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State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) introduces The Whole Woman’s Health Funding Priorities Act.PA Republican State Representative Daryl Metcalfe introduced the Whole Woman’s Health Funding Priorities Act today, with the objective to defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.

Existing state law already prohibits taxpayer funding of abortions but Metcalfe is not satisfied.

“Regardless of their position on abortion, Pennsylvania taxpayers must no longer be forced to subsidize the loss of innocent lives,” said Metcalfe. “In reality, women in Pennsylvania will be healthier and the children safer when we permanently defund Planned Parenthood and its anti-family agenda.”

Mallory Quigley, communications director for Susan B Anthony List, called the bill an “upgrade” for women’s health services because it directs money away from Planned Parenthood clinics and toward hospitals and other kinds of family planning clinics that don’t provide abortions.

Six states enacted legislation to defund Planned Parenthood in 2011: Wisconsin, Indiana, Kansas, North Carolina, Texas and Tennessee. District judges in all of those states except Wisconsin have since determined that those laws were unconstitutional and have temporarily blocked them. Similar cases like a new Texas law that has refused all Medicaid funds, are being ruled unconstitutional at a state level.

A federal judge in the Texas case wrote that the state has made no credible case that especially poor women won’t suffer under the new anti-Planned Parenthood legislation.

“In the past our clients would qualify for services for free, but now we have to charge them a fee,” said Jeff Teague, president of Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee. “It’s put a burden on people, obviously. We’ve seen a ten percent decrease in patient numbers, and we’ve worked very closely with health department to see if they’ve seen a corresponding increase, and they have not. We have a serious concern that there are a number of women not receiving or delaying care, which is a bad situation either way.” via Huff Po

Related Reads

A Message to Girls About Religious Men Who Fear You Soraya Chemaly at Huff Po

What You Need to Know About the Law Behind the Catholic Church’s Anti-Birth Control Lawsuit ThinkProgress

California Bill Would Increase Access to Birth Control RH Reality Check

The battle among Catholic bishops E.J. Dionne Jr. at WaPo

Death by Stoning

A detail from Ercole Ferrata’s “Martirio di Santa Emerenziana” (1660), a marble engraving carved to adorn the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone of Rome, Italy. The engraving depicts the stoning St. Emerenziana, martyred at the grave of St. Agnes.Death by Stoning

It’s believed that stoning is the world’s oldest form of execution and is a common death penalty in the Bible, leaving scholars to conclude the Jesus’ famous anti-death penalty statement in John 8.7: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Today stoning is primarily enforced by Islamic fundamentalist sharia law. In 2004, 13-year-old Zhila Izadyar was sentenced to death by stoning in Iran for the ‘crime’ of being raped by her older brother. International protests saved her life.

How Stoning Works: The prisoner is buried either up to his waist (if male) or up to her shoulders (if female) and then pelted with stones by a crowd of volunteers until obviously battered to death. Under the terms of most fundamentalist courts, the stones must be small enough that death cannot reasonably be expected to result from only one or two blows, but large enough to cause physical harm. The average execution by stoning is extremely painful, lasting at least 10 to 20 minutes. via About.com

Help Us Save Intisar Sharif Abdalla

A young Sudanese woman, who gave birth to a child claimed not to be her husband’s, has been sentenced to death by stoning by Sudanese judge Sami Ibrahim Shabo. AOC will respond to requests for help from activists in Sudan trying to save the young woman from this brutal death.

Intisar Sharif Abdalla, believed to be between 15 and 17 years of age is presently awaiting her fate with her baby, in a jail in Khartoum. Prison authorities, who claim she is 20 years old, say the young mother was sentenced to death in accordance with Article 146 of the Sudanese criminal law. She had no legal representation.

The judgment was made on May 13, 2012 after just one hearing and came after an “admission of guilt” plea following torture and brutal beatings by Sharif’s brother who instigated the case. Her co-accused however remains un-convicted and walks freely.

The sentence must be approved by Sudan’s Supreme Court. To date, no stoning cases have been carried out but the demands for full Islamic shariah laws have escalated since the separation of Islamic Sudan and predominantly Christian South Sudan.

Anne is working with the same team of activists as she did on freeing Lubna Hussein, one of 40,000 Sudanese women who avoided flogging when she was arrested in 2009 for improper dress.

Again in 2010, Anne published a horrific video of a young woman being flogged in Sudan, stabilizing the footage on Vimeo when YouTube repeatedly took it down. She then sent the video files to Bloomberg News. Media contacts will be made regarding this stoning case in the next few days.