Tuesday, January 22, 2008

What the Huck??

My sister blogged today about her experience listening to NPR this morning and hearing yet another doozie from Mike Huckabee. He said that the reason we need to "import" immigrants to fill all our jobs is most likely because we've aborted over a million "people" in the last 30 years, people that could have filled those jobs. In my head I imagine her choking on her coffee or perhaps turning off her radio in disgust and opting for some Pantera instead of the dismal news.

Rebecca was thinking along the same lines today and sent around a quote from an article called "What the Huck?" a April, 2007 interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board: "There are some forms of birth control that really are the destruction of a fertilized egg." One of the editors offered a follow-up question, "Should the government ban that sort of birth control?" Huckabee replied, "Yeah, I personally think there are better ways to deal with contraception than destroying a human life. So, again I'm going to say that I'm always going to make my position on the side of protecting human life."

I’m not just writing this to highlight his horrifying position on abortion, but to share what Huckabee was doing in Georgia today, which was speaking in strong favor of HR 536. This proposed Georgia law would ban not only abortion, but many forms of birth control including the Pill, the patch, the ring, IUD, etc. Yes, you read that right, ladies Every day last week one of HR 536’s sponsors would go to the well in the House to speak in its favor. And that's when I would have spat my coffee- if I drank coffee that is. Ok, so maybe I choked on my protein bar. And the crumbs went down the wrong way. And there was lots of coughing. You get it.

I have been on the Pill for years because without it, my menstrual pain is so severe that I struggle to stand, much less run around in heels on those hard-as-hell marble floors at the Capitol. It would be an understatement to say that I am deeply, urgently appalled and offended that this is a "legitimate" proposal to be considered this year.

I feel the outrage particularly today, the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Today is a personal anniversary for me as well, the 15 year anniversary of my first leadership role in a political action. In high school in Chicago, I worked with a group called the Emergency Clinic Defense Coalition (ECDC- great acronym). We did clinic escorting, helping women seeking health care (from breast exams to birth control to abortions) to get inside the health clinic safely with as little harassment by anti-choicers as possible. The anti-choice activists were crazy, yelling things in the couple years following the Persian Gulf War like "You're killing our future troops!" Absurd.

In any case, I was 16 years old on January 22, 1993, the 2oth Anniversary of Roe. Parental consent and notification laws were rearing their ugly heads throughout the country, and the women at ECDC encouraged and supported me in stepping up into the role of being the Coalition's media spokesperson for the day, because I was one who would be most effected by these laws if they did indeed pass. I attribute much of where I am at and what I am doing with my life now to those women who took a chance on an odd, stripy haired girl with a vampire obsession.

It was such an awesome experience; I'll never forget sitting in the family room of my parents' home later that evening watching the TV coverage which my non-English-speaking grandfather. He had no idea what I was saying when my face came on the television, but his eye shone with pride nonetheless.

My 16 year old mind never entertained the thought that 15 years later reproductive freedom would be in dramatically worse shape. That a man making such inane statements would be a viable candidate for president-ok, maybe based on the last 8 years that doesn't surprise me so much. That we would be fighting a proposal from the radical right to take our medication away. Its heartbreaking and outrageous. Sick.

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