It is difficult to understand how so many supposedly progressive women in the democratic party voted for such a reactionary health care reform that gave the women-hating religious fanatics eveything they wanted. They gave away their rights in order to please party bosses that insisted on helping the insurance monopolies enlarge their customer base. This cowardly behavior is why the theocrats are gaining ground everyday in America which will soon be forcing women to travel to other countries in order to have reproductive rights. Both corrupt parties are now working against women.

Could someone operate a large ship in international waters to provide 'off-shore' medical attention in this type of situation?

If every state has it's own laws. . .wouldn't it be federal statutes that dictate the laws that apply to the citizen seeking medical care in an 'international' zone?

Mind you, getting to/from the facilities would dramatically drive up the costs involved but it may be worth it to the patient. (Although, in this case, they could just go to another state it would seem.)

they are just following Hitler's shining example...if you control the uterus's (uterii?)of the nation, you control society.

Much like the congo, where rape is used as a weapon....the fanatics in the USA are also fighting to control sexual reproduction as a political means to an end.

Who are these people that are voting for these laws ? It is no bodys business what a women does with a medical procedure done by her doctor.
This Country is being run by religious fanatics, we may end up having a civil war again...the religious freaks against normal people. I wonder how that war is going to work out...lol
Sometimes I feel like I am on a Planet with nuts, that I don't even understand how they come up with their thought process ? Where does this odd ball thinking come from ? How does it spread so fast ?
Take away their money, don't educate them, and keep them afraid, do this, and you can rule the people !

I wonder if bad guys,like corrupt politicians,and C.E.O.'s,if any of these guys watch movies about the horrors of bad guys, and how what they do hurts, and affects millions of people,I wonder if they see themselves, and if so, do they ever think about what scum they are ?

This article is enough to make you weep, scream or gnash your teeth, until the cautiously optimistic end. Like razormirror I wonder who these ugly, mean, narrow-minded people are, and it reminds me of the 'joke' a number of years ago: they call themselves the Moral Majority but they're neither. And, thank goodness, they aren't (yet) a majority.

For women who have no money for an abortion, there ought to be a national fund, paid into by people like me (now that I've stopped sending money to the Democratic Party). There must be some women's organizations who can come together and create a 'bank' which loans women the price of an abortion in the same way as micro-financing systems work in third-world countries. Most women would pay it back, gladly, even if only $5 a month is all they can spare.

Someone please pass this idea on to where it can be discussed or even, let's hope, implemented.

Note how -- as capitalism marches its entities forward to full constitutional personhood -- women are forced ever backward to total subjugation.

Coincidence?

I think not.

Just as Christianity and Islam are the direct descendants of the hitherto alien patriarchal savagery that conquered the planet by exterminating the inconceivably ancient cultural ethos we know today as Minoan, so is capitalism the direct derivative of the savagery embodied in Christian theology.

Note the progressions:

From Goddess as mother of us all to God the divine dictator, God the royal tyrant, God the heavenly Fuhrer, God the chief executive officer whose egotistic favoritism, greed, hatefulness and sadism determine even the minutia of how we live and die.

God, king, Fuhrer, CEO -- to facilitate His alien conquest and His triumphant tyranny, our human consciousness is methodically blinded: the Gaean reality of the cosmic and Earthly womb is tabooed forever; Nature is proclaimed the enemy; the physical universe once defined as the sacred living flesh of the Mother is not only purged of divinity but reduced to dead matter valued only for its profitability; the once superior female gender is not only overthrown and reduced to chattel but defined as the source of all evil.

Whether headed by priest, king, Fuhrer or CEO, God appoints the ubermenschen of His Select, the Communion of the Saved, to rule with zero tolerance over all of us He proclaims members of the Legion of the Damned. We are thus cursed as untermenschen: all of us who are pagans, rebels, heretics, agnostics, witches, scientists, abominations, revolutionaries, disabled, unemployed -- all of us who dare question His edicts.

See the connections?

See how Christianity inevitably becomes Capitalism?

See how Capitalism -- infinite greed as maximum virtue; limitless selfishness as ultimate good -- inevitably becomes Nazism?

The Third Reich was the dress rehearsal for tomorrow, crushed not for its atrocities but for its revelations of true capitalist reality.

Yeats saw it all too clearly: "And what rough beast, it's hour come round at last..."

Comes now the Fourth Reich, God's War against Woman and Nature institutionalized.

Forever.

Note how -- as capitalism completes its inevitable metamorphosis into the Fourth Reich -- women and Nature are forced ever backward to extinction.

Personally I think that there are many moral issues around abortion, but I would never support the State determining the answers to these moral questions.

The state should stay out of personal and family matters.

Similarly, I oppose draconian child support and domestic violence laws as intrusion into personal and family issues.

This is about who decides the issue of reproduction in a woman's life and women are being relieved of that responsibility. And, for those that think reproduction is a personal decision, well there is a jail cell waiting for them. I didn't read what the consequences are for getting someone pregnant. It use to be that it was unconstitutional to make laws that only affect one class of people and not others.

Due to shortages of time and space I skimmed over several important points that might serve as intellectual gate-keys for newcomers. Ergo:

(1)--The transition from patriarchy through Christianity and Islam to capitalism and finally to fascism is historical proof that ideas have consequences. It is perhaps THE classic example of the idea-to-reality process in action. It is also a vivid illustration of the dynamic that fuels history – the interaction of cause and effect.

(2)--The pivotal function of the god-concept in this process becomes evident only when we are able to transcend the (deliberate?) distractions of conflicts over the existence of the divine. Distancing ourselves from the associated doctrinal warfare – and warfare is precisely what it is – is extremely difficult in a de facto theocracy like the United States. But it is well worth the effort; only from such distance can we view the concept of god – any god – with enough objectivity to examine its psycho-dynamic and psycholinguistic functions. Only then can we see that – no matter whether god is objectively real or not – god is a primary art symbol, an ultimate human symbiosis, a concentrate formed by the interaction of self and other, with “other” defined to include the entire cosmos and everyone/everything within it. God is therefore both a blueprint for society and an ever-evolving summation of what that society believes to be true. Descriptions of god or divine essence – Christendom's “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no other gods before Me”; Islam's “There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is His prophet”; the First Nations' concept of “Great Holy Mystery”; Asia's “the Tao that can be named is not the true Tao”; Minoan society's presumptive “In the beginning was the Mother and She gave birth” – reveal not just the principles that shape our behaviors but the direction, intent and probable destination of the societies in which we live.

(3)--History, archaeology and anthropology show humanity's original gods to have been female. The original social and familial structures were matrifocal and/or matrilineal (if not matriarchal); the original human economies were various forms of proto-communism. Because the psycho-dynamic impulses that govern human consciousness seem to have changed very little (if at all) during our species presumptive 100,000-year history, we can hypothesize a mutually sustaining relationship between god, society and individual essentially identical to that of today, with each of these elements in their characteristic albeit gradual states of flux.

Our hypothesis is confirmed by what we know of the societies in question -- information gleaned via history, anthropology, archaeology, folklore and myth. Minoan civilization is especially relevant here because of the archaeological evidence that strongly suggests it was a national fruition of the incalculably ancient tribal societies that preceded it: thus – despite intensifying censorship by the capitalist Ruling Class – Minoan civilization has emerged as a definitive archetype of its era and kind. Though capitalist archaeologists are loathe to admit it, Minoan cities had neither slums nor mansions. The structures capitalist archaeologists deceptively label as “palaces” were more likely to have been administrative offices and are in fact so catalogued by researchers who are exempt from capitalism's overpowering need to propagandize greed and hierarchy as human norms. Meanwhile the existence of a powerful, effective and definitively humanitarian Minoan administrative apparatus – exactly the sort such installations might house – is proven beyond argument by the successful evacuation of Thera.

Indeed the Minoans' matrifocal, ecocentric religion and their proto-communist infrastructure are increasingly regarded as the apex of human achievement, not merely of the Bronze Age but of all time.
Hence the duration of Minoan civilization, which is genuinely breathtaking: despite a peacefulness proven by its lack of fortifications and other military structures, the Minoan world endured well over a thousand years before its fatal weakening by an inconceivably destructive volcanic debacle – probably the worst such disaster in all human experience. And it may have extended far beyond the Mediterranean: based on a line of British poetry presumptively dated to 600 BCE – Taliesin's “I have sung before the rulers of Britain, abounding in fleets” – Bronze Age Britain may have been a Minoan commonwealth.

(4)--When we apply the same analytical principles to patriarchy – male supremacy symbolized by a male god (a concept that seems to have remained alien until the Theran debacle and its apocalyptic aftermath, which was no doubt taken as proof the goddess had failed or turned hostile) – we again see the importance and function of the god concept: how humanity defines god and how that definition shapes humanity.

Rejecting god as nurturing mother who loves us all as children of her divine womb – the goddess whose body is the universe (a concept eerily reborn in the Gaea Hypothesis) – we emerge from the tsunami-drowned and Achaean-sacked ruins of Knossos to kneel in terror before a god who has become the ultimate abusive father: the Nature-hating misogynist who loves only his Chosen (those who have proclaimed themselves his children) and so despises all the rest he condemns us to eternal damnation – psychologically the most terrifying concept ever articulated.

God the Father thus becomes god the Führer; the collective humanitarian consciousness of proto-communism is overthrown by the malevolence of greed and hierarchy (contrast the evacuation of Thera with the abandonment of New Orleans); human society is divided into the anointed (and therefore Saved) aristocracy of god's übermenschen and the damned (and therefore infinitely exploitable) slave-pen üntermenschen of everyone else.

As I described below, capitalism is the inevitable consequence – just as fascism is the inevitable fulfillment of capitalism.

It would be great for women to get in tune with their fertility cycles and for men to understand too. Then they will know better how to prevent unwanted pregnancy. There are three clues that together should provide a good idea of fertility. One involves what is called a basal thermometer, and there are non-electronic versions of those. With awareness and empowerment conveyed person to person the elites will have one less issue to abuse for further enslavement of the people. There are 129 million housing units in the USA. Everyone has to have their own private castle. With everyone pushed by elites into material gluttony and social isolation, it come as little surprise that so many want to abort their pregnancies.

There have been some marvelous comments to this article.
Sioux Rose, as always, with her insight.
Lorenbliss with her grasp of history. (If you can find a copy of "Forbidden Archeology," Cremo and Thompson, you might find it of interest.)
Onemantribe's analysis of it being an infection.
As to Theocracy, one might read Heinlein's "Revolt in 2100" to see where that could lead.

I don't have much of profundity to say here. I remember the relief felt when Roe vs Wade finally established the woman's right to her own body. Finally it had ended the situation where the wealthy went on a "vacation" to Sweden. The poor got a rusty coat hanger in a back alley.

I watch with tears the erosion of all the civil rights that we fought so hard for and "won."

A lot of rather weird association passed through my mind as I read the article and its comments. A song from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life." "Every sperm is sacred."

Onemanstribe's infection and pus made me think of gangrene, which is the other direction an infection might go. I had a gangrenous wound years ago. The doctor would not remove the affected part as he said there was too much chance of infecting the rest of my body. I had to live with the agony and stench until it finally shriveled up and dropped off.

Gaia has been a good mother to her wayward children, but as I read and study, I find that, for instance, the amphibians such as frogs and salamanders are disappearing or mutating, apparently due to increased UV. Our various chemicals are leaching into the groundwater and into the sea. Infertility is increasing in many species. The oceans, our lifeblood, are being poisoned at an increasing rate. Arable land is being turned into housing developments. Much of what is left has been bought or leased by big oil to raise grains for ethanol, while millions starve. As the world climate continues to change, glaciers melt, ice caps diminish, sea levels rise, droughts torture the landscape worldwide, while unprecedented floods inundate others.

I greatly fear our Mother is dying and we are too stupid to figure it out, or attempt to heal Her. Instead, we look for even greater "profit" by continuing the rape and torture of Her body.

Those fortunate enough to have seen earth from orbit, or from the moon have all remarked on this beautiful blue and green marble, rolling along, all alone in the vastness of space.

Earth is our home. It is all we have. If we kill her, all the wealth in the galaxy will not prevent us from dying with her.

The fact that attempts to “confer personhood status upon fertilized eggs” have failed is a positive. The idea that from the moment of conception the legal entity usually in law called a “person” exists seems to be the essence of the claim that “life begins at conception.” It doesn’t take much thought to realize that this claim, enacted in law, would result in damaging, and ridiculous, consequences.

Science supports the belief that members of all identifiable groups of humans are endowed at conception with equal capacity to lead successful lives. This equal start is immediately negated by influences that ultimately result in persons born to blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans – I’m speaking of the U.S., but every country has counterparts to these – being statistically much less likely to achieve success than whites and certain Asians. So, personhood doesn’t begin at conception, but discrimination does. I’ve never heard anyone in the pro-life movement take note of this, notwithstanding that such discrimination is a major reason abortions are obtained.

Three more points:

(1)--We already live under Christian theocracy – mostly theocracy cloaked in euphemisms: nullification of church/state separation, as by the malicious refusal of Christian pharmacists to sell birth control or by extension of “freedom of speech” to protect Christianity's war against science and secular society. It is theocracy protected by codas of “political correctness” – for example the taboo against speculating on the connection between Sen. Harry Reid's role in torpedoing health-care reform and his beliefs as a Mormon Elder.

No doubt this will change after 2012, when Moron Nation elects Palin/Beck and the U.S. experiment in constitutional democracy will be formally ended, probably by the same emergency decree with which President Palin declares herself the de facto Führer of the de facto Fourth Reich. Congress, by then as tautly controlled by the Teabaggers and GOPorkers as the Weimar Reichstag was controlled by the Nazis in 1933, will no doubt add its rubber-stamp of approval, at which point a New Inquisition will begin the nation's theological cleansing even as the more definitively secular Department of Homeland Security unleashes its geheimestaatspolizei on all political dissidents including the few remaining DemocRats.

The economic purpose of theocracy is perpetuation of the slave mentality essential to permanent submissiveness to oppression. Christian theocracy's primary weapon is fear – specifically the truly infinite fear of eternal damnation – psychologically the most abjectly terrifying concept ever articulated.

Though theocracy itself is ancient, its modern effectiveness was proven in the U.S. South, where post-Civil War experiments in governance by the Ruling Class demonstrated how Christian theocracy could provide a near-absolute barrier to humanitarian activism, whether in the workplace or society in general.

Christian churches thus became brain-police installations. The consequences include:

(A)--the South's unique history of racial bigotry, misogynistic brutality and savage resistance to organized labor (note the polite Southern euphemism for the Ku Klux Klan: “the Saturday Night Men's Bible Study Class”);

(B)--the post-King nullification of the Civil Rights Movement – note not only the emergence of national racism in the wake of the Katrina atrocities but the Palin/Beck co-optation of the Civil Rights Movement;

(C)--the nationalization of theocracy itself, proven by the spread of Christian fanaticism throughout the U.S.

Acknowledgement of the third trend was the real message in Barack the Betrayer's appointment of the rabidly misogynistic and homophobic theocrat Rick Warren to give the 2009 inaugural invocation -- the theological equivalent of the keynote address at a political convention.

(Relevant aside: Though the Left suicidally dismisses the capitalist Ruling Class as a cabal of greed-blinded dunces, history proves it to be the diametrical opposite: in truth the most diabolically cunning, selfishly malevolent, murderously adept elite ever. Now – because of its wealth, criminal skill and mastery of technology – it is empowered for the remainder of human time: that is. until our species is extinct.)

(2)--The extent of present-day theocratic oppression becomes apparent if we examine how the DemocRats' economic policies abolish Working Class reproductive freedom. While the GOPorkers openly battle reproductive freedom, the 'Rats attack it economically. The prerequisite of all U.S. reproductive rights is adequate health insurance – that is, insurance that supports female reproductive independence. The Ruling Class is ensured by its inconceivable wealth, but such insurance is available to the Working Class only as a condition of employment. Hence job-losses inflicted by the 'Rats' so-called “free market” policies are as effectively anti-choice as any outright abortion ban. Add the birth control prohibitions imposed by welfare and Obamacare plus Obamacare's implicit war on employer-provided health insurance and what emerges is a political truth the 'Rats try desperately to keep secret: the fact that despite their pro-choice rhetoric, the 'Rats' actions – welfare restrictions, free trade, Obamacare – prove them as misogynistic as any bible-thump GOPorker. Only the richest women -- those of the Ruling Class -- escape the prohibitions.

(3)--When I contemplate the history of patriarchy and its progression through Christianity to capitalism thence to fascism and ultimately to the extinction of all human life, I find myself wishing I were skilled at writing fiction, which I am not. Probably because I am dyslexic, my flights of creative imagination are limited to visual media: chiefly photography and collage. But if I were a novelist, what an epic of science fiction I could write:

Imagine a universe policed by a humanoid species unimaginably older than ourselves, inconceivably more advanced (and therefore capable of light-speed travel), but a species that for all its technological mastery is terrified by the long-term potential of any similar species emerging elsewhere across the galaxies. Indeed this Nazi-like species fears its counterparts exactly as post-Islamic-Invasion Europeans feared the inhabitants of other continents and sought to enslave these indigenous peoples as colonial subjects lest the indigents rise to invasive power exactly as the Muslims had done. Hence the Forenazis patrol the cosmos, exterminating potential rivals, and over the hundreds of thousands of years of their cosmic despotism, they perfect their Final Solution to leave no discernible trace. Eventually the Forenazis reconnoiter Earth; they see the limitless promise of humans manifest at Knossos. In retaliation the Forenazis pick a handful of tribes to vector their terminal disease of patriarchy. The Forenazis appear as gods, proclaiming their New Order. Patriarchy expands: the pains of the sword are more compelling than the pleasures of love. Finally when the time seems ripe the Forenazis engineer an apocalypse: Callisté – Thera – explodes with the force of at least two dozen H-bombs; the patriarchal legions then boil into the ruins and murder the survivors. The Minoan ethos is exterminated.

Terminal species failure begins.

The Forenazis salute one another; they have saved their cosmic Reich again.

But of course this (3) is only science fiction.

Remember, many Sci-Fi writers have turned into prophets, as have other writers. George Orwell, Jack London, Robert Heinlein, Sinclair Lewis and many more.

Write the story.

I just posted a somewhat more detailed version of my earlier comments -- complete with an appropriate photograph -- on my blog, Loren Bliss: Outside Agitator's Notebook, at http://lorenbliss.typepad.com/