a whole lotta 'Firsts', but none to brag about...

[leashedForLife]

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our current POTUS is the first -
* American to open a casino with an in-house strip club
* sitting [or even former-] POTUS to appear in a soft-porn film
* to refer to his attempts to avoid STDs while having none-to-discriminate sex as "my personal Vietnam".

Unfortunately, one of the most-active fronts in the multiple wars he's conducting against his own citizens will have a lot of collateral damage.
The WAR ON REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS is gaining more traction, & women, children, & the body politic are the victims.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/donald-trump-women-reproductive-rights.html

It's incredible that a sleazy male slut [my frank opinion - the NYX went with 'libertine', which sounds nicer but means the same thing] has decided that women shouldn't have the right to decide when or if they have a child - contraception, & especially abortion, is for HIM to decide.  :blink:

Notably, he also refused to answer when asked if any of his former partners had ever had an abortion.  I'd have to say that as a former peer-counselor on sex, contraception, & related issues, it's extremely unlikely that he never unintentionally got a partner pregnant; after all, he's 70-YO & spent at least half a century having sex with women inside & outside his marriages.
I also cannot imagine he'd let any women he was NOT married to, carry a child to term that he'd sired - she'd be able to get financial support for that child.  DNA has changed the rules, & men can't sire & walk off so easily, any more.

THis is the man who's telling WOMEN not to have sex unless they want to make a baby.  :huh:   Un-be-leiv-able.  Just how many times in his life has he engaged in non-reproductive sex?
 - terry

 

[leashedForLife]

Warning to the general reader - 
this post is about sex & pregnancy, childbirth & abortion -- all of them are innately messy & involve bodily fluids, including blood.
As a farm-raised kid, I was a midwife delivering lambs at 12-YO, & since then, as a peer-counselor in college - explaining diaphragms & how to insert one, condoms & how to put one on & take it off, the use of spermicides, hormone tablets, IUDs, etc - & finally, as a healthcare practitioner, I am accustomed to talk about these topics frankly - not crudely, but factually.
If the very idea of discussing them upsets U, let alone discussing the social & personal costs of unwanted pregnancies,  unwanted children, the astronomical costs of raising kids whether dearly-desired or not, & access to contraception or abortion when contraception fails,  this post is likely to upset U.

_________________________________________

Mass. is one of the very-few states of the 50 that help women on MedicAid [public health-care plan] by funding abortions with state monies - as Federal law in the U-S forbids the use of any Fed $$ for abortions. //  Right-wing activists with help from conservative churches are now attacking that state policy.   

Factually, If U refuse to provide funds to let a woman who is already on state-funded health care TO GET an abortion, U then have a couple of likely outcomes:
A - she carries the fetus to term; the baby survives, & is a ward of the State for 18 years, as she can't afford to house, clothe, shelter, educate, etc, said child.
A2 - she carries the fetus to term; the baby dies. // This saves the State 18-years of tending, food, clothing, housing, schooling, etc. It costs the State for delivery care & post-partum for the woman, & however much for cremation or a pauper's grave for the newborn.

B - she finds a backstreet abortionist, & gets it done anyway; she survives / fetus dies, is the planned outcome. Both die is another possible end; she has a raging infection or massive complications is a 3rd possibility.  // Her funeral is liable to be at state cost; massive complications are definitely going to be at state &/or Federal cost.

C - for whatever personal reasons, she cannot get even a backstreet abortion, & tries DIY.  This also usually results in complications - the simplest is death; more complicated after-effects could be days in intensive care, followed by weeks in hospital, all on public funds - again, whether that's state or Fed or both.

D - for whatever personal reasons, she cannot face carrying the pregnancy, & kills herself - which, as far as some conservative religious groups or their members are concerned, is either "no more than she deserves, that slut...", or "God's judgement". // It seems to me that these very groups & individuals are the ones doing the judging & finding her lacking, but what do i know? -- since i'm not a member of that church, i am obviously not among the Enlightened or the Saved.    :blink:  
Of course, now that she's dead - if she succeeded - her funeral still needs to be paid for; if she failed, her care must be paid for.

If i just look at all of these from a strictly financial viewpoint, all of them COST MORE than just paying for a 1st-trimester abortion in a clinic. //  The right-wing folks & the religious organizations will promptly shout that it's not ABOUT money - even tho that's what it is about,  as it's Mass state-funds that they're raising H*** over.   They'll say it's about saving that poor innocent's life.  *sob*
But i've noticed... none of them tend to adopt children who languish for years on end in the orphanage or foster-care systems, nor do they want to fund good pre-natal care for ALL pregnant women on low incomes, nor to pay for a good education for any low-income children who are already here, alive, now - they only want to punish women for having the nerve to have SEX without deliberately planning to make a baby today / tonight.   How very dare they!  

The children already here are their mothers' problems, to feed, rear, tend, school, house, etc; Right-Wing loudmouths lose all interest in that potential life as soon as it becomes an actual living, breathing, needing life, separate from the uterus that contained it. // BEFORE that, tho, it's their concern, & the pregnant woman has no right to make any decisions for herself that they do not agree with. Period.
Most especially the decision that she doesn't want to be pregnant, or that this fetus will be born with serious defects & she therefore wants to end the pregnancy, or that she herself is not healthy & cannot safely carry a pregnancy, or that she cannot afford another child / any child, or that her life is too marginal to make room for a child... homeless, low wages, multiple jobs / rarely home, chronic illness?... THEN YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE SEX. Ever.   :huh:
What about the men, who sired these pregnancies?

Maybe they shouldn't  have sex, ever, either - but nobody is saying that out-loud.   :unsure:

 The UK introduced national health-care post-WW2, & has provided access to women for reproductive health -and- contraception when it became available, ever since.
Other than Ireland, i don't think most folks there have any idea just how difficult it is to get medical insurance in the U-S, nor how hard it was prior to the ACA to get decent women's coverage; PAP smears, pelvic exams, STD prevention, healthy pregnancy / preventive care, well-baby follow up care, nutrition help, breast health, menopause, the whole spectrum of female health & fetus / infant / child health.
It's hard for me to fathom how all those 60-plus-YO mostly-white wealthy men could have CHEERED resoundingly, back in January, when Trumpling told them that the Repugnant health-care act "wouldn't cover breast mammograms" or any of that needless junk.  :blink:   Surely their 2nd or 3rd wife, 20-years or more younger, will need a mammogram? ... PAP smear? ... maybe even pregnancy check-ups? ... but of course, THEY HAVE medical insurance.   :b  Silly me! - 'cuz i help pay for it.
And they can AFFORD to pay out of pocket, if they must - again, 'cuz i help pay for it, along with all the other working women of Amerika.

There's something wrong with a system that taxes me to the tune of 25% of my income, when my primary job is minimum-wage, & punishes me for being female - then hands money to my well-paid "representatives" for their own healthcare, & denies me any.

Q:
if this state of affairs develops in the UK, when they privatize health-care under U-S for-profit management, will there be a revolution?
Or will y'all just sigh disgustedly, & re-think retirement, adding another 10-years to the workforce period?

inquiring minds would love to know,
 - terry

 

 

[leashedForLife]

while the now-Veep was governor of Indiana, he signed an incredibly-restrictive anti abortion bill - which, thankfully, was shortstopped by a Federal judge.

the bill was [at the time] the most-restrictive in the nation - for all i know, it's been surpassed by some even-more draconian law, after all, this was 2016 - 'BT', Before Trumpling.

QUOTE, 
"...it contained a multitude of provisions designed to prevent women from accessing abortions.
 - It forced women to have an ultrasound at least 18 hours before an abortion;
 - banned abortions when a fetal anomaly was detected;
 - mandated the burial and cremation of miscarried or aborted remains;
 - restricted fetal tissue donation; and
 - required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital, or to have an agreement with a doctor who does.

"This is one of the most extreme anti-abortion measures in the country, & only further penalizes Indiana women & their doctors for accessing constitutionally protected abortion care," charged Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in response to the law's passage.
...U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt's ruling (pdf) found that the requirement that women have an ultrasound is likely unconstitutional, & creates an "undue burden", particularly for low-income women.

Pratt granted a preliminary injunction against the provision, and the latest decision followed an earlier emergency injunction that prevented the law from taking effect last year.

Planned Parenthood of Indiana & Kentucky (PPINK) [provides reproductive health, prenatal & well-baby care to women in both states, as well as abortion services in both states].

'The new ultrasound law creates significant financial & other burdens on PPINK and its patients, particularly on low-income women in Indiana who face lengthy travel to one of PPINK's now only six health centers that can offer an informed-consent appointment,' Pratt wrote in her decision. 'These burdens are clearly undue when weighed against the almost complete lack of evidence that the law furthers the State's asserted justifications of promoting fetal life & women's mental health outcomes."

NOTE the 2nd measure:
this bill bans abortions of fetuses with congenital deformities or genetic disease, i-e, Tay-Sachs which is fatal by age-5, cerebral palsy, metabolic diseases which may not be treatable, profound retardation, etc - this would include "pin-headed" infants affected by Zika virus, who cannot learn to speak, feed themselves, become continent, or walk.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/04/03/federal-judge-blocks-pences-extreme-anti-abortion-indiana-law

 

[leashedForLife]

* sigh ... *
Another "first" & hopefully a last:   Scaramucci, the spozedly urbane sophisticate, announced that the planet is 5k-500 years old.
:blink:   W-T-H?...  This is the follow-up to Thursday's obscenity-laced temper tantrum over the phone, to a journalist.

https://www.livescience.com/59972-why-scaramucci-is-wrong-about-earths-age.html

How is it that Trumpling's "smooth-talker" has morphed into a potty-mouthed ignoramus in less than a week?!?