Tag Archives: New Mexico

January 25, 2013 · 12:46 AM

Republican New Mexico Bill Would Make Criminals Of Rape Victims Who Have Abortions

Uh…that GOP moratorium on the word rape seems to have dissipated…

Alan Colmes’ Liberaland

The bill by Rep. Cathrynn Brown would require victims of rape to carry fetuses to term or be accused of tampering with evidence.

“Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime,” the bill says.

Third-degree felonies in New Mexico carry a sentence of up to three years in prison.

Pat Davis of ProgressNow New Mexico, a progressive nonprofit opposing the bill, called it “blatantly unconstitutional” on Thursday.

“The bill turns victims of rape and incest into felons and forces them to become incubators of evidence for the state,” he said. “According to Republican philosophy, victims who are ‘legitimately raped’ will now have to carry the fetus to term in order to prove their case.“

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April 10, 2012 · 5:41 PM

Teen Pregnancies Highest In States With Abstinence-Only Policies

Duh!  Tell a teen NOT to do something and you can bet your last dollar he/she will do it!

Think Progress

The number of teen births in the U.S. dropped again in 2010, according to a government report, with nearly every state seeing a decrease. Nationally, the rate fell 9 percent to about 34 per 1,000 girls ages 15 through 19, and the drop was seen among all racial and ethnic groups. Mississippicontinues to have the highest teen birth rate, with 55 births per 1,000 girls. New Hampshire has the lowest rate at just under 16 percent.

This is the lowest national rate for teen birthssince the Centers for Disease Control began tracking it in 1940, and CDC officials attributed the decline to pregnancy prevention efforts. Other reports show that teenagers are having less sex and using contraception more often. Studies have backed this up. Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle found that teenagers who received some type of comprehensive sex education were 60 percent less likely to get pregnant or get someone else pregnant. And in 2007, a federal report showed that abstinence-only programs had “no impacts on rates of sexual abstinence.”

But 37 states require sex education that includes abstinence, 26 of which require that abstinence be stressed as the best method. Additionally, research shows that abstinence-only strategies could deter contraceptive use among teenagers, thus increasing their risk of unintended pregnancy.

For example, take the states with the highest and lowest teen pregnancy rates. Mississippidoes not require sex education in schools, but when it is taught, abstinence-only education is the state standard. New Mexico, which has the second highest teen birth rate, does not require sex ed and has no requirements on what should be included when it is taught. New Hampshire, on the other hand, requires comprehensive sex education in schools that includes abstinence and information about condoms and contraception.

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December 18, 2011 · 6:10 PM

Newt Gingrich Proposed the Death Penalty for Pot — Even Though He Admitted to Smoking It

English: Former Speaker of the House at CPAC in .

Image via Wikipedia

This is just one example of Newt Gingrich’s outrageous proposals.  This particular one is  from 1997…

AlterNet

Newt Gingrich proposed the death penalty for marijuana in 1997, and yet he is one of the 100 million Americans who have smoked marijuana.

Over the weekend, struggling Republican presidential candidate Gary Johnson reminded MSNBC viewers that GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich had once to called to punish some drug offenders with death.

“Newt Gingrich, in 1997, proposed the death penalty for marijuana — for possession of marijuana above a certain quantity of marijuana,” Johnson explained. “And yet, he is among 100 million Americans who’ve smoked marijuana.”

“I would love to have a discussion with him on the fact that he smoked pot, and under the wrong set of circumstance he proposed the death penalty for, potentially, something that he had committed. I have troubles with that,” he added.

Johnson, a former New Mexico governor who has advocated for marijuana legalization since 1999, is at least partially correct about Gingrich’s position.

As Speaker of the House, Gingrich introduced the “Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996.”

The bill would have required a “sentence of death for certain importations of significant quantities of controlled substances.” It would have applied to anyone convicted more than once of carrying 100 doses — or about two ounces  — or marijuana across the border. Defendants would have had a window of 18 months to file their one and only appeal.

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September 28, 2010 · 4:50 AM

Newsweek: What does ‘Mama Grizzly’ really mean?

Newsweek

Sarah Palin says that a new crop of conservative women will ‘rise up’ to protect their cubs. But will they?

ma·ma griz·zly noun, pl. -zlies

1. Large brown bear, female of the species, native to North America with big claws. 2. A certain breed of U.S. politician, female, who stands for…

…what exactly? On some level, the term isn’t hard to figure out. A mama grizzly is a conservative woman with “common sense,” as Sarah Palin puts it, someone who “rises up” to protect her children when she sees them endangered by bad policies in Washington. She is fearless, and that, in combination with her femaleness, makes her scary—a new kind of political predator. She will take on any foe and, the implication is, rip him or her to shreds.

Palin first described herself as a mama grizzly during her 2008 vice presidential run. She floated the current usage—as a movement—in a speech before a pro-life women’s group in May, and soon she was reflecting on the special qualities of mama bears on her Facebook page. “Mama bears not only [forage] for themselves to prepare for winter, they [work] twice as hard to slay salmon for their cubs, too.” By late June, Palin’s political-action committee had realized the emotional power of the image, and made an Internet ad—nearly half a million views to date, titled “Mama Grizzlies”—which is as plaintive and urgent as a 1960s protest song. It calls America’s women to a sisterhood of grizzlies “because moms kind of just know when there’s something wrong.”

Political pundits and journalists were delighted. Like beauty-contest judges, they began to bestow the mama grizzly title upon the women Palin endorsed, such as Nikki Haley, who is running for governor in South Carolina; Carly Fiorina, a Senate candidate in California; and Susana Martinez, a gubernatorial candidate in New Mexico. Palin was soon anointing mama grizzlies herself. When she endorsed Arkansas congressional candidate Cecile Bledsoe on Facebook, Palin explicitly referred to her as part of a growing list of “commonsense conservative ‘mama grizzlies.’ ”  Continue reading…

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