This Week in Your Uterus (Video)

Choose Life Inc.

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Have you been keeping up with #uterusgate? Last week, Mother Jones told the story of a Florida Democratic state rep who was rebuked by House Republican leaders for suggesting that his wife “incorporate her uterus” to keep conservatives from interfering with her lady business. A progressive meme ensued: See Twitter’s #GOPnames4uterus. But this week, the Sunshine State’s right-wing lawmakers showed no signs of a U-turn in their war on the U-word. Here’s the haps:

1) Have You Registered Your Uterus Website Yet?

Well, not this one: incorporatemyuterus.com. The ACLU of Florida has already snatched that one up! Inspired by Rep. Scott Randolph (D-Orlando), the original utterer of the now-famous U-line, the civil-liberties group wants women to register their nether regions through the site: “[B]y doing so, you can send a message to the Florida Legislature that less regulation and government intrusion begins with a woman’s uterus.” Sounds like a great idea…until Donald Trump stages a hostile takeover of your uterus. Economics, people.

2) Abortion Providers Are “Disengaged”

MJ‘s Kate Sheppard reported yesterday that a bill requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before an abortion is sailing through the state’s legislature. (As Kate points out, it’s one of 18 anti-choice laws under consideration in Florida.) The floor debate on this one’s been lively; at one point, a Democratic lawmaker asked the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ronda Storms (R-Valrico), just what she expected abortion providers to tell women about their ultrasound images. Her answer? Not much, because abortion providers are terrible people:

“Abortion providers generally don’t view the baby as a baby,” she said. “They view the baby as a fetus. They do not describe little legs and little feet. They describe the baby in very disengaged terms. I would be very surprised to hear an abortion practitioner be describing a baby that he or she is about to abort in terms of his babyhood or humanhood—but that’s a subject for debate on another day.”

Perhaps not much of a surprise, coming from a woman who’s called Planned Parenthood “prodeath from its founding.

3) Choose Life…and Welfare for Anti-Choice “Clinics”

For years, Florida’s had “Choose Life” license plates, featuring little kids drawn in shaky crayon-style lines. Since their creation, 70 percent of the revenue from their sales has gone to county governments to meet “the physical needs of pregnant women looking to make an adoption plan for their unborn child.” The other 30 percent went back to Choose Life Inc., which uses the cash to open “crisis pregnancy centers” with a bad habit of lying to women seeking abortions (PDF).

Well, goodbye to all that! No, not the plates, just the government revenue. A new bill in Florida would send all the money to Choose Life Inc., with none left over to care for women who’ve chosen to carry their pregnancy to term. Congratulations on choosing life, young woman! Now, until we can place you kid in the adoption agency, buy your own damned formula and diapers.

4) Rachel Maddow Talks Lady Parts

In one of those thoroughly satisfying “about time” moments, Rep. Randolph took his uterus-mentionin’ potty mouth on The Rachel Maddow Show. “They want to control it, but I guess they don’t want to respect it,” he tells RM. Watch your tone, young man!

 

5) Reproductive Rhyme Time!

And finally, if you haven’t read editorial coordinator Jen Phillips’ uterus-limerick post, you’re in the wrong. Check out her comment section for even more reader-provided U-rhyme fun. We could all use the laugh.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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