It's all about the continued existence of patriarchal control. Men, and many women, want to control women's sex lives. I would never tell a man what to do with his reproductive organs and I would appreciate it if they'd stay out of the decisions I make along with my physician, over my reproductive organs.

I don't want anyone telling anyone what medical services they can or can't receive. It seems to me a great deal of hypocrisy that men get to pressure women into having sex and then get to complain about abortion. It seems a great deal of hypocrisy to me that men get to buy hookers and then complain about abortion. It seems a great deal of hypocrisy, and I apologise in advance for how crude this is, that men can get women tipsy or drunk or slip them roofies in order to have sex, but then complain about abortion. It seems a great deal of hypocrisy that men, again sorry for the language of this comment, get to complain that "they can't feel anything" and pull the condom off. If you're a man and you've came inside of a woman, regardless if she said she was on the pill or not, regardless if you were wearing a condom or not, you don't get to complain about abortion. You can't, as a man, complain that you want to have sex with women and then complain when she has to bear the consequences of that choice. So again, I want the man who has never done any of these things (specifically I want the guy who has never O'd inside of a woman whom he wasn't married or otherwise in a stable relationship with) to tell me why he gets to decide what a woman does with her uterus. And don't give me the "I think it's murder" bullpuckey. If you really thought it was murder then you wouldn't be having sex with a woman unless you were in a stable relationship with her and prepared and able to support the child.

Can someone please explain to me why males feel entitled to tell women what medical services they can or can't receive?

Simple. They're idiots.

This is one of those delightful little points where fundamentalist Muslims and Christians agree, along with their stands on homosexuality. And it is on these inroads that Christian Sharia will creep into this country. Watch for it. You can be sure that the cultural revolution in Iran was about traditional values as well. Suspect anyone who advocates those two words.

Christ I hate living in Oklahoma.

Christ I hate living in Oklahoma.

I hate living in Texas!

Simple. They're idiots.

I tend to lean "evil" in the "stupid/evil" debate. They know exactly what they're doing, and they puruse it doggedly and cleverly.

simplest way to determine a bloodline is thru the female. however, we live under the convoluted yoke of a patriarchal paradigm. all this oppression is to insure a patriarchal lineage as difficult as that can be..it's all about control!!

Exactly mad mike. It's an obsession with control. They go on about the safety and protection of the "people", however it's a far cry from that. They don't care about the young woman in an untenable position with an unwanted pregnancy, they don't care about the babies after they are born. They care about control and inflicting their beliefs on folks in the name of "protection". They are insane....

hate will be here any moment to call us baby killers....

I used to be a conservative Christian and part of the anti-abortion movement in the late 80s. As no-fun as it is, I can tell you the explanation is that these people in their heart of hearts see an embryo/fetus/zygote as a human being as important as any post-born human being. Therefore abortion in their minds literally is murder. To relate a little, imagine the government started to euthanize foster kids to lighten the foster care load. You would be horrified and do everything you could to stop the murder of those children. That's how these people see abortion.

Yes it's stupid that they think a cluster of undifferentiated cells is the same as a 10 year old child, but don't try and dismiss these people as evil or stupid just to simplify your worldview and feel superior to them. As Noam Chomsky says, they're making rational decisions within an irrational framework. Of course they're going to do whatever it takes to stop what they see as literally a holocaust. What they're trying to do is very very bad and dangerous for women, but as they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions!

Bonnie, it's obvious that you have switched sides in the abortion rights debate. Do you mind telling me what made you do so, as it seems there are very few "converts" on either side of the divide. Your insights would be interesting, as is your explanation about the thought processes of the people in the anti-abortion camp.

How does that explain their intransigence about children born into extreme poverty, welfare, or with special needs? The demonization of welfare mothers, hell...the whole anchor baby contraversy, the slashing of health and human services budgets, SCHIP, Newt Gingrich's proposal that children be taken from welfare mothers and put in institutions...all of that shows the depth of concern pro-lifers have for children once they've left the womb. Very simply, whatever happens to unwanted children, they feel, is not their concern. Their compassion for the unborn is rank hypocrisy.

I'm sorry Bonnie I do not, cannot, and will not relate abortion anywhere close to being akin to the government starting to "euthanize foster kids to lighten the foster care load". I don't think people are evil or stupid if they do not fit in to my "world view". I don't agree, and feel strongly that some of the tactics used (2nd amendment remedies?) against pro choice folks and clinics as evil and stupid. The murdered doctor and the bombing of clinics for example. Don't see much of the pro choice, liberal left people burning churches and shooting attorneys general eh?

Interesting choice of words, stupid and evil...I am certain that is exactly what conservative Christians and part of the anti-abortion movement think of the advocates of pro choice to simplify THEIR world view and to feel superior to us...just sayin...

these people in their heart of hearts see an embryo/fetus/zygote as a human being as important as any post-born human being.

The flip side to this, of course, is that they see uteruseswomen as categorically less important than other human beings, including the ones they consider "pre-born."

Not to mention that for considering it MURDER, they can't come up with an appropriate punishment for the women who have them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo

ETA: trigger warning, fetus posters

Very simply, whatever happens to unwanted children, they feel, is not their concern. Their compassion for the unborn is rank hypocrisy.

Yes and that exposes it for the woman-hating it really is. Despite their claims, they couldn't care less about the fetuses. It's all about punishing women.

Interesting choice of words, stupid and evil...I am certain that is exactly what conservative Christians and part of the anti-abortion movement think of the advocates of pro choice to simplify THEIR world view and to feel superior to us...just sayin...

Evil yes*, stupid no. They think we're clever--reference all the conspiracies they accuse us of. We can't be stupid if we're secretly plotting (and close to achieving!) the Black, Hispanic, Muslim, Atheist, Socialist, Fascist, Abortionist, Homosexual Takeover of America.

*Ya'll are invited to my baby-cue this weekend. ;)

maggie: hate and the other Howdy Doodys aren't fairing too well now that we have called them out for what they are: poor, unpaid Republican interns stuck in a basement room. I bet their corporate masters are not too happy w them right now!

you have switched sides in the abortion rights debate. Do you mind telling me what made you do so

FWIW, I also changed my views. I used to be very, very (I must stress: Very) Catholic. Although I was anti-abortion, I didn't go to marches or anything because I didn't think it should be illegal. I thought that women who had abortions were sinning, but that it was their decision to make. What changed my mind was losing my faith. I came to the conclusion that the Church was very wrong about a certain issue that was very personal to me, and soon the whole thing fell like Jenga blocks, including any rationale I had against abortion.

Never fear, they will be back, either under their old names, or with shiny new sock puppets. After all, mom is letting them live in her basement, but she's not going to provide the Big Macs and Cokes. They'll have to go out and earn the money for them the only way they know how...by displaying their massive ignorance and vitriolic hate to the public on liberal blogs.

I know mike, but Arnold's (The Terminator) words are seeping through the cyberspace as we type...

I didn't go to marches or anything because I didn't think it should be illegal. I thought that women who had abortions were sinning, but that it was their decision to make.

Put another way, I was privately pretty hateful and judgemental, but not actively anti-choice.

I would also like it if someone can explain to me how you can believe that abortion is murder, but then not want to invest in prevention. Referring to the video MechTrek linked, the protestors never thought about, if abortion was illegalized, what should happen to the women who seek abortion. Many of them think she needs to get counceling or some form of help (which implies that they think the 1 out of 3 women who will have abortions must be insane). Everyone that he interviews seems to universally agree that once an abortion has happened, regardless if it's legal or illegal, the damage has been done. So wouldn't logic dictate sex education and family planning centers? But yet many of the pro-lifers are also against sex ed and want to eliminate facilities like Planned Parenthood. I don't understand this contradiction.

Reality-based logic would dictate that, yes. But winger-logic starts with a number of assumptions that make it non-reality-based. Assumptions such as: women can't be trusted to make decisions concerning their own bodies, sex determines gender and gender roles are fixed and "complementary", and women who do unapproved things with their bodies have been duped by liberal lies.

Believe these and a couple more, and it's not hard to argue logically that women shouldn't need birth control OR abortions because women's correct roles in life are wife and mother, and that women who don't follow that path deserve "consequences" aka punishment for going against the natural order.

Mouser, you are forgetting about most of the past ten years. The Bush Administration had their answer for that. Abstinance education. That way if they step off the boat and have sex, its their own damn fault. If they get pregnant, outside of making sure there are no abortions, she brought it on herself. If a young man catches AIDS, he's just being punished by God. Move along, nothing to see here. If AIDS spreads like wildfire among young black women, well that's one less social problem to worry about isn't it?

That, Mouser, is your answer. That is their idea of preparation and prevention.

Howdy Doodys on strike!! Now that it is common knowledge the Koch Bros. are throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at the Tea Party, all those unpaid interns and volunteers are thinking "Where's my cut?" Also they r gettin beat up on the Maddowblog cuz we r on to them. If they come back it is only becuz they're gettin paid...

Ah @Don and Mech. But that logic, the abstinence logic, leads back to my initial statement which is that men pressure women to have sex and be sexual beings all the time, yet when women do it's the woman whom the punishment is levied against. Again, the man is never punished for his actions. The double standard exists in our society and everyone knows that it exists. Conservative men like sex just like liberal men and they like the double standard just as much. And this brings me back to, if you've ever ejaculated inside of a woman then you contribute to abortions and are just as much to blame (assuming an abortion is something to be blamed for). It's circular logic. The other problem is that even if people are married, which is what abstinence education focuses on, that doesn't automatically mean that the man will assist in raising the child. That doesn't automatically mean that the family can afford to take care of the child either. And again, Christian conservatives are all about sex once you are married. Catholics like me are taught not to wear condoms or take birth control, but then they pass out pamphlets about sexual health in marriage. Remember that couple who wanted to create a Christian sex website because "they didn't like the non-Christian" sex stuff available? That's the hypocrisy that i can't figure out. There's no guarantee that once a couple is married they can pro-create (or even that they should pro-create). If you're telling them "no sex until marriage" "sex once married is good" you're still contributing to the abortion "problem." It doesn't make a damn bit of sense.

Mouser, that's just misogyny in action. The whole point is that women can't win.

This is this whole other train of Christrian thought/attack/etc that a woman who has an abortion victimizes the man who got her pregnant. A pro-life stance is the gate way drug to the fundamentalism that makes chattel out of women, whether Christian or Muslim. Puts a target on the back of every homosexual. It is unlovely, Christian or Muslim.

It's obvious that those that claim to care about "cute little babies", really don't care about "cute little babies" at all.

The "cooch" is at it again. Luckily, I'm past the getting pregnant stage, but I also fervently believe that every woman has a right to decide what she is going to do with her body. Our AG is a Roman Catholic and has a bunch of kids. I wonder if he and his wife are willing to take on more that will be born unwanted with moms unable or unwilling to care for them.

My whole thought is, if you want to do this and make abortion even more inaccessible to women, then you'd better to also be willing to adopt the offspring coming into the world. I, also, agree with the comments about men making decisions about what a woman can and can't do with her own body.

I have heard it said that if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.

:).

They have been about damn near everything. They really need to grow a pair and stand up to the right.

I dislike using the sexist (and favored by the right wing) meme that weakness is associated with female body parts. You do realize things the size of watermelons come out of pussies? Call me when you've pissed out a baby, will ya?

From Dan Savage, in reference to calling someone a pussy:

“Pussies are powerful; they can take a pummeling and spit out a brand-new human being. What you are, CTOAC, (the person who wrote him for advice) is weak, vulnerable, easily manipulated, and far too sensitive for your own good. What you are is a ball-sack."

I love Dan Savage.

And what will the conservatives say about that? Probably that the woman deserved it because she was "immoral", not just in having sex, but then wanting to have an abortion.

Exactly! The anti-choice movement and most conservatives care nothing for the woman, only the fetus inside her until it's born, then they are both on their own.

They're so busy obsessing over fetuses that they neglect all the real unwanted children who are still waiting to be adopted or are living on the streets or being bounced through foster care.

You've got that right. And not only are both the mother and newborn on their own, anti choicer's usually want to throw them immediately into the center of the lions den. Because anti choicers are usually anti welfare, anti medicaid, anti single parent family. In other words most anti choicers are all about having control over women, especially the reproductive lives of women. First, they can't understand why any married woman,(who make up over 25% of women having abortions)... would not want to have children. Nothing comes before children for a woman in marriage, not career, not finances. And single women shouldn't even think of having sex before marriage, the shameless hussy, (which also tells me they must have sucky sex lives if they don't understand a woman's need to have sex whether married or not...lol)...They certainly believe that women do not have the intelligence to make coherent, cognizant decisions concerning reproductive health, since female reproductive health issues are the only health issues regulated by the ability to make decisions. A woman seeking an abortion for an unwanted pregnancy must sit through a rigorous speech by a psychologist, or social counselor so that they may explain to the woman that there are options other than abortion available to her,(like she hasn't gone over them a billion times already before entering the clinic)... Surprisingly, these counselors tell women, she can gestate and give the baby up for adoption,(which leads me to the anti choicers who like this option, saying it is g-d's will this baby is born, give it to a nice family who cannot have children...that's when I say to them, if it is g-d's will this child is born, don't you think it was g-d's will that a couple who can't have children, are not supposed to have children...their answer is a blank stare...I don't believe this really, I happen to think adoption is the best institution mankind has created)... or she can raise the child, regardless of her financial situation, the fact that gestating will get her fired, leaving her without not only the money to raise a child, but her healthcare also. When the long boring option speech is over, the woman is then handed about a bizillion pamphlets reiterating all that was said, and told to go and mull it over for no less than 24 and up to 72 hours. Come back if you still decide on abortion. Oh, and try to wait for a volunteer,(me)... to escort you through the anti choicers screaming at you that you are a baby killer. Then they'll start the ultrasound process, just to make sure she knows that something is growing in her, and they'll point it out to her. See this fuzzy stuff right here on the screen, no not that fuzzy stuff, this fuzzy stuff, it's this 1/4 of an inch fuzzy stuff right there. Still can't see it, wait let's get the high powered telescope to look through. Still can't see it. Well take our word for it...it's there. And should she choose not to abort, she has the "crisis pregnancy centers" to help her. But be aware, they really are imo, adoption mills, especially for white babies, and they get really ticked off, should she choose NOT to adopt out. That's when she gets a pack of pampers and a can of powdered baby formula throw at her, escorted out with the number and address of the nearest city hospital, the state funded hospital that they wouldn't bring their pet to. Should the woman have and keep the child, anti choicers are the first to label it a bastard-child and call the woman a burden on society for needing welfare to help her raise the child, with their "hard earned dollars." These anti choicers are also the ones who vote to stop federal funding for FAMILY PLANNING services, contraception, emergency pill, if the organization is in any way connected to an organization that performs abortions. It's all about control.

and to think the entire issue can be solved in one sentence....if you don't believe in abortion, don't have one, and stay out of the way of people who do believe it is their right to have a legal abortion as an option to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.

to the poster requesting responsibility of men through DNA testing. The fact that paternity can be found through DNA testing, is one way of keeping at least first trimester abortion very very legal.

The right wing ties itself up in knots trying to say that government has the right to tell women what they can and can't do with their bodies, but then says the government has no place in healthcare as in the reform bill that was passed. Government power is good when it is used for illegal wiretaps, bad when it is used to provide unemployment benefits for millions of unemployed. Welfare is good for Wall Street, where trillions of taxpayer dollars bail out greedy financiers that made bad decisions that drove their companies to the brink of ruin, but bad when far less money is given to GM to keep its workers employed building something that is of actual benefit to the country. Religious freedom is good when it allows fundamentalist christian organizations to bypass laws to deny jobs to applicants based on their religious beliefs, but wrong when muslims want to build mosques and community centers all around the country.

How the heck do these people even form a coherent view of the world when their very core ideology is so self-contradictory?

If a woman opts for an abortion, she's a murderer. If she opts to keep the child, they call her a welfare whore and gripe about tax payers money being used to assist her. You really can't win with these bastards.

It's the best form of doublethink, aint it Uffy? Conservatism is not about limited government overall, it's about limited government when it comes to business and economics. By definition conservatives want to control your behavior but not your finances. A liberal, by definition, is the opposite. Someone who wants limited government with social behavior, but doesn't have a problem with the government getting involved in economics and business. The reason why I'm a liberal is because you have to have some form of regulation. Someone has to be involved in the market in order for there to be a market. Hence, conservatism at it's core is nonsensical. It seems to me that if you're illogical enough to believe in "free market" then you're illogical enough to believe that welfare is bad, that women cannot make their own health care decisions, and that taxes should be higher on poor people for being...poor.

The right is always saying that communism failed, and that capitalism is the only way to go, that in fact, capitalism works best when it is completely unfettered, as Friedman espoused. Why did communism fail? Because it failed to take into account human greed. When a system, whether it is economic, political or social, fails to account for basic human behavior, it is doomed to fail. Capitalism has also failed to take into account human greed, and it is similarly failing. Supporters of unfettered, laissez-faire capitalism argue that the holy market DOES take it into account, as greed drives individuals to work hard to make money. The fiasco on Wall Street that brought the global economy to the ground proves just the opposite. The greed of individuals on Wall Street took precedence over the economic survival of their own companies, and so rather than being an incentive to work hard and succeed, it became the engine of destruction. We absolutely need smart regulations that take into account human nature, and allow the best of our nature to guide us to success, while taking the worst of our nature and putting it under strict control. Unless and until we come to that realization, we can't hope to escape from this morass we find ourselves in.

Actually, the reason why the Soviet Union failed was because the Cold War had been turned from a strictly military war to an economic war because of the arms race. Its economy had been devoured by its own military-industrial complex and it was bankrupted out of existance. The cost to us was the first multi-trillion dollar deficit in history.

One would think that it would be a cautionary tale for use to heed re military spending and over-reach, especially as we are no longer a manufacturing economy...but no. It would be a mischaracterization it call it a truimph of capitalism over communism or socialism. If anything, Germany and Scandanavia are underscoring the strengths of socialism over the weaknesses of Conservative capialism. Our hope is to infect those countries with the idea of lower personal taxes and that the gov't owes the governed nothing...dragging them back to the 3rd world where we presently reside.

How the heck do these people even form a coherent view of the world when their very core ideology is so self-contradictory?

If you can get into their mindset, it makes a surprising amount of sense. Of course, it fails to account for reality, but for them that's a perk, not a detriment.

Don, I can only partially agree with your assessment. Yes, the USSR was destroyed because a military conflict with the West morphed into an economic competition with the West, which they were doomed to lose under the system they had in place. The government planned their economy with the military as the primary priority, but even if they had decided to emphasize more in the way of consumer goods, as they did toward the end under Gorbachev, they still would have failed. Why? Because workers were paid simply to meet an artificial quota, the workers were paid whether they worked hard or decided not to show up at all, and the quality of their products was generally abyssmal. As the old soviet era joke went, "I pretend to work, and they pretend to pay me". They had no incentive to work hard, or do a good job, because they didn't get rewarded for that. In other words, they were unable to satisfy their basic human nature of greed. I don't mean "greed" with a big "G", the kind of greed that drove Wall Street to create subprime mortgages and derivatives, or the greed that drove Madoff to create his Ponzi scheme. No, I am talking about the greed that tells us, "I'd like a new 3D hi def tv, so I'm going to work overtime or get a second job so I can get that". The greed that makes us want to work hard to buy something that is a luxury, not a necessity. That kind of greed is the basis of capitalism, but unregulated, greed with a capital "G" brings the whole system down.

Yes, unbridled military spending ultimately brought the Soviet Union down by bankrupting them. No, it wasn't a triumph of capitalism...we simply bankrupted them before they bankrupted us, especially with the help of the money they bled away in Afghanistan. Without that, I think their crash may have been delayed by a couple of decades.

And look at where we are now. At war in Afghanistan. After frivolously pursuing a war of choice in Iraq. All of which was done off of the books. After we nearly drove our economy off a cliff. I really doubt our nation can survive another Republican Administration. Not on the terms they are pushing for. Vote children.

If this country makes the mistake of putting repubs back in charge, we might as well prepare to become an over-armed third world nation. They of course will first be sure to do as Bachmann says, and do nothing but witch hunt investigations in the House, with the ultimate goal of doing to Obama what they did to Clinton, try to impeach him on some trumped up charges and also trying to put as many of his administration members in jail as possible. Think it's not possible? Ask Don Siegelman down in Alabama about that one.

Once they have that bit of political hatchetwork out of the way, it's time to finish dismantling the social safety net, from social security to medicare, to medicaid, to welfare, to healthcare reform, all under the guise that we simply can't afford those programs anymore, and besides, those people are just lazy leeches. Of course, that will go hand in hand with more tax cuts for the top 1% of taxpayers and business, on the only supply side argument that the rich need that money in order to create jobs, even though that has been proven demonstrably false. The Pentagon will also see increases in their budget, because we need to be ready to launch some more wars for the profit of defense contractors.

All in all, if we think the damage that repubs have done so far is bad, it's nothing compared to what they will do if they return to power.

Once they have that bit of political hatchetwork out of the way, it's time to finish dismantling the social safety net, from social security to medicare, to medicaid, to welfare, to healthcare reform, all under the guise that we simply can't afford those programs anymore

And less government involvement of course. However, they will track all pregnancy tests through pharmacies and doctors offices to make sure the government is involved in your reproductive decisions and no abortions are performed. Women may even be charged with murder if they miscarry.

Repubs can deny it all they want, dress it up in pretty themes like "taking back the country", or "smaller government", or "return to our founding principles", but the fact is that they really want a fascist government. I'm not throwing out that term to be hyperbolic, just basing that on the actual definition, which is government in the service of business. Of course, fascist regimes also tend to be totalitarian in nature, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens by the Bush administration, under the guise of the never-ending global war on terror is just one example of what the right wants to keep doing. Controlling the citizenry is paramount to them, as a cowed and fearful citizenry will not object to policies that will help business and the rich at the expense of everyone else.

If this country makes the mistake of putting repubs back in charge

So Uffy, what you are saying basically is that we are hosed?

I've been saying that for a while, maggie. Even when the repubs are not in charge for the past 18 months, they have still been able to block or water down legislation over the heads of spineless dems, and with the economy now being blamed on Obama rather than Bush and the repubs as is actually the case, the dems are going to lose at least one house of Congress in November. If it's the House, subpoenas will be flying from repub-chaired committees aimed at impeaching Obama and getting administration officials to be fired, resign, or go on trial for one trumped-up charge or another. Think it won't happen? Look what happened to Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod...and that was when they didn't have anything more than Fox News putting pressure on dems. If it is the Senate that is lost, then you can be assured that absolutely nothing will get out of the Senate for the next 2 years, and repubs will then use that in 2012 to claim that Obama hasn't been able to accomplish anything. It's win-win for them.

Yep, we're hosed.

We don't know that Republicans WILL make a come back. Lord knows my proclivity for cynicism and low expectations...but maybe there will be enough people disgusted with the party of NO! that it won't be a gimme for the Republicans.

To say that they won't take back at least one house of Congress is whistling past the graveyard. Dems best hopes are that Tea Party candidates win their primaries, as they are so far to the right that they won't even capture the votes of independents. We have already seen that once you look beyond repub voters, Caribou Barbie has negatives that are far higher than positives, which probably helped drag McCain down in 2008. If Palin is the 2012 nominee, Obama should win re-election handily. On the other hand, if Huckabee is the nominee, he will be much tougher to beat, because even though he holds similarly far right views to Palin, he is far more folksy and likeable, and many voters will fall for that.

Time to make/save as much $$ as possible and get the flying fluck off the grid.

I love this country, I loath it's government... *sigh

Like it or not, we are all consumers, so it is next to impossible to get completely off the grid. Unless you want to go the survivalist route, and raise or hunt all your food, make your clothes, build and maintain your own home, produce all your own energy, and get rid of your car, you are to one extent or another dependent on big corporations for your very survival. Since that route isn't available to more than a very tiny minority in this country, or any developed nation, for that matter, the actions of our government are of vital importance to our everyday lives. The far right has long recognized that, and despite their rhetoric of smaller government and the like, they actually want to run things in a more intrusive way than has ever been seen in this country. That is why I am totally perplexed by the vast majority who pay virtually no attention to politics and government except at election time, where most will form their opinions based on 30 second political ads and sound bites on the news. Your very way of life depends on the decisions and actions of the people you elect, and you can't be bothered to turn off "American Idol" long enough to find out what these people are all about and what they are proposing to do if they are elected? No wonder this country is so easily manipulated. We are too lazy and self-absorbed to be anything else but manipulated sheep.

I understand what you are saying. I do have friends in that tiny minority. It's a community of folks I've known for a long time...they've been talking about the importance of growing your own food for decades.

It just seems to me like it's getting more scary everyday. But, alas...as I enter the winter of my life the silence of the lambs seems more a coming reality than I would have guessed....(taking a spin off your "manipulated sheep") maaaaaahhhhhh

I guess we are entering a pivotal time in our nation's history, and I honestly can't say which way things will go. Economic history from around the world tells us that when economic equality reaches the levels we now see in America, revolution is inevitable. Of course, there is no way to know ahead of time which side of the revolution will come out on top, but you can predict that it will be bloody.

The Tao works by reversal. Like I've said before, we may well be entering an ugly scary bloody time. Much like child birth. If there is that big a conservative backlash that it ruptures the nation, there may well be a settling of accounts between the have and have-nots. Something like the Marxist Dialectic. A balancing of the scales of social justice. Go on tell me I'm naive. Its one of the few things that keeps despair at bay. I have to lean on it harder since I'd quit smoking a couple of years back.

The problem is that it was done knowing that it would immediately have the effect of shutting down almost every clinic where abortions are performed. Let's put in a way the right wing would understand. Let's say that the US government, in the wake of the BP oil spill, declared that no offshore drilling could take place unless each drilling rig had the ability to stop oil spills that could occur thousands of feet underwater---even if that rig was only drilling a hundred feet underwater. In addition, there wouldn't be any time for them to make the adjustment to the new law, as it would take place immediately.

If abortion clinics are going to be forced to make such major, unnecessary changes, supposedly for the "safety" of the patient, then only the most unreasonable person would say that they had absolutely no time to make those changes. Even if those clinics had unlimited funds to make those changes, they would obviously take time, as many of them require actual structural changes to their buildings. If the government came in today and told you that your house had to have a sprinkler system and fire alarm box installed, and you couldn't live in your house until it was installed, with no grace period to allow you to make those changes, would that be fair?

In addition to what Uffy said, I see nothing wrong it from a patient safety standpoint, IF hospitals were required to accomodate the clinics' staffs and operations during the renovation period. But of course, that would not decrease accessibility to abortion, which is why that sort of provision wasn't included.

OK, Uffdaguy, that makes sense. Thanks!

Until one of these guys that thinks abortion is so awful actually gets pregnant, carries the baby for 9 months, then has a traditional vaginal delivery (not possible, I know) I would like them to keep their religious opinions to themselves. The "cooch" has way too many kids, which of course his wife had, is a R. Catholic and believes abortion is evil (as does our Gov. McDonnell) and like with other very conservative agendas they carry, this is the next on their list.

I just hope that the damage they do in their 4 years in office can be undone by the next less conservative administration.

I don't believe men who use erectile dysfunction medication would like it very much if their medical or pharmaceutical records were published.

I'm curious what part of the HIPAA Law Kline doesn't understand, ya know him being AG and all.

That's nice.

I'm still using "ball sack" instead now. ;-)