New Black Woman

Vote NO on Mississippi personhood initiative

Posted on November 8, 2011 by New Black Woman

In no way should a fertilized egg be recognized as a person. Period. Voters in Mississippi today will get to decide that measure, which many said is a back-door attempt to void abortion rights granted to women in the state.

The question, which asks voters to give legal status to a fertilized egg, can set the stage for a slew of legal problems in the state.

The process of interpreting and implementing the amendment is likely to be complicated and fraught with legal challenges, considering the word “person” appears more than 9,000 times in the Mississippi constitution. The law would unequivocally ban abortion, with no exceptions for rape, incest, or life of the mother, but advocates on both sides argue about the legal implications beyond abortion. The initiative could be interpreted to ban emergency contraception as well as the regular birth control pill, which can both affect a fertilized egg’s ability to attach to the uterus. It could also complicate the legality of in vitro fertilization, which can result in a number of unused embryos, and stem cell research.

The “personhood” amendment raises other, murkier questions: If every fetus is considered a person, does this affect voter districting? Would a woman who is three weeks pregnant be able to claim her fetus as a dependent on federal tax forms, or in claims for government assistance? If a woman who doesn’t know she’s pregnant engages in some negligent activity that leads to a miscarriage, could someone prosecute her on behalf of the embryo?

“This law can go to the silliest and most radical extreme if you take it literally,” said Michele Alexandre, a civil rights law professor at the University of Mississippi. “If this passes, all heads will turn to the legislature to figure out how to implement it, but the law gives no guidance as to how to do that. It can reach into so many spheres — the combinations are endless.”

“To try to figure out what it would mean to impose this standard definition that always includes an egg, embryo and fetus could have consequences we couldn’t even speculate about, because we haven’t thought of them,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. (SOURCE)

Sadly, some experts are predicting the measure could either squeak by or could be rejected by a razor-thin margin.

Measures like this aren’t designed to protect the rights and privileges of the unborn. They aren’t designed to stand up and give a voice to whom they believe are people inside a woman’s uterus.

They are designed to simply roll back Roe V. Wade and are a clever way to take away the right for women to seek an abortion. Referendums such as these could not only make birth control illegal, but could also set the stage for local coroners or prosecutors to investigate when a woman has a miscarriage.

It’s not rocket science as to why doctors have come out against the measure.

“The thing that we’re mainly concerned about is our physicians’ ability to take care of our sisters and our daughters and our mothers in ways that we’ve been taking care of them for 100 years,” said Dr. Tom Joiner, a family practitioner who is also president of the state medical association. “What this thing is doing is it’s taking it out of the realm of medical decisions into the realm of legal decisions.”

Joiner and other opponents of Initiative 26 are concerned that by attempting to criminalize abortion, the initiative will criminalize routine medical practice that intentionally or not terminates a pregnancy. There is no mention in the initiative of an exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, nor for the health of the mother, as in the case of life-threatening conditions such as ectopic or molar pregnancies. (In an ectopic pregnancy the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, most often in the fallopian tube; in a molar pregnancy the fertilized egg becomes an abnormal growth such as a tumor rather than a fetus.)

“These pregnancies were not meant to go on to be people and we don’t think calling them persons is going to do any good for the patients that carry them nor the pregnancies themselves,” said Tupelo obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Wayne Slocum, vice chair of the Mississippi section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Slocum said because ectopic and molar pregnancies never result in live births, casting those fertilized eggs as “persons” does not make sense. “They just need to be treated either with medication or surgery,” he said. “If not the mother can bleed to death or have dire consequences.”

The Mississippi personhood question is not in the best interest of the mother and her health. It’s not in the best interest of the state. The personhood question is about reducing women to second-class citizenship by possibly forcing her to carry to term a pregnancy that could eventually become a danger to her health. It’s about revoking her right to an abortion if she so chooses. It’s about shoving the retroactive anti-abortion agenda down the throats of the public at large. It’s about anti-abortion activists bypassing the judicial system to directly challenge Roe v. Wade.

Tell so-called pro-life, anti-abortion activists that you value a woman’s right to choose and vote NO on the Mississippi personhood question.

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Herman Cain equates abortion to genocide

Posted on November 7, 2011 by New Black Woman

Herman Cain’s attack on abortion rights last week flew under the radar as he continues to weather the claims he sexually harassed women while working for the National Restaurant Association. Cain appeared on CBS’ Face The Nation on Oct. 30 and told Bob Schieffer his feelings on abortion and Planned Parenthood. Here’s a set of Q and A taken from Time magazine’s Swampland blog.

Schieffer: At one point, when the question of Planned Parenthood came up, you said it wasn’t ‘Planned Parenthood,’ it was really ‘planned genocide,’ because you said Planned Parenthood was trying to put all these centers in black neighborhoods because they wanted to kill black babies before they were born. Do you still stand by that?

Cain: I still stand by that.

Schieffer: Do you have any proof that that was the objective of Planned Parenthood?

Cain: If people go back and look at the history, and look at Margaret Sanger’s own words (In the early 1900s, Sanger formed one of the precursors to Planned Parenthood), that’s exactly where that came from. Look up the history…. Look at where most of them were built – 75% of those facilities were built in the black community. And Margaret Sanger’s own words — she didn’t use the word “genocide,” but she did talk about preventing the increasing number of poor blacks in this country by preventing black babies from being born.

Schieffer: So you wouldn’t see the advantage to having young mothers get counseling and advice that Planned Parenthood could give them, with so many black babies born out of wedlock?

Cain: There are a lot of centers that offer sincere counseling, rather than Planned Parenthood claiming to be those centers, when in fact they’d rather for the young lady to come in — say, they come in to get an abortion — and facilitate that. Plenty of centers genuinely do that. Planned parenthood isn’t sincere about wanting to try to counsel them not to have abortions.

I’m glad to see Time later refers to the Guttmacher Institute, which refutes long-standing myths about abortion clinics being strategically placed in predominately black communities. The nonpartisan think tank notes that fewer than 10 percent of abortion clinics are located in neighborhoods in which residents are predominately black. Using 2008 U.S. Census figures (the latest available at the time), the institute noted 63% percent were located in neighborhoods where one-half or more people were white, 12 percent were in majority Hispanic neighborhoods, 9 percent were in majority black neighborhoods, 1 percent were in non-Hispanic other neighborhoods and 15 percent were in neighborhoods in which no single racial or ethnic group were the majority.

I’m not going to rehash what I previously said about attacks on Planned Parenthood by people claiming they are concerned about the plight of black babies since I touched on that topic here, here and here.

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Posted in abortion rights, anti-choice, black women, Herman Cain, politics, race baiting | 1 Comment

Ann Coulter: “Our blacks are better than their blacks”

Posted on November 5, 2011 by New Black Woman

You only have to watch the first minute of this garbage to hear Ann Coulter once again put her foot in her mouth.

Anyway, the conservative political analyst went on FOX News with Sean Hannity and proclaimed black Republicans and conservative are “better” than the blacks who are on the political left. She and Hannity were dissecting the so-called liberal elites’ criticism of Herman Cain, who is mired in sexual harassment allegations. Of course, these two believe that as a black man, Cain’s mere allegiance to the Republican Party is what’s driving the so-called resentment towards him.

Hannity said that, while he was not downplaying the seriousness of sexual harassment, he felt that everyday office banter was being misconstrued too often as inappropriate. “These people are humorless,” he said.

Coulter brought things back to race, saying that some women had been quick to forgive Bill Clinton for his sexual transgressions, but were attacking Herman Cain. “If you are a conservative black, they will believe the most horrible sexualized fantasies of these uptight white feminists,” she said.

Hannity wondered why liberals were, in his words, so “threatened” by Cain. Coulter was blunt in her response.

“Our blacks are so much better than their blacks,” she said, speaking of Democrats. “To become a black Republican, you don’t just roll into it. You’re not going with the flow…and that’s why we have very impressive blacks in the Republican party.”

She went on to add there are no John Conyers or Maxine Waters in the GOP and proceeded to recount the pain and suffering black conservatives experience with their families, neighbors and friends to proudly proclaim their conservative values.

(Aside: Hannity’s statement about “everyday office banter” being labeled is sexual harassment is the same ol’ ploy the established male elite has used since sexual harassment became a national phenomenon after women began speaking out about their trails and tribulations in the work place)

I wonder what her standards are for black Republicans being “impressive.” Does she mean Alan Keyes? J.C. Watts? Allen West? Hm…okay, then. Furthermore, why are these conservatives so quick to use the race card in this scenario, but are quick to condemn moderate or liberal black politicians if they even thought about race when it came to criticism of them? Conservative hypocrisy at its finest…

Here’s the question I think is the elephant in the room: how can Coulter praise the autonomy of black conservatives for aligning themselves with the GOP, but claim ownership of their personhood?

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Posted in Ann Coulter, conservatives, Herman Cain, politics, whiteness | Leave a comment

Herman Cain goes racial

Posted on November 4, 2011 by New Black Woman

We knew this spin was coming on the allegations against Herman Cain that he sexually harassed three women while employed at the National Restaurant Association. One accuser may release a statement on the allegations as soon as today, CNN is reporting.

If you want to avoid the over-the-top woe is me plea in the ad, it’s basically a collection of sound bytes that feature activists and conservative talk radio hosts and pundits either lambasting Cain or the elite liberal media embarking on a racist witch hunt to take down the only black conservative in the Republican Party’s presidential race.

In a nutshell, Herman Cain is falling back on the race card, something he’s routinely criticized fellow black people for.

“I don’t believe racism in this country today holds anybody back in a big way,” Cain said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Are there some elements of racism? Yes. It gets back to if we don’t grow this economy, that is a ripple effect for every economic level, and because blacks are more disproportionately unemployed, they get hit the worst when economic policies don’t work. That’s where it starts.”…“Many of them do have a level playing field,” Cain said. “I absolutely believe that. Not only because of the businesses that I have run, which has had the combination of whites, blacks, Hispanics – you know, we had a total diversity. But also because of the corporations whose board I’ve served on for the last 20 years. I have seen blacks in middle management move up to top management in some of the biggest corporations in America.”

As for African Americans who remain economically disadvantaged, Cain said they often only had themselves to blame.

“They weren’t held back because of racism,” Cain said. “People sometimes hold themselves back because they want to use racism as an excuse for them not being able to achieve what they want to achieve.” (SOURCE)

So, now you care about race and racism in America, Herman Cain?

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Posted in conservatives, Herman Cain, politics, race baiting, Republican Party | Leave a comment

Image shows Obama with gunshot wound to head,

Posted on November 2, 2011 by New Black Woman

Not sure why anyone would think the following would be in good taste, even for Halloween:Conservative and liberal groups are condemning this image produced by the Loudoun County, Va. Republican Party which shows the President Barack Obama with a gunshot wound to the head.

The message, with the subject line “Halloween 2011,” invites supporters to a community parade where “we are going to vanquish the zombies with clear thinking conservative principles and a truckload of Republican candy.” It also features a caricature of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a jack-o-lantern, and cartoons of zombies.

The email was first reported by the blog Too Conservative, which said the group had gone “way too far” and should be reported to the U.S. Secret Service.

Mark Sell, chairman of the Loudoun County Republican Committee, explained that the email was a “light-hearted attempt to inject satire humor into the Halloween holiday.”

“Apparently, some individuals have interpreted an image of Barack Obama that appeared within the email as intending to portray the President as a victim of a violent crime. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Sell said in a statement. “We deeply and sincerely apologize to the President and anyone who viewed the image if that was the impression that was left.”

It’s cute when Republicans create images that depict and implicitly support the shooting of a president. This type of action 10 years ago would have been quickly condemned by both sides as unpatriotic and labeled as a terroristic threat against the president. It’s amazing how patriotism and supporting the office of the presidency, no matter the party affiliation of the commander-in-chief, can fall on deaf ears when Republicans hold no executive power.

UPDATE: NBC Washington is reporting Robert Jesionowski, the communications director for the county Republican committee, resigned his post this morning.

“I will not excuse my missing the connotation of the zombie pic of the president,” Jesionowski wrote to LCRC Chairman Mark Sell. “(Found it online, very late, while I was hastily putting the Halloween email together.) This was in bad taste, does not reflect my own principles nor those of any political activist or candidate I know in either party, and if I had reflected a little longer I would have caught it. A different pic ought to have gone out.”