Who’s in charge of this party anyway?

Senate Candidate Todd Akin is now running away from his odious comment about “legitimate rape” and, in the process, proving he doesn’t have a damn clue about why it was so offensive in the first place. He’s now saying that he meant to say “forcible rape”, completely missing the point that nobody but completely out-of-touch conservatives believes that women rarely get pregnant from rape. The statistics show otherwise.

Akin’s not-so-subtle implication is that, if a women gets pregnant from rape, she must have enjoyed it.

This week the Republicans will put the finishing touches on their party platform. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have suddenly Etch-A-Sketched their positions on abortion being legal in the case of rape and now say they now support an exception being made when a woman is raped so that they are not forced to bear the child of their rapist if they choose not to. The question is how they square this with their own Party’s platform that is sure to be absent of that exception.

Let’s ask them.

Much more after the jump.

Hard to believe we STILL have to fight the War on Women

the Republican War on Women in full swing, including an anti-women Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, Planned Parenthood is launching a Women are Watching battleground state bus tour to educate and mobilize voters in 11 states over 17 days.

The tour with their iconic “Big Pink Bus” lands in Canton, Michigan TOMORROW, Tuesday, August 21, 2012. It’s no surprise. Women are under attack more profoundly in our state than in most others. Republicans in our state legislature are on a course to roll back nearly every gain in women’s reproductive freedoms that we’ve made.

Details after the jump.

Taking our country back…to the Stone Age

It’s astonishing in this day and age to find people that think so backward, so last century, that they feel perfectly comfortable making a statement like this in public:

First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

That’s Congressman Tom Akin, who is running for Senate in Missouri, on Fox KTVI-TV over the weekend.

Lots more after the jump.

Let’s you and him fight…

Tea partiers in western Michigan are taking on a strange adversary this month. In a widely-blogged screed from the Tea Party of West Michigan (“Influence policy, effect [sic] elections, protect the Constitution”), Tina DuPont is outraged the Right to Life of Michigan is supposedly supporting the formation of a state-run health insurance exchange mandated by the Affordable Care Act.

Details after the jump.

Larger version suitable for sharing after the jump.

What, you didn’t think we’d notice?

I received emails and phone calls this afternoon from Representatives Lisa Brown and Barb Byrum letting me know that Senate Republicans snuck in a last-minute notice that they will take up the anti-Choice H.B. 5711 tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. The hearing will take place at 10:00am in Room 110, Farnum Building, 125 W. Allegan, Lansing.

Details after the jump.

With friends like these… Tucked inside the Michigan Democratic Party platform is the following statement: We believe that women should have access to reproductive medical services and professional advice when they need it. We pledge our support for reproductive freedom, giving a woman the right to make her own choices in this matter. But we respect the individual conscience of […]

Vagina Power

A couple of days ago, V-Day, the group founded by Eve Ensler to end violence against women, started a Facebook event page called Vaginas Take Back the Capitol. Ensler, the creator of the Vagina Monologues, will be presenting her show there along with a whole host of other women including state representatives and senators.

In just two days, over 2,140 people have RSVPed.

This event is going to be huge.

Click through for more information and then submit your ideas for signs in the comments.

Hard to stop a freight train The Michigan House Republicans voted to pass one of the three anti-choice, anti-women bills that make up the omnibus package described as the most regressive legislation of its kind in the country. A deeply divided Michigan House on Wednesday approved new regulations for abortion providers after passionate floor debate on the issue. House Republicans […]

We’re still watching and we still vote

As I wrote yesterday, Planned Parenthood of Michigan brought nearly 500 protestors to the state Capitol yesterday to protest a package of bills that will make Michigan the most anti-choice, forced-birth state in the country. Photos and video from the rally can be found HERE.

In the face of the noisy protest, a scheduled vote was postponed in the full House and is likely to be voted on tomorrow.

Details and a link to an online petition after the jump.

We’re watching and we vote

State House Republicans today tabled a vote on a package of anti-woman, anti-choice bills that is being called the most regressive legislation of its kind in the country. With hundreds of protesters filling the Capitol building and grounds, mostly women dressed in pink t-shirts sporting the phrase “Women are watching and we vote”, a vote scheduled today was tabled.

Photos and video after the jump.