Yesterday, about ten of us from the FMLA went down to Austin with Planned Parenthood of North Texas, to lobby our state senators and representatives, to support or oppose certain bills that are coming up for vote, or are being worked on in committees right now as I type this journal post. The ten of us, met up with about 800 other activists from around the state, to take the capital by storm.

Here's a breakdown of what we were asking for.

-To oppose House Bill 16, which gives Pharmacists the right to not fill Emergency Contraception prescriptions, written by doctors. EC prescriptions mainly get written for survivors of rape, and is not, in any way, an abortion pill. The bill is worded so vaguely, that it even allows Pharmacists the right to deny someone their contraceptive pills such as Orhtotryclin (sp?) The Pharmacist would also be protected from penalization from his employer for refusal to fill the prescription.

-We also called for the state to either up their portion of money donated to family planning, or to keep it the same as it is now. We gave them a laundry list of reasons why family planning is smart, not just for social reasons, but for state monetary reasons.

-We asked the representatives to support that information about Emergency Contraception be given out in Emergency Rooms for survivors of sexual assault. The hospitals would not have to write the prescriptions, but would have to let the patient know about *all* of the options out there.

-We also asked that the state not support the denying of funds to any family planning agency that performs abortions. People always have this misconception that Planned Parenthood is some kind of abortion industrial complex, and that's all that they do. When in fact, abortions are only 2 percent of what Planned Parenthood does, with the other 98 percent of their work going towards everything from family planning to breast exams. To deny funding to these agencies, even though NO state or federal money goes to abortions, would cripple Planned Parenthood and the health care they give to hundreds of thousands of Texan men and women.

Lobbying was both really interesting, and really frustrating. My frustrations didn't come until after the fact, but they came full swing.

Talking with the state representatives usually happened in way of us talking with their aides. As anyone who knows anything about lobbying will tell you, talking to aides is sometimes more important than talking with the representatives themselves. Many times, it is the aides who help instruct a senator or rep. on how to vote.

I learned that I am dangerously naive when it comes to being able to read people, well not people, but politicians. ;-) There were many times throughout the day when our group would be talking with a rep's aide, or the rep themself, and I would actually feel like they were taking in what we were saying, and were giving it due consideration, only to find out later from people who lobby everyday that we were basically talking to a brick wall. They all seemed so polite and genuine, that after the fact, it dawned on me why and how they get elected in the first place.

But we did speak with one person who totally made me feel proud to take part in the electoral process. Lon Burnam from Fort Worth is one awesome Democrat. Before we could even begin our spiel, he told us that he was behind what we were saying 100%. And his voting record proved so, with him voting 100% for pro-choice issues. He basically told us that most reps and senators were spineless hacks, who only cared about getting re-elected. He even went so far as to say that a lot of his colleagues who vote pro-life, do so only because their constituents feel that they should, and that they typically run somewhere from "moderate to pro-choice." Such is the life of a civil servant I 'spose.

Overall, the day was really tiring, but really energizing at the same time. It felt great to actually take my political involvement past the activist and ballot puncher stages. I hope to keep on doing things like this for the rest of my life.

Luke was there. Even though I didn't get to see him for all of about ten seconds, it was ten seconds that meant a lot to me. We tried to get together throughout the day, but kept running into the obstacles of set appointment times. We did talk a lot on the phone though. That was cool.

matt out

Oh, and the State Capital has penis shaped tiles on the second floor of the capital. Weird, huh?