ColumnRand Paul surrenders; the Senator admits losing the War on Women during a  four-man panel on Fox News debates.

I guess Megyn Kelly was in the bathroom gabbing with her lady friends or changing her tampon when Fox News gathered four (white) men for its debate about The War on Women.

Fox’s “All Star Panel” convened in response to Rand Paul’s recent mess of an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley, in which he said a number of totally out-of-touch things about the War on Women.

Here’s a Rand Paul snippet: “The whole thing with the War on Women, I sort of laughingly say, ‘yeah there might have been,’ but the women are winning it.”

Did I miss the parade? Did I achieve equal pay and not get the memo?

Fox’s Bret Baier, the panel’s host, was a little sheepish as he admitted — during the panel discussion itself — that choosing four men to discuss the War on Women wasn’t the best idea. But the team powered on.

Panelist Charles Krauthammer was annoyed that in discussing Hillary Clinton as a 2016 candidate, Paul went back to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He wasn’t annoyed because the scandal painted women as either victims, whores or frigid bitches. He was annoyed because that tactic didn’t work the first time, so why try again?

Krauthammer suggested that Republicans instead focus on, “the women’s issue in terms of late-term abortion and other stuff.”

He ripened the battlefield for a good old-fashioned abortion debate — never mind the fact that only 1.2% of all abortions occur after 21 weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

But, if Krauthammer really wants to go there…I got this one. During that CNN interview, Paul did say that the number one cause of poverty is people having kids out of wedlock.

It is? Great. Because if he is right, let’s make birth control free and easily accessible for all men and women. Let’s legalize abortion and make it affordable and easy to access in every part of the country — and cover it under every insurance policy.

Hell, while we’re at it, let’s legalize gay marriage nationwide so those crazy homos will stop having babies before they get married, and let’s put free condoms in every school bathroom.

I’m sure Paul would agree, given his itch to end poverty via ending pregnancies out of wedlock.

Ugh. I just remembered that Paul tried to make all abortions illegal when he co-sponsored the Life at Conception act, and he opposes the Obamacare birth control insurance coverage mandate.

Now I’m just at a loss.

Back to the braintrust, the Fox News panel. Charles Lane was irritated with Paul for getting his stats wrong, which he did.

The guys looked around but still couldn’t find Megyn, so they cut to footage of Democratic strategist Penny Lee saying that the Republicans’ attempt to unearth the Lewinsky scandal is “very foolish.”

Foolish indeed. If you want to win the War on Women and keep Clinton out of the oval office, it’s best to go right for the jugular: Hillary’s hair.

That Happened is Libby Lowe’s weekly column for EcoSalon analyzing media, news and pop culture through a feminist lens. Keep in touch with Libby @LibbyLowe.

Image: Gage Skidmore

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Texas Passes Restrictive Abortion Law

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ColumnTexas passed an abortion law banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and requiring new restrictions that will close almost every clinic in the state.

Despite Wendy Davis’ best efforts, and outrage in Texas and around the country, the state has passed a restrictive, controversial abortion law banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy—which is terrible, but given that only 1.3 percent of abortions occur after 20 weeks, it’s not even the worst part of the new legislation.

The ambulatory surgical center regulation requires that all clinics performing abortions become designated as ambulatory surgical centers. This will cause the shuttering of all but five abortion clinics in the entire state. The five are all located in larger cities, which will limit access to abortion and healthcare for rural women, those without transportation options and those who don’t have the money to travel.

But, as with most things in life, there’s a bright side. In a post on the Dallas Observer blog, Amy Silverstein suggests great abortion road trips. The obvious concern is for those women who can’t afford a road trip. Gas is expensive, as you know, and we haven’t all upgraded to the Volt or Leaf.

I have a solution: For the people who can’t afford to travel, perhaps a walkabout. You know what’s great after an abortion? A 200-mile walk through Texas. Boots on, ladies!

Sadly, I am unable to dream up a viable option for women who can’t take time off for a walkabout. But, luckily, being pregnant, giving birth in a hospital and choosing to raise a child isn’t a big time or money suck.

This loss for Texas women (and all women given the shitty precedent it sets), might be a gain for lady-hater Rick Perry’s sister. Salon reports that she is an executive at a company that operates ambulatory surgical centers. Well, well, well. Seems Rick’s sis may stand to make some cash on this whole thing. The only problem is, most of the clinics that are going to be closed don’t have money for the upgrades and licensing it would take to get ASC cred. Maybe they didn’t think this through.

If you think not living in Texas means this law won’t impact you, think again. While there will be a court challenge on this ruling and it could get shot down (Wendy willing), New York Times writer Ross Douthat makes an interesting case about the global impact of restricting abortion, examining restrictions across the globe to see what happens when abortion is hard—or impossible—to obtain easily, affordably and legally.

Abortion News From Across the Country:

Illinois: A decision by the Illinois Supreme Court means that starting August 15, Illinois’ parental notification law must be followed. The state will notify a minor’s parents 48-hours before the procedure, unless there’s an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which I’m hoping for.

Mississippi: There’s one abortion clinic in all of Mississippi. One. Read Lori Gregory-Garrott’s account of what it means to work at the Last Clinic. Thank you, Lori!

Missouri: Senate Majority Whip Brian Nieves (R) got all pissy on Facebook and replied to a comment stating that abortions to save the life of a mother are “a matter of convenience.” He’s right in that being alive is very, very convenient.

North Carolina: The North Carolina House passed the motorcycle abortion bill this month restricting access to abortion—oh and increasing safety measures for motorcyclists, which makes tons of sense. The bill would allow the state’s health department to create temporary rules for North Carolina’s abortion clinics as it sees fit (a helmet on every fetus!). The bill also prohibits government-administered insurance plans (including the Affordable Care Act) to pay for abortions and would require a doctor to be present when a patient is administered abortion-inducing drugs—which will cause the same widespread closures we may see in Texas.

North Dakota: Thankfully, a federal judge has temporarily blocked a law banning abortions as early as six weeks of pregnancy, before most women even know they are pregnant. The judge said that this law is, “clearly unconstitutional under an unbroken stream of United States Supreme Court authority.” Also, kids that attended  the North Dakota State Fair got a creepy treat in their candy bags: a toy fetus.

For more information, check out this clip of  Ilyse Hogue, President of NARAL Pro Choice America, discussing what happens after a 20 week abortion ban goes into effect.

Image: Ann Harkness

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VideoIf you can’t say it, don’t legislate it.

As the War on Women rages on, anti-woman forces – primarily a cadre of ultra-conservative men – continue to beef up their offensive troops. They now have Paul Ryan “a no abortions ever” kind of guy, teaming up with Mitt “I’ve always been pro-life” Romney, and together, they’ve created a party platform that represents the biggest threat to Roe v Wade we’ve seen thus far.

New to the frontline, we’ve been introduced to the rogue soldier, Representative Todd Akin, a Missouri candidate for the U.S. Senate. In a recent interview, Rep. Akin was seen munching on a tasty foot in his mouth as he expressed his belief that in most cases of “legitimate” rape, “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” thereby preventing pregnancy. Sadly, he isn’t the only politician who actually believes this absurd theory, nor does he stand alone in his justification for excluding rape-induced pregnancies in legislation that would restrict abortion funding.

Though our battles have escalated in the 2012 presidential campaign, women have long been besieged by fundamentalist religious groups, a male-dominated government, and society at large. It wasn’t until the 19^th Amendment was ratified in 1920, that women were granted the right to vote. Finally, we were allowed to raise our political voices, even if we would not be spared continuing efforts to silence us. We’re now all too aware that a strong declaration of opinion can lead to consequences. The duality of our political system was clearly exposed when Michigan’s State Rep. Lisa Brown, was censured for using the word “vagina” during a debate on abortion rights. Politicizing the word “vagina” helped mobilize many of us who had grown a little too accustomed to minding our manners.

If you can say it, display it.

Women have continued to say “vagina.”

Some even seek to destigmatize other descriptive terms for female genitalia, speaking – what may still be to many – the unspeakable. Others, the more demonstrative among us, are showing their vaginas (or vaginae…) to the world in a no-skirt-lifting fashion, through various forms of artistic expression. Vagina art may not be a new concept, but it is a window to society’s changing regard for women throughout history – from divine worship to oppression and repression.

Instead of conforming to expectations of “good girl” behavior, we’re seeing an emergence of newly empowered and emboldened women who have set up their easels, raided granny’s baskets of crochet hooks, knitting needles, embroidery kits, and hauled the sewing machines down from the attic. The results, as seen in the examples we’ve collected, evoke a broad range of emotions. Laughter. Anger. Sadness. Pride. Each creative effort celebrates the artistry of the individual as well as our collective identity. All have been inspired by “the sacred source of life” –the vagina.

Slideshow Music Courtesy JSP Records “Mama Don’t Allow It” by Julia Lee & Her Boyfriends; Images: Not Your Average Hooker, Hypgnosis, Shine Maverick Jewelry, Hypgnosis, Johnny B Wilde,  Expired Goods, Scarlet Tentacle, Purple Hippo Stitches, I Wear Party Hats, spidercamp, Irma Diaz/SourOctopus, TheVaginaZine, The Tie Dye Bohemian, Alex Florschutz, Adrien Art, Tina Casebeer/wikit626, ©Carrie Reichardt, Alex Florschutz, Woman In Bloom, thepixelrat, The Voting Box , VJazzle, Bridesmaids, Wedding Dress, Protest/CODEPINK, ©Ursula Kölle, Cupcakes, Body Parts Poster, Pink Flannel by Daria, Graffiti, Stenciled Tees/#waronwomen, ampule, the moss girl, ©Lydia Shalanko, Protest/CODEPINK, Scarlet Tentacle, Pochos Cosas, Vulva Love Lovely, Sinful Soap Favors, Family Tree Glass, Delicious Accessories

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Women like sex.

I’ve been thinking – buried under the crushing, exhausting weight of all the assorted indignities of the current war on women, maybe it’s time to flip the script and go back to the basics. My theory about why all of this inane madness is happening is this: elite white men are afraid that their god-given power is disappearing. After all, we have a black president, we’re on our third female Secretary of State, and apparently, women no longer “need” men.

I have a proposition: maybe what we do need is to get in touch with our most instinctual, sexual selves, the selves that could potentially make Rick Santorum’s head explode.

So what do women want? And why is it so necessary to ask that question right now?

The short answer is that women’s desire is a massive threat to men insecure about their own masculinity. Consider asking the question –  “What do I desire?” – and then pursuing the answer in the most pleasurable way possible. This may be more than just a fun, enlightening exercise– it may in fact be revolutionary.

Women who want to get inside their own desire must start by shredding some prevailing myths, beginning with the one about men wanting sex more than women. It’s been ingrained in us to accept that men are so man-like that they can’t help but stare at every pair of breasts within a one-block radius, watch porn in every free moment, and masturbate like monkeys. Then there’s the trope about how men cheat because they “can’t help it.”

Part exaggeration, part truth, but what’s true is that they have license to do this, and women culturally don’t.

There’s no shame in wanting sex, but women who express their desire at an early age are shamed as sluts. The only women who have the ability to not enter almighty slut-dome are those who are happily married, actively procreating, and (hopefully) have no desires whatsoever. Women are not allowed pleasure in this worldview, one that’s on the GOP platform in 2012.

Let’s tell Paul Ryan, Todd Akin, and their pals that we like sex and we don’t apologize for it. It’s not just for making babies. That if they want to take away our birth control, they’ll have to wrest it out of our cold, dead, hands. We’re not making more babies for them to recruit.

Feminist History 101

Women were literally property not that long ago. If you’re coveting or already have an engagement ring, note that it essentially evolved as a husband’s down payment on his soon-to-be-wife. Not only did we belong to our husbands like cattle or guns, we were not allowed to own any property, because we were not considered human beings. Since then we’ve gotten the vote, have been allowed to work outside the home, been set free by the pill, and presently find ourselves in a fraught conversation about what it means to “have it all.”

Second wave feminists did some great work, but the anti-porn bit missed one important fact: women like sex. Going all Lysistrata on men isn’t going to solve much except making us all really sexually frustrated. At the same time, we have to push back. We are not Eve, or Pandora, or some other hypersexual goddess seducing men to eat our poisoned apples. Nor are we their Virgin Mary. We need to be allowed to simply be women, and not be shamed or idealized for wanting what we want, when we want it.

Even though we’ve made ridiculous amounts of progress (and fought like fierce warriors for every victory) we’re still so very far from where our feminist forebears had hoped we’d be. And I think it’s because we haven’t allowed ourselves to have enough, desire enough, experiment enough with sex. There’s still too much shame. Many women who have a lot of sex are doing so without pleasure. It’s still in service of the ideal of wanting to be wanted – rather than understanding what we truly want.

Stefanie Iris Weiss is the author of Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Ten Speed Press/Crown Publishing, 2010) and eight other books. Stefanie keeps her carbon footprint small in New York City, where she writes about sustainability, sexuality, reproductive rights, dating and relationships, politics, fashion, beauty, and more for many publications. Learn more about her at ecosex.net, follow her eco-sex exploits on Twitter or join her on Facebook.

Image: Je@n

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In the latest assault on reproductive rights, losing a pregnancy could mean serious legal consequences for the mother – even the death penalty.

Imagine that you are several weeks pregnant and growing more excited by the day. You have decided to wait to tell people until you are past that tricky first trimester, the time period of so many losses (some estimate that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage). At your first checkup, the doctor scans your belly and frowns. Scans again and frowns. There is no heartbeat. An ultrasound confirms that your baby is not moving and there is no blood flow, just a sad, little unmoving body.

As you cry for your loss and for the child you will never know, a male police officer arrives and asks you, “What did you do to cause this?” As you are trying to come to terms with your own unfounded feelings of guilt, a man is putting it into words and demanding answers, never mind the fact that in most cases doctors cannot determine the precise cause of a miscarriage. Despite that, the burden is on you to prove that your behavior did not in some way cause your pregnancy to terminate, or you could face life in jail or the death penalty.

Sound like something from The Handmaid’s Tale? Margaret Atwood might be prescient. We are well on our way to living in a dystopian society caused by the systematic dismantling of women’s healthcare and rights. 2011 has been an appalling year for women. State after state has mounted a legislative assault on Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood, chipping away at a woman’s right to choose, access to affordable birth control, STD screening and early breast cancer detection. But, it hasn’t stopped there.

Legislators have suggested that women carry abortion insurance in the event they might be raped and a Georgia bill proposes prosecution of women who can’t prove they didn’t intentionally cause a miscarriage. Thirty-eight states have fetal homicide laws, designed to protect the fetus from attack from a third party, like a violent male partner, while other states have chemical endangerment laws passed to punish parents who expose their children to meth fumes – yet overwhelmingly, these laws are now being used against the women themselves. South Carolina has prosecuted one man for attacking a pregnant woman, but almost three hundred women for their behavior during pregnancy. Other states have followed suit, twisting the language to focus on punishing women.

Of all the proposed and recently passed legislation, the Georgia bill proposed by Rep. Bobby Franklin potentially punishing women for miscarriages is the most disturbing. The language of the law demands that women prove “no human involvement whatsoever in the causation.” This vague language leaves the door wide open for prosecutorial abuse.

The bill has been shelved for now (and in a further twist, the representative behind it, Bobby Franklin, passed away July 26th during development of this story). Regardless of the tragedy of this individual’s death, the fact that anyone could put that into words, and attempt to pass it, affecting thousands of women in one state with the potential for other state legislators to follow suit – speaks volumes about what men in power think of women. It spells out their belief that they have the right to oppress women and punish them without proof for perceived behaviors and lifestyle choices.

Even though many pregnancies end in miscarriage, doctors routinely tell women that they will not do any additional testing until a woman has had three consecutive losses. Three investigations. Three heartbreaks where a mother can be questioned and be blamed, when she is already feeling grief, hopelessness and despair of ever having the child she wants so much. It is an incredibly private and painful time, and legislators want to not only intrude, but vilify and punish. Should law enforcement really determine if a woman is to be charged, when even doctors can’t say with certainty why a pregnancy ended and will do nothing about it until she has had three losses?

What is the purpose of this law? It and others like it are simply state-sanctioned witch hunts. The chemical endangerment law, passed to prosecute parents who subject their children to harmful fumes in meth labs, has been expanded to include pregnant women who tests positive for drug use or whose infants test positive after birth, and even women who have lost pregnancies when the cause can’t be proven.

Prosecuting women with drug problems would seem like a deterrent to drug use during pregnancy, but realistically, it will more likely just cause women to not seek help, and when they are pregnant is precisely the time they need help the most – before their babies are damaged by their habits. This could cause more babies to be born with health problems or more women to seek abortions for fear of being prosecuted if their baby tests positive.

This could deter women from considering giving up their children for adoption, as well. Many adoption agencies question birth mothers about their medical histories and habits during pregnancy to get an idea of the health of the child. If birth mothers believe that their behavior will be used against them, they will either lie or simply avoid adoption altogether.

This virtually eliminates a woman’s right to medical privacy. No woman will want to tell her doctor or any other medical health professional the truth about her habits, and this can have serious repercussions when medical staff don’t have all the facts when they are treating someone. Will all reports of miscarriages be investigated? With state budgets facing shortfalls and police forces enduring personnel cuts, is this what police should spend their time on?

Will women have to be nervous about every action they take? What if a woman drinks alcohol before she knows that she is pregnant and suffers a miscarriage? What about any woman who goes against a doctor’s advice and loses her pregnancy later, even though those two events might not be linked at all? What does “human involvement” mean? Where does it stop and who will the law be enforced against? Will all hospitals have to report gunshot victims and miscarriages?

I have a friend whose daughter died in utero 10 days before her due date, another who lost two different babies at 18 weeks, another whose twin girls were stillborn at 22 weeks, and several who had one, two or three miscarriages. If pressed, none of them could prove “no human involvement,” since their doctors weren’t even sure why it happened. Should these tragedies have potentially cost my friends their lives?

image: Y, La Bella Vida, Tourist On Earth

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