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Saturday Afternoon Check In

Posted by Michelle Moquin on May 19th, 2012

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Good afternoon!

I am sorry that this is such a late post. I was able to begin my blog write for the day, but not able to finish it. My blog shut down around 8:30 AM. I had tried until 9:30 AM to get back on but had no success. And unfortunately what I had thought I had saved was obviously not saved, because when I logged on upon my return at 5:07, the only part of my blog post, was a comment that I made to Peter.

I think in light of what Anonz wrote, my gut is, my blog was shut down this morning. I could be wrong but it is rare that I can’t get on. And then I ran out of time and had to leave to attend my grandmother’s funeral, and celebration. Hence I did not have access to the internet nor a way to finish today’s write. And, from the time stamp of the last comment from this morning on yesterday’s blog post, it seems that no one else was able to get in as well.

That being said, since it is so late in the day, I am just going to end it here and HOPE that after I publish, it will be possible for you to post your comments on whatever is on your mind.

:)

Peter: Thank you. It’s always nice to see you here. HOPE is good but I agree with you, I too wish Guam had a voice in the voting process, and a clean sweep and a toss in the garbage can is my plan. I HOPE there are many others who are with me.

That’s it for me. Blog me. 

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

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Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2012

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"

Posted in ChitChat | 2 Comments »

Flap Your Lips Friday

Posted by Michelle Moquin on May 18th, 2012


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Good morning!

Mitt Romney Bain Capital Record Targeted By Obama Campaign

President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign on Monday morning opened a new front in its election faceoff with presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, releasing documentary-style videos and a full website portraying Romney as a job-destroying corporate takeover artist.

The Obama campaign put out a two-minute video and a six-minute video featuring interviews with former workers at GST Steel, a company acquired by Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital in 1993. GST shut down its Kansas City plant in 2001, costing about 750 workers their jobs.

The Obama campaign has also launched a website, RomneyEconomics.com, which focuses on GST and two other companies that went bankrupt after Bain acquired them: Dade International, a medical diagnostics equipment firm, and Stage Stores, a chain of small-town department stores.

That means there are likely to be more videos such as the ones released today focusing on GST.

For now, the Obama campaign will be airing the two-minute ad in Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Virginia, the campaign said. The six-minute video can only be seen online.

The campaign describes GST this way on RomneyEconomics.com:

Kansas City’s GST Steel was a successful company that had been making steel rods for 103 years when Mitt Romney and his partners took control in 1993. They cut corners and extracted profit from the business at every turn, placing it deeply in debt. When the company eventually declared bankruptcy, workers were denied their full pensions and health insurance, and the federal government was forced to step in and bail out the pension fund.

When Reuters wrote about GST in January, Romney spokesman Ryan Williams offered this comment: “Bain Capital invested in many businesses. While not every business was successful, the firm had an excellent overall track record and created jobs with well-known companies like Staples, Dominos Pizza and Sports Authority.”

Watch both GST videos here:

UPDATE: 9:05 a.m. — The Romney campaign responded with a written statement:

“We welcome the Obama campaign’s attempt to pivot back to jobs and a discussion of their failed record. Mitt Romney helped create more jobs in his private sector experience and more jobs as Governor of Massachusetts than President Obama has for the entire nation,” said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul.

“President Obama has many questions to answer as to why his administration used the stimulus to reward wealthy campaign donors with taxpayer money for bad ideas like Solyndra, but 23 million Americans are still struggling to find jobs,” Saul said. “If the Obama administration was less concerned about pleasing their wealthy donors and more concerned about creating jobs, America would be much better off.”

UPDATE: 9:55 a.m. — The ads have generated a significant amount of pushback from beyond the Romney campaign as well.

The Daily Caller points out that Romney was no longer “running the day-to-day activities” at Bain Capital when GST Steel went bankrupt in 2001.

A former Obama adviser, Steve Rattner (himself a former private equity executive),says the ads are “unfair” (the RNC pushed this out).

And the Washington Examiner suggests that Romney responds by pointing out that Obama cost tens of thousands of jobs by pushing the auto companies to close dealerships in exchange for a bailout.

UPDATE: 3:45 p.m. — The Obama campaign’s ad buy is only for one day,href=”http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/05/obamas-bain-ad-a-day-engagement-123398.html” target=”_hplink”>according to Politico, making it more of a play to earn media coverage than a real paid ad campaign intended to persuade voters.

*******

Readers: I am in a 2-day seminar so I am going to be brief..but as usual, you are welcome to start flapping your lips. Blog me. 

Cuddles: I just had to chime in. LOVE the video of Ms Summer – One of my fave songs. May she continue to showcase her talent wherever she is. Thanks for posting. She will be missed. My condolences to the family.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

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Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2012

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"

Posted in Political Powwow | 11 Comments »

Wonderful Servicewomen Of The World

Posted by Michelle Moquin on May 17th, 2012

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Good morning!

Unseen: Trailblazing Military Women Forced To Fight For Recognition, Equal Treatment

After a rocket-propelled grenade sent the Black Hawk helicopter tumbling out of the sky over Iraq, the medics got to work fast on the co-pilot, Capt. Duckworth. Standard operating procedure: cut away the desert-camo uniform before burnt fabric melds with burnt flesh. Get at the wounds. Stop the bleeding. Save what’s left.

When you show up at Walter Reed Medical Center in that kind of condition, you show up naked, with nothing except the hospital gown. So you’re given a “comfort kit,” a little backpack containing some toiletries and clothes. Duckworth awoke there around Thanksgiving 2004, a few weeks after the shootdown, to find a comfort kit waiting with slippers, a shaving kit and men’s jockey shorts.

She had to laugh.

“It was great. I don’t have feet, so I can’t wear the slippers, and you know, I just had my legs blown off, it’s not like I’m gonna shave my legs any time soon,” she chuckles. “I don’t have jockey, I’m not gonna wear men’s jockey shorts.”

Tammy Duckworth had just become the first female double amputee from Iraq, losing one leg above the knee and one below, but she had been a woman for a while already.

“They just had kits for men,” Duckworth says. “It never occurred to them to make kits for women.”

Duckworth is one of more than 282,000 American women who have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan during a decade of war, according to Pentagon figures. That’s more than six times the number of women deployed in the first Gulf War and more than 35 times the number sent to Vietnam.

(An interactive timeline of U.S. women at war can be found here.)

The 207,308 women currently serving on active duty comprise some 14.5 percent of the U.S. armed forces, according to the military. While more than 2 million women have served since the Revolutionary War, some 1.9 million of them are currently living — an unprecedented generation of women at war. The number of female veterans hasdoubled since 1990 and is expected to skyrocket given further drawdowns in the Middle East.

They are helicopter pilots, linguists and flight nurses, mechanics, mental health administrators and homeland security-force directors, intelligence officers and combat correspondents, Ph.D.s and amputees, Purple Heart recipients and prisoners of war. Over seventy have become generals. Two, one in the Army and another in theAir Force, have four stars.

Duckworth, who received the Purple Heart, is one of 868 servicewomen who have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. One hundred forty-four have been killed.

tammy duckworth

Tammy Duckworth looks on as President Barack Obama departs from the White House in November 2009.

 

Yet while women are undeniably at war, the full extent of their roles and capabilities still isn’t formally recognized by the military brass. Today’s servicewomen perform many of the roles that official policy says they cannot. Often, their service and suffering remain ignored by or invisible to the Pentagon and the public.

“First thing we can do for women veterans is to raise the awareness that women are veterans,” says Maj. Gen. Irene Trowell-Harris, director of the Center for Women Veterans at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the first African American woman to reach the rank of general in the National Guard.

Of the 1.2 million positions available throughout the military, 252,179, roughly 21 percent, are closed to women, according to a Department of Defense report to Congress ordered under the defense budget bill for fiscal year 2011. At the report’s release in February, the DOD announced plans to open 14,325 more jobs — an additional 1.2 percent of that total – slated for implementation on Monday.

All graphics by Chris Spurlock. A detailed table can be found here.

“The Department of Defense is committed to removing all barriers that would prevent Service members from rising to the highest level of responsibility that their talents and capabilities warrant,” the report says. But it continues, voicing the concern of those who oppose women in combat: “There are serious practical barriers, which if not approached in a deliberate manner, could adversely impact the health of our Service members and degrade mission accomplishment. Change of this magnitude requires sufficient time and resources.”

Incremental reforms, however, don’t address the fundamental problem: a segregated system that denies women the chance to compete for the most elite positions in the military — typically the fast track to advancement through the ranks — as well as the respect that their service and sacrifice has earned.

That hasn’t stopped Duckworth, named President Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs in 2009 and now a Democratic candidate for Congress in Illinois. Yet for every Duckworth, thousands of military women remain trapped between the Pentagon’s policy and practice, between rhetoric and reality.

‘LET’S NOT TELL HIM UNTIL THE WAR’S OVER’

American women have served in the military since there has been an America to serve. During the Civil War, women on both sides disguised themselves as men to enlist. More than 400,000 women served during the World Wars, but as the United States demobilized, the military pushed women back to the homefront.

During Vietnam, Congress began to recognize that more women were needed for the U.S. military machine, repealing legal provisions that had prevented them from comprising more than 2 percent of the nation’s troops. With the end of the draft in 1973, the military turned greater attention toward recruiting women, but struggled to treat them as equals — the Pentagon’s 1988 “Risk Rule” officially excluded women even from support missions if they were deemed as likely as combat troops to take a bullet.

The first Gulf War soon proved this doctrine untenable, however, as a clear gap emerged between the risk rule and the facts on the ground.

Rhonda Cornum lived in that gap. The call to war was a big change for Cornum, a biochemistry and nutrition Ph.D. recruited by the Army in 1978 to study wound healing — when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, she was primarily conducting research on helicopter pilot performance and helmet-mounted displays. For Operation Desert Storm, the Army assigned her as a flight-surgeon to an attack-helicopter battalion, directly contravening the risk rule.

commander cornum

You know, women aren’t supposed to be in combat, Cornum recalls a colleague telling her at their staging grounds in Saudi Arabia just before the U.S. air assault on Iraq.

“Right, I know that,” was her answer.

Do you think the colonel knows you’re a girl? he asked.

“I said, ‘Well, I’ve been living in the parking space next to him in the Dhahran Airport parking lot for the last four months,’” she says. “‘If he doesn’t know by now, let’s not tell him until the war’s over.’”

This kind of doublethink was a standard part of Cornum’s experience in the Gulf. “So when people would come around or dignitaries would come,” she says, “they’d send me off to the motor pools.”

Yet by the end of the Gulf War, Cornum had participated in roughly one-quarter of her battalion’s attack missions. “One time, it didn’t go all that well,” she deadpans.

rhonda cornum
Rhonda Cornum deplanes after being released from Iraqi captivity on March 6, 1991.

 

On the last day of the war in 1991, Cornum’s Black Hawk was downed by Iraqi forces during a rescue mission. She broke both her arms and a finger, tore knee ligaments and, yes, took a bullet, but nonetheless managed to crawl out of the wrecked bird. She and the two other survivors of her eight-person crew spent a week as Iraqi prisoners of war before being released.

“Nobody made any comments about, ‘Oh, she shouldn’t have been there,’” says Brig. Gen. Cornum, who was awarded the Purple Heart. “My boss got promoted again.”

A 1993 Government Accountability Office study concluded that the some 40,000 servicewomen who deployed to the Gulf performed well on all fronts. Congress quickly repealed legislation dating to the 1950s that barred women from flying in combat and serving on combat ships.

Yet while the Pentagon also lauded servicewomen’s combat performance, the official expansions of opportunities for military women did not include ground combat. Instead, Clinton Defense Secretary Les Aspin replaced the risk rule in 1994 with the “Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule,” still the military’s official policy. Aspin’s rule gave women more options than the risk rule, but it also severely constrains them, excluding them from ground combat that could involve hostile fire and physical contact “well forward on the battlefield.”

His rule also gave the services broad discretion to further restrict women from positions that entail physically demanding tasks, special operations, direct combat, stationing or cohabitating with combat troops and a lack of privacy.

With the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and a global “war on terror,” America’s definition of combat radically changed. The Pentagon’s policy, however, has not.

An April report by the Congressional Research Service argues that the Defense Department’s embrace of counterinsurgency strategies should prompt officials to rethink more than 14,325 positions. “Recent changes in Army doctrine have in many ways called into question the ground exclusion policy, or at least, the services’ adherence to it,” the report’s author writes.

“In 1994, we didn’t know what was coming,” says Rajiv Srinivasan, who led an Army platoon as a lieutenant in Afghanistan. Now, he says, “There is no front line, no protected circle where we can hide the women.”

ATTACHMENT VS. ASSIGNMENT

The military is about to roll back the part of Aspin’s rule that bars women from officially serving in direct ground combat units below the brigade level — allowing them to be assigned at the narrower battalion level, in specialties in which they are already serving. It will also lift the portion barring women from serving in units or positions that co-locate with direct ground combat units that are closed to them. The Army accounts for the majority of the 14,325 affected positions.

Army Maj. Gen. Gary Patton, the Defense Department’s principal director for personnel policy, says the changes are a response to servicewomen’s performance during the past decade of war. Like many throughout the chain of command, he says the new policy isn’t a change in at least one way: women are already mission-critical.

majgen gary patton
Maj. Gen. Gary Patton discusses the DOD Women in Service Review at a Pentagon press conference on Feb. 9.

 

“Women have shown immense courage and have contributed greatly to our mission — we simply could not accomplish our objectives without them,” Patton, who served as a top commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, says in an email.

This line of reasoning also acknowledges that the military has for years tacitly violated the spirit of its own policy, if not the letter. While the 1994 rule bars women from being officially assigned to combat units, they can still be assigned to support positions “attached to” combat units. Thousands of the “new” positions opening to women are just formal assignment, rather than attachment, to units they already serve with, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez.

Both Patton and Lainez cite as an example the position of Army tank mechanic among those newly opening to women. But Spc. Latoya Lucas served in a comparable role nine years ago.

Under Aspin’s rule, Lucas could not be assigned to an infantry battalion or brigade. She could, however, be attached as a mechanic to an infantry division, as she was to the 101st Airborne a month after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She was part of an engineering unit tasked with resupply and infrastructure work in Mosul, an Iraqi provincial capital where fighting was heavy.

“DOD’s policy regarding women in combat was due for a revision,” she says, “particularly because so many [Iraq] and [Afghanistan] female veterans have found themselves in combat situations.”

Lucas was one of them. During a supply run, she was blown out of her Humvee when it took a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade. She suffered burns, shrapnel wounds, broken bones, hearing loss, paralysis and traumatic brain injury, as well as intestinal damage that required a permanent ostomy — surgery to reattach her intestine to the surface of the skin.

“I will have these ailments for the rest of my life,” Lucas writes in an email. “When I look at my scars, I cannot help but feel resilient. You have to be.”

She received her Purple Heart at her bedside during her five months at Walter Reed. A year later, she was forced to retire, even as she continued what would total two and a half years of rehab to regain her mobility. Now a public speaker, she continues to serve in a different way: Late last year, she was appointed to the VA’s advisory committee on women veterans.

latoya

At the committee’s annual meeting in late March, Lucas sits toward the end of a long table surrounded by glass and a projector screen, her sleeveless white shirt an outlier in a roomful of somber suits. Dark lines of scar tissue snake across the rippled skin of her bare arm. She asks about the transfer of medical records for combat veterans — a particular concern to women seeking treatment for injuries that, officially, they shouldn’t need.

“Did you serve in theater?” asks Michael Cardarelli, the VA’s principal deputy undersecretary for benefits and one of the only men in the room. From the head of the table, he can’t see her scars.

Like Lucas, Staff Sgt. Marti Ribeiro officially should not have been in a position to take fire, but she did. A combat correspondent who spent eight years with the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines, she deployed to Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base in 2006, accompanying medical convoys to remote areas without local doctors. The Army deployed such clinics in set locations rather than going door-to-door, so the locals needed significant advance warning of their arrival.

Unsurprisingly, that also made the convoys vulnerable to attack. The first night that they set up on the fringes of the northeast province of Laghman, bullets started flying. When the weapon on top of Ribeiro’s Humvee jammed, the driver got out to give suppressive fire while Ribeiro provided cover. Returning fire under fire earned her a Combat Action Badge.

By the end of her last deployment, the 5-foot-9 blonde also had a nickname, “Combat Barbie,” and was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, traced to trauma from combat and from a sexual assault by a fellow member of the military. Yet she faced raised eyebrows when she sought treatment: The first time she walked into a VA clinic, an older male veteran asked, “You lost, darlin’?”

(More on the issue of military sexual assault in the second installment of this series.)

marti ribeiro
Marti Ribeiro at an Afghan village in 2006.

 

Given the military’s official policy, Ribeiro says, women veterans face dismissive treatment from the VA’s staff, too. “They’re getting denied filing for PTSD because they’re not allowed in combat,” she says. “The VA’s looking at them going, ‘You’re not allowed in combat.’”

In their February report, Defense Department officials say they have learned much over the last decade “regarding the demands of operating for extended periods at the limits of human capability.” But until they’re satisfied that women won’t hamper units operating at those limits, they say, broader changes to the 1994 rule remain off the table.

FORCE-READINESS AND THE FAST TRACK

Pentagon officials say they plan to develop gender-neutral physical standards and use the coming changes as a step toward more fundamental reconsideration of the 1994 rule. “As a former infantry battalion commander, I can tell you I wish I’d had the opportunity afforded by this change to policy,” says Patton, the personnel policy director. “Commanders want the best talent available to maximize their unit’s capabilities.”

The 14,325 positions, Patton adds, mark the beginning of a process, not the end. Defense officials often hedge, however, when it comes to eliminating gender restrictions entirely, with the caveat, “where feasible while maintaining force readiness.”

Translation: Barring outside pressure, enlisted infantry, special operations units and other elite, especially intense military positions are likely to remain denied to women for the foreseeable future, as is the advancement that comes with them.

That’s not to say women cannot rise through the ranks, as Duckworth, Trowell-Harris, Cornum and others have demonstrated. But while women account for 14.5 percent of active-duty military personnel, they make up just over 7 percent of general officers.

The Defense Department calls these figures “strong,” because far fewer women than men serve for more than 20 years, and it generally takes longer than that to reach a senior rank. (Generals, for example, typically put in 30 years.) Given that, the DOD’s February report concluded, women are not disadvantaged under the current assignment policy.

Yet the Military Leadership Diversity Commission reports that while the percentages of occupations open to women “do not appear inordinately low, exclusion from these occupations has a considerable influence on advancement.” In the Army, where only two-thirds of positions are currently available to women, four in five general officers came from the third of positions that are not.

“You’re keeping women from rising from the ranks,” Duckworth says. “You need to have some real combat under your belt. You want them to have a shot, just like you would want anyone to have a shot.”

tammy army
Tammy Duckworth with her Black Hawk in Iraq, 2004.

For her part, Duckworth says she stayed with the military because she “fell in love” with the physical and psychological demands. And given clear physical standards, she argues, there is no reason to keep women out of infantry or special ops. “Let’s not bar a few women who might be capable of doing it,” she says, “same way we wouldn’t bar a man from a desk job.”

“Any general who doesn’t think, any politician who doesn’t think women can handle it” is sorely mistaken, says Srinivasan, the platoon commander. As for space-sharing and privacy, he says, “We’re all adults.”

The “legacy thinking” restricting military women is a kind of “iceberg,” says Cornum, alluding to her work on the “comprehensive soldier fitness” program, which treats psychological well-being like physical well-being. “That’s one of the skills we teach,” she says, “to recognize that you have an iceberg, a deeply held belief that may be getting in the way of you seeing what’s going on around you.”

In any case, she says, future servicewomen have time on their side. “Eventually,” she says, “everybody who believed the world is flat died off.”

‘THE INVISIBLE ONES’

For veterans like Latoya Lucas or Tammy Duckworth, the costs of their service are visibly striking, undeniable. But when women’s wounds are tougher to spot, since they should not officially be facing the rigors of ground combat anyway, the military bureaucracy has often left them unseen or unaddressed. This blind spot forced Ribeiro to take her story public, and it nearly cost Jennifer Crane her life.

Crane, whose first morning of Army training was Sept. 11, 2001, arrived at Bagram, in Afghanistan, in 2003. Bagram was then just a seven-mile circle of wire around three concrete buildings and a mass of tents. Crane principally served as a paralegal for the Judge Advocate General Corps, but she still had to drive mine-pocked roads and patrol for Taliban fighters in dangerous territory.

jennifer crane
Jennifer Crane in Afghanistan in 2003.

“We were in a valley,” she says. “They could literally just stand on the edges of the cliffs and drop bombs on us.”

Within the first two weeks, she saw her first military funeral after a friend who deployed with her dropped dead of a heart attack. By the latter half of 2003, she found it difficult to eat or drink, and became consistently, critically malnourished and dehydrated. To her superiors’ credit, she says, they tried to send her home, but she managed to convince them she’d pull through — until her heart began racing and the base medics were unable to slow it back down. At that point, she was at constant risk of a heart attack herself.

Spc. Crane was forcibly evacuated from Afghanistan. Her official discharge was administrative separation: adjustment disorder. “I couldn’t ‘adjust’ to wartime service,” she says of the Army’s assessment, with a hollow laugh. “A physical condition, not a disability.”

Years later, the Defense Department began recognizing such cases as post-traumatic stress. “If I would’ve known then what I know now,” Crane says, “I might have been able to get actual retirement from the military.”

She was home in time for Christmas, but it wasn’t home anymore. Nightmares kept her from sleeping much, and even while she was awake, she’d have sudden flashbacks, feel like she was back in Afghanistan. Loud noises or lights, from sirens to fireworks and thunderstorms, would leave her hyperventilating or unconscious.

Yet because Crane’s PTSD went undiagnosed, she says, she struggled even to seek help. “I stigmatized myself because I was a woman,” she says. “Other people, they’d been through it, lost limbs, been in firefights and everything else. I really discounted my own experiences. Quite a few years self-medicating, getting rid of the nightmares, the flashbacks. Getting rid of myself.”

In 2004, Crane started using cocaine, which ended her nightmares by keeping her awake — she barely slept for a month. Her boyfriend kicked her out, and her drug use left her unwelcome at her parents’ house, too. She started self-mutilating. After attempting suicide, she was admitted into a VA program, where she was diagnosed with PTSD. By that time, however, she was far gone: After the five-week VA program ended, it was “right back down the hill,” to crack.

She spent two years homeless. “I had decided I was gonna let the drugs kills me,” she says. During that time, she started paying her dealers in sexual favors.

In a desperate moment, she says, she prayed for help, for someone to save her. “And 12 hours later,” she laughs, “I was arrested.”

After her arrest, for possession of crack cocaine, Crane was allowed to enter the drug court program in lieu of serving time. She moved back home. The program, her parents and the one friend who stuck by her saved her life, she says.

jennifer crane
Jason and Jennifer Crane.

That friend, Jason, is now her husband. Their daughter, Hailey, turns 4 on May 17, a few months before Crane is to begin nursing school. She was recently awarded a fellowship to work at the VA.

The military and the VA have come a long way in treating veterans since 2003, Crane says. She remains concerned, however, for the latest waves of returning troops, especially the women. People still tell her she doesn’t “look like a vet.”

“I had high commanding officers question me once, about how I had PTSD if I was JAG Corps,” she says. “I think them allowing women to be in more ‘combat fields’ could dramatically impact the respect women get in the military.”

Military women who do not have combat decorations, high rank or visible war wounds often do not receive enough respect from their peers, Crane says. But the greater problem, she says, remains the skepticism that meets such women when they seek treatment or other help.

“It’s the invisible ones we’re struggling with,” she says. “These veterans could just fall through the crack. And we may never hear from them again.”

‘LET’S NOT WAIT TOO LONG’

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has directed the services to update him on military gender integration in November. His department’s upcoming changes carry the caveat, however, that the Pentagon respects Congress’ intent to “remain the arbiter of the ground combat exclusion policy.”

Servicewomen have found some advocates in Congress. Duckworth hopes to join them. But as in the Pentagon and the court of public opinion, there are those on Capitol Hill who turn a blind eye to or even dismiss women’s service.

“What else has she done? Female, wounded veteran … ehhh. Now let’s move on,” Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), the freshman incumbent Duckworth is looking to unseat, said of his opponent in March. “Wearing the uniform should immediately earn everyone’s respect,” he said in a statement after the minor furor his earlier comments caused. “It should not, however, earn everyone’s vote.”

Through a spokesman, House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) declined to comment.

On the campaign trail, the Pentagon’s February announcement of new openings for women elicited opposition from then-presidential candidate Rick Santorum, once the third-ranking Republican senator and a favorite among social conservatives. “I do have concerns about women in front-line combat,” Santorum said. “I think that could be a very compromising situation.”

Retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) counsels patience, predicting in an email that “barriers that prevent women from serving in certain roles will continue to fall in the years ahead.” But Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.), who serves on McKeon’s armed services committee, says women have waited long enough. “Let’s not wait too long to do more,” Tsongas says.

On her first trip to Afghanistan, Tsongas recounts, she had lunch with a female first lieutenant, whose brother had worked on Tsongas’ campaign. Three weeks later, the woman was killed by an improvised explosive device — a testament, Tsongas says, to the combat risks women already face.

“I think the steps they’ve made also acknowledge there’s an inevitability to this,” she says of the Pentagon, citing estimates that women will comprise as much as 25 percent of the military by 2025.

Beyond Capitol Hill, however, Cornum says her decades in the Army taught her that any policy change will come slowly, citing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the longstanding, now-repealed ban on openly gay service members. Positions like hers started becoming available to women, she says, because the military found it increasingly difficult to enlist enough men.

Retention remains a problem for the armed forces, with multiple deployments sidelining ever-greater numbers of veterans. “We live in a country where the same 500,000 to a million people have been going to war over the past 10 years,” says Srinivasan, the Army platoon leader. “Anyone who is willing to volunteer, more power to them. Who is our nation to judge?”

Ultimately, necessity may force the end of the 1994 rule, though the military’s stated plan is to radically reduce ground combat operations in the coming years. “We cannot exclude an entire force of very capable people who can do those jobs,” says Duckworth, who became a Black Hawk pilot because aviation was the closest she could get to ground combat.

After her shootdown, Duckworth refused medical retirement. Now a lieutenant colonel, she still drills with the National Guard.

“We’re warriors,” she says. “We’re not victims.”

**********

Connie: I only read my comments this morning from yesterday, but I had to respond to your because I did not see the comment posted from Anonymous, the day before,  (I thought Alycedale was the last) so I had to check it out. I agree with your sentiments. Truly beautiful. I will have to comment more later…I am so late. Got to run.

Blog me.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2012

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

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Posted in Human Rights and Equality, Wonderful Women Of The World | 16 Comments »

This ‘n That Chitchat

Posted by Michelle Moquin on May 16th, 2012


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Good morning!

Kathy: Except for the Brown snake epidemic, I really enjoyed your chronicles of Guam. Lucky you for getting to send so much time there and the chance to visit the Trench. Knowing how I love island living/weather, Guam sounds like home to me.

Social Butterfly, Zen Lill: Thank you. She was a great woman, and will be missed by all. We are celebrating her life on Saturday and I expect it to be wonderful. PS ZL: I like what you said.

Anna, Peter: Hafa Adai. So nice to hear from both of you! I realized after seeing both of your comments that it has been awhile. How is everything?

Cn: I like what you wrote. I say, “People don’t police themselves”. I think I stole that thought from Anonz. But it is so true.

SS-1: Hmm…like that quote. Unfortunately it really matters what people read, and watch on TV, and in this modern age, what they read and watch on the internet. It is amazing to me how many people watch FOX, and stupidly believe without really doing their homework. It is destructive and irresponsible at worst and lazy at best.

Ída: Following Whisper’s lead, in one word, “Yes”.

Roger, Roger, Roger…Does it not occur to you? Perhaps your wife is doing and thinking the same same thing. You know the song don’t you? Got to love it. Sometimes it makes a woman a better partner, especially when she’s getting it good and the pussy is primed.

This one’s for you:

Love the song – Diggin’ the dancing and the green suit!

Grace: Payback is a bitch isn’t it?

Brenda: I agree with the “was my best friend”. What is wrong with women who don’t share this vital information with their girlfriends? Women need to know when their so-called “man” is doing “indiscretions” behind their backs.

A note to all Girls: Be a true girlfriend and Tell TELL TELL about the LSOS!

Helen: Exactly right. Women make the biggest mistake thinking that their relationship is going to be different…that they’re going to be the one to “change him”. He wouldn’t dare cheat on me. Yeah right. You will surely be disappointed and most likely hurt.

Morgan: Well you got one thing right, I do love Obama. The only idiot in your little comment is Hasselbeck.

Trish: This topic was on my mind this morning.  So this one’s for you.

Lawrence O’Donnell Rips Newsweek’s Obama Gay Marriage Cover: America Is ‘Wicked Stupid’ (VIDEO)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Lawrence O’Donnell ripped Newsweek on his MSNBC show Monday night for itsprovocative cover celebrating President Barack Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage.

After showing an image of Newsweek’s cover featuring Obama with a rainbow-covered halo above his head (or as one HuffPost editor fondly dubbed it—a gaylo), O’Donnell called the magazine “wicked desperate.”

“Newsweek had two headlines they were thinking of going with,” O’Donnell told his panel. “‘Please Buy This Magazine’ was one…and the other was ‘The First Gay President.’”

O’Donnell seemed to take issue with the fact that some Americans may believe Newsweek’s headline as factual statement about the president.

“We live in a wicked stupid country, okay,” O’Donnell said. “This is a country that believes, in a very substantial proportion, that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Huge number, millions and millions of people…like 30 percent, think he wasn’t born American. They think he’s Kenyan. Crazy, crazy beliefs. And Newsweek, it seems to me, has to consider the responsibility of sending out into such a collectively stupid country and stupid electorate this thing, which is the only sentence in Newsweek that most people are going to read this week – the sentence on the cover.”

O’Donnell added that the cover and headline could perpetuate more misinformation about the president. “The ‘Obama is gay’ number is now going to go up to 35 [percent],” O’Donnell said, referring to the portion of the population that could mistake Newsweek’s headline for fact.

Watch the discussion in the video above. The exchange comes at about 3 minutes into the segment.

********

NW: You may feel like you have stepped into an insane asylum, but when I read the lies, rhetoric, all-about-me, bigoted comments of “Anyone but Obama”,  I know I have.

Alycedale: Coattails. Obama needs “coattails”.

This is a good place to end. The forum is open. Blog me. 

Peace out.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

Gratefully your blog host,

michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)

Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:

Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129

Thank you for your loyal support!

All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2012

“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream 

" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"

Posted in ChitChat, Love, Sex & Relationships, Political Powwow | 5 Comments »

Are You A Christian?

Posted by Michelle Moquin on May 15th, 2012

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Good morning!

 

Go grab a cup of coffee, sit down and enjoy…this one’s a long one.

 

Taxpayer-Funded Crisis Pregnancy Centers Using Religion To Oppose Abortion

WASHINGTON — If you want to help carry out the anti-abortion mission of the taxpayer-funded Care Net Pregnancy Resource Center, you have to be a Christian.

It’s right there on the Rapid City, S.D., center’s volunteer application.

“Do you consider yourself a Christian?” “If yes, how long have you been a Christian?” “As a Christian, what is the basis of your salvation?” “Please provide the following information concerning your local church. Church name … Denomination … Pastor’s name.” “This organization is a Christian pro-life ministry. We believe that our faith in Jesus Christ empowers us, enables us, and motivates us to provide pregnancy services in this community. Please write a brief statement about how your faith would affect your volunteer work at this center.”

But that hasn’t stopped the center from receiving federal funding and other forms of government support.

In 2010, it was awarded a $34,000 “capacity building” grant as part of President Obama’s stimulus bill.

Last year, the nonprofit National Fatherhood Initiative, with “support from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Family Assistance,” awarded the center $25,000 for capacity building.

And when South Dakota passed a law requiring that women get counseling from a “pregnancy help center” before receiving an abortion, the Rapid City center was quick to sign up — becoming one of three such facilities listed on the state’s official website.

Like other crisis pregnancy centers, the Rapid City Care Net seeks to prevent abortions by offering women a combination of free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, a “24 hour hotline,” and medically dubious ”abortion education” (its website claims that “a number of reliable studies have demonstrated connection between abortion and later development of breast cancer”).

The Rapid City center is not alone. On its website, the facility says it “submits to the affiliation guidelines” of the national Care Net organization, which supports more than 1,100 explicitly Christian crisis pregnancy centers. Care Net requires that at each center, “those who labor as pregnancy center board members, directors, and volunteers are expected to know Christ as their Savior and Lord” and that “all board members, staff, and volunteers of the center agree with the Care Net Statement of Faith.”

And it’s not just Care Net. Across the country, crisis pregnancy centers that refuse to hire non-Christians are receiving taxpayer funding and other forms of government support.

Equal Opportunity Employer?

The Life Center, a crisis pregnancy center in Midland, Texas, is looking for a new receptionist. The receptionist is expected to be bilingual in English and Spanish, proficient in Microsoft Word and Excel, and in agreement with the Life Center’s “Common Christian Beliefs.” Typed on each page of the three-page job application is: “The Life Center is an Equal Opportunity Employer” – even on the page that asks for a church reference.

Applicants for the open executive director position at the LifeTalk Resource Center in Frisco, Texas, have to prove they are “mature Christians.” The Dallas Pregnancy Resource Center is only hiring ”committed Christians.”

Each of these centers appears on a list compiled and publicized by the Texas health department of organizations that offer free sonograms to pregnant women and that do not provide abortion services or referrals. The list was created last year as part of a sweeping anti-abortion law signed by Gov. Rick Perry. Doctors are required to distribute this list to women before performing an abortion.

The Life Center is among 12 centers on the list that also receive state funding through the controversial Alternatives to Abortion Services Program.

In addition to Texas, at least six other states — Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania — currently fund crisis pregnancy centers. Collectively, for the current fiscal year, they are allocating approximately $17 million to these anti-abortion centers.

The centers are generally barred from using state money to promote their faith, but many still use religion to make hiring decisions. True Life Choice in Orlando — one of the 80 or so facilities funded by Florida’s pregnancy center program — is looking for an executive director who is a “committed Christian who demonstrates a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.”

A handful of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers have also received indirect funding from the federal government during the Obama administration.

The Care Net facility in Rapid City, for example, was awarded a piece of a million-dollar stimulus grant given to South Dakota’s Chiesman Center for Democracy to help nonprofits and faith-based organizations address issues within their local communities that were exacerbated by the global economic crisis. According to areport on this stimulus project, called the Strengthening Communities Fund, applicant organizations were evaluated based on their objectives and need for assistance, their organizational profile, and their approach. The money that each organization got had to be used for capacity-building purposes but not for direct services.

Chiesman’s principal evaluator and researcher, Helen Usera, told TAI in an email that her organization provided capacity-building training and technical assistance to 19 nonprofits, including Black Hills Area Habitat for Humanity, Black Hills State University, and Northern Hills Alcohol and Drug Services.

“Care Net focused on board development which included strategic planning, hiring a consultant to provide facilitation of the strategic planning, and updating bylaws,” Usera said. “In addition, they were able to send staff to various trainings in the areas of fund raising and marketing. Another area they were able to focus on was upgrading technology.”

The center itself did not respond to requests for comment.

Usera said that Chiesman did not select any of the sub-grantees who participated in the project; they were chosen by a team of independent reviewers unaffiliated with the foundation.

Asked about the Care Net grant, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families told TAI: “All grantees and any sub recipients are required to follow the law and provide the services described under the terms and conditions of the grant. We are currently reviewing this particular situation.”

While federal law prohibits employment discrimination based on religious beliefs, there is an exception for religious organizations — a category that seems to include the Rapid City center and other CPCs. And in many cases, it’s perfectly legal for these groups to receive taxpayer funding, even if they practice religious hiring discrimination.

Texas’ Alternatives to Abortion Services Program, which annually draws in $4.15 million in taxpayer funding, is managed by the Texas Pregnancy Care Network, a nonprofit headquartered in Austin. Stephanie Goodman, the spokesperson for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees the program, told TAI that the commission does not have a specific policy on Christian groups that discriminate in hiring, but she said the state follows the federal “Charitable Choice” laws and requires the TPCN to do the same.

“Charitable Choice” refers to provisions in federal laws passed beginning in the late 1990s, which apply to various federal grant programs, such as the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. Generally, the laws specify that faith-based organizations cannot be excluded from competition for federal funds; they may consider their religious beliefs in hiring and firing employees (but they cannot use religion as an excuse not to hire for other things like race or gender); and they cannot use federal funds to support any inherently religious activities, such as worship or religious instruction. President George W. Bush expanded these exceptions, more broadly exempting religious organizations that receive federal contracts from rules that bar religious discrimination in hiring.

‘An Outreach Ministry of Jesus Christ’

The fact that many of the country’s anti-abortion pregnancy centers are Christian organizations is not something that is prominently featured in state literature promoting these groups or even on many of the centers’ websites.

But for many of these places, Jesus Christ is central to their daily activities.

Care Net requires that each of its affiliates pledge to adhere to the network’s “Pregnancy Center Standards of Affiliation,” the first of which reads: “The primary mission of the center is to share the truth and love of Jesus Christ in conjunction with a ministry to those facing pregnancy related issues. The pregnancy center is an outreach ministry of Jesus Christ through His church. Therefore, the pregnancy center, embodied in its volunteers, is committed to presenting the gospel of our Lord to women with crisis pregnancies — both in word and in deed. Commensurate with this purpose, those who labor as pregnancy center board members, directors, and volunteers are expected to know Christ as their savior and Lord.”

Care Net also requires that all board members, staff, and volunteers at each center agree with the “Care Net Statement of Faith.” Adapted from the National Association of Evangelicals’ Statement of Faith, it reads, in part: “We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.”

Care Net member centers must agree to offer all services for free, to never perform or refer for abortions, and to refrain from referring “single women for contraceptives.” However, “married women seeking contraceptive information should be urged to seek counsel, along with their husbands, from their pastor and/or physician.”

A document attributed to Care Net that was given to TAI by the National Abortion Federation (the document is not dated, but NAF communications coordinator Andrea Alford said she believes it is from 1995) includes a section labeled, “Guidelines for Working with the CPC.” Among the “Things to Remember” is this point:

We are worshipping and serving Jesus Christ. We are not in the ministry to serve the people, but to worship and serve Him. In worshiping and serving Him, He will enable us to minister to those who come to the CPC. If this focus shifts, the ministry will be less effective.

Care Net would not respond to questions about the authenticity of the document, but nearly identical language currently appears on the website of a Care Net affiliate in St. Cloud, Minn.

Care Net Chief Operating Officer Larry Breeden told TAI in an email that Care Net did not want to participate in this story, but regarding Care Net’s hiring policies, he said, “Care Net adheres to federal requirements for a faith-based 501(c)3 and adheres to all federal requirements in the hiring process. Care Net is a Christ-centered ministry whose mission is to promote a culture of life within our society in order to serve people facing unplanned pregnancies and related sexual issues.”

Another major anti-abortion pregnancy center network, Heartbeat International, also defines itself as a religious institution.

“We are formed under IRS regulations 501(c)3 as an organization for religious, charitable, and educational purposes,” said Heartbeat International spokesperson Virginia Cline in an email to TAI. “We hire individuals who support our mission, our vision, and our Christian core operational values and beliefs.”

According to its website, “All Heartbeat International polices and materials are consistent with Biblical principles and with orthodox Christian (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox) ethical principles and teaching on the dignity of the human person and sanctity of human life.”

Cline says that – unlike with Care Net – individual pregnancy centers affiliated with Heartbeat are not obligated to discriminate based on religion. She said the only requirement regarding their hiring practices is that they must comply with state and federal laws. Affiliates also must pledge to uphold Heartbeat International’s “Commitment of Care and Competence.”

But that doesn’t mean Heartbeat opposes employment discrimination. In a posting on Heartbeat’s job registry, for example, PregnancyCare of Cincinnati states that it is looking for a general manager with “mature Christian faith” who will “set a good personal example of Christ-centered servant leadership.”

The third major CPC network in the U.S. is the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, based in Fredericksburg, Va. NIFLA was the first CPC network to promote ultrasounds in crisis pregnancy centers and works in tandem with Focus on the Family to transform CPCs into “medical clinics.” Like Heartbeat, NIFLA maintains anonline registry for available CPC jobs across the country. Many of the centers – some of which are also affiliated with Care Net or Heartbeat International – are only looking for Christians.

Recent open positions have included: a position for an executive director at Compassion Pregnancy Center in Clinton Township, Mich., who is a “dynamic disciple of Christ”; a position for an executive director at Option’s Women’s Clinic in Helena, Mont., who can “exhibit a strong Christian faith life”; and a position for an executive director at Concord, Calif., who “demonstrates a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and has a strong commitment and dedication to the pro-life position, the sanctity of human life, and sexual purity.”

In the abortion wars, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates are often portrayed as being in direct conflict with the major CPC networks. Each side has its own powerful political allies, and each has a stake in public policies that can lead to public funding. But among the many key differences between Planned Parenthood clinics and crisis pregnancy centers is in their hiring policies. According to a spokesperson, Planned Parenthood employers do not ask applicants about their religious beliefs, and the organization’s official hiring policy bars discrimination based on religion.

And while CPC applicants often must pledge to be against abortion, contraception, and, in many cases, premarital sex, Planned Parenthood says its policy is not to ask applicants about their views on such matters.

“People have a range of personal views on certain issues and for most, our views evolve over time,” said Planned Parenthood spokesperson Andrea Hagelgans in an email. “Planned Parenthood hires staff who are qualified, meet high professional standards and are able to promote the mission of the organization.”

‘YOU can be the one to introduce them to Jesus’

Many crisis pregnancy centers, even those that receive state or federal grants, are nonprofits with low budgets that rely on volunteers to help run the centers and counsel women facing crisis pregnancies.

Though they are unpaid, volunteers serve key roles in these organizations.

The state-funded Pregnancy Care Center in Tampa, Fla., has this message for prospective volunteers (emphasis is original):

Our doors are open to women who do not know where else to turn, women searching for answers and help with unexpected pregnancies. Women who need honest information and material items for their baby. Women who need Jesus! YOU can be the one to introduce them to Jesus and help them make life-changing decisions. Becoming a volunteer at the Pregnancy Care Center has great rewards!

Pregnancy Care Center’s website explains that the center opened in 1988 “as an outreach ministry dedicated to presenting the Gospel of Jesus Christ both in word and deed. The Center emphasizes the need to minister to both the mother, toward eternal life; and the baby toward a healthy live birth.”

Some CPC volunteer applications can be quite personal and probing.

Heartbeat of Miami, which has two state-funded locations, publishes a six-pagevolunteer packet complete with the Apostle’s Creed and a policy stating that the center does not encourage contraception but does provide “fertility awareness information” for married couples. Volunteer applicants are required to submit a recommendation from their pastor, and they are asked questions about their sex lives (“Are you now living a lifestyle of sexual integrity, abstinent if single or faithful within marriage?”) and their past experience with abortion (“Have you ever had an abortion? … If Yes, have you had the opportunity to go through a post-abortion class on forgiveness and healing?”).

The Pregnancy Help Center of Lufkin, which receives money through Texas’ Alternatives to Abortion program, actually requires volunteers to sign a pledge that they will pray and attend church:

In addition to the above, I hereby pledge that as a volunteer I will: 1. Attend as many volunteer meetings/trainings as possible. 2. Pray regularly for my part in the ministry and for the ministry as a whole. 3. Fellowship with other believers for encouragement and edification (this means being part of a local Christian church).

‘Inspired by God’

South Dakota has taken support for CPCs even further. Rather than provide funding, the state legislature simply mandated that women receive counseling at one of the anti-abortion centers before having an abortion.

Last year, the state passed a law that, among other things, created a 72-hour waiting period between when a woman first sees an abortion provider and when the abortion can be legally performed. During that time, the woman “must have a consultation at a pregnancy help center.” The law specifies that the doctor must provide the woman the contact information of all crisis pregnancy centers registered with the state’s department of health. Religious anti-abortion centers are allowed to participate in the program but are required to obtain written consent from pregnant women before discussing religion with them.

While much of the law is tied up in an ongoing court battle, the health department still maintains a list of three pregnancy centers that “have submitted the necessary affidavits to the department.”

One of them is Care Net Pregnancy Resource Center, the Rapid City facility that received federal stimulus funds and asks volunteers, “As a Christian, what is the basis of your salvation?”

Another facility on the state’s list — the Bella Pregnancy Resource Center in Spearfish — is also a Care Net affiliate and is thus obligated to hire only Christians and to follow Care Net’s Statement of Faith.

That leaves the Alpha Center in Sioux Falls. According to Allen Unruh, who co-founded the organization in 1984 with his wife, Leslee, the “entire Alpha Center story was inspired by God, and the rising up of Godly people with courage to be salt and light; to take action against the most evil act in this generation – the killing of innocent unborn babies and the deliberate deception of millions of women.”

It’s possible that if South Dakota’s anti-abortion law is ever implemented, some secular crisis pregnancy centers will register with the state. But as it stands now, doctors would be required to direct women to a facility whose mission is to prevent abortions while spreading the Gospel.

*******

Peace & Love. Blog me what you will. The forum is now open.

Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.

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michelle

Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)

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