July 10, 2006

Mapping Our Rights

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A new interactive map created by a consortium of advocacy groups (Ipas, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective) colors the 50 states according to their level of sexual and reproductive freedom. Visually, the result is familiar: the darkest blues — signifying the states with the least restrictive laws — are clustered at the coasts. Moving inwards, states turn purple, crimson and finally, in an island chain stretching from North Dakota to Oklahoma, fire-engine red. Interestingly, though, Ohio, with its dearth of hate-crime laws and its myriad restrictions on abortions, ranks as the least free of any state (Oklahoma, by contrast, was merely #46). New Mexico, meanwhile, came in number one.

map.jpg.
Click on the image to go to the interactive map. (Requires Flash)

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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