On birtherism, misogyny, and… math

Okay, so I'm not sure where it comes from. A few things, probably: a little blowback from all of the attention to Obama's birthplace (note: It's Hawaii. Let it go), a desire to discredit Sarah Palin any way possible, a love for absolutely anything salacious and conspiratorial. But the idea that Trig Palin is not Sarah's son but her grandson is for some reason picking up volume that seems impervious to logic.

An overview: Trig Palin (the one Sarah allegedly made) was born, as far as available evidence shows, on April 18. Tripp Palin (the one Bristol allegedly made) was born December 27 of that same year. Unless Bristol celebrated pushing out a six-pound baby by immediately getting' down and getting pregnant on the first try, and then promptly delivered a 36-week baby who weighed in at more than seven pounds, Trig can't be her kid. Math + biology. If you want evidence even solider than Obama's certificate of live birth, math + biology should do it.

There are two things that bug me about this controversy. One is the aforementioned math + biology issue. I love biology, and I particularly love math--if you want to discard math to support some wacky conspiracy theory, I'll be bugged. And the other is that I'm now forced to defend Sarah Palin. Do you know what that's like for me? Don't you like me? Why would you want me to do that?

On a "victory" for "life"

Okay, so on Friday, your House of Representatives voted to, in the interest of protecting life, completely defund women's preventive health services. in the name of protecting life. In eliminating federal funding to Planned Parenthood, the House eliminates $330 million for services that have nothing to do with abortion and everything to do with providing essential health care to millions of women--many of whom wouldn't be able to afford any care at all otherwise.

To underscore the extent to which Planned Parenthood directs no federal funds to abortion services, allow me to note that Planned Parenthood directs no federal funds to abortion services. Regardless of your personal feelings about the Hyde Amendment and abortion funding in general, one unavoidable fact is that Planned Parenthood directs no federal funds to abortion services. So if your goal is to ensure that no federal money goes to fund abortions at Planned Parenthood, yay! You win.

But abortions account for a whopping three percent of Planned Parenthood's services. And that's one thing that bugs me about the ABC story linked above--in the first sentence, it identifies Planned Parenthood as an "abortion provider," which is like identifying McDonald's as a salad bar. It would be more accurate to identify Planned Parenthood as a provider of preventive care, cancer screenings, tests and treatments for STIs, contraception, and well-woman services, not to mention educational programs that help prevent unplanned pregnancies and promote health and wellness. But that's fairly wordy, and it lacks the dramatic punch implying an office full of white-coated Dr. Orloffs just itching to kill a baby.

On a weird kind of pharmacist power

Okay, so I've brought up the issue of conscience clauses a couple of times before, and the answer has always come out the same: a big, fat chunk of I Don't Know. I'd hate to personally be forced to do something to which I had serious moral objections, but at the same time, isn't there a point at which you have to stop judging and do your job? Particularly when you're in a medical field--your choice to go with your conscience may actually result in someone's death. Whether you're a pharmacist refusing to fill a birth control prescription or a hospital willing to let a woman die rather than provide a treatment that violates their Catholic charter, you're putting your own moral reservations up against a woman's physical well-being and a physician's educated and deeply considered orders.

That's a lot of power, particularly for someone whose white coat spends most of its time behind the pharmacy counter at Walgreens. And it's a lot of responsibility. A pharmacist in Idaho, for instance, had the responsibility of filling a prescription for Methergine, a drug used to prevent or control bleeding of the uterus following childbirth or abortion. She decided not to, because the NP calling it in wouldn't tell her if the patient had had an abortion.

Now, let's be clear: The medicine in question could potentially save a woman from bleeding until she died--but the pharmacist wouldn't dispense it unless she knew the woman was moral enough to be worth saving.

The NP was, of course, prevented by HIPAA to tell a Walgreens pharmacist what had happened behind the closed doors of a doctor's office, and so the prescription was refused. And when the NP asked for a referral to a pharmacy that would fill it, the pharmacist hung up on her.

This is the discussion. This is the bright-line test for conscience clauses. If we are going to decide that a person's right to their own conscience should be honored above all things, how far are we willing to go with it? Is a medical professional required to help someone who will die? What about someone who will probably die? What about someone who will at the very least end up in the hospital if they aren't given the appropriate treatment?

And if the pharmacist is being asked to dispense medicine after the objectionable act has already taken place, isn't she just using her power to punish the patient? What conscience clause allows that?

On not just lemonade, but SPARKLING STRAWBERRY lemonade

Okay, so optimism is important in tough times. It's good to find the cloud's silver lining. Boyfriend dumped you? Woof. But if you look at it, he was a loser anyway. No one came to your party? Aw! But now you have all those beers and burgers to yourself. Just got your wisdom teeth pulled? Ouch! But at least you have a good excuse to pop narcotics and eat ice cream. Get raped and impregnated by your father? Whoops! But look on the bright side, says Republican senate candidate Sharron Angle--now you get a baby!

Stock:What do you say then to a young girl, I am going to place it as he said it, when a young girl is raped by her father, let's say, and she is pregnant. How do you explain this to her in terms of wanting her to go through the process of having the baby?

Angle: I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade. Well one girl in particular moved in with the adoptive parents of her child, and they both were adopted. Both of them grew up, one graduated from high school, the other had parents that loved her and she also graduated from high school. And I'll tell you the little girl who was born from that very poor situation came to me when she was 13 and said 'I know what you did thank you for saving my life.' So it is meaningful to me to err on the side of life. [emphasis mine]

This is one of those times when The Boy would tell me I'm out looking for things to get pissed off about, and I can't say for sure he's wrong. And even blogging about it here doesn't have a huge impact, because all of my reader--and, God willing, 98 percent of the rest of the world--recognize that looking for the lemonade in incestuous child rape is sheltered, thoughtless, ignorant, willful stupidity.

The reason this is significant is that she's not an inconsiderable presence in the upcoming Senate race. She's a darling of the Tea Party movement (as well as Phyllis Schlafly and Joe the Plumber), and she's up for Harry Reid's seat, which a lot of conservative voters would love to see filled with a Republican butt at any cost. In the current anti-liberal blowback culture, it doesn't take a lot for conservatives to look past an overwhelming volume of crazy if it means shifting the Senate balance even a little.

The above linked post includes an update reporting a response from Angle's campaign:

If abortion advocates really believed in choice as they claim, they would be just as eager to present women in these tragic situations with choices they can actually live with for years to come. That was the point I was making.

But this isn't about providing women (or, as discussed, girls) with choices they can live with. To Angle, it's about taking away their choices. It's about eliminating all but the choice she can live with.

It's not just her argument--wacko fundamentalist antis love to point out that "two wrongs don't make a right." And they don't. Raping a young girl, and then forcing her to carry and give birth to a baby whether she wants to or not, don't make anything even a little bit right. In that situation, the girl has been violated enough without having to cede further control of her body to some unsympathetic, Bible-waving stranger over in Nevada. But if God has a plan, God has a plan, right?

Let's hope to God his plan involves an overwhelming Harry Reid victory and a general opening of a whole lot of eyes. And maybe a little empathy, compassion, clarity, psychotropic drugs. Just a little? No? Just one? Still no? Okay, we'll get to that later.

On corporeal punishment

Okay, so I'll let Think Progress set this up for you:

On Thursday, Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall (R) spoke at a press conference against state funding for Planned Parenthood. He blasted the organization for supporting a woman's right to choose, saying that God punishes women who have had abortions by giving them disabled children:

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” said Marshall, a Republican.
“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”

I'm not going to even bother refuting his actual statement, because it's so completely asinine in every respect. And I'm not going to discuss at any length the complete insensitivity to parents of disabled children who are dealing with the stress of raising a child with special needs and who love those children desperately, because that's obvious to anyone who has half of a functioning heart and a sliver of a conscience.

What really jumped out at me was the fact that once again, someone from the "party of life" characterized a baby as a punishment for a woman's sins. Traditionally, it's been a somewhat abstract approach, where a woman commits the sin of gettin' down, and her "punishment" (usually just characterized as "the normal consequence") is the shame of pregnancy and the burden of responsibility for a human--or what most people call "parenthood." If you didn't want a kid, you shouldn't have fucked! That's the price of sex, slattern! That baby is going to be your millstone and the constant reminder of your sins against... whatever. God, or society, or something.

This time, we have a wackaloon taking it further, saying in so many words that these children are actual, literal punishments for women's sins. They aren't people. They aren't much-loved family members. They aren't precious lives worthy of care and protection. Fuck that noise. This is what you get, whore. Don't you wish you'd kept your damn legs closed (or at least accepted your just punishment then)? Now God hates you, and he's sending down his divine vengeance in the form of a human being with thoughts and feelings, whom you're expected to view as penance for your transgressions. If you'd done right by the Lord, you'd have had a good "normal" child, but instead you get this worthless broken one.

I'm not by any means trying to make Bob Marshall the spokesperson for his party; he's obviously a member (if a member in a position of some prominence) of the loony fringe. But his statement is another example of the conservative/Evangelical view that a child isn't a person to love and care for but an object of shame and a seven-pound, eight-ounce weapon to keep your sins ever in your mind. An object, a weapon, isn't alive, and a "culture of life" that sees a baby as those things isn't a culture of life at all.

Every baby should be loved and wanted, even those conceived unintentionally, even those with disabilities. No woman should be forced to bear a child that would be seen--that should be seen, according to conservatives--as a punishment. And no woman should be told that the child she chose to have is actually nothing more than God's divine wrath.

(h/t Pandagon)

On freedom of speach

Okay, so as soon as it was announced that Focus on the Family would be running an ad about abortion starring football-media-darling Tim Tebow during the Super Bowl, you knew there would be opposition from women's and/or liberal groups. And when that opposition arose, you knew there would be counter-opposition in the form of 1., "Tim Tebow is God's own anointed quarterback, so it's best to just give him what he wants," and 2., "FREEDOM OF SPEACH MOTHER EFFERS!"

And as soon as that popped out, you knew ACG was going to get that twitchy thing below her left eye, because she hate-hate-HATES that argument.

And it's not like I haven't made this point before, but obviously Practically Harmless doesn't have a voice loud enough to reach the whole world (or even the comments thread at SB Nation). And so I shall embark once again on what ma have to become a regular feature: Freedom of Speach Watch: This Has Nothing to Do With the First Amendment.

Because it doesn't. The question of the government's censorship of lawful expression isn't at issue here--and that's what the First Amendment addresses, your not-complete-but-pretty-comprehensive freedom from censorship by the government. But having the right to say something and having a venue to say it are two different things, and no one is required to provide you with the latter, regardless of how they feel about the former.

And that's what's at issue here: the venue. This is a particularly big issue because it's a particularly big venue--Super Bowl Ex Ell Eye Vee is expected to bring in 150 million viewers in the U.S. alone. That's $2.5 million for 30 seconds that will reach 150 million people live, plus the countless others who will be watching and re-watching the ads online. A study by Nielsen suggests that 51 percent of viewers will be tuning in to CBS just for the ads. So CBS has likely taken great care in the way they've sold and distributed ad space, and with a hot button issue like abortion, a lot of people are going to be paying attention to how they do it.

So how do they do it?

- In 2004, CBS turned down a Super Bowl ad from MoveOn.org that negatively portrayed George Bush. (They approved ad buys from Anheuser-Busch featuring a farting Clydesdale and a sexually aggressive monkey.)

- That same year, CBS (and partner UPN, as well as NBC) refused to run two ads from the United Church of Christ as being "unacceptable for broadcast" for highlighting the UCC's acceptance of gays, racial minorities, and people with disabilities.

- Last year, NBC declined to run a PETA ad that they deemed too racy.

- This year, CBS turned down $3 million for an ad from a gay dating site.

- It's CBS's air time, and particularly on an occasion like this, they have a vested interest in keeping things largely neutral and inoffensive to viewers--they have a right to ban controversial ads as much as they do sexually provocative halftime shows and spicy language by sideline reporters in the interest of keeping things family-friendly.

So that's what the issue is here: not whether CBS is bound by the First Amendment but whether they have made a wise choice in how they've distributed their ad space.

And when women's groups speak up against it, you know what? That is protected free speach. They have as much right to their opinion as Focus on the Family has to theirs, and they've managed to find a venue (in this case, several media outlets) in which to express it. And they aren't even questioning Focus on the Family's right to run the ad, merely CBS's choice to show it during the Super Bowl.

Once we get past the government's non-interference with Focus on the Family's freedom of speach, it all comes down to one thing: market forces. Capitalism at its finest. CBS chooses to run the Focus on the Family ad because they'll get money to do it. Women's groups choose to protest, since CBS has declined to run similarly issue-y ads in the past. CBS shrugs. Ain't no skin off their bottom line.

What if the women's groups decided to take it further? They could start going for the skin on CBS's bottom line by, for instance, organizing a boycott of Super Bowl fixtures like Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, and Doritos as long as CBS plans to run the Focus on the Family ad. Those companies could well go to CBS and saying, "This ain't worth it to us, CBS. It's us or Tebow." Forced to choose between Jesus and Benjamin Franklin, CBS would likely follow the money. And if (unlikely as it would be) that were to happen, it wouldn't be censorship--it would be business. Which is how the free market is supposed to work.

And thus I bring it back to me (because this is all, in the end, about me). How do I feel about CBS running the ad?

1. I'm agin it. If a network has a policy against running "issues" ads or "advocacy" ads, they need to stick to that policy and not run those ads--even if they come from a conservative politician or fundamentalist religious group.

2. I'm agin it. The "I'm glad my mom didn't abort me" argument always creeps me out anyway, but I also tend to raise an eyebrow at the "I could have had an abortion, but I didn't, and you can not-have one too" arguments. I'm glad that Mrs. Tebow was able to carry a very challenging--but very much wanted--pregnancy to completion, and I'm glad that she was able to make the choice to do so--but there are a lot of people who don't have the resources to do the former, and with Focus on the Family working hard to deny women the opportunity to do the latter, I have to call foul on this one.

3. I'm agin it. As sports columnist Gregg Doyel says, Super Bowl Sunday is a day for football, not pressing and divisive social issues. Eight o'clock Sunday morning is the time for moral and religious issues, and 6:30 (EST) Sunday evening is the time for athletic and officiating issues. Which means that I agree with Gregg Doyel. I'm agin that, too.

4. I'm agin it. Regardless of the subject, if you have an issue that's as significant and deeply felt as a woman's right to choose, it's certainly not best served shoehorned between a farting horse and a horny monkey.

On the stupidity inherent in the system

Okay, so it's no secret that I'm fairly exercised about the current health-care debate, particularly in re: the Stupak Amendment and reproductive rights. So when I got to a link from the Center for Reproductive Rights encouraging me to send an e-mail to my representative, urging him to sign Representatives Diana DeGette's and Louise Slaughter's letter of opposition to Nancy Pelosi, I was all for it. I sat down and penned an eloquent missive to my rep, Artur Davis. No form letter, this--I spoke of the plight of poor and middle-class women struggling for access to health care, the need for that health care to be comprehensive and address all of their needs as determined by that woman and her doctor, not as decided by a bunch of strangers in Congress or a bunch of fundamentalists behind a Web site. I implored him to be brave, to do what he knew was right instead of what would be expected of him from the Mountain Brook housewives in his district. God, it was a fine letter.

I shortly got an e-mail from Nancy Northrup with the CRR, thanking me for participating. "Thank you for taking action on this urgent issue," she said. "Every message sent will make a difference."

Maybe in a different district. Maybe in a different state. Maybe, certainly, with a different representative. But not with our buddy Artur Davis.

Artie writes:

Thank you for contacting me with your thoughts and concerns regarding abortion services within the health care reform package. I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter.

Well, y'know, it's what I do. I care.

As the health care reform legislation continues to take shape in both chambers of Congress over the next several weeks, I share your concerns about the use of federal funds to provide abortion services. I have joined other members of Congress in urging Speaker Pelosi to include language in any final healthcare reform bill that makes clear that no federal dollars can be used to finance coverage of an abortion-whether through a public option or through the direct use of federal subsidies to individuals. I believe this approach is consistent with the Hyde Amendment, a thirty year old federal prohibition on the use of Medicaid dollars to finance an abortion.

It's a big deal, y'know? Whether we like it or not, abortion services are an important part of comprehensive health care for women, so it's important to defend--wait, what?

I have joined other members of Congress in urging Speaker Pelosi to include language in any final healthcare reform bill that makes clear that no federal dollars can be used to finance coverage of an abortion...

Ah. Well, then, fuck you, Artur Davis.

He goes on to blah, blah, blah, and abortion is controversial and emotional, and tax dollars and an event that offends people's beliefs, and whatever, and I don't care, because fuck you, Artur Davis.

Please know that as this process moves forward I will continue to keep your thoughts in mind.

Why start now?

Again, thank you for contacting me, and I look forward to hearing from you in the future on matters that are important to you.

I'm pretty sure you won't. I'm not a fan of wasting my time. But I can think of a lot of people I can contact on matters that are important to me, and I've got plenty of time to do it between now and November 2010.

So to wrap up: Neither you nor any of your interns even bothered to read my e-mail, you don't share my concerns, you won't get my vote, and to sum up, FUCK YOU, Artur Davis.

Think you might have better luck with your rep? Check out the Center for Reproductive Rights.

On choices

Or, The Stupak, It Burns

Okay, so on Saturday night, the House of Representatives told the women of America to get comfortable under that bus, because universal health care is actually going to be defined as universal except for some women, because their ladyparts sometimes require procedures that we find icky. It may sound like I'm being dramatic, but I'll tell you, it feels pretty darn dramatic. It feels like our elected representatives are willing to screw over poor women and women who couldn't afford insurance without getting it through their employer and women who may get pregnant accidentally and women who may get pregnant intentionally--in other words, every women with a functioning uterus--in the name of affordable health care for the other 49.1 percent of U.S. citizens.

The Stupak Amendment to HR 3962 bans abortion coverage for any private or public health plan receiving federal subsidies--in essence every plan available on the Exchange. Not for any amount of money, not for any woman. Not even for a woman paying her entire premium herself. Not in a box, not with a fox. Thus women who depend on their employers for insurance or women who must pay for their insurance themselves will be left paying out of pocket for what can be a very expensive procedure. Exceptions will be made, of course, for rape, incest, and the life--life, not health--of the mother, so if you're lucky enough to have preeclampsia, you can just wait until the seizures start and then the government will take care of you.

For some reason, Bart Stupak and friends think it's perfectly reasonable that reproductive health services are the only ones that can be left completely out in the cold. They don't, for instance, try to explicitly remove heart disease from the bill, even though it costs taxpayers more annually than women's health services and usually arises from preventable lifestyle choices. Sorry, chubbo, you're paying for your angioplasty out of pocket! Next time you'll think twice before reaching for that rack of ribs. You should have coughed up for that extra heart-disease policy when you had the chance.

Three arguments that I will not entertain:

1. There are more important things to worry about right now! This bill would provide health insurance to 96 percent of Americans; can't you just compromise for their sake?

Well, no, I can't. Among those 96 percent are nearly 150 million women who may someday need reproductive health coverage. Congress would never try to pass a bill explicitly requiring insurers to deny coverage for obesity, and if they did, Americans would be up in arms. They would never try to pass a bill explicitly denying coverage for sickle-cell anemia. Yet when it's women getting the fuzzy end of the universal health-care lollipop, we're expected to sit back quietly, in the name of compromise, and hope that we'll someday get our chance to politely request the benefits that are offered to everyone else without thought or question. Hell, it's the sitting back quietly and politely that's gotten us into this situation.

2. The Hyde Amendment already says that federal dollars can't be used for abortions. It's not like women are any worse off.

First of all, let me note that even if women weren't any worse off, they'd be no worse off than a bad position. The Hyde Amendment was bad from the start, and women have been fighting against it from the start. It's like saying, "Oh, he's just trapped in the forest with a broken femur. It's not like it's raining or anything." No, it sure isn't raining, but that doesn't mean he's okay out there with his broken femur, and it doesn't mean someone doesn't need to go in there and help him.

That said, no, in fact, women are worse off. The Hyde Amendment, lousy as it is, only says that federal dollars can't be used for abortions. The Stupak Amendment extends that to all insurance sold through the Exchange, even to women who themselves pay their entire premiums without using federal dollars. Whereas before, it was only poor women on Medicaid who were left out in the cold, now it's any woman who can't afford to pay $1,500 for a D&E after her much-wanted baby is discovered to have hydrocephalus. Sure, she could have bought an abortion rider, but she probably didn't expect to ever need an abortion, any more than a person would buy a bus-hitting rider in anticipation of being hit by a bus.

3. I think that abortion is murder, and I don't want my tax dollars to fund murder.

Of course you don't. Neither does the pacifist who believes that war is murder--and yet still has to watch her tax dollars fund war. Neither does the person who believes that the death penalty is murder--and yet still has to watch his tax dollars fund executions. But in 1976, our government ruled that people who oppose abortion have the special privilege of dictating how their taxes are used. Since by current numbers, 57 percent of Americans oppose the Iraq war while only 45 percent oppose abortion, you'd think Congress would be rushing to shield tax dollars from the military rather than from reproductive health, but somehow that isn't the case.

The upshot echoes what President Obama said in an interview with ABC--"This is a health-care bill, not an abortion bill." On the surface, it sounds kind of dismissive, like we're discussing health care now and abortion will have to wait. But taken in context, it has meaning. It means that abortion isn't a separate issue. It means that health care isn't health care without care for every aspect of health, serving every citizen. Discussing abortion as a separate issue ignores the fact that, like diabetes and cancer, reproductive health is an integral aspect of health care crucial to keeping America healthy.

Okay, so I count myself lucky to have friends of a wide variety of personal conviction--Christian to Muslim to atheist, pro-choice to anti-choice and that nebulous in-between where you would never have an abortion yourself but you totally support other women's right to have abortions when please, if you're honest with yourself, you can't know how you would act were such a situation to arise but at least you're not one of those women who are totally anti-choice right up to the point where they find themselves pregnant but then they get to have an abortion because they have a good reason and everyone else just hates babies.

A friend of mine of the Christian, anti-choice variety (who is also generally a very nice and reasonable man, and he and his wife are currently housing a 20-week-old fetus in her abdomen, which they're very excited about, and thus so am I) posted a link on Facebook without comment: Why does Planned Parenthood need a restraining order against Abby Johnson? And my response to that is, well, because.

Let me disclose right away that I am not generally a fan of Double X (for all values of "generally" equal to "at all"). Their XXFactor blog claims to give voice to "what women really think," but its content seems liberally sprinkled with the kind of "just because I don't espouse any generally accepted feminist values doesn't mean I'm not a feminist" drivel that gives Sister F***ers something to link to approvingly in their blogs.

Another thing I'm not a fan of is intellectually incurious--to the point of suspicion--blog posts. Regardless of writer Rachael Larimore's stated intent to "kee[p] an eye on" the issue, she's gotten off to a weak start with a post that accurately parrots a local news story and goes into no further depth, accepting Johnson's accusations about Planned Parenthood's business model without question and speculating--entirely to PP's detriment--from then on.

I won't pretend to know anything more about the subject than Larimore does, and I hope that more information will be forthcoming, but if she's not going to ask questions, I will. If either of my readers has any informed, relevant knowledge on the subject, I invite you to fill in my blanks.

Three questions...

1. Larimore presents the news that Abby Johnson left her job as director of a Planned Parenthood health center (she doesn't say when, but it was October 6) after seeing the ultrasound of an abortion, which I'm sure would be rather a moment for anyone, regardless of value affiliation on the subject. But one has to wonder how Johnson managed to work for Planned Parenthood for eight years--two of those as director--and not know what was going on in those procedure rooms. Was she aware of how surgical abortions work? Did she never wonder what those bleepy machines with the little TV screens were for? What did she think they were doing back there?

Question 1: How did she go eight years without realizing how surgical abortions work?

2. Larimore also repeats without questioning a quote from Johnson:

Johnson says she became conflicted because “she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions,” and that the organization was “changing it's business model from one that pushed prevention, to one that focused on abortion.”

Johnson has said that she never received any e-mails or letters instructing her how to raise profits but that "Every meeting that we had was, 'We don't have enough money, we don't have enough money — we've got to keep these abortions coming.'" (Larimore didn't provide that quote herself, but a quick Google search provided a Fox News interview with Johnson as its second result.)

So. In their 2008 annual report, Planned Parenthood claims that three percent of the services provided at their health centers are abortion-related, while 36 percent are related to contraception; they say that 82 percent of their clients received contraception services in 2007. And they say that less than 40 percent of their overall revenue comes from their health centers. And PP's health center in Bryan, Texas, is only one of 850 in the nation.

(If you have a minute, check out Johnson's KEOS interview six weeks ago where she repeated those statistics, talked about the importance of reproductive rights, and mentioned how dishonest and threatening the Coalition for Life were and how she considered the 40 Days of Life to be harassment. Funny, that)

Recognizing that one abortion would certainly provide more income than, say, one pregnancy test or one pack of birth-control pills (although less, potentially, than one IUD or one year of BCPs), how many more abortions would Johnson have to bring into her clinic to have a substantial impact on Planned Parenthood's business model? Would she be expected to go out and recruit new clients to come in and have abortions, or would it be more effective to convince current clients not to use contraception after all?

Question 2: How many more abortions would Johnson have to bring in to have an impact on Planned Parenthood's business model?

3. In that Fox News interview that Larimore never managed to come across in her research on the subject, Johnson says that a visiting doctor could perform "30 to 40 procedures on each day he was there," two days a month. How many could one doctor actually perform in a day? I have this image of a doctor scrubbing in, performing the procedure, scrubbing out, and scrubbing right back in for the next one, like a game of whack-a-mole that leaves him with no time for chart notes or lunch. Is this realistic, or might Johnson have been exaggerating and/or sensationalizing a bit to Fox News because Bill Hemmer is such a muffin?

Question 3: Does the Bryan PP health center force its visiting doctor to work through lunch, or is Bill Hemmer a muffin? (The judges will accept "both" as an answer)

Larimore does ask one question in her post. She asks, "Why does Planned Parenthood need a restraining order against Abby Johnson?" (and also, "Is Planned Parenthood going to such lengths to keep Johnson from discussing its 'business model?'" but that's kind of the same thing). She doesn't want to jump to conclusions. And neither do I.

... and an answer

I do have access to this mystical device called "the Google," though, and it reveals to me wondrous things. For instance, the Google tells me that Salon obtained a copy of Planned Parenthood's petition for the restraining order, which included allegations that the same day Johnson was put on a "performance improvement plan," she was seen copying files and "removing items" from the health center, and that Johnson herself told clinic employees that she'd passed information along to the Coalition for Life and that "something big" was coming up.

Now, Johnson denies the allegations, but considering the threatening nature of much anti-choice activism (which Johnson herself decries in the aforementioned KEOS interview) and the Coalition for Life's own tactics of, for instance, calling the homes of clinic patients to tell their families that they've had abortions, it may be a safer move to restrain now and ask questions later. Later, for instance, on November 10, when a court date has been set up so that both parties can ask questions, and if the allegations turn out to be unfounded, the temporary restraining order won't be extended. But I like to think that if I were a PP patient, my medical records would remain confidential and my family unharassed by anti-choicers even if the clinic director did have a "change of heart."

Anyway, that's one thing that might be an answer to the only question that Rachael Larimore bothered to ask. We'll see how this thing pans out. I'll be watching.

On all your uterus (still belong to us)

Okay, so not that I've ever been there (thank God), but I'd imagine that being obliged to push a small watermelon out of your girlyparts is a very personal experience such that addressing your personal comfort as your prefer should be a priority. And as fruity as things like water birth and standing birth and, I don't know, kickboxing birth may sound, they're generally time-honored approaches that date back to before medical intervention was the norm for childbirth, and in many cases they add a sense of control over the experience and bonding with the baby that a hospital birth doesn't necessarily provide. That's why the popularity of midwives has been growing in recent years.

But oh, wait.

Forget I said all that, Alabama. You're going to be having your baby in a hospital where you bloody well belong. If you choose to sprog at home, having your friendly neighborhood certified professional midwife by your side will be enough to charge her with a misdemeanor. But I've been working with her throughout my pregnancy! you say. She knows everything about me! I was counting on her assistance! And you're welcome to it - as a certified nurse midwife, assisted by an obstetrician, in the intimate comfort of a hospital delivery room.

Again, I know nothing from personal experience on the subject of giving birth, but having worked extensively with various women's services here - and having known plenty of people who've been, y'know, pregnant - I gather that a quieter, less clinical environment for childbirth is ideal. As I pimp our new women and infants center, the selling point that keeps popping up is that the birthing rooms are comfortable and quiet and dimly lit and blah-blah-blah to make it a more homelike atmosphere. If most medical professionals recognize that that is the ideal, why not work to make it easier for women to give birth in an atmosphere that is homelike by virtue of being an actual home?

I recognize that there are a lot of complications that a woman can encounter throughout her pregnancy and especially during delivery itself. And of course women are encouraged to seek regular medical care throughout their pregnancy, and if things start looking complicated, they may have to compromise their home-birth fantasy in favor of one that has a few more crucial medical resources lying around. But the majority of pregnancies aren't that way. For millennia, women have been squatting in the corners of caves and teepees and thatched huts to give birth, and certainly enough mothers and babies have survived the experience to tell the tale and propogate the species.

It seems that when a woman is pregnant, she's the only person who doesn't know what's best for her. Everyone wants to protect her unborn child, and she is suddenly reduced to an inanimate object, a two-legged incubator incapable of making her own decisions about her own body.

A woman from Cameroon is landing in a federal prison after a judge in the U.S. sentenced her to 238 days for having fake documents - because she's pregnant and she has HIV, and apparently giving birth with the stellar health care of a prison infirmary is the best way to keep her baby from contracting the virus. A woman who can't kick her drug habit (which is, admittedly, a really bad thing) before she gets pregnant could be charged with child endangerment or even murder. The number of C-sections is on the rise, whether the woman wants (or sometimes even needs) one or not. Caffeine is bad, sushi is bad, some other stuff is bad (lunch meat? Peanut butter, or something?), and a woman is as likely as not to get chewed out by random strangers for introducing such poisons into her bloodstream. Hell, unpreggos like myself are already being told to treat ourselves as "pre-pregnant" on the off chance that a birth-control slip will get us knocked up without our uteri being appropriately prepared.

As always, there are limits. There are things that you should do. Get plenty of sleep, get plenty of prenatal care (heck, get health care throughout your life; it's just a good idea). Don't put stuff in your body that you don't intend to go into the baby's body. Wear your seatbelt. But there are plenty of things that we should do in life that they don't put us in jail for not doing. The fact that our uterus is now flashing a "no vacancy" sign doesn't mean that everyone is suddenly the boss of us. Hell, we have enough impositions on our bodily autonomy as it is. At least let us push out a baby in our fucking living room.

It's increasingly becoming a rallying cry. Stay. Out. Of my. Uterus. It's mine. If it's empty, I don't want you poking around, and if it's full, there's no room for you.

On putting the "life" in "pro-life"

Okay, so everyone who doesn't live under a bridge, even those who don't particularly care, knows that Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller was gunned down Sunday in the foyer of his church. A controversial figure in the debate on reproductive health, Dr. Tiller was one of two providers in the entire country to perform abortions in the third trimester for women carrying fetuses with severe abnormalities, women whose lives were endangered by their pregnancy, and victims of child rape. He was shot and wounded at his clinic in 1993; on Sunday, Scott Roedert came back to finish the job.

Several issues arise from his murder, among them: Is it moral to murder a man you consider to be committing murder? What will be the impact of this crime on the anti-choice community? Is this the act of one man or the result of an entire culture? What happened to "life"?

One at a time:

Is it moral to murder a man you consider to be committing murder? The big argument from the anti-choice crowd is that fetuses in the third trimester are about as close to babies as you can get, and they're not entirely wrong. But in their claims that women get late-term abortions for frivolous reasons (the infamous "prom-dress abortion" comes to mind), they are unequivocally wrong. Current legislation limits third-trimester abortions to the aforementioned women who are carrying fetuses with severe abnormalities, women whose lives are endangered by their pregnancy, and victims of child rape, and doctors performing said abortions are required to document the medical necessity of the procedure. In that respect, it can be argued (if you believe that a fetus is equivalent to a born baby) that Dr. Tiller was not committing murder but defending the lives of his patients, which is defensible in court. That is one reason that despite numerous lawsuits by opponents, Dr. Tiller was never convicted of any crime: He wasn't committing one.

What will be the impact of this crime on the anti-choice community? Like I care. No, seriously, I do care, although not as much as I care about the impact on the pro-choice community. Dr. Tiller's murder deprived the country of one of the few providers willing and able to perform late-term abortions; this raises the question of whether the procedure will disappear entirely as providers fear for their lives or if providers will defiantly take up the mantle of performing this lifesaving service, as did Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who will be taking care of Dr. Tiller's patients at the clinic. So, yeah, my main concern is for the women whose lives have been saved by doctors like Dr. Tiller and whether those services will be available to women in desperate situations in the future.

That having been said, I do have some interest in the impact on the anti-choice community, in that their success would obviously be detrimental to pro-choice efforts. As reported by Jacqueline Salmon in the Washington Post's "God in Government" column, anti-choice groups have been coming out in droves to condemn the actions of Dr. Tiller's murderer, trying to distance themselves from an act that is deplorable to all but the most extreme anti-choicers, regardless of politics. Roedert's connection to groups like Operation Rescue obviously does significant damage to their purported defense of life and shifts them toward the "crazy fundamentalist" view of the reproductive-health spectrum in the eyes of many Americans. And while the fair part of me rallies against the unfairness of that generalization, the pragmatic part of me realizes how well that works for the rest of us.

(I can't miss the irony of Michelle Malkin's fear that lefties are going to try to score political points on the back of this tragedy and her concern for Dr. Tiller's grieving family. Because golly, she has been one of his only real advocates from the beginning, hasn't she. Besides, she would never try to score points on a tragedy like, for instance, Terry Schiavo, or school shootings. Some things are just beyond politicization.)

Is this the act of one man or the result of an entire culture? There's the big question. Obviously, the vast weight of responsibility falls directly on the shoulders of Scott Roedert, the man who fired the gun. But it's arguable that he wouldn't have gotten to that point were it not for an anti-choice culture that whips up such an extreme fervor in its supporters that taking a human life would be considered an inevitable step. Which is not to say that all, or even most, anti-choice groups support such actions; groups like the Family Research Council and the National Right to Life Committee pursue goals that are abhorrent to me, but for the most part they do encourage only legal actions from their supporters.

But there are vocal and powerful groups on that side that come as close to encouraging violence as is possible without coming out and saying it. Groups like the Army of God and Roedert's favorite Operation Rescue, who will get links from me over my dead body, the sons of bitches, regularly post the names and addresses of abortion providers and their families as well as businesses they frequent along with wanted posters and vague comments about the lengths one might go to to protect innocent lives and how something must be done. Randall Terry insists that pro-life leaders and the pro-life movement are not responsible for George Tiller’s death" (Dr. Tiller merely "reaped what he sowed") but his own program has facilitated violence against abortion providers right up to the line where they could be held responsible for it.

And that's what happens when, in your fervor, you begin to lose sight of your real goal and start to worship the movement itself. The anti-choice movement has become more about making a point than actually saving lives and making life easier for women with difficult pregnancies. It's about lining up and shouting at pregnant women going into abortion clinics, intimidating abortion providers, and characterizing those providers as "murderers" - in our legal system, people deserving of imprisonment and execution. When you embrace inflammatory language, characterize your mission as a crusade, demonize your opponents, and encourage actual physical intimidation tactics, your movement moves closer and closer to the consuming flames of extremism. When you encourage vandalism and even firebombing of clinics, you're right in the middle of them. By definition, the use of violence to intimidate and cause terror is terrorism, which is a favorite tactic of other extremist fundamentalist groups that we tend to villify.

And a note to the more legitimate (such as it is) arm of the anti-choice movement: If you find that you have to put out a press release to assure the public that you don't condone cold-blooded murder, you might be backing the wrong horse.

What happened to "life"? It's still sacred, right up to the point where you stick your head out of your mother's vagina. If you're a woman carrying a fetus with severe abnormalities, you're expected to subject it to a short life of unspeakable misery. If you're a woman whose very life is threatened by her pregnancy, you're expected to take one for the team, giving up your life for your baby's and possible leaving behind childen and a widower now responsible for caring for a newborn infant. If you're a victim of child rape, you're expected to carry your rapist's baby to term, leaving indelible scars on your body and your emotional health. And if you're a physician charged with the unenviable task of making those people's lives better through an unfortunate and difficult procedure, you're expected to take one in the chest from a religious extremist - a domestic terrorist - who values the life of a fetus over that of you or the families you care for.

Here's a person who valued life: Dr. George Tiller, who risked his life to save lives. He waded through mobs of clinic protesters, he braved bomb threats at his clinic and threats to his own life and the lives of his family, he even took bullets and went right back to work, because he knew the importance of what he was doing. He worked to support women and their families in some of the most difficult times of their lives, helping them not only medically but emotionally and spiritually with counseling, support groups, and even religious services for the child they lost. That is truly pro-life, and the world is worse for losing him. My condolences to his family, who saw him not as a political figure but as a husband and father and are now suffering the consequences of this terrorist act.

On a matter of conscience

Okay, so I've expressed my opinion (wavery as it was) on the subject of conscience clauses before, specifically that I thought they were a pretty bad idea. It certainly promised a foot in the door for fundies who feel oppressed unless they're allowed to impose their beliefs on everyone else.

Well, now the Iowa fundies are taking it a step further. Having gained the right to not-dispense medicine, the Alliance Defense Fund is now fighting for the right to not-dispense marriage licenses.

However, a letter sent to county recorders by the Alliance Defense Fund says Miller is forgetting completely about “one of the most foundational rights and liberties we enjoy as Iowans” … “the right of conscience.”

That right, the letter says, is codified in Iowa Code 146.1.

“This right is based upon the simple truth that it is wrong to force anyone to violate his or her conscience,” said the letter, also from the Iowa Family Policy Council.

It cites the motto on the seal of the state, which reads, “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.”

“This noble motto … is emblematic of the moral sentiments of Iowans from the banks of the Missouri to the waters of the Mighty Mississippi. … As citizens of the State of Iowa and thus, the United States, we enjoy the protections of this right guaranteed in the U.S. and Iowa Constitutions. This right of conscience protects individuals against coercion by the state authority, and serves as the first line of defense against the cancer of tyranny.”

The letter suggests counties adopt policies that ensure no one will be required to “issue or process a marriage license, or to perform, assist, or participate in such procedures, against that individual’s religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

The suggested policy continues: “A person shall not discriminate against any individual in any way, including but not limited to employment, promotion, advancement, transfer, licensing, education, training, or the granting of employment privileges or conditions, because of the individual’s participation in or refusal to participate in the issuance of a marriage license.” (emphasis mine)

Me, I'm for it. I like the idea that, if you're acting on your conscience, you can't be fired for not doing your job. I think the law should be expanded to cover all professions. Jehovah's Witness phlebotomists who won't draw blood. Anarchist IRS employees who won't process tax forms. Pacifist police officers who won't knock down a fleeing suspect. I personally think it's morally wrong to honor any client requests that would result in damage to their brand, so I reserve the right to pick and choose which projects will cross my desk. And don't think you can get away with firing me for it.

Or waaaait. This isn't one of those things where the law only applies to some people, is it?

Let's analyze. Our pharmacist, we're going to call him Stan, is asked to fill a prescription for Plan B. Stan won't fill it, because his religious belief is that Plan B kills baybeez. Our pharmacy owner, we'll call him Mike, wants to fire his ass, because Stan isn't doing the job he was hired to do.

Stan's right to not dispense medicine. Mike's right to decide who gets a paycheck from him. Via the conscience clause, the round goes to Stan.

New twist: Mike has beliefs, too. One of his beliefs is that a woman has a right to not end up with a baby just because the condom broke. So this transaction is important to him not only because it's a sale but because it supports his personal belief.

Stan's right to not dispense medicine. Mike's right to decide who gets a paycheck from him and to prevent unwanted pregnancy. We'll also throw in Mike's right to not pay for two people to do a job that one person could handle so he still has an employee on hand to pick up Stan's slack. Via the conscience clause, the round still goes to Stan.

What the fuck?!

Let's delve deeper into this festering tunnel of blechh. You're a racist asshole landlord who believes that black people will filthy up your nice apartment, so you won't rent to them. You're a fundamentalist asshole restauranteur who believes that Muslim people will call down God's wrath upon your restaurant, so you won't serve them. You're a sexist asshole college dean who believes that women are inherently stupid, so you won't hire them. Acting your conscience vs. breaking the law. My heart says them coloreds is dirty, the FHEO says I'm breaking the law... The cognitive dissonance, it burns!

You have religious beliefs. That's great. I'm happy for you. But beliefs, values, and twinges of conscience aren't solely based on religion, particularly not just Christian religion. People of other faiths have values. Agnostics and atheists have values. Playing the "value" game, valuing some values above other values... Ahem. Playing the "belief" game, where some beliefs are deemed more valuable or important than others, is a messy exercise, particularly if Belief A beats Belief B because Person A has a Jesus fish on his car.

I've used this example before, but if you have serious objections to some of the requirements of your chosen profession, choose another profession. If you're Muslim and can't touch pork, don't become a butcher (or find a halal butcher to work for). If your religion forbids touching women, don't go to work for a gynecologist. If you're a Buddhist, don't become a... hit man. Or an exterminator, for that matter. If you're lucky, you'll find a vegan-friendly grocery store that doesn't mind if you won't ring up a block of cheddar. But don't go bitching if Safeway won't let you get away with it.

I fully accept your right to act only on your conscience. As a matter of fact, I fully accept your right to do a whole lot of things (but by no means all things), even things that I don't like. But I also accept your right to accept the consequences of your actions. Jaywalk? Accept that you're probably going to get pasted by a car. Punch the bouncer? Accept that you're going to get pounded. Refuse to do your job? Accept that you're probably going to lose your job. And don't cry about it because you're supposed to be special. My mom says I'm special, too, but I'm sure as hell going to get shitcanned if I don't finish that stupid-ass brochure for our stupid-ass client. Because I have to do the job I was hired to do.

On open theocracy

Okay, so this kind of thing is why this election is so important, and why you just cannot believe the fundies when they claim they respect your right to practice your own religion (when they bother to claim it):

" do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards," Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Despite the fact that Huck doesn't define which god, whose concept of God, or the god of which holy book or series of books is the one whose will is to be enshrined in our nation's constitution, I think it's fairly safe to assume that he means the god of the King James version of the Christian bible as interpreted by the Southern Baptist Convention, also known as his god. Amending the Constitution to those particular standards would mean banning blended fibers (which should improve business for cotton farmers, at least) and shellfish (but not so much for the shrimpers, crabbers, and lobstermen off the coast of New England) and approving slavery and the stoning of insubordinate children. We know for sure it'll involve wifely submission.

If Huck asked me what God's standards are for gay marriage or universal health care or national defense, I daresay he'd get a couple of answers that he'd disagree with. And I daresay he'd go right ahead and push for unitary executive power over my uterus whether I thought God would approve or not. Because we're not talking about God's standards; we're talking about Huck's standards, the ones he's pushing by waving a bible around and invoking the name of a being that between five and ten percent of Americans don't even believe exists. We're talking about Mike Huckabee as the god of the Constitution, and if not him, the fundie wackos behind him, and if not them, some other fundie wacko pursuing the presidency with the same agenda.

What ever happened to John F. Kennedy's take on religion?

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim--but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

[...]

Whatever issue may come before me as President--on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject--I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

A personal belief system is inevitable, as is the fact that whatever your beliefs happen to be will have some influence over your conscience. That's unavoidable. But a presidential candidate needs to come into the race conscious of that fact and determined to avoid it to the extent that it is possible to do so. Because the president needs to see to the physical, terrestrial interests of the American people and leave their heavenly salvation to whatever higher power they worship or choose not to, as is their right as enshrined in the first amendment of the Constitution on which he's trying to impose the questionable standards of his personal god.

Unless we're talking about the standards of this guy's god. He seems to have it together.

On Hollywood and the unwed mother

Okay, so I was already prepared to hate Juno when I walked into the theatre. I'd read a lot on various feminist blogs about the way various parts of the film could be twisted by anti-choicers, and I'd read a couple of interviews with the screenwriter, Diablo Cody, that really made me question her sense of wealthy white privilege. And when Ellen Page's Juno MacGuff yelled at that dog to "Shut [his] gob," I knew that I was going to hate the unrealistically snappy smart-disaffected-teen pseudo-slang-a-la-Megan-Jasper.

Except I actually really, really liked the movie.

It wasn't hard to like. It also wasn't hard to pick out which parts would be prime fodder for anti-choicers; 16-year-old preggo Juno (and I don't think I'm spoiling too much here, but do read on at your own peril) goes into an abortion clinic and ends up coming back out when she discovers that her fetus already has fingernails. She responsibly decides to put the kid up for adoption. She searches for a loving, stable, hetero, normal couple to raise the kid, and she finds them, and they meet and negotiate a closed adoption and the deal is done and aren't we all just about to have a happily-ever-after 'cause Juno chose life?

Yeah, sure, on the surface, yeah. If you haven't actually seen the movie and are working purely from hearsay, reviews, and some promotional materials, you might think that. But actually watching, you see how the movie is all about choice -- Juno's choice to have or not have the baby. Juno's choice to put it up for adoption. Juno's process of selecting an adoptive family that she finds appropriate. And at the end, which I will absolutely not spoil because I insist that each and every one of you go see it and report back, she makes a couple of pretty significant choices, some of which might satisfy the fundies, one of which almost certainly would not. Without really advocating any particular path -- Juno's situation is presented as unique, as all such situations are -- Juno is given the authority over her own life and body to decide how to address her unique circumstances.

And that's what the pro-choice position is all about. It's not about forcing people to have abortions or ripping eight-months fetuses from their unsuspecting hosts in the dark of night. It's not even about advising that women have abortions. It's just about making sure that, should a young woman like Juno or an older woman with a family decide that her circumstances aren't conducive to carrying a pregnancy to term, she has access to safe and affordable health care for that process. And it's about supporting her choice if she chooses to have the baby after all and raise it, so that she can afford to support herself and her kid and give them both the best life possible. And it's about supporting her choice if she chooses to have the baby and give it up for adoption, so that she can have access to health care to keep her healthy and adoption services to help her find a good, loving family of whatever shape or orientation.

It's also, of course, about preventing the need for abortions in the first place, to the extent that such a thing can be done. It's a laugh line in the movie, but the boysenberry condoms proffered by the receptionist at the abortion clinic -- "My boyfriend wears one every time we have intercourse. It makes his junk smell like pie" -- are also a reasonably effective means of preventing pregnancy in the first place. Far moreso than, say, pretending that sex doesn't exist, telling teens never to have it, and expecting that they'll have the un-hormonally-driven self-control to refrain.

From where I sat, the movie was far more pro-choice than anti-, but I can see why antis desperate for a pop-culture foothold might bite down on it and wrestle it into submission in fallacious support of their own ends. At the same time, though, I've tried to come up with a lighthearted, non-preachy movie based on the a similar premise but with a different ending -- pregnant teen/woman decides to have the abortion -- and I just can't figure out how to make a movie out of it that's worth making a movie of. If she chooses to have the abortion and, as so frequently happens, it all works out well, she sighs and says, Well, gosh, I wish I hadn’t had to do that. Oh, well, life goes on, and life goes on, there’s not much of a movie. And, of course, if she chooses to have an abortion and everything goes horribly (or even marginally) wrong, the anti-choicers are all over it, screaming, See what happens?! See what happens when you kill teh baybeez?!!?!?!one!! Maybe it could be a movie from the perspective of one of the woman’s other kids who now has a better life because her mother had an abortion, but I just don’t know.

Commenters on the Feministe thread suggest movies like Teachers and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, both of which address the abortion issue as only an 80's film can, but both of those include said issue as a provocative subplot rather than the main focus. It all makes me think that maybe there aren’t any explicitly pro-choice movies out there because the pro-choice position is so inherently reasonable as to be beyond cinematic drama.

Regardless, I'm not going to let the antis plant their flag in this one just because they can't be bothered to read beneath the surface, especially since in their ideal world, Juno probably wouldn't have had access to the health care necessary to produce a healthy baby, and she certainly wouldn't have been able to leave it in the loving arms where it ultimately landed. The whole damn movie is all about choice -- and more than that (more importantly than that, even? It could be argued), it's really, really entertaining. And funny. And sweet. And Allison Janney is my hero. And unlike Knocked Up, it's probably even a movie you could see on a date without going home and sitting on opposite sides of the couch without making eye contact.

On poking and owning

Okay, so the Ohio state legislature is working on a bill that would put any source of fresh sperm in charge of any uterus said sperm encountered. Under House Bill 287, any woman seeking an abortion would have to produce a signed note from the sperm donor saying that it's okay to terminate the pregnancy.

In other words, if a woman doesn't want to be pregnant, but her abusive husband/date rapist/stepfather/creepy pastor/one-night stand/vindictive ex won't sign the paper, that uterus is going to be "no vacancy" for the next nine months, and there's not a damn thing she can do about it. Why? Because he planted his man flag in her uterus, dammit, he planted his seed, and whether or not he even wants the kid, he has every right to make her endure the risks and hardships of carrying it against her will.

Luckily, there's a very simple solution to this problem. If a man and a woman shared, say, a special edition box set of Seinfeld DVDs, and she decided she didn't want it anymore, she wouldn't throw it away - she'd give it to the man. And he'd by no means force her to hold on to them, just because he wanted to keep them - he'd take them off her hands.

So if a woman is pregnant with a man's fetus, and she no longer wants to be, the reasonable thing to do would be to give the fetus to the man, let him finish gestating it in his uterus, and everyone’s happy.

At that point, of course, it's the man's responsibility to provide adequate facilities to raise a fetus to adulthood, but that shouldn't be too much trouble, right? It's no more than he was expecting of the woman who had custody of the fetus in the first place. The Ohio state legislature is right in saying that a man deserves a say in the disposition of any fetus that's half-his. It just doesn't make sense that he'd have any right to store it in another person's uterus without her permission.

On regrets (I've had a few)

Okay, so in light of yesterday's post on the origins of misogyny back in the day and the continuing justifications for misogyny now, I was amused to find this post by mcjoan at Daily Kos:

The New York Times chronicles the Right's ongoing, and succeeding, effort to not only curtail women when it comes to what we decide to do about our bodies, but to question our very ability to think for ourselves about life-altering decisions. And the Supreme Court goes merrily along with it:

[L]last month’s Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act marked a milestone for a different argument advanced by anti-abortion leaders, one they are increasingly making in state legislatures around the country. They say that abortion, as a rule, is not in the best interest of the woman; that women are often misled or ill-informed about its risks to their own physical or emotional health; and that the interests of the pregnant woman and the fetus are, in fact, the same....

All sides agree that the debate reached a new level of significance when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing the majority opinion in the Supreme Court case last month, approvingly cited a friend-of-the court brief filed by the Justice Foundation.... In its friend-of-the-court brief, the group submitted statements from 180 of those women who said that abortion had left them depressed, distraught, in emotional turmoil. "Thirty-three years of real life experiences," the foundation said, "attests that abortion hurts women and endangers their physical, emotional and psychological health."...

"While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained," Justice Kennedy wrote, alluding to the brief. "Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow."

Given those stakes, the justice argued, "The state has an interest in ensuring so grave a choice is well informed."

This, despite that a real research institute, the Guttmacher Institute, has conducted a real review of the studies done over the past 30 years and concluded that legal abortion posed no danger the physical or emotional health of women. That's real statistics, however, real research. We can't expect that, nor the fact that the millions of women who have had legal abortions in the last 30 years are heatlhy, functioning, productive member of society who make critical decisions on a daily basis.

She goes on to suggest that, if it's really in the best interest of the government to save us poor, emotional, illogical women from reproductive choices we may later regret, what other choices should they save us from?

She and Scott Lemieux have a few suggestions:
- Women who get married and later regret it
- Women who have babies and then suffer post-partum depression or psychosis (Scott wonders if this justifies state-mandated abortions)
- Women who think it through, decide to get pregnant, and then lose their jobs because of it, like the ones who worked for Bush's domestic policy czar
- Women who really wish they hadn't voted GOP

I could add:
- Women who bought an SUV back when they needed the cargo room but now really regret it since gas prices have gone up
- Women who got a lower-back tattoo and now feel embarrassed since Britney Spears got one
- Britney Spears
- Women who got a perm because Halle Berry looked so cute with curly hair but now have to face photographic proof of their foolishness every time they open up their high school yearbook (not me)
- Women who bought the first season of Veronica Mars one episode at a time on iTunes and are now regretting it because, since the show's been cancelled, they're bound to put out a special-edition box set any day now
- Women who left college to have babies but, since their husband walked out, are having trouble finding work and now wish they'd finished their degree first
- Women who want to get their tubes tied but can't because the doctor thinks they're too young, and then find themselves pregnant, and then regret not popping the doctor in the nose and finding a new one

Now it's your turn! What legislation should Congress consider for the next session that'll take the burden of decision-making off of us poor, overburdened, emotionally fragile women? Come on, people, be a pal! Save me from myself!

On "womb envy" and way more than you ever wanted to know about my reproductive health

Okay, so there's an interesting discussion over at Pandagon right now. It started with a rant (he calls it a rant; I think it's entirely coherent) by Joss Whedon* at Whedonesque about the stoning death of Dua Khalil in Iraq and theories on the origins of misogyny (a rant which you should read, because it's really moving). He boils a lot of it down to "womb envy," which led to an enthusiastic discussion of the concept in comments.

The discussion goes kind of like this:

Some commenter without a uterus: I can buy that. Being able to bear children is a pretty awesome trick.
Other commenter with a uterus: You've got to be kidding. You should try it sometime.
SCWaU: Well, that's the point. I can't. But it would be cool if I could.
OCWaU: You should try dragging one of these things around.
SCWaU: Hey, I'd love to try! That's kind of a source of power, if you think about it.
OCWaU: Right, 'cause I feel soooo powerful every month as I bleed profusely from my...

And so on.

And while I kind of make light of the debate here, I actually think it's an important one, because to me, it underlines one of the most important points of the "womb envy" concept: men just don't know. They envy because they just don't know.

Sure, medical science has helped us understand the process of gestation and childbirth. We know the anatomy of it. Children know where babies are made, and then we can look at 4-D ultrasounds to see a fetus in the womb and watch TLC to see a baby coming out of the womb. But to know what it's like to actually have the necessary reproductive equipment and to deal with the day-to-day hassles and maintenance, you really have to experience it directly.

For the record? Women's reproductive capabilities? Not so magical. I've never been pregnant myself, but just maintaining my girly bits in a condition such that I can one day be pregnant is a hassle and a half. Skip to the next graf to avoid TMI and Teh Gross, because there are menstrual cramps, which feel like the equivalent (and I've determined this through extended and frank discussion with my male acquaintances) of getting kicked in the nuts ever half-hour or so for an entire day. There are all manner of substances coming out of said region, of different consistencies and colors and smells and serving different biological purposes. I can generally predict, to the day, when, during the month, I will be a) bitchy and short-tempered and b) inconsolably weepy for no reason but cannot control these reactions. There are times when I will crave salty food like nobody's business but not be able to eat it because I will promptly begin retaining, and this is no exaggeration, as much as five pounds of fluid. Some months, I sweat a lot, and I haven't been able to figure out why. And all of that is just the basic monthly maintenance of the reproductive system. Actually make a baby in there, and you're looking forward to nausea, back pain, fluid retention, weight gain, swollen feet, new body hair, changes in complexion, mood swings, food cravings, breast tenderness, and, of course, labor, after which point your body never completely returns to its former state. It's magical!

And a lot of guys know about all of these things, but they don't really know them. I think some of the guys I know think, when I’ve got PMS, that I’m taking liberties and allowing myself to be snappish and coddle myself as a luxury, because it can’t be that bad, right?

Seriously, guys, it's that bad.

I don't want to pretend that the ability to produce a complete and unique human being from nothing more than a couple of gametes isn't impressive; it is. It's also vital to the survival of the species. It's something that you have to be a woman to do. And I have it on authority from friends who have been pregnant that when you really want a baby, all of the hassle and discomfort is negligible in comparison to the wonders of the reproductive process and the little person you get as a result. Pretty cool.

The capacity to produce entire human beings from our naughty bits is pretty awesome; it's just not simple or easy. And that's something you really have to be a woman to understand, and that's where "womb envy" comes into play. Humans have a natural reaction to things we don't understand: We romanticize, and we fear. Organized religion has its base in all of the things that people haven't understood, things that they've romanticized into a supreme being for them to fear. A woman's role in reproduction, being something that men can't entirely understand, is romanticized into a magical power, and it's also feared, because that power really does have the capacity to end humanity. See previous discussions of Children of Men.

The response has been, throughout time, to marginalize and subjugate women to keep them from exercising this (supposedly) awesome and threatening power. Restrict their freedom of movement. Limit their rights. Convince them, all biological evidence to the contrary, that they are weak and frail and fragile and incapable of [insert activity here]. Dress them up in pointy, high-heeled shoes (or bind their feet) and long, tight skirts (or acres and acres of fabric) to physically hobble them.

Then load them down with catch-22s. They have to be sexually attractive but not superficial. They have to be sexually available but also pure and virginal. They have to be earth mothers raising children and keeping a perfect house, but they also have to be self-sufficient, or else they're just sponging off of their husbands. Convince women that nothing they ever do is right, and they'll spend all of their time making up for it, and not conspiring to weild their magical uterus power against the menfolk.

Commenter Nadai makes a really interesting point:

I think of women’s social position as being akin to that of a person being extorted. An extortionist has to walk a careful line - make the price too low, and you’ve lost money you could have got, but make the price too high, and the victim won’t pay. What counts as “too high” depends on what the extortionist has on the victim. I wouldn’t pay a dime to avoid having it revealed that I once littered, but I’d pay a great deal to keep secret that I murdered my husband for $2 million in insurance.

What patriarchy does is raise the stakes on both sides. It defines the “crimes” of women as being extraordinarily bad, bad enough to be worth paying the maximum. Then it demands payment over and over, every day, in terms of our behavior, our thoughts, our allegiances. Of course we pay. How could we not?

And like with most victims of extortion, there’s no way to end it, no way to get back the incriminating recording or the gun with our fingerprints on it, because the crime we’ve committed is being female, and we’ll keep on committing it every day of our lives.

And the scary thing is that the misogynistic thought processes that originiated with the beginning of recorded history still persist today. Patriarchy has become so ingrained and self-sustaining that some people deny it exists at all, and yet we still have a gender wage gap (Women are just going to go off and get pregnant anyway!) and debates about women in combat (They can't carry the weight! They're too emotional! Men will be distracted!) and restrictions on reproductive rights (Women are too emotional to make these decisions! They might regret it later! Make the sluts have the babies!) and disparities in health care (and I can't even come up with a rationalization for that one). Otherwise (reasonably) intelligent people still manage to believe that women are inherently weaker in science or that men are inherently better leaders.

The question is, since we've been pounded literally since the dawn of civilization that women are these others, that we're inherently different and weaker and that any rights we have must be gradually meted out to us by male gatekeepers and caretakers, how do we move past that? What will do the job? Reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? More stay-at-home dads? An experimental, gender-integrated combat unit in the Army? Give Amy Wynn Pastor her own TV show? Extensive therapy for certain nauseatingly paternalistic Supreme Court justices? I'm open to any and all suggestions.

How do we change the mind of a man who watches a woman push an eight-pound human being through her vagina and thinks, "Yeah, totally the weaker sex"?

*Debate also raged as to whether or not Joss Whedon is actually a feminist at all. I tend to think he is, but YMMV. Discuss at will.

On Sam Brownback: This Is Your Soundtrack

Okay, so it's one thing to be anti-abortion. It's another thing to be so anti-abortion that you oppose it even in the case of rape or incest.

It's another thing entirely to be a man who thinks he has a uterus.


Sam Brownback starts to forget his 8th grade biology lessons at 0:42

But we need to remember that, even if Sam Brownback doesn't actually have a uterus, he has every right to have a baby.

STAN: I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me 'Loretta'.
REG: What?!
LORETTA: It's my right as a man.
JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
LORETTA: I want to have babies.
REG: You want to have babies?!
LORETTA: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
REG: But... you can't have babies.
LORETTA: Don't you oppress me.
REG: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
LORETTA: [crying]
JUDITH: Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.

The Ten:

1. Under the Influence, "Mama's Room"
2. Dixie Chicks, "Baby Hold On"
3. Dinah Washington, "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby?"
4. Big Mountain, "Baby, I Love Your Way"
5. Bon Jovi, "It's My Life"
6. Smash Mouth, "Can't Get Enough of You Baby"
7. Madison Avenue, "Don't Call Me Baby"
8. Athenaeum, "If Baby's Gone"
9. Cat Stevens, "There Goes My Baby"
10. Fatboy Slim, "Right Here, Right Now"

On cruelty and humanity

Okay, so Jill, usually of Feministe, has a post up at Huffington Post outlining the true consequences of the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban. She points out, and rightly so, that the ban isn't about preserving life or protecting families. In fact, the women and families most frequently affected by this legislation (and by an incredibly wide margin) and those who want their pregnancies, who want children, who are faced with unimaginable pain and sorrow when those pregnancies go wrong - and who are subjected to further pain and sorrow as they are victimized and demonized by the court.

And I do want to mark this with a TRIGGER WARNING, because the descriptions of the things that can go wrong with a pregnancy may be understandably difficult for some women to read. I publish them not out of any sense of gratuitous voyeurism or shock value but to illustrate the need for basic human compassion in situations like that, and I'm grateful to the women who have shared such personal stories

The ruling against intact D&E, the ruling that allows the Supreme Court to overrule the best judgment of a physician and a pregnant woman, makes reference to the fact that the procedure in question is "gruesome." It's true. Most significant medical procedures are. But although an honest examination of the procedure is enough to squick a person out, so is an honest examination of the consequences, both physical and emotional, when a necessary medical procedure is made unavailable and politics are played with a woman's life, physical and emotional health, and future fertility.

Gretchen Voss shared her story with Marie Claire magazine.

When I was 18 weeks pregnant at my doctor's office in Lexington, Massachusetts, I remember eagerly anticipating the ultrasound that would tell my husband and me whether our baby was a boy or a girl. We were so excited, oohing and aahing like the giddy, expectant parents that we were.

The technician, however, was quiet, and I started to panic. We learned that the ultrasound indicated that the fetus had an open neural-tube defect, meaning that the spinal column had not closed properly. We had to go to Boston immediately, where a new, high-tech machine could tell us more.

In Boston, the doctor spoke using words no pregnant woman wants to hear - clinical terms like hydrocephalus and spina bifida. The spine, she said, had not closed properly, and because of the location of the opening, it was as bad as it could get.

What the doctors knew was awful: the baby would be paralyzed and incontinent, its brain smushed against the base of the skull and the cranium full of fluid. What they didn't know was devastating: would the baby live at all, and if so, with what sort of mental and developmental defects? Countless surgeries would be required if the baby did live, and none of them could repair the damage.

It sounds naive now, but I never considered pregnancy a gamble. Sitting in the doctor's windowless office, I tried to read between the lines of complicated medical jargon, searching for answers that weren't there. But I already knew what I had to do. Even if our baby had a remote chance of surviving, it was not a life we would choose for our child.

I asked over and over, "Are we doing the right thing?" Our family - even my Catholic father and Republican father-in-law, neither of whom was ever pro-choice - assured us that we were. Politics suddenly became personal - their daughter's heartbreak, their son's pain, their grandchild's suffering - and that changed everything.

Martha Mendoza, too, certainly wasn't hoping that her pregnancy would end in abortion.

I could see my baby's amazing and perfect spine, a precise, pebbled curl of vertebrae. His little round skull. The curve of his nose. I could even see his small leg floating slowly through my uterus.

My doctor came in a moment later, slid the ultrasound sensor around my growing, round belly and put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s not alive,” she said.

She turned her back to me and started taking notes. I looked at the wall, breathing deeply, trying not to cry.

I can make it through this, I thought. I can handle this.

I didn’t know I was about to become a pariah.

I was 19 weeks pregnant, strong, fit and happy, imagining our fourth child, the newest member of our family. He would have dark hair and bright eyes. He’d be intelligent and strong — really strong, judging by his early kicks.

And now this. Not alive?

...

My doctor turned around and faced me. She told me that because dilation and evacuation is rarely offered in my community, I could opt instead to chemically induce labor over several days and then deliver the little body at my local maternity ward. “It’s up to you,” she said.

I’d been through labor and delivery three times before, with great joy as well as pain, and the notion of going through that profound experience only to deliver a dead fetus (whose skin was already starting to slough off, whose skull might be collapsing) was horrifying.

I also did some research, spoke with friends who were obstetricians and gynecologists, and quickly learned this: Study after study shows D&Es are safer than labor and delivery. Women who had D&Es were far less likely to have bleeding requiring transfusion, infection requiring intravenous antibiotics, organ injuries requiring additional surgery or cervical laceration requiring repair and hospital readmission.

...

There was this fact, too: The intact D&E surgery makes less use of “grasping instruments,” which could damage the body of the fetus. If the body were intact, doctors might be able to more easily figure out why my baby died in the womb.

...

We told our doctor we had chosen a dilation and evacuation.

“I can’t do these myself,” said my doctor. “I trained at a Catholic hospital.”

My doctor recommended a specialist in a neighboring county, but when I called for an appointment, they said they couldn’t see me for almost a week.

I could feel my baby’s dead body inside of mine. This baby had thrilled me with kicks and flutters, those first soft tickles of life bringing a smile to my face and my hand to my rounding belly. Now this baby floated, limp and heavy, from one side to the other, as I rolled in my bed.

And within a day, I started to bleed. My body, with or without a doctor’s help, was starting to expel the fetus. Technically, I was threatening a spontaneous abortion, the least safe of the available options.

I did what any pregnant patient would do. I called my doctor. And she advised me to wait.

...

On my fourth morning, with the bleeding and cramping increasing, I couldn’t wait any more. I called my doctor and was told that since I wasn’t hemorrhaging, I should not come in. Her partner, on call, pedantically explained that women can safely lose a lot of blood, even during a routine period.

I began calling labor and delivery units at the top five medical centers in my area. I told them I had been 19 weeks along. The baby is dead. I’m bleeding, I said. I’m scheduled for a D&E in a few days. If I come in right now, what could you do for me, I asked.

Don’t come in, they told me again and again. “Go to your emergency room if you are hemorrhaging to avoid bleeding to death. No one here can do a D&E today, and unless you’re really in active labor you’re safer to wait.”

...

At last I found one university teaching hospital that, at least over the telephone, was willing to take me.

“We do have one doctor who can do a D&E,” they said. “Come in to our emergency room if you want.”

But when I arrived at the university’s emergency room, the source of the tension was clear. After examining me and confirming I was bleeding but not hemorrhaging, the attending obstetrician, obviously pregnant herself, defensively explained that only one of their dozens of obstetricians and gynecologists still does D&Es, and he was simply not available.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Not the next day.

No, I couldn’t have his name.

...

They inserted sticks of seaweed into my cervix and told me to go home for the night. A few hours later — when the contractions were regular, strong and frequent — I knew we needed to get to the hospital. “The patient appeared to be in active labor,” say my charts, “and I explained this to the patient and offered her pain medication for vaginal delivery.”

According to the charts, I was “adamant” in demanding a D&E. I remember that I definitely wanted the surgical procedure that was the safest option. One hour later, just as an anesthesiologist was slipping me into unconsciousness, I had the D&E and a little body, my little boy, slipped out.

Around his neck, three times and very tight, was the umbilical cord, source of his life, cause of his death.

This unnamed mother chose to spare her child the constant pain of a rare and unexplained disorder.

In November, when I was 22 weeks pregnant, we received news that would forever change our lives. A sonogram at the perinatologist’s office revealed that our son, Thomas, had a condition known as arthrogryposis. The doctor’s face spoke volumes when he returned from fetching a medical book to confirm the rare diagnosis. He explained that arthrogryposis was a condition that causes permanent flexation of the muscle tissue. The condition could be caused by over 200 different diseases and syndromes, with a wide array of severity.

He asked for permission to do an immediate amniocentesis, and for the first time he used the word “termination. It was then that I first realized the gravity of our situation.

My husband and I were shocked and struggled to comprehend what we were being told.. It would take two weeks to receive the results of the amniocentesis, which might reveal the cause of the arthrogryposis, but we already knew that the prognosis was not good.

The ultrasound showed that Thomas had clubbed hands and feet. His legs were fixed in a bent position and his arms were permanently flexed straight. He had a cleft palate and swelling on his skull - a condition that would likely kill him in and of itself. Due to his inability to move, Thomas’s muscles had deteriorated to 25% or their usual size, and his bones to 25% of their usual density.

My husband and I were sent home to grapple with the news and face an unwelcome decision: whether or not to continue with the pregnancy.

… By the time the amnio results came back, we had two days left to make a decision before hitting the 24 week mark – after which, no doctor in Texas would terminate a pregnancy. The results were devastating. Our son had no chromosomal disorder. There was no explanation at all for his condition, and as such, no way to predict the scope of his suffering. We would have to make our decision based strictly on what the ultrasound had revealed.

My husband and I decided that we would have to use the golden rule. We would do for Thomas what we would want done for us in the same situation.

We tried to look at the evidence as honestly as we could. Even the best case scenario was abominable.. Thomas would lead a very short life of only a few years at the very most. During those years he would be in constant pain from the ceaseless, charley-horse-type cramps that would rack his body. He would undergo numerous, largely ineffective surgeries, just to stay alive. He would never be able to walk or stand; never grasp anything, never be able to hold himself upright. He wouldn’t even be able to suck his own thumb for comfort. And this was only if we were lucky. The more likely scenarios tended toward fetal death and serious health complications for me.

We made our decision with one day to go and left for Houston where we would end Thomas’s suffering in one quick and painless moment. Though we wanted to stay at home, _______ was no longer an option, as all of the hospitals were religiously-backed and there was no time to convene an ethics committee hearing.

In Houston, God graced us with some of the most compassionate people we’d ever met. The first was our maternal-fetal medicine specialist, who confirmed that the prognosis was even direr than originally thought. In a procedure very similar to an amniocentesis, Thomas’s heart was stopped with a simple injection. In that moment, as I held my husband’s hand, I met God and handed him my precious boy to care for, for all eternity.

Over the next 17 hours I labored to deliver Thomas’s body. It was a painful experience, but the only option given to a woman at 24 weeks gestation. Thomas Stephen _______ was born into this world just after 6:00 a.m. on November 27, 2002 – the day before Thanksgiving.

The loving nurse who’d helped us through labor cleaned his fragile body and brought him to us. We held our boy for the next hour as we said goodbye. Our own eyes confirmed what our hearts had already come to know: that Thomas was not meant for this world. The hospital’s pastor joined us and we christened Thomas in the baptism bonnet I’d worn as an infant.

On that same page, follow the link to "Loving Zeke" for a reminder that the freedom to choose includes the freedom to carry a fetus to term, regardless of the circumstances.

It's easy to look at a healthy baby sleeping peacefully or a healthy toddler running around in the park in the sunshine and imagine a perfect world where every fetus grows into one of those healthy kids. Unfortunately, our world is far from perfect, and problems arise in pregnancies every day - serious, life-threatening problems that happen to much-wanted and already-loved children. To pass a universal law on a subject that concerns only unique individual cases is ridiculous. To legislate with some imaginary, perfect world in mind is not going to make that world come into being.

It will, however, hurt people. It hurts women. Forcing a woman to carry around the body of a fetus that will never see toddlerhood, that will live a short, miserable life (if it lives at all) while she waits for the court to rule from on high as to whether she's worthy of the medical procedure her doctor recommends is gruesome and inhumane. Forcing a woman to endure the pain of labor and vaginal delivery of a dead body or of a fetus that will live a brief, miserable life is gruesome and inhumane. Forcing a woman to undergo a D&E, dismembering the fetus and leaving her without so much as a body to hold and grieve over because a Supreme Court justice finds the alternative unpalatable, is gruesome and inhumane.

What isn't gruesome and inhumane? Understanding. Sympathy. Compassion.

[A]mong the audience members was a Los Angeles physician named James McMahon, who had made a specialty of performing late intacts and then bringing the fetuses to women who had asked to see them. “Having it intact was a goal, so they could do that, and have this closure,” recalls McMahon's widow, Gale McMahon, a nurse who helped run McMahon's practice until he died of complications from a brain tumor in 1995. “I knew what it meant to these women, to be able to hold them, and be able to coo over them and say goodbye. It was profound. I got material, and sewed little tiny sheaths, and we got tiny hats we could dress them in. I would put them on a clean cloth, and I would swathe them. Many women spent hours in there, and showed them to their other children. It was always treating the babies with the respect the parents would want them to.”