Censoring Doonesbury on Abortion: It’s So Sad It’s Not Even Funny

Important: All passwords were reset on 06/15/11. Old passwords will no longer work. Click here to retrieve your password.
Login
Logout
Subscribe to Our Free Dewsletter

Like the Dew?

We are non-commercial, all volunteer and supported by our readers. Please help sustain the Dew by making a donation.

Jodi Jacobson

Jodi L. Jacobson is a long-time leader in the health and development community and an advocate with extensive experience in public health, gender equity, human rights, environment and demographic issues. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of RH Reality Check. In September 2011, Ms. Jacobson was awarded the "Preserving Core Values in Science" Award by the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals. Previously, Ms. Jacobson was the Director of Advocacy at American Jewish World Service, where she established a new department, leading the organization’s efforts to mobilize the American Jewish community toward ending the genocide in Darfur, fighting global AIDS, ensuring access to quality basic education worldwide, addressing the global food crisis, and promoting global debt relief and effective anti-poverty policies, among other issues. From 1994 to 2007, Jodi served as founder and Executive Director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) (est. 1994), an organization that monitors and seeks to promote accountability of US international policy to women’s reproductive and sexual health and rights.
Number of posts: 3
Email address: email
Facebook: Facebook
Twitter: Twitter

Posts by Jodi Jacobson:

Body Politics

Censoring Doonesbury on Abortion: It’s So Sad It’s Not Even Funny

by Jodi Jacobson | 5, Add your Comment | Mar 14, 2012

What does it say about the state of our society when so many state legislators seem to make the passage of laws de-humanizing women their main priority, but newspapers are afraid of running comic strips satirizing these laws?

Garry Trudeau, the brilliant political cartoonist, has produced a series on forced trans-vaginal sonogram laws in Texas, intended to run in all papers that syndicate his comic strip. The strip depicts a “shaming room” and counseling by ridiculous anti-choice legislators in an effort to drive home how harmful these laws are.

Except not all papers who regularly run Trudeau will run this week’s strip.

Read on →

War on Peaceful Protest

Your Body Under Arrest: Police in Riot Gear Remove Peaceful Women’s Rights Protestors in Virginia

by Jodi Jacobson | 4, Add your Comment | Mar 5, 2012

You might think that the right wing in this country was getting the message that women will no longer stand for legal, verbal, and physical abuse and harassment, especially by elected officials. You would especially think that would be the case in Virginia where former Vice Presidential aspirant Governor Bob McDonnell, who is contemplating signing into law a forced ultrasound bill after doing women a “favor” and taking out the forced trans-vaginal ultrasounds initially required, has been widely pilloried. You would also think the right-wing would be cautious after a week in which the seemingly untouchable Rush Limbaugh has, as of this writing, lost seven corporate sponsors over his debasing remarks about Sandra Fluke.

But you would be wrong.

Read on →

Body Politics

Va. Governor Backs Off

by Jodi Jacobson | 3, Add your Comment | Feb 23, 2012

Today, after a week of media coverage of a bill mandating that women seeking abortion undergo medically unnecessary state-sanctioned trans-vaginal ultrasounds, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is now backing down. A little.

Over the past year, Virginia has been a “leader” in passing laws to harass and intimidate abortion providers and patients. Recently, for example, and despite widespread condemnation by the public health and medical communities, McDonnell signed into law regulations for clinics providing abortion care intended to do nothing other than shut them down. In this instance, medical evidence meant… well… nothing to him.

Now, however, angling for a role as Vice President in the 2012 election, watching the backlash against the far right’s efforts to politicize women’s health, and after a week of intense media scrutiny of a plan to mandate trans-vaginal ultrasounds (including by RH Reality Check) medical evidence has suddenly become very, very important to the governor.

Read on →

Could it be that you and your children may be too clean?

Modern mankind may be too clean, that is, not dirty enough. That may surprise you. Today we take personal hygiene to be a standard in the developed world, not only healthy, but also a state which gracious people routinely adopt. It hasn't always been so. As close back as 100-200 years ago, cleansing yourself on a regular basis might mean a semi-annual or monthly bath. Royalty of the days of old thought that the long-hanging germs on your body fought off disease, and kept you healthy. Hence, few baths. From the year 1075, one monk living in Cluny, wrote: "As to our baths, Read on →

The Gathering

I can recommend a few days in Ireland to reset your clock: geographically, politically, economically and culturally. For those hazy about geography, Ireland is on the northwest edge of Europe. Clouds traversing the ocean from America absorb Atlantic moisture, dumping it at first landfall; hence Ireland’s rainy climate and its reputation as The Emerald Isle. I’m here for two weeks holiday, flying Dulles to Dublin with the son I live near in Virginia. He’s bound for England on business. Arriving at Dublin’s beautiful modern airport (built just before the financial collapse of 2008) one appreciates how the 1990’s engendered a sense of boom and Read on →

Barbarians inside the gates

We are barbarians. I can't take credit for saying that, although I completely agree. My friend did that, just after I posted this video on my Facebook page: I was all set to write about how Charles Ramsey isn't a hero. But this, this makes me realize that I was wrong about that. Here I was thinking Ramsey, the guy who answered Amanda Berry's cries for help, ending the imprisonment of three women in Cleveland, shouldn't be called a hero because he just did the right thing. My argument was that we've set the bar way too low for bestowing hero Read on →

Heritage Inaction

For some reason, a letter from the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation was characterized as having been received by NBC News, as if it were some sort of privileged communication. In fact, the thing was a press release and rather obviously designed to change the conversation about the Heritage Foundation from trying to defend the indefensible "study" of Hispanic intellectual insufficiency to food stamps, a real two-fer issue. Two-fer in the sense of being offensive on two fronts since the dollars doled out represent a subsidy to industrial agriculture, even as they serve to remind the indigent that, if they're Read on →

LikeTheDew.com

Sections

Our Writers

Jodi Jacobson

Posts by Jodi Jacobson:

Body Politics

Censoring Doonesbury on Abortion: It’s So Sad It’s Not Even Funny

War on Peaceful Protest

Your Body Under Arrest: Police in Riot Gear Remove Peaceful Women’s Rights Protestors in Virginia

Body Politics

Va. Governor Backs Off

Worthy of Comment

Also on the Dew

Could it be that you and your children may be too clean?

The Gathering

Barbarians inside the gates

Heritage Inaction