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By Ira A. Hunt
$35.00
By Ellen Goodman
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Wikimedia Commons / U.S. House of Representatives
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After an exhibition of political recklessness conducted in the face of an ominous deadline, congressional leaders reached an accord late Friday night that averted a shutdown of the federal government. The agreement was announced by House Speaker John Boehner, above.
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wassermanschultz.house.gov
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The Democratic National Committee has picked Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz as its new chair—a choice that Politico frames as one to rally the party base rather than court voters on the fence as the DNC gears up for campaign 2012.
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Cows produce milk with the properties of human breast milk, telenovelas turn serious, a new HIV vaccine is set to go into trials and Arizona passes a new race-based law ... this time about abortion. These discoveries and more after the jump.
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New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan is a man of the world in some senses, showing his love of cigars and beer in this “60 Minutes Overtime” clip, but he’s all about strict adherence to Catholic doctrine when it comes to some hotly contested ...
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Flickr / ctrouper (CC-BY)
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Congressional Republicans have yet another “liberal” target on their short list, looking to take down Planned Parenthood with tactics similar to those they’ve used to go after NPR—i.e., hit ’em in the wallet. Problem is, their strategy gets a bit confused when it comes to the reproductive ...
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Bob Englehart, Cagle Cartoons, The Hartford Courant —
Posted on Mar 18, 2011
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By Ruth Marcus — House Republicans voted to increase the number of abortions, raise federal health care costs and swell the welfare rolls.
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AP / Osservatore Romano, HO
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While in Barcelona, Spain, to dedicate Antoni Gaudi’s famous, yet unfinished Sagrada Familia basilica, Pope Benedict XVI got down to some unfinished business of his own, zeroing in on a short list of favorite family values issues he sees as causes for concern ... (continued)
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AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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Senate candidate and tea party favorite Christine O’Donnell has done her darnedest to lose the whole “witch” label as she makes her play to join Delaware’s ranks in Congress, but she was more than ready to brand opponent Chris Coons with her own scary term in their debate on Wednesday.
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So, Christine O’Donnell had a couple of crucial goals to accomplish in her first ad aimed at persuading the good people of Delaware to send her to the Senate: First, she needed to make it known that she’s “not a witch.” Right.
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Flickr / Fibonacci Blue
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Certain members and proponents of the tea-party movement may claim that diversity abounds among their ranks, but through the magic of polling, the Public Religion Research Institute has sketched out a shared belief system ... (continued)
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Could this be the face of the future of politics? Let’s hope not. Alaskan pinup boy turned wannabe politico Levi Johnston has a bit of a tough time answering “The Last Word” host Lawrence O’Donnell’s fairly basic questions about evolution, abortion and global warming ... (continued)
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Flickr / Berkman10_220 (CC-BY-SA)
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Elena “Shorty” Kagan will step onto the national stage when her confirmation process to become a Supreme Court justice begins Monday. Undoubtedly the confirmation hearings will bring words like stare decisis into the public vernacular again, along with a whole lot of hoopla about abortion. Let the democracy commence.
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Flickr / campusprogress_blog
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A European contraceptive that works as a five-day alternative to the “morning-after” pill may be coming to American shores, but a thorny debate surrounding the drug’s chemical similarity to the RU-486 abortion pill raises some politically charged questions for the FDA.
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Who knew that while George W. Bush held office at the White House, a supporter of gay marriage and abortion rights lurked under the same roof? That would be his wife, Laura Bush, who told Larry King and his shiny suspenders ... (continued)
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Flickr / renfield
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Even in cases of sexual abuse or rape, a strict abortion law enacted Tuesday in Oklahoma requires women to undergo a sonogram, during which the doctor has to turn the screen to face the patient and give her fetal development details.
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AP / Andrew Brownbill
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It seems the pope can’t take a joke. The Vatican is threatening to cancel a visit to Britain by Benedict XVI after a leaked Foreign Office memo gave suggestions that included a “Benedict condom.”
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Flickr / the pragmatic
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Bart Stupak, the Michigan congressman who led the charge against President Obama’s health care bill on the grounds that it might allow tax money to pay for abortions, has decided he will not run for re-election in 2010.
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By Ruth Marcus — There are any number of good reasons for House Democrats to vote against health care reform. Abortion isn’t one of them.
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Wikimedia Commons / U.S. Congress
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“In the present form, the Senate health care bill is going nowhere in the House of Representatives,” Rep. Mark Stupak told Fox News on Thursday, owing in part to the way in which the bill was passed—“the special deals,” as he put it. After Fox co-anchor Liz Claman reminded him that he “could hold this whole thing up” ... (continued)
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Filckr / arizonaguardian
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A Georgia anti-choice group has a “choice” strategy to cater to African-Americans in an effort to diversify its majority-white membership: launch a public outreach campaign that argues that abortion is a decades-old conspiracy to kill off black people.
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They’re not called the “culture wars” for nothing, but still, the fact that Focus on the Family spent precious seconds of prime Super Bowl advertising airtime (and lots of money) on the abortion debate is a telling reminder that America has some issues, and deeply divisive ones at that.
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youtube.com
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Would any pregnant woman want American viewing audiences to decide whether she should keep or abort her baby? Luckily, even the producers of the new Web-based show “Bump” know that that kind of programming wouldn’t fly, but they did go so far as to dramatize that idea by using actors in various prenatal scenarios to stage their stories for an online voting audience.
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Sedgwick County Jail
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After just 37 minutes of deliberation, a Kansas jury found Scott Roeder, the man who admitted killing abortion doctor George Tiller, guilty of first-degree murder, rejecting his defense that the killing was justified to stop the death of the unborn.
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Human rights organizations are on the offensive as groups mobilize pressure against Ireland’s ban on abortion, accusing the government of a deliberate campaign of misinformation and exposing women to undue risk by forcing them to travel abroad for abortions.
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AP / Gregory Bull
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A disturbing trend is arising in Mexico, as state legislatures are banning abortion in a wave of individual state decisions. Abortion rights advocates say the trend will force women to more dangerous and clandestine forms of abortion.
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stewart.army.mil
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Remember when protecting women’s rights was given as a justification for invading countries? Well, the U.S. general in northern Iraq has added pregnancy to the reasons why a soldier could be court-martialed—a list that includes selling weapons and taking drugs.
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Pro-Choice Public Education Project / Creative Commons
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To the ire of anti-abortion supporters, a temporary restraining order has been extended on an Oklahoma law requiring doctors to report the personal information of women seeking abortions to a Web site.
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The health care reform bill that made it through the House of Representatives last month didn’t exactly win rave reviews from the pro-choice camp, and now it’s the Senate’s turn to have it out over whether government-subsidized health care should ever include coverage for abortions and, if so, under what circumstances that should be allowed.
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By Ruth Marcus — Let’s dispense with three fallacies swirling about the question of abortion coverage in health care reform.
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Coptic Icon / Wikimedia Commons
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By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet —
First they threatened to take down health care reform over abortion coverage. Now they’re threatening services to the sick and poor of Washington, D.C., over same-sex marriage.
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By Ellen Goodman — If pro-choice Democrats turn back reproductive rights, it proves that they can be rolled by intransigent opposition. And once rolled, it’s all downhill.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Pro-choice Democrats need to accept that their House majority depends on a large cadre of anti-abortion colleagues. They can denounce that reality, or they can learn to live with it.
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Flickr / Photo Mojo
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Arguing that “the worst thing to do is nothing,” former President Bill Clinton rounded up Senate Democrats for a talking-to about their upcoming vote on the health care reform legislation passed by the House of Representatives last weekend. Clinton emphasized the need for action and reminded his audience that “there is no perfect bill.”
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thefrisky.com
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A new Oklahoma law, effective Nov. 1, will require women seeking abortions to reveal personal information such as marital status, number of children and race—all of which will be posted online. Critics say that the intent is intimidation.
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Flickr / Hellgasms!
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This isn’t going to sound all that shocking, but remember that this country is still wrapping its head around evolution: Criminalizing abortion does not reduce the number of abortions; it reduces the number of safe abortions. Contraception, however, does reduce abortions, according to an epic study of 197 countries.
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AP / Jose Luis Magana
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Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch tried, and ultimately failed, to add an amendment to the health care hydra that Max Baucus’ reform bill has become. This one would have required women to buy separate policies for abortion-related services. Even the formerly reticent Sen. Olympia Snowe cast a “no” vote on this one.
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If these anti-Obama marchers are to be believed, fascism and socialism are the same thing, abortion caused 9/11 and “Glenn Beck is such a logical thinker.” There’s a whole pile of crazy where that came from.
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YouTube / BarackObamadotcom
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When emotions run high about certain hot-button issues, good judgment can fall by the wayside, and facts can get lost in the shuffle. Luckily, the helpful researchers at FactCheck.org are around to round them up again, as they’ve done here with President Obama’s health care speech.
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AP / Daymon J. Hartley
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A 63-year-old anti-abortion activist who had been staging a protest, reportedly involving graphic images of fetuses, in front of a Michigan high school was killed in a drive-by shooting Friday, according to The New York Times.
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womenonwaves.org
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After 10 years, the Dutch government may end the voyages of Women on Waves, a flotilla of abortion ambassadors who sail information and pills to countries that ban the practice. Originally designed as a floating clinic, “The ship is [now] a symbol, more than anything,” the group’s founder told Global Post.
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AP
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Public memory often has a short shelf life, and it doesn’t preclude the potential for rapid recycling, according to The New York Times’ take on the current “death panel” controversy, considering that a prototypical version of this particular argument made the rounds during the (Internet-enabled) Clinton era.
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thawstudio.com
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In the face of strong conservative Catholic opposition, Italy has approved use of the RU486 abortion drug. Italian authorities decided to allow the drug to be administered by a doctor up to the seventh week of pregnancy.
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Flickr / ECohen and White House / Eric Draper
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Yet another report confirms, as The Guardian explains, “that rates of teen pregnancy and STDs are, after more than a decade of decline, once again on the rise.” Thanks to President Bush’s abstinence-only sex education agenda, black, Hispanic and poor women are more likely to have unwanted pregnancies.
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By Amy Goodman — Nonviolent activists and Muslims are held in draconian conditions, while the man charged with killing Dr. George Tiller trumpets from jail the extreme anti-abortion movement’s campaign of intimidation, vandalism, arson and murder.
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Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee joins Jon Stewart to discuss abortion, and the two actually manage to have a civil conversation and get their points across. Here’s a clip from the interview on Thursday’s “Daily Show.”
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Reuters
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Was the murder of Kansas doctor George Tiller an act of terrorism? In a move sparked by fear, Tiller’s family has decided to close the clinic, one of the few remaining places in the U.S. that performed late-term abortions.
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By Marie Cocco — The murder of Dr. George Tiller cannot be smoothed over with a speech. This is the lesson the Obama administration must learn from it.
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Back in 2006, here’s what Bill O’Reilly had to say about the recently murdered Dr. George Tiller: “[I]f I could get my hands on Tiller—well, you know. Can’t be vigilantes. Can’t do that. It’s just a figure of speech. But despicable? Oh, my God. It doesn’t get worse. Does it get worse? No.”
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By Ellen Goodman — It is believed that the shooter acted alone. But Michael Griffin also acted alone when he killed David Gunn in 1993. Paul Hill acted alone in 1994. John Salvi acted alone and so did Eric Rudolph and James Kopp. This suspect is hardly lonely in this murderous cast of lone actors.
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Too Soon to Tell: The Case for Hope, Continued
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