The War on Women is Real

By refusing to comply with a federal law allowing women to choose their own providers of basic wellness care health services (one of those providers being Planned Parenthood), Texas has lost federal funds and denied some 70,000 women of the funded services.

Wisconsin has reinstated a strict limit on the time women are allowed to sue over wage discrimination, eliminating a law that had been written when a specific woman was denied her rights because she found out about the wage discrimination "too late."

Mississippi, which has the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, has laws banning the discussion of condoms in sex education *except* to discuss failure rates. Mississippi lawmakers are also trying to rewrite laws to force the state's single abortion clinic out of business. (For the purposes of overseas comparison, Mississippi state is roughly half the land mass of the island holding England, Scotland, and Wales. One. Clinic. In. The. Whole. State.)

Arizona just banned abortion after 20 weeks... which is calculated not by conception, but by the woman's last menstrual period, making the actual cutoff somewhere 16-18 weeks, depending on when the woman conceived.

Georgia tried to ban abortion for any reason after 20 weeks, including health of fetus or mother. When it was pointed out that this prevented removal of a stillbirth, one of the bill's supporters compared women carrying a dead fetus to the livestock on his farm. After the backlash, the overall ban went into affect, although with a codicil exempting mother's health or "medically futile" pregnancies.


I put on an orange vest and stood in a parking lot. (Fraulein and Father Corleone were uncharacteristically quiet today.)

We have to vote this upcoming election. But voting is not the only action we can take to fight back.

Recipe: Eggs Florentine in a Flash

I've slightly amended one of the NYTimes spinach recipes and come with an (almost) perfect eggs florentine that took about 10 minutes. The sauce is runny, so next time it'll be a roux instead of butter and wine.

In a very small pot, bring a tablespoon of butter and about 1/2 - 2/3 a cup of white wine to a boil. Turn down and toss about half a pound of spinach in. Cover and turn to medium or medium-low heat.

Let the spinach steam for a minute or two, then uncover stir up. (In the roux version, this is where I'll be scattering in some flour.) When all the spinach has wilted down, poke a couple of holes into it and crack an egg into each one. Cover again and let sit for 3-4 minutes, depending on how you like your eggs poached.

When they're done, slide everything into a deep dish. Scatter parmesan cheese on top. (Something with a little crunch may not go awry - possibly toasted breadcrumbs?

I ate it with some of M's biscuits; an excellent meal that whipped up nigh onto instantly.