...and the only way to do this is to rile their base.

They can't do it with racial issues because they'll just cause more people of color to vote...

They can pick on women because women mostly vote dem anyway...

Anything to keep people from talking about an improving economy

But misogyny seems to have taken root and flourished somehow. And it has all the earmarks of being quite sincere, since the Teabag party governors and State legislators are actually passing legislation, not just talking about it and using it as a wedge issue in an election year.

I'm old enough to remember quite well what it was like before birth control and laws being passed to allow women to choose. Our family had an uncle who was a Gynecologist who was very active regarding this issue specifically. He treated women after their horrendous back alley abortions when they became deathly ill.

That will all happen again. Women aren't going to stop having abortions.

The Christian Taliban is taking a righteous stand against women's rights and ability to choose. That's why Santorum is surging among their ranks. I really believe that the Rethug Party has shed most of its reasonable members and what's left are the fanatics and crazies. Hopefully we will resoundingly defeat them in November. I have been very unhappy with Obama, but, after the Thugs instituted their war on women, nothing is going to stop me from doing everything possible to get him and every other Dem elected.

Women is this really what you want for yourselves, your daughters, your grand-daughters?
No? Then don't vote Republican at any level local, state, or national!

The Wire Hanger should be the only image included with the text.

I think an AD like that would definitely bring the message home. Its simplistic enough for people to understand yet powerful enough to be controversial and get people talking and make more women aware of just how far the Right wants to push us back.

they've grown up with roe v wade. unless they take women's studies, who will fill in that history for them? shoot, many public schools don't even teach american or world history anymore, let alone, women's/political history.

ellen fl

So it's actually a good thing to show the symbolism of the hanger for women's issues. History needs to be re-taught every few generations.

do you know many young women? the ones i know wouldn't even question.

ellen fl

Any woman born past 1970 is not going to know what we are talking about. And not many older women who do, never talked to their daughters about them...or even wanted to talk about them in the first place.

Maybe it should include a tag like google "back alley abortions" or if google objects to their name being used in the ads, just "research on line". I just tried it and one of the first things that came up was a "Wikipedia" entry which included a reference right off the top to the symbol being the coat hanger.

It takes like ten seconds to do, but who knows maybe a lot of people wouldn't even trouble them selves to do that.

"Do you know that this was once used to kill women in this country?"

Then a succinct paragraph about women dying or being maimed from self inflicted or back alley abortions and how Emergency Rooms in hospitals all across the country were seeing them come in, day in and day out. And how after Roe, women stopped dying from abortions in those ERs all across the country...

If younger women KNEW that women actually suffered and DIED from such abortions -- and don't any more -- they would have their eyes opened. They would ask more questions. They would be interested enough to read about that time.

We need a whole new spate of books about that history. The old ones were published years ago and are probably out of print.

Time for a new PR campaign on what making abortions illegal really means. In graphic terms.

Let's stop playing nice on the issue of abortion. We don't want to talk about those bloody days, but we should. Why not? We having NOTHING to lose!

And by that logic no one would know anything about history.

I'm going to have a serious discussion with my daughter about my granddaughters having more consciousness raising around this subject. For the fact is, my oldest granddaughter is 16 and needs to know that this is a life or death issue, should Roe be overturned or even more efforts to strangle it are successful. Young women cannot live in a bubble forever...

Kids going into college for the first time can't remember a time when there were no computers. Today's college Freshmen were born in 1993.

from a hotel room abortion.Her picture saved many women's lives.

Us younger women do know about the coat hanger. Maybe the really younger generations don't, but I see them on their signs. AND anyone who watches Dirty Dancing would have an inkling as to what an unsafe abortion looked like. The abortion was the only reason that Baby had to learn to dance.

Anyway, the coathanger is still a powerful image for women. It means not having access to safe medical procedures. And really, it's already tough enough gaining access to affordable woman's care and affordable birth control, imagine not having an option to to terminate a rapists baby or terminate a baby that has a major life threatening illness or u and the baby dying because of health effects of being pregnant (WTF would women do in the case of an entopic prelgnancy where the baby is developing in the filopian tube and not the uterus?

As it is we still hear stories of young women becoming preggo, hiding it, giving birth in a bathroom and then tossing the baby in a trash can because society already places such a horrible, judgmental stigma on pre-marital sex, teen pregnancies, and shame for young women... And on the other side of the coin, we do little to help young women know where they can go or gain access to contraception. The Bush yrs and their abstinence only BS only caused more harm than good.

The younger women who perhaps had not been very active in feminist circles did not know what the hanger meant. And "Dirty Dancing" came out in 1987. That year my daughter was graduating from Mount Holyoke College. She knew about the abortion rights struggle (I was involved in it). She had campaigned for Mondale/Ferraro. I was so pleased that my daughter's generation was so informed and active and aware of what my generation of women had had to endure.

Her oldest daughter, my first grandchild, is now 16 years old and is growing up in a very liberal Boston area community. She is VERY aware of the marriage equity movement, but I doubt if she knows the coat hanger history (or even the ERA history, for that matter). I doubt if she has seen "Dirty Dancing." It would be a good thing to have this discussion with her, because she won't learn about them if we don't. In two years she will be able to vote. When she goes into that voting booth, I want her to know everything she needs to know to vote for the well being of herself and other women, including her two younger sisters.

But I wouldn't be surprised at younger women knowing the symbolism of the hanger. I work at UC Berkeley and I know how incredibly smart and aware young women are. Especially graduate students. Sometimes I wonder if any of them have had abortions. College is pretty well known to be where much sexual experimentation occurs. It certainly was when I was there around 35 years ago.

I remember as a kid how sick my mother got with an entopic pregnancy and how the emergency abortion saved her life. She had a tubal ligation after that. Without the abortion she would have died.

Not too many people would consider and entopic pregnancy as anything other than a non-viable pregnancy and it would be similar to a miscarriage.. Just explaining that this would be illegal in these sick fuck's minds scares even Republican women. Most men, unless their mom's or wives experienced an entopic pregnancy, wouldn't know what one was... I doubt the old, white bastards in the Senate have a damn clue or care.

This seems more like what they are shooting for:

It's become obvious even to the stupidest that if they can do it to us they will, with little to no hesitation. And they'd feel righteous and morally superior doing it, utterly convinced of their godliness.

Coat hangers should only be used to hang coats.

It kind of reminds me of a meat hook and I have a good visual imagination.

Fair enough. That might be the only other good use.

too. And that is an issue that resonates with women across ALL poliltical and non-political lines. Many women who are anti-abortion are pro-contraception BECAUSE they are anti-abortion. Many devout Catholics totally ignore the Vatican regarding birth control.

It is only a narrow, but noisy, group that is against birth control. Equating those two issues was a huge mistake of the GOP. They will pay dearly for it sooner or later (hopefully sooner).

assumed that all religious women would be against birth control, because after all, the patriarchy is against it. Their egos would not consider that millions of religious women would have a contrary view to theirs.

Once women experience the freedom that birth control offers, it's hard to put that genie back in the bottle, but these asshats are going to try.

I think it's time to get past being totally shocked and bemused about this blatant trend. They're serious. We need to accept that fact and react accordingly.

We didn't think the ridiculous teabaggers being bused in to storm the Democratic Town Hall meetings would gain any traction because they were just too fucking ridiculous. Now we know they HAVE made huge inroads into busting unions, disenfranchising voters and reversing women's rights. They're really out to get us.

Last edited Sat Mar 17, 2012, 02:34 PM - Edit history (1)

...the 1650's

Except of course their wives and daughters.

Do what I say not what I do... y'know.

Of course it could actually be they don't know what their wives do. These religious superior males don't seem to know what ANYBODY is doing... not even themselves. It's shallow, shallow thinking.

Anyone who thinks sticking a government sanctioned device up women is OK is a fucking mean ass abuser. Period.

ESPECIALLY their mistresses! They don't want to be caught like John Edwards.

So they could maintain their public ability to dictate to other people.

It's impossible to have any sort of economic or personal self-agency without boundaries of what the state can impose on a person.

that women will say one thing in public and vote another way in private. I don't think they are going to get women, even the majority of the right wingnut ones with these kinds of policies and stands. Of course, if they stack the diebold machines they could get anything .

I know how tenuous Roe v. Wade is and remember how it was before the ruling. I am fighting for the choice to have an abortion or not have an abortion. I refuse to vote for anyone who thinks that interference with this truly personal decision is the government's business.

There was always a fringe minority who railed against it and they could usually be counted while protesting outside abortion clinics. But this year there's a concerted effort by many governors to hobble women's rights. Especially reproductive rights. There's been more than 130 laws passed restricting women's choices as Rachel Maddow pointed out a couple of days ago.

there has been de facto war on abortion rights for years now. Accessibility is limited because few property owners will lease space for clinics. Women have to travel further and further to get abortion services and must then meet requirements like waiting 24 hours, having a mental health counseling session, and verifying parental notification.

Before Roe v. Wade, the Catholic Church stopped the legalization of abortion (and birth control) in many "liberal" states. Massachusetts did not legalize abortion until Roe mandated it. Test cases intended to overturn Roe v. Wade are making their way through the courts as we speak. Most of Obama's federal judicial appointees have been held up in Congress, so the anti-choice Bush appointees will be making those rulings.

Abortion and birth control are always big issues for women.

many of the people you support on your one issue will also support the positions that I find important on other issues.

But I can't support the antiabortion, anti birth control misogeny that almost seems to define the Republican Party these last few weeks either--not even close.

Because if they make true inroads the other issues will be attacked next. We can't allow them to gain even an inch in taking away our rights. Like a toxic disease their interference will spread to all other issues. They're already giving your boss the right to fire you if you take birth control. Next they'll make it illegal to get a job while you're in your child bearing years. They're just getting started.

If I see priorities differently it is just--priorities.

is the one big issue to me. Both Romney and Santorum want to do just that and they can kiss my ass!!

are slim to none, but I'm a one issue voter, too. I care too much for my fellow sisters, even the ones that are too stupid to see where these kinds of laws will lead, to NOT be a one-issue voter.

Those of us who have been around for a few decades have always known that "pro-life" was never about abortion. It's about "get women out of the workforce and back in the home so the men can have their jobs and women learn their place". The easiest way to do that is to ban birth control. That's the real goal in all of this.

kicked for the weekday crowd if you're interested.