“She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” – A Film

July 24, 2015 JanF Editors' Choice, Feminism and Womanism 9

“Aren’t the Internets great?”

– me to my Moose peeps this morning

An article in the New York Times yesterday about the “Women of the Young Lords: The Revolution within the Revolution” panel at the Bronx Museum, included the rare link-out to a web site for some biographical information on one of the speakers, our own Denise Oliver Velez.

Much to my delight, that was a sub-page on a larger site about a film entitled “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry”.

The trailer explains what it is about:

With women’s reproductive freedom under attack in the states and in the Republican controlled Congress and in the courts, when one of our major political parties is already loading up the testosterone cannon and aiming it at the woman who is the front-runner for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, when right wing groups are attacking Planned Parenthood … a group that saves women’s lives, it is a great time to remind ourselves of our past, the fights we won, only to lose again, and the battles we will face in 2016 and beyond.

From the About on the web site:

SHE’S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE’S ANGRY resurrects the buried history of the outrageous, often brilliant women who founded the modern women’s movement from 1966 to 1971. SHE’S BEAUTIFUL takes us from the founding of NOW, with ladies in hats and gloves, to the emergence of more radical factions of women’s liberation; from intellectuals like Kate Millett to the street theatrics of W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Conspiracy from Hell!). Artfully combining dramatizations, performance and archival imagery, the film recounts the stories of women who fought for their own equality, and in the process created a world-wide revolution.

SHE’S BEAUTIFUL does not try to romanticize the early movement, but dramatizes it in its exhilarating, quarrelsome, sometimes heart-wrenching glory. The film does not shy away from the controversies over race, sexual preference and leadership that arose in the women’s movement. SHE’S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE’S ANGRY captures the spirit of the time — thrilling, scandalous, and often hilarious.

That story still resonates today for women who are facing new challenges around reproductive rights and sexual violence, as the film shows present-day activists creating their generation’s own version of feminism. SHE’S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE’S ANGRY is a film about activists, made to inspire women and men to work for feminism and human rights.

Add your voice to those pushing back against the right-wing noise machine trying to defame Planned Parenthood:

Clinton Responds To Accusations That Planned Parenthood Sells ‘Aborted Baby Parts’

Accusations that Planned Parenthood inappropriately profits off the sale of aborted fetuses are part of a “concerted attack” against both the organization and women’s ability to choose whether to have an abortion, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Thursday.

“I think it is unfortunate that Planned Parenthood has been the object of such a concerted attack for so many years,” the Democratic front-runner said at an event in Greenville, South Carolina. “And it’s really an attack against a woman’s right to choose, to make the most personal, difficult decisions that any woman would face, based on her faith and the medical advice that she’s given.”

~

Schakowsky, Lofgren, Nadler and Clarke send letter to Attorneys General asking for investigation into Center for Medical Progress

WASHINGTON, DC – Reps. Jan Schakowsky, Zoe Lofgren, Jerry Nadler, and Yvette Clarke sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and California Attorney General Kamala Harris on Tuesday requesting an investigation into the Center for Medical Progress and the selectively-edited video of a Planned Parenthood physician that it recently released.

According to press reports, the Center for Medical Progress created a fake limited liability corporation in advance of the meeting it recorded with a Planned Parenthood doctor. The video was captured by actors using fake identification to pose as buyers from that fake human biologics company. This elaborate scheme raises serious questions about whether any federal or state laws were violated in securing the LLC or the personal identification that were part of its execution.

The video was also filmed without the consent of the Planned Parenthood doctor, which may violate California law.

There are other questions about possible coordination between the Center for Medical Progress and Members of Congress who knew about the video weeks in advance of its release.

“This is a new low, even for anti-abortion activists who will stop at nothing in their effort to undermine a woman’s right to choose,” said Schakowsky. “I believe the Center for Medical Progress may have broken the law in developing and executing this unbelievably elaborate and troubling scheme, and all Americans should have concerns about that. I hope that Attoneys General Lynch and Harris will investigate this case.”

“Planned Parenthood is a well-respected and important organization in my community,” said Lofgren. “One in five women in America has gone to Planned Parenthood at some point in their lives. The recent surreptitiously recorded video is the latest iteration of harassment and partisan attacks on Planned Parenthood which have become far too common, and raises serious legal questions that merit an investigation into whether the so-called ‘Center for Medical Process’ has broken the law.”

“Like the millions of women who access their broad-range of health services every day, we trust Planned Parenthood,” said Nadler. “This video is nothing more than a witch hunt – an elaborate, possibly illegal, scheme to attack Planned Parenthood, undermine their life-saving work and deny the Constitutional and moral rights of women across the country. I urge the Department of Justice and the state of California to investigate the Center for Medical Progress and determine if their activities in planning and making these videos violated state and federal laws. We need to stand up to such bullying tactics and ensure that every woman is free to make her own health care decisions.”

“I am deeply concerned about the allegations that federal and state laws were violated in an attempt to attack Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides critical health care services to more than three million men and women each year, and that the attack was coordinated by conservative activists who want to discredit Planned Parenthood and its work,” said Clarke. “I urge Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Honorable Kamala Harris, Attorney General of California, to initiate a full investigation into this incident to determine if any fraud or other illegal activities were committed.”

~

Help Planned Parenthood, and women all across the country, by supporting them and their mission: DONATE HERE.

Find out what you can do at PP Action

9 Comments

  1. We will have to keep re-fighting these battles because, as the woman in the trailer said “You are not allowed to retire from women’s issues”.

    • I would love to see the movie but I don’t have $395 to buy a DVD. I wonder how far along they are in getting the music rights paid off so that they can sell it to ordinary people.

  3. Even when we win, it often feels like a loss. The onerous North Dakota fetal heartbeat bill was stricken but the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals wants the Supreme Court to review it because they are ignoring all the bad science!!!

    … while the three members of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit that heard MKB Management Corp. v. Stenehjem — all of whom are George W. Bush-appointees — reluctantly concluded that existing Supreme Court precedent requires them to strike down the North Dakota law, they devoted the bulk of their opinion to an extended attack on what remains of Roe v. Wade. Indeed, much of the opinion does little more than repeat arguments commonly found in anti-abortion literature.

    The opinion claims, for example, that “some studies support a connection between abortion and breast cancer,” even though this claim is rejected by many leading medical groups, including the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. It also quotes claims that “abortion is psychologically damaging to the mental and social health of significant numbers of women,” despite the fact that a literature review conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University determined that “[t]he best quality studies indicate no significant differences in long-term mental health between women in the United States who choose to terminate a pregnancy and those who do not.”

    The North Dakota law was particularly awful because most women at 6 weeks do not even know they are pregnant:

    It makes it a felony for physicians to perform an abortion if the fetus has a “heartbeat [that] has been detected according” to a standard set out in the law. This moment typically occurs as soon as six weeks into a pregnancy, meaning that, by the time a woman determines that they are pregnant, she will often have only a few weeks to seek an abortion (or less if they do not discover their pregnancy until later). For many women, who lack the job flexibility to seek time off on such a short time frame, this will preclude them from having an abortion. Other women may be unable to obtain an abortion because they cannot find a clinic which can schedule them on such short notice.

    Couple that with clinics closing all over the country (one just closed in Montana because it was burned down by a rabid anti-choicer) making it more and more difficult to get an abortion. In Texas, some women have to drive 250 miles to the nearest facility.

    We need pro-choice members of Congress and a pro-choice president who will appoint pro-choice Supreme Court justices. It really is that important.

  5. More on the Planned Parenthood attack videos:
    The Many Manipulations of the Planned Parenthood Attack Videos
    (An OB/GYN explains how medically incorrect language is used to distort the facts)

    These are not “baby parts.” Whether a woman has a miscarriage or an abortion, the tissue specimen is called “products of conception.” In utero, i.e. during pregnancy, we use the term “embryo” from fertilization to ten weeks gestation and “fetus” from ten weeks to birth. The term baby is medically incorrect as it doesn’t apply until birth. Calling the tissue “baby parts” is a calculated attempt to anthropomorphize an embryo or fetus. It is a false image—a ten to twelve week fetus looks nothing like a term baby—and is medically incorrect.

    Hearing medical professionals talk casually about products of conception may seem distasteful to some, but not to doctors. Medical procedures are gory by nature. Surgeons routinely cut skin, saw bones, and lift the uterus out of the abdominal cavity and then put it back in. We stick our hands inside people and it is messy. We handle broken limbs, rotting flesh, and cancers that smell. We talk about this calmly because this is what we are trained to do. It doesn’t mean that we are heartless; it means we are professionals and this is our norm for a clinical conversation. There is no reason a conversation about products of conception requires more or less reverence than one about a kidney or a biopsy specimen.

  6. Planned Parenthood defunding is on a fast-track in the Senate:

    Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Friday started a fast-track process to skip the normal committee procedure and make sure that Sen. Rand Paul’s bill to defund Planned Parenthood will be brought up for a floor vote.

    Paul (R-KY) and his anti-choice colleague Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), both 2016 presidential contenders, have aggressively pushed to deny federal funding to Planned Parenthood in recent days, citing misleading, heavily edited video footage released by an anti-choice front group.

    Both Paul and Cruz were hoping to attach amendments to a must-pass highway funding bill to defund Planned Parenthood, but McConnell effectively put a stop to that when he used a process called “filling the tree” to block further votes on amendments.

    Call your representatives:

    House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) dismissed the videos as a phony controversy this week, and House Democrats have called for the Attorney General to investigate the Center for Medical Progress, the anti-choice group behind the videos, for laws they may have broken.

    Progressives are urging more Democrats to take a strong, proactive stance to defend Planned Parenthood against Republican attacks.

  7. A win in the 9th Circuit for access to birth control:

    Pharmacy owners do not have a constitutional right to refuse to dispense medicines that they object to on religious grounds, according to a decision handed down Thursday by a federal appeals court. Had the plaintiffs in this case prevailed, it would have not only permitted them to refuse to fill many birth control prescriptions (which is what these particular plaintiffs hoped to achieve), but it could have also potentially enabled pharmacists to refuse to fill a long list of prescriptions, including “diabetic syringes, insulin, HIV-related medications, and Valium.”

    Stormans v. Wiesman concerned a Washington state rule that permits individual pharmacists to refuse to fill a particular prescription “so long as another pharmacist working for the pharmacy provides timely delivery,” but does not generally allow the pharmacy itself to refuse to deliver a prescription “even if the owner of the pharmacy has a religious objection.” […]

    it is unlikely that this case would have gained much steam at all except for the fact that the plaintiffs drew a particularly sympathetic trial judge. Among other things, the trial judge implied that these plaintiffs had the right to refuse to fill certain prescriptions for contraception “premised on the right ‘to refrain from taking human life.’”

  8. What a fabulous film clip! When time permits I’m going to come and watch it again. Wish we all could see the entire film! If the price would just come down, we could all buy shares in the DVD and start a “train” to each other, just as people used to in the old days when they’d start a “tape train” with VHS videocassettes.

    Loved seeing a photo of Denise in her young days!

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