Godless Professors and the Subversion of American Youth

Did you know that universities are subverting the minds of America's young people by turning them into godless socialists? Dr. Mike S. Adams, a professor at University of North Carolina at Wilmington, is dispensing advice at Townhall to a father who is distraught about his daughter coming home with scary new leftist ideas. Jeff Fecke (h/t) has already taken down Dr. Mike bit-by-wingnutty-bit - including his coinage of the oh-so-clever acronym STD for "Socialist Teaching Disorder." I just want to zoom in on one little piece of Dr. Mike's take on university life:

First of all, I want you to understand that many of the crazy ideas you hear your daughter espousing are commonplace on college campuses. Nonetheless, it must have been shocking for you to hear that she supported Barack Obama in the last election principally because of his ideas about “the redistribution of wealth.” I know you were also disappointed to hear of her sudden opposition to the War on Terror and her sudden embrace of the United Nations. Most of all, I know you are disappointed that she has stopped going to church altogether.

Now that your daughter is not going to church it will be easier to get her to accept other policies based on economic and cultural Marxism. Socialist professors like the fact that average church attendance drops dramatically after just one year of college. God and socialism are simply incompatible. One cannot worship both Jesus Christ and Karl Marx.

(If you must, you can read the rest here.)

Although I'm not a real socialist - just a fan of redistribution, thanks to my pastor when I was 14! - I am one of those freethinking university professors. Scandalously, I think it's a good thing when my students start to examine their beliefs and preconceptions.

I just finished teaching a class on religion, gender, and sexuality that might well enrage Dr. Mike. I framed patriarchy in materialist terms and lectured on how poverty multiplies the odds that a woman will terminate a pregnancy. (Socialism!) We discussed the Gnostic Gospels and the struggle between heterodoxy and orthodoxy in Christianity. (Heresy!) We delved into the roots of the Christian valorization of virginity. (Sluttishness!)

At the end of the quarter, students were asked to write a short essay in which they discussed how their views had changed over the past ten weeks. Many of them said that the class upset their certainties. Some of them questioned their faith. How, after all, can you trust the Bible's authority if a politicized Church hierarchy - not divine revelation - determined which books became canonical?

So yeah. Dr. Mike would hate this class. So did one student (out of 85), judging from the final exam. She objected to the feminist framing of the material. She would have preferred ten weeks of Catholic dogma. She transparently didn't bother to engage with the material in any serious way.

The rest of the students - including many current and former Catholics - realized that they didn't have to follow any party line. Not mine; not any religion's. One young Catholic woman had a real crisis of faith mid-quarter. By the end of the quarter, she felt stronger in her beliefs than before. Another young woman who's planning to become a minister wrote of her past and present struggles with her faith.

Did I turn those students godless? Not by any stretch. And that was never my intent. If a person is going to embrace faith as an adult, they're going to have to find it themselves. They can't just continue believing a Sunday School version of it with colorful, sanitized pictures of Daniel in the lion's den and Jesus surrounded by fluffy lambs. They'll have to navigate their way from dogma to actual faith. That's exactly how some of my religious students used the class. They started questions and haven't stopped. And they have matured in their beliefs. (Interestingly, a number of them declare some affinity for Buddhist ideas, even as they remain in their own faith tradition.)

A substantially minority of my students wrote that they consider themselves agnostics or atheists. So did I convert them to godlessness? A few of them did begin to call themselves agnostics during the class, but most of them came into it already rejecting or questioning religion. Many of them felt liberated at being able to "come out" about their unbelief in their discussion groups - something they often had felt unable to do, until now.

These students took my class for one of two reasons. Some had grown up without any religion and felt they needed to close a gap in their education. Others were questioning their religious upbringing or had rejected it altogether, often in the wake of a loved one's death. (It's ironic and sad that religion seems so often to fail people at the very moment when it's supposed to provide the most comfort.) Disproportionately, the students in this second group had been raised Catholic. For most of them, the Church's condemnation of homosexuality was a serious dealbreaker, with its position on abortion and contraception coming in a close second.

This is why the Pope's statement on gender last Christmas made me crazy. There was some controversy at the time about what the English word "gender" connotes when used in Italian (as in the Pope's address), and I can't speak to that as an expert. I know about a dozen words of Italian and I wasn't raised Catholic. But the context - as well as some of the smarter commentary on this - convinced me that he was affirming the church's teachings on the sanctity of heterosexual marriage and traditional gender roles.

More importantly, the Pope was trying to shut down all discussion of all gender issues within the Catholic Church. This is exactly what's driving young people out of the Church. They see the condemnation of homosexuality and the hierarchy's refusal to even discuss it as contemptuous and inhumane.

Dr. Mike, his letter-writer, and (I'm betting) a lot of conservative parents want to short-circuit that discussion too. It's a terrible loss, because their kids want to have it. They need to have it. That goes for everyone from the young fundamentalist to the hard-core nihilist. (And yes, the range in my class was that wide.)

If Dr. Mike were paying attention to his students, he'd realize that whatever their professors do or say, they are at an age where they're bound to question their upbringing. A good university education should help them learn to think for themselves in a more thorough, systematic, and deeper way. It should prod them to question received wisdom and authority. It should expose them to a variety of viewpoints. (Yes, even Dr. Mike's.)

If that's subverting young people, then I'm blessed to be a part of it. One student sent me an email at the end of the quarter saying the class had changed her life; another said the same as she turned in her exam. I don't personally take too much credit, because the potentially life-changing work happened in the discussion groups, not in my lectures. But even so, staying on the job full-time this quarter through weeks of illness and fear was probably the hardest thing I've ever done, and I'd worried that my students got cheated. I blubbed in gratitude when I read that email.

Oh, and as far as I know, I didn't convert a single student to Marxism. Nary a Trotskyist. Not even a mild-mannered socialist-feminist. I guess I'd better try harder.

Letting Kids Be Kids (Even When They're Parents)

I'm still on my soapbox about leaving Bristol Palin alone, and so all I've got to say on the announcement of her canceled engagement to Levi Johnston is that I'm glad if they're following their hearts, and I wish them both the best.

But all the angst-y right-wing commentary on the non-wedding of the season is fair game. Not to mention easy pickins! Here's what Lisa Schiffren of the National Review had to say (via Hugo Schwyzer):

I certainly don’t know if they should have gotten married. You’d have thought so . . . even if it didn’t last forever. Better odds for the kid. [My emphasis.] If the parents didn’t like it, well, they should have thought about that when they were drinking and fooling around. But, as we all know, shotgun marriages lead to plenty of unhappiness, some of the time. And very young marriages have a lousy track record. So parents of the expecting teens are not willing to push. And maybe they are sometimes right. Still, the default position of the girl, left on her own with the baby, now in serious and immediate need of further education and a set of remunerative skills with which to support herself and Tripp, which will be harder to acquire with her maternal responsibilities, isn’t much of a happy picture either.

For all of the high-minded discussion of marriage policy on these pages and elsewhere, to me it looks very late. That train left a while ago. Even Corner readers, who will discuss choosing life vs. abortion, with endless passion, do not get so worked up about marriage. Which is why all I have to say is, “poor girl.”

Hugo rightly points out the pity, condescension, and ethical bankruptcy in Schiffren's position. Amanda Marcotte argues that the pressure put on Bristol and Levi to redeem her pregnancy through coerced marriage reveals how ultimately, conservative anti-sex fury punishes men, too, by pushing them into unwanted and possibly loveless marriages.

Yes to all that. But I think the punishment goes deeper than the shotgun marriages that even Schriffren can't quite stomach. Schiffren unwittingly exposes this deeper dimension when she writes: "Better odds for the kid." I read that and thought: Which kid? Because Tripp is not the only child in this story! Bristol was 17 when she became pregnant!

In my book, that's still a kid. But in the anti-sex reactionary playbook, as soon as you have sex and get caught out - that is, if you turn up pregnant - you're disqualified from being a kid anymore. And since abortion isn't an option, you've got no choice but to plunge pell-mell into adulthood, whether you're 17 or 13.

I understand that a young parent will have to grow up faster than usual and meet the challenges of parenthood. Having had two babies, I know that babies impose their own limits and constraints, and unless you give your child up for adoption, your old freedom is toast. That doesn't mean young teen parents will instantly grow up, however. They are still kids - cognitively, emotionally, behaviorally - even if they rise to the challenge. This is why a pregnant child should always have the option to terminate, with or without parental permission; no one should be forced to grow up so fast. But if she does choose to carry the pregnancy to term, she deserves massive support to let her finish her education and maybe even have some fun once in a while. She deserves to enjoy whatever vestiges of childhood remain.

Imposing premature adulthood on pregnant girls and their partners as a punishment is just the flip side of seeing a baby as a righteous punishment for having sex. Both attitudes betray a profound contempt for children.

Personhood Provocateurs in North Dakota

Photo of North Dakotan Badlands by Flickr user JJSchad, used under a Creative Commons license. This somewhat gratuitous picture is included lest you think North Dakota boasts nothing but snow and gophers and pro-life zealots.

North Dakota's new "personhood" law, which made it halfway through the legislative process on Tuesday, may no longer be the reproductive folly du jour, but it's still preoccupying me. Why would my home state even consider such a silly law - one that, much like Colorado's failed Proposition 48 last fall, could criminalize not just abortion but also most forms of birth control, IVF, and even normal miscarriage and menstruation? How the heck did this happen?

My husband said to me, "Curb your patriotism." But it's not just loyalty that's got me wondering. North Dakotans are churchgoing and God-fearing, yes; but they're also deeply pragmatic. Or at least they used to be when I lived there.

That's not just childish nostalgia speaking, by the way. Not even the abortion controversy has historically negated North Dakotan's basic pragmatism. Faye Ginsburg's wonderful ethnography, Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community looked at activists on both (or actually, all!) sides of the issue in Fargo during the 1980s. While she found plenty of drama and conflict, she also found that activists of all stripes shared a basic set of values regarding family and women as nurturers.

Perhaps the growing season in North Dakota is just too short for extremism to thrive.

Leslie Unruh, you say? Nope. She belongs to South Dakota.

So what planet did HB 1576 come from? How did a bunch of part-time legislators dream up the idea of conferring legal personhood on fertilized eggs even prior to implantation? Because that's what the text of the bill does:

[F]or purposes of interpretation of the constitution and laws of North Dakota, it is the intent of the legislative assembly that an individual, a person, when the context indicates that a reference to an individual is intended, or a human being includes any organism with the genome of homo sapiens.

If this language is eerily reminiscent of the Colorado referendum, that's because this is not an indigenous product of North Dakota. It's written and promoted by the same people who brought us the Colorado foolishness.

In other words, the Colorado referendum wasn't a one-off. It has spawned an apparently new tentacle of the pro-life movement, Personhood USA, whose ultimate aim is to pass "personhood" laws in as many states as possible, ultimately setting up a judicial confrontation with Roe v. Wade. Here's their call to arms:

The fight for life is raging nationwide right now like never before and we wish to thank you for your conscientious decision to support every preborn child's right to life. We are Personhood USA and our goal is simple: Together, we will glorify Jesus and then stop the dehumanizing of and destruction of preborn people.

The organizers that got personhood on the ballot in Colorado, would like to help in North Dakota as well. By getting personhood on the ballot, we force the question that the pro-death side does not want to answer, "when does life begin"?

Personhood USA claims grassroots support, and I have no doubt that North Dakota has its fair share of pro-lifers (even if the North Dakota League for Life's website is pretty rinky-dink and years out of date). Here's how Personhood USA describes its campaign in North Dakota:

"North Dakotans have gotten used to cold temperatures like -44 degrees, but they haven't gotten used to child-killing. We applaud and support their efforts to protect every baby by love and by law," commented Cal Zastrow, who, along with his family, worked on the North Dakota bill on the grassroots level.

Reading this, you might reasonably believe that Cal Zastrow is part of a burgeoning pro-life movement among North Dakotans. That's the implication, right? But Zastrow would be a mighty unusual name among all those grandchildren of Germans and Norwegians. So I couldn't resist googling Cal Zastrow. He's from Michigan - two states over! No, Personhood USA didn't lie about this; it just used the term "grassroots" to insinuate. Here's how Michigan Citizens for Life describes him:

Cal Zastrow resides in Kawkawlin [Michigan] with his wife, Trish, where they homeschool their children. They are missionaries to the preborn who speak in churches, schools, and on the streets. Cal trains pro-life activists and conducts seminars to make the killing of preborn children unthinkable and unavailable through peaceful means.

Ordinarily I include links to groups like this just for substantiation, not because I think you need to waste any time going there, but Cal Zastrow has a such a dorky, douchey picture that he's worth a visit if you're in a snarky mood. Also, maybe you'll discover WTF it means to be a missionary to the preborn. I'm still mystified.

So the success of the personhood bill in North Dakota depended crucially on the work of a provocateur from out of state.

I have to admit, though, that the bill's sponsor, Dan Ruby, is a completely homegrown zealot who claimed "This language is not as aggressive as the direct ban legislation that I've proposed in the past." Nor can I claim that the 51 legislators who voted for the bill (against 41 opponents) were bussed in from out of state.

What are the prospect for this bill actually becoming law? According to Kay Steiger at RH Reality Check, the bill's introduction caught Planned Parenthood - the only pro-choice group with any presence in North Dakota - by surprise. That surely won't still be the case when it comes before the state senate in a few weeks. At that point, Tim Stanley, senior director of government and public affairs for Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, hopes for a better outcome:

The personhood bill will go on to the state Senate by the end of the week, and Stanley says it is likely not to be voted on until the end of the legislature's session, in April. Stanley believes that ultimately North Dakotans may not want to draw national attention with a challenge to Roe. If the bill does pass, Planned Parenthood's affiliate will begin reaching out to the medical and religious community to begin building a coalition of support to fight the measure.

"My experience had been that this legislature is grounded in reality, as opposed to some other legislatures," Stanley said. "South Dakota is not the most rational legislature when it comes to this kind of stuff. They're known as being slightly out there and willing to take those high-profile risks to fight this fight. My feeling is that North Dakota is just slightly more reticent to do that. To their credit they're not a state that looks [for] and seeks undue attention."

(Source: RH Reality Check)

See, North Dakota doesn't just have the prettier badlands, it also has a more level-headed legislature than South Dakota. And again - Dan Ruby is no Leslee Unruh! I'm hoping the state senate is rational enough to realize how ruinous it would be to litigate the "personhood bill" all the way to the Supreme Court, as required by the bill's second paragraph.

But even assuming this bill dies before the tulips are blooming in Bismarck, Personhood USA won't stop its quest. According the the American Life League, similar "personhood" legislation is pending in 15 other states. Even if there's good reason to be relatively sanguine about the North Dakota state senate stopping this foolish bill, odds are good that it will pass somehow, somewhere, and ultimately land in the laps of the SCOTUS.

Another ominous aspect of this: the "personhood" movement is trying to shift the discourse. To some extent, they're already succeeding. Just look at how RH Reality Check and I are both repeatedly referring to the bill and the movement within their frame: "personhood." Repeat it often enough, and people may start believing that a fertilized egg is indeed a person.

The Sins of the Mother: Can We Just Leave Bristol Alone?

Look. I never thought Sarah Palin should get a free pass on 1) using motherhood as one of her chief qualifications for public office and then 2) telling America we had no right to know anything about her family. I sharply criticized Palin for getting on an airplane while leaking amniotic fluid. I thought it was reasonable for people to criticize her for marketing herself as a perfect mother when, clearly, she's not.

But back in September, when Bristol Palin turned up pregnant, I also wrote that criticizing her was out of bounds:

There's no room for schadenfreude. She shouldn't be made the poster child for the failure of abstinence-only approaches to teenage sexuality; we have too many such poster children already. She's going to face the difficulties of early motherhood with the added burden of publicity. She'll also find deep joy in her baby, I'm sure - a point too rarely mentioned for all the moralizing about "teenage mothers." She's embarking on an amazing adventure in one of the hardest ways possible. I wish her well.

Now that Bristol has given an interview and basically said, yes, it's hard but I love my baby, I don't really have anything more to say about her - except that I really feel for her when she lets slip that she mourns a chance to just be herself, for herself.

But darn it, too many people that I otherwise like and respect are amplifying the Bristol interview and making her into, well, the poster girl for the bankruptcy of abstinence-only education. Sure, Bristol herself said it doesn't work. That's worth reporting. But Rebecca Traister at Salon goes on to comment:

Bristol went on to make more (perhaps unwitting) feminist points about what, exactly, the responsibilities and consequences are for young women who choose (or are forced down) the path she took.

At Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte quotes Traister's article approvingly, adding:

For the rest of us [non-prolifers], of course, the whole thing is a horror show.

Both Rebecca and Amanda then go on to give Sarah Palin the drubbing she deserves. I'm all for that. I just wonder: Can't we call out Palin on her hypocrisy and failed policies without dragging Bristol any deeper into it? I mean, Amanda sees the problem when it's coming from the opposite direction:

Abstinence-only had been sold to the country as a teenage pregnancy prevention program, but the right wing reaction to Bristol made it clear that it was a teenage pregnancy inducement program, and Bristol was the poster child for its intended effects. [my emphasis]

Analytically, I agree with Amanda 100 percent on what the 'wingers were up to. Yet I think we can make this argument without making Bristol the poster child for a feminist critique of wingnutty views on sexuality. Otherwise, we're reversing the terms, not redefining them.

And we can certainly condemn the failures of abstinence-only without endorsing statements that hold Bristol up as a "perfect example " and assume we know just what went down between Bristol and her mother. In fact, we don't know whether Sarah Palin forbade Bristol to have an abortion.

Let's not make Bristol pay for the sins of her mother.

Within a Whisker of Martial Law

Wow. Apparently Bush or his henchpersons threatened martial law last October while pushing their economic "rescue" package. Here's how The Political Cat reports it:

Later on down the line, we find (Surprise! NOT!) that the League of Incompetent EvilMen actually threatened our elected congresscritters with martial law if they didn't approve the bailout of Wall Street and its legions of fat, slobbering, greedy bankers. Pig man, pig man.

(This little gem is buried in the midst of a nice long rant featuring the best financial meltdown LOLcat ever, so go read the whole thing.)

TPC's source for this is the Santa Monica Mirror:

On October 3, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) stated on the floor of the House of Representatives that “a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no [on the $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill].” Under National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), the president has sole discretion to invoke martial law in case of a "catastrophic emergency" defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

Full implementation of martial law would include the invocation of a series of executive orders (10990-11921) which entail government control of all modes of transportation, communication, utilities, food, health, education, and welfare functions. The statutes also allow for the mobilization of civilians into work brigades, the relocation of communities, and control over all U.S. financial institutions.

Now, I don't think it would have actually come to actual martial law. I think Bush and his evil cronies would have blinked. Then again, maybe I'm indulging in what Cornel West would call optimism rather than hope: the dogged wish that the world will be just fine, despite evidence to the contrary.

Regardless, I'm outraged but sadly unsurprised that at a time when we needed sober deliberation and smart policymaking, we instead got scare tactics. Imagine if FDR had pushed through the New Deal with the threat of bayonets.

No wonder the bankers got umpteen billions with no strings attached. No wonder they got to hand out kajillions in year-end bonuses to the same bozos who wrecked the world's economy.

I harbor no illusions that the new administration is going to fix everything. I was pretty frustrated at how Obama birth control funding under the bus last week. However, it looks as though it's going to be packed into the big budget bill, so I'm withholding judgment for now. I'm less forgiving about Obama's vote on the FISA debacle last summer; he's gonna have to prove his rhetoric about transparency and the rule of law before I drop that old grudge.

No matter what, though, I think we can be pretty confident that Obama won't throw a hissy fit and threaten martial law when he doesn't get his way.

The End of Our Long National Hairball

Hairball kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

Poor Grey Kitty suffered horribly from hairballs. (No, that's not her in the pic above; she was much prettier, even while yakking.) She'd groom herself neurotically and then try to hack up a ball of hair the size of a small kitten. No sooner had she eliminated one hairball than the next one would be queued up, ready to go. She'd sprint furious circles around the house, growling and yowling, until finally she'd cough one up. Preferably at 4 a.m. Preferably on the carpet. Groom, rinse, and repeat.

The past eight years haven't been all that different. It's been just one hairball after another. We've had the Enron debacle, 9/11 and "My Pet Goat," Katrina, "Misssion Accomplished" in Iraq and Afghanistan, collapse of the rule of law, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression. (I'm sure I've missed a few, so check out Jeff Fecke's depressingly dead-to-rights countdown of the ten worst Bush moments, starting here.)

We too have spent the past eight years running in circles, making no headway on climate change, oil dependency, and our crumbling health-care system. The Bush regime has been utterly indigestible. It's made us sick - at least at heart - and too often, literally. Unlike the feline version, which only rarely prove fatal, the Bush hairballs have been lethal.

We'll be cleaning up the mess on the carpet for years to come.

Bush's Christmas Gift to Women

As any beginning student of the German language learns, the word "gift" is a false cognate. In German, it means "poison." That double meaning seems just about right to describe George Bush's parting gift to women: the new HHS rule that allows health providers to refuse women basic health services.

Jill at Feministe has a great analysis of what's really at stake in this rule. Here's the short version (but you should really go read her whole post):

It’s being framed as about abortion, but here’s the thing: There are existing laws that protect health care workers from performing or assisting with abortion. Under current U.S. law, no one can be forced to partake in an abortion procedure if they have a moral objection.

This is about birth control.

Yep. I have just two things to add, both in connection with the Nativity story.

First, a film I often use in the classroom - Sacred Choices and Abortion: 10 New Things to Think About - starts from the premise that "Mary Had a Choice." And it's true that the Gospels don't say that God impregnated Mary against her will. They don't suggest that the Holy Spirit essentially raped her. God asked Mary if she was willing. She had a choice. She said yes. She could have also said no.

Imagine if Mary instead had to convince an intransigent pharmacist to prescribe Plan B for her after unprotected sex with Joseph? I'm not being flip about this. I sincerely think that the HHS rule doesn't protect the Christian faith; it conflicts with it.

Secondly: Over twenty years ago Margaret Atwood made a poetic plea for all women to have the same reproductive choices as Mary. I would like Bush and his minions to have to write out this poem over and over again until they knew it by heart - until they took it into their hearts. I realize that would take a miracle on par with the virgin birth.

(Warning: This is a poem, but it vividly depicts sexual violence, so it's not for you if you're easily triggered.)

Christmas Carols

Children do not always mean
hope. To some they mean despair.
This woman with her hair cut off
so she could not hang herself
threw herself from a rooftop, thirty
times raped & pregnant by the enemy
who did this to her. This one had her pelvis
broken by hammers so the child
could be extracted. Then she was thrown away,
useless, a ripped sack. This one
punctured herself with kitchen skewers
and bled to death on a greasy
oilcloth table, rather than bear
again and past the limit. There
is a limit, though who knows
when it may come? Nineteenth-century
ditches are littered with small wax corpses
dropped there in terror. A plane
swoops too low over the fox farm
and the mother eats her young. This too
is Nature. Think twice then
before you worship turned furrows, or pay
lip service to some full belly
or other, or single out one girl to play
the magic mother, in blue
& white, up on that pedestal,
perfect & intact, distinct
from those who aren’t. Which means
everyone else. It’s a matter
of food & available blood. If mother-
hood is sacred, put
your money where your mouth is. Only
then can you expect the coming
down to the wrecked & shimmering earch
of that miracle you sing
about, the day
when every child is a holy birth.

From Margaret Atwood, Selected Poems II: 1976 - 1986, p. 70.

Atwood holds the copyright on this, of course, and if anyone objects to my reprinting it in its entirety, I will take it right down. She was describing truths from history and nature, but as usual, she was also all too prescient about the future.

Photo by Flickr user andy castro, used under a Creative Commons license.

For the "Health" of the Mother

Remember John McCain's use of air quotes in the presidential debates when he talked about abortions to preserve women's "health"? Remember how the Bush Administration is trying to push through a "conscience clause" for providers of reproductive health services that's so capacious, it would likely redefine birth control pills as abortifacients? Remember how women used to routinely die in this country during childbirth? (Okay, so you need a longer memory for that last point. A century ago, the lifetime risk of death in childbed was about 1 in 20. 'Course, that only applied to women, which might explain why McCain sees "health" as a non-issue.)

Well, as Tracy Clark-Flory reports at Broadsheet, the Bushies are making one last push during these lame duck days to put that new rule in place. The only good thing about this? The ensuing discussion is shedding light on the barriers women already face in getting decent, equitable, timely reproductive health care. From the L.A. Times:

In calling for limits on “conscientious refusals,” ACOG [American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists] cited four recent examples. In Texas, a pharmacist rejected a rape victim's prescription for emergency contraception. In Virginia, a 42-year-old mother of two became pregnant after being refused emergency contraception. In California, a physician refused to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple. (In August, the California Supreme Court ruled that this refusal amounted to illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation.) And in Nebraska, a 19-year-old with a life-threatening embolism was refused an early abortion at a religiously affiliated hospital. [My emphasis.]

That last case was new to me, so I hunted it down - first via the ACOG report and then the ACLU analysis that ACOG footnoted (both are pdf files). The ACLU report had the details. Here's the story:

In the spring of 1994, a nineteen-year-old woman in Nebraska, Sophie Smith [not her real name], was admitted to the emergency room of a religiously affiliated hospital with a blood clot in her lung. Tests revealed that Smith was approximately ten weeks pregnant, and the clotting problem resulted from a rare and life-threatening condition exacerbated by the pregnancy. The hospital immediately put her on intravenous blood-thinners to eliminate the existing blood clot and to help prevent the formation of more clots that could kill Smith instantly if they lodged in her lungs, heart, or brain.

Smith’s doctors told her that she had two alternatives. She could stay in the hospital on intravenous blood-thinners for the remaining six-and-a-half months of the pregnancy. She would also need a procedure in which a doctor would insert into one of her primary veins an umbrella-like device designed to catch blood clots before they reached a vital organ. Or she could have a first-trimester abortion, switch to oral blood-thinners, and be released from the hospital.

Smith decided to have an abortion. She wanted to go home to her two-year-old child. Because she was poor, Medicaid was covering her medical expenses but would pay for an abortion only upon proof that it was necessary to save her life. Four doctors at the hospital certified that Smith needed a lifesaving abortion, and Medicaid agreed to cover it.

On the morning Smith was scheduled to have surgery, however, the hospital’s lawyer appeared in the operating room. He announced that the hospital would not permit an abortion – lifesaving or otherwise – to take place on its premises. The procedure was canceled, and Smith was wheeled back to her room.

Ten days of dangerous delay followed. Smith wanted to be transferred to a facility that would perform the abortion, but moving her increased the risk that she would throw a life-threatening blood clot. Moreover, because the blood-thinners she was taking made her prone to excessive bleeding during surgery, Smith’s doctors felt that it was in her best interest to be treated in a hospital. The hospital, however, stood by its decision not to let the abortion take place in its facilities. Notwithstanding the risks, Smith was ultimately transferred by ambulance to her doctor’s office. He performed the abortion and sent Smith back to the hospital, which provided follow-up care.

Even in a culture where a presidential candidate feels free to mock women's health, this story is shocking. It wasn't just Sophie Smith's health that hung in the balance; it was her very life.

I know someone who died in her twenties from a pulmonary embolism. One of my grandfathers died - long before I was ever born - from an embolism. If even Medicaid judged the situation to be life-threatening, you'd better believe it was. An embolism is an immediate life-or-death emergency, not some remote risk.

And yet this hospital saw fit to risk the Smith's life. Of course, if she had died, she wouldn't have been much use to her potential child, either - not to mention her actual one! But I guess that didn't occur to these morally pure hospital administrators. She did survive, but due to luck, and no thanks to the "care" she received.

Historically, of course, the woman's life was always chosen first - not because women had higher standing in the past (they didn't) but because they typically had family members who depended on their care. Even the Roman Catholic Church was on board with this policy until about 1900. After that, it began to revalue the "innocent" life of the fetus as worthier than that of the presumably sinful mother.

In Smith's case, you have to wonder if any particular "sins" exacerbated her situation. She was young. She was obviously poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. She may have been married, though given her youth, odds are that she wasn't. I'm guessing that an educated, middle-class married woman in her thirties might have had better luck. But then again, maybe not.

And remember: Smith's ordeal happened in the mid-nineties. The climate for reproductive choice has only deteriorated since then, with the emergence of new tactics such as pharmacists' concerted refusals to fill birth control prescriptions. Anyone want to imagine what new scenarios might emerge if Bush manages to ram through this new rule?

As Clark-Flory notes, Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray have vowed to fight the rule. An Obama administration won't let it stand. But repeal will take time and political capital, and it leaves women's health advocates fighting a stupid, unnecessary rear-guard battle.

Update 12/4/08: I corrected the text to keep the blame focused on the hospital administrators, where it belonged, not on the doctors. Thanks for pointing out the slippage, moioci.

South Dakota's Less-Famous Loony Abortion Law

Bad abortion laws in South Dakota are a lot like a game of Whac-a-mole. You knock one down and another one instantly pops up.

You probably heard about the latest attempt to ban abortion via referendum in South Dakota, which went down to defeat on November 4. I'm willing to bet you're less familiar with another batshit abortion law that was passed there in 2005 and finally went into effect last July after a judge lifted an injunction against it. I only heard about it now through my nerdy reading habits.

According to the latest New England Journal of Medicine, South Dakota's new law mandates that

physicians in South Dakota must tell any woman seeking an abortion that she is terminating the life of "a whole, separate, unique, living human being" with whom she has an "existing relationship," that her relationship "enjoys protection under the United States Constitution and under the laws of South Dakota," and that abortion terminates that relationship along with "her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship." ...

The law also requires that doctors give pregnant women a description of medical and "statistically significant" risks of abortion, among which it includes depression and other psychological distress, suicide, danger to subsequent pregnancies, and death. Physicians must tell women the approximate gestational age of the fetus and describe its state of development.

Information is good, right? But this isn't information, it's propaganda.

Take, for instance, the law's characterization of the fetus. Since when is a fetus a "separate" being? I'll gladly grant the rest - that it's unique and human and alive - but "separate" only applies once the fetus is born. Until then, it's intimately tethered to a woman by its umbilical cord. This is an elegant and wondrous system. But separate, it's not.

The only reason this law can claim "separate" status for the fetus is that we've grown used to seeing disembodied fetuses. Intrauterine photography is pretty amazing. It's also deeply deceptive, because it routinely effaces not just the womb but the woman - a woman who most assuredly is a separate, unique human being. (See Barbara Duden and Valerie Hartouni for more sophisticated versions of this argument.) When we see a fetus floating through what appears to be a starless universe, it's very easy to imagine that the fetus is an autonomous person - and to forget about the personhood of the woman whose universe it inhabits.

The legally protected "relationship" between woman and fetus that this law posits is entirely nebulous, as the NEMJ argues. The law's vagueness opens up doctors to second-degree misdemeanor charges, which of course is the editorialists' main concern. The NEMJ doesn't directly address the impact of this "relationship" language on women, though it does make a connection to the new paternalism espoused by pro-life activists and enshrined in Gonzales v. Carhart:

In the U.S. Supreme Court's most recent abortion case in 2007, Gonzales v. Carhart, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that "some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained." Had these women been better informed, he suggested, they might have chosen not to abort and thus been spared the "grief more anguished and sorrow more profound" caused by discovering how their pregnancy had been terminated. Many commentators interpreted Kennedy's words as an invitation to state legislatures to amend abortion statutes to add informed-consent requirements. South Dakota appears to have answered this invitation.

(Source: NEJM)

This language affects far more than just the doct0r-patient relationship. It shapes the cultural image of the women who are unhappily pregnant. By using terms like "right" and "protection," the new law casts these women as the victims of abortion - as mere pawns manipulated by husbands, lovers, and doctors. This has been a tactic embraced by anti-abortion activists for the past several years. Since it bore fruit in Carhart v. Gonzales, we can expect the victimization thesis increasingly to permeate anti-abortion rhetoric.

At the same time, the "relationship" palaver imputes a mother-child relationship where none exists - not yet and maybe not ever. If a woman rejects the victimization frame and fully owns her decision to terminate her pregnancy, this instantly triggers the bad mother frame. This language is an attempt to invoke mother guilt, pure and simple.

Even the "medical" information is a load of ideological crap:

The purported increased risks of psychological distress, depression, and suicide that physicians are required to warn women about are not supported by the bulk of the scientific literature. By requiring physicians to deliver such misinformation and discouraging them from providing alternative accurate information, the statute forces physicians to violate their obligation to solicit truly informed consent ...

(Source: NEJM)

Yep. And it's not just psychological risks that the law fabricates; it also suggests that abortion is physically perilous. In fact, the opposite is true. A woman is over twenty times more likely to die from a full-term pregnancy than from a first-trimester abortion, according to the ACLU. (For more on the strong safety record of early abortions, see the Guttmacher Institute's Fact Sheet on Induced Abortion in the United States.)

Of course, medical and legal facts and logic had nothing to do with the framing of this law. It's an attempt to intimidate women. From that angle, South Dakota's consent requirements are sadly incomplete. Why not round out this "information" with the risk of a vengeful god casting thunderbolts at women who abort?

A Palin-God Ticket in '12?

Just a few days ago I was savoring Katha Pollitt's valedictory address to Sarah Palin, "Sayonara, Sarah." Go read it if you haven't already. Bask in it for a moment. And then come back for today's dose of harsh reality.

Scroll down past the anti-Cathar LOLcat, cutely yet heavyhandedly representing a medieval correlate of spiritual warfare, a doctrine to which Palin has been linked ...

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

... okay. Deep breath.

The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that Palin plans to run for high office again, should it be God's will:

"I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door," Palin said in an interview with Fox News on Monday. "And if there is an open door in '12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."

I realize that Palin herself is leaving a door open here. No more, no less.

But. Given her lack of reflection, her fundamentalist religious beliefs, and her apparent blindness to her own inadequacies, what do you suppose her God will do? Will he swing open that door?

Let's just say that if Palin's God had a barn, His livestock would be scattered all over the universe by now.

But Can Palin Spell "Potatoe"?

Photo of multicolored potatoes by Flickr user libraryman, used under a Creative Commons license.

Dan Quayle was roundly mocked when he couldn't spell potato without adding an E, but he had nothin' on Sarah Palin. Via the HuffPost, Fox News is reporting that Palin was way more clueless than even the Katie Couric interview revealed. She thought Africa was a country!!!!

(I promise not to get in the habit of citing Fox News, but I bet they'll offer a great view of the Republicans' circular firing squad over the next few days. I'm not above a little schadenfreude.)

Not only was Palin unable to name the NAFTA countries when quizzed by her handlers. Worse, she didn't even know which countries are on the North American continent!

What did she think: Alaska, Canada, and "pro-American areas of this great nation"? That makes three, all right.

Wow. This goes way beyond potato, potahto.

I've said before that Palin lacks curiosity but can't be dumb as dirt. Otherwise she wouldn't have come this far. Now I'm wondering if I overestimated her. Or if she learned her geography from the Alaska Independence Party.

Either way, I'm hoping she won't slip into Washington on the criminal coattails of Ted Stevens, assuming Alaskans really were daft enough to re-elect him the day after his conviction on corruption charges. Sarah Palin does not need to replace Stevens in the U.S. Senate. She needs to rev up her snowmachine and do a little racin', maybe some moose huntin', and a lot of forgettin' about another run in 2012.

Update, 11/13/08: Okay, so at least the "Africa" comment appears to be completely fake - confabulated by a certain Martin Eisenstadt - which the New York Times describes as the fictional creation of a couple of filmmakers, Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish. No word yet on whether Palin's NAFTA comments were also cut from whole cloth. Go read the Times article anyway; it's very, very funny.

This is my karmic punishment for having cited Fox News. Bill O'Reilly, no less. I deserve ten strokes with a loofah - or was it a falafel?

Some People Are Just Jealous 'Cause No Princess Will Have Them

Seriously, are Pepperdine University professors worried that no girl will be interested in them if she can get hot princess-on-princess action instead? Ewww!



I have only one nice thing to say about this hateful ad for Proposition 8 in California (the one that would ban same-sex marriage): I am so amazed, and heartened, that my mom is the person who alerted me to it. Indignantly. While informing me that she's happy to be the wedding helper at her church as it conducts its first-ever same-sex ceremony.

The two brides have been together for 35 years, and they're rushing to marry - for the second time, following a Canadian ceremony - before California voters have a chance to shut down the option. Yes, they're sort of past the princess stage. It's still the most romantic story I've heard in ages.

More on Colorado's Zygotemania

Diana Hsieh of the Coalition for Secular Government left a lengthy comment on my post on Colorado's proposed Amendment 48, which would give a fertilized egg the full rights of legal personhood. Her analysis is so helpful that I thought I'd better rescue it from the obscurity of the Kittywampus comment corner:

You might be interested to read an issue paper published by the Coalition for Secular Government: "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person" by Ari Armstrong and myself. It's available at:

http://www.seculargovernment.us/docs/a48.pdf

We discuss some of the serious implications of this proposed amendment, such as:

* Amendment 48 would make abortion first-degree murder, except perhaps to save the woman's life. First-degree murder is defined in Colorado law as deliberately causing the death of a "person," a crime punished by life in prison or the death penalty. So women and their doctors would be punished with the severest possible penalty under law for terminating a pregnancy -- even in cases of rape, incest, and fetal deformity.

* Amendment 48 would ban any form of birth control that might sometimes prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus -- including the birth control pill, morning-after pill, and IUD. The result would be many more unintended pregnancies and unwanted children in Colorado.

* Amendment 48 would ban in vitro fertilization because the process usually creates more fertilized eggs than can be safely implanted in the womb. So every year, hundreds of Colorado couples would be denied the joy of a child of their own.

Our paper also develops a strong defense of abortion rights -- not based on vague appeals to "choice" or "privacy" -- but on the fact that neither an embryo nor fetus qualifies as a person with a right to life.

An embryo or fetus is wholly dependent on the woman for its basic life-functions. It goes where she goes, eats what she eats, and breathes what she breathes. It lives as an extension of her body, contained within and dependent on her for its survival. It is only a potential person, not an actual person.

That situation changes radically at birth. The newborn baby exists as a distinct organism, separate from his mother. Although still very needy, he lives his own life. He is a person, and his life must be protected as a matter of right.

So, we argue, when a woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy she does not violate the rights of any person. Instead, she is properly exercising her own rights over her own body in pursuit of her own happiness. Moreover, in most cases, she is acting morally and responsibly by doing so. ...

The sad fact is that Amendment 48 is based on sectarian religious dogma, not objective science or philosophy. It is a blatant attempt to impose theocracy in America. That's definitely a scary thought.

Many thanks, Diana, for this careful and systematic analysis. I'd add that this is also an attempt to seize control over women's bodies - both our sexuality and our reproductive potential - in a rearguard action to defend patriarchy.

Personhood for Zygotes!

Photo of billboard spotted in Cleveland by Flickr user Austin Kleon, used under a Creative Commons license.

I'm betting most of you have heard that Leslee Unruh is taking another crack at effectively outlawing abortion in South Dakota. But only very recently did I hear about a ballot initiative in Colorado that's equally loony. Julie at A Little Bit Pregnant describes it thus:

Next month Coloradoans will vote on whether to amend their state Constitution "to include the pre-born from the moment of fertilization as having their 'personhood' clearly established."

This description comes from Colorado for Equal Rights, the force behind proposed amendment 48, "Equal Rights" in this case being as much of a creepy buzzwordy misnomer as "pre-born." The thrust of the measure, say its supporters, is "to define a person in Colorado as a human being from the moment of fertilization."

Oy. There's so much wrong with this, and I have so little time. (I'm slowly digging through 80 essays that demand to be graded.) But just for starters:

Your average zygote will not implant, and that sorta puts a crimp in its personhood. At the Berkshire Conference last summer, I learned the following from Lara Friedenfels' presentation (and this is my paraphrase, not hers):

Of 100 meetings of egg and sperm, 57 never implant (and thus wouldn't result in a positive test). Of the 43 that do implant, 10 miscarry before a doctor would declare the woman pregnant. ... Of the 33 that continue, 4 will miscarry "clinically" and 29 will reach full term (give or take a few weeks).

What does this Colorado initiative plan to do to save those 57 persons who are shed before they ever implant?

Do the backers of this initiative care that implantation, not fertilization, is the medically recognized start of pregnancy?

Have they considered that whether fertilization has occurred is unknowable until sometime after implantation, and thus the existence of such "persons" will be completely speculative until post-implantation?

Are Colorado voters aware that if this measure passes, it won't just call legal abortion into question, it would lay the groundwork for potentially outlawing many forms of contraception, stem cell research and therapies, and infertility treatments, as Julie points out?

I have no problem granting that life begins at implantation, or even at fertilization. I'll grant, too, that it's human. After all, it's human DNA that starts to replicate, and keeps replicating - barring failure to implant, or miscarriage, or incompatible-with-life developmental anomalies, or the formation of a molar pregnancy ... As Lara's statistics show, this is a precarious process and less than a third of fertilized eggs result in an actual baby. I would never belittle the significance of pregnancy loss, but surely none of us would equate a hydatidiform mole with a person?

Isn't it possible to grant that the zygote is human and alive, without erasing its very real differences from a social or legal person?

How about if we instead take a developmental perspective and recognize that while an embryo is not nothing, it's also not a person? It's a clump of cells with amazing potential that - with some luck, if all goes well - will attain full personhood when it leaves its mother's body. No more. And no less.

Charting Palin's Debating Style

This is the most awesome flowchart since James Brundage's graphic depiction of sex and the penitentials (no, not that kind of graphic).

Thanks to adennak at the Daily Kos for parsing the impenetrable, clarifying the unintelligible, and charting the directionless:

(Click on the chart if you need to embiggen it.)

Sadly, even with addenak's marvelous cheat sheet, I still don't know WTF this means:

"Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be all, end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet, so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period." (Via Steve Crandell at the HuffPost, who questions whether the finger attached to this logic and syntax belongs anywhere near the button.) (Oh, and she's back to saying "nukular" again - channeling Dubya, I suppose.)

Echoes of Dubya in the Alaskan Wilderness

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

Quick follow-up to my last post on Tina Fey's wonderful Sarah Palin send-up (and also my earlier fretting on what seems to be her willful ignorance of foreign policy).

James Fallows at the Atlantic cogently analyzes why Palin is clueless about the Bush Doctrine and why this should rob us of our sleep:

How could she not know this? For the same reason I don't know anything about European football/soccer standings, player trades, or intrigue. I am not interested enough. And she evidently has not been interested enough even to follow the news of foreign affairs during the Bush era.

A further point. The truly toxic combination of traits GW Bush brought to decision making was:

1) Ignorance
2) Lack of curiosity
3) "Decisiveness"

That is, he was not broadly informed to begin with (point 1). He did not seek out new information (#2); but he nonetheless prided himself (#3) on making broad, bold decisions quickly, and then sticking to them to show resoluteness.

We don't know for sure about #2 for Palin yet -- she could be a sponge-like absorber of information. But we know about #1 and we can guess, from her demeanor about #3. Most of all we know something about the person who put her in this untenable role.

(My emphasis. Read his whole commentary here.)

Now, I did follow European soccer when I lived in Germany, and it's great fun - but only if you're willing and able to invest some effort in it. Otherwise, you're left with a sea of furrin names that don't mean much. Same for furrin policy. But darn it, virtually everyone I know who's involved in local politics has more of a clue about the Bush Doctrine than Sarah Palin does.

That, to me, is pretty strong evidence that Palin suffers from congenital lack of curiosity about foreign affairs. Seems to me that Fallows really underplays his second point. His third point - about "decisiveness" - is pretty well illustrated by Palin's approach to preterm labor. If you object that this was a "personal" arena and thus no predictor of how "resolute" she'd be as president, please recall her "I did not blink" mantra in the Charlie Gibson interview.

Fallows could've also added a fourth similarity to GW Bush: Palin's penchant for cronyism, secrecy, and intimidation, as reported in the New York Times. Apparently her attempt to fire the Wasilla public librarian was only her warm-up act. And Troopergate is only the most publicized manifestation of her Nixonian qualities.

All of this adds up to someone who I wouldn't want on my local school board, much less a heartberat away from being Leader of the Free World. The only person I trust less, at this point, is the guy who picked her.

I'm Not En-Raptured

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

A few days ago, I raised questions about Sarah Palin's religious beliefs. I basically consider people's faith a private matter - unless it impinges significantly on how they would shape policy. So Joe Biden personally believes life begins at conception; he personally has serious qualms about abortion; yet he wouldn't stop others from choosing abortion. I'm fine with that. When making policy, he keeps his convictions in the personal realm, recognizing the religious pluralism of American society.

Sarah Palin is on record as believing that God favors certain pipeline projects (not to mention certain wars in Mesopotamia). She sees direct her faith as directly applicable to the public realm.

This isn't surprising in light of reports that came out this week about Palin's home church. Now, people aren't responsible for everything their pastor says. I'm not going to apply a totally different standard to her than I did to Barack Obama when his former pastor, Reverend Wright, made some highly impolitic remarks.

I do think Palin needs to respond to this, however. Writing in Alternet, Bruce Wilson reports:

Sarah Palin's churches are actively involved in a resurgent movement that was declared heretical by the Assemblies of God in 1949. This is the same 'Spiritual Warfare' movement that was featured in the award winning movie, "Jesus Camp," which showed young children being trained to do battle for the Lord. At least three of four of Palin's churches are involved with major organizations and leaders of this movement, which is referred to as The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit or the New Apostolic Reformation. The movement is training a young "Joel's Army" to take dominion over the United States and the world.

Along with her entire family, Sarah Palin was re-baptized at twelve at the Wasilla Assembly of God in Wasilla, Alaska and she attended the church from the time she was ten until 2002: over two and 1/2 decades. Sarah Palin's extensive pattern of association with the Wasilla Assembly of God has continued nearly up to the day she was picked by Senator John McCain as a vice-presidential running mate.

Palin's dedication to the Wasilla church is indicated by a Saturday, September 7, 2008, McClatchy news service story detailing possibly improper use of state travel funds by Palin for a trip she made to Wasilla, Alaska to attend, on June 8, 2008, both a Wasilla Assembly of God "Masters Commission" graduation ceremony and also a multi-church Wasilla area event known as "One Lord Sunday."

At the latter event, Palin and Alaska LT Governor Scott Parnell were publicly blessed, onstage before an estimated crowd of 6,000, through the "laying on of hands" by Wasilla Assembly of God's Head Pastor Ed Kalnins whose sermons espouse such theological concepts as the possession of geographic territories by demonic spirits and the inter-generational transmission of family "curses". Palin has also been blessed, or "anointed", by an African cleric, prominent in the Third Wave movement, who has repeatedly visited the Wasilla Assembly of God and claims to have effected positive, dramatic social change in a Kenyan town by driving out a "spirit of witchcraft."

(See also this version at the Huffington Post.)

Again, none of this indicates directly what Palin herself believes. Even her appearance on stage at her home church doesn't mean she agrees with every particular of Reverend Kalnins' theology. (I'll admit that seeing video Wilson provides of them sharing a stage is pretty suggestive, however.)

Everything Wilson writes about the Third Wave is consistent with scholarship that I'm intimately familiar with. (I translated a 15,000-word book chapter on the Pentecostal movement a few months back.) Spiritual Warfare is a real and growing movement. Lots of Pentecostal and Charismatic worshipers sincerely believe in the efficacy of demons, curses, and exorcisms. While blending these ideas with a belief in witchcraft is particularly common in Africa, the difference between witches and demons is mighty slender.

I, for one, would prefer political leaders who don't fear demons. Who can separate the secular from the sacred. Who haven't bought stock in Armageddon. And who don't believe in the Basement Cat.

Criminality versus Dumb Decisions

Earlier this week Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, published an open letter to Sarah Palin in Alternet, asking her to reconsider her position on abortion:

According to press reports your water broke while you were giving a keynote speech in Texas at the Republican Governors' Energy Conference. You did not immediately go to the hospital – instead you gave your speech and then waited at least 11 hours to get to a hospital. You evaluated the risks, made a choice, and were able to carry on your life without state interference. Texas Governor Rick Perry worried about your pregnancy but didn’t stop you from speaking or take you into custody to protect the rights of the fetus.

After, Ayesha Madyun’s water broke, she went to the hospital where she hoped and planned to have a vaginal birth. When she didn’t give birth in a time-frame comfortable to her doctors, they argued that she should have a C-section. The doctors asserted that the fetus faced a 50-75 percent chance of infection if not delivered surgically. (Risks of infection are believed by some health care providers to increase with each hour after a woman’s water has broken and she hasn’t delivered).

The court, believing, like you that fetuses have a right to life, said, "[a]ll that stood between the Madyun fetus and its independent existence, separate from its mother, was put simply, a doctor's scalpel." With that, the court granted the order and the scalpel sliced through Ms. Madyun's flesh, the muscles of her abdominal wall, and her uterus. The core principle justifying an end to legal abortion in the US provided the same grounds used to deprive this pregnant and laboring woman of her rights to due process, bodily integrity, and physical liberty. When the procedure was done, there was no evidence of infection.

(Read the whole thing here.)

Paltrow doesn't specify how many hours passed before Madyun's doctors pressed for a c-section. An old New York Times article says she'd been in labor for two days and in the hospital for 18 hours. Rachel Roth's excellent study Making Women Pay: The Hidden Costs of Fetal Rights states it had been 48 hours since her water broke. That's long enough that Madyun's decision starts to look fairly foolish by my standards and by most medical guidelines.

But here's the thing: People do lots of things that are stupid, risky, macho, or otherwise blameworthy. Some of these risk other people's lives as well as their own. Not all of these things are illegal. One example would be driving while very sleepy or distracted.

This is naturally true for childbearing, as well. Some people choose unassisted home birth, where the father catches the baby and no midwife or other trained assistant is present. Many of the people who propagandize for unassisted birth believe that birth, like sex, should only involve the couple; some of them also subscribe to right-wing religious ideologies. This is loony and irresponsible, in my view. (Not to mention it's asking a hell of a lot of the father!) Still, it's not illegal. Nor should it be. Imagine the mess if every baby born after a precipitous labor triggered a court case.

Another example Paltrow cites is of a woman who insisted on a VBAC at home. There are good reasons that no reputable doctor should condone this. If you give birth vaginally after a cesarean, there's a heightened chance of uterine rupture, which endangers the mother's life as well as the child's. If that occurred at home, odds are great that you'd bleed out before you could get help.

This woman, too, was forced by court order to have a c-section. This goes against our law on medical treatment in every other instance. A person cannot be forced to have surgery or undergo radiation even if they would surely die without the treatment. No one can be forced to donate a kidney - even if he or she is the parent of the patient needing a transplant.

If you believe humans have a right to bodily integrity and autonomy, you cannot legislate women's childbearing decisions. You certainly can argue that these people have an ethical obligation to make wise decisions and that some decisions are so irresponsible as to be unethical. However, unless you want to reduce the woman to an incubator and deprive her of basic rights of personhood, the law has no place intruding on ethics.

This is a long-winded way of saying that it's possible to fully agree with Paltrow's arguments and still maintain that Sarah Palin's choice to board a plane while she was at astronomical risk of going into active labor was a foolish decision. She wasn't taken to task for it legally, nor should she be. Her privilege protected her from any legal action. (Women subjected to forced childbearing decisions have been disproportionately young, poor, unmarried, and non-white.) If we trust women to make their own reproductive decisions, we have to acknowledge that while most women are remarkably altruistic and sensible, there will always be some who make decisions that we personally would never countenance.

But Palin's privilege shouldn't stop us from regarding her choice as 1) reckless and 2) completely hypocritical for someone who preaches the sanctity of fetal life. What's legal - and should remain legal - is not always ethical in every situation. We have a right to demand leaders that understand this distinction.

Palin, the Object of Our Obsession

I know it's time to move on from Sarah Palin. Somehow, we have to shift everyone's focus off of her and back to Obama's promise of - well, not salvation, maybe not even transformation, but at least starting to remedy the fuck-ups of this country that I love.

So why am I having trouble shifting focus, myself? Yeah, I'm scared because she's a wingnut who could too easily become President. But I'm not normally this obsessed about any individual 'winger. Huckabee alarmed me, too, but you didn't see me blogging about him for ten days straight.

I think I've finally figured it out after reading this post by Jessica at Jezebel:

When Palin spoke on Wednesday night, my head almost exploded from the incandescent anger boiling in my skull. ...

And the question now is why? Why does this particular pitbull in lipstick infuriate — and scare us — so viscerally? Why does her very existence make us feel — and act — so ugly? New York Times columnist Judith Warner calls Palin's nomination a "thoroughgoing humiliation for America’s women," because "Palin’s not intimidating, and makes it clear that she’s subordinate to a great man." ...

I think what Ms. Warner is dancing around, but not saying outright, is that for a certain kind of feminist, Palin is a symbol for everything we hoped was not true in the world anymore. We hoped that we didn't have to hide our ambition or pretend that our goals were effortlessly achieved ("I never really set out to be in public affairs, much less to run for this office," the Governor has said.) We hoped that we could be mothers without having our motherhood be our defining characteristic, as it seems to be for Palin. We hoped that we did not have to be perfect beauty queens to get to where we wanted to be in life, that our looks, good or bad, wouldn't matter. ...

I think the correct high school stereotype is of the homecoming queen. For many of us looking back at high school, we can now feel a smug superiority towards the homecoming queen. Sure, she was pretty and popular in high school, catering to the whims of boys and cheering on their hockey games, but what happened to her after high school? Often, she popped out some kids and ended up toiling in some not particularly impressive job. We can look back and say, we might have been ambitious nerds in high school, but it ultimately paid off. What's infuriating, and perhaps rage-inducing, about Palin, is that she has always embodied that perfectly pleasing female archetype, playing by the boys' game with her big guns and moose-murdering, and that she keeps being rewarded for it. Our schadenfreude for the homecoming queen's mediocrity has turned into white hot anger at her continued dominance.

(I've excerpted a lot of it but the whole post is worth reading.)

You know, I don't have any real issues with Palin's beauty queen past. I'm not a great beauty, myself, but I'm also not hideous. I don't know what it's like to have men drool en masse over me, but I've always been attractive enough for nearly all of the men who interested me. So I don't have jealousy issues about beauty. Nor do I discount the intelligence of women who happen to be conventionally beautiful. In high school, I even got along just fine with the homecoming queen, who was the band's drum major.

(In fact, in an odd chapter of my past life - which I'd forgotten until very recently - my band friends nominated me for "basketball homecoming queen" my senior year of high school, a very obscure honor indeed. It was mostly of a joke, and I was sort of an anti-candidate. I so didn't fit the type and I was never "popular" but I did have plenty of friends. I vaguely recall coming in second.)

But the cheerleaders! A few of them had this slightly simpering, dumbed-down way of dealing with boys. They weren't dumb, they just played the part. They hung out with the girls who were "popular," which - as in most high schools - was not at all the same as being well-liked. They acted just slightly frosty to the rest of us, enough to register with the girls but pass under the boys' radar. (Just to be clear, I have a couple of friends who were cheerleaders in high school. I'm not casting aspersions on all cheerleaders, just a select few from my high school.)

To this day, I have a real allergy to that sort of woman. Sarah Palin strikes me as one of them - as a woman who will fake and flirt and cajole and act stupid to please the menz - and then turn around and stab women in the back, individually and collectively.

Patriarchal systems have always required women like these. Every era has had its Anita Bryants and Phyllis Schaflys. Madame Bitch at Open Salon suggests that far from being the target of sexism, Palin is the very apogee of playing by the patriarchal rules:

What are the ways in which Palin embodies these sexist rules?

• She's number 2, not the top of the ticket.
• Her very appointment is a testament to the paucity of women leaders in the GOP -- had there been more choices, perhaps McCain would have chosen someone with fewer drawbacks.
• She's a mother of 5 children, so her "woman" credentials cannot be challenged.
• She constantly downplays her ambition and her accomplishments, even though the ambition is oozing out of her ears.
• She dumbs herself down.
• She embraces the frantic mommy role, both literally, and figuratively for her leadership roles.

To me, Palin seems not like a trailblazing, hard-charging battering ram, but a gray fascimile of that ideal, and one that is neatly confined into the small allowed space for her to exist, completely controlled for the comfort of the men who created those rules.

(Read the rest here.)

Palin is quite literally being controlled by the men, at least for now. She's being groomed and prepped and the press is not being allowed access to her - although word came out today that she'll grant an interview to Charlie Gibson later in the week. It reminds me a little of Old Testament descriptions of girls being prepared for entrance to the king's harem. The Book of Esther recounts how they spent a full year being beautified with oils and perfumes and makeup before they ever had a private audience with the king.

Palin has her beauty routine down pat, but the patriarchal grooming is no less intense for being focused on the names of foreign leaders and the pros and cons of privatizing Social Security. (I'm not suggesting that these are in any way "patriarchal" subjects. It's only the GOP take on them that's steeped in patriarchal assumptions.) My hunch is she's a quick study, judging from her convention performance. She seems to be smart and very, very tough. If Palin were transported back to the Old Testament, she wouldn't be a girl in the harem. She would be the woman who runs it. (For those of you who've read The Handmaid's Tale: Palin would be Aunt Lydia.)

Palin's experience in beauty pageants is not irrelevant; pageants teach and reward poise, self-possession, and smooth performances. So does cheerleading. I say this sincerely, not snarkily. These are good life skills for anyone. They're invaluable if you're a politician.

I'd like to think we're all beyond knee-jerk high-school emotions, despite the results of the past two elections. But I can't help thinking of another memory, this one from the back of the school bus, where my friend Kate and I were using our halting French skills to disparage the cheerleaders in what we assumed was our secret language. Eventually, one of them - a platinum-blonde named Mary - turned around and glared at us. We'd forgotten that Mary was in third-year French. Oops.

We underestimate the cheerleaders at our peril.

Choice, Schmoice

Because I'm still trying to perk up, here's Samantha Bee at the Republican Convention, tormenting the poor delegates with the oxymoron of "choosing" in an anti-choice party.



(h/t Feministing)