Some news on reproductive rights in the United States

Remember that horrible HHS rule that allows medical professionals to deny medical care for ludicrous reasons, thereby harming women and LGBTQ? people? It’s being rescinded! (hat tip)

Remember how contraception was supposed to be in the recent stimulus package, but was removed? Funding has been put in the proposed budget and will help ensure American women have better access to necessary health care. (hat tip)

Unfortunately, not all the news is good. The United States Congress wants to continue funding ignorance-only sex education.

Conservative pornocrats

A new study is out about subscriptions to online pornography in the United States. It has some interesting correlations:

• The more red/conservative a state is, the bigger a consumer of online pornography it is likely to be. Of the top ten consuming states, only two were blue in the recent presidential election.
• States that banned gay marriage or civil unions had, on average, 11% more subscribers than those that did not.
• States that agreed with either or both of the statements “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage,” and “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behaviour,” had more subscribers than those that did not.

A New Scientist article suggests that the correlation is due to the fact that social conservatism in red states means that online pornography is discouraged, which therefore makes it seem more valuable. I’d also like to add that consies are more likely to see women as objects useful only for breeding rather than people, and that this might also explain red states’ appetite for pornography. I hope the correlation is due to the reason suggested in the article.

Update: I’d like to indicate that correlation does not imply causation. Indeed, the New Scientist article says “When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different.”

Another reason to support female employment

It reduces women’s likelihood of being murdered by their spouse by enabling them to escape from an abusive partner, reports the Vancouver Sun.

More evidence of what really motivates them

Not like we needed another example of the concern for puritanical sexual morality that motivates social consies:

Democrats were outraged Wednesday morning when Republican state Sen. Dave Schultheis said he planned to vote against a bill to require HIV tests for pregnant women because the disease “stems from sexual promiscuity” and he didn’t think the Legislature should “remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior.”

In other words, this is a concern for “punishing” women for daring to have sex. Mr. Schultheis seems unaware that HIV can be spread through means other than sex. At least he and his Republican Party are in the minority throughout the government of Colorado, where they belong.

Schultheis later reiterated his opposition:

“What I’m hoping is that, yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that,” he said. “The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior.”

Yes, that’s right. He wants babies to get AIDS.

What an asshole.

Hat tip to Pam’s House Blend.

Brilliant idea, indeed

I just replaced my water filter. It is in the kitchen and has a tiny, auxiliary tap. The job itself wasn’t difficult, except for one thing: whose brilliant idea was it to make the batteries so damn hard to get out of the filter?

North Dakota tries to ban abortion

The North Dakota House of Representatives has passed a bill intended to challenge Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton that says that “‘[A]ny organism with the genome of homo sapiens [sic]‘ is a person protected by rights granted by the North Dakota Constitution and state laws.” This includes fertilized ova. Although the sponsor, Republican Dan Ruby claims that the bill does not ban abortions, in practice that is exactly what it will do, regardless of what the intent behind the law is.

Meanwhile, a committee of the Oklahoma House of Representatives approved a bill that would ban sex-selective abortions. This is a law in need of a purpose as there is no evidence that sex selective abortions have ever taken place in Oklahoma (hat tip for both).

Regarding the Oklahoma bill, it may have some moral force if women were actually undergoing sex-selective abortions. Since that is not the case, it will either have loopholes that mean the law is meaningless, as a woman could always not tell that she is having an abortion solely because of the sex of the fetus, or it will be draconian and oppressive in enforcement.

Regarding the North Dakota law, Idyllicmollusk has raised questions about it, and I won’t repeat them here. I do offer my own objections and after the jump.

Chalk this one up under “Ironic”

Same-sex marriage is not recognized in France. However, civil unions are. Civil unions, called a Civil Solidarity Pact, besides being a separate but unequal “marriage substitute” for homosexual couples, allows any two people, including opposite sexed people, to enter into one. It has a number of advantages, including the fact that it is a lot easier to get out of than a marriage.  This has resulted in some unintended consequences (hat tip):

The number of PACS [the French acronym of the Civil Solidarity Pact] celebrated in France, both gay and heterosexual unions, has grown from 6,000 in its first year of operation in 1999 to more than 140,000 in 2008, according to official statistics. For every two marriages in France, a PACS is celebrated, the statistics show, making a total of half a million PACS[']ed couples, and the number is rising steadily.

…

Perhaps more important as an indication of how French people live, the number of heterosexual men and women entering into a PACS agreement has grown from 42 percent of the total initially to 92 percent last year.

In other words, civil unions are threatening marriage, not protecting it. Had same-sex marriage just been allowed, this who civil union stuff would have been unnecessary. That would mean there are more marriages.