By Katie Halper • @kthalps • 10 years ago

Ohio governor legislates your uterus, surrounded by a bunch of dudes

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand reproductive-freedom curtailing words. Here’s the lovely Ohio governor, John Kasich (R), surrounded by a bunch of dudes, of course, signing a budget which contains severe anti-chose provisions.

The new budget, which takes effect on Monday, and was signed Sunday, will defund Planned Parenthood clinics, reallocate family planning resources to “crisis pregnancy centers,” deny funding to rape crisis centers that deign to give out any information about abortion services, shutter abortion clinics by imposing restrictions, and force doctors to tell women who want an abortion about a b.s. study linking abortion to breast cancer and the “fetal heartbeat.”

Kasich waxed poetic: “There is no reason why Ohio cannot reclaim prominence. There is no reason why Ohio cannot be the greatest state in all of the states of the great country of America. We can get there…There is no reason why Ohio cannot take its rightful place on the mountaintop.”

I guess the path to the mountain top happens to go through our uteri.

nyc

Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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