David at The Debate Link sticks a cautious toe into the abortion debate, asks when personhood begins. (Actually, he asked the question a few different ways, but one of them was when personhood begins.)

Here’s what “personhood” means to me: the ability to subjectively experience consciousness; to have thoughts and feel emotions; to have a personality. This ability, in humans, is located in the cortex of the brain, where all our thoughts and emotions take place.

Why am I so focused on the brain as the center of what we are? Because the brain is the only part of a person’s body that cannot be destroyed while leaving the person still alive.

To see what I mean, imagine that you get an emergency call: Someone close to you has been in a terrible accident. You rush to the hospital, and are told that your friend’s heart has been destroyed. However, a tourist from Belgium happened to die the same day, in the same hospital, and luckily is a tissue match for your friend. (Luckily for your friend, not so luckily for the dead Belgian).

Repeat the same thought exercise, except this time imagine different body parts being replaced with a part from the unfortunate Belgian. A hand transplant. A kidney. Ears. Hair. Lungs. No matter which part is replaced, it’s still your friend. You’re not mistaken to feel you have an ongoing relationship with this person, despite the new heart/hand/kidney/ear/hair/whatever.

Now imagine that the doctors say your friend’s brain was utterly destroyed in the accident. But not to worry - they have put in the Belgian’s brain. The doctors tell you that your friend now remembers an entirely different life, speaks a different native language, and has a completely new personality; but other than that, she’s still the same person you know.

Does that make any sense? Is this the same person you considered your friend? Most people would say no. The survivor of that operation wasn’t your friend; it was the Belgian tourist.

In science fiction movies like The Man With Two Brains, some people can be reduced to brains in jar, but they’re still themselves, and audiences have no trouble accepting that notion. Why does that ring true with us? Because it gets at a core truth. Our brains - and in particular, the personality imprinted in the cortex - is the one part of a person that cannot be destroyed and still leave the person in any sense intact. But as long as that part is retained, we are still, in a meaningful sense, the same person.

So when does personhood begin? I don’t know. But I know that it can’t possibly happen before the fetus has a fully functioning cerebral cortex, capable of supporting thought.

In particular, it’s not possible for there to be any thought or awareness before the emergence of pyramidal cell dendritic spines on neurons, which happens relatively abruptly at about the 28th week. Pre-dendritic spines, the cerebral cortex might as well be a pile of gray slush, in terms of how well it can actually function.

Once the dendritic spines are in place, does the fetus become a person that instant? I doubt it. I think a working cerebral cortex is a necessary condition of personhood (in human beings, anyhow - maybe Vulcans are different), but I don’t think it’s sufficient. Once a fetus has a fully working cerebral cortex, to some extent that’s like having a blank hard drive; the hardware is all in place, but the data is still to come.

Nonetheless, as far as abortion is concerned, I find the scientific facts reassuring. Personhood, as I understand it, can’t even begin to exist until at least the 28th week - and probably doesn’t exist in any meaningful form until well after that point. But virtually all abortions - even those abortions usually referred to as “late term” abortions - take place well before the 28th week of pregnancy.

* * *

David writes:

Is a newborn baby a person? I think so, although its personhood is perhaps in a developmental stage.

Both the elderly and the disabled are people, as I’ve defined personhood above. The exception is when someone’s cortex is so extremely disabled that it basically stops existing at all, as in the case of Terri Schiavo. I am, however, prepared to defend the proposition that someone in the same shape Terri Schiavo was in two years ago, is for all moral purposes dead, despite the fact that their body lives on.

* * *

So if a fetus might be a person beginning sometime after the 28th week, do I think that post-28th week abortions should be banned?

No.

First of all, I’m not certain that there are any post-28th week abortions of viable fetuses performed in the US. (As it’s usually used, the term “late term abortion” refers to abortions that take place at week 18 and thereafter.)

But insofar as any do take place, it’s likely most take place in order to protect the life or health of the mother. I’m not prepared to legally force mothers to sacrifice their bodies to save a fetus’ life, any more than I’m prepared to advocate for laws forcing fathers to donate their kidneys against their will should their children ever require them.

Besides, it ultimately comes down to trusting women. I think pregnant women are the people who are best able to judge when a very-late-term abortion is necessary (in consultation with their doctors). I’m not convinced that the Senate is in a good position to make that judgment call.

In 1986 Louise Nicholas was raped by three policeman. She has tried to get justice since, and had been unable to. Finally, almost 20 years later, those were charged.

The trial is currently taking place in Auckland. Most details of the case have been suppressed, so I can’t really talk about it (but you can bet I’ll have something to say when the verdict comes out).

I just wanted to commend her strength and courage.

This post was also published at my blog

Abortion has been in the news again here. Staff at the Waitemata District Health Board refuse to do late second trimester abortions on mental health grounds, so the District Health Board is subsidising women who are going to Australia to have the procedure done there.

Of course there are a number of issues here, first of all that staff can say “I’ll do an abortion if there’s signs of fetal abnormality, but not under other grounds, because the woman should just suck it up and go through pregnancy.” I actually don’t think that’s compatible with the law, which allows people to refuse to perform abortions on ‘moral’ grounds. I don’t see that sort of judgement as a moral one (of course I think that if you don’t want anything to do with abortions you should choose a speciality like geriatric care, if your morals interfere with your job choose a new job).

But it has also really drawn attention to how patchy New Zealand’s abortion provision is, among the different District Health Boards (This website has information about access in the different DHBs - although it is funded by the drug company which makes the abortion drugs). Almost all the abortions in the South Island are done in Christchurch (which in a way is a good thing because in Dunedin you have to go to the clinic four times, and in Ashburton you have to wait 1-2 weeks for an appointment). In Taranaki abortions are usually performed under general anesthetic (to give them a greater opportunity to kill the woman involved, I guess).

It doesn’t have to be like this, first trimester abortions is the safest procedure that is only done in hospitals. There’s no reason why first trimester abortions couldn’t be performed in your home.

Finally Family Planning pissed me right off in the interview with National Radio:

I think the whole area of abortion is a sensitive and contentious issue, and as I say the real answer is to say ‘why is it occurring?’ lets invest in health promotion and prevention to make sure that women don’t have unplanned pregnancy.

She went to say that if people are objecting to late stage abortions then it shows that late stage abortions are happening too often, and effort needs to be put into prevention.

She can go complain about women’s choices with her fellow Labour Party candidate George Hawkins.

I’m more and more convinced that the rest of us need to do something.

Also posted on my blog

Audra Williams has a really interesting piece about feminists in their 20s and early 30s on Rabble. I felt a little anxious about writing about it first, because I disagreed with her to the point where I was highly annoyed by what she was saying. But then I re-read it, and I realised that I agreed with her argument.

I’m not doing this to be adorable; this is what it’s like in my brain. I have Feminist Insecurity. In fact, if I didn’t repeat those first two points to myself, I’d never have the guts to say the third. And it’s not just me. So many feminists in their 20s and 30s are like this. We apologize, we disclaim and, worst of all, we don’t reach out to other young feminists for fear of being called out as the frauds we feel we are.

One of the ways this isolation manifests itself is that we don’t organize in the ways of the generations of feminists before us. We don’t join. We’re not sure if we should, and we can’t seem to navigate the movement as it is.

This is an incredibly important question. What is it that makes feminism an individual enterprise for some people, rather than a collective experience?

Audra presents this problem as a generational one: second-wave feminists organised, third-wave feminists generally do not (I do have a rant about the term third-wave, and what it ignores, but I’ll save that for another time). She describes third-wave achievements as follows:

That isn’t to say there isn’t a great deal of amazing energy and teamwork happening with younger women right now. We have Shameless magazine. We have independent women’s businesses like Venus Envy and Peach Berserk. We have menstrual experts like Blood Sisters. We have bands like Pony Da Look, Bontempi and the Maynards. We’ve got body-positive troupe Big Dance.

While our achievements are not the sort of feminism that older women hope to see, one thing that we’ve done well is dissect and influence culture. Third wavers might not have an abortion caravan, but we’ve got record labels. Maybe we don’t attend candidate’s school, but we’re running feminist businesses. We don’t hold consciousness-raising sessions, but we stitch and bitch.

This was the bit I was afraid of being overly sarcastic about, because for me those lists don’t begin to compare (even leaving aside my opinion of alternative businesses). These individual projects don’t make a movement.

Having said all this I’ve spent most of my time as a feminist without belonging to a feminist group. My feminism mainly involves words, writing, ranting, yelling, talking, and other words, but not actions. I try to make my feminism part of my activism, but I don’t really know what to do, or who to do it with. I don’t believe that women of my age are just lamer than the women who came before and who were able to turn their words into something more.

I think Audra has identified one possible reason, which is that feminism can be set up as a standard that women should attain, rather than a form of analysis. I had an activist friend tell me recently that she didn’t know anything about feminism. Which shocked me, but I understood what she was saying, because feminism can be seen as something that happens in a rarefied atmosphere, that comes once you’ve taken a women’s studies class and read the right books.

I think this is bullshit, I think all you need to do to be a feminist is to listen to other women and stand beside them. You take that step, and everything else you need will follow. I’m not devaluing analysis, I think it’s vital, but feminism isn’t dependent on doing the reading.

I think possibly another reason is that I don’t think we’ve got any idea how to fight patriarchy (for lack of a better term), because it’s so pervasive. There are days when I go to the supermarket and I just want to grab every single magazine and rip it into to tiny pieces stomp on them, because almost every page of almost every magazine devalues women. I hear stories about how women are relegated to the kitchen during a particular campaign, and I despair that 30 years of calling sexist men out has got us precisely nowhere. I hear the pay gap is getting wider and I know so many employers who promote men to the jobs that pay higher over women time and time again. I see how raising children is treated as some kind of weird hobby, where it’s fine if you want to do it, but don’t ask the rest of us to support you. It’s overwhelming, particularly when I’m think about it on my own.

I’m all over the place here - we’ve got too much theory, and not enough. But I think what I basically want to say is that feminism needs to start with women’s lives and move to collective action, and through that I’m hoping we’ll learn how to fight.

In the end I think that might have been what Audra was saying too:

Oh, I bet you are now all so excited to join and build NAC! But don’t forget, you can’t join NAC [A Canadian coalition of feminist groups]. After the last day of meetings wound down, I was whining to longtime feminist activist Lee Lakeman about this very thing: “So now I have to go win over some Nova Scotia women’s group if I can find it in order to get the right to come here and try to win NAC over?” Lee looked at me like I was perhaps a moron and said, “Why don’t you start your own group?”

As soon as she said “Why don’t you start your own group?” I started to hear “!!!!!!!!” “!!!!!!!!” “!!!!!!!” in my head, because WHAT. A. GREAT. IDEA.

Here is the deal. You need 10 people and a feminist mandate. Make sure you formally exist six weeks before the AGM (which is happening in May). You also have to have a recommendation by an existing member group. But really, contact me, we’ll find a way.

The idea of starting a group is fairly terrifying, because if we’re going to start groups we have to go on the record with stances, and we have to collaborate and lead and follow. But we have those skills, I know we do. It’s just a question of applying them in a new way. What issue infuriates you the most? How do you think it can best be addressed? What have you been wishing someone else would do? Assemble a team and get on it.

This was also posted on my blog

Yesterday, Robert James McGowan died when the mine he was working at flooded work yesterday. It was a private mine on the West Coast of New Zealand that employed just 6 people.

This sort of thing is always called an accident, but deaths at work don’t have to happen. They happen because it’s cheaper to do things the more dangerous way, and because employers don’t provide proper equipment and training. There is a really interesting analysis of the situation in America (where 21 people have died in mine accidents so far this year) on the world socialist website.

Anti-capitalism is a large part of my politics (I own a t-shirt that says “it’s all capitalism’s fault”), but I don’t understand how anyone can stand the values that make mining companies decide they don’t need a particular safety procedure.

This post was always posted on my blog

Go! Look! See!

To publicize its fund for helping victims of domestic violence, Allstate is donating $1 for each of the first 75,000 unique visitors to this website. So please go ahead and click through! Thanks to Bean for the heads-up.

I’m a big fan of Steve Bell’s cartoons, have been long before I could understand them (my parents had If cartoon books when I was a kid). But it wasn’t until recently that I realised that the crazy look Tony Blair always has on his face wasn’t hyperbole, but just good drawing. In case there was any doubt Tony Blair has recently used God as back-up in his decision to invade Iraq. I would try to comment on this, but Terry Jones has already done so, and he was a Python, so chances are he’s funnier than me:

A source says Gabriel has spent days trying to dissuade the Almighty from loosing a plague of toads upon the Blair family. Gabriel reminded God that Cherie and the children had nothing to do with Tony’s decisions. God’s response, it is reliably reported, was: “Blair says the Iraqis are lucky to have got bombed, so how can he complain if his family gets a few toads in the bath?”

PS speaking of plagues of frogs go check out the Brick Testament - because a plague of frogs in lego is an experience not to be missed.

So I half watched the Oscars, despite the fact that I had seen just three films with any nominations at all. I was mainly hoping Michelle Williams would win Best Supporting Actress (I’ve loved her ever since she loved Dick), which she didn’t. But that’s not quite outrageous enough to move me to write. George Clooney’s acceptance speech, on the other hand, ended like this:

We are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while. We were the ones who talked about AIDS when it was being whispered. We talked about civil rights when it wasn’t really popular. This Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I’m proud to be part of this Academy. I’m proud to be part of this community. I’m proud to be out of touch

This is a pretty annoying speech who ever gives it, quite frankly. For me, politics isn’t actually about feeling smug about how I’m much better than the great unwashed, but about building and organising so you’re not out of touch. Being alternative and radical isn’t actually my goal, because I think that it’s only through collective action that we’re going to end capitalism, not through being rich and famous.

But it’s particularly annoying from George Clooney, who was nominated for Good Night and Good Luck, a movie whose message (McCarthyism is bad when the people involved aren’t communists) was so radical that Joe Liberman would have supported it. Yes Three Kings was actually a good political movie, but that’s one on a rather long CV. I’d think that not noticing that women have relationships with each other is a little out of touch, and I’d also be damned surprised if more than 5% of the movies George Clooney has been in would pass the Mo’ Movie Measure.

The Hollywood he praises is the voice of rich, it’s racist, misogynist, homophobic, for a start, and the fact that it occasionally nominates ‘issue’ films doesn’t make that any less true.

Oh and if we’re going to talk about specifics it wasn’t Hollywood that was talking about civil rights when it wasn’t popular. It was normal people who gave enough of a shit to try and fight back. Some of them died, and when Hollywood got round to making a movie about that - a ground breaking 25 years later, it was about as accurate as you’d expect.

In 1977 New Zealand passed abortion legislation that was described as the most repressive in the Western world and, apart from a couple of minor modifications in 1978, it hasn’t been changed since. If a woman wants to have an abortion in New Zealand she must get two certifying consultants (these are registered doctors who are selected on the basis that their views aren’t in conflict with current abortion law) to agree that she meets the following criteria:

That the continuance of the pregnancy would result in serious danger (not being danger normally attendant upon childbirth) to the life, or to the physical or mental health, of the woman or girl . . .; or

(aa)That there is a substantial risk that the child, if born, would be so physically or mentally abnormal as to be seriously handicapped; or

(b)That the pregnancy is the result of sexual intercourse between…

(i)A parent and child; or
(ii)A brother and sister, whether of the whole blood or of the half blood; or
(iii)A grandparent and grandchild; or

(c)That the pregnancy is the result of sexual intercourse that constitutes an offence against section 131(1) of this Act[this means a dependent family member]; or

(d)That the woman or girl is severely subnormal within the meaning of section 138(2) of this Act.

If I discovered that I was pregnant tomorrow I would go to my doctor (this would be free because maternity care in New Zealand is free) who would refer me to the euphemistically named Level J Unit in the Wellington Public hospital. I would have to make two appointments (neither of which would cost me anything) where I’d have to talk to a whole lot of people, and at the end of the second appointment I could have by abortion by suction (which I’d choose, but because I live in Wellington I also have the option of medical abortion). The abortion would be safe, on demand and free (the three things I want all abortions to be).

The point of this post is that despite the hideous laws we have in New Zealand I have better abortion access than most American women. I think that talking about the New Zealand abortion situation is all I have to offer women in South Dakota, and the rest of the States. I know most abortion activists in America know far more about this than I do, but this is a tale which begins with laws being tightened and ends with access being loosened - I thought it might sound like good news.

Reading about comparative abortion law makes it clear that there is often very little relationship between abortion law and abortion practice, except for occasional ceremonial public fight. New Zealand is the positive example of that, the United States is the negative.

New Zealand women didn’t have a legal right to abortion before the law change, but from 1974 if you could get up to Auckland in your first trimester then Auckland Medical Aid Centre would probably give you one, basically they were ignoring the law. They were raided by the cops, and faced prosecution, but the juries wouldn’t convict the abortion doctor. There were several attempts to change the law and close the clinic but they failed due to general incompentence.

Before the law change there were also some underground networks, people who knew how to do menstrual extraction (which is a skill well worth learning, particularly because you don’t have to wait for someone to need an abortion to practice it) and doctors and who were performing abortions of dubious legality.

Immediately after the law was passed you could not get a legal abortion in New Zealand (although there were probably some D&C operations that had the purpose of ending a pregnancy). Instead if a woman was going to get an abortion she had to fly to Australia. This cost $500 then, which would be $2,652.14 now (that’s $1,736.89 US). This was made reasonably seamless by SOS (Save Our Sisters) groups, that would do all the organising required to get someone to Australia, and do some subsidising of travel. There were complications: one of the big abortion clinics in Australia started subsidising the SOS groups to try and increase their business.

The best estimate anyone can do actually shows the number of abortions New Zealand women had over this period going up after the law change, it’s just they were all happening in Australia. Then slowly more abortions were allowed, and the boundaries began to be pushed. Now 98% of abortions are done under the grounds that the continuance of the pregnancy would result in serious danger (not being danger normally attendant upon childbirth) to the mental health of the woman or girl.

The comments of this thread are open to feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly commenters only.

Ampersand has kindly offered to let me guest blog for a week, and so I thought I’d say hi. I’m Maia, from Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty . I think I’ll let my politics speak for themselves - the only thing it’s probably useful to know is that I live in New Zealand.

For reasons that I don’t quite remember I’m Maia on my own blog, and other New Zealand or blogspot blogs, and reddecca everywhere else. This is likely to cause intense confusion, so now I’ll be Maia everywhere (although I’ll miss making a tribute to the great Jessica Mitford).

So thank you for having me. If anything I say doesn’t make any sense it’s probably a Buffy reference, if you know it’s not a Buffy reference then I probably forgot to finish the sentance - I’m working on that.

As usual, open for whatever discussion or links you’d like to post - and don’t hesitate to post links to your own stuff!

By the way, I’m sorry I haven’t gotten around to part two of my “No Basis” critique yet. I’m mildly sick, and doing a heavy-research blog post just doesn’t seem as high a priority as, you know, lying on the couch and watching a lot of TV. I am going to do part two, but it may be a week or so - I’m taking it easy.

Nonetheless, I still need to empty all these open tabs, so….

Tomorrow is Blog Against Sexism Day!
I’d better start thinking of a post…

The Third Carnival of Bent Attractions!

The Second Radical Women of Color Carnival!

Fetal Personhood as Metaphorical Thinking
This discussion of abortion politics and pro-life thought, by regular “Alas” comment-writer Richard Jeffrey Newman, develops a fascinating line of thought, using as a starting point a couple of the abortion discussions we’ve had here on “Alas,” and so will be especially entertaining for “Alas” readers. One of the best posts I’ve read this week - check it out.

Top Ten Things Fattiepatties is Tired of Discussing
Ten months from now, I must remember to nominate this series for a Koufax award for “best series of posts 2006.” Fattiepatties discusses the ten “fat acceptance” discussions she’s sick of having over and over. Excellent, smart analysis. She’s halfway through the series now; start here and scroll up.

Feh-Muh-Nist: Dance Like No One’s Watching
Utterly fantastic, beautifully-written post about “Dancing While Fat.” This is the sort of writing I envy. (I’ve added Feh-Muh-Nist to the blogroll.)

The Fifteen Year Plan for Same Sex Marriage
The long-range strategy for same-sex marriage. The article is a bit too optimistic and rah-rah go-team-go for my tastes, but it’s nonetheless interesting.

Slavery Denial
We condemn holocaust denial. So why don’t we condemn those who softball or try to excuse American slavery for slavery denial?

Queer vs. Nigger/Nigger vs. Queer

Newsflash: Contraception Prevents Unwanted Pregnancies

Ohio State Senator Proposes Bill Banning Republicans From Adopting Children
Being an elected official makes sarcasm much more satisfying.

Israel’s Economic Abuse of the Palestinians
Keeping $700 million in taxes that rightfully belongs to the Palestinians is just scratching the surface.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Rape
Curtsy: Muse and Fury.

Can Conservative Christians Be Convinced To Ally With Democrats?
David at The Debate Link argues persuasively that no, they can’t; “as an organized political entity,” the Christian Right can’t get behind “any proposal that doesn’t relate to abortion, gay marriage, and abstinence.” But then a few posts later David reverses himself, after reading this Washington Monthly article, about some Conservative Christians who are sick of Republicans putting big business and hardball politics ahead of issues.

The Gender Mysteries of Don Knotts

Reappropriate on “Crash“: Racist, Shallow, and Easy For Whites To Swallow

The Same Peanut Butter Tastes Better With A Brand Name
As Word Munger sums up, “People prefer inferior peanut butter when it’s got a recognizable brand name. People will say the same peanut butter tastes better when it’s labeled as a recognizable brand.” But since enjoyment is subjective, does this mean that people really do get more taste enjoyment out of eating a brand-name product?

Gendergeek’s FAQ for Men’s Rights Activist readers
Curtsy: Muse and Fury.

Why Curious People Shouldn’t Own Stun Guns

New to the Blogroll: Bad Feminist
The appropriate kitch artwork illustrating each and every post is impressive. More substantively, I liked this post suggesting specific ways feminists could switch way from a judicial-branch approach to protecting abortion rights.

Real Life Simpsons.
“The opening sequence of The Simpsons, but with real people.” Via Crooked Timber.

Widowhood is Bad For Whites, But Not Blacks

Excellent Series of Essays on Being An Adjunct Professor

Wow.

The Double Edged Sword of Fuck Me Feminism

UK nurses want to supply clean blades and cutting advice to self-harmers

Parental Notice Laws Don’t Reduce Abortion

New To The Blogroll: Vigilence
Smart, “professional-feeling” blog focused on queer rights and fighting the Christian right.

On Being a Straight White Pro-Feminist Progressive Male

Kevin Drum on the Irrational Wackiness that is CEO Compensation

TV Land is cool.

For obvious reasons, this new ban that will be going into effect in July in South Dakota has caught my eye - that isn’t to say it won’t be splashed all over the news by tomorrow (or it should be, in a sane world!). While of course most of us knew that this ban and others like it would become common place in the near future, it never really prepares us for the reality. Or it doesn’t prepare me, at the very least. So here it is, the first fairly comprehensive ban signed into law by Governor Mike Rounds, signed Monday aimed at challenging the 1973 Supreme court decision.

In defense of his position, CNN quoted Governor Rounds as saying:

“In the history of the world, the true test of a civilization is how well people treat the most vulnerable and most helpless in their society,” said a statement released by Rounds, a Republican.
“The sponsors and supporters of this bill believe that abortion is wrong because unborn children are the most vulnerable and most helpless persons in our society. I agree with them.”

The ban itself can only be described as extremist, going so far as to ban abortions in all cases except for medical necessities. Cases of incest and rape are not included in the exceptions:

The bill signed by Rounds allows doctors to perform abortions only to save the lives of pregnant women, but even then encourages them to exercise “reasonable medical efforts” to both save mothers and continue pregnancies.

Anyone who performs an abortion under any other circumstance — even in a case of rape or incest — can be charged with a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. The mother cannot be charged.

As can be expected, both Naral and Planned Parenthood have spoken out quick and harsh against this new law, and are rallying for support to keep this from happening in other states. Nancy Keenan, president of Naral had this to say earlier:

“Governor Rounds’ signing of this bill should spur all Americans to let their governors know that they oppose egregious actions that threaten a woman’s reproductive freedom. This law is a monumental setback for women in South Dakota and across the country. This ban contains no exceptions for women who are rape or incest victims, or whose health is threatened, and has an inadequate exception to protect a woman’s life.”

“Since the South Dakota Legislature first passed this abortion ban, pro-choice Americans have reacted with a renewed commitment to protect a woman’s right to choose. They are right to be concerned because this is not an isolated case. Anti-choice politicians in 11 other states are pushing similar bans. President Bush has created a climate with his judicial appointments in which anti-choice lawmakers feel emboldened to attack Roe v. Wade. Americans don’t want to see this landmark decision overturned, and President Bush and his anti-choice allies will pay a political price for advancing such an out-of-the mainstream agenda.”

Well, she does live in Oregon.

The first round of voting for this year’s Koufax awards is open. I’m enourmously pleased that “Alas” was nominated in three categories: Best Blog (non-professional), Best Writing, and Best Single Issue Blog.

(UPDATE: We’re up for “Best Group Blog” too! Cool!)

Given the high quality of the other nominees, I don’t expect “Alas” will advance to the next (and final) round. Nonetheless, I’m extremely fuckin’ honored to see “Alas” listed in such great company. Go over and vote, why don’tcha?

Meloukhia of This Ain’t Living has posted the first call for submissions for the second Big Fat Carnival!

(Hmm… time to start thinking of what to write!)

Virtually all peer-reviewed academic research on same-sex parenting has come to one conclusion: there’s no evidence that being raised by same-sex parents harms children in any way. This result, which has been replicated in one form or another at least fifty times, drives sexists and homophobes up a wall. If for children, being loved and taken care of by two parents is what matters, then the cherished conservative belief that children “need” parents of both sexes for healthy development is unsupportable. Furthermore, the research undercuts the myth that children need protection from queers (a major plank of the anti-same sex marriage platform).

No Basis by Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai is frequently cited by anti-gay activists to argue against this body of research (and, by a logically dubious implication, same-sex marriage). Christianity Today’s take on No Basis is pretty typical:

From No Basis itself:

Lerner and Nagai claim that studies of same-sex parenting don’t meet minimum standards of scientific respectability. But are the standards they put forward ones they genuinely believe in, or are they standards that Lerner and Nagai opportunistically take on for the specific purpose of rejecting same-sex parenting studies? (It is perhaps worth noting that No Basis was commissioned by The Marriage Law Project, an organization formed to oppose same-sex marriage). One way of answering this question is to see if Lerner and Nagai have held their own research to the rigorous standards they insist are mandatory in No Basis.

Before No Basis, Lerner was probably best known for a 1996 study, published by a right-wing think tank in the wake of the O.J. verdict, which claimed to show that American juries typically treat black defendants more gently than white defendants (the disadvantage of whites compared to blacks is a frequent theme in Lerner’s research). Although the study was never published in a peer-reviewed journal, Lerner’s spectacular findings - in particular, his claim that juries convict white rape defendants twice as often as black rape defendants - created a stir in the mainstream press. From U.S. News and World Report (Oct 14 1996):

The study was widely derided by academics (among other things, it ignored the disparity in sentencing, an area in which the judicial process is clearly easier on whites compared to blacks). For our purposes, what’s interesting is that this study flunks the standards advocated in No Basis. As the ACLU comments,

Lerner and his associates thought a sample size of five was solid enough to trumpet to the national press; but samples many times larger are still too small, according to Lerner, when he needs an excuse to dismiss gay parenting studies.

What about Lerner and Nagai’s other standards? In No Basis, a major objection to many studies of same-sex parenting is the use of non-probability samples, and in particular “snowball” sampling, in which participants recruit other participants. Here’s a passage of recommendations from No Basis:

That’s some very strong language. So, surely, this is a standard that Lerner and Nagai genuinely believe in - not just an opportunistic standard they’ve taken on to bash gay parenting studies? To answer that question, I’ll quote from a review of Lerner and Nagai’s book American Elites (the review was published in the prestigious American Journal of Sociology, September 1997):

(Emphasis added). Again, it’s clear that Lerner and Nagai have altered their conceptions of what is and isn’t acceptable methodology.

These are by no means unique examples - see, for instance, this Lerner and Nagai study of affirmative action. Although Lerner and Nagai argue in No Basis that conclusions can never be drawn without extremely rigorous statistical controls or tests of significance, they didn’t bother using any such statistical tests here. Instead, Lerner and Nagai present only percentages, an approach they single out for harsh criticism in No Basis. Note as well that their study seems to have included only 37 black students - a sample size they’d deride as far too small in No Basis.

You may be now saying to yourself, “so Lerner and Nagai use the same bad methods that the gay parenting studies do. They’re still bad methods, right?”

To that I’ll say: Have patience, folks. I’ll get there.

Today, I’ve shown that Lerner and Nagai are not serious about the standards they used to reject gay-parenting studies in No Basis, as demonstrated by the fact that they’ve never taken these standards seriously in their own work. Tomorrow, I’ll show that - setting aside Lerner and Nagai’s double-standards - the standards they use to dismiss gay parenting studies are illogical, misapplied, and show a severe misunderstanding of social science norms and standards.

The elder of my half-brothers is almost seventeen years old. He’s busy studying physics and chemistry for A-level, playing around with a BBC microcomputer he salvaged from somewhere, and saving up his Education Maintenance Allowance in the hopes of one day being able to afford a Landrover.

He owes his existence to an abortion our mother had some fourteen months before he was born.

She chose to end her pregnancy around the halfway point when she learned that the fetus had Downs syndrome. My half-brother was conceived on what would have been the due date had she chosen to continue the earlier pregnancy. If she hadn’t had access to abortion, if she’d had to carry the fetus to term and give birth, there is no way my half-brother could have been conceived.

My half-brother is a walking refutation of the Feminists For Life contention that “abortion pits women against their children”. Let us accept for the moment the pro-life formulation and agree to describe the fetus as one of my mother’s daughters. This (potential) daughter is pitted, not against her mother but against her (potential) brother. Abortion allowed my mother to decide which of her potential children she wanted to carry into actuality.

If she had not been allowed to make that decision, I would have a half-sister instead of a half-brother - not such a great difference. But my mother would have, instead of a son she bore by choice, a daughter she bore because she had no choice - an immense difference. It’s not just my brother who owes a debt of gratitude to the abortion that allowed her to have a child she felt she could raise: the whole family is better off because of it.

Pro-lifers like to accuse pro-choicers of thinking that disabled people, or children conceived by rape, have no right to exist. (A better summary of the pro-choice view would be that no fetus has a right to exist - they exist by the goodwill of their mothers, and will do so until they develop the ability to live independantly of women’s bodies.) But by saying my mother had no right to an abortion - no right to choose which of her potential children she wanted to give birth to - pro-lifers are saying my half-brother has no right to exist.

David at The Debate Link links to a column by Mark Steyn about Jews being murdered by Muslims in France.

The article is stirring, but I need more evidence to be persuaded, and so should David. Steyn himself isn’t a reliable source - for instance, Steyn once endorsed the homophobic myth that being gay leads to an early death (From Steyn’s review of a play about Matthew Shepard: “Maybe Matthew Shepard would have died anyway, not at twenty-one but at twenty-five or thirty, not because he was gay and someone killed him but because he was gay and it killed him”).

The evidence in Steyn’s article is entirely anecdotal. Has anyone done an empirical study of the annual rate of violent anti-Semitic incidents in France and in other countries over the past 10 years, for instance?

Some of the statements in Steyn’s story seem amazing and are not attributed.

It’s disgusting that “every public official” in France denying antisemitism - or it would be disgusting, if it were true. From a BBC story about Halimi’s murder:

Contrary to Steyn’s claim, it’s clear that at least some prominent public officials are calling this murder antisemitism. Note as well that the “Jews have money” quote that Steyn attributes to a police detective, presumably to imply that French police are antisemites, was (if Sarkozy’s statement was accurate) actually said by the murderers. That’s an appalling error for Steyn to make.

Given these errors, I don’t think it’s justifiable to take any of Steyn’s unattributed statements at face value.

Also, Steyn’s implication that anyone who thinks Israel is the leading threat to world peace must be “to put it at its mildest, indifferent to Jews” is similar to saying criticism of Israel is antisemitism. It’s hard to say for certain without knowing exactly how the survey was worded.Why couldn’t someone simultaneously oppose antisemitism, but also believe that the most likely hotspot to directly or indirectly cause WW3 is the Israeli occupation of the West Bank? The two views are not mutually exclusive.

I don’t doubt that antisemitism is a serious problem, including in France. But I’m not sure that the incendiary tone and lack of rigor in Steyn’s column is a useful approach to the problem (although it delights France-bashers, I’m sure). I’d recommend reading the “France” section of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia’s report on antisemitism, instead.

Some interesting tidbits:

* The French Jewish community, at 600,000+, is the largest Jewish community in Europe. “In reaction to the anti-Semitic mood the number of the French Jews who immigrated to Israel in 2002 doubled to 2,566, the highest number since 1972.” At that rate, it doesn’t seem likely that a huge portion of France’s Jews will be immigrating to Israel, as I’ve heard some commentators predict.

* Antisemitic violence peaked in 2000, apparently set off by the Palestinian Intifada. At the time this report was issued, in 2003, violent incidents appeared to be dropping.

* France keeps excellent records of antisemitic incidents, compared to most European countries. This fact should be accounted for - or at least noted - in any country-to-country comparison of incidents.

* “The perpetrators [of antisemitic violence] were only seldom from the extreme right milieu, coming instead mainly from non-organised Maghrebian and North African youths. After interrogating 42 suspects, the police concluded that these are ‘predominantly delinquents without ideology, motivated by a diffuse hostility to Israel, exacerbated by the media representation of the Middle East conflict (…) a conflict which, they see, reproduces the picture of exclusion and failure of which they feel victims in France.”

* Nonetheless, a survey of North African youth in France found that:

* On the other hand, North African youth were more likely than other French youths to think that Jews have too much influence.

(Curtsy to this comments thread at Volokh, which is where I found virtually all the links and info used in this post.)