Pop quiz, fellow progressives: how do you refer to the two sides of the abortion debate?

Did you say "pro-life" and "pro-choice"? Those are the terms I generally use when talking about the issue too. And, as I was reminded by a conversation between colleagues this morning, it doesn't make much sense.

For those of us who may have even the slightest inclination to give anti-abortion activists the benefit of the doubt, the time may have come to shed our last feeling of sympathy.

The Bush White House, in another spectacular display of ideology over science, is proposing a regulation that would deny federal funding to any medical facility that does not allow pharmacists to refuse to hand out Plan B, IUDs and even Birth Control pills for religious reasons. In classic right-wing strawman semantics, this is framed as a matter of "religious freedom" vs. patients' rights.

This alone, I expect, should not be too surprising. We have always been familiar with the Right's ongoing desire to overturn Roe v. Wade. But a deeper look reveals a new ideological battle front altogether: contraception. The Dominionist Right is now beginning to frame contraception as equivalent to abortion.

We would do well to remember that those who style themselves as "pro-life" are not simply anti-abortion. They are against modern sexuality and female sexual independence in their entirety. That the Dominionists are increasingly unveiling their radical agenda may be both a blessing and a curse. A short-term curse that hurts families with draconian punishments, but perhaps a useful opportunity that can help us begin to reverse the damage caused by this utterly wicked, perverse and backwards movement.

Note: This is going to be a brief entry because I have a lot going on at the moment and haven't really had time to process today's events.

The quick of it is, there is a very large anti-abortion demonstration being held in front of the Coffman Student Union at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and the pro-choice groups WSAC and the UPCC need people to protest with us. We'll be starting at 8am tomorrow (the anti-choicers are returning at 6am) and going all day, no matter what the weather, until the anti-choicers leave. As a reward for our hard work afterwards, we'll all be heading to MPIRG's Take Back the Night rally (6pm, Loring Park).

You can read a more detailed description of the day's events and tomorrow's plans after the break.

I'd like to preface everything by declaring that I am ridiculously inconsistent when it comes to journaling. My schedule is erratic at best and nonexistent at worst. Also, when I haven't written in a while I tend to ramble, but I promise there's a point buried somewhere. So, in the case that this "blog" isn't touched for several weeks after this entry, it doesn't mean that I'm not doing anything. Far from it, I find myself more regularly (ha!) active than ever before.

A hearty, post Summit hello to everyone!! Judith Schaeffer, PFAW Foundation's legal director, and I had a fabulous time at the YP4 Summit in a workshop on how the courts affect our progressive agenda and what we can do about it. Turnout for the workshop was tremendous and we had a really engaging discussion about the rights and liberties we sometimes take for granted that, in fact, are grounded in important decisions by the Supreme Court. We all know about Roe v. Wade, but we also talked about things like the right to obtain contraceptives, the right of same-sex couples to engage in sex; the right of high school students to wear black armbands to school to protest the war (in the case decided by the Supreme Court, called Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, it involved the Vietnam War, but it's obviously still relevant today); the right of interracial couples to marry; the right of an extended family of a grandmother, her son and two grandsons to live together in the same dwelling; and, of course, the case of Brown v. Board of Education, involving the right of African American children to a public school system free of legally-mandated segregation.