An Open Letter To the 129th General Assembly In Support Of Planned Parenthood

An Open Letter To the 129th Ohio General Assembly In Support Of Planned Parenthood:

I was a patient of Planned Parenthood as a young woman in Chicago in the mid-1970s.  I was underemployed, and, although I had health insurance through my employer, women's preventive health care either was excluded from coverage or was applied toward a hefty major medical deductible.  Turning to Planned Parenthood meant that I could get my annual Pap test and pelvic exam done for a modest fee.  There were basic lab tests and other educational services at the clinic if I wanted them.  Nobody forced me to do anything I did not want or need.  Subsequently, I went on to better jobs, but I will never forget that Planned Parenthood was there for me when I was young, underemployed, and I needed that annual check-up (Compare:  http://www.npr.org/2012/03/28/149473236/texas-feds-face-off-over-planned-parenthood).

Several years later, I went to work in a leukemia and immunogenetics research group of the German Research Society (Special Research Area 120) in Tuebingen (1983-1987).  There I learned what it means to live and work in a foreign country that has instituted universal health insurance for all its citizens and legal residents.  For well over a century, no patient who needs medical care must go without it for lack of affordable health insurance in Germany.

Some years after that, I went to work in the Clinical Transplant Laboratory in the Surgery Department of the University of Chicago Hospitals (1992-1999).  There I performed clinical tissue crossmatches for both cadaveric and living-related solid organ transplantation.  I will never forget that night on call duty when I had to pick apart the lymph nodes of a three-year-old toddler.  The child had been sitting on his own front stoop on a summer afternoon when he was killed by a gunshot wound to the head in gangbanger crossfire.  So, I can tell you how it feels to work under pressure at a laminar air-flow hood and to flick those Terasaki plates and to power up that flow cytometer even as your heart goes out to a grieving mother.

However, your first duty on the job is to do what you need to do for the patient.  The patient's needs come first, not your emotions, not your political preconceptions, not your sectarian fixations.

I still hope to live someday in a United States where the children of poor and underemployed mothers will have better prospects in life than to serve as spare parts repositories for those wealthy enough and connected enough to enjoy the security of good health insurance to the exclusion of the working poor and those too sick to defend themselves (Compare http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/11/16/142314581/illegal-during-watergate-unlimited-campaign-contributions-now-fair-game with http://www.followthemoney.org/database/search.phtml?searchbox=Ohio&States%5B%5D=OH&Years%5B%5D=2012&Years%5B%5D=2011&Years%5B%5D=2008&g%5B%5D=6).  Until that day dawns, women at my end of the socioeconomic spectrum will continue to rely on Planned Parenthood for competent reproductive health care provided by practitioners with medical ethics that women can trust in a nonprofit, nonsectarian setting (Compare http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/nov/02/tim-ryan/tim-ryan-says-poverty-rate-women-highest-two-decad/ with http://www.msmagazine.com/Spring2011/treatmentdenied.asp).

Looking back approximately 135 years to a broader historical context, I remind the 129th General Assembly that Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), hardly a bleeding-heart liberal, never wanted universal health insurance, social security, or workmen's compensation (with or without bogus coin collections) for Germany.  Bismarck had to compromise to retain skilled workers that were leaving Germany in droves for better wages, but no benefits, in the United States.  To his credit, Bismarck had the intelligence and the political acumen to move ahead of the curve even if he did not like that curve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck).  More than one-hundred years later, Germany still serves as a model for a nation state that cares for all its citizens and legal residents for the sake of that country's social stability and economic competitiveness in the world market (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/models.html).

The historical record goes on to tell us that, in the century following Bismarck, Germany did not produce Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), family planning activist, but rather Beate Uhse-Rotermund (1919-2001), Luftwaffe pilot and businesswoman (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4847bx.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beate_Uhse-Rotermund).  Perhaps Ms. Uhse-Rotermund's entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen appeal to the 129th General Assembly as the more suitable model for Ohio's daughters to emulate (http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,786667,00.html).

Be that as it may, the historical record also tells us that, to his credit, President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) displayed his political acumen when he signed Title X into law in 1970 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_X; http://www.nationalfamilyplanning.org/page.aspx?pid=476). Today Ohio wage earners like me can only hope and pray that our illustrious Lieutenant Governor and Director of Insurance somehow will snap out of it and get to work on a sane health insurance exchange for Ohio (http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/12/20/carney-says-invitation-to-taylor-not-a-stunt.html; http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/sep/19/mary-taylor/lt-gov-mary-taylor-says-obamacare-would-require-pu/; http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/nov/02/tim-ryan/tim-ryan-says-poverty-rate-women-highest-two-decad/).

In the meantime, both Senate Bill 201 and House Bill 298 appall me for what they fail to do as much as for what they threaten to do (http://www.plunderbund.com/2012/02/29/bill-to-defund-planned-parenthood-likely-unconstitutional/).  For example, child rape and child abuse offend my God.  Yet I see no provision in this bill to forbid my tax dollar from subsidizing Viagra for the next old goat to bugger a child in a stadium locker room, a rectory, or some public restroom (http://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/142111804/penn-state-abuse-scandal-a-guide-and-timeline; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/us/kansas-city-bishop-indicted-in-reporting-of-abuse-by-priest.html; http://articles.philly.com/2011-07-24/news/29809930_1_grand-jury-angry-grand-jurors-cardinal-anthony-j-bevilacqua; http://www.npr.org/2012/02/17/146983312/pa-priest-faces-trial-on-child-abuse-cover-up-charges).  I see no provision in this or any bill before the 129th General Assembly to help victims recover from the ravages of child abuse, although I am sure that organizations like SNAP could give the Ohio legislature some pointers (http://www.snapnetwork.org/; http://www.msmagazine.com/Fall2011/perpwalkforpope.asp; http://www.snapnetwork.org/snap_blasts_symposium_in_rome_as_window_dressing; http://fratres.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/full-text-open-letter-to-bishops-by-hans-kung/; http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/theologe-kueng-offener-brief-historischer-vertrauensverlust-1.4154).  I do not want my tax dollar frittered away on fertility treatments for some "octomom" who needs psychiatric counseling more than she needs in vitro fertilization, but I see no provision for that contingency in this or any bill before the Ohio legislature (http://www.wcivf.com/about.php; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43241012/ns/health-health_care/t/sulemans-fertility-doc-has-license-revoked/).

The TRUTH is that NONE of the Title X funds Planned Parenthood receives is spent on abortion services.  ALL Title X funds in Planned Parenthood's budget are disbursed to provide medically and ethically sound health care services to mostly poor and underemployed patients in a nonprofit, nonsectarian setting that they can trust in the absence of universal health insurance.  We know this because Planned Parenthood's budget is audited by law, not to mention hostile fishing expeditions at taxpayer expense (http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/dec/09/ohio-right-life/ohio-right-life-says-millions-federal-aid-went-sta/).  With due regard for the maxim that trust is good, verification is better, Planned Parenthood's bookkeeping and regulatory compliance have withstood that scrutiny with integrity as opposed to the likes of Paul Casimir "The Gorilla" Marcinkus (1922-2006) or Thomas W. Noe (1954-) (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/feb/23/guardianobituaries.religion; http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/19/newsid_3092000/3092625.stm; http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2003/dec/07/italy.theobserver; http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=475691).

Planned Parenthood's agenda always has been to inform their patients; to support them in their decisions about their reproductive health; and thereby to empower them (http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/history-and-successes.htm; http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/reverend-martin-luther-king-jr-4728.htm).  Planned Parenthood has NEVER betrayed their patients by keeping them ignorant, afraid, or dependent (Compare http://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/clintonp.htm).  Whatever a patient's faith may or may not be, Planned Parenthood employees do not foist their personal religious beliefs on her by intimidation or by withholding medical treatment that could save her life (Compare http://www.msmagazine.com/Spring2011/treatmentdenied.asp; http://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm).

In conclusion, I welcome Planned Parenthood in my neighborhood.  I can no longer abide the travesty of the 129th General Assembly on my tax dollar (http://www.plunderbund.com/2012/02/29/bill-to-defund-planned-parenthood-likely-unconstitutional/; http://www.ppao.org/Legislation/129th/June28-House-votes.html; http://www.plunderbund.com/2011/09/03/senate-gop-leader-awards-huge-retroactive-pay-raises-to-staff/).  What you propose to do with reckless disregard for the consequences to poor and underemployed patients today is as damnable as what you have left undone in health care reform to date.  So, I have posted this open letter to put Ohio's 129th General Assembly on notice that, to paraphrase an expression from the vanished world of my Chicago Catholic and my Cleveland Lutheran grandmothers, you cannot urinate up my back and tell me that it is raining.  No more blue-dog split-personality tickets for me (http://www.ocnus.net/artman2/publish/Dark_Side_4/The-Abortion-that-Mitt-Doesn-t-Talk-About-Anymore.shtml).  From now on I urge every voter to vote Planned Parenthood pink right down to her, or his, underwear on Tuesday, November 6, 2012.  It is the only decent thing to do in light of "our" Ohio legislature's abysmal job performance.

POSTSCRIPT:  Contact Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio to learn what you can do to support their mission (http://www.plannedparenthood.org/greater-ohio/get-involved-39424.htm).  You can email them (public.affairs@ppao.org) or phone them at 614-244-2235.  In the meantime, take heart, speak up, and remember that the only poll that counts is the one that is taken on Election Day.

N.B.:  The internet websites originally cited in this post were accessed on January 17-20, 2012.  Additional citations were added in February and March 2012 in honor of Ohio Women's Lobby Day.

News Update From Ohio

On August 8, 2011,  I heard a troubling report on WOSU-AM, FM radio in Columbus, Ohio.  It seems that the number of known drug withdrawal cases for prescription drug (especially opiate) addiction in Ohio newborns doubled between 2008 and 2010.  Not all Ohio hospitals track these cases.  There is no reporting requirement for these cases in the State of Ohio.  Not all mothers are screened for drugs during their pregnancies unless the clinician suspects that something is amiss.  So, we do not know the real extent of the problem.  Furthermore, according to that report, sending an addicted newborn home to go through withdrawal can be life threatening -- especially if the mother does not recognize the infant's withdrawal symptoms.
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wosu/news.newsmain/article/0/1/1837629/WOSU.News/Opiate-Addicted.Infants.On.Rise.In.Ohio

The report did not go into what lifelong consequences that babies born addicted to prescription drugs/opiates may suffer.

Yet another example of Ohio's "pro-life" legislators' hypocrisy about abortion.  They demand forced births in the jackbooted dominatrix state even as they reject caring for the baby in the social welfare nanny state.  Too bad for the infant that how she lives or dies once she is born is her problem.

Addendum:  See also (broadcast on August 9, 2011)
 http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wosu/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1837929/WOSU.News/Columbus.Mom.Battles.Rx.Drug.Abuse

On Abortion And The 129th Ohio General Assembly

I WAS JUST MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS WHEN...

Finally submitting to my doctor's wishes, I let her do a PAP test on me for the first time in 15 years.  The results came back fine.  But if I do not like a qualified professional fumbling around my innards, I sure as hell resent the 129th Ohio General Assembly populated by the medically unqualified presuming to insert themselves between my licensed physician and me.  If I had wanted craven politicians in the consultation or exam room at any time in my reproductive life, I would have invited them.  I did not.  They should stay the hell out -- especially when they represent a political party unable to put a credible alternative to health care reform on the table even though they claim to be so distraught about "Obamacare".
1.  http://www.ppao.org/Legislation/129th/June28-House-votes.html;
2.  http://www.cantonrep.com/newsnow/x2014917431/GOP-bills-target-abortion-in-Ohio;
3.  http://www.msmagazine.com/Spring2011/treatmentdenied.asp;
4.  http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=28941&news_iv_ctrl=0&abbr=daily2;
5.  http://www.npr.org/2012/03/28/149473236/texas-feds-face-off-over-planned-parenthood

That said, I personally can afford to be apathetic about abortion; the question has become moot for me, biologically speaking.  But where are all the young women whom this move by the 129th Ohio General Assembly will affect?  Why are they not up in arms?  Are they so cowed or complacent or just plain clueless?  Maybe they have no sense of American women's reproductive history.
6.  http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/history-and-successes.htm;
7.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/peopleevents/e_comstock.html;
8.  http://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/morality-of-birth-control/;
9.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00kmdg9
10.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00mwbkv/Witness_Roe_v_Wade/
11.  http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

Maybe I need to get up close and personal with younger readers that have grown up complacent about the breakthrough of Roe versus Wade :

FLASHBACK...

I was nine years old and sitting at the kitchen table, doing my homework one evening, when my parents walked into the kitchen, having one of their "conversations".  My father was speaking in a low voice about a coworker who had given him contact information for somebody who would --

Suddenly my mother blurted out, "I'm not going to some back-alley abortionist, just get that through your head! You were there to make this baby, you can be there to take responsibility for it."

A few months later, on the morning of July 4, 1962, my parents had another conversation in the kitchen.  This time it started about hotdogs.  My father lost it completely and flew into what I later would learn was a homicidal bipolar rage.  Horrified with my feet stuck to the floor and unable to move -- still nine years old, I watched my father kick my pregnant mother around the kitchen.  By early the following morning she had begun to hemorrhage vaginally.  My father woke me from my bed and brought me downstairs.  He told me that I was to stay in my parents' bed until he returned from taking my mother to the emergency room -- just in case my younger sister or brother woke up while both parents were out of the house.

I asked why I couldn't just stay on the sofa.  No, I had to stay in their bed even though my mother's half of it was drenched in blood.  There was blood down the hallway floor and all over the bathroom floor and the toilet.  The one concession that my father did make was that I did not have to clean up the blood; he would mop up the mess when he got home.  My mother said nothing; she was looking rather pale.

So, there I lay until my siblings woke up and our father came home.

Our youngest sister was delivered by caesarean section in a "good Catholic" hospital in West Islip, Long Island, New York, on July 6, 1962.  There the clerics forbade the surgeons to perform a tubal ligation for my mother before sewing her up after the caesarean section -- all the better to foist their sectarian doctrines on a woman who now had four children to rear as well as her newly diagnosed diabetes mellitus.  My father refused to buy my mother the post-surgical girdle needed to help heal her abdominal muscles because he was too cheap.  So, my mother went through the rest of her life with a distended belly because she could not afford the corrective "cosmetic" surgery -- especially after my father deserted the family; married another Catholic woman; and had four more children with his second wife.

For decades I listened to assinine platitudes that I was just being neurotic about my parents' unhappy marriage.  That may be so, but I was also right about my father being crazy.  Independent medical proof finally arrived the day my brother cleaned out our father's medicine chest after he had died and found his V.A. prescription vial full of lithium tablets.  My father never went for a diagnosis, much less treatment, until he retired from the U.S. Army Signal School. Psychiatric diagnosis, no security clearance. No security clearance, no job.  No job, no money.  And that was the one thing my father, having grown up in the Great Depression, simply could not bear.  He just let the rest of us bear the brunt of his undiagnosed, unmedicated bipolar antics for seven-and-one-half decades.

BACK TO THE PRESENT...

I am so relieved that my father is dead and out of my life.  These days the nightmares recur only when I am going through a really stressful situation.  I am also grateful to be beyond the age when Mother Church can meddle in my reproductive life.  Mother Church was nowhere to be found when I needed rescue and succour as a child, so she can just shut her yap about how I live my life as an adult.  Frankly, it was better for me in the long run that I did not merit her attentions given what we now know about her minions abusing children with impunity around the globe for decades.  Now I must make sure that Mother Church does not sink her claws into me on my deathbed, too!  Compare:
12.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/us/20bishop.html;
13.  http://www.compassionandchoices.org/page.aspx?pid=492;
14.  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_1_37/ai_66893455/?tag=content;col1;
15.  http://articles.philly.com/2011-07-24/news/29809930_1_grand-jury-angry-grand-jurors-cardinal-anthony-j-bevilacqua;
16.  http://articles.philly.com/2012-02-25/news/31098596_1_church-lawyers-abuse-complaints-priests;
17.  http://www.philly.com.philly/news/breaking/20120319_Archdiocese_fights_to_keep_12_documents_out_of_Lynn_trial.html
18.  http://bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14224199;
19.  http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,676404,00.html;
20.  http://fratres.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/full-text-open-letter-to-bishops-by-hans-kung

HEY, WAIT JUST A MINUTE, YOUR EMINENCE...

When it comes to cutting a deal with evil incarnate, Planned Parenthood never negotiated, much less signed, the Reichskonkordat of July 20, 1933 .  The individual martyrdom of Edith Stein and Maximilian Kolbe never will, and never could, whitewash the institution's concordat in my book.  Lucie and Raymond Aubrac, the entire family of Corrie ten Boom, and Janusz Korczak deserve our respect and remembrance just as much as Stein and Kolbe.
21.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat;
22.  http://www.concordatwatch.eu/showkb.php?org_id=858&kb_header_id=752&kb_id=1211;
23.  http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frauen_im_Nationalsozialismus;
24.  http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERwomen.htm;
25.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_Kolbe;
26.  http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FRaubracL.htm;
27.  http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006914;
28.  http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/korczak.html;
29.  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/pius.html;
30.  http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/kueng-ueber-stellvertreter-papst-pius-xii-hitler-war-fuer-ihn-das-kleinere-uebel-1.475868;
31.  Bascomb, Neal.  Hunting Eichmann:  How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi.  New York:  Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2009.  Pages 68 -- 72, 122, 305.

A BROADER PERSPECTIVE...

Mother Church's chronic persistent misogyny notwithstanding, many Christian denominations have adopted a range of stands on abortion that reflect a nuanced understanding of the woman's predicament.  Other faiths also evince a spectrum of attitudes and practices that range from enlightened compassion to calculated barbarity when it comes to women, their bodies, and who does what to them when.  How a particular woman is treated in any of these cultures depends largely on her family's socioeconomic status as well as her access to nonsectarian formal education and job training, i.e., economic self-sufficiency.  Apparently, women's true status worldwide has not changed all that much since Margaret Sanger began her work in the slums of New York City back in 1916.  Today every woman with two grey cells to rub together in her cranium must decide whether she will submit to misogyny tricked out as religion.  Prudence and a healthy regard for self-preservation dictate that she exercise her franchise accordingly.
32.  http://www.spiritrestoration.org/Church/Denominational-stand-on-the-issue-of-abortion.htm;
33.  http://www.religiousconsultation.org/family_planning_in_Islam_by_shaikh_p4.htm;
34.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15262680;
35.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13760895;
36.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17379721;
37.  http://www.rosebellkagumire.com/2011/09/07/who-listens-to-listener-health-workers-and-war-trauma-in-drc;
38.  http://www.npr.org/2011/08/10/139382653/in-pakistan-birth-control-and-religion-clash;
39.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/04/2007_12_mon.shtml;
40.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8223966.stm;
41.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7693397.stm;
42.  http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/mauritania-urged-revoke-anti-slavery-activists%E2%80%99-sentencing-2011-08-23

LESSONS LEARNED...

Evidently, medical decisions about abortion, as with all other forms of health care, are best left to confidential consultation between the woman and a competent physician free to discuss and to perform the full palette of treatment options the patient may wish to consider in light of her circumstances, not yours or mine.  Matters of faith are between the patient and her faith, not yours or mine.  The patient must be free to make her decisions without interference from bigots saddling her with their doctrines, saddled as they are with their own manifest hypocrisy and criminality.  IF we are to believe that American women are full citizens with equal rights, then that patient is a human being in her own right, not chattel.  Do you perchance recall the days within living memory when a doctor confronted with having to save the mother or the child when he could not save both would ask the father/husband which one the man wanted the doctor to save?
43.  http://www.liberalslikechrist.org/about/Goldwater.html;
44.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/22/us-catholic-bishop-hospital-abortion;
45.  http://www.msmagazine.com/Spring2011/treatmentdenied.asp;
46.  http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/late-term-abortion-29-weeks-dana-weinstein;
47.  http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)61799-2/fulltext

To argue that it is a woman's civic duty to submit to the pernicious machinations of sanctimonious bigots -- thereby putting her health, her well-being, and even her very life at risk -- is degrading and obscene.  I wish that the degradations my mother suffered at the hands of a Christian husband and a Catholic hospital were so rare that recounting my childhood experiences could shock and awe you.  But what I witnessed was not rare in 1962.  It is not rare in 2012.  Even if the abuse of women in all its permutations were rare, the law must allow the patient access to unfettered qualified medical care to cope with her birth control needs according to HER freedom of conscience in the real world, not in some la-la-land of medically unqualified and morally bankrupt clerics.  Those sectarian healthcare providers intent on subverting truly ethical health care for women would do better to refuse the federal healthcare tax dollars they rake in from all of us. (Heaven forbid! That would require clerics to stop to chasing the money -- and politicians like Mitt Romney, the presidency -- at any price just so long as it's women who pay the price.)
48.  http://www.lifeandlibertyforwomen.org/about_gerri.html;
49.  http://www.ocnus.net/artman2/publish/Dark_Side_4/The-Abortion-that-Mitt-Doesn-t-Talk-About-Anymore.shtml;
50.  http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2012/03/15/democrats-ride-romneys-planned-parenthood-remark.html;
51.  http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)61799-2/fulltext;
52.  http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/03/garry_trudeau_interview_his_doonesbury_strip_about_the_virginia_and_texas_ultrasound_laws_.html;
53.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/opinion/targeting-women.html?_r=3&ref=opinion

Accordingly, I do not give a tinker's damn what some doctrinaires in Rome or their political lackeys in Columbus, Ohio, presume to think they know about my life, my morals, or my decision to complete or to abort my pregnancy.  The only cleric I pay attention to when it comes to my reproductive life is that Augustinian Gregor Johann Mendel and his seminal work with pea plants.  Knowing that bipolar disorder runs rampant on my father's side of the family, I chose to abstain from motherhood for damned good reasons.  Knowing that Roe versus Wade was there to protect me in case I slipped up -- or was raped -- gave me the sense of security I needed.  How you young women in Ohio today propose to assert your reproductive healthcare rights in light of the bastardized legislation promulgated by the 129th Ohio General Assembly is beyond me.
54.  http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel;
55.  http://www.thebigohblog.com/2011/07/senator-turners-floor-speech-on-hb-78.html

THIS IS YOUR FUTURE IF YOU FAIL TO LEARN FROM MY PAST...

Take it from the voice of experience, ladies:  Brownshirts, blackshirts, and run-of-the-mill nut cases in jackboots or cowboy boots or wingtipped brogues will kick you around your own kitchen and leave you there to bleed out if you let them.  I witnessed it with my own eyes when I was nine years old.  Of course, some doctrinaires wear stiletto heels or promote themselves as "women of faith" or "true believers".  Note how smugly they proffer themselves on the political stage even as they denigrate you and deny your rights in a country that purports to cherish freedom of conscience on the world stage.  But that only works if you remain silent and let them get away with it.  Be it Mother Church or Papa Staat -- with or without the dog collar -- you need to confront spiritual frauds of any denomination and their political hacks sooner rather than later.
56.  http://www.ppao.org/Legislation/129th/HB125.html;
57.  http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/02/29/abortion-foes-want-funding-rerouted.html;
58.  http://www.ocnus.net/artman2/publish/Dark_Side_4/The-Abortion-that-Mitt-Doesn-t-Talk-About-Anymore.shtml;
59.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15318725;
60.  http://bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14224199;
61.  http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2011-07/papstbesuch-deutschland-berlin;
62.  http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/beichtgeheimnis100.html.


THE ACTION PLAN...

Looking forward to voting the doctrinaires in the 129th Ohio General Assembly and that de facto Governor's Mansion in Delaware County out of office, I hope and pray that you women in Ohio get a clue and belly up to the voting booth in time -- IF you can still fit your bellies into the booth.  Just do not show up barefoot, or they will not let you into the polling station, never mind the Statehouse.  Mark my words:  Either you will vote to regain your access to competent medical care and full health insurance coverage for all your birth control needs, or you will go back to calling "JANE".
63.  www.fwhc.org/jane.htm;
64.  http://www.lifeandlibertyforwomen.org/about_gerri.html
65.  http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/03/09/bare-feet-officially-going-bye-bye-at-statehouse.html

PARTING THOUGHT...

It may be politically incorrect these days to use the term "idiot fringe", but the fact remains that idiots are just as dangerous on the political right as they are on the left.  Politics has never been foolproof, and bigots mixing politics with sanctimony are the most dangerous kind of idiot on the American right.  So take care what you vote for lest you get it.

Postscript:  This post updated periodically in honor of Ohio Women's Lobby Day, March 21, 2012.