PLEASE!!!! Sign our petition for pushing through an ERA amendment NOW!! 

Today’s front page RedTracker picks up news about the Violence Against Women Act in Congress. The Senate is expected to bring the renewal to a vote this week, with passage expected. What will happen in the House in terms of getting Republican support for the bill is up for grabs. 

Our succinct overview of arguments pro and con for the legislation raises several key points from the conservative side of the argument. While it’s true that far more women than men are injured and killed in acts of domestic violence, women are often perpetrators in the initial lower-level of physical aggression such as pushing or slapping. 

South Dakota Women’s Personhood Rights Again Under Assault

AOC has tracked the Republican War on Women — led in many cases by the Catholic bishops — for years now. My 2011 article on South Dakota’s justifiable homicide bill for killing abortion providers and those enabling abortions within the immediate family has been a top read for the last two weeks. 

I assumed incorrectly that the interest in the South Dakota action was tied to New Mexico’s introduction of the bill that would make abortion a felony in crimes of rape and incest, because the victim had destroyed critical evidence (the fetus) in ending her pregnancy. The perpetrators of the assault in this case were 10 Republican women in the New Mexico legislature. 

Let’s face it — all these stories of the right-wing’s assault on the personhood of American women border on barbaric today. America is indeed going back to the Dark Ages, losing our place as a leader among educated people in the world. It’s difficult to keep up the pace, in which each day’s news brings a new assault more damning than the earlier one. 

Our rejection of science and information based on factual evidence has caused American students to drop to 20th place internationally in mastery of science and math. Darker days are ahead. 

Women Can’t Think on Weekends

In fact, South Dakota guys are busy again, trying to regulate women’s personhood and rights to self-determination. Two years ago, South Dakota legislators passed a law requiring that a woman seeking an abortion must consult with her doctor, then visit an anti-abortion ‘crisis pregnancy center,’ then wait 72 hours before actually having the abortion. 

For no explicable reason except to hound women’s right to choose even further, South Dakota House Bill 1237 would amend the waiting period rule, adding a line: “No Saturday, Sunday, federal holiday, or state holiday may be included or counted in the calculation of the seventy-two hour minimum time period between the initial physician consultation and assessment and the time of the scheduled abortion procedure.” 

For women in South Dakota, who have access to just one abortion clinic in Sioux Falls (an hour away from where I grew up in Minnesota), this new legislation becomes a major additional barrier to exercising a right deemed a constitutional one by the US Supreme Court. 

Simply stated, South Dakota legislators believe a woman can’t think critically on weekends. At rock bottom, most Republicans think women can’t think critically AT ALL!!!! And this is why women and men MUST sign our petition for pushing through an ERA amendment NOW!! 

‘Dark Ages’ by David Curtis

Anne of Carversville has become a leader in this new petition movement, raising well over 1000 signatures so far. I explain in great detail in last week’s post Sign Our Petition in Support of an Equal Rights Amendment for American Women that three other justices on the US Supreme Court probably agree with Justice Scalia’s position that American women have NO rights under the Constitution. Scalia rejects conservative anti-ERA crusader Phyllis Schlafly’s argument that the US Constitution is gender-neutral. 

Justice Scalia says that the only Constitutional right that American women have is the 19th amendment right to vote. All other matters from pay discrimination to rights to contraception are states rights issues claims Justice Scalia. 

A Romney victory would have almost insured that American women would lose all rights gained in the last five decades. The time to get involved is NOW!

Abortion Rights Today, Contraception Rights Tomorrow

I’ve been awake since 4 am — me, a woman who doesn’t have nightmares. The last time I awoke screaming in the dark was two years ago when I wrote The Republican War on Women Gives Me Nightmares. What I read online yesterday, made me want to vomit in the middle of the night. 

I explain my middle of the night anxiety after the petition visual.