Sara Palin can see Virginia from her PAC!

Sarah Palin is setting down roots in Virginia. She selected the newly battleground state as the one in the Lower 48 to start her bid for the Presidency in 2012.

SarahPAC, which submitted its filings in November, chose Virginia as its headquarters. Emily Buchanan of Arlington, an anti-choice volunteer for McCain, is listed as the treasurer. Melissa Graeff of the same anti-choice group, a Bob Jones University graduate, is listed as Assistant.

The anti-choice group mentioned above that is run by the two Virginians is disguised under the name of the Susan B Anthony (SBA) Foundation. SBA is an illegal pass-through group for organizations who have already donated the contribution that is the maximum allowed by law. By donating to SBA, a shell organization, SBA can disburse further donations to the same candidates, and the candidate recipients can collect donations twice - twice as much money as that allowed by Campaign Finance Law. It is the same principle that got Tom Delay indicted.

SBA is now filing under a slightly modified name here, which makes their donations seem to start from a "clean slate."

Mother's Day: Birth Control is Healthy for Mom and Baby

Standing tall for Pregnant Women: Against Gag rules and Guns.

I had learned through work that bleeding is a common cause of death in pregnancy. It is endemic in the third world, such as Afghanistan. It is a problem that may get worse depending on the youth of the mother. In poor countries, the loss of small amounts of blood are especially dangerous due to the high rate of malaria and anemia that already weakens the moms. The lack of refrigeration makes blood transfusions almost impossible. The AIDS rate means a transfusion cure can be worse than the disease, anyway.

Without birth control and health care, these moms may die, sometimes during their fourth or fifth pregnancy, malnourished and exhausted from multiple, closely-spaced births. Often they are still nursing the previous child. This means most moms that die in childbirth leave orphans behind. If only they could space their pregnancies, they would have more strength, a better chance at life and at mothering their existing children. In cultures where men are not active in child rearing, these children are often left to suffer, starve, and die.

In the US, prior to the prevalence of handwashing and other aseptic techniques, rates of deaths from abortions and pregnancies were about the same. Midwives had better survivial rates, probably because doctors increasingly performed their work in dirty cities. As doctors tried to corner the market on obstetrics, in 1951 they formed the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, and to reduce the influence of midwives they successfully lobbied to outlaw abortions, which till then had been undistrurbed in most states.

More recently, in the US, sepsis is not so much a problem any more. Bleeding death rates have also reduced. Curious of what pregnancy-associated issue may have taken its place, some scientists have followed pregnant women for a year to see what their health issues are today.

The most common cause of death was injury. The most common cause of injury was homicide. The most common cause of homicide was guns. The moms were shot, usually by the father of her baby.

In North Carolina 1992-94. In New York City 1987-1991.

In Chicago 1986-89. In young mothers

Back to the third world, I see a story on NOVA tonight with another cautionary tale about the effect of the lack of birth control. It involved a Turkish woman who had 19 children. The first 7 children were born within 5 years. As a young mother, overcome with the burden of raising them all, she never had time to teach the children to walk upright. They still walk on all fours, stuck in a baby's crawl. The daughters dispair of never dancing, never being able to marry. Their sons are angry they can never support a family or work. Their bone structure now may never be able to support them to walk upright.

Hiding behind "pro-family" rhetoric, neo-conservatives continue their deathly policies. With inadequate background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases, pregnancy can be a death sentence in the US. In poor countries, refusing to acknowlege the desperate need for birth control is ending lives of women and their children.

Maternal mortality remains the leading cause of death for women of childbearing age—an estimated 500,000 women die each year from pregnancy related causes, with 78,000 deaths resulting from unsafe abortion. Having access to safe, appropriate family planning methods and safe abortion when needed, can make the difference in women’s lives. It can prevent dangers from pregnancies ...

Save lives with your vote. Check out the politicians on these issues at the portal at Planned Parenthood.

Republicans raise their hands against science

At the Republican debate, three Senators running for President, Brownback, Huckabee, and Tancredo, raised their hands to signify they don't believe in evolution.

Next, they raise their hands to show they don't believe in gravity. Can they still keep their hands up?

Hmmmmm... why not?

They say evolution is "only a theory." However, in science, a theory is more than a "hunch." A theory is a substantiated hypothesis.

A theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from and/or is supported by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations that is predictive, logical and testable. In principle, scientific theories are always tentative, and subject to corrections or inclusion in a yet wider theory. Commonly, a large number of more specific hypotheses may be logically bound together by just one or two theories. As a general rule for use of the term, theories tend to deal with much broader sets of universals than do hypotheses, which ordinarily deal with much more specific sets of phenomena or specific applications of a theory.

How do these men demand - and get - respect for espousing a belief that is completely unsupported by evidence? Even more, how about for a belief that requires ignoring and denying evidence?

A hysterical commentary on the race to ignorance is here.

"Evolution is a hoax," began Brownback. "It is hubris of the highest degree for scientists to think they know more than God."

"You're right," continued Huckabee, "But let me add that I believe gravity and electricity are also demonic ideas intended to blind humans to the glory of the Almighty."

Tancredo added his voice. "So true, gentlemen. We have lost our way, and I for one, yearn for that bygone era when religion was respected and permeated every aspect of society. I'm not talking about the 1950s. I'm talking about the 1050s. The Middle Ages, when the natural order of society was in balance."

If pregnant women have rights to bodily integrity, will everyone want some?

Right to Lifers killed Angela Carder: the sad story of pregnant Maryland resident Angela Stoner Carder, who died from a forcible delivery of her premature fetus, is detailed well here and on Wikipedia here.

"No party should be the mere instrument of another. In shared decision-making, the act of informed consent or informed refusal affirms and protects patient autonomy while acknowledging the physician's commitment to professional standards. We strongly believe that difficult medical decisions should be made within the doctor-patient relationship and not by the courts."

Do you agree? Do you think you have a right to bodily integrity? To marital privacy? To a prescription for birth control if a pregnancy could kill you? The ACLU's timeline of reproductive rights here describes state efforts to deny these self-evident rights.

The Supreme Court decided yesterday to officially pile on the attacks on decisions by pregnant women that increasingly include coerced cesarean sections and blood transfusions.

The law in question criminalizes "partial birth abortion." Despite the fact that "partial birth abortion," however distastefully described and rarely used, is not a true medical procedure, and is not defined in the law as to what true medical procedure might be the crime, the court said it was not vague. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists not only said the procedure could be medically necessary, but pointed out how the specially invited anti-choice witnesses who testified on the Nebraska statue lied in their testimony.

The most curious rationalization in this opinion is that the safety of patients need not be addressed at all in the ban. Nevertheless, Justice Kennedy does inject his concern by saying the State is just demonstrating concern for their mental health by protecting them from the "severe depression and loss of self-esteem" because of the choice. According to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

"When a statute burdens constitutional rights and all that can be said on its behalf is that it is the vehicle that legislators have chosen for expressing their hostility to those rights, the burden is undue.”

From the Department of Theology, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC:

...[B]ecause a [medical intervention for a fetus, in this case, a] cesarean section, unless there is a threat to her life [by the pregnancy], is not of any clear benefit to the woman, it is wrong to insist that a dying woman must always endure burdensome treatment for the sake of a viable fetus. Should the mother decide to take on such burdens, it is important also to recognize that a cesarean section is not always in the interest of the fetus simply because it is viable. Given the ambiguity of the prognosis for survival and the risks of significant handicaps for the preterm or low birth weight fetus, it may be ethically appropriate to omit an act on behalf of the fetus. Finally, the fact that the fetus' only chance of survival is a preterm delivery does not make the delivery ethically mandatory. The issue is not whether a [medical intervention] is the fetus' only hope, but whether [it] is in the interest of the fetus.

Good NYT story here.

Happy Roe Day

PhriendlyJamie has an eloquent blog here.

Angela Carder was a neighbor of mine who got pregnant at 26+ years old. She had been told since she was 13 that her cancer gave her 6 months to live. She and her husband were determined to keep the baby and she stopped taking her medicine. Her remission ended and when her cancer returned she was hospitalized during the 2d trimester for her high-risk pregnancy. George Washington Hospital in DC appointed a guardian for her fetus - not for her - and he sued the mother to end the pregancy. He said it was for good of the child, since Mom was as good as dead, he said, to give the fetus a "better chance" in Neonatal ICU rather than in her declining body. The wacked-out judge weighed the value of her life and the unborn baby's and agreed. The fetus was removed over the objections of her, her husband, and her doctor. The anesthesia killed Mom, AND the baby. The ACLU continued the case to settle the law, even though the outcome couldn't help Angie. They won because the lower court should have honored her freedom of choice and right to privacy.