Horrifying News from South Dakota

I don't normally share my views on hot button topics like abortion (I'm very pro-choice) on my blogs, but as a woman who has been raped and knows what it is like to fear for her life in case of unplanned pregnancy, I just couldn't let this horror go by without comment or post. This is from the ACLU's Blog of Rights:

We'll See You in Court: South Dakota's Governor Signs Outrageous Law Restricting Abortion Care

Today, South Dakota's governor, Dennis Daugaard, signed a bill that creates unprecedented restrictions on access to abortion care. As we've blogged before, this law requires women to wait 72 hours between the first counseling session with the doctor and the abortion; it also requires women to first visit "crisis pregnancy centers," entities that are notorious for providing false and misleading information; and requires doctors to tell the woman of any possible risk factor published in medical and psychological journals since 1972. These new restrictions are on top of the long list of abortion restrictions in South Dakota, and come from a state that has one abortion provider.

If the law were to take effect, the consequences for women in South Dakota would be devastating. Given that Planned Parenthood is the only abortion provider in South Dakota, and they are in Sioux Falls, some women already must travel great distances to see a physician. But under the law, they would have to make to make two trips: one to visit with the doctor in person, and then another 72 hours later for the abortion. In the meantime, they must visit a crisis pregnancy center, which, under the law's requirements, must be anti-choice.

At the crisis pregnancy center, the woman must tell the staff her private reasons for having the abortion and give the name of her doctor. These intrusions into women's private lives are outrageous, and they also put physicians at risk for violence and harassment.

And just in case the law was not cruel enough, there is no exception for women who have been raped, who are survivors of incest, or have a wanted pregnancy that is doomed.

So we're headed to court. We won't stand for this blatant mistreatment of women and blatantly unconstitutional law. We'll join Planned Parenthood in court to stop the law in its tracks so no woman is faced with these burdensome, humiliating requirements.

I sincerely hope that Governor Daugaard gets his arse whupped in court, because the women of his state deserve much better treatment than this. They deserve access to clean and safe reproductive health care, and not back alley abortions or access to only those horrible 'crisis' pregnancy centers that offer no solutions at all to a woman in distress with unplanned and unwanted pregnancy.

The St Patrick's Day Greenish Blues

So I was wandering through a poetry list made by some Lit professor who hates all the classic poets I adore (like Carl Sandburg and Pablo Neruda), when I came across this poem by TS Elliot, who is, apparently, still in favor in the academic community.
Anyway, it occurred to me that what he's saying here could easily be changed to be about Crohns Disease. So forgive me, Thomas Sterns Elliot, if I replace the word "river" with the word "colon" and contemplate the 'strong brown god' that is my troubled digestive system.

(The Dry Salvages—presumably les trois sauvages—is a small
group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E. coast of Cape Ann,
Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages.
Groaner: a whistling buoy.)



The Dry Salvages

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the COLON
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting



Anyway, I've been on Humira for 8 months now, and have gained 45 pounds back in that amount of time, as well as gaining headaches every Monday and Tuesday, joint pain in my shoulders and elbows and back, plus a pica-like tendency to need to chew ice 24/7, probably due to anemia and vitamin D deficiency. So while I am taking some iron tablets and vitamin D supplements, I still have painful flares and trouble going to the bathroom at least once a week, which is still too much. I am still also going to the WIO gym 5 times a week, and I've gotten Jim signed up at the MVF gym, so that's a step in the right direction, but it's still depressing that I seem to be gaining weight without changing my diet that much. But, since I have no insurance, I can't go back to see my gastro doc, so I am going to have to just deal with where I am now and try to accept myself as I am at the moment.