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22. Participatory Budgeting: Empowering Citizens 24. South Dakota: The Top Anti-Abortion State Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a process that allows South Dakota is taking extreme action against any citizens to decide directly how to allocate all or part of a person who performs an abortion within the state's public budget, typically through a series of meetings, borders. The South Dakota House is taking up a bill to work by community "delegates" or representatives and redefine "justifiable homicide" that may "make it legal to ultimately a final vote. It was first implemented in the ill doctors who perform abortions", Mother Jones reports. city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1990, and has since spread. The bill, which is backed by the GOP in theory, could PB has recently taken root in Canadian and American allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter or soils. Chicago's 49th Ward, for example, uses this usband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman process to distribute $1.3 million of annual with an abortion, even if she wanted the procedure. discretionary funds. The ward's residents have praised In 1994, the state banned abortion providers inside its the opportunity to make meaningful decisions, take borders. "Planned Parenthood flies a doctor in from ownership over the budget process and win concrete out-of-state once a week to see patients at a Sioux Falls improvements for their clinic. Women from the more remote neighbourhood, e.g., community parts of the large, rural state drive up gardens, sidewalk repairs, street lights to six hours to reach this lone clinic" and public murals. The initiative and must "receive counseling and wait proved so popular that the ward's 24 hours before undergoing the alderman, Joe Moore, credits PB with GOP (Republican) procedure". helping to reverse his political GOP (Republican) lawmakers at the fortunes. The wave is not stopping in lawmakers at the state and federal level have come up Chicago, either. Elected officials and state and federal with four other radical abortion community leaders elsewhere, such as | | h restrictions to marginalise women's in New York and San Francisco, are evel nave come up rights and eradicate choice. Through considering launching similar with four other such inflexible attachment to pro-life initiatives. ; 9 policies, the GOP subordinates the radical abortion choices and lives of women to a 23. Movement to Ban Plastic Bags restrictions narrow-minded and Shoppers worldwide are using impracticable philosophy. 500 billion to one trillion single- to marginalise GOP state lawmakers in Arizona use plastic bags per year. The Ion and Ohio have unveiled so-called average use-time of a plastic bag women's rights "Heartbeat Bills" to "prohibi is 12 minutes. Plastic bags and eradicate women from ending pregnancies at the first detectable feta heartbeat". The heartbeat can be heard "within 18 to 24 days o conception" and “in almost al cases by six weeks"—a period in which "many women don't even pollute our waters, smother wetlands and entangle and kill animals. This eventually affects our health because larger animals eat small plastic-laden creatures, and plastics work their way up the food chain until we know they're pregnant”. consume animals that have eaten Texas Governor Rick Perry (R some form of plastic. Plastic is non-biodegradable and "fast-tracked" an anti-abortion bill, mandating tha is made from a non-renewable resource: oil. An “pregnant women be shown an ultrasound of the fetus estimated three million barrels of oil are needed to at least two hours before an abortion". Physicians produce the 19 billion plastic bags used annually in would have to show the foetus's dimensions, limbs or California. internal organs, and, if audible, the foetal heartbeat. Now 35 countries have already banned the use of Arizona GOP Rep. Steve Montenegro actually plastic bags, nine countries have passed levies and fees —_ introduced bills to criminalise abortions if they're on their use, 12 countries are considering bans or fees, | sought because of race or sex. The bill would charge and 26 states in the USA have introduced a form of doctors with a Class 3 felony if they "knowingly perform egislation concerning plastic bag use. abortions for these reasons". Most plastic contains harmful chemicals like On the federal level, House Republicans took the first bisphenol A and phthalates, which are unsafe forhuman — two months of 2011 to marginalise the rights of women. use. These can be avoided by substituting plastic First, they tried to exclude certain victims—including materials and products with other alternative materials | women who are drugged, women who do not physically ike reusable cloth bags, stainless-steel water bottles and wooden, glass and metal substitutes. Continued on page 81 choice. GOP (Republican) lawmakers at the restrictions to marginalise women’s rights and eradicate choice. 30 * NEXUS _ State and federal level have come up with four other radical abortion Continued on page 81 DECEMBER 2011 - JANUARY 2012 www.nexusmagazine.com