The “Protect Life Act” was back with a vengeance last week, not that you’d know it given the scant amount of attention it seemed to get. (It was, of course, duly noted … on Daily Kos.) Maybe Republicans are trying to bore us with their never-ending displays of unborn baby-kissing so that we simply stop noticing when they pass bills deeming women’s lives expendable.
Even though the bill would face an Obama veto, House Republicans apparently considered it a higher priority than a jobs bill. But here’s the real kicker: just one week earlier, the House passed H.R. 2681, which exempts cement plants from the Clean Air Act and encourages the burning of industrial waste. Via Earthjustice:
“Does the House of Representatives think that not enough babies are being born with developmental damage due to mercury poisoning?” asked Earthjustice attorney James Pew. “The House essentially just opened up all the doors and windows in homes across the country and urged polluters to blow their toxic emissions right in.
So evidently we should sacrifice a mother to save a fetus, but pumping that fetus full of heavy metals is just dandy. Okay, then. I really wanted to work this point into the cartoon, but there’s only so much inanity you can address in four panels.
Jen – there reason things make no sense in the abortion argument is that the people doing the talking are lying. They are posturing politically and those postures make no sense; it’s the same thing as “we don’t have to test that vaccine to see if it’s dangerous because it’s perfectly safe.” In the case of abortion it has nothing to do with fetuses; it has to do with keeping women in a subservient position. That’s why they don’t worry about hurting anyone or everyone with their policies, and why they make no sense. They cannot actually argue their main point.
And so, I’m takin’ it to the streets with my city’s #Occupiers tomorrow to get some numbers behind having their permit renewed.
Best to open the head and heart with humor and to let the rest of the story envelop — we can’t afford to compartmentalize the consequences of bad policy for a woman’s body or for the environment. Another example of how the theme stays close to home.
Economic justice, gender equality AND environmental justice are one and the same thing: We need to fight the policy makers who continue to support those who use the entire world as a commodity, and then throw it away.
Rachel Maddow was talking last evening about the ballot issue in Mississippi in November to amend the state constitution for a “personhood initiative declaring that life begins when a human egg is fertilized.” Apparently there’s movement to do likewise in at least four other states, with the intention of creating challenges to Roe v Wade.
Rachel commented that the language would effectively ban birth control pills and other forms of contraception.
How far backwards are the bastards going to push us?
JannKinz
The cartoon is oustandingly, grotesquely (The Onion-y) funny, but Jen’s follow -up is so disheartening that it is hard to have a non-schizo response, so I’ll just move on.