Since I am a female with a deeply personal and emotional stake in this issue, no longer for myself but for my grandaughters and their future daughters, I am appalled and fearful  at the direction that the issue of reproductive rights has just taken.
I am so old that I remember vividly the horror of an unwanted pregnancy, esp in the young, and the terrible, killer, back-alley desperate abortions that used to take place. This generation has no concept of what this meant. I pray fervently that they never have to find out.
Talk about health care...
Not only were they not allowed even basic good medical care, they were treated in barnyard circumstances, at worst they often died, or they were horribly brutalized, often never being able to reproduce agin in happier circumstances.

What does a shootout at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the confessions of a Khmer Rouge jailer and the murder of a Kansas medical doctor have in common? The answer is "children," and how they suffer from being targeted and used by extremists to advance their own hateful agendas.

In 1981, acting as a public interest lawyer, I represented a Holocaust survivor who had been a 17-year-old boy when his entire family was murdered in Nazi concentration camps. We sued a group of radical right-wing organizations that denied the Holocaust and, as a publicity ploy, had offered a reward for proof it had occurred.

NOW's outstanding President Kim Gandy speaks for me:

Today the Supreme Court upheld this nation's first abortion procedure ban—a ban enacted by George W. Bush and conservatives in Congress. Five justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito—both installed by Bush and a Republican-majority Senate—ruled that the law does not violate a woman's constitutional right to abortion.

Not since Bush v. Gore has the Supreme Court made such a political decision, or one that so completely distorts the law and disregards the U.S. Constitution.

Though there were a lot of signatures on the petition to get the issue on the ballot, it might still be a close vote on whether to keep the ban or get rid of it.

"Fat" Tony Scalia makes no bones about it. He'd repeal Roe v. Wade if given the chance. And says as much in a televised debate with the ACLU's president, Nadine Strossen. The debate in and of itself is a milestone for Scalia who's had a penchant for banning the media from his public appearances. Is this a public rolling out of the radical right-wing judicial agenda?

Scalia debates head of ACLU on TV
Justice Antonin Scalia on Sunday defended some of his Supreme Court opinions, arguing that nothing in the Constitution supports abortion rights and the use of race in school admissions. Scalia, a leading conservative voice on the high court, sparred in a one-hour televised debate with American Civil Liberties Union president Nadine Strossen. He said unelected judges have no place deciding politically charged questions when the Constitution is silent on those issues. Arguing that liberal judges in the past improperly established new political rights such as abortion, Scalia warned, "Someday, you're going to get a very conservative Supreme Court and regret that approach."...

Governor Kathleen Blanco of Katrina-ravaged Louisiana recently signed a law banning abortions, including those for rape and incest, except for cases where the mother's life is in danger. The Louisiana law will take effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Medicaid requires abortion funding, and Louisiana's new law, if enacted, will allow those exceptions. Blanco cited overwhelming support for the law and noted the pending law reflects her own personal convictions. She did qualify that by hoping for a new law providing choice for rape and incest victims. Blanco, like recently re-elected New Orleans' Mayor Ray Nagin, was the subject of intense controversy regarding her role in the pre-planning and aftermath of Katrina. Blanco's term expires in 2007, but a recall petition was begun on January 10, 2006 and will end July 9, 2006 after the 180 day statutory limitation. What will the outcome be?

It's time to start a serious campaign to impeach George W. Bush.

Doctors Are Warned on Fetus Care
Guidelines Are Issued on Born-Alive Infants Protection Act

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 23, 2005; Page A07

The Bush administration issued guidelines yesterday advising physicians and hospitals that under a 2002 law they are obligated to care for fetuses "born alive" naturally or in the process of an abortion, and medical providers could face penalties for withholding treatment.