Olivia Becker at Vice reports that reproductive rights activists are resisting the right wing campaign to make women prisoners of their own pregnancies, in Republican strongholds as well as less hostile territory.

In Missouri — which has some of the harshest anti-abortion laws on the books —  Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill to recognize abortion “as an essential component of women’s healthcare” and that it “shall be made affordable and accessible throughout the state and integrated into the health care safety net.”

…

Some of these bills have already been shot down. In Virginia, Democrats introduced one of the most comprehensive pro-choice measures this year in the form of Whole Women’s Health Act, which sought to make sure that “any statute that places a burden on a woman’s access to abortion without conferring any legitimate health benefit is unenforceable.” It died earlier this month before leaving committee.

…

Many of these measures seek to overturn the wave of abortion restrictions that Republicans have passed in rapid succession in recent years. In the past five years, nearly 300 anti-abortion laws have been enacted in states across the country.

“Since 2011 we’ve seen an absolute avalanche of attempts to attack women’s healthcare,” said Allen. “But it’s important to remember that that wave of anti-choice legislation did not happen because the public asked for it.” About 7 in 10 Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, a level of support that hasn’t really wavered in the four decades since the 1973  landmark decision that affirmed a woman’s right to an abortion.

Following their sweeping electoral victory in the 2016 election, Republicans have wasted no time in trying to restrict access to abortion and reproductive healthcare for women.

Well it’s a core issue. Restricting women’s freedom is often the first thing reactionaries do when they get power. Reactionaries cannot tolerate women who have the freedom to shape their own lives.

This backlash is not limited to protecting abortion rights. Another wave of bills seeks to expand access to contraception and make it easier for women to pay for it. Bills like Missouri’s HB 233, New York’s A579, and New Jersey’s AB 2297 would allow women to receive a 12-month supply of birth control at a time instead of six months, which makes it easier for women to obtain contraception now, when it’s still covered by insurance. Other measures, in Iowa, Oregon, South Carolina, and Hawaii are “pharmacy access bills” that expand the kind of birth control that pharmacies can give women over the counter.

This year has seen an uptick in bills specifically concerning insurance coverage — specifically, attempts to protect the provision under Obamacarethat made all types of birth control free, said Elizabeth Nash at the Guttmacher Institute. These include bills like New Mexico’s HB 284, New York’s AB1378, Hawaii’s SB 403, and Oregon’s HB 2232, which seek to enshrine the mandate on insurance companies to provide contraception at no cost to women.

H/t Seth

This is heartbreaking. Ashoka Mukpo at NPR:

When James Harris rushed his wife, Salome Karwah, to a hospital at the edge of Monrovia on the night of February 19, he expected that she’d be treated as a priority case. Salome was a prominent Ebola survivor and ex-Doctors Without Borders employee who’d graced the cover of Time magazine in 2014 as one of the “Ebola Fighters” named persons of the year. And the hospital — run by an international Christian aid organization affiliated with the U.S.-based charity Samaritan’s Purse — had earned a reputation for providing care to survivors.

In fact, Salome had just been discharged from the same hospital a few hours earlier. She’d given birth to her fourth child two days before, undergoing a Caeserean section despite a dangerously high spike in her blood pressure, which Harris says had periodically popped back up in the days after the procedure. Privately complaining to Harris that she was being neglected by hospital staff, Salome returned home on the 19th to tend to her newborn son. Not long after, Harris says, she collapsed, foaming at the mouth and wracked by convulsions.

But when Harris reached the hospital — known as ELWA, or Eternal Love Winning Africa — he says the doctor on duty refused to treat Salome. A doctor who specializes in treating Ebola survivors wasn’t present, and Harris was told he’d have to take her to a different hospital. In anguish, Harris says he pleaded with the doctor, growing increasingly agitated as his wife convulsed in the front seat of his car outside.

“[The doctor] was checking Facebook,” Harris says. “I had to rush into the emergency room myself to get a wheelchair, but I was struggling to take her from the car to put her in it. Other nurses came to help me, but the doctor told me that she would not touch her, and that if [Salome] stayed [at the hospital] she would die.”

A doctor who specializes in treating Ebola survivors did eventually get there, but Karwah died.

They both had Ebola but survived.

Doctors Without Borders staff noticed that Harris and Salome had shown an inclination to care for the other patients and hired the two of them to serve as psycho-social counselors to the sick.

“She was so caring,” he remembers. “They told us we should only spend 30 minutes in [protective gear], but sometimes she would stay in the ward for 2 or 3 hours, just talking to patients and telling them to have hope.”

Interviewed by NPR in 2014, Salome Karwah said, “”It was not hard to come back [to the Ebola treatment center]. Of course I lost my two parents here … but if I can help someone survive, I will be very happy.”

But she couldn’t get prompt treatment in an emergency so she died.

Now, in the wake of Salome’s death, both Harris and  [Salome Karwah’s sister] Josephine are accusing staff from ELWA hospital of malpractice, saying that she was stigmatized and discriminated against because she was an Ebola survivor.

“We look at it as stigma,” Harris says. “The doctor said that the other doctor who normally works on survivors wasn’t around to treat the ‘special’ patient. I said because she’s not around my wife will die? And [the doctor] told me yes.”

ELWA hospital is managed by a Christian aid organization called Serving in Mission, which made headlines during the Ebola crisis when two American doctors working with the organization contracted the disease in 2014. It’s considered to be among the best health facilities in Monrovia, operating a special clinic for Ebola survivors that treats secondary complications like vision loss and joint pain.

Maybe they should waive the rule about needing specialists to treat Ebola survivors when it’s an emergency?

At any rate, it’s heartbreaking.

This time it’s a Sikh man. From the Seattle Times:

Kent police are looking for a gunman who allegedly walked onto a man’s driveway and shot him, saying “go back to your own country.”

The victim, a 39-year-old Sikh man, was working on his vehicle in his driveway in Kent’s East Hill neighborhood about 8 p.m. Friday when he was approached by an unknown man, Kent police said, after talking with the victim.

An altercation followed, with the victim saying the suspect made statements to the effect of “go back to your own country.” He was shot in the arm.

The Kent police have consulted the FBI.

“We’re early on in our investigation,” Kent Police Chief Ken Thomas said Saturday morning. “We are treating this as a very serious incident.”

Jasmit Singh, a leader of the Sikh community in Renton, said he had been told the victim was released from the hospital.

“He is just very shaken up, both him and his family,” Singh said. “We’re all kind of at a loss in terms of what’s going on right now, this is just bringing it home. The climate of hate that has been created doesn’t distinguish between anyone.”

Singh said Puget Sound-area Sikh men in particular have reported a rise in verbal abuse and uncomfortable encounters recently, “a kind of prejudice, a kind of xenophobia that is nothing that we’ve seen in the recent past.”

To Singh, the number of incidents targeting members of the religion, which has its roots to the Punjab region of South Asia, recalls the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“But at that time, it felt like the [presidential] administration was actively working to allay those fears,” he said. “Now, it’s a very different dimension.”

Trump keeps stoking the hatred instead of working to allay the fears.

You know one thing that happens when you make undocumented immigrants afraid of the authorities? In addition to things like: they don’t go to the doctor or the dentist, they drop out of school, they don’t apply for library cards, they can’t call anyone in emergencies?

Multiple victims of domestic assault — who are living in the U.S. without proper documentation — are refusing to testify in a Denver courthouse out of fears of being deported, according to city officials.

Since President Donald Trump‘s executive order on immigration was issued on Jan. 25, at least four victims of domestic violence are unwilling to testify in court, said Denver City Attorney Kristin Bronson on Friday to ABC News affiliate KMGH.

Since the victims refuse to testify, “four alleged perpetrators of domestic violence” are “back out on the streets without any kind of punishment.”

And free to abuse some more.

On Thursday, the Meyer Law Office, in Denver posted video of an immigration attorney questioning ICE agents who were at the city’s courthouse. In the video, agents admit that they are looking to arrest someone but refuse to elaborate beyond that. At least one agent admitted that he did not have any arrest warrants, but he would not confirm or deny whether he was working undercover.

While the actions of the ICE agents are not illegal, the law firm alleges that ICE is using “bully” tactics and destroying the trust between immigrants and law enforcement.

 

ICE issued a statement saying they did have warrants.

NPR has more details on the Tuam human remains story.

Authorities in Ireland say they have excavated the human remains of an undisclosed number of young children from the site of a former home for unmarried mothers.

The home, located in the town of Tuam, was operated by the Bon Secours nuns beginning in the 1920s and was home to women and babies until the 1960s. For years, some in the region had suspected there was a mass grave on the site.

That’s a good deal clearer and more blunt than RTE was. It was a Catholic home (aka an informal prison) for unmarried mothers in 1920s-1960s Catholic Ireland. We can be sure those mothers were not treated well.

On Friday, the Irish minister for children and youth affairs, Katherine Zappone, announced in a statement that the official commission investigating the Tuam site “revealed that human remains are visible in a series of chambers that may have formed part of sewage treatment works for the Home.”

The statement continued:

“It is not certain whether the chambers ever functioned for sewage purposes, but the Commission believes that there are a significant number of children’s remains there. The Commission recovered some juvenile remains for detailed forensic analysis. From this analysis, it has determined that the remains are between 35 fetal weeks and 2 to 3 years of age. From carbon dating it has correlated the age of these samples with the time period during which the home was in operation — between 1925 and 1961.

Oh lord – remember the former Catholic mother and baby home in Tuam, Ireland, where human remains were found in the grounds?

They’ve found more. Lots more. RTE reports:

“Significant quantities” of human remains have been discovered at the site of the former mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.

It comes after the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation began test excavations at the site of the children’s burial ground on the Dublin Road housing estate in Tuam, Co Galway in October 2016.

The commission was established following allegations about the deaths of 800 babies in Tuam over a number of decades and the manner in which they were buried.

In a statement today, the commission said significant quantities of human remains have been discovered in at least 17 of the 20 underground chambers which were examined earlier this year.

It added: “These remains involved a number of individuals with age-at-death ranges from approximately 35 foetal weeks to two-three years.”

The mother-and-baby home operated from 1925 to 1961; a number of the samples are likely to date from the 1950s, the commission said. Further scientific tests are being conducted.

This isn’t a cemetery, with duly recorded deaths. This is dead children being thrown away in hidden places.

Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone said it was very sad and disturbing news.

It was not unexpected as there were claims about human remains on the site over the last number of years.

“Up to now we had rumours. Now we have confirmation that the remains are there, and that they date back to the time of the mother-and-baby home, which operated in Tuam from 1925 to 1961,” Minister Zappone added.

It must not have been a very healthy “home” for mothers and babies.

The woman who first raised concerns about the site said she is relieved at the confirmation that the remains of babies and children are buried at the site.

Catherine Corless said “it is wonderful and emotional” that the truth has been revealed today.

She said survivors of the former Bons Secours home for unmarried mothers should be consulted to see what they would like to happen to the remains.

Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, Ms Corless said their one hope was that the truth would come out.

She also said the Bon Secours sisters should apologise to them.

Ms Corless said that during her research into the site “everything pointed” to this area being a mass grave, but despite this she was told to leave it alone.

She said that it should have been properly investigated n the 1970s when the County Council, gardaí and the religious order knew what was there.

Ms Corless said she believes the graveyard extends further overground where remains are buried in coffins. and the whole area needs to be investigated.

Emphasis added. The religious order knew what was there.

H/t Stewart

He sounds nice.

A Polish lawmaker is facing punishment from the European Parliament after telling a colleague that it was right that women earn less than men — “because they are weaker, they are smaller, they are less intelligent.”

The comments were made by Janusz Korwin-Mikke on Wednesday evening, but came to widespread attention Thursday after the Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament released footage of the comments.

Well anyway he has a point. Clearly Elizabeth Warren, for instance, is way less intelligent than, say, Donald Trump. All men are more intelligent than all women, so systematically paying them less would make sense.

Korwin-Mikke has faced censure from parliamentary authorities three times before. In 2014, he was fined after giving a speech that used the word “negroes,” and in 2015 he was temporarily suspended after giving a Nazi salute and later suspended again after describing immigrants as “human garbage.”

Before Korwin-Mikke was elected to the European Parliament, his views on women were already the subject of debate back home in Poland, where he has long been a figure on the libertarian and far-right fringes of politics. In the past, he has suggested that perhaps women should not be allowed to vote and said that domestic violence brought women “down to earth” (comments he later indicated were meant ironically).

Now where have we heard that before?