USA still a scary place for those seeking, providing abortion services

I haven't been a very competent blogger lately. Being home for summer, there's less exciting urgent stuff I want to write about. But I was deeply saddened today to learn about the murder of Dr. George Tiller, a late term abortion provider, in Wichita, Kansas. In '86, Tiller's clinic was bombed, and in '93, Tiller was shot in both arms by radical anti-choice advocates. Today he was killed on his way into church. In addition to providing abortions, Tiller was a defendant in a number of abortion rights lawsuits. It's a tragic loss of a pro-choice medical professional, and a heartbreaking reminder of how fucking stupid some people are.

President Obama is "shocked and outraged." I agree with that sentiment.

Wichita abortion provider George Tiller shot to death at Wichita church


Abortion Doctor Slain by Gunman in Kansas Church (nytimes)

(For my final project for a journalism class this semester, I wrote an article on the New York Abortion Access Fund, and learned a lot about the incredible hoops that many women still have to jump through to access affordable, safe, legal abortion services. There is still SO MUCH legislation in this country (most of it state by state) that limits access to abortion; often an unavoidable consequence of laws restricting abortion funding, forcing women to travel to other states, etc. is that women must wait until later and later to terminate their pregnancy. While I understand the controversy surrounding "late term" abortions, they're so frequently the only option for women who spend months trying to obtain and afford abortion services. I'm so sad the pro-choice community has lost an abortion provider who understood this.)

Something On The Internet #2425920

I can't really say enough good things about livemocha.com. As someone who really enjoys learning new languages, I'm so glad someone put this together. It's a social networking site for learning a foreign language. You take rosetta stone style courses online to learn vocab and grammar, then write and record yourself doing little exercises, and people in the community who speak the language you're learning correct you and provide you with that kind of unabashed enthusiasm you can only find on the Internet. Basically, I correct people's English and French exercises, and native Spanish speakers correct my awful Spanish and don't even care that I butcher their beautiful mother tongue.

And it's all free. (look me up-- I'm alexandrak814)

Home!

Being halfway done with college is pretty incomprehensible.
This movie is getting really good reviews.

I know what you're thinking. If you've seen the film, spill it already. So who does he out? Dick's targets include Florida's current governor, Charlie Crist, who was viewed for a time as a front-runner to be John McCain's vice-presidential pick; David Dreier (R-San Dimas), who was once a leading candidate for the House majority leader post when the Republicans still controlled Congress; Ken Mehlman, George Bush's campaign manager during the 2004 election and former Republican National Committee chairman; former New York City mayor Ed Koch; the now-retired Idaho Sen. Larry Craig; Jim McCrery (R-La.), a ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee who retired last year; Ed Schrock (R-Va.), who retired in 2004; and -- gasp -- the prominent Fox News anchor Shepard Smith.

--http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2009/04/outraged-kirby-dick-kicks-open-washingtons-closet-door-.html

I'm writing this article for journalism, and I'm having a really interesting realization.
"Funding is at the heart of the third-wave feminist movement. NYAAF is providing access to safe, legal and affordable reproductive health care that is rightly ours, it’s just not accessible by other means—it’s incredible feat of the second-wave to have secured abortion as a legal right for all women living in the US and their work has allowed the third-wave to focus on equality within a social justice framework. And I think now our job now is to focus on providing all women with affordable access to that legal right today."
-Constance DeCherney, Chair of the New York Abortion Access Fund

This is my new response to people who believe that the fight for reproductive justice is over, that having Roe v. Wade and a democratic president means our access to the umbrella category of "reproductive rights" is entirely secure. What good is possessing these rights if, in reality, not everyone has equal access to them? What good is any one woman's individual right to her own body, if restrictive legislation in combination with socioeconomic circumstance denies hundreds of thousands of other women that right? What "choice" is there if we live in a society in which choice is only really accessible to white, middle-class women in certain states?