The Activist Beat with Rose Aguilar, host of Your Call on KALW in San Francisco is a weekly roundup of progressive activism that the mainstream media ignores, undercovers, or misrepresents. <\/em><\/p>\nThis Sunday marks the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision recognizing a woman\u2019s constitutional right to have a safe and legal abortion. <\/p>\n
Women\u2019s rights and pro-choice activists across the country are planning to mark the anniversary with rallies and demonstrations to express support for a woman\u2019s fundamental right to abortion and reproductive justice.<\/p>\n
If Republican presidential hopefuls Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul had their way, Roe v. Wade would be overturned. These four men are so extreme, they believe abortion should be illegal, even in cases of rape, incest, and threats to a woman\u2019s health. That needs to be repeated. These four men believe that abortion should be illegal, even in cases of rape and incest. They believe that if your sister or best female friend is raped, she should be forced to go through with the pregnancy. <\/p>\n
Why isn\u2019t this getting more attention?<\/p>\n
During the last presidential campaign, Republicans used the abortion issue to get votes as they always do, but they didn\u2019t go this far. In 2008, Republican Senator John McCain, a supporter of a Constitutional amendment that would outlaw abortion, was heavily criticized for pressuring the Republican Party to change its platform to recognize exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.<\/p>\n
Here we are just four years later. Perry, Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul have all signed the first-of-its kind Personhood Pledge from Personhood USA. That\u2019s the organization that is putting so-called personhood amendments on ballots across the country. <\/p>\n
By signing this pledge, these candidates support a \u201chuman life amendment to the Constitution, and endorse legislation to make clear that the 14th amendment protections apply to unborn children.\u201d <\/p>\n
They also oppose assisted suicide and embryonic stem cell research. Rick Santorum is so extreme, he believes states should have the power to ban birth control. <\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s Ron Paul. Most of the coverage about Ron Paul focuses on his popular views about the military industrial complex and the drug war, but what\u2019s missing is his extreme position on abortion. He calls himself \u201cstrongly pro-life\u201d and believes that life begins at conception and abortion leads to euthanasia. <\/p>\n
Ron Paul added an addendum to his Personhood pledge, stating that the 14th amendment has no role to play in protecting a fetus. He believes the states should decide. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to note that in November, when the so-called personhood movement backed a ballot initiative in Mississippi defining a fertilized egg as a human being, it lost by 58 percent. That tells you how extreme this measure is and how out of touch these men are with one of the most conservative voting blocks in the country. <\/p>\n
Tonight in South Carolina, these men are attending Personhood USA\u2019s Presidential Pro-life Forum. I\u2019m guessing very few questions will be asked about what happens once the child is born. Their records are horrible on issues like early childhood education, children\u2019s health insurance, or child poverty. In 2010, 16 million children lived in poverty. Do these so-called pro-life candidates ever address these issues? Of course they don\u2019t. <\/p>\n
The Children\u2019s Defense Fund scores members of Congress based on how they vote on issues of importance to children. Representative Ron Paul is one of the worst representatives for children scoring zero percent. Even though the state of Texas has one of the worst child abuse records in the country, Governor Rick Perry has consistently cut child abuse prevention funding. <\/p>\n
The new motto for men like Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul: Pro-life Until Birth. Let\u2019s end this \u201cpro-life\u201d charade once and for all. They know the personhood amendment won\u2019t pass, but rolling back reproductive rights is now becoming normalized. <\/p>\n
So where is the outrage? Hopefully we\u2019ll see it on the streets over the next week. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Activist Beat with Rose Aguilar, host of Your Call on KALW in San Francisco is a weekly roundup of progressive activism that the mainstream media ignores, undercovers, or misrepresents. This Sunday marks the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision recognizing a woman\u2019s constitutional right to have a safe and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-radio-commentaries","category-the-activist-beat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Activist](\"\/home\/graphics\/activist_beat.JPG\")
The Activist Beat with Rose Aguilar, host of Your Call on KALW in San Francisco is a weekly roundup of progressive activism that the mainstream media ignores, undercovers, or misrepresents. <\/em><\/p>\n