Planned Parenthood's March on Washington

[pandora]

Half a million, if not more, women marched on Washington yesterday in support of reproductive freedom against an adminstration that has done more to roll back the clock against women's reproductive rights world wide than ever before.

The Bush adminstration has pulled funding not only locally in the United States, but World Wide towards women's reproductive care. As human beings on a planet that is increasingly sensitive to the overpopulation of the human race, and in which women continue to struggle to get even basic health care of their reproductive organs, an adminstration which disowns any and all support of reproductive freedom and women's health care has threatened to bring us back to the Dark Ages of reproductive freedom.

It is not coincidence that the last dark ages involved the burning of midwives and women health care workers, mostly herbalists, as witches in the name of the church. Now we are facing such ignorance again.

What do you think? How does reproductive freedom effect how women work and live? What difference does it make as far as women's education and the needs of this planet? I'm interested in hearing other people's thoughts on this, especially if they have other thoughts.

[kidicarus20]

Well according to Feminist Majority (www.feminist.org) they got more than 1 million, 1.2 million they claim. They may be exaggerating, but if they got a 1,000,000+ I think that's great.

I support covering abortion under national health care, people say they shouldn't be "forced" to "pay" for abortion, but their reasons are illogical and nonsensical, and should be discarded. Some people are against publically funded roads and libraries, too. It benefits society to have abortion funded by the public, they can make the process safer, and I see no difference between that and funding stem cell research and reasearch on embryos and fetuses and so fourth.

As long as there is capitalism, there should be taxes that pay for things that benefit society (taxes go to the government, which in turn can be controlled by the people, unlike business, which is not controlled by the people).

So yeah, it's a good thing.

[pandora]

I agree, as usual the press under published the numbers, especially not surprised at the NYT which has continually sabotaged the women's movement, not hiring female reporters, and debasing the International Women's Summit in Beijing.

The idea of forcing people to pay for abortion who can not afford to pay for a baby, and then limiting their access to reproductive and child care, well what can you say ABSOLUTELY FREAKING NUTS!

What the hell do they want people to do, particularly young pregnant women? Who often have no means of supporting themselves.

And adoption for that many children is not an answer, for one it often psychologically damages the mother and sometimes even the child.
And for two if the mother is using drugs or alcohol the fetus may already be damaged, and kids with disabilities are rarely adopted.

Add to this the Republican parties disbanding of social services around disabities, single mothers, dependent housing, section 8, the welfare state, health care, and foster care and you have a FUCKING disaster in inner city and rural areas which are low income