I don’t expect Wendy McElroy to report anything accurately (she does write for FOX, after all). Still, her discussion of Mary Koss in a recent Foxnews column included two sentences, which were a simply amazing example of McElroy’s inability to get facts straight.

Mary Koss, for those who don’t know, is a professor who has done very influential work on designing surveys measuring the prevalence of rape. Debunking Koss is a favorite activity of anti-feminists: Katie Roiphe, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Warren Farrell are just a few of the anti-feminists who have spent a lot of ink attacking Koss and her work.

Anyhow, here are the two sentences:

So what did McElroy get wrong?

1. The study Ms contributed to was published in 1987, not 1985. (There was a Ms Magazine article reporting on Koss’ research, published in ‘85; but an article reporting on a study is not the same thing as the study itself).

2. So where was the study itself published? In The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, not Ms Magazine.
3. The study found that the 1 in 4 had experienced rape or attempted rape, not just rape. (Nor did the ‘85 Ms Magazine article ever use the 1 in 4 statistic, by the way.)
4. The study used standardized survey forms, not interviews.
5. The women were asked dozens and dozens of questions, not just 10.
6. There was a 10-question subsection related to sexual assault and coercion, which is I suppose what McElroy meant to refer to. However, McElroy is still mistaken, because respondents were NOT “deemed to have been raped if any question elicited a ‘yes’ response.”
7. There were 3,187 women surveyed for the study, not 7,000 women as McElroy claims. (Including men, a total of 6,159 people were in Koss’ sample).

None of that is terribly substantial, I know, but it’s still impressive how many factual mistakes McElroy makes in such a short passage.

Also, I’ve been debating this with “Brad” (who I think may be McElroy’s partner or husband) on the ifeminists discussion board.

McElroy also cited this IWF critique of Koss’ study. I’ll tackle the IWF’s critique on Monday, and I promise that post will be more substantive.

* * *

More on Wendy McElroy

More on Mary Koss

This post has been updated since I originally wrote it, to add in the sample size error, and to put in the information about the 1995 Ms article reporting on the research.

Since Annie at After Abortion has been criticized a fair amount on this blog lately, I wanted to link to two good posts of hers.

First, Annie corrects Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman, who has reported an urban legend as if it were fact. Goodman claimed that before abortion was legal, “10,000 American women a year died from illegal abortions.” As this chart shows, Goodman’s number is way off base.

There were hundreds more deaths when abortion was illegal, but nowhere near the number that Goodman claimed. In the developed world, even when abortion is illegal, women can often obtain safe abortions illegally from doctors, or by crossing borders. In the US, at least some feminist groups, such as Jane, offered safe abortions as well.

(Of course, the story is different in third-world countries, where pro-life laws kill 77,000 women a year.)

In a different post, Annie (to her credit) criticizes some of the rude behavior of pro-lifers at last week’s march. (She’s posted a couple of times about rude pro-choicers, as well). She also points out that, contrary to what some pro-choicers believe, most leaders of pro-life groups are women.

(Personally, I think it doesn’t matter what sex pro-lifers are. Pro-life laws are wrong on their own merits, not based on the sex of the person proposing the law.)

Here’s my housemate Sydney Quinn, showing off how much cooler she is than us ordinary mortals. Just you wait: Four decades from now, she’ll be playing the Samuel Jackson part in a remake of Pulp Fiction.

Bitter divorced man, or brilliant salesman? You decide.

UPDATE: No longer on ebay, but still on Snopes.

[This is the "non-Catholic version" of the post below this one; it's the same post, but I've taken out the arguments about Catholicism, so that folks who are uninterested in that debate, might read the arguments for why John Kerry would reduce abortion more than George Bush will.]

[This is why being a blogger is so cool. I mean, a real writer would never be able to do unprofessional $#!+@ like this.]

I assume that the primary goal of a sincere pro-lifer is not to punish the guilty, but to reduce abortion as much as possible. So I therefore assume that pro-lifers support pro-life policies - and pro-life politicians like George Bush - because they think pro-life policies will reduce abortion. But there are legitimate reasons to doubt that’s true.

First, how likely is it that abortion will ever be banned in the USA? Reagan couldn’t do it. Bush Sr. couldn’t do it. So far, Bush hasn’t been able to. Face it: the country is divided on abortion. The most pro-lifers could possibly accomplish is throwing abortion to state-by-state restrictions; but some states will never ban abortion, so all that will do is force women to cross state lines.

Even if legal abortion could be entirely banned, it’s unclear that this would actually reduce the real number of abortions by a significant degree. Before the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade ruling, American women had somewhere between 200,000 and 1.2 million abortions a year in the U.S.. Although measuring something as hidden as illegal abortions is always difficult, the best pre-Roe scholarly assessment came to a figure of about a million abortions a year (”…prior to the adoption of more moderate abortion laws in 1967, there were 1 million abortions annually nationwide, of which 8000 were legal….” From Christopher Tietze “Abortion on request: its consequences for population trends and public health,” Seminars in Psychiatry 1970;2:375-381, quoted in JAMA December 9, 1992).

Another option is to look at what happens to birth rates; an significant increase in abortions should lead to a declining birth rate. So if Roe caused a big increase in abortions, the birthrate in the US would have dropped post-Roe. So what actually happened?

      Year  Births   Birthrate

      1973  3,136,965   14.9
      1974  3,159,958   14.9
      1975  3,144,198   14.8
      1976  3,167,788   14.8
      1977  3,326,632   15.4
      1978  3,333,279   15.3
      1979  3,494,398   15.9
      1980  3,612,258   15.9

Similarly, what happened when Poland banned abortions in the 1990s? If pro-life policies reduce abortion significantly, there would have been a spike in Poland’s birthrate. But Poland’s birth rate remained steady. (See Reproductive Health Matters (Volume 10, Issue 19 , May 2002): “The restrictive abortion law in Poland has not increased the number of births.”)

Pro-life laws may prevent a few abortions; but they don’t prevent enough to be measured statistically, or to have a noticeable effect on birthrates. That may seem counterintuitive, but it actually makes sense. Why? Because most women don’t have abortions lightly. They have abortions because they are feeling very determined, or perhaps very desperate, and the anti-abortion laws don’t seem just to them. When something is desperately wanted by consumers - and when that something is fairly easy to supply - outlawing it won’t make it actually unavailable. Just look at the market for pot; and the proportion of casual pot smokers is far higher than the proportion of casual abortion patients.

Here’s another statistic to consider: Which countries have the least abortion? Belgium has an abortion rate of 6.8 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44. The Netherlands, 6.5. Germany, 7.8. Compare that to the USA’s rate of 22. Even better, compare it to countries where abortion is illegal: Egypt, 23; Brazil, 40; Chile, 50; Peru, 56.

According to the World Health Organization:

If pro-life laws are the best way of reducing abortion, then why are the world’s lowest abortion rates found in pro-choice countries like Germany and the Netherlands, while some of the world’s highest abortion rates are in countries that outlaw abortion?

Statistically, there’s no evidence that outlawing abortion lowers abortion rates; and quite a lot of reason to think that it doesn’t.

* * *

There’s no evidence that any pro-life law will reduce abortion by any significant degree in the United States.

What will reduce abortion? If the examples of the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium - countries that have incredibly low abortion rates - are any example, we should consider reducing abortion by reducing the demand, rather than reducing the supply. As Ono Ekeh recently wrote in National Catholic Weekly:

Given that traditional pro-lifers cannot, as far as I know, point to a single country in which pro-life policies have resulted in a low abortion rate comparible to the Netherlands, it’s time for those who seriously oppose abortion to consider the demand-side approach to abortion reduction.

* * *

Finally, regarding the current presidential race, the matter of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) should be considered. George Bush chose to defund the UNFPA, removing the $34 million US contribution, due to accusations that the UNFPA supports coerced abortion in China. Many people believe these accusations were not true (both a Bush State Department team, and a British inspection team including a well-known pro-life critic of UNFPA, found that the accusations were not true).

UNFPA does not provide support for abortions or abortion-related activities anywhere in the world. In fact, they prevent abortion, by providing family planning services and birth control in developing countries all over the world. They also help prevent AIDS, provide medical care which makes pregnancy and childbirth safer for mothers and babies, and work to prevent and treat obstetric fistulas. (Follow this link for more posts about UNFPA).

According to UNFPA, “UNFPA estimates that $34 million applied to family planning programmes could prevent some 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and 77,000 infant and child deaths annually worldwide.”

It’s certain that John Kerry, if elected president, would refund UNFPA - which in turn could prevent hundreds of thousands of avoidable abortions.

There’s very little chance that George Bush could succeed in banning abortion. Even if he does, there’s virtually no evidence that Bush’s pro-life policies will reduce abortion. It is, however, certain that having John Kerry in office will prevent thousands of abortions; not in some theoretical far-off time, but immediately, next year.

If you’re sincerely in favor of reducing abortion, as much as possible, as quickly as possible - then you should probably be voting for John Kerry. Objectively, a Kerry presidency will prevent more abortions. Shouldn’t that be the bottom line, if you’re pro-life?

[This is the "Catholic version" of this post; it contextualizes my thoughts about abortion into the question of if Catholics can support pro-choice policies. The post above this one is the "non-Catholic version" of the same argument, for those who aren't interested in the religious questions.]

[This is why being a blogger is so cool. I mean, a real writer would never be able to do unprofessional $#!+@ like this.]

Over on the Dallas News blog, Rod Dreher responds to an op-ed by his colleague Bill McKenzie (unfortunately, the Dallas News blog software doesn’t seem to include permalinks to particular entries). Here’s the best bit:

Okay, let me try to answer that. I’m not a Catholic - and, given my admitted ignorance of Catholism compared to most Catholics, it’s likely I’m making a fool of myself. But I think it’s possible to argue that, even given acceptance of Catholic doctrine, a Catholic can also be pro-choice or vote in clear conscience for a pro-choice politician.

Please note that I’m not defending John Kerry’s motives in particular; I don’t know what’s going on in Mr. Kerry’s heart, and neither do the folks who have been criticizing him. It’s not possible for me to know if Kerry is a sincere Catholic or not. All I’m saying is that it’s perfectly possible for a sincere Catholic to hold pro-choice views.

First, let me state a few points, which I hope that Mr. Dreher is willing to agree to for the sake of argument:

1) All Catholics, if they accept the teachings of the Catholic Church, must be anti-abortion. By “anti-abortion,” I mean that they must work to make abortion as rare as humanly possible. For a politician, this means supporting legislation which she believes will make abortion as rare as the government can make it.

For the purpose of this discussion, I’m going to be using “Catholic” as shorthand for “Catholics who accept the teachings of the Catholic Church and are therefore anti-abortion.” No offense is intended towards Catholics who don’t accept those teachings.

2) “Pro-life,” for the purpose of this argument, refers to the position that abortion should be illegal except where the mother’s life is in danger. (I realize that many Catholics argue that “pro-life” refers to a larger tapestry of policies; I respect that, but it’s not what I’m discussing at this moment).

3) “Pro-choice” refers to the position that abortion should be legal in almost all circumstances.

4) It is possible to be a Catholic and yet disagree on what exact policy is the best policy for achieving a particular outcome. To quote from the US Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral Letter on War and Peace:

* * *

So if all Catholics must be against abortion, doesn’t it follow that all Catholics must be pro-life?
Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone who has been following the Kerry and the Catholic Church controversy should take the time to read this 1984 speech on the subject (well, the general subject, not Kerry in particular) by Mario Cuomo, another Catholic politician criticized for his pro-choice votes. Here’s a few snippets:

And more, from later in the speech….

Damn, I wish Cuomo had run for president.

There’s too much good stuff to quote… if you’re interested in the issue and have a bit of time to spare, I recommend reading the whole thing. Link via e-skojec.com.

In the comments at Winds of Change, WoC reader “Lili” writes:

The only thing I really disagree with here is saying that “men” may not legislate. As I wrote in the comments there, I think it’s a mistake to make it about the sex of the legislators.

In most ways I agree with Lili. I don’t think the legislature has a moral right to force pregnant women to bear children against their will. Every sane individual adult has the right to own their own body and make essential medical choices for themselves; women don’t give up that right by becoming pregnant.

But individual women would have that moral right even if the legislature was 100% female (statistically, women in the US are about as likely to be pro-life as men). The right to reproductive choice is not dependant on the sex of the people in Congress. So when some feminists suggest that male legislators in particular have no right to outlaw abortion, I think they’ve moved away from the central issue, which is that no politician should force childbirth on an unwilling pregnant woman.

* * *

There’s also the question of “should the father have a say”? Morally, I’d say sure; aside from those fathers who are abusers or rapists, I hope that women considering having an abortion choose to consult with the father. But legally, men should have no rights to a voice in the abortion decision. If the father and mother disagree on if a pregnancy should be aborted, there is no compromise position available; someone has to have the final legal authority to decide.

And that someone has to be the woman, because it’s her body. The alternative is to give the father a veto - which is to say, men would have the right to force their girlfriends to give birth. That’s not acceptable.

There’s an interesting discussion going on at the Family Scholars Blog. David Blankenhorn - one of the leading opponents of marriage equality - has in the past favored hetero-only marriage but with “civil unions” for same-sex couples. But now he’s changed his mind, deciding (correctly, in my opinion) that civil unions would actually weaken marriage as an institution:

David now seems to be leaning towards “disestablishment,” AKA “leave marriage to the churches” - the proposal that the government provide only “civil unions” and provide them to same- and opposite-sex couples alike. Marriage would lose legal significance; couples could get “married” instead of or in addition to getting, er, civil unionized, and churches could choose for themselves which couples to perform weddings for. As David writes:

From a marriage equality point of view, either disestablishment or “redefinition of marriage” (by which David means “legally recognized same sex marriage”) would be acceptable, and none of the other solutions are. Both of them give equal legal rights and recognition to same-sex and opposite-sex couples, which is (I’d bet) the main goal of most marriage equality advocates.

(In the past, I’ve gone back and forth between calling myself a “SSM” proponent and a “marriage equality” proponent. However, it makes no sense to say that you’re in favor of SSM, therefore you want to disestablish marriage from the law. So the term “marriage equality” makes more sense.)

I do wonder, however, if David’s goals are really better served by disestablishment than they would be by legal SSM. David’s co-blogger Tom Sylvester wonders the same thing:

Although David may or may not think of himself as on the side of “marriage equality,” I think his change of position puts him (tentatively) on our side; so, hooray! (I also have to say, it speaks very well of David that he has the intellectual flexibility to change his mind; I’m not aware of any other major voice in the debate who has done so, on either side of the debate.) There’s interesting back-and-forth between David and Tom at Family Scholars Blog; to read the whole thing, start with David’s initial post and scroll upwards.

Kevin Drum posts a guest editorial by former Clinton policy wonk Bruce Reed, complaining about the lack of religion at the march for choice.

This matches the current talking point among moderate Democrats, which is that us darned leftists are too anti-religion and don’t include religious progressives in our movements. Since it fits in with the current talking point, lots of folks will read it and nod along and say “how true.” And heck, probably it is true on some larger level. But it’s completely false regarding this Sunday’s march. As “J from VJ,” writing in the comments to the post, put it:

I agree with Reed that there’s way too much religion-bashing among liberals and leftists. But part of undoing that has to be promoting visibility among religious progressives. Reed (and Kevin Drum) have relatively big megaphones, and it’s a shame they’ve skipped this opportunity to do some good on this front.

Why is it that religious progressives are invisible? One reason is that “everyone knows” that leftists are anti-religion and rightists are Godly folk, and so evidence that supports that narrative tends to be reported more and discussed more, while counter-evidence is ignored. Rather than writing a post or article that pumps up the religious presence at the March, and talks about the ministers and rabbis and church groups and so on, Reed writes a post that serves right-wing purpopses by claiming there were no religous pro-choicers there at all. Reed’s being part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Body and Soul is on this, too.

UPDATE: Via Body & Soul, here’s the post from “V from VJ” herself.

• Bean emailed me this Get Fuzzy strip, and it totally cracked me up.

• I’ve been ignoring the Bush/Kerry polls because they’re not meaningful unless they’re broken down into state-level results. But Ruy Teixeira looks at the battleground state poll results and finds some cause for optimism.

• Harpo Marx was pretty good with his little horns, but he had nothing on this French dude.
• The Boston Review has an interesting “forum” on “What We Owe to Parents.” Anne Alstott proposes a $5000 annual grant to the caretaker parent in each household (no more than one per household); this money can be spent on child care, on the caretaker’s education, or on the caretaker’s retirement account. Several (mostly feminist) scholars reply to this proposal, both supportively and critically.
• One problem with focusing on child-rearing is that it ignores other kinds of caretaking - such as taking care of elderly relatives. Bodies Politic reports on a study of “the toll of caring for an elderly spouse.”
• Yet another poll showing that a lot of Americans are just plain ignorant. Sometimes I just feel like giving up and moving to France.
  A new poll shows that 57 percent of Americans continue to believe that Saddam Hussein gave “substantial support” to al-Qaida terrorists before the war with Iraq, despite a lack of evidence of that relationship.

  In addition, 45 percent of Americans have the impression that “clear evidence” was found that Iraq worked closely with Osama bin Laden’s network, and a majority believe that before the war Iraq either had weapons of mass destruction (38 percent) or a major program for developing them (22 percent).

  There’s no known evidence to date that these statements are true.

  Americans live in a fantasy world, in which the USA is incapable of doing wrong, and the easiest and simplest foreign policy fairy tale is always considered true. Next to the power of that fantasy world, little things like facts have no power.

• Speaking of polls, Liberal Oasis has a good piece up on how pro-lifers spin the poll results - and the “liberal media” lets them get away with it.
• Hey, if you haven’t checked out Feministing, a new feminist blog, you really should - it rocks, it rolls, it stays up all night and trashes the hotel room.
• Speaking of Feministing, it, Feministe, and “Alas a Blog” were all recommended on left-wing radio station Air America last week. Neat. Thanks to Bill at Liberal Oasis, who did the mentioning.
• Sara at Diotima is on a hot streak. First, former IWF intern Sara fisks the IWF blog for assuming that women who say they’re being discriminated against are just whiners. Second, a good critique of Will Saletan’s Slate advice to pro-choicers. And third, a post about the “is legalizing prostitution a good way to fight sex-trafficking?” question.
• By the way, Saletan’s Slate piece on abortion - arguing that pro-choicers need to frame abortion as a “healthy families” issue (”They don’t want abortions. They want to be moms’when they’re ready.”) is worth reading, even though his interpretation of how feminists view the “who decides” slogan is egregious bullshit. I’m not sure I agree with Sara’s critique; intellectually, she’s right, but as a practical matter, I think the pro-choice groups would survive (have already survived) being a little intellectually inconsistent.
• Via Body and Soul, a good essay on Kerry, abortion, and the Catholic Church.
• Legal Affairs has a good article about rape of men in prison.
  The traditional rationale for prison rape is the lack of women, but most psychologists consider this facile. They see prison rape mainly as a means by which people who have been stripped of control over the most basic aspects of their lives’when to eat a meal, take a shower, or watch TV’can reclaim some sense of power. As one Louisiana prisoner, Wilbert Rideau, wrote, “the psychological pain involved in such an existence creates an urgent and terrible need for reinforcement of [a prisoner's] sense of manhood and personal worth.” Others believe that prisoners become rapists out of fear of becoming victims themselves; it’s a choice between becoming predator or prey. The psychologist Daniel Lockwood, in his study Prison Sexual Violence, calls this strategy “pre-emptive self-defense.”

I couldn’t attend the march and don’t have anything to say about it; except to recommend that you read the posts at Ms Musings, and also at Feministe, Feministing, the marchforchoice livejournal (including a post with lots of photos), Unreal City’s photo album (source of the photo at the bottom of this blog entry), Livejournal for Choice, and Echidne.

(UPDATE: Check out Red Polka’s coverage and photos, too.)

Alternatively, if you want to read about how many pro-choicers are evil, mean, stupid, unattractive and probably not even human, follow the links at Diotima and AfterAbortion.

UPDATE: In light of Sara’s update to her post, let me clarify that I’m not saying “pro-lifers are mean people who say mean things, unlike us saintly pro-choicers.” On the contrary, it’s clear to me that both sides demonize the other far too much; I’ve fallen into this trap myself sometimes, although I honestly try to avoid it. But I think it’s important for pro-choicers to be aware of what the opposition is saying to themselves, and that’s why I included those pro-life links.

And I also appreciate the pro-lifers who don’t demonize pro-choicers on a regular basis, such as Sara at Diotima and Emily at After Abortion.

UPDATE AGAIN: I replaced the word “all” with “many” - see the comments for why.

A belated welcome to “Alas” guest-poster Lucia. Huzzah!

For those “Alas” readers who don’t read the comments, Lucia has been a frequent comment-writer here for quite a while. She’s also a frequent poster over at MarriageDebate. I’ve been really impressed with her lucid comments in both venues, and I hope we’ll see many posts from her here.

* * *

And hey, while I’m discussing other “Alas” posters, congratulations are due to Bean for being published in the radical feminist journal Rain and Thunder. Bean’s article, The War on Terror Women, is about the need for asylum for women fleeing gender-based violence.

Over on Political Animal, the former Calpundit suggests compromising with the right by replacing race-based affirmative action with income-based affirmative action.

Kevin means well, but I see two immediate problems with this proposal. First, racism against middle-class blacks, latinas and American Indians happens, and shouldn’t be ignored as if it were acceptable.

Second, racism against lower-class blacks, latinas and American Indians happens, and shouldn’t be ignored. Income-based affirmative action would benefit low-income whites who are, objectively, much wealthier than the minorities they’d be beating out for those income-based AA slots.

Why? Because looking at income - even if we concentrate only on low-income folks - vastly understates how much poorer minorities are than whites. Low-income white families are simply much wealthier, on average, than low-income minority families. I wrote a couple of detailed posts about this in 2003 (here and here); this table from one of those posts illustrates what I mean:

Because low-income white families have far more wealth and (on average) live in nicer neighborhoods with better schools, compared to low-income (or even middle class, sometimes) minorities, they’re probably better positioned to take advantage of low-income AA programs. That, combined with their greater numbers, will mean that most low-income minorities - despite being objectively poorer - would wind up being shut out of income-based AA.

(It’s not a simple thing to just make it wealth-based AA, instead. Income can be verified just by looking at last year’s income tax forms - but there’s no such easy way for college admission programs to verify wealth.)

Not that I’m against income-based affirmative action. But while income-based affirmative action would be a good thing on its own, it’s no substitute for race-based affirmative action, and it shouldn’t be proposed as one.

Julian is excited at the prospect of a Watchmen movie. Why?

Terry Gilliam had the right idea - a Watchmen movie needs to be 12 hours long. There’s no way to fit it into two or three hours without entirely slashing the plot, nor would it be possible to develop all the characters in any satisfying way.

Furthermore, the plot of Watchmen is stuck in the cold war; without a Soviet threat, it’s hard to know what the story is about. And how does the story end? It’s not like we can just cross out “Soviet” and write in “Bin Laden”; if an (apparent) alien crash-landed in New York City and killed a million people, Bin Laden wouldn’t offer peace terms, he’d give a prayer of thanks and offer the aliens a road map to L.A..

Even if that problem is solved, I can’t imagine U.S. movie audiences - especially post-9/11 - accepting an ending in which a main character commits a hideous act of terrorism, murdering thousands of New Yorkers, and (bad dreams aside) gets away with it. Even worse, in the comic Adrian comes off as a morally ambiguous figure - is there any way mainstream movie audiences would accept someone who makes Bin Laden look like an amateur as morally ambiguous? On the other hand, if Adrian Viedt is just killed off in the end, like an ordinary movie villain (maybe Rorsharch could impale him with a gigantic piece of the set! Ooooh, that would be original!), that would feel dumb and cheap compared to the comic book’s more sedate ending.

Julian points out this correction, which will run in tomorrow’s New York Times:

Hee hee.

• Stanley Kurtz and other same-sex marriage opponents have been claiming that the sky fell in Scandinavia after gay marriage. Now Andrew Sullivan and Darren Spedale (who has been using a Fulbright scholarship to study this exact question in Scandinavia) suggest that the Scandinavian sky is firmly in place.

• From Amsterdam, the news (in the Boston Globe) seems pretty similar:
  Thus far, specialists in domestic law, legislators, and some religious commentators say there is no empirical evidence of damage to the institution. For example, divorce rates are no higher, and there is no sign that conventional couples are shunning marriage.

  There’s also some interesting thoughts in favor of a gradual strategy for achieving marriage equality. I’m not sure that the religious opposition they faced there is really comparable to what we face here in the USA, though.

• Meanwhile, in Virginia, they’ve passed a new law which not only bans gay marriage, civil unions, and contracts attempting to make marriage-like privileges between same-sex couples; it may actually outlaw all contracts between any two people of the same sex. That possible mistake aside, the extent to which some folks insist that gays must not have any rights at all is stunning. (See also Bean’s previous post regarding Michigan.)
• Two transgendered folks stage a tree-sit-in protest, apparently to get their parents to acknowledge their relationship.
• In the Advocate, David Ehrenstein reflects on “coming out” over the last half-century or so of American gay culture. Includes a painful showbiz anecdote from West Side Story, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. (Okay, I’m a bit obsessed with Sondheim.)
• Brad DeLong points out that, in Bush Treasury Department lingo, “hardworking” means “earns $200,000 or more a year.” No, really - that’s what they use the term to mean. So do they believe that no one who earns less than 200 grand is working hard?

After picking my jaw up from my desk and checking for bruises, I had to check the calendar today, to check and see if it’s really still 2004. According to my calendar, it still is, but I’m having trouble believing it.

In an appalling move by the Michigan State Legislature, discrimination against gays and lesbians is becoming more and more overt, and going far beyond refusing equal rights in marriage. Now they’re going for healthcare.

• A truly wonderful, thoughtful and sad Feministe post considers whether or not the abortion debate is futile. If you read just one post today…

• Larry Lessig, looking back on his loss on the “Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Case” before the Supreme Court, writes an extended - and surprisingly interesting - mea culpa.
• I don’t often agree with pro-lifers, but in this case they’re right. The NEA has no business sponsering a pro-choice march, not if they still expect their pro-life members to pay dues. Via - actually, I can’t remember who this was via. Probably either After Abortion or Eve Tushnet.
• Decent In These Times article on young feminists of color. The criticisms of institution feminism for being too white aren’t anything new, but they’re still worth reading.
• Old Oligarch’s Painted Stoa, a conservative intellectual Catholic blog, is the sort of blog that’s interesting to me because it’s like reading an almost totally alien culture. He seems like a nice, intelligent, very thoughtful guy; and yet there’s no point in my even attempting to argue with him, because he and I probably don’t have a single shared premise in our ethical worlds. Anyhow, of particular interest to feminists might be his account of protesting an “abortuary” on Easter (one pro-choice person there noticed the large crowd of protestors and said “heh! Christmas and Easter,” which the Old Oligarch found offensive, but I think is pretty giggleworthy); and also his very long discussion of why women are banned from the priesthood. In his account of the protest, by the way, there’s a brief cameo appearance of Human Life International, a pro-life group founded by noted anti-semite Paul Marx. Via Eve Tushnet.
• Via Rad Geek, a New Yorker profile of Boodocks cartoonist (or, I should say, co-cartoonist; it turns out that the strip is actually drawn by Jennifer Seng nowadays, without credit on the strip itself. Feh!) Aaron McGruder. McGruder comes across as kinda a jerk, but that doesn’t change the fact that after 9/11, he was by far the gutsiest and best political cartoonist in the papers. He’s quite right to say that he deserved the Pulitzer that year.
• Sara at Diotima has two interesting posts on feminism, choice and respecting the choices women make, here and here. I especially liked the second post, because it quotes extensively from Heidi Hartmann’s classic essay on feminism and Marxism.

  As for the issue itself, I’ve never seen a contradiction; it seems to me that by recognizing that the choices women (and men) get to make are constrained by the choices society makes reasonably available to them; and by agitating for women and men to be presented with a wider menu of options to choose from, feminists are, in the end, arguing for more choice.

• Sara at Diotima also points to two good Women’s Enews articles on “cutting,” self-injury among young women (here and here). Some researchers seem to beleive that cutting is increasing; however, I wonder if they’re not mistaking the way that the internet has made cutting more visible for increased frequency. Certainly, there were female classmates who were cutting themselves when I went to high school in the 80s.

  A more interesting question, for me, is: why is cutting apparently an overwhelmingly female act? (Historically, in some Native American cultures, I’m told but don’t know if it’s true, young men used to cut themselves to show off what macho warriers they are - not unlike G. Gordon Liddy holding his hand in the flame - but that’s not the same thing). A researcher talks about increased loneliness, isolation from more computer-activities, and “feeling invisible” (was there ever a time when teens didn’t feel invisible?), but nothing about that happens to girls alone, so why are girls the ones cutting themselves?

  Sara also points out that we have to look at external factors, rather than treating cutting only as an individual problem, and I quite agree.

  One last question: if there is an increase in negative self-mutilation among girls, is it at all connected to the increase in what I’ll call positive self-mutilation among teens - tatoos and piercings?

• A surprisingly interesting profile of Margaret Marshall, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, focusing on the Goodridge decision. (The author of the piece seems a bit biased against the Goodridge decision, alas).
• I’m not sure how many readers have followed the case of Ono Ekeh, an employee of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops who was fired because - although he self-identifies as pro-life - he didn’t toe the pro-line line on his blog and on the “Catholics for Kerry” web forum. In this op-ed piece, he defends his views, and in the process becomes a pro-lifer I have a lot of respect for:
  Catholics are called on to promote a culture of life. Reducing the number of abortions is not the sole determinant of the pro-life platform, even though it is a vital component. Life does begin at conception but does not end at birth. Our goal is to fight for the dignity of life in all its manifestations, from conception to death. With a goal as complex as this, does it not stand to reason that there could be more than one way of reasonably promoting a culture of life?

  The conservative approach to reducing the number of abortions is a “supply-side” approach. The idea here is to criminalize abortion providers, thus resulting in a reduction in the number of abortions. Unfortunately, eliminating abortion providers is much like trying to solve the drug problem by solely going after drug suppliers, but ignoring demand. It is a fact of market dynamics that as long as demand exists, there will be supply.

  Pro-life moderates and liberals embrace the “demand-side” approach. This approach seeks to reduce the number of abortions by addressing the social issues that compel too many women to contemplate what would normally be unthinkable. If social conditions were changed so that women were empowered, and if we effectively addressed issues such as health care, child care, family leave, wage inequity, domestic violence and other women’s issues, we could reasonably expect a significant reduction in the number of abortions in the United States. For instance, 21 percent of abortions in the United States are a result of inadequate finances. This category of women, though not exhaustive, represents a very fixable opportunity. Consider the following simplified example. If a woman for whom inadequate finances were the primary reason to consider an abortion is confident that there would be assistance to compensate for her lack of finances, the lack of finances then weighs less in her deliberations.

  This demand-side approach will take time and does not immediately make abortions rare, but our goal is to change a culture, not just a law. This approach is a steady tide that lifts all boats of human dignity. It seems that this is a reasonable means of attaining the goal of a culture of life even if different from the process laid out by traditional pro-lifers.

  So maybe there are some pro-lifers out there we can work with.

It’s a common belief - one I’ve endorsed in the past - that if Roe v Wade is overturned, the result won’t be the nationwide banning of abortion in the USA, but rather a return to state-by-state rules. So abortion might be outlawed in Alabama, but it would remain legal in New York, and so on.

But lately I’m not so sure. The “Partial Birth” Abortion ban is a nationwide ban, enacted by the federal congress. Yet no one seems to be making a serious case that the PBA ban is unconstitutional because Congress has no authority to pass a nationwide abortion ban. (It does show what hypocrites “federalist” Republicans are, though.)

Since the Republicans in Congress believe they have the right to ban PBAs nationwide, then they must believe they have the right to ban all abortions nationwide - if Roe is overturned.

Of course, Democrats in congress (along with the few moderate Republicans that still exist) would try to block such legislation - so even if Roe is overturned (which could only happen if two of the current pro-Roe justices are replaced, which could only happen if Bush wins re-election, and then only if two pro-Roe justices die or retire), it couldn’t happen unless the Republicans pick up a few more seats in the Senate.

That’s a whole lot of “ifs” and “unlesses”; none of them are unlikely on their own, but it’s probably not likely that all of them will take place. So I’m not saying it’s time to panic. I am saying, however, that the “if Roe is overturned it’ll be up to the states” argument may not be as ironclad as it once appeared.