everyone is entitled to their opinion are trying to have contraception classified as abortion. Not only scientifically ridiculous but a flat out lie. How long will it be before the church or groups affiliated will want your medical records? Hold the phone…they have already asked.

The Wichita grand jury convened after anti-choice organizations dusted off an 1887 law which allows citizens to launch grand jury investigations. The groups allege that Dr. Tiller violated a Kansas law prohibiting post-viability abortions unless a woman’s life or health is in danger. The grand jury first met on January 8, 2008, and soon thereafter, subpoenaed the records of every patient who was twenty-two weeks pregnant or more and visited Dr. Tiller’s clinic Women’s Health Care Services from July 1, 2003 on

We need to ask our questions now, vote for our rights now, so that this does not become our dialogue
Finally, one parish worker appealed to the six bishops present, “Ano pong masasabi namin sa kanila kapag naghahanap sila ng payo sa amin, kung talagang hindi na puwede sa kanila na mabuntis?” [“What do we tell women seeking our advice if they really don’t want to go through another pregnancy?”] She did not get an answer.

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I don’t fill prescriptions at your church, don’t preach in my pharmacy!

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Equivalent of abortion?
Equivalent of abortion?

The Bush administration in it’s continuing efforts to appease the crazies appeal to it’s base is drafting legislation which would

  • consider contraceptives abortifacts
  • require family planning clinics to hire staff opposed to family planning
  • allow any health care provider to refuse care based on their religious beliefs
  • consider fertilized eggs not implanted fetuses to be a pregnancy (even though there is no way to test for this )

Under the draft proposal, federally funded hospitals and clinics that provide family planning services would be required to promise in writing that they will turn a blind eye to health care providers’ views on abortion and certain kinds of birth control, such as emergency contraception.

The proposed rule defines abortion as “any of the various procedures–including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action–that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”

Organizations that do not comply would forfeit financial aid distributed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

SOURCE

While it goes without saying that women have the right to choose to reproduce or not.  I wonder if they have considered that many women are on the pill for reasons other than reproductive control. Other medically indicated reasons include;

  • acne control
  • Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)
  • irregular or absent menstrual periods
  • severe cramps
  • endometriosis
  • hormone replacement therapy
  • estrogen replacement due to such causes as anorexia nervosa, damage to the ovaries from radiation or chemotherapy
  • anemia from heavy periods

from the draft pdf available here

Ambulance Firm Faces Bias Suit; Worker Fired After Refusing to go to Abortion Clinic, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, May 9, 2004 at C3 (“An ambulance worker who was fired after she refused to transport a woman to an abortion clinic filed a religious-discrimination lawsuit against her employer Friday…‘I just felt really strongly it was something that I couldn’t do,’ said Adamson, a devout Christian who is adamantly anti-abortion. ‘It would be against everything that I believe in and everything that I support.’”);

This is used an example of bias against people’s religious values. Now what if a gay man requires transport to the hospital is it ok for him to have to wait until an ambulance with a human being non religious person arrives? What about a JW refusing to do a life saving blood transfusion? How about as an atheist or non christian your caregiver declines to contact your priest for last rites because it doesn’t jive with their beliefs? Yes this is a can of worms for choice but also for religious war. And if churches are deciding laws and politics is it not time that their tax exempt status was revoked?

An IRC Section 501(c)(3) organization may not engage in carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities. Whether an organization has attempted to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities is determined based upon all relevant facts and circumstances. However, most IRC Section 501(c)(3) organizations may use Form 5768, Election/Revocation of Election by an Eligible Section 501(c)(3) Organization to Make Expenditures to Influence Legislation, to make an election under IRC Section 501(h) to be subject to an objectively measured expenditure test with respect to lobbying activities rather than the less precise “substantial activity” test. Electing organizations are subject to tax on lobbying activities that exceed a specified percentage of their exempt function expenditures. For further information regarding lobbying activities by charities, download Lobbying Issues.

For purposes of IRC Section 501(c)(3), legislative activities and political activities are two different things, and are subject to two different sets of rules. The latter is an absolute bar. An IRC Section 501(c)(3) organization may not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office. Whether an organization is engaging in prohibited political campaign activity depends upon all the facts and circumstances in each case. For example, organizations may sponsor debates or forums to educate voters. But if the forum or debate shows a preference for or against a certain candidate, it becomes a prohibited activity. The motivation of an organization is not relevant in determining whether the political campaign prohibition has been violated. Activities that encourage people to vote for or against a particular candidate, even on the basis of non-partisan criteria, violate the political campaign prohibition of IRC Section 501(c)(3).

SOURCE

It is said that there is no such thing as being a little bit pregnant, it is obvious that there can be no such thing as being a little bit pro-choice. American women need to come out in droves and support pro-choice candidates. Not just for themselves but for their daughters and granddaughters and sisters. There is a war on American soil. It is the war of religion against reason, lies against science, and a war for control of your body. Don’t let the Bush administration, as did the Nazi’s, as did the Ceausescu regime, make your body property of the state.

And to Canadian readers, this is why we cannot as Ms. May insists have ‘dialogue’ with the anti-choicers. It only emboldens them. Bills C-484, C-537 and Bill C-338 are all bills designed with the purpose of creating a climate where women’s choices are defined for them by others beliefs.

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  • Contraception = Abortion? Bush Plan Enrages

Celebrate Choice

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Today marks the 20th anniversary of the right to reproductive liberty.

Abortion is not about a culture of death, it is not about hating children or being sinners. It is about controlling ones health, ones life, ones future.

There is a mistaken belief that if abortion were completely outlawed no more abortions would ever be preformed. This of course is ridiculous nonsense. Women have always practised birth control and abortion. And would continue to do so. [Read more…] about Celebrate Choice