In the end, when you hear the phrase “life begins at conception,” remember the implications. In debating the “personhood” of eggs, embryos, and fetuses prior to viability, we are also implicitly and explicity debating the personhood of women. Because if you have no choice and control over your body, you are less than an actual person in the eyes of the law. If the right is so worried about abortion the closer a pregnancy gets to viability, then anti-choicers would be making sure both contraception and early, safe abortion were widely available. That really is not their actual concern.

The development of a potential human life requires conception as a first step. But that is not the same as either pregnancy or personhood. You can’t reduce complex reality to a slogan, and when you try to do so, you actually minimize the personhood of women.
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/11/25/life-begins-at-conception-reducing-complex-reality-to-a-slogan-actually-minimizes-the-personhood-of-women/

President Barack Obama is preparing to expand the fiscal cliff fight beyond the confines of Washington, traveling the country and leaning on Democratic activist groups to help apply political pressure.

The goal, organizers said, is to keep engaged the activists and followers who have stood with Obama through two campaigns, and to begin applying external pressure to the president's negotiations with congressional Republicans.

And so, top Obama operatives are gaming out ways to squeeze political capital out of the 2012 elections, aiming to affect the lame-duck session in Congress. Obama previewed the strategy in a conference call with activists after the election, saying that a second term that will include some barnstorming across the country.

"One of my pledges for a second term is to get out of Washington more often," Obama said.

On that same call, one of president's top campaign aides, Mitch Stewart, alerted listeners that they would be asked to help support the White House as it deals with the expiring Bush tax cuts and looming $1 trillion in sequestration-related cuts. Stewart added that some campaign operatives would remain in Chicago "going through what worked in 2012 and what didn't work in 2012 and trying to figure out how we as an organization can get better." He concluded by pointing the 30,000 call participants to a newly developed initiative called TheAction.org.
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2012/11/changing-washington-from-outside.html