NOW Campaign: Reject More Abortion Restrictions

The National Organization of Women has set up an action page, allowing you to instantly contact your House representatives, urging them to oppose further restrictions on abortions through insurance plans funded by the federal government.

Abortion rights opponents are trying to use health reform legislation to impose additional restrictions on abortion services that go far beyond the compromise in the Capps Amendment. Short of a complete ban on abortion coverage, these opponents will try to attach additional restrictions — and they are severe. The Capps Amendment language would require that insurers segregate funds for abortion services so that no public money is used. That requirement is sufficient to continue the harsh Hyde Amendment restrictions already in place.

As a supporter of the National Organization for Women and an ardent advocate for affordable health care for all, [Your name here] want to urge you to hold firm against further attacks by opponents of abortion rights who want to deny all women access to an important health care service.

[Your name here] oppose any effort to exclude abortion services from private health insurance plans.

Has feminism been co-opted?

Over at The Wooden Spoon, lit blogger Daniel E Pritchard considers Ariel Levy in The New Yorker and Marni Soupcoff in the National Post, on the “feminist conundrum”: why and how the word continues to be used pejoratively:

What the movement has become, in some sense, is a movement framed entirely by the politics of the wealthy: you can have a rich liberal woman empowered, or a rich conservative woman empowered, and you are to live vicariously by their success. Practical equality between men and women is no longer the goal of feminism. We also very often frame the role of the wife / mother and husband / father in entirely traditional ways, even when describing the goals of feminism: the woman ‘has the choice’ now, the implication being that the man’s role of financial support is still mandatory while the woman’s role is newly flexible. (Realistically, neither partner probably has a choice at all. Times are tough.)

Honor our rape-sponsoring legislators!

We’d like to help circulate this list of thirty legislators who were brave enough to stand up in defense of rape and vote against Senator Al Franken’s anti-rape amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill. We applaud these courageous men! Visit this site, and roll over their portraits with your mouse to see each Senator’s contact information. We encourage you to send your kind words to these gentlemen!