Amanda Marcotte writes for and manages the blog Pandagon, blogs for Slate's Double X, and has two books out: "It's A Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments" and "Get Opinionated: A Progressive's Guide to Finding Your Voice (and Taking a Little Action)". She's written about politics, pop culture and feminism for outlets such as Slate, Salon, the LA Times, the Guardian, Bitch, and the American Prospect. A former resident of Texas, she now lives in Brooklyn, NY.
With a plodding inevitability, conservatives have started to blame Kasandra Perkins for the choice of an entire other person to pull the trigger and take her life. But this is an urge that not only can be resisted, but should be resisted.
In January, a regulation that could end legal abortion in Mississippi could go into effect. The entire situation is a classic example of the NIMBYism and hypocrisy of anti-choicers, who are more interested in appearances than realities around abortion.
John McCain joins the growing list of Republicans who claim that attacking reproductive rights while declining to talk about it in public will help them win elections. But that strategy has been in effect for years now, and it’s not working anymore.
In the United States, the war on contraception continues, with the Ohio state legislature mounting a new attack on subsidized birth control for low income women.
Pro-choice candidates gained big time this election cycle, while anti-choice politicians lost even more power, at least on a national level. The lesson of all this is simple: After decades of feminists arguing for women’s rights, the majority of the public is on board.
Emily Bazelon profiles Charmaine Yoest in the New York Times Magazine. Yoest knows that the anti-choice movement needs to improve its reputation, but despite this, she can’t give up on the overt sexism and the anti-contraception sentiments.
New York City is helping train volunteers for a clinic escort program that will help patients seeking abortion get past anti-choice militants who crowd around clinics slinging invective. Anti-choice whining about this is unintentionally revealing.
New statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics indicate that the popularity of highly effective, long-acting forms of contraception is growing rapidly. Society is becoming more easy with contraception, and access needs to catch up.
In a move of utter predictability, a major anti-choice website angrily denounces a strong, multi-year study that shows that contraception access reduces the abortion rate. Which is, of course, more consistent with hating on sex than any concern for preventing abortion.
A study reveals that, provided with access to contraception for foree, women have a much lower abortion rate than the national average. This should be obvious, but with anti-choicers claiming contraception doesn’t prevent unintended pregnancy, this study should be shouted from the rooftops.
