Let's talk about cases of rape and incest

This is the ugly truth no one ever wants to talk about. Abortion allows predators to repeatedly victimize the most vulnerable among us- born and preborn children. ChildPredators.com shows just how frequently this happens by publishing nationwide news stories and court documents (changing the names of the victims for their protection of course). These clinics must be held accountable and we must stop repeating the lie that abortion is the best thing for women, when it allows so many to be exploited and abused. 

A society that claimes we *need* abortion because of cases of rape and incest needs to wake up to the fact that the rapists are the very ones they're actually protecting, while their victims are being silenced.

*****************************************

Post by Destiny

Maybe some women don't heal through shouting...

I know we're supposed to see these women using the #ShoutYourAbortion hashtag and feel one of two ways- either proud of their boldness or angry at their callousness.

But I don't feel either of those things.

I just kinda want to take them all out for coffee and let them know that if they need to "shout it" and surround themselves with other women who are saying abortion is okay, then I totally understand that. Reading through these tweets, I don't get the sense that most of these stories are coming from a place of pride. I think a lot of these women have probably been holding onto their abortions for awhile now not really knowing how to feel about them. The world tells us abortion's no big deal, but very few women actually choose to abort lightly, so somewhere deep down most of us know it is… something. We don't think twice about getting a root canal or removing our appendix, but a majority of women lament at least a little bit about whether or not to choose abortion.

And when you come out on the other side of that choice, having made a decision that cannot be undone… well, I guess I'd probably be doing the same exact thing. I'd want to find a community of women who also aborted and think it's okay and more importantly who would reassure me that what I did was okay. And I probably wouldn't want to have it festering inside me either. I'd want to 'shout it out' as well.

But if you've done all this tweeting and shouting, and still find that you're struggling with your abortion, please know that I love you. I truly, genuinely care about your happiness and wellbeing. As a feminist I don't want to see a woman living under any type of oppression, whether it's societally inflicted or emotional and self-induced. So if you do struggle with a past abortion, and have yet to make peace with it, please please please reach out to me. I'd love nothing more that to help you find healing so you can live a life free from that bondage.

And if that's not you, if you're someone who chose abortion and think it's the best decision you ever made, I want you to know that I Iove you too. This isn't about guilting or shaming anyone, it's just about letting women who don't handle things in the same way know that there are other options when it comes to processing a past abortion. Pro-choice can't just apply to ending a pregnancy. Women need to know there are also alternative ways to deal with the emotions left after they've terminated.

This is how Planned Parenthood "Mammograms"

Planned Parenthood IS Selling Baby Parts, You Idiots.

"Poor, Uninsured Women" Deserve Better

I was that girl, the one everybody is suddenly talking about: the low-income, uninsured woman in need of potentially life-saving healthcare.

My husband worked for a small start-up. He was given a $200 stipend for insurance that covered him and the kids. However, if he also included me and my baby-making organs it immediately shot up to $600 a month. Evidently, I’m one of those parthenogenesis mammals capable of reproducing all on my own, and that's a liability. 

So I went without. As mothers often do.

Then one day I noticed something was "off" with my body. Specifically my lady parts. I was terrified. I needed to see a physician immediately but because it was likely to require blood draws and lab work I knew that was going to be way out of my fledglings family’s price range. We were on a budget where ten bucks could make or break us for the month. 

This was about five years ago and at the time I remember my resources here in Dallas were incredibly limited. There were no federally qualified health centers in the area offering well woman care. Most were merely ear, nose, and throat doctors. Many had been shut down do to lack of funding, so when you called you'd just get a busy signal. I couldn't afford the hundreds of dollars it would cost to go to a family physician. I knew an ER would be even worse. I had a friend who attended a local mosque and said he might be able to get me an appointment with their female physician who came in quarterly, but the entire time there was one obvious solution to my predicament: Planned Parenthood.

For around $75 I could be seen by one of their physicians and further treatment would then be put on a sliding scale based on our income. When I told people this they thought I was crazy for not making an appointment immediately.

There was only one problem. I was… I am... pro-life.

I know a lot of people might scoff at that, but in my book abortion is the taking of a human life. And knowing I would likely have to see a higher-level physician, one who performed that procedure, was incredibly conflicting. I knew I needed help and that not receiving treatment that could potentially catch an issue in its early stages—thereby saving my life—was just that, pro-life. But I still couldn’t bring myself to make the appointment.

I called the mosque instead but when I never heard back I did nothing. Planned Parenthood, ironically, was my only viable option.  

Fellow pro-life activists get mad when I embrace the “talking point” that PP has a monopoly in this country because they think I’m supporting the belief that without Planned Parenthood poor women like myself would have nowhere to go, but the opposite is actually true. I think it’s completely unacceptable that Planned Parenthood is allowed to have a monopoly in this country simply because so much federal funding (around $360 million a year) is funneled straight to them instead of being evenly dispersed among clinics that offer the same well woman care, just minus abortion. 

Over the last few weeks most of us have seen the undercover videos of high ranking Planned Parenthood staff haggling over "tissue" donations from aborted fetuses and whether you view this behavior as admissible or not, I ask you to respect the fact that many of us will never be comfortable receiving care from Planned Parenthood physicians. Ultimately we disagree on what constitutes a human life, at what point it deserves respect, and when it becomes a human being worth protecting. Because of that many of us will choose not to receive medical attention if Planned Parenthood is our only option.

I know we can't all afford the same level of healthcare, but why must poor women be forced to go to doctors who can't even adhere to the most basic medical oath… to do no harm.

Rich women, poor women, all women deserve better choices.

*********************************************************************************************************************

Post by Destiny

Why This Video Matters To Me Personally

Most of us think we know what rape is. Whenever someone forces themself onto another person without consent, it's sexual assault. It's very black and white... except when it isn't.

It took me ten years and ultimately a very honest and kind friend to tell me that when I was "taken advantage of" in high school that one time, I had actually been raped. I mean, had I said "no"? Yes. Had I been crying? Yes. Had I asked him to stop? I had. But in my mind, because he had not beaten me up and wasn't holding me down, it wasn't really rape - it was just a teenage guy "taking advantage of the situation." For years I used that term. For years I made excuses for his behavior.

We live in an increasingly violent world, where most adolescent boys are brought up on a steady stream of pornography. The images they see are far from those in their father's Playboy. They are inundated with women being dominated, overpowered, and placed increasingly in states of pain. Their natural, instinctual reaction to protect their partners from harm, or to stop when their partners are expressing discomfort, has now been replaced with the exact opposite. Inflicting pain becomes a turn-on. These boys confuse faces twisting in agony with pleasure based on the pornography they've fed their minds for years. Sexual intimacy is rapidly being replaced with violence in our modern-day society.

And it's not just the guys who are learning this. Young women are constantly being told that their power lies in their sexuality; every magazine stand and billboard screams it. You want to exude confidence and strength? Become the ultimate sex kitten. Act like the girl in the porn or like Anastasia in Fifty Shades of Grey.

I didn't get up and run away that day because the very thing that was supposed to make me confident and strong was now breaking me - making me feel scared and weak. I froze. Between the two of us, we'd created the perfect storm: a girl so insecure that she couldn't forcefully demand that the boy stop violating her, and a boy who thought "no" meant "yes," and that "stop" meant "go."

As I watch Live Action's latest undercover investigation into Planned Parenthood, SexEd, I want to jump through the screen and shake the nurse who thinks it's okay to talk to a 15-year-old girl about "safe words" and BDSM - who's telling this girl that words like "no" and "stop" can get "mixed up when you're having intercourse," or that "usually a lot of people will say 'stop' even though it feels good." She has no idea of the long-term damage she's doing - or, honestly, maybe she does have an idea, and it's simply good for business.

When we tell teens to engage in this type of destructive behavior, we are telling them they are not worthy of love. We are saying they do not deserve to be cherished, that they deserve only to be hurt. We are telling them abuse is affection. And furthermore, when we instruct them that "stop" is not a good safe word because "usually people say 'stop' even though it feels good," we are reinforcing the lie, to a generation of confused young men, that yeah, she really did want it. And we are telling the girls hurt by these young men that they were probably asking for it.

**************************************************************************************









Post by Destiny

"Donations"

Have you ever wondered how Planned Parenthood receives so much money in donations each year?

I mean, they already get a whopping $305.3 million from our federal government annually (a.k.a. tax payers), so they're hardly a shabby little charity. But on top of that, the community must really love and support them to be donating an additional $212.2 million a year, right?

I guess I always just assumed those donations came from the fanatical, old fauxminists at their ritzy luncheon fundraisers, but as it turns out, that's not the case at all.

A dear friend of mine was telling me how when she found out she was pregnant with her son she had to go and get an official 'Proof of Pregnancy' document before she was able to apply for Medicaid... and SURPRISE, SURPRISE, PP wasn't giving out any freebies. They told her over the phone when she scheduled her appointment to make sure she brought $40 in cash with her to the clinic.

After she was seen and received her proof of pregnancy form she went up to the counter to "check out."  The woman at the front desk proceeded to run down a very long list of services, tallying them up as she went, then telling her how today's appointment should cost her a couple hundred dollars. The blood left her face and of course she began to panic, "BUT WAIT!" the woman said, "you qualify for quite a few grants, lucky girl!" All of them of course come from the $305.3 PP gets from you and me, however, I doubt she informer her of that. After all was said and done, her total was a manageable twelve dollars. Then just as my friend began to regain her bearings and reach into her pocket for the money, the woman asks if she would like to make a donation to Planned Parenthood today...

Now she knows that the woman knows she has $40 in cash on her, and she also knows that thanks to PP's "generosity" she just saved a boatload on the services she received, so how could she not make a donation?

The nerve.

By their own definition they are a NOT-FOR-PROFIT medical facility there to reach out to poor, and un(der)insured women!

Would a food pantry ever ring up all of your items, tell you how much you should be paying, then ask you for a donation on your way out the door? I don't think so. And why is that? Because it's manipulative, and they are true non-profits... not big sleazy businesses like Planned Parenthood.

Women, especially those of us on a budget and with less than desirable health coverage (or none at all), deserve better than this. However, right now America's largest abortion providers runs a monopoly on well woman care. We must ask ourselves, why are we being sent to abortion clinics for our healthcare? Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but the answer seems pretty obvious to me.

The quickest way to eradicate poverty in the federal government's eyes is to kill poor people before they're even born.

******************************************************************************

Post by Destiny

You just totally want to hear more about this whole SGK/PP thing, I can tell...

So..... I was uninsured for 4 years. Not because my husband and I didn't work, but because he worked hard, but for a small company with no benefits, and because I worked (hard) as a stay at home mom.

During that time I discovered an abnormality in my lady parts. I was convinced I had cervical cancer, but seeing as I had no insurance it would have been a luxury to verify my findings.

In this day and age, that was just insane to me. But going to an ER would've meant thousands of dollars of debt for my family and going to a OB would've amounted to about the same. I felt as though I had no other choice but to go to Planned Parenthood.

I imagine this is how many women feel.

However, when I considered the prospect of that, this is what I figured... the doctors at Planned Parenthood, the surgical ones at least which would've been the ones checking me out, were more than likely the same ones who provided abortions. So in turn, they were abortionists. And because I am strongly against abortion, in my opinion they were murderers. They stopped human life.

Now I don't know what others think of them... I'm sure many consider them heroes and wonderful people, but since I considered them murderers and nothing was going to change that, I was going to have to let someone who ended human lives put their hands on my body. Honestly, I could not see myself being able to remain composed enough for an exam, let alone any other type of procedure following that.

I know many people will think this is ridiculous, but it is what it is. For me, Planned Parenthood simply wasn't an option.... even though it was my only option.

And I hate that. I hate that PP was my only option. There's nothing pro-choice about having no choice at all when it comes to my health care. But that's precisely the way I felt.

As for the SGK issue, PP only offers manual breast exams NOT mammograms. Let's all go ahead and acknowledge that fact right up front. As far as I can tell, only ONE of their Texas offices (in Waco) even has the actual equipment required to provide thorough screenings.

So honestly, this has nothing to do with abortion or any of the other services they offer, it has to do with breast cancer screenings, and they fact that PP is not doing enough to adequately provide them.

Susan G. Komen stated as much just yesterday in a statement on their facebook page- "At Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the women we serve are our highest priority in everything we do. Last year, we invested $93 million in community health programs, which included 700,000 mammograms. Additionally, we began an initiative to further strengthen our grants program to be even more outcomes-driven and to allow for even greater investments in programs that directly serve women. We also implemented more stringent eligibility and performance criteria to support these strategies. While it is regrettable when changes in priorities and policies affect any of our grantees, such as a longstanding partner like Planned Parenthood, we must continue to evolve to best meet the needs of the women we serve and most fully advance our mission."

This is a good thing. I promise. Women will benefit from these changes. Perhaps we will start getting a higher caliber of care, AND actually have a choice as to who provides it.

If we'd all inform ourselves more I think that fact would become even clearer. Women deserve better....and this provides us with much better choices in the long run. We have to stop letting Planned Parenthood monopolize our health care. We deserve options. This is ultimately the most pro-choice thing for women.

{UPDATE: Scratch that. Looks like we'll still have no choice. #komenforthecave}

************************************************************

Post by Destiny