Concerned Women for America

from Talk to Action

As Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards got right with Jesus and the only "single-issue voters" that rate the Democratic Party's approval, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried talking the talk to enlist "pro-life" support for funding stem cell research.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has drawn guffaws from the pro-life community for comments saying that embryonic stem cell research, which involves the destruction of days-old human embryos, is a "gift from God." Her remarks came after the House approved a bill to force Americans to fund it.

"Science is a gift of God to all of us, and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure... And that is embryonic stem cell research," Pelosi said.

As Pelosi speaks of God’s gift of science, a Democratic Congress votes to spend $27 million more on abstinence-only programs and crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) than Bush had even asked for — thereby ensuring an increase in the rate of sexually transmitted infections and abortions among young people — while dumping millions of our tax dollars into the coffers of the same Religious Right abstinence-only industry working to criminalize safe abortion care, abolish stem cell research, and defeat the Prevention First program that Democrats claim to consider a high legislative priority.

While these politicians might fudge their positions on "a woman's right to choose," this action undeniably stamps them as just what the Religious Right accuses them of being: pro-abortion — because despite all their meaningless cant about "reducing the number of abortions," increasing the number of abortions is the only thing that abstinence-only programs guarantee to accomplish.

Oh. Whoops. I think that just made me an enemy of the state according to those freethinking folks who run Concerned Women for America. When they’re not out trying to get bloggers fired or arguing that no, really, they would never endorse a candidate, they seem to spend an awful lot of time thinking about women’s hoohaws. Their cunts. Their pussies. Their vaginas. (See? That’s how you’re supposed to use those words—to refer to that place of pleasure that women have between their legs.)

So, there’s this group of candidates who are throwing the word “transformation” around. And, then there’s this dire warning about a girl’s transformation zone. The transformation zone, is, of course, a precious thing that all unmarried girls are warned to keep safe from the wandering fingers or tongues or cocks of randy boys. But what’s a girl to do if she really wants to date a candidate who offers her dreams of transformational leadership? Do I have to be married in order to vote? If I’m a virgin, am I excluded from considering these dashing candidates with their naughty talk?

I am not an expert on China. Far from it. But I know hatred of the body when I see it. And it is just as ugly in China, or Afghanistan, or Iran, as it is in the United States.

This photo will give me nightmares. Because sometimes, I think that we, as a nation, are about 15 minutes away from this type of bullshit ourselves.

SHANGHAI, Dec. 12 - For people who saw the event on television earlier this month, the scene was like a chilling blast from a past that is 30 years distant: social outcasts and supposed criminals - in this case 100 or so prostitutes and a few pimps - paraded in front of a jeering crowd, their names revealed, and then driven away to jail without trial.

The police kept watch over the public shaming. Suspects were allowed to partly hide their faces with masks.

The act of public shaming was intended as the first step in a two-month campaign by the authorities in the southern city of Shenzhen to crack down on prostitution.

Imagine. Rounded-up prostitutes--but not their johns--paraded before a crowd in order to be humiliated and shamed. So what? So they'll never be forced to resort to prostitution to put food on their table again?

When Caoily was 10 months old, she came down with rotavirus. If you have children, and you've been through this, then you know how awful this common infection is. Everything you put into your child--in my case, breastmilk and some solids--comes out in a very short time as a watery, noxious, seemingly neverending river of shit that overflows diapers. I would breastfeed her, and she would be shitting simultaneously, covering both of us in it as I tried to get fluids into her to keep her from dehydrating.
Our pediatrician hospitalized her after 12 hours. For three days, she stayed on a simple solution of electrolytes and fluid through an IV in her leg, the only vein the anesthesiologist (I had insisted on an anesthesiologist) could find to puncture.
She was one of the lucky ones.

Another awe-inspiring fuckwaddery as uttered by the Concerned Women for America. But, in reading it, I was reminded that there is a huge difference between evangelical Christians and fundamentalist Christians. And while I am neither, I happen to think that the evangelicals may at least have the advantage of conscious thought on their side.

CWA President Wendy Wright said, "It is hard to believe that a foundation that gives millions to Planned Parenthood, International Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, and the Center for Reproductive Rights would give money to a group and not expect to see the results it wants. The ECI signers are linked to an initiative funded by a group utterly opposed to the basic Christian principle of life. While it is absolutely necessary that Christians be good stewards of the Earth, there is no Biblical basis for elevating the Earth above human beings in priority. We care for Nature so it can sustain God's crowning creation - the only thing made in His image - mankind. When the mission comes in conflict with the Biblical, pro-life stance that evangelicals live by, it negates itself."

What’s got their grandma-pant knickers in a twist? The fact that the Evangelical Climate Initiative, a group of evangelicals who think it’s time to deal with the impending disaster that is global warming, accepted a chunk of change from Hewlett Packard. It turns out, according to Ms. Wright, that HP wants to kill all the unborn babies in the world and convert them into silica. Okay. Not really. But the woman’s so bat-shit crazy, I would not be surprised if she argues such a thing.

Let's go back to the passage I’ve highlighted: Um. Does that register as cognitive dissonance to you?

I think I have officially declared war on the Concerned Women for America. I think I have decided that if there is only one thing I can do that will make a difference, it is that I will, on a regular basis, expose the general fuckwaddery that comprises their site, their position papers, and the articles that they post. Rather than quietly stewing over something I've read there, I want to cast light on it, in hopes that, exposed to sunlight, they will shrivel and die.

The Strawberry Bitch, as I have been affectionately called, has spoken.

Let us begin.

Okay. I admit it. I don't often go over to the Concerned Women for America web site expecting to read good news. I go over there to see what the latest spin is on the organization's goals for complete gender subjugation and reproductive slavery for women. Because you know, what we women want really, is to smell the leather of the boot that's holding our faces down.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

Sylvia Plath Daddy

I go to CWFA to read the longings by mostly white, mostly middle class women to be released of the burden of independence. How easy it would be to surrender everything--one's thoughts, one's body, one's soul--to a man who promised to love one forever and forever and ever as long as we always did what he said.

So, imagine my utter delight to read that CWFA is pissed. At Democrats. Who flip-flopped. The irony is killing me.


The good news from last week, which most of us missed in our rage over the other bullshit, is that Senate Bill 403, the one that would have thrown people in jail for transporting minors over state lines to get an abortion, failed. The Democrats killed it.

And, what makes it all the sweeter, is that eight Democrats, who had previously supported the Anti-Choice legislation, voted this time against it.

Meet the eight Democratic senators who flip-flopped on their vote to protect pregnant minors last weekend, causing the single most important piece of pro-life legislation in the 109th Congress – the Child Custody Protection Act (CCPA) (S.403) – to  die on the Senate floor barely hours before Congress recessed.

Evan Bayh (Indiana)