Write Your Six Words for Reproductive Health!

Words of Choice, in post-show discussions and Creativity Workshops, loves to use a simple technique to engage the audiences. Now, the National Partnership for Women & Families has used some of the technologies available on the Internet to take it to the next step, with its multimedia presentation of Reproductive Health, each in six words of less.

Getting people to express, in simple terms, their thinking about reproductive freedom has been a staple of Words of Choice activities, described here in Techniques: Defining for Ourselves. Sometimes we collect audience comments after performances, and crafting them into a piece of poetry or performance, such as in this spontaneously created script, here.

National Partnership for Women and Families, an advocacy group in Washington D.C., has been asking people to send in their SIX WORDS on Reproductive Health. Using the Prezi program, the National Partnership has created a delightful online presentation, Your Six Words, which when clicked reveals a graphics show of individual six words in various artistic formations with background music. The words -- better than most PR firms come up with -- create a cascading reminder of why reproductive health and choice are so important to so man.

Among the SIX WORD STATEMENTS in the "show" are:

Still fighting after 40 years. Why?

We need health care. Don't you?

No more back alley abortions, ever!

My body is subject to none.

My uterus, My choice. TRUST WOMEN.

It's a wonderfully inventive approach, and a great use of the the Internet and technology. More SIX WORDS can be uploaded on the WALL of the National Partnership FACEBOOK page.

The National Partnership for Women and Families says it "promotes fairness in the workplace, access to quality and affordable health care, reproductive rights, and policies that help women and men meet the dual demands of work and family."

Creativity is needed more than ever now, so thanks, National Partnership for Women and Families. Keep it going!

Posted by Cindy Cooper
Pictured above: Screen Shot, Your Six Words

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Cartoon Take: Jen Sorenson Sends A Message on Planned Parenthood Defunding

SlowPoke Comics by Jen Sorenson published her special cartoon-ey take on the surreal attempts in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood (Sceenshot at right, see full cartoon HERE at www.slowpokecomics.com.)

The four-panel text of this cartoon, says, in part [subject to her copyright, of course]:

LADIES! Come on down to... UNplanned Parenthood -- Pregnancy Centers, GOP-style

Pregnant teen? We've got... Helpful Pamphlets "So you had a happy accident"...

Sexual assault victim? ... "Eggs fertilized by a rapist's sperm are people too!"....

We don't provide cervical screening... but we do offer lesbian screening!

And don't forget to check out our store! We've got books: "The Rhythm Method Cookbook: Recipes for Enormous Families" ....

And Jen offers this explanation on her site about why she made UNPLANNED PREGNANCY:

As you may have heard, House Republicans are looking to solve our nation's economic problems (not) by defunding Planned Parenthood. What you may not know is that there are currently over 4,000 anti-choice "crisis pregnancy centers" around the country, more than five times the number of abortion providers. These largely "faith-based" operations, known for disseminating medically-dubious advice, received at least $60 million under the Bush administration. (You'll recall the many Republicans who howled about that instance of deficit spending, no? Hmm... neither do I.) So, in a sense, Unplanned Parenthood already exists, and this cartoon is merely absurdist exaggeration. I hope.

Jen Sorensen is a Portland, OR-based cartoonist and illustrator whose comic "Slowpoke" has been reprinted in The Village Voice, Ms. Magazine, Funny Times, LA Times, The Daily Beast, CampusProgress.org, Daily Kos, and dozens of altweeklies around the country. Her illustrations have appeared in Nickelodeon Magazine, The American Prospect, Legal Affairs, University of Virginia Magazine, and the Women's Review of Books.

In 2000, she won a Xeric grant to publish the first collection of Slowpoke strips, and in 2010 she received an Aronson Journalism Award from Hunter College in NYC. She is featured in Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists, an anthology edited by Ted Rall, and in several editions of The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, edited by Daryl Cagle. Currently on the board of directors of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, her latest book is called Slowpoke: "One Nation, Oh My God!" It can be ordered on her site -- highly recommended.

Thanks, Jen Sorenson, for your good words and pictures and deeds on behalf of reproductive freedom!

Posted by Cindy Cooper
Pictured above, Screen shot: www.slowpokecomics.com

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A Minute of Silence on International Women's Day

From GIRE, Mexico's leading voice for reproductive justice and access to safe and legal abortion for all of the women of Mexico, comes this moment of thoughtfulness for International Women's Day.

GIRE (Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida or Information Group on Reproductive Choice) writes: This March 8th, the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, let us denounce the aggression that human rights defenders, especially those defending women's rights, face as they carry out their work.

Because We Honor Life, A Minute of Silence

Let us honor the activists who have been killed for demanding justice for Mexican women, victims of feminicide.

Let us honor all women,adolescents and girls murdered because they are female.

Let us honor all women that face discrimination, who lack access to health services or education, because they are indigenous, poor, young, lesbian, illiterate or for any other reason.

Let us honor all women that have survived physical, sexual, social, economic or psychological violence.

Let us honor all women that, as single mothers, struggle to provide their children with food, health, education and wellbeing.

Let us honor all women prosecuted and imprisoned for having an abortion.

Let us raise our voices against the flagrant impunity that prevails in the daily violations of our fundamental rights.

Let us denounce the lack of political will that impedes Mexico's transformation into a democratic, egalitarian and inclusive country with true access to justice.

Because we honor life, let us remember all these women today with a minute of silence and renew the struggle for a better world.

For more information about what's happening in Mexico, see "interesting articles" on the GIRE English-version site.

Special thanks to Marcy Bloom
Pictured above, Maria Luisa Sanchez Fuentes, leader of GIRE, accepting an award from Feminist Majority Foundation, from GIRE website

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Signs of Discontent: ProChoice Rallies Against Attacks on Repro Healthcare

In Walks for Choice and a NYC Rally, people were popping up with hand-written signs and more creativity than ever. In the New York rally at Foley Square on February 26, one woman simply held high a packet of birth control pills to protest cuts to Planned Parenthood and Title X. Another protester held aloft a pink mannequin that said 'Our Bodies, Our Rights,' and a costumed pair walked around as a penis and a condom with a sign, 'United We Stand 2 Protect Women's Health.'

There was the girl with the 'Women Rule' sign, and the woman with the crown that said 'Pro Women, Pro-Family, Pro-Choice' and 'Choice is a Family Value.' There was 'My Body, My Country, My Voice' and, very loudly, 'Get Out of My Pants.' We had 'There Is No Principled Opposition to Abortion' and a sarcastic 'Sacred' over a drawing of a giant sperm, and a simple and bright 'Guard Your Penis.'

There were multi-people banners: 'Fundamentalists Want Us Barefoot and Pregnant -- Defund Fundies' and 'NJ Pumps Fists 4 Women's Health' and 'Feminism is for Lovers'. There was 'Sex Happens,' and the reminder, 'RAPE: It does not mean whatever Rethuglicans want it to mean.' We had 'Planning is Power,' and, in a nod to Wisconsin, 'Pro-Choice, Pro Union.' There was a psychedelic 'Planned Parenthood 4 Freedom' on orange poster board, and '300 M? That's like 10 minutes of war' on lime green. We had 'Keep Your Hands Off My Pap Smear' and 'Keep Your Hands Off My Ovaries' and 'Keep your Boehner out of my Vagina but a Weiner is always welcome'(with a photo of the anti-achoiceUS House Majority Leader John Boehner, and pro-choice NY Congressional Representative Anthony Weiner.

We had a sign that said 'I Stand With Poor People and Women of Color at the Frontlines.' We saw 'Not everyone wants to be a mother,' and 'Let's Help the Born' and 'Stop the War on Women.'

There was 'Real Freedom for Real Living People, Rise Up!' And simply, as pictured above, 'Fight Back' and the symbol for 'Women.'

See a collection of pictures from Walk for Choice across the country, posted by Bradley Swensen on RH Reality Check, here. And a nice article about students and Walk for Choice on The Nation blog, here.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America videos of speakers at the rally in NY are posted here, and Raising Women's Voices has one, here. Brooklyn Vegan posted some nice pictures and "watchhotch" has a nice compilation video on YouTube here.

If you want a tv update on what it was all about, the NY 1 story is here.

Oh, and the other side? Yes, they managed to get tangled in knots. Here is an anti-video -- only beware, watch with caution, it's called 'Frenzied Feminazis' -- come to think of it, you probably can get the idea without watching.

Posted by Cindy Cooper
Pic above: Sign at Rally at Foley Square, NYC
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