Rachel Ford is a programmer, and since 8:00 to 5:00 doesn't provide enough opportunity to bask in screen glare, she writes in her spare time. She was raised a very fundamentalist Christian, but eventually "saw the light." Rachel's personal blog is Rachel's Hobbit Hole, where she discusses everything from Tolkien to state politics.
In the United States, there is a wide range of federal and state laws that exempt healthcare providers from offering reproductive care — everything from contraception to sterilization — based on the provider’s religious beliefs. The reason for these laws, ostensibly, is to protect the conscience of the provider. And women need not worry since they can just find other providers, right? Of course, as we’re already seeing, that’s becoming more and more difficult as more restrictions are applied to reproductive care. Like in Mississippi, where abortion is so heavily restricted that only a single clinic remains open in the state, and even that one’s in trouble of being closed. Restricting women’s health care is the method-of-choice in certain parts of our country, but that’s not the only way to prevent women from accessing those services. In Italy, a country that allows first trimester abortions, it can still be very hard to obtain one. Read more
A 17-year-old waiter in Kansas says that he was the recipient of a fake $20 tip — a proselytizing message, printed to look like a folded twenty-dollar bill. Garrett Wayman posted pictures of the tip on his Twitter account, commenting “someone seriously left this as my tip today. pissed is an understatement.” Wayman’s frustration is understandable, not least of all because the penny-pinching proselytizer didn’t even leave a real tip. Read more
