Some women's choices are ok, others not so much

Boy, do I wish I had more time to spend on this one. Because when Democratic strategist-for-hire Hilary Rosen said that Ann Romney "never worked a day in her life," she opened a can of worms that deserves a lot of virtual ink to parse. Let's break it down:

- Rosen does not work for the Obama administration or the president's re-election campaign. The president's actual staff have denounced what Rosen said.

- Rosen has apologized to Ann Romney and clarified that she didn't intend to insult Romney's work as a stay-at-home parent - she says she was only trying to point out that Ann Romney is hardly qualified to speak for women who run households on a hell of a lot less than $20 million+ a year.

- Sorry to burst the bubble of the conservatives who've been desperately scrapping for some talking point to refute the GOP's well-documented and successful war on women, but what Rosen said isn't equivalent in any way to introducing and enacting laws that actually restrict women's freedoms, as opposed to bruising their feelings.

It's important that, once this news cycle blows over, we remember what's really at stake here. It's important that we don't allow one stupid remark by one registered Democrat overshadow the actual record and policy statements of someone currently running to be the Republican party's nominee for president.

Ann Romney's choice to be a full-time stay-at-home parent is perfectly fine, and that's what was best for her family. But let's not forget that a) her family's income is what allowed her to do so, a luxury most American families can't afford, and b) her husband and his party are doing everything they can to make it harder for other families to survive on one income. If Ann Romney really wants stay-at-home parents to be valued and to have the support they need, maybe she should lay off some cable news talking head and have a chat with her husband.

“My career choice was to be a mother and I think all of us need to know we need to respect choices that women make," Ann Romney said today. I have some ideas on where we could start.

Fellas, I love you... but it's time for you to shut up

So, this...



...is funny because it flips reality. It's also sad because of the reality that it flips. Namely, that in 2012, we have individuals, Congresspeople and actual candidates for the presidency publicly debating women's sexual health, when no one outside of America's comedians would broach doing the same for men's sexual health.

Don't shake your head at me, man-reader. You know what? I love my male friends, the feminist ally ones especially. But after a month that saw the Komen/Planned Parenthood thing, the health insurance provider/contraceptive thing and its sequel, the Congressional panel on contraceptives with no women on it thing, I'm pretty tapped out on male opinions regarding things that affect me and that don't affect them.

No offense, it's a free country, and blah blah blah, but I've discovered that even the most enlightened man has a point where he hits his "admitting my own privilege" limit and starts patting on my head and telling me how much worse the women in Afghanistan have it.

*profanity alert*

FUCK THAT. I am a human fucking being, and my citizenship and my vote count for just as much as yours do. When Congress and people who want to be in charge of negotiating the next Cuban Missile Crisis find time out of their days to waste taxpayer time on your testicles, then you can talk. Right now you can buy condoms in every goddamn gas station bathroom in this country and nobody gives a shit, so don't fucking pretend you know what it's like to be me.

You don't know what it's like to take it for granted that everything about your body is open for public debate, from how you have your children to how you avoid having children. (Unless you're gay, which is a whole 'nother category of MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS.) When you ask your doctor for that little blue pill, you don't have to worry about swearing that you're only going to use it to fuck your wife. It probably never crosses your mind that your insurance company might not cover your boner pills. You don't think for a second that some fundie state representative will pass a law keeping your doctor from treating you the way his/her education and experience dictate. Because your body isn't up for public debate.

Mine is. And I'm fucking over it. If I decide, and my doctor concurs, that a medicine or medical procedure is best for me, there are individuals who would keep me from acting on that. More seriously, there are state and national legislators who would do the same. This is EVERY DAY in my life, and in that of all women in this ostensibly free country.

I didn't make reproductive rights a political issue. The people - sorry to stereotype, but pretty much universally Republicans - who swept into office promising jobs and fiscal restraint have instead wasted no time passing laws restricting access to abortion and contraception and, in Virginia last week, pretty much mandating state-sponsored rape-via-camera dildo*. They're the ones who made this political.

*watch if you think that statement was hyperbolicious

And they've done so largely without input from women. No wonder. In this country, when a woman points out that men are not, in fact, all knowing, we get that little head-pat. An eye roll if we keep it up. Maybe even the b-word. Most of us don't relish CONSTANTLY having to inform the men in our lives of the most basic facts.

Fuck that. I love you guys, but you don't know what you're talking about. If you'd like me to enlighten you about specifics, drop me a line and I'll be glad to do so. I mean, if women were 90 percent of the people making public policy decisions, and there were an issue that pretty much exclusively affected men, I'd consider it my duty to ask them what they thought.

So, men - I love you, but you need to shut up now. You need to listen to the women in your lives and that it's your job to represent. We don't all think the same way, sure. But we all know a hell of a lot more about this stuff than you do.

Someone flunked PR 101

The Komen v. Planned Parenthood debacle continues to fascinate me. As I wrote earlier this week, I disagree with Komen's decision to cut its funding for PP's cancer screening programs (which they reversed today). That hasn't changed... but it's Komen's exceptionally poor handling of the entire situation that's interesting to me, just because of what I do for a living.

I've been where Komen's administration was this week. And it's just about impossible to change the conversation when people take what you've done so personally and when information (and sometimes misinformation) can spread so rapidly. The time to fix something like this is before it blows up. Once the horse is out of the barn, all you can do is mitigate the damage, but you can never completely cure it. Even if you assume that every single thing Komen said this week is completely true, a lot of their former supporters will never completely trust them again.

But how do you handle a PR crisis before it starts? You just have to prepare as well as you can. You know your organization well enough to know who your constituents are and where their hot buttons are (and that those buttons may be different for different groups). You don't have the luxury of pretending that everyone loves you and will always trust you no matter what. Komen was one of the most respected nonprofits in this country, and a reputation built over 30 years took less than 24 hours to be turned on its head. Because someone in a position to do so didn't plan ahead.

OK, so, assuming that Komen's policy change late last year not to award funding to groups under any kind of investigation was indeed about better stewardship. At some point, when whoever it was noticed that, oops, that includes Planned Parenthood, that's when the Komen staff should've asked themselves one basic question - who is going to piss off?

PR crises happen when someone who's invested in your organization feels slighted, or caught off guard, or taken advantage of. It could be a customer, or an employee, or a legislator who's helped you out in the past, or in this case millions of women who support the goals both of Komen and Planned Parenthood. These are the people who do NOT need to read about your potential bomb on Facebook. They need to hear from you directly so that you set the narrative (as best you can).

Someone high up at Komen should've been on the phone with every politician who's ever done them a favor, every head of every affiliate, every top supporter (they have email, don't they?), and all of that BEFORE they released a statement to the press. Someone should've had the sense to grasp that cutting off Planned Parenthood, the lightning rod that it is, would be seen as a political move even if it wasn't. Someone should've looked through the books and found all of the other under-investigation groups that Komen still funds (ahem, Penn State). Someone should find a way to deal with the fact that "We're assessing the effectiveness of grantee programs so that we can better steward our resources" is a harder story to tell than "Komen hates poor people."

And even if Komen didn't manage to get ahead of the story, they still could've handled things better. Sometimes things blow up out of nowhere. But it's still true that PR crises don't happen unless someone feels wronged. (It's not a media story unless there's more than one side.) And that's when you do everything you can to get everyone on the same side, which usually means you're the one who's going to have to move. You listen. You don't pretend that the people who are angry with you don't exist, or worse, say on national TV that they're uninformed.

It's kind of shocking that an organization that's been so sophisticated in its marketing could be so bad at negotiating what could've been a relatively straightforward PR issue. In my experience, the organizations that struggle to respond to situations like this are the ones who identify the institution's reputation too closely with their own. It must be incredibly hard for Nancy Brinker to look objectively at the nonprofit she founded in memory of her own sister, but that's what you have to do. When you believe that the organization is you and you are the organization, it's harder to consider how all of the other people who care about, say, Race for the Cure, are feeling. Especially if you're a nonprofit, utterly dependent on the goodwill of your donors and volunteers to survive. Everyone who's ever worn a pink ribbon has a stake in Komen, and Komen's leaders lost sight of that this week.

What color ribbon do cowardly BS-artists wear?

Last year at my new office's Christmas party, we did that "dirty Santa" game and I ended up with a pink fold-up umbrella. You can never have too many fold-up umbrellas, even though I'm not crazy about pink. But it turns out that it wasn't just any pink umbrella... it was a "breast cancer awareness" pink umbrella, complete with a little fuschia ribbon drawn on it.

And my coworkers were all "You got an umbrella! Oh look, it's a BREAST CANCER AWARENESS umbrella!" as if it's extra-good at repelling raindrops. And I was kind of... eh.

Here's something I've never written about because I honestly feel a little dickish saying it, I do: I frakking hate all those pink "breast cancer awareness" products. Pink kitchen utensils, pink shoes, pink purses, entire pink cars. Of course it's a good thing that people are aware of cancer and how to detect it early - particularly breast cancer, which women and their doctors were so squeamish about addressing until very recently. And the Susan G. Komen Foundation has become the most visible symbol of breast cancer awareness-raising. Their funding and, yes, all that pink, has saved lives.

But you know who else saves lives? Planned Parenthood. Every year, PP performs between 700,000 and 800,000 mammograms*, pap smears and other preventative exams on women, most of them low-income. PP serves the exact population who are more likely to die from treatable cancers because they don't get treatment until it's too late, usually because they don't have health insurance coverage.

EDIT: PP doesn't do mammograms themselves, apparently. But they do basic breast exams and offer referrals to doctors who do mammograms.

But because PP also performs abortions and provides other reproductive care for (again, usually low-income women), Komen has announced that it's pulling funding from one of the largest health care providers in this country.

They have every right to do that; it's their money. But the next time you get an appeal for Komen donations that swears that this foundation is the No. 1 advocate for women's health, you'll now know for sure that they're full of it. Komen's leaders proved today that their top concern is politics, not preventing cancer. They're no different than the "pro-life" people who do everything in their power to eliminate funding for those programs that actually prevent unplanned pregnancy.

But, hey, at least now my pinkwash-hating conscience is clear. Your pink spatula did not save a single woman's life today. But Planned Parenthood did.

Choose logic

I'm the middle child of five, all girls. The oldest four of us are very close in age, and the youngest is seven years younger than I am. So, our family dynamic was first like that of a basketball team, and then later like that of a basketball team ganging up on a toddler because we were bigger than her. Except that basketball players are adults, and we were children right at that age where each of us genuinely felt that we were the center of the universe and SHE'S ON MY SIDE OF THE CAR SEAT!!!

Which is to say, my parents had to be master mediators. If you have more than one kid, you're probably very familiar with those bitter disputes that end with "...then NO ONE gets to ride in the front seat/pick the TV show/hang the Patrick Swayze poster on her side of the room."

It's basic Fairness 101. When you have two or more opposing entities, you give them all the same privileges, or you give all of them no privileges at all.

And consider that my introduction to what might be the simplest case the ACLU has ever argued. This year, our GOP-led General Assembly continued its waste-no-time approach to its first controlling majority in more than a century and ok'd a state-issued anti-choice specialty license plate. The plate, reading "Choose Life," would raise money ($15 of every $25) for the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship, whose website says it is "the legally designated agency for disbursement of plate funds." CPCF openly advocates against abortion rights... and that's their prerogative. It's a free country.

The problem is that the General Assembly had previously rejected six attempts to issue a plate benefiting a pro-choice organization. Now, personally I don't think the DMV should be in the business of shilling for ANY non-profit group, but if it is going to do that, logic dictates that it be objective.

Not just logic, though. The law, too. The ACLU argues that the state can't facilitate speech by one side and not the other. And this week a federal judge agreed, issuing an injunction that prevents the "Choose Life" plates from being offered.

CPCF and its supporters have every right to buy and display their plates, but not if every other advocacy group on the same issue is silenced. The government doesn't get to play favorites.

Entitled

There's a post I've been wanting to write all week, but I just couldn't get it to gel. Sometimes I have no trouble articulating what I think about something, and sometimes I know that if I tried to write about X, all that would come out is a bunch of gibberish. A lot of the time, I just want to keep from writing three identical posts in a row, so I wait until I've figured out some way to unify a couple of different ideas. Basically, this week I almost wrote about a 40-something pro-lifer in Alabama and some BS Mitt Romney pulled back when he was a Mormon bishop, but it took a letter to Slate's "Dear Prudence" for me to bring it all together.

This week, a woman wrote Prudie asking how she could persuade her 21-year-old pregnant sister not to place her upcoming baby in adoption, and instead "impress upon her that she can, and should, take more responsibility for her actions." Prudie (rightly) responded that the woman needs to mind her own business and respect that her sister IS making a responsible choice, and in the process making a dream come true for the couple who will adopt the baby.

But what really jumped out at me is this: the letter-writing sister reports that the pregnant sister, a college student, could have plenty of financial and baby-sitting support from her parents and others while she goes to class (because, as everyone knows, children don't require any care or expense once they're out of diapers). And then she writes this:

"I simply cannot understand why she is choosing adoption when she has support, both financial and otherwise. I think she is being a bit entitled. After all, she got herself into this mess, and it doesn't seem fair that she just gets to put the child up for adoption and resume her life."

DING DING DING! There it is!

Now, Mitt... When he was a Mormon lay leader in the Boston area, Romney (as reported in a 1990 story in Exponent II, a magazine published by Mormon feminists, and this week in the New York Times) barged into the hospital room of a woman whose sixth pregnancy had produced a blood clot that threatened her life. The treatment for the blood clot would terminate her pregnancy, and so the church ok'd an abortion (for, again, a pregnancy that she planned and wanted).

"Her bishop got wind of the situation, she wrote, and showed up unannounced at the hospital, warning her sternly not to go forward," says the Times. According to Judith Dushku, publisher of Exponent II, the exchange went like this:

He said – What do you think you're doing?

She said – Well, we have to abort the baby because I have these blood clots.

And he said something to the effect of – Well, why do you get off easy when other women have their babies?

And she said – What are you talking about? This is a life threatening situation.

And he said – Well what about the life of the baby?

And she said – I have four other children and I think it would be really irresponsible to continue the pregnancy.

DING DING DING! There it is!

(By the way, if I'd been that woman and Mitt Romney - hell, if a member of my own family - had said this to me, they'd have left that hospital room with some teeth missing. Seriously, where the frak does he get off? "Easy"???")

I respect the people who genuinely don't want abortion to happen, and who therefore support better family planning and birth control access, and who support funding for those programs that help low-income families feed, clothe and educate their children. (For instance, the Mormon Church does an excellent job helping member families.) My problem is this undercurrent in every single conversation with an anti-choicer I've ever had, which in the above quoted passages spills right out into the open.

Sooner or later, once you've gotten through the debate about when life begins and the ethics of privileging one life above another, eventually it comes out. "Well, you had sex, so you deserve what you get." (Note: only if you're a woman.) Or, as Letter-Writing Big Sister put it, "it doesn't seem fair that she just gets to put the child up for adoption and resume her life." Or, Bishop Mitt: "Well, why do you get off easy?"

Perhaps it's the juxtaposition of "Mitt Romney" and "getting off easy," but this just occurred to me... When progressives talk about race or class privilege - the consequences of which cost actual, walking-around-human lives - we're shouted down as "class warriors" who want to overthrow America and outlaw apple pie or something. But when a woman exercises her natural and (at least for the moment) legal right not to have a kid, she's a selfish, cake-having AND -eating harpy slut who's dodging her scarlet letter and thereby callously subverting the entire human system of right and wrong.

And don't tell me this is about saving fetuses (fetii? I really don't know...). Letter-Writing Big Sister's pregnant sister is, on paper, doing everything that the social conservatives would want her to do: carrying the pregnancy to term and placing the baby for adoption. But still, she's "entitled." Mitt Romney had the gall to tell a married mother of four that she's selfish for having life-saving surgery that would keep her around to mother her real-life children. That was "getting off easy," apparently.

What this is about is shaming women who have the temerity to do what's best for themselves and their families. It's never an easy choice, and for that reason it's a highly personal choice. If the Letter-Writing Big Sisters, the Mitt Romneys and the other scarlet letter-assigners of the world really and truly cared about justice, or saving lives, or anything to do with making it easier for families to have and raise children, then the woman in that hospital room (or adoption agency) is the last person they'd be going after.

Instead, they'll tell you all about how much they cherish life, up until the moment that life emerges from the womb and needs food stamps, health care, after-school care and public school. Then that little rug-rat needs to start pulling herself up by the bootie-straps, 'cause with that slut single mother, you never know, amirite?

So, who's really the entitled one here? The person facing the most profound decision there is, who frankly assesses her life situation and ability to care for a child, and who seeks out the advice of her doctors and spiritual advisers, and who makes a choice? Or the person who's never met that woman, and who will lecture her about the wrongness of her choices without doing anything to actually help?

Bev hauls the Legislature out of my uterus

It will be hard for me to say this more clearly than the Charlotte Observer already did in the op-ed calling the Legislature’s abortion-restriction bill “an insult to women.” So let me just give a big kudos to Gov. Bev Perdue for vetoing the bill today, her 10th veto this year of bills passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature. (Ten vetoes will happen when the governor is a moderate Democrat and the Legislature conservative Republicans.)

The bill, which the Observer describes as the first of its kind in the nation, would’ve required not just an ultrasound (following a 24-hour waiting period), but for a doctor to describe what the ultrasound is showing. The bill included eliminating state funds for Planned Parenthood as well.

Let’s be clear: this is not about preventing abortion. Because the best, most effective way to do that is to increase funding for Planned Parenthood and other programs that educate women and provide contraception. If people whose stomachs are turned by abortion were serious about keeping abortion from happening, they would do the exact opposite of what this Legislature, and others around the country, tried to do. They wouldn’t be trying to shut down the organizations that provide women, in particular poor women, birth control, basic health care (including pap smears and mammograms) and – Hello – prenatal care. (They also wouldn’t be axing education and health care if they were truly “pro-life,” but that’s a separate issue.)

The bill was indeed an insult to women. It comes from a place of deep distrust of any woman – college student, middle-aged mother, whomever – to make decisions about her own pregnancy and childbearing. And, though nearly anyone can agree that terminating a pregnancy is a tragedy, I am and always will be vehemently suspicious of letting the government get involved with that decision.

(I don’t understand conservatives on this issue. Y’all are convinced that Democrats want to take your God-given right to own an assault rifle – even though no one has tried since the assault weapons ban expired during the last administration – and you think every attempt to simultaneously lower taxes and the cost of health care is either socialism or Nazism or somewhere in between, but you’re totally ok with a bunch of guys elected to two-year terms encoding in state law what your highly trained doctor can and can’t say to you during a medical exam?)

Abortion restrictions of this type are insult to women.

This part may be difficult to read. I intended it to be.

Let’s take me, for example. If you read this blog, you probably know that I was raped not quite four years ago. Afterwards, when I went to the hospital, I was offered the “Plan B” pill – basically a high dose of the common birth control pill, administered in two doses several hours apart. Hell yes I took it, and if it hadn’t been offered I would’ve demanded it.

But let’s say I’m unfortunate enough to live in a state that bans Plan B, or maybe I didn’t go to the ER. Now, a few weeks after being raped, I’m pregnant. Now what?

Well, maybe I happen to live in one of the 90 percent of U.S. counties without an abortion provider. So I have to find a provider somewhere else. Maybe I have a car. Maybe not, and I have to hitch a ride from a friend. Maybe the doctor I find is in the next county, or maybe two or three hours away. Assuming I get the ride, there’s that 24-hour waiting period to consider. So now I’m getting a hotel room on top of the gas and food (for my friend, too, if I’m hitching that ride).

Maybe I have a job with paid time off. Or maybe I work hourly, in which case I’m not only losing money, but I most likely don’t have health insurance. Boy, I sure hope I had hundreds of dollars lying around. For not just one doctor’s visit, but at least two, assuming I don’t need any follow-up care.

In the doctor’s office, I’m already 99 percent sure I don’t want and can’t handle this baby. But before the doctor can perform the medical procedure I came here for, she has to perform an ultrasound. Now, if you’ve ever been pregnant at this stage, you know that an ultrasound isn’t the thing you see in the movies where the doctor squirts jelly on your stomach and views from the outside. It’s a wand placed inside your vagina far enough to view the uterus.

Keep in mind that hypothetical me was raped a few weeks ago. Nothing traumatic about that.

I can tell you from personal experience that, within weeks of what happened to me, I was most definitely NOT in the emotional shape to deal with something like the above scenario.

Ok, ok, lots of abortion opponents who like to think of themselves as reasonable create little loopholes in their ethics like “only in cases of rape or incest.” Go back through what I just wrote, only this time pretend it’s not about what could’ve happened to me. Pretend the same thing is happening to a teenager, or a single mom who’s the sole source of income for her family, or a woman who desperately wants her baby, but knows that having him will kill both of them.

As with anything in life, reproductive rights are far too complicated and personal to be handled by public legislation. Any government is woefully inadequate to deal with this, and therefore should trust women, families and their doctors to decide what’s best for them.

And, for what it’s worth… if you’re someone who’s ever thought, forwarded an email or bought a bumper sticker telling the government to get out of your gun cabinet, then you should absolutely respect my wish that the same government stay out of my uterus.

What the (rhymes with "duck"), Huck?

A was going to do a "principles are hot" post about Natalie Portman severing her relationship with Dior following John Galliano's anti-semitic rant earlier this week - and I admire the hell out of her for taking a stand that way - but events, and Mike Huckabee's mouth, overtook me.

On Michael Medved's radio show the day after Portman won an Academy Award for Best Actress, Huckabee held her up as an example of Hollywood corrupting America's wholesome family values by setting a bad example (or something). Frankly, I'm not sure what he was going for. Let's figure it out together:

“People see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts, ‘we’re not married but we’re having these children and they’re doing just fine,’” Mr. Huckabee told the conservative radio host Michael Medved on Monday. “I think it gives a distorted image. It’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out-of-wedlock children.”

Hmmm... Here we have an example of someone staking a position on something other than facts. Or BS, if you want to think of it that way. In my job, when I prep people for media interviews, I stress that you should never veer off into areas that you don't know by heart, documentation included. If you start basing opinions on something you vaguely recall that you heard somewhere, then you risk looking like an idiot.

For instance, I don't think anyone could describe Portman as "boasting" about being a single mother. She and the baby's father seem to have gotten engaged as soon as they learned they were pregnant. Also, Portman's my age. Even if she weren't a highly paid film actor with a bachelor's degree fron an Ivy League school, most people our age are at the point where they can support a kid. The single mothers Huckabee talks about who find themselves limited in their education and work opportunities are typically younger. And, if one's going to pull out a prominent example of a young woman who got pregnant, say, in high school, and who's parlayed her notoriety into appearances on national magazines and reality TV shows, which probably reach a lot more impressionable young women than an R-rated art house film... I think that would not be Natalie Portman.

But there's a bigger problem with what Huckabee said that has nothing to do with an actor. More than one of them, actually. Let's start with this myth that no one had sex pre-marriage before the sexual revolution, when the awful feminists forced women to burn their underwear (or something). Not true. There's more than one person in my family who was born far less than nine months after their parents' wedding. (In the 50s.)There's also the memorable example of a relative born in the early 20th century more than a year after her "father" died. So don't blame sex on Hollywood.

But what's more troubling is his implication that unplanned pregnancies are all on the mother. Oh, those silly girls, going out and getting ideas from movie magazines and then running on down to the Knocked Up Store so they can be trendy and raise babies off the government. No men were involved in the making of this pregnancy.

And then there's real WTF. Let's let Huckabee explain:

My comments were about the statistical reality that most single moms are very poor, undereducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death. That’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that society often glorifies and glamorizes the idea of having children out of wedlock.

If that reality is something that keeps Huckabee up at night, really and truly, then there are things he can do besides throwing up his hands and saying "Single mothers, whaddya do?" For starters, he could rethink his support of abstinence-only sex ed programs, which he supported as Arkansas' governor and as a 2008 presidential candidate. He could've eliminated the waiting period for abortions in his home state. (In 2008, Huckabee said he favored a Constitutional amendment banning abortion.) He could encourage other states and the federal government to promote healthy living as he did as governor. He could support raising the amount of Pell grants and other aid that make it possible for low-income people to attend college. He might consider supporting tax deductions for child care expenses. He would certainly prevail on his fellow Republicans to stop targeting safety net programs like the one that provides birth control and pap smears to low-income women.

But that might actually require effort, as opposed to casting judgment on people he doesn't know.

Your civilly disobedient uterus

North Carolina is one of eight states where it's illegal for a midwife to handle a delivery. (To be clear, the state is ok with certified nursing midwives, who have to attend nursing school, just not certified practicing midwives, who can deliver babies in 27 other states.) Practicing midwives still work, though. One less, after Amy Medwin was arrested this week.

I've written before about how restrictions on home birth aren't motivated by public health concerns but rather because they're a threat to insurance companies and the doctor lobby. And, though I know that a lot of people don't agree with me on this - this is part of the reason I'm pro-choice. I trust women, and I trust families, to make informed decisions about their reproductive health.

Some of those women will choose hospital births with or without epidural painkillers. Some of those women will choose C-section deliveries. Some of those women will choose to give birth at home. And it isn't my place or anybody else's to judge those choices. It's none of our business.

Medwin provided care to a couple who had a stillborn baby a few weeks ago, but since that family doesn't hold her responsible I have a hard time believing that they pushed for her arrest. So what's the deal?

Says Capt. John Stifford of the Rowan County Sheriff's Office: "Whether you be a midwife, a doctor or law enforcement officer in North Carolina, you're required to be certified in this state and she was not and that's why she's been charged at this point."

So, even the law enforcement agency that issued the warrant for Medwin's arrest admits that there's nothing inherently dangerous about what Medwin does. It's just a matter of state regulation.

So - time to get with the times, N.C. Change that stupid rule and give families more options - safe options - for their own care. Because the fact is that women are going to continue to use practicing midwives, despite what the state says. Might as well bring them out of the closet and make sure they're operating safely.

Sharron Angle: Asshat

My home state may have produced some face-palm-worthy politicians over the years, but I don't think even the likes of Jesse Helms would've gone so far as this. Sharron Angle, the Republican running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada, said in an interview earlier this year (which came to light this week) that she thinks that no one should ever get an abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. Why? Because she's a Christian, that's why.

Well, Sharron, I'm a Christian, too, and I think you're full of it. Shall we settle this with a game of rock-paper-scissors?

Look, I'm not going to tell Angle how she should interpret her beliefs, even if I think her interpretation is deeply flawed, both logically and theologically. (Why does a pregnancy from rape get to be part of God's plan, but a clinic in the pregnant rape victim's hometown doesn't get to be?) But since she's running for public office, I think it's fair to ask how her stated views will affect her votes on legislation.

Angle does not say - at least in this interview - that she believes X is wrong, and therefore the law should also prohibit X. But the fact that she didn't say "My personal beliefs are one thing and the law is another" indicates that she doesn't see a difference between the two. And that's scary. Because we don't elect senators to be our ministers. We elect them to pass laws.

Angle's comments here do nothing to assure voters that she understands her larger responsibilities to the public, aside from her personal feelings. To put this in perspective, the Senate to which Angle wants to be elected has the duty to confirm everyone from Supreme Court justices to ambassadors to Cabinet secretaries, all of whom have to bend over backwards to assure senators, under oath, that their personal feelings will not trump the laws they're being asked to enforce. Why shouldn't a prospective senator have to meet the same standard?

And, on a personal note... I think Angle's comments are ill-informed at best. And that's a phenomenally restrained assessment on my part. Someone who has been sexually assaulted, especially a child (who the stats show was likely victimized by a relative or close family friend), has enough to deal with without hearing a U.S. Senator tell her that she's a sinner. No, Angle didn't use those words. But any religious person will have no trouble drawing the conclusion that, if X is "God's plan," then doing the opposite of X is counter to that plan, a.k.a. sin.

If the people who think as Angle does were truly compassionate toward these victims, they wouldn't be lecturing them from on high about "God's plan." They'd be down on the front lines - the hotlines, the victim services, etc. - and then maybe they'd learn a little humility.

I continue to *heart* Laura Bush

Last night on Larry King, former First Lady Laura Bush appeared to support both same-sex marriage and reproductive rights:



It's cool that Bush would frankly speak about views that are contrary to her husband's, as well as many of his supporters. If nothing else, it's proof that these issues aren't black and white - which means that there's room for common ground. I also hope that my conservative friends take Bush's point that either position is totally compatible with a conservative philosophy.

Should Bush have been more vocal during her husband's presidency? On one hand, we didn't elect her. And I completely understand her not wanting to publicly contradict the administration's policies. But, on the other hand, isn't there an obligation to speak out on behalf of the powerless when, say, your husband's top adviser is cynically urging states to draft same-sex and abortion-related ballot initiatives in order to help him get re-elected?

A more random question - why are things like same-sex marriage and reproductive rights referred to as "social issues," separate from apparently hard concerns like fiscal policy or foreign policy? Food for thought...

This week in "anti-abortion laws hurt everyone"

A proposed bill in Utah would make it illegal to have a miscarriage. Not just an abortion-caused termination of a pregnancy. "This creates a law that makes any pregnant woman who has a miscarriage potentially criminally liable for murder."

Or, as Dan Savage put it:

If every miscarriage is a potential homicide, how does Utah avoid launching a criminal investigation every time a woman has a miscarriage? And women have a lot of miscarriages: one in four pregnancies end in a miscarriage. And how is Utah supposed to know when a pregnant woman has had a miscarriage? You're going to have to create some sort of pregnancy registry to keep track of all those fetuses, Utah. Perhaps you could start issuing "conception certificates" to women who get pregnant? And then, if there isn't a baby within nine months of the issuance of a conception certificate, the woman could be hauled in for questioning and she could be indicted for criminal homicide if it's determined that she intentionally or accidentally induced a miscarriage. Of course, lots of women miscarry before they even realize their pregnant... so Utah will have to pass another law, one that compels all sexually active women—actually, let's just say all women, Utah, since some sexually active women claim they're chaste—to come in for mandatory monthly pregnancy tests...

Or you could, you know - radical thought here - trust women to handle their own pregnancies and only prosecute those cases of clear assault or abuse that are already covered under existing laws. Crazy talk.

And this, via Feministing: The cruelty of Nicaragua's extreme abortion ban is undeniable in the case of Amelia (an alias), a 27-year-old woman with cancer. Passed in 2006, the law criminalizes abortion, even if the woman's life or health is at risk. Amelia, who has a 10-year-old daughter, needs to have an abortion so she can undergo treatment for the cancer, which may have metastasized in her brain, lungs and breasts.

I can't imagine being pregnant and then learning that this very pregnancy is keeping me from getting the medical treatment that would save my life. Or that this treatment would inevitably kill the baby I was pregnant with. In effect, this law is sentencing this woman - a mother to an already living child - to death.

I have an idea, law - get the hell out of her way. Maybe she'll decide to forego chemo and deliver a possibly healthy baby at the expense of her own life. Maybe she'll opt for treatment, lose this baby (either to abortion or radiation), and live to have more healthy children. Maybe, law, it's none of your business.

So, when I say that I'm opposed to government intervention into reproductive rights because it's too complex an area for any law to be adequate... do you see what I mean?

Sarah Palin had an abortion

At least, according to this guy's logic:

State Delegate Bob Marshall of Manassas says disabled children are God's punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy...

"The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children," said Marshall, a Republican.

That is really, really frakking disgusting. (Not to mention - as should be evident - untrue. There's ZERO correllation between having an abortion and later having a child with physical or mental disabilities.) It's offensive to those of us who believe that God doesn't punish people in this way, and it should go without saying that it's obscene to believe that disabled children are punishment for anything.

I hope that Sarah Palin, currently the country's most prominent advocate for families with disabled children (judging by her willingness to call out what she sees as ableism on the part of anyone from Barack Obama to Seth MacFarlane) will publicly criticize Marshall for his comments.

Focus on This

So the Tebow family Super Bowl ad turned out to be not nearly as scary as some pro-choice groups feared. (CBS is still full of it, though.) The commercial's main purpose seems to be to drive people to Focus on the Family's Web site, where anyone unfamiliar with Focus on the Family will read about their positions, say "WTF? Ew..." and promptly go back to watching Danica Patrick not win races. (Seriously, check out the positions. You'll come for the common-sense advice about disciplining children, but you'll stay for the persecution of environmental advocates and the loony-tunes gay-bashing!)

(Speaking of WTF... Why, in the commercial, does "Timmy" tackle his own mother? For one thing, a QB usually only tackles someone when there's been a turnover and the ball's going the other way, which doesn't speak too highly to Tebow's awesome QBing ability... But mainly, WTF? Why is he tackling his mother???)

I feel like the only pro-choice feminist in America who didn't flip out when the ad was announced. I was, and am, disappointed that someone I think of as a role model would associate himself with those nutcase bigots at Focus on the Family, but hey, it's a free country. And I think the Tebows have every right to their opinion about abortion, as much as I disagree with it. Legitimately pro-life people, who think that abortion is tragic and who therefore work to prevent it through improving support for families and promoting contraception, don't bother me at all. (It's the "pro-life" people who want to reduce abortions by pushing government intervention in private decisions, murdering doctors and harassing women at clinics that, in my humble opinion, can go frak themselves.)

In case you've been under a rock lately, here's the gist: Back in 1987, pregnant Pam Tebow was doing mission work in the Philippines when she contracted dysentery or something awful, and – according to her – doctors warned her that the medicine she’d been given could cause birth defects. She decided to go on and have the baby despite the risk to him and herself. Not only was the child born healthy, he grew up to be Heisman Trophy-winning college QB Tim Tebow. Hugs all around.

I’m just thrilled to death that everything turned out fine for the Tebow family. Pam Tebow exercised an informed choice, fully aware of the possible negative consequences of that choice. As it happens, she did so while living in a country where abortion has been illegal since 1930, so it’s debatable how things would’ve turned out had she decided to terminate the pregnancy after all. Pam Tebow can talk all she wants about her choice, but effectively, women in the Philippines don’t have one.

Here’s the thing, though. Stories like this, at least in the way they’re told, seem to say that Pam Tebow doesn’t really care that I’m happy for her. Just like when Sarah Palin drags out her youngest son (who has Down syndrome) like he’s Simba at the beginning of “The Lion King,” the implication is that those of us who support reproductive freedom are “pro-abortion.” That we’re trawling the streets looking for pregnant women to haul to the clinic. That we’re just fuming that baby Tim came out okay and grew to be a healthy adult. That when Palin decided (um, chose) to have her youngest son even after she was aware of his Down syndrome, that we were all “CURSES!” like the villain in a Scooby Doo cartoon.

And that really pisses me off. It’s insulting. It’s a scare tactic. Just because I want to help protect the right of women who CHOOSE to have an abortion doesn’t mean that I’m actively rooting for more of them.

Within the last year, both my aunt/uncle unit and my oldest friend had their first children. From the moment that each told me they were expecting, I thought of them as parents, and of their still-incubating fetuses as children. If something had happened with either pregnancy, I would’ve been devastated. And I deeply resent – to the point where this pacifist will punch anyone who suggests differently – the idea that I didn’t feel this way.

So, if you're in the pro-life camp, this is what I want you to think about: I do not disagree with Pam Tebow or the choice she made. I could not be happier that things turned out well for her, and I have no doubt that she would love her son even if he weren’t Tim Tebow ™.

But I also want you to think about the reasons people like me are pro-choice, and support reproductive rights. For me, it’s because I think that no one – not a government, not a hospital administrator – should determine a family’s reproductive decisions other than that family. If outside entities can tell women what they can or can’t do, who’s to say that will stop at abortion? Hey, if, say, a government can tell a women she CAN’T get an abortion, what’s to stop it from saying a woman MUST get an abortion?

What about this scenario? Pam Tebow’s insurance company looks at an actuarial table that shows that a baby born under her particular set of conditions will have X birth defect 72.6 percent of the time, leading to death of mother and /or child 52.3 percent of the time. Therefore, she simply must terminate the pregnancy. If she refuses, she’s on her own for her and her son’s medical expenses. Maybe her family is permanently un-insurable. Maybe she’s even prosecuted for negligence.

It’s not farfetched. Families are already being booted off their insurance. Hospitals are already telling women how they may give birth. Or else. And we want to get Congress involved?

That’s what I want you to think about. Reproductive freedom is about so much more than access to abortion. It’s about more than one family’s experiences. Once you open the door to someone other than a family determine what’s best for that family, you can’t close it.

Things that are a billion times more important to me than a Super Bowl commercial

One out of every six women in the U.S. will be the victim of rape or attempted rape. Think of six random women in your life. Now do the math. For Native American women, it’s more than one in three.

Women represent almost 60 percent of beneficiaries of Social Security at age 65, and 71 percent at age 85. Twenty-five percent of elderly women have no other source of income besides Social Security. Almost 30 percent of elderly African American women live in poverty.

Women pay up to 50 percent more for health insurance than men – one of the inequities that the health care reform bill in Congress would aim to fix.

Here in N.C., one in five children lives below the poverty line.

Full disclosure: there’s not much that irritates me more than the jerk who pops up on a feminist blog to tell us all to quit our bitchin’ because at least we don’t live under the Taliban. Most of us have the intelligence to appreciate the privilege we have by living in a place like America (which is completely due to the work of past feminists and allies, not just something we were handed) while also pointing out the work we still have left to do.

That said – I refuse to get worked up over a 30-second commercial THAT NOBODY HAS SEEN YET, to the point where I’m drawing lines in the sand about who’s feminist or not feminist. Yes, CBS is full of it for airing this commercial having rejected “advocacy” ads in the past. Yes, I’m highly disappointed that a person like Tim Tebow for whom I have such admiration would associate himself with the bigots at Focus on the Family. Yes, his mother HAD a choice, and other women should have choices, too – a distinction that too many of the Tebows’ fellow anti-abortion folks fail to make.

But, if I’m going to sign a petition or boycott or a broadcast of the championship of my favorite sport (not gonna happen), it’s going to be over something that actually matters. For the record, I think my stance on reproductive freedom (i.e., for it) is strong enough to withstand 30 seconds of a former college football player.

Blog For Choice Day: Trust Women

This year’s Blog for Choice focus is “Trust Women,” which, coincidentally, was the title of a post I wrote last May. In that post, I wrote:

“When anti-choicers raise the spectre of a woman carrying a baby for several months and then casually deciding that, meh, she's just not into it, they're more than disingenuous. They're sexist. They're coming from a place of deep distrust of women's ability to make decisions. I've got news for you: any pregnant woman who simply doesn't want to have a child will schedule that abortion ASAP. If a woman's getting an abortion at 21 weeks, or 24 weeks, there are almost always other issues at play - tragic, heart-wrenching circumstances that are not remotely the business of the president, my Congressman, the guy from the pro-life Catholic group or anyone else.”


When anti-choice demonstrators outside clinics yell at arriving patients that their children will look like them, they’re distrusting women. When lawmakers pass legislation requiring a woman wanting abortion to look at a sonogram, they’re distrusting women.

But here’s the kicker.

They don’t trust women who DO make the choice to have children, either.

Those of you out there who are mothers – how many times has someone (family member, random person at church, perfect stranger at the grocery store, etc.) critiqued the choices you’ve made relating to your pregnancy, your childbirth and your child-rearing? How many times has this “advice” made you feel like nothing you’re doing is right, and that you’re going to horribly scar your child for life?

Your choice to have natural childbirth is wrong. Having a C-section is wrong. Buying your two-year-old French fries is wrong. Feeding the same child an organic diet is wrong, too. You let your child watch too much TV, or not enough. Homeschooling is bad. Public schools are bad. You don’t have enough kids. You have too many kids. Etc., etc.

It may take a different form, but it all comes from the same place: this idea we still have in our culture that women are public property and so our choices are up for public debate. They most certainly are NOT.

Whether or not you identify as feminist, this is a feminist issue because it disproportionally affects women. Men certainly suffer from patriarchy-inspired peer pressure, but when was the last time you read about a father getting arrested for feeding his kid in public? A male former Cosmopolitan centerfold got elected to the US Senate this week, while Sarah Palin still gets told to get back in the kitchen.

This will only stop when women collectively stand up and tell the Greek Chorus of Ur Doin it Rong to mind its own damned business. And that will only happen when we stop being good little girls and give up the illusion that everything will be okay as long as we go along with the status quo.

Stop feeding the beast. It won’t be easy, because there are multiple billion-dollar industries devoted to convincing women that everything about us needs fixing, from our hair to the color of our genitals. It means that we have to stop tearing one another down, and that we have to shake the mortal fear of hearing ourselves called “bitch.”

Ultimately, if we want others to trust us, we have to start trusting one another. Most of all, we have to start trusting ourselves.

Anti-choicers in Kentucky succeed only in pissing me off

Anti-choice protesters at a clinic in Louisville, Ky., have taken to wearing vests that mimic the ones worn by clinic escorts:



As if we need further evidence that anti-choicers A) think women are stupid, and B) are clinically incapable of minding their own business...

First of all, do these faux vest-wearers honestly think a patient coming to this clinic will mistake them for an actual clinic escort, become convinced that even the clinic's volunteers have turned against the clinic's mission and just get in the car and drive home? I suppose if you're one of those people who think women don't really understand what abortion is or are capable of making their own reproductive choices, then you'd think this is a viable strategy.

But what really chaps my ass about this is the anti-choicer's (in the video clip) apparent conviction that she knows exactly why the patient is going the clinic. Newsflash: clinics provide many, many services other than surgical abortion. That woman could've been coming in for a pap smear for all we know. But even if she were there for an abortion - as I've said 'til I'm blue in the face, every woman who gets an abortion does so for a different reason. Maybe there's a problem with the fetus, or with the pregnancy. Maybe she got pregnant from a rape, or by an abusive boyfriend or husband. Maybe she can't afford children. Maybe, sh*tbird, she just had a miscarriage, and is at the clinic to get a D&C to remove the dead fetus (just like the ones in the pictures you're waving in front of her face).

I don't know. You don't know. The anti-choicer yammering about what her baby will look like doesn't know. That's my point.

And yes, the assumption that the patient doesn't already have religious beliefs also pisses me off. As a Christian, I'm taught to witness to others with my own behavior - NOT ambushing them and trying to shame them into a relationship with Christ. ARGH.

(via Feministing)

One hell of a “single issue”

The topic of the day is not so much the fact that Democrats in the Senate corralled the 60 votes needed to advance health insurance reform legislation, but the compromises they had to make with conservative and independent members of the caucus in order to get there – namely, ditching the public option (still a piece of the House bill) and increasing restrictions on abortion funding.

It’s the second one I want to talk about. I can’t speak for every pro-choicer out there, but I for one have had to do a lot of soul-searching over the past two months. I’ve had to think about my priorities. Namely, is true reproductive freedom – where contraception and surgical abortion are not merely legal, but available – enough of a deal-breaker for me to support jettisoning reform altogether? Am I truly a “single-issue” voter?

That’s the situation we find ourselves in today. In both the House and the Senate, the reform bills arguably would not have passed without concessions to anti-choice Congresspeople. While it continues to piss me off that health issues almost exclusively concerning women (or at least perceived as such) always seem to be at the top of the list of bargaining chips, I can’t ignore that fact that, if reform fails, women will also be hurt. Among those millions of uninsured Americans are women – pregnant women, women with breast cancer, women working two or three hourly-wage jobs to put food on the table.

Also, it’s plainer to me than ever that my personal position on reproductive care is well to the left of many Americans, and that this is largely due to the average American’s un-engagement with issues of women’s health. So those of us who support full reproductive freedom have the continuing responsibility to move the conversation away from inflammatory (and inaccurate) blow-up pictures of Photoshopped fetuses and educate our communities about how anti-choice laws are bad policy for everyone.

In other words, I’m okay with preserving the status quo on federal funding for abortion if it means we can improve the overall health care for millions of Americans. But the provisions in the House and Senate versions of the reform bill go far beyond that. Since 1976, it’s been illegal for federal funds (through Medicaid and other Department of Health and Human Services programs) to pay for abortions. Yes, this has disproportionally affected low-income women. Yes, there’s not a single abortion provider in nearly 90 percent of U.S. counties.

But that’s not good enough for Congress, apparently. For instance, the Senate bill that narrowly overcame a filibuster last night would affect everyone who gets a stipend to buy insurance (which would be quite a lot of us if the new law mandates that everyone buy coverage). According to RH Reality Check, the bill:

"Requires every enrollee--female or male--in a health plan that offers abortion coverage to write two separate checks for insurance coverage. One of these checks would go to pay the bulk of their premium, the other would go to pay the share of that premium that would ostensibly cover abortion care. Such a check would have to be written separately whether the share of the premium allocated for abortion care is .25 cents, $1.00, or $3.00 of the total premium on a monthly, semi-annual or annual basis. Employers that deduct employee contributions to health care plans from paychecks will also have to do two separate payments to the same company, again no matter how small the payment."

Sooo… It’s not enough that an individual writes a check, and then the insurance company itself divides the premium into pots (which several states already do with their federal Medicaid money in order to comply with the Hyde Amendment). Nope, everyone has to write two separate checks. Which of course will have the effect of reminding every single person writing that premium check once a month that abortion exists, and that people get them – and would do so in a more abstract way than, say, personally knowing a woman who needs an abortion halfway through her pregnancy for medical reasons. Remember that this will affect private insurance companies that currently cover abortion, and which have chosen to do so because their market demands it – so much for the idea that conservatives are A-OK with private enterprise!

It’s a blatant attempt to drum up negative feeling for reproductive health. If you think I’m being paranoid, ask yourself – where’s the separate “pot” for funding prescriptions for Viagra, or medicinal marijuana? Going beyond health care, why aren’t our income tax payments apportioned into the War Fund, or the Death Penalty Fund, or the Federal Subsidies for Factory Farms Fund? My tax dollars go to fund plenty of things of which I personally disapprove.

I am willing to support this initial effort to reform our broken health insurance system, which would benefit women in many ways (eliminating discrimination in premium costs for one thing; ending dropped coverage for actual sick people, another). But the current proposals go far beyond the restrictions on abortion funding we’ve had for more than 30 years. It’s patently unfair for anyone in Congress to hold reproductive health hostage as part of such a critical piece of legislation. If they want to further restrict access to a legal medical procedure, let them write and submit a separate bill.

Target: Mommies

I have a very clear memory of going to Mayfest in Pilot Mountain with my sister Maria and my nephew Alex when Alex was about three months old. I was away at college when he was born, so this was the first time I’d really been around him with any regularity. Anyway, at one point Maria pulled the stroller into the side street across from Hardee’s, next to the funeral home that’s now a bed & breakfast, to reapply Alex’s sunscreen. Since his hair was still pretty thin, it went all over his scalp, over the backs of his ears, down his neck – basically every bit of skin that wasn’t covered by clothing.

Alex did not enjoy this; he started crying. Or maybe he was hot and he started crying, or irritated by the constant banjo music and he started crying, or just pissed off at the world because sometimes infants get that way and he started crying. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. The point is, we hadn’t made it 20 feet back down Main Street before Alex’s face had turned beet red.

A woman passing us glanced down at the red-faced, wailing baby, then glared up at my sister. “That baby’s got a sunburn,” she said – using the same tone with which most of us would say “Your baby’s playing in traffic. With knives” – before waddling on her merry way. I was furious – a) who the hell do you think you are? And b) his mother JUST slathered him with half a bottle of Coppertone, and c) seriously, who the hell do you think you are?

Maria just let it roll off her back. You need to understand, she told me, that once you have kids, everybody and their brother assumes that you need and want their advice, and have no compunction about sharing it with you. Even if they’re perfect strangers passing you on the street.

Our culture still treats women as if we’re public property**, but you’d think that mothers of all people would be exempt from the Greek Chorus of What You’re Doing Wrong. But no – mothers might even have it worse than the rest of us. Recently, a breastfeeding mother was kicked out of a Target store in Michigan for doing what society would judge her for if she HADN’T been doing it. It’s like a psycho patriarchal choose-your-own-adventure book:

You don’t have kids? Man-hating whore.
You do have a baby? Ah, but what birthing method did you use? WRONG!
You dared to leave the house with your baby, and now the baby’s hungry and crying in the store/on the plane? Why don’t you feed that baby already?
Oooooh, you breastfeed? Why don’t you use a breastpump and bottles, or formula?
You can’t afford a breastpump and its accessories, or they just don’t work for you? Hmm, well, I don’t know, but you’re still wrong.

Mothers can’t win. Despite the fact that they’ve brought into the world and are rearing children, mothers are treated as children themselves, with perfect strangers who know nothing about their circumstances questioning their every decision. I don’t even HAVE kids and I’m already sick of it.

Can we please just stop? Can we collectively stifle this urge to second-guess the parents of other people’s children (excepting cases of clear abuse)? We can’t, as a culture, claim to value families and then throw up crazy barriers in the faces of those same families. If I see a woman breastfeeding in Target, or changing a diaper in a restroom, or anything else… I just can’t see how it’s any of my business.


**I talk a lot about the experience of women because, duh, I am one, but I’d very much like to hear from men who also feel that our culture objectifies their lives and experiences.

Chris Matthews and Bishop Tobin

I'm not a big fan of Chris Matthews, but I love what he does in this interview with Bishop Tobin, the Rhode Island archbishop who's allegedly told Rep. Patrick Kennedy not to take communion because he supports keeping abortion legal:

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It occurred to me while watching this that I have no idea what Rep. Kennedy's personal views on reproductive freedom are. It's entirely possible that he is personally pro-life. But he took an oath to vote for legislation that represents good policy, and outlawing abortion has proven to be very bad policy. Matthews is exactly right - the archbishop has no business inserting himself into the complicated, sometimes murky business of crafting and passing legislation. Bishop Tobin admitted as much himself.