NPR host Dee Dee Bridgewater recounts her own experience with illegal abortion

Women don’t abort because of some sort of whim. They abort because they feel they have no other choice. The fact that they’d risk their lives to do it should be proof enough of that.

[via ThinkProgress]

Republicans’ latest awesome idea: have the IRS audit rape victims

ThinkProgress: House Republicans are currently advancing the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act,” or HR 7, a measure that would impose sweeping restrictions on abortion coverage that could make the procedure less affordable for Americans across the country. In addition to preventing low-income women from using their Medicaid coverage to access abortion, HR 7 could also have dramatic implications for the tax code and the private insurance market. One of its most controversial provisions could actually require the Internal Revenue Service to conduct audits of rape victims.

Why? Because HR 7 eliminates medical-expense deductions for abortion care, essentially raising taxes on the women who opt to have an abortion. Like many abortion restrictions, this provision includes an exemption for victims of rape and incest, as well as women who encounter life-threatening complications from their pregnancies. But in order to enforce those exceptions, the IRS would have to verify that the women who are claiming a medical-expense deduction for an abortion fall into one of those three categories, to ensure they’re not committing tax fraud.

Essentially, that would empower the government agency to have the final say over what “count” as a sexual assault or a life-threatening situation. And that, in turn, would force victims to prove their case.

So if you have an abortion after a rape, you have to move heaven and earth to prove that you really were raped — including sitting through an IRS audit, which Republicans have basically argued is the worst thing ever.. But if you shoot someone on the street, you just have to say you were “standing your ground” and you don’t have to prove jack (although it helps if the bullet recipient isn’t white).

I’m not sure which is more disturbing, Republicans’ sick fascination with firearms or their sick fascination with rape. Either way, a lot of Republicans are seriously unhealthy people.

SCOTUS turns away Oklahoma ultrasound law

Los Angeles Times: For the second time in two weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court has let stand a ruling that strikes down a major abortion regulation from Oklahoma.

The justices on Tuesday turned down the state’s attempt to reinstate a law that would have required pregnant women to undergo an ultrasound test and hear about the size and possible heartbeat of the fetus.

Last year, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down the state’s ultrasound law on the grounds it put an undue burden on a woman’s right to abortion.

This is what always gets me; the extremely weak and stupid rationale for these sorts of laws. “State Atty. Gen. Scott Pruitt appealed and argued the law was needed to ensure women were ‘fully informed’ before they opted for abortion,” according to the report.

Just once I’d like to see one of these clowns asked point blank what they think it is that most women don’t understand about pregnancy. What Pruitt’s argument — and that of every “informed consent” spin doctor out there — boils down to is an argument that women are too stupid to know what they’re doing, so they need a helpful Republican male politician to draw them a damned picture with a sonogram.

It’s not just an unnecessary burden, it’s an insulting one, as well.

Love the fetus, hate the child

Nick Anderson.

Republicans admit they have a women problem

National Journal: When the House Judiciary Committee passed a late-term abortion ban in June, Republican leaders scrambled to find a female, media-savvy lawmaker to bring the legislation to the floor. Their biggest problem: Not a single Republican woman was represented among the committee’s 23 Republican members. They eventually settled on Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who isn’t on the Judiciary Committee.

The episode underscored a growing problem that is worrying Republicans: Women are badly underrepresented within their party in the Congress. Only 8 percent of House Republicans are women, and there are only four female Republican senators. Of the long list of potential 2016 GOP presidential contenders, there’s not a single woman.

Party leaders want to close the gender gap, but worry that it will be difficult with very few female leaders in Congress to handle outreach.

"It’s not good enough. It’s not. And it’s not reflective of the electorate," said Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., one of just three Republican women in the freshman class of 2012, who were sworn into the House alongside 17 female Democratic colleagues. “We have a message I think that reaches women and we need to make sure that we’re actively and aggressively telling that story. And there’s no better way to do it than being a woman who talks about it."

Wagner argues that women bring an important perspective on some of the biggest issues the country is currently dealing with, such as family budgets, health care, entitlements, and energy policy—all things women tend to handle in their households. “We’re the ones filling the minivan up," she said.

The first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one. For the Republican Party, the first step also seems to be the final one. The GOP faces the same problem here as they do with the rest of their rebranding efforts — they aren’t at all interested in listening. An authoritarian party to the core, they seem to believe they don’t have to listen to women’s concerns. Instead, they try to dictate to women what concerns women have.

Another rookie mistake, [Republican pollster Kellyanne] Conway said, is focusing too much on “women’s issues," if such a thing exists. Democratic women, she said, put too much of an emphasis on abortion, while Republican women have the opportunity to take a broader view. “There are very few Democratic women who can begin or finish a sentence without mentioning a ‘woman’s right to choose,’ " Conway said, noting that she’s actually had her researchers go through hours of remarks by Democratic members to find a single woman who failed to mention abortion. They haven’t found one yet. “There is a tremendous opening for the ‘whole women,’ if you will, to step up and run for office as a Republican…. What do you do every week gals, do you fill up the gas tank or do you have an abortion?" she said.

Yeah, I seriously doubt that she couldn’t find any Democratic woman who’s ever talked about anything other than abortion. And taking a “there’s no such thing as women’s issues" line doesn’t strike me as the best way to win women voters. But my biggest takeaway here is that she’s basically telling women, “You don’t care about abortion." Which, if your party is currently engaged in trying to eliminate abortion, you really have to hope is true.

As it is with minority outreach, the Republican message to the target voters here is “We don’t have to change, you do." I doubt women will find that especially compelling. As Taylor Marsh points out in a post about this outreach project, this is all about Hillary 2016. She writes that Republicans “don’t have one single viable female contender to take on Hillary Rodham Clinton, with the congressional bench slim compared to the Democratic women waiting in the wings: Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand." And about that “whole woman" idea that looks beyond the right to choose:

[T]he Republican war against entitlements, specifically Social Security, hurts females more than any other group. There isn’t a bigger champion for women’s economic rights than Hillary, with the Republican version having only a platform of “reforming” entitlements so that older women have a financial burden they can’t meet as they age.

If Republicans want to win with women, they’re going to have to change. Swinging a watch in front of female voters and saying, “You are getting sleepy and you don’t care about no ‘bortions," just isn’t going to cut it.

[photo via johnscotthaydon]

Rubio prepares abortion timewaster

Steve Benen: In recent months, most of the Republican efforts to limit reproductive rights have been in state legislatures, as evidenced by recent fights in Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin, among others.

But federal efforts on Capitol Hill haven’t faded, either. One notable Republican senator intends to take the lead.

Sen. Marco Rubio said unequivocally Wednesday that he hopes to be the lead sponsor of a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks.

"If someone else would like to do it instead of me, I’m more than happy to consider it. But I’d like to be the lead sponsor," the Florida Republican said. “I feel very strongly about this issue. And I’d like to be the lead sponsor on it if we can find language that we can unify people behind."

If this sounds familiar, there’s a good reason — Rubio first expressed an interest in this three weeks ago, though there’s been little movement since. These new comments suggest the Florida Republican intends to make this a top priority.

Apparently, problems like unemployment and the economy have been solved, freeing up Marco to waste everyone’s time with an abortion bill that has no hope in hell of ever becoming law.  And it’s a good thing too, since these 20-week bans are extremely dangerous to women’s health. Benen quotes an Andrew Rosenthal piece on the subject:

The way the Catholic Association mentions “late-term" abortions, you might think the only women who had them were lazy and callous, just waiting around until the last second for no good reason.

But as Cecile Richards, the head of Planned Parenthood, told me in an email, nearly 99 percent of abortions occur before 21 weeks; abortions later on often involve rare, severe fetal abnormalities and real threats to a woman’s health. In many cases, women are facing the need to terminate a desired pregnancy, not an unwanted one.

Ms. Richards cited the case of a woman in Nebraska, Danielle Deaver, whose water broke at 22 weeks, depriving her baby of most of the amniotic fluid. “Her doctor told her that the fetus could not develop or survive," Ms. Richards said. “Despite this, she was forced to live through 10 excruciating days waiting to give birth, because her doctors feared prosecution under her state’s 20-week abortion ban."

As bad as that is, in order to have a shadow of hope of getting anything through the Senate, Rubio would most likely have to add exceptions for rape, incest, and women’s health. This would mean that Rubio’s bill would prevent somewhere in the neighborhood of zero abortions, making what’s already a timewaster even more of one.

It’s just a stunt to rehabilitate Rubio’s image with the base, who see immigration reform as some sort of betrayal. If there’s anything these Tea Party “liberty" types like more than big piles of guns, it’s oppressing women.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

Social conservative extremism costing VA gov. candidate Cuccinelli donors

Bloomberg News: Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli has less than half as much cash as Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe, with a prominent list of Republican donors sitting out this year’s most competitive U.S. political contest — and in some cases switching sides.

The financial disadvantage four months before the election illustrates the difficulties confronting an attorney general who is campaigning on an economic growth plan yet is best known for his opposition to gay marriage and abortion.

“Mr. Cuccinelli’s very hard stance on some of the social issues is a concern for me,” said Virginia Beach developer Bruce L. Thompson, chief executive officer of Gold Key/PHR Hotels and Resorts, a financial backer of current Republican Governor Bob McDonnell who in May gave McAuliffe $25,000.

“I believe personally in a woman’s right to choose, but I also think from an economic development standpoint, we’re trying to attract businesses from other areas of the country, and we’re telling women that we’re going to regulate the way that they run their life? I just don’t think we can be exclusionary when it comes to women” and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals, Thompson said.

Cuccinelli, 44, had $2.7 million in cash as of the end of June, compared with $6 million for McAuliffe, 56, the former national Democratic Party chairman and fundraiser. While McAuliffe had been expected to out-raise Cuccinelli, the Republican is lagging behind where McDonnell was at this point in his 2009 race, when he had $4.9 million in cash on hand.

Granted, a some of the lag in fundraising has to come from the fact that Cuccinelli is growing increasingly rank with the smell of impending failure; the scandals of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell threaten to pull his camaign down as well. But when donors are specifically citing certain social issues as the reason for withholding donations or even for funding the opposition, something is most definitely up there.

Cuccinelli’s been a tireless social warrior and the business community is concerned that this is the only thing he thinks about. Given the Governor’s Office, they think he’ll use it almost exclusively to wage War on Women and to fight the Homosexual Menace — which probably isn’t a bad guess. That has been his history as the state’s Attorney General.

Here’s hoping that other Republicans notice that hyping the religious-based wedge-issue politics is a fundraising loser. That would be a welcome  — and long-overdue — development.

[photo via Gage Skidmore]

‘Pro-life’ pundit literally celebrates the return of coathanger abortions

Following the passage of Texas’ oppressive abortion bill, RedState.com founder and top conservative pundit let loose the tweet above. The link leads to a site selling coathangers. “Ha ha! You lose! Go kill yourselves with coathanger abortions now!"

This is what passes for the “pro-life" position on the right.

Of course, there’s nothing pro-life about this. There isn’t even anything pro-birth here. But there’s an accidental exposure of truth here. And the truth is that abortion laws are just another form of slut-shaming. It’s behind so many of the arguments. Remember Foster Friess, Rick Santorum’s billionaire backer? Yeah, he got a lot of unwanted attention for this little exchange with Andrea Mitchell in 2012:

MITCHELL: Do you have any concerns about some of his comments on social issues, contraception, about women in combat, and whether that would hurt his general election campaign would he be the nominee?

FRIESS: I get such a chuckle when these things come out. Here we have millions of our fellow Americans unemployed; we have jihadist camps being set up in Latin America, which Rick has been warning about; and people seem to be so preoccupied with sex. I think it says something about our culture. We maybe need a massive therapy session so we can concentrate on what the real issues are. And this contraceptive thing, my gosh, it’s [so] inexpensive. Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.

MITCHELL: Excuse me, I’m just trying to catch my breath from that, Mr. Friess, frankly.

The subject here was contraception coverage, but the underlying argument is the same: women who have sex, but want to avoid pregnancy, are sluts. The issue is their fault — not the fault of the men trying to regulate their bodies. If these gals would just keep their legs together, why it wouldn’t be an issue, now would it? The same reasoning was behind Rush Limbaugh’s slut-shaming of Sandra Fluke.

Pregnancy is seen as the consequence of a moral crime. Abortion laws, like the arguments against contraception coverage, are about punishing dirty little sluts — not about saving lives or protecting women somehow. Erick-Erick gleefully imagines sluts paying the ultimate price for their round-heeled ways. He sees coathanger abortions as women getting what they deserve and completely ignores the fact that the “unborn baby" he’s supposedly so interested in saving goes to the grave with the mother. He clearly doesn’t give a damn about the fetus; this is about getting the woman with an unwanted pregnancy to take what she’s got coming to her.

If you check his twitter feed, you’ll see Erickson’s since tried to weasel out of his tweet by pretending he was mocking people who used coathangers to protest the bill, but this makes no sense, since the protests have already happened. And why would protesters who already had coathangers need to bookmark a site selling coathangers? And in what way would this be mocking them anyway? What could the punchline possibly be, exactly?

No, Erick Erickson was celebrating a victory in the Republican War on Women by telling pro-choice women to go die like the sluts they are. It’s impossible to take it any other way. The rest of Erickson’s anti-choice crowd have to be pretty angry with him right now. He let the cat out of the bag. None of this is about “saving babies," it’s all about hating women.

"Pro-life" my ass.

Small Government Republicanism

Matt Wuerker, Politico.

Fashionable footwear for Texas women

Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle.

Taking a beating over immigration, Rubio plans to pander to the base with doomed abortion bill

The Atlantic: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has seen his approval rating fall among conservatives in the wake of his push to reform U.S. immigration policy, and so it is not surprising that he, out of all 46 Republican senators, will sponsor a bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks. With the potential 2016 presidential candidate in charge of guiding the measure through the Senate, it’s guaranteed to get “enormous media attention and thus more national visibility for the issue of limiting late term abortions," The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes writes. And it could help Rubio win back conservative hearts and minds.

Rubio’s name was booed at a Tea Party rally in Washington, D.C. last month. A June 19 Quinnipiac poll found that Florida voters disapprove of the way Rubio’s handling immigration reform by 41 percent to 33 percent. A recent Washington Post/ ABC News poll found Rubio’s “strongly favorable" ratings among Republicans has dropped 11 points since August. Barnes writes, “His front-and-center role on a key anti-abortion measure is likely to ease concerns about him among GOP voters." It will be interesting to see whether conservative voters will be OK with citizenship for 11 million immigrants if they get some potential restrictions on the 1.2 million abortions each year.

If this doesn’t work, he’ll sponsor a bill to hand out guns to kindergartners or have the Ten Commandments tattooed on the backs of everyone’s eyelids. This bill will probably never even come up for a vote, let alone pass. Even if by some miracle it got out of congress, the president would veto it and it would violate Roe. It serves one purpose, to shore up Rubio’s 2016 chances by casting him as a general in the Republican War on Women. Whether it passes or not is irrelevant. In fact, if it doesn’t pass, all the better. And yes, these state-level bans will be struck down in the courts.

Losing abortion fights is preferable to winning because the one-issue voter goes away when that one issue has been resolved. In the bait-and-switch that is Republican abortion politics, losing battles brings the chumps back for more. Vote for abortion bans, get tax cuts for gazillionaires and the gutting of worker protections — lather, rinse, repeat.

The Republican Party must be extremely pleased with the endless gullibility of their base. Kick them in the teeth and they keep coming back for more — every time.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

North Carolina GOP uses Sharia ban to push their own religion-based laws

I don’t suppose they see the irony.

ThinkProgress: The North Carolina legislature is advancing a package of stringent abortion restrictions that appeared in the Senate this week without any public notice. The anti-abortion measures popped up on Tuesday night, tacked onto a controversial measure to ban Sharia law, and caught women’s health advocates completely off-guard.

House Bill 695, which would prohibit the recognition of Sharia law in family courts — an increasingly popular conservative tactic that essentially serves to demonize the Islamic faith — was slated for consideration in a Senate committee on Tuesday. As soon as that committee convened, it quickly approved several abortion-related amendments to the legislation. HB 695 now combines several different anti-abortion measures that were in different stages in the legislature into one omnibus measure.

The new amendments would prevent insurance plans on Obamacare’s health marketplaces from covering abortion services, ban “sex-selective” abortions, impose unnecessary restrictions on doctors administering the abortion pill to women, and require the state’s abortion clinics to adhere to complicated new regulations that would likely force most of them to close. A similar package of abortion restrictions has inspired weeks of protest in Texas, where thousands of reproductive rights activists have been rallying at the state capitol.

Apparently, North Carolina was on the verge of falling victim to the Islamic Fundamentalist Menace. Thank goodness they had the foresight to ban Sharia law before they had a chance to impose Sharia law (after all, who would insttute it, if not the state legislature?). Too bad they didn’t quite make it in time. They may have blocked Islamic religious law, but they instituted Christian religious law at the same time. The American Taliban strikes again and Christian Sharia is now the law of the land in the Tar Heel state.

It’d be nice if these Tea Party fools loved liberty as much as they say they do, but I suppose expecting intellectual honesty from them is just too much to ask.

[photo by sunshinecity]

Your weekly insane Republican rape theory

Raw Story: A Texas Republican state representative pushing legislation that would enact one of the nation’s strictest bans on abortion claimed in floor debate Sunday night that exceptions for the victims of rape and incest are not needed because emergency rooms offer rape kits that “basically clean her out.”

“If a woman is raped… We have hospital emergency rooms,” Rep. Jodie Laubenberg (R) insisted. “We have funded what’s called rape kits that will help the woman, basically clean her out. And then hopefully that will alleviate that.”

Laubenberg, from Collin County, sits on the Texas House Public Health Committee and chairs the state’s chapter of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which promotes business-friendly legislation to conservative lawmakers all around the country.

She was responding to a Democratic lawmaker who asked if she feels it is fair to require that rape victims in El Paso travel over 500 miles to San Antonio — which is where the nearest clinic would be located if Laubenberg’s bill becomes law — just to obtain an abortion.

As Raw Story’s headline suggests, there’s video to go with this. But there’s no need to subject you to it here. It’s basically posted to prove that, yes, Laubenberg did indeed say something so incredibly stupid. Follow the link if you have to prove it to yourself.

All this rape theorizing is just a way to justify taking the right to choose away from even the victims of sexual violence. After all, if every fetus is the same thing as an actual infant and abortion really is murder, then carving out exceptions for rape and incest makes no sense at all. Women who are victims of sexual violence shouldn’t be allowed to kill their babies.

Of course, that explanation may be the truest, but it’s also not very popular. It’s as true to say that a fetus is a baby as it is to say that an acorn is an oak tree. And if the explanation isn’t very popular, then you lie. You lie your lying ass off and make up stories about how abortion following rape is unnecessary, instead of explaining that you can’t let a rape victim murder her “baby.”

This is why Republicans can’t shut up about rape and abortion. The lie causes enough outrage. The truth would be even worse. Between making up some crazy bullshit about rape and abortion and telling people what you really think, the crazy bullshit does a lot less damage.

A rare glimmer of logical consistency on the right

This morning, I wrote that if Republicans really believed their own “fetal pain” horseshit, they never would’ve amended their bill to make exceptions for victims of rape and incest. After all, the rationale behind the law was to protect a fetus from pain. So what difference would in make how that fetus came to be conceived?

“Imagine this all from the perspective of someone who believed every word in the original bill,” I wrote. “What you’re voting for is a law against torturing babies to death. Assuming that’s what you really believed, would you then support an exception to that law? Would you support allowing a woman to torture her baby to death, just because that child was conceived through rape or incest? I’m kind of thinking you would not. Not in a million years. It would be playing politics in an unconscionable way.”

Now Ed Kilgore offers an example of just how rare a logically consistent conservative actually is:

[Georgia Right to Life] broke with the National Right To Life Committee to oppose the “fetal pain” abortion bill on the House floor, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jim Galloway:

[T]he message of the last-minute flurry from GRTL was clear, as it urged its supporters to call their member of Congress to request a no vote on the “hijacked” bill.

“What they’ve done is target a particular class of children, those conceived in rape and incest,” [GRTL spox Suzanne] Ward said. “While Georgia Right to Life has the utmost sympathy for those victims, we can’t justify murder in those circumstances.”

And surprise, surprise, one of the co-sponsors of the original House bill, Rep. Paul Broun, denounced the bill and voted against it, carrying with him another Georgia colleague, Rep. Rob Woodall.

Kilgore goes on to write that Broun’s running for Senate and is eager to shore up his wingnut bona fides. But consider the giant loophole in the bill was and consider that National Right to Life backed it anyway. They obviously don’t believe this “fetal pain” crap, despite the fact that it’s becoming a cornerstone of their movement. They just want to chip away at the right to choose, one excuse is as good as any other, and if rape and incest get a free pass… Well, it’s fewer abortions in the long run anyway, which has been the whole damned point all along — along with a court challenge to Roe.

It might be tempting to give Broun and the GRTL some credit for being consistent in their reasoning, but unfortunately that consistency either means they actually believe the anti-science hoodoo they’re pushing or that they’re supremely committed to the lie.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

The successor to Republican rape theorizing: fetuses spanking it

ThinkProgress: As the House of Representatives prepares on Tuesday to consider huge legislative restrictions on a woman’s right to choose, one GOP congressman is using the idea that fetuses can masturbate to argue for more abortion restrictions.

On Monday evening, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), an Ob/Gyn by trade, told his colleagues to, “Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful”:

They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?

It’s tempting to look at this, think about Todd Akin and Trent Franks and conclude that these men are very stupid. And they may be. But the truth is that they don’t actually believe any of this crap, they’re just hoping you do. If they’re stupid, they’re stupid liars. Burgess doesn’t think fetuses whack it and he probably knows there’s no evidence that a 15-week-old fetus can feel or are even capable of experiencing anything. But he’s rationalizing his position, because stating it flat out would make it incredibly unpopular — he wants to pass legislation that can be used to overturn Roe v. Wade.

So he — like Todd Akin and Trent Franks — makes up stupid lies to justify his position. As always, the most religious in America are the least honest.

More waiting periods for abortion than for guns

Because, you know, it’s pro-life to have easy access to death machines and pro-liberty to try to make women give birth against their will…

Or wait, is it the other way around? I get confused. Conservative reasoning is so self-contradicting it’s hard to keep track of these things.

[source: ThinkProgress]

Rooting for the bad old days

Joel Pett, Lexington Herald-Leader.

Today in crazy: Rep. Stockman wants to arm fetuses… or something

I’m a little lost on what part of this is supposed to make any sense. I get that it’s supposed to be a joke, because Republicans find killing pregnant women and abortion providers  hilarious. But the logistics don’t quite work out right. Then again, Stockman is completely insane, so I suppose he saw it and thought, “It’s funny because it’s true!”

This low-wattage bulb is gunning to be the next Todd Akin — pun intended.

[h/t Raw Story]

Anti-choice students’ group distibutes “fetus dolls” in schools; mayhem ensues

Raw Story: A federal appeals court ruled that an anti-abortion group did not have the right to distribute rubber fetus dolls to a high school because the students destructive behavior on the dolls outweighed the group’s free speech to distribute them, according to Think Progress.

Students from an anti-abortion group called “Relentless” distributed rubber fetuses as propaganda to “put God back into the schools” at two high schools in Roswell, New Mexico, only to have the dolls destroyed in various ways.

“Both schools experienced doll-related disruptions that day. Many students pulled the dolls apart, tearing the heads off and using them as rubber balls or sticking them on pencil tops,” the ruling from United States Court of Appeals 10th Circuit said (PDF). “Others threw dolls and doll parts at the ‘popcorn’ ceilings so they became stuck. Dolls were used to plug toilets. Several students covered the dolls in hand sanitizer and lit them on fire. One or more male students removed the dolls’ heads, inverted the bodies to make them resemble penises, and hung them on the outside of their pants’ zippers.”

Teachers complained that the distribution of the dolls was distracting, according to the ruling. “While teachers were trying to instruct, students threw dolls and doll heads across classrooms, at one another, and into wastebaskets,” the ruling continued. “Some teachers said the disruptions took eight to 10 minutes each class period, and others said their teaching plans were derailed entirely. An honors freshman English class canceled a scheduled test because students had become engaged in name calling and insults over the topic of abortion. A Roswell security officer described the day as ‘a disaster’ because of the dolls.”

But this wasn’t the problem, believe it or not. When the student group saw the carnage they’d unleashed upon their schools, they lived up to their “Relentless” name, attempting to distribute the dolls again and hope for a more positive outcome. This was the problem. According to the report, they did this because they believed “it was their Christian duty” to repeat the fiasco. It was at this point that school administrators shut them down.

“The court ruled that the school was correct to block the distribution of the fetus dolls because the administration correctly anticipated they would cause disciplinary problems,” the report tells us.

America, where we can stop the distribution of foam rubber fetus dolls on the grounds that they’re a threat to public safety and order, but hot and cold running guns are A-OK.

Once they're born, it's, 'Get a job, kid!'

Lee Judge, Kansas City Star.