A Horrifying Tale of Parental Notification Laws

Read the whole thing. Please.

Monday Reading List

Clothing: The Newest Weapon Against Sexual Assault:

Adam Whiton, an MIT student, and Yolita Nugent, a clothing designer, are leading a research project to develop sensor-studded clothing for women that will record data about an attack in real time and store that information on a computer. Having such hard evidence about an attack may persuade more women to turn to the authorities in crisis situations, and this evidence may make it easier to prosecute and convict offenders.

Just How Pro-Choice Is America, Really?:

...in late 1995, a Florida Republican congressman named Charles Canady had a stroke of insight that would shift it to the realm of both the metaphysical and brutally physical, which is precisely where the pro-life movement wanted it all along. On the floor of the House, he introduced a bill that would ban so-called “partial-birth abortions,” a second-trimester surgical method previously known as intact dilation and extraction. The procedure was extremely upsetting to behold. In it, the fetus—or is it a baby?—is removed from the uterus and stabbed in the back of the head with surgical scissors. It’s a revolting image, one to which the public was ritualistically subjected on the evening news as the debate raged on the House and Senate floors. Defending it was a pro-choice person’s nightmare. Pat Moynihan compared it to infanticide. Clinton still vetoed the ban in 1996, but it was eventually signed into law in 2003 and withstood a Supreme Court challenge in 2007. More important, women were spooked. “A lot of our patients started asking whether or not the fetus felt pain after that, even if they were early along in their pregnancy,” says Albert George Thomas, who until two years ago had spent eighteen years as the head of the family-planning clinic at Mount Sinai.

Ads Gone Bad: The Dockers Man-ifesto:

Once upon a time, men didn't have anyone questioning their shit. They wanted to be congratulated for opening doors and walking across streets. Men were in charge because they kept everyone else down. But somewhere along the way, women wised up and were like, these dudes are fucking assholes and we'd like some freedom and autonomy now, please.

Three Examples of Rape Culture in Nice Guy (tm) Breast Cancer Activism:

Do you feel safer yet? Oh, but this is hilarious, right? Because no-one ever ACTUALLY touches breasts against their owner’s will! See? It’s SATIRICAL. Don’t you get it? The threat is just a JOKE! Lighten up, chicks! God, you’re so SERIOUS.

John's working on a new project, Operation Backlog Slog, Days 1-5, Day 6, and Days 7-9:

Beginning December 1st, I swore off purchasing any new music, movies, TV shows, video games, graphic novels until I finish my existing stockpile of each. I haven’t done a full inventory yet, but I’ve got at least 10 video games, 10 graphic novels (here, plus hundreds back home), two high-capacity DVD binders full of movies and TV shows and several albums to go through.

Stuff You Should Know's Josh and Chuck have a Kiva Team, of which I am a part, has raised $38,600, well on their way to the $100,000 challenge they've set for themselves.

And Toothpaste for Dinner!

toothpastefordinner.com

Unplanned Children & Guilt

"My doctor told me there is nothing you will ever regret about having the baby, but he was like, 'You may regret not having the baby.'"

I am the product of an unplanned, unexpected, and - in the beginning - unwanted pregnancy.

I've known this for, oh, more or less forever. I've also had the suspicion, though not confirmed, that an abortion talk happened somewhere in that early period when my mother was still freaking out and desperately wanting her sporty two door convertible. My parents are both ardently pro-choice, so it would be strange if there weren't the barest minimum of a conversation about it.

This hasn't had much of an impact on my life. At least, not the negative kind. Because even though I am the product of an unplanned, unexpected, and initially unwanted pregnancy, I was (and am) a beloved child. I am also a wanted child, and it has always been easy for me to recognize that the two issues - unwanted pregnancy versus wanted and valued child - are separate and very different.

That doesn't mean, however, that my parents don't have regrets, regrets directly relating to me, and my being born. My mother, for instance, still can't get over her loss of the sporty two door. My impending birth was also the reason she missed the funeral of her favorite aunt, and then I didn't even have the common decency to be born that day. No, I waited until my due date, because I'm generally punctual but not excessively early. I'm pretty sure they regretted having me that time I got a D in English and then burned my report card in an effort to destroy the evidence. I'm also fairly certain the time I didn't come home or call was another one of those "regret ever having her" times in my parents' lives. There were other moments of regret. Trips they couldn't take, money they didn't have, time they no longer had to work on their relationship. And although I know I'm not the center of the universe and that my parents would have in all probability found other things to fight passionately about if I didn't exist, I'm sure there were many times when they were fighting about me one or both of them wondered if their lives - their (potentially not legal) marriage - would have been better off if instead of having sex they just watched some television that fateful night.

This isn't to say that my parents don't take a certain amount of pleasure in being parents. They do. They revel in it. And because my parents weren't ready to be parents, our relationship has a weird, slightly dysfunctional, side to it where we are and have been friends as much as I'm their daughter for most of my life. As a side note, this whole side to my relationship with them is one of the reasons I never rebelled.

So, even though I have a ridiculously good - if dysfunctional - relationship with my parents, even though (Ds in English aside), I have (generally) been a rather low stress venture for both of my parents in terms of parenting, even though my parents love me and respect me and, almost more importantly, really like me, they have still had regrets. Some big, and some small. Some more long term, and some that were more like flashes. Because part of life is regretting the path(s) not taken.

This is why I find the response Kourtney Kardashian recounted her doctor as saying, the one at the top of the post, as being so entirely disingenuous. Because it simplifies life. It makes it seems as though children never cause regret, and as though abortion always does. That isn't true. Children, even wanted, planned for children, come with frustrations and pains and - yes - regret. As much as children bring light and life and joy and love and wonderment and fulfillment, they bring a lot of the negative stuff as well.

More than pushing birth, though, claiming that going through a pregnancy will result in no regrets is harmful because it creates an environment where the women who do experience regret are shamed for that completely natural feeling. It creates an environment where women keep those feelings bottled up, don't talk about it because it is so unnatural, because to talk about it is to be a bad mother. And that is the last thing a doctor should be pressing upon any woman. Because it contributes to a view that motherhood is an inherently pleasurable act, an act all women gain fulfillment from and enjoy doing. An act that in no way at times makes them want to rip their hair out or wonder when they get to go shopping for their own clothing, when they get to take care of themselves and get their two door in the midst of bottles and surly teenagers and mini vans.

We need to recognize that most decisions carry with them a bittersweet realization of the path unchosen. And if that bittersweetness comes when we order a chocolate-mint chocolate chip ice cream cone and then lust after the vanilla-mint chocolate chip ice cream in a cup, then it comes in conjunction with more important decisions. We need to fully recognize the effects of parenthood. We need to talk about them, air out those particular facets of life, and still remain positive that for a lot of people - most people - children are well worth any of the regret they bring. That is an adult conversation. The other one is stuff of fairy tales.

Air Quotes

Chris Matthews has come out hard against McCain's use of air quotes (and my favorite moment of the video, aside from Cecile Richards' eloquence, is Chris Matthews demonstrating air quotes as if they are some kind of foreign function of language most Americans have been unacquainted with) in describing a woman's health as a reason for abortion:

What is so appalling for me about this video is Barbara Comstock's inability to (or refusal to) defend or explain McCain's patronizing, insulting, and downright dismissive brush off of women's health rights. Her need to stick to Partial Birth Abortion, which aside from being a misnomer also accounts for a miniscule amount of abortions performed (.17% of American abortions in 2000), just proves to me how indefensible McCain's statement really is. There are some incredibly obvious issues in McCain's use of air quotes around the word "health" in terms of abortion: 

1. It suggests that most women - sorry, most "pro-abortionists" - will lie about their health in order to obtain an abortion. It plays directly into the meme that feminists or other women who get abortions are in some way flighty and incredibly morally deficient - that they have gone through 21 or more weeks of pregnancy and suddenly decided that they no longer wish to remain pregnant.
2. It suggests that the health of the already-alive person in front of McCain is less important than the birth of the fetus she is carrying. If the health of the mother is so trivial it deserves air quotes, it is because a woman's concerns are less once she is carrying a child. Everything must go toward protecting the fetus. The woman is no longer of primary concern, nor should her wishes and bodily autonomy be given any thought. After all, she decided to get pregnant; for those nine months, she now gets to be more of a glorified incubator than a person.
3. It dismisses women who actually have serious health concerns relating to pregnancy. The air quotes McCain used invalidates these women's situation and trauma and lives. McCain's casual dismissal of health concerns for the women who carry his precious fetuses shows a cavalier attitude toward what pregnancy is and what complications can develop. Apparently in McCain's world, all pregnancies go smoothly. There is never someone with high blood pressure, or someone with Type 1 diabetes. There is never a fetus with severe spina bifida. The women who have had these pregnancies and experiences are thus cast aside, and made less. Their emotions and lives are trivialized and dismissed. In a way, McCain's air quotes places the onus for a mother's health on the mother. If something goes wrong, it is obviously the mother's fault, because the only women who get late-term abortions and who use the health excuse are those terrible pro-abortionists.

Late term abortions (21 weeks or later) account for 1.4% of all abortions in the USA. They are the focal point of the anti-choice movement simply because they are the most extreme cases. The anti-choice movement has made this a black and white issue for Americans by focusing on the stages of development of the fetus after 21 weeks; but in doing so, they blatantly ignore the area of grey that is still very much present. For instance, this diarist at Daily Kos tells her story (note: I don't get my news from here, but I do think that this person's account of what she went through and why is important to read). As did these three women. All of them exist within the area of grey McCain's policy and air quotes denies them. When McCain turns to these women and belittles their lives as simply being a part of an "extreme pro-abortion position", he is doing them, and all of us, a great disservice. As Cecile Richards rightly asks, "Since when did women's health become extreme?"

John McCain is not pro-life; and neither is the movement his viewpoint represents. A pro-life position, a true pro-life position, would not be so cavalier and dismissive of women and their right to health. It would not demean and belittle women; it would not implicitly state in their policies and positions that once a woman becomes pregnant, the fetus she is supporting becomes more important than she is and should have access to more rights than she does. Pro-life means being for the health and integrity of all life; it means recognizing that sometimes difficult and heartbreaking decisions must be made. It means supporting women. It means not simply counseling a woman or compelling a woman to keep a child or to carry the fetus to term but providing support for that woman and that child once the baby has been born. The McCain ticket and the pro-life movement in general stops short of that. Once there is a baby and not simply an unborn child, they perceive their job as being done. And that is what is so disingenuous about their position. Because to be pro-life requires more than just legislating that a woman not abort. It means giving care, like healthcare, to that child; it means providing support for mothers who could not afford to take care of their child. In order to be philosophically pro-life, that would be the position McCain would have to take. Instead, he and Sarah Palin and countless others come off as sanctimonious, callous, and out of touch.

And as a bonus, they and their hardline position regarding late-term abortion come off as extremist, especially when people like Barbara Comstock are there to toe the line. And Barack Obama and Cecile Richards appear to be level-headed, reasonable, and knowledgeable.

A Weird Balancing Act

Here's the thing: I think political families should be off-limits when it comes to political campaigns. Cindy McCain's past problems, McCain's adopted daughter, Palin's 5 children -one pregnant, one with Down's Syndrome- Obama's children, none of those things should matter. We shouldn't scoff at Palin or utilize her daughter for political points. We shouldn't point and laugh at how the woman with an abstinence only agenda has a pregnant teenage daughter. Why? Because of Ron Reagan Jr. Seriously. Ronald Reagan Jr. is my reasoning. The first time I saw Ron Reagan, he was scoffing at conservative policies in the 1980s in regards to the AIDs epidemic. It was one of VH1's specials, one of their Behind the Musics; one of the year ones. Here was a man who derided Ronald Reagan Sr.'s policies, deriding the policies of the day that didn't work to save druggies and homosexuals because those were not Republican voting blocks. I thought, "Man, this guy really hates the Reagans". But that guy was a Reagan. He just happened to also be liberal. The chances of Bristol being liberal are probably slim, but that doesn't mean that she should be held up as political fodder. And that is partially because we don't know what happened, not exactly. We know the result. We know that she is pregnant. But we don't know if she used protection or if she was truly a victim of abstinence only education. We don't know if she was a student of abstinence only education. What's more, we don't have the right to know; we don't have the right to violate her privacy in order to score some cheap political point against her mother. And more than that, her decisions are not her mother's.

So Sarah Palin's viewpoints about abstinence only education, about teaching creationism in schools, her ideas about the environment, her anti-choice rhetoric, should be attacked. The weaknesses should be present (and are present) in Sarah Palin's own arguments. We can point out the flaws in abstinence only education through studies and statistics; we should be doing that anyway, and often. We can argue that creationism isn't simply a divergent view of how the planet and life got started but a religious one; and how if we grant that creationism should be taught in classrooms as an alternative theory, than every other religion's creationist tale should also be taught because Christianity doesn't get to corner the market on religious rights. We should argue that, and we should argue against the dismissive phrase that evolution is "just" a theory, because most things we accept as scientific truths are theories. It is part of the language of science. We should argue against creationism based on the fact that it is no more or less true than the Iroquois' creation myths. But we shouldn't use her family as a battering ram against her. But the truth is, it shouldn't go the other way either, with conservatives using her family in order to score some ideological point.

A lot of reports I've seen have talked about Trig, her child with Down Syndrome, as a kind of political checkmate. "Sarah Palin is so pro-life, she carried her child to term even knowing that he had Down Syndrome" seems to be the overwhelming viewpoint. And first and foremost, that is an incredibly ableist mindset, the idea that Sarah Palin and her family is so noble and self-sacrificing for "burdening" themselves with a special needs child; that a pro-choicer would have obviously made a different choice. Phyllis Schlafly made that exact argument, that a Democrat would have chosen to abort. The truth is, special needs children come with their own joys and challenges. The truth is, I know many liberal-minded people who have special needs children. The truth is, using Trig as a political point in the choice wars, no matter who is doing it, is quite frankly appalling. He should not be some kind of political football. He is a baby, and he is one who is loved and whose mother (hopefully) carried him to term because she loved and wanted him no matter what; a mother who didn't carry him to term because she felt morally obligated to once she learned of his condition but because she wanted to without that even being a consideration. Because looking at Trig like a political point maker devalues special needs people and children in society.

That isn't to say that people don't abort children if and when they learn that the child is disabled in some way. I'm not even saying that they are wrong to; I think there are numerous situations where it is completely understandable, in terms of knowing that as a parent you do not have the resources to care for this child in the way he or she will need you to; that you do not have the money to support them; that you have other children who have needs that will not be met if you have this child. It must be a terrible situation to find oneself in, to be carrying a child you wanted -maybe desperately- but cannot, for whatever the reason, carry to term. It must be a terrible feeling to not have the privilege Sarah Palin does in even being able to have five children and care for them all adequately. But for those who abort a special needs baby because that child isn't one who will be perfectly healthy and of average intelligence, I think the decision is a bit foolhardy. Because humans are fragile creatures. Helen Keller was a perfectly healthy baby. I worked with a woman whose daughter was involved in a horrible car accident, and who suffered some brain damage because of that. She was married at the time of the crash.  She's not any more, and she now cannot live alone. She was a healthy baby. 90% of fetuses who are diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted. And one of the reasons is because we look at people with special needs with a certain type of prejudice. We call their families angels for having them; we call them angels too. We look at them with pity; we look at them with contempt. We look at ourselves and thank our lucky stars that we have healthy children with no developmental problems. And until that changes, until we stop devaluing them and seeing them as "less", then we will continue to see praise like the kind given to Sarah Palin for being so pro-life as to keep her son, a son she may have kept anyway -because she loves him.