At the start of the month, Megan McArdle — who is, I think, pro-choice — wrote:

But in this case, I think the analogy to slavery is important, for two reasons. First of all, it was the last time we had an extended, society-wide debate about personhood. [...]

Listening to the debates about abortion, it seems to me that really broad swathes of the pro-choice movement seem to genuinely not understand that this is a debate about personhood, which is why you get moronic statements like “If you think abortions are wrong, don’t have one!” If you think a fetus is a person, it is not useful to be told that you, personally, are not required to commit murder, as long as you leave the neighbors alone while they do it.

Conversely, if Africans are not people, then slavery is not wrong.

Although Megan is (I think) pro-choice, I’ve certainly heard this argument made by pro-lifers any number of times. But “lack of personhood” was not, in fact, a major pro-slavery argument. I’d recommend listening to (or reading the transcript of) this lecture by Yale historian David Blight, in which he outlines the pre-civil-war pro-slavery arguments.

The entire lecture is worth your time, but here — heavily edited for space — is Blight’s outline of the important pro-slavery arguments.

Now, there are many ways to look at pro-slavery. Deep, deep in the pro-slavery argument–I’m going to give you categories here to hang your hats on–deep in the pro-slavery argument is a biblical argument. Almost all pro-slavery writers at one point or another will dip into the Old Testament, or dip into the New Testament–they especially would dip to the Old–to show how slavery is an ancient and venerable institution. [...] You can therefore assume it was divinely sanctioned. [...]

A second kind of set of arguments, I’ve already referred to, are the historical ones. Here it is not just the venerability of slavery, how old it is, but it’s the idea that it has been crucial to the development of all great civilizations. That slavery may have its bad aspects but it has been the engine of good, it has been the engine of empires, the engine of wealth, the engine of greatness. How would you have had Cicero? How would you have had the great Roman philosophers and thinkers? [...]

Pro-slavery ideology is also part of–at the same time it’s resistant to–the greatest product arguably of the Enlightenment, and that is the idea of natural rights; natural law, natural rights, rights by birth, rights from God, being born with certain capacities. Now pro-slavery writers were inspired by this to some extent, but many of them will simply convert it. They will convert it–they’ll take portions of John Locke that they like, and not the others–and they’ll say the real rule of the world is not natural equality, but it is natural inequality. Humans are not all born the same, with the same capacities, abilities.

Now, then there’s a whole array of economic arguments, and the cynic, the economic determinist, simply goes to the economic conclusions of pro-slavery and nowhere else. [...] “You will say that man cannot hold property in man. The answer is that he can, and actually does, hold property in his fellow, all over the world, in a variety of forms, and has always done so.” [...]

Some would get worried and they would discuss slavery as a necessary evil–this system entailed upon them. [...] “But the question is, in my present circumstances, with evil on my hands, entailed from my father, would the general interest of the slaves and community at large, with reference to the slaves, be promoted best by emancipation? Could I do more for the ultimate good of the slave population by holding or emancipating what I own?” [...] he develops a highly intricate theory of how he’s going to use slavery to save black people. He’s going to ameliorate their conditions, he’s going to make their slavery on his plantations so effective, so good, such a even joyous form of labor, that he will be doing God’s work by improving slavery.[...]

There are many pro-slavery writers who developed, like James Henry Hammond, what I would call the cynical or amoral form of pro-slavery argument; and this is a potent form of argument when you think about it. [...] “The only problem with slavery in America,” said James Henry Hammond, is that too damn many northerners didn’t understand it is the way of the world as it is, and they ought to stop talking about the world as it ought to be.” [...] “Is it not palpably nearer the truth to say that no man was ever born free and that no two men were ever born equal? Man is born in a state of the most helpless dependence on other people.”

And then there’s the whole vast category of racial defense and justification of slavery. [...] Probably the most prominent pro-slavery writer to make the racial case–and they all did–but probably the most prominent was George Fitzhugh. [...] “The Negro,” he said, “is but a grownup child and must be governed as a child. The master occupies toward him the place of parent or guardian. Like a wild horse he must be caught, tamed and domesticated.” [...]

And lastly, there was a kind of utopian pro-slavery. [...] In Hughes’s vision and Hughes’s worldview slavery was not only a positive good–it was the possibility of man finding a perfected society, with the perfect landowners fulfilling their obligations, supported by a government that taxed the hell out of them to do it, and perfect workers, would make the South into the agricultural utopian civilization of history.

It’s politically useful for pro-lifers to pretend that abortion and slavery were similar debates, and that the major argument for slavery was the claim that Africans were not people. But that’s simply not true.

(Note that in the lecture I’m quoting, Blight’s intent wasn’t making a case about abortion in either direction — Blight isn’t shading his arguments towards a pro-choice or pro-life outcome, he’s simply explaining the history of pro-slavery arguments. Can pro-lifers cite similarly non-biased sources to support their argument?)

See also: Ta-Nehisi.

* * *

P.S. I can’t resist pointing out that the first few arguments Blight lists — the institution goes back forever, it’s in the Bible, and it’s the foundation of civilization — are also the major arguments used in the present day to argue for banning same-sex couples from marriage.

So Steven Waldman of Beliefnet and Lord William Saletan went on Bloggingheads to discuss abortion, and how we can make the dirty tramps who have them stop. It’s a natural topic of conversation for two people with zero ovaries, fallopian tubes, uteruses, and vaginas between them; since they’ll never have to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term, Waldman and Saletan are free to discuss things logically and scientifically, free from concerns like, say, how this would actually affect a human being.

Remarkably, in a discussion including Saletan, Waldman managed to make the dumbest and most offensive argument: what if we paid those wanton slatterns to keep the precious baby growing inside of them?

Now I wonder, I know this is dangerous territory here, but I’m just kind of thinking out loud…I wonder if we should start thinking about financial incentives or help for women who decide to carry the baby to term.”

[...]

So maybe we ought to be saying to them, if it’s officially important for us as a society to reduce the number of abortions…maybe we should pay her a thousand dollars, uh, I don’t know what the right number is, because you don’t want to create a financial incentive for, uh, making babies.

Genius! The woman gets ten honeybees, the patriarchal society gets its precious, precious baby, and everything is swell. It’s logically air-tight, except for the part of the stuff where he said all about…uh…things.

Before we take this apart on philosophical grounds, let’s first go over the basic argument: we’re going to give women money to continue with a pregnancy she would have aborted. Okay. Well, since we live in a country with de jure legal abortions, every pregnancy can be terminated. So we just agreed to pay every woman who gives birth $1000 cash money. In 2005, there were 4,138,349 live births in America. Presumably, this proposal would increase those numbers, and the numbers are just naturally going up anyway, so let’s say this gets us to a robust 5 million kids a year. At $1000 a kid, that’s a measly $5 billion a year in child bonuses! Pocket change. I mean, sure, it’s just $2 billion less than we give the EPA, but compared to the $660 billion we spent on defense, that’s nothing!

Then again, coming up with $5 billion a year will require higher taxes eventually, and if you hate abortion, you probably hate taxes even more. So somehow, we’re going to have to narrow this down a bit. Why not eliminate married women from the payout? I mean, every child born to a married couple is a loving gift from God, and therefore no married woman has ever had an abortion, so there we go! Now, some naysayers will say nay, that would encourage women and men to postpone marriage until after they had kids so that they can qualify for the child bonus, but that’s just crazy talk.

Maybe we could ask women if they were going to have an abortion, and if they say, “no,” we could simply not pay them. Brilliant! Nobody would lie for $1000. It’s foolproof!

Okay, now that we’ve reduced the cost to $4 billion or so, we run into our next problem: the .000002% of the recipients of the bonus who actually were swayed from aborting are now going into labor, and they just realized that the copay for giving birth is, like, much more than $1000. And that’s the ones who have insurance. They tell all their slutty friends who are cursed with God’s judgment, and now their friends all want to get abortions again! It’s crazy, I know, but given the expense of labor and delivery and having to pay for an actual child (assuming these children aren’t all given up for adoption, which they wouldn’t be), $1000 is absolutely nothing. (This shouldn’t be surprising; the going rate for surrogates is roughly $20,000 — which is probably lower than it should be, considering the health risks of pregnancy. Of course, that would have our plan costing around $100 billion a year, or about the size of the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security, Energy, Agriculture, and Justice combined.) 

And not for nothing, but $1000 certainly not much of an incentive for women who are, one remembers, already paying easily that much to have abortions – which tends to suggest that the financial implications of childbirth are not the most pressing on women looking to abort anyhow. 

So to recap the plan: we’re going to increase the out-of-wedlock birthrate, encourage women to lie, and pay too little to actually affect the abortion rate whatsoever. It’s a remarkable plan, I don’t know why anti-choicers haven’t thought of this before.

Now, obviously, this plan simply wouldn’t work, but frankly, that’s not the worst part of it. The worst part, of course, is that it’s essentially treating the woman as a rent-a-uterus, a thing that must be placated just long enough to extract the thing of value, the baby, from her. It’s dehumanizing, and it’s demeaning, and it ignores all the problems with actually being pregnant that most women, bless them, soldier through in order to have a child. It’s arduous, dangerous work, which is why people of decent character generally think that we should do what we can to make the work voluntary — to allow women to decide for themselves whether to take on the burden of carrying a pregnancy to term — and to allow them to opt out should they decide, even after they start, that they do not want to continue.

Of course, thinking that requires one to recognize that the work women do in carrying on our species’ existence is tremendously valuable and difficult, and something that they, as humans, should be lauded for. But when your view of pregnancy values the potential human within far more than the actual human without, it’s hard to recognize that. And easy to think that the husk which contains the precious child can be bought off with 15 cents per hour for nine months of ’round the clock work. The husk isn’t that important, you see. It’s just a woman.

Under rules of engagement developed in the Bush Administration, we can waterboard Scott Roeder:

The man charged with murdering a high-profile abortion doctor claimed from his jail cell Sunday that similar violence was planned around the nation for as long as the procedure remained legal, a threat that comes days after a federal investigation launched into his possible accomplices.

A Justice Department spokesman said the threat was being taken seriously and additional protection had been ordered for abortion clinics last week. But a leader of the anti-abortion movement derided the accused shooter as “a fruit and a lunatic.”

So I’m sure the right will join me in calling for torture “enhanced interrogation techniques” to be used against Roeder, just to see what he’s up to.

What? No takers?

Funny, isn’t it? When the terrorist isn’t brown, the bloodlust just isn’t as fun for you guys.

(Click on the cartoon to see a larger version.)

Thanks to Mandolin for suggesting the inset panel at the end.

This cartoon talks about the perils of even trying to tell stories about the work that people do, at great risk to themselves, to help women achieve reproductive justice. Via silk_noir.

**

And this one — which is much more uplifting, and which I have now watched three times — is a video of a number of GLBTQQI (and allies?) teenagers lipsynching to Lily Allen’s “Fuck You Very Much” as a response to prop h8 being upheld. I particularly enjoy the use of phallic popsicles to create imagery that can be used as a weapon against bigots. Via ktsparrow.

UPDATE: Watching this second video a fourth and fifth times, it really grinds home to me how much the people in this video are the kind of people I consider “my people.” It’s beyond me how anyone can look at such joyful profusion, so much color and joy in the way they dress and act and exist, and see something threatening or disgusting.

Yet I know they do. When I was a teenager, my presentation — though abnormal for teenagers — was never enough to unsettle adults. In fact, I probably dressed in a more adult-friendly way than most teens. Long skirts, pseudo-professional clothes, often bizarrely formal for a high school student. But my friends didn’t.

There was one girl I spent a lot of time with. A pixie-like joy of a person, Dawna, who wore her blonde hair almost totally shaved, and strung chains on her jeans. People who saw her knew there was something unusual about her. They didn’t take joy in her oddness, in her willingness to sing in the middle of the street, in her humor, in her desire to leave strange and beautiful things in public places for strangers to find and puzzle over. They shouted “dyke!” at her from car windows; they deployed store guards to follow her around; they sneered and snarled.

When I was 17 and Dawna was 15, she went out with me and started acting very strange. “Is she on meth or something?” a friend of mine asked. I said, “I’m sure she isn’t” — but I was wrong. She was on meth. She called me that night, crying. She’d been taking a lot of drugs for a long time — to try to deal with the pain of her isolation, the pain of how people pricked and pained her, and othered her, and told her she was nothing.

I told her I’d help. I arranged for her to be transferred to my high school and set her up with the teachers who’d been best for me. Nothing worked; the teachers who were more than happy to deal with my casual attitude toward authority had no tools in their kits to handle a girl who was too depressed to go to class. I’d thought they would recognize in her, as they had in me, independence and intelligence. I suppose they did. But even if they wanted to, there was nothing they could do.

I always worried Dawna would die. I thought she would overdose or commit suicide. When I read a few years ago that she was dead, and the obituary hinted at a cause of death that couldn’t be announced to potentially scandalized ears, I knew I was right.

She was twenty-two.

Dawna lived twenty-two years in the toxic hatred of our homophobic, gender policing, joy-killing world. And then it murdered her.

When people stand with bigots to say that gay marriage is an evil to society — when they agree gay people should be excluded on the basis of their sexuality — when they doubt gay people’s goodness or morality — they contribute to the deaths of people like Dawna. Yes, I do mean you, individual Alas commenter who may be a good person in other ways. You participate in a culture that kills people like my friend, and “fuck you very much” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

I hope that someday people will realize what they’re doing when they vote and act hatred. In the meantime, I can only be glad that there are still colorful, inspiring, joyous, unique people in the world, and try to give those people my love and support.

George Tiller was shot and killed today. Shot while he ushered a service at the church he attends.

It’s fitting, because for decades, he had done the Lord’s work.http://www.amptoons.com/blog/

George Tiller was the medical director at Women’s Health Care Services Clinic in Wichita, Kansas. The clinic provided reproductive health care, including abortion services into the third trimester. It was this that made Tiller a marked man; the fact that he had the temerity to provide legal medical services for women drove the anti-abortion movement crazy. He was shot in 1993, but stubbornly refused to give in to terrorism. He simply went on, providing medical care for women in difficult situations, walking boldly through the throng of detractors and haters, people who would rather women died on the table from complications of pregnancy than receive care from a medical professional.

Today, a killer ended Tiller’s life, and sent a signal to all providers of abortion services that they are not safe either. It is classic terrorism, the use of violence to achieve a political aim. The despicable Randall Terry of Operation Rescue chose to take the occasion of Tiller’s death to note that the doctor was a “mass-murderer,” adding, “I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; [sic] murder.”

Tiller was not a mass-murderer, no matter what the Randall Terrys of the world may claim. He was a doctor, one who helped women through a difficult procedure. He sacrificed his life today because he was unwilling to step aside, to let women’s rights die at the threat of violence. May all of us who believe in a woman’s right to choose honor Dr. Tiller with the same steadfast resolve; terrorism works only when we surrender to fear. And the terrorist who committed this act (and the anti-choice cheerleaders who encouraged and endore it) must not be allowed victory.

If I ever have the “pleasure” of having a pro-life individual in my house for lunch who won’t stop using the word “child” to refer to fetuses, I fully plan to serve everyone else apples, and give them an apple seed, and tell them that since they can’t tell the difference, I figured they wouldn’t mind.

Grumble. Internets. Someone wrong on. And so on.

The anti-choice activists have completely dispensed with reality, and have gone on to just making stuff up:

The Obama administration’s actions to respond to the outbreak of swine flu, including its declaration of a public health emergency, smacks of an attempt to cover up this week’s Senate vote on the confirmation of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) as secretary of Health and Human Services, a prominent anti-abortion-rights activist told the Washington Independent.

“Some people think that declaring a state of emergency about the flu was a political thing to push the Sebelius nomination through,” Concerned Women for America President Wendy Wright told the website’s Dave Weigel.

Okay, it’s tempting to think that’s just a bit of isolated wingnuttery from the CWA, but apparently it isn’t:

Look likes like the swine-flu-response-equals-cover-up-for-Sebelius meme is working quickly through the right wing. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins weighed in via an e-mail sent to supporters Monday. “[L]iberals are already scheming how they can use the health scare to win the confirmation of pro-abortion extremist Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kans.) as Secretary of Health and Human Services,” he writes

Just who are these liberals who confide the truth about their secret conspiracies to prominent national conservative leaders? Perkins leaves us hanging on that one.

That is surprising — when you’re that deep into tinfoil hat territory, it’s usually easiest just to start making more stuff up. I would blame George Soros, myself — he’s usually to blame.

At any rate, what the anti-choicers expect you to believe is that the United States only is concerned about a flu outbreak and possible epidemic in a country that sits on our southern border because it allows them to get Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, D-Kan., into the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services approximately one week earlier than they otherwise could.

That’s a pretty lame conspiracy. Unless….

…Unless maybe, what they’re saying is that Barack HUSSEIN Obama secretly engineered the flu virus and started spreading it in Mexico, so that he could get Sebelius through to get mandatory, free, universal abortion going even sooner! Yes, it’s all so clear now. Wheels within wheels, man, wheels within wheels.

I just read this on Pandagon and had a sense of “Oh! Oh! Ohmigod! Oh!” — not so much because of it’s analysis of the breastfeeding issue speficially, but because I’d never thought of this aspect of how the middle class works before. For me, it was very enlightening, and just in case it works like that for anyone else, I thought I’d pass it on.

But it’s also because breast feeding advocacy has been structured around what Barbara Ehrenreich called the “fear of falling”—since middle class people don’t inherit wealth, but they do inherit opportunities, recreating the middle class every generation requires hard work and competition with each other. So parents are deeply invested in getting an edge for their children, and every little thing starts to loom large as the very trick that will put your kids a leg up over everyone else. That’s the carrot—and the stick is the fear that if you skip any of these crucial steps, your child will fail to recreate your middle class life. Breast-feeding also gives people the feeling of control over the situation, and it’s obvious that anything that can be packaged to give middle class parents the feeling that they know best and that they and only they have the power to set their children on the right path will be eaten with a spoon. (That’s why anti-vaccination sentiment—or even the unscientific “spacing the schedule” soft version—is so popular, despite being routinely disproven by science.)

In particular, this part — “since middle class people don’t inherit wealth, but they do inherit opportunities, recreating the middle class every generation requires hard work and competition with each other.” — was an enormous OH! moment for me.

–

Edited to add: Oh, and inasmuch as it matters what my take is on the breastfeeding issue (which is to say, probably not much), I’d like to second Chingona on what she said at Pandagon:

if we go too far in casting this as a purely individual decision, incentives to provide accommodations wither away and women actually end up with no real “choice” in the matter. That’s the situation many poor women and even middle-class women find themselves in right now, and I don’t think there’s anything feminist about enabling that status quo.

I actually think this should be the focus of the majority of feminist blogosphere conversations on breastfeeding. There may be some benefits to formula feeding for mothers who think that it may enhance egalitarianism in *their* (emphasis their) relationships, or for mothers who don’t want to breastfeed — not to mention those who can’t! But there are also definite, proven benefits to breastfeeding, and women of all classes, in all situations, should have access to them. There may be bad feelings going on for both sides of the Mommy War in this mess, but it seems like the structural issues are real screw yous to those choosing to breastfeed — who are challenged on their right to do it in public, and whose livelihoods are structured in such a way so as to make real choice impossible.

I suspect this is actually why breastfeeding advocates sometimes go too far with their rhetoric. They want to impress upon the public *just how necessary* breastfeeding is so that the public will be willing to try to help them ameliorate the structural issues that make breastfeeding difficult. I know personally that I’m appalled by how many of my otherwise-liberal acquaintances recoil at the notion of women breastfeeding toddlers. Those people need to understand that such breastfeeding has been a norm in certain times and places, and that it has benefits. They represent only one segment of an ignorant public that needs education.

So, since the breastfeeding advocates are arguing with such high stakes — stakes that affect real mothers and real children — I think it becomes easy to slip into rhetoric that contributes to the concept of total motherhood perfection. And I do sometimes feel alienated by that rhetoric, as a woman who doesn’t even have children, but who’s thinking about potentially not breastfeeding if I do.

But Chingona’s right in the core of what she says. All that’s basically an interesting, but superfluous, derailment from the real feminist heart of this issue, which should be making sure that as many women as possible have structural access to breastfeeding.

OK, that turned out longer than my original post. Sorry about that.

A few months after my boys were born I stumbled across a message board for twin moms, I really started to enjoy the tips and the sense of community that I gained from reading and posting on the site.  One of the things I enjoyed most was the forum for breastfeeding mothers, which gave me a strong sense of belonging and encouragement, and at that time, I needed encouragement.  Breastfeeding was and is a struggle for me.  I don’t know how things would be different if I was trying to feed only one baby, but I know breastfeeding two babies is one of the hardest things I have done.  While the Mommy message board is a great source of support for breastfeeding, it’s also a place where many of the most contentious elements of motherhood and womanhood are laid bare.  Sometimes it’s the stereotypical Mommy Wars– women in the paid labor force and women not in the paid labor force– but one of the more contentious debates is the bottle vs. breast debate.

As Hugo points out one subset of the Mommy Wars, is the “boob wars”:

And I’ve become aware of what might, for lack of a better term, be called the “boob war” — a sub-conflict within the larger “Mommy War” that continues to rage, exasperating and frightening and dividing women. And into this fight comes a bombshell article in the new Atlantic Monthly: Hanna Rosin’s The Case Against Breastfeeding. More on the article later. (Cap taps, belatedly and with apologies, to Rod Dreher and to Scott.)

The term “Mommy Wars” generally refers to the public and private debates, common among the middle and upper-middle classes of the developed world, about what makes a “good” mother. For years, the chief front in these wars has been the battle over daycare and work outside the home, though other conflicts rage in areas like nutrition and natural childbirth….

I read the Rosin piece; someone posted it on the twin Mommy board.  I felt a great deal of sympathy for the mother who posted it.  She said it helped her to feel less guilt about not breastfeeding, and from that point a discussion ensued with many formula feeding mother’s talking about how they feel that breastfeeding mothers are looking upon them unfavorably.

I’ll be frank; I don’t like the article, but there is one part of the article that stands out as true to me¹ :

In her critique of the awareness campaign, Joan Wolf, a women’s-studies professor at Texas A&M University, chalks up the overzealous ads to a new ethic of “total motherhood.” Mothers these days are expected to “optimize every dimension of children’s lives,” she writes. Choices are often presented as the mother’s selfish desires versus the baby’s needs.

I have a great deal of empathy with mothers today who are striving to mother under a mothering ideology that demands perfection.  What I also find fascinating is how both breastfeeding and formula feeding mothers really have the same underlying feelings; both groups feeling that their decision on infant feeding is not respected.  Anytime these kinds of issues come up the Mommy board mantra is “do what works for you” “don’t judge each other’s parenting.”  The down side is that this places limitations on honest communications between these mothers, and the upside is that mother’s, who are already operating under ideology that demands parenting perfection, feel validated.

Nevertheless, topics like this are hotly contested on Mommy boards, and one thing I find most fascinating is that many Mommies blame each other, not the dominant ideology.  Here’s how I respond to the debate over this article on the Mommy board:

Women’s “choices” are often very heavily scrutinized, I wouldn’t say it’s primarily from women but from the entire society, and the hidden radical feminist in me says it’s because women as a class are not truly free. Every behavior that we engage in is held to a different set of standards than our male counterparts, and as you say we damned if we do and damned if we don’t. The can be extended to the abortion debate, the SAHM (stay at home mom) vs. working mom debate, debates over women and domestic violence, debates over women and plastic surgery, debates over hormone replacement therapy, and the list could go on and on. And I guess what bothers me is that we consistently divide women into dichotomies–e.i. virgins/w*hores, good girls and bad girls, bi*ches and nice girls. Thus, all of our behaviors are viewed in this context. I use the term choices loosely because I think that society convinces us that we have more choices than we really do. So many of our behaviors (or “choices”) occur in a societal context where we are so heavily scrutinized that our freedom is limited. It’s limited by peer pressure, it’s limited by sexism; it’s limited by patriarchal ideology; it’s limited by bottom line capitalism; it’s limited by racism; it’s limited by poverty; and I’m sure I could come up with a host of other factors that tell us “choices” are not just personal decisions.

Unfortunately this is where this crabs in a barrel problem comes in because we all feel heavily scrutinized but rather than blaming the social system that creates this mess we blame each other, and no matter what our so called “choice,” the constraints on our full personhood are still there.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also say that constraints on mothering are radically different in diverse groups of women.  For example, the breastfeeding vs. formula feeding debate has much different meaning for middle and upper income white women living in the US than it does for poor women of color in developing countries.  The the structures of gender, race, class, sexuality, and nationhood operate simultaneously.

I’m not one who think women all have to tow the line and agree with each other, but what gets lost in translation is how social forces much greater than us shape our “choices” to formula feed, breastfeed, or combo feed our kids.

1. I have several critiques of the Atlantic Monthly article that I would like to touch on in another post. (back)

You know, I’m really glad that the Republican party picked a pro-choice Republican to serve as RNC chair:

Michael Steele: The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life, or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life. So, you know, I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other.

Lisa DePaulo: Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?

Steele: Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.

DePaulo:You do?

Steele: Yeah. Absolutely.

Now, I agree with this wholeheartedly, but that’s because I’m a pro-choice Democrat. The Republican Party is not, last I checked, a pro-choice party. That’s one of the reasons I’m not a part of it. Steele later in the interview seemed to try to walk his statement back (he believes abortion is a right, but that right should be left up to the states, or something), but my guess is that the damage is done here.

Up to this point, I’ve tended to think that Steele would survive this current rough spot; no matter how incompetent he is, I can’t see the GOP firing its first African-American chair. Easing him out after a year or so? Sure. But firing him? No way.

After this, though, I think Steele’s days are numbered. No matter how Steele tries to walk this back, he’s on record saying a woman should have a right to choose — a right that the GOP strongly wants to deny women (except, of course, women they know). I think that we’re going to see open rebellion in the anti-choice wing, and I think Steele is probably done for.

And it’s too bad. Because I think he’s been doing a great job. But again, I’m a Democrat.

(Richard mentioned this as an intro to a post earlier this week, but I thought the event needed a post of its own).

From Time, and via Scott, who describes this as “the moral low ground.”

Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well.[...]

The case has caused a furor. Abortion is illegal in Brazil except in cases of rape or when the mother’s life is in danger, both of which apply in this case. (The girl’s immature hips would have made labor dangerous; the Catholic opinion was that she could have had a cesarean section.) When the incident came to light in local newspapers, the Church first asked a judge to halt the process and then condemned those involved, including the 9-year-old’s distraught mother. Even Catholic Brazilians were shocked at the harshness of the archbishop’s actions.

Cara says that as far as she can tell the rapist hasn’t been excommunicated.

Brazil is a pro-lifer’s paradise in many ways; the country, which is 75% Catholic, has strict abortion bans. So how well has that worked out for them? Has making abortion illegal caused it to become rare? Not exactly:

Although abortion is illegal, an estimated 1 million women each year have one. The poor are forced into clandestine clinics or take medication, while the better-off are treated by qualified physicians at well-appointed surgeries known to anyone with money and overlooked by colluding authorities.

That secrecy has a price. More than 200,000 women each year are treated in public hospitals for complications arising from illegal abortions, according to Health Ministry figures.

This is the dirty little secret of the pro-life movement: Their policies don’t reduce abortion much.

It’s not a secret which countries in the world have the lowest abortion rates — and it’s not Brazil, or any of the other countries where pro-lifers have gotten the laws they want. The exceptionally low abortion rates are in countries like Belgium, where demand for abortion has been driven down by a combination of a strong social welfare state for single mothers, excellent sex ed, and lots and lots and lots of contraception.

We could have it both ways. We can have the reproductive freedom pro-choicers want; and we can also have the low abortion rate pro-lifers say they want. (I once figured out, in a back-of-the-envelope calculation, that if the US’s abortion rates were as low as Belgium’s, that would mean 700,000 fewer abortions a year.) This is truly an issue where both sides could get what they want. But this grand compromise won’t work and will never happen, because although pro-lifers may want low abortion rates, they don’t want them nearly as much as they want to control women’s bodies — and the bodies of nine-year-old girls.

(The article also mentions a Protestant church which has been running pro-choice ads, by the way. So yay for them.)

UPDATE: From Elkins and others in comments:

The unrepentant archbishop said overnight the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the Church.

Although the man allegedly committed, “a heinous crime, the abortion - the elimination of an innocent life - was more serious.”

Thank goodness we have the Church to provide us with moral leadership. Otherwise we might think that raping a child was somehow worse than giving an 80-pound nine-year-old a possibly lifesaving abortion.

Author’s Note: This post at Feministe–about the Catholic Church’s excommunication of the mother of a nine-year-old girl who became pregnant with twins, apparently after having been raped by her step-father, and the doctors who performed the abortion that ended the girl’s pregnancy–has been roiling me since I read it. It did, though, put me in mind of a post of my own, “Know Thine Enemy: Fetal Personhood as Metaphorical Thinking,” that seems relevant to me in thinking about the religious (implicit and explicit) opposition to legalized abortion. I want to say up front something that I also say very late in the post, i.e. that I am aware that there are progressive Catholics working very hard and with real integrity against the sexism and misogyny in the Church, and my purpose in this piece is not to trash Catholics or Catholicism. Rather, I am trying to tease out one strand of thinking that seems to me quite present in much anti-abortion thinking and activism, as it relates to Christianity. I posted this originally in 2006 and so some of the legislative news that it refers to is dated. I have not edited the piece much, however–except to correct a confusion in the original between the immaculate conception and the virgin birth (and I hope I got it right this time)–because, while the introduction is long, I think it is still important to work through before getting to my main argument.

I have wanted to write about this for a while, now, ever since I read through the thread called (Very) Basic Economics and Abortion over at Alas. Since then, though, a number of things have happened: the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case concerning so-called “partial-birth abortions,” South Dakota has passed the most restrictive law in the country against abortion, Utah has a proposed law that would eliminate incest exceptions in its parental notification law, and I have been in another conversation, What If Your Mother Was Pro-Choice, on Alas, the initial post of which concerned a common strategy used by people who are anti-choice to try to silence those of us who are pro-choice: what would have happened if your mother had chosen to have an abortion instead of giving birth to you?

At one point the thread became a conversation about whether the virgin birth was an instance of divine rape or not (start reading here). This was relevant because it went to the question of what it means for women to have real choice in terms of pregnancy and childbirth—which also means in terms of when and whether and under what conditions to have sex—and, though I don’t remember that this point was brought out explicitly, to the question of what we model our understanding of women’s reproductive choice on. (I have italicized this because it will become important later on, towards the end of what I want to say.) What I want to do here is to try to tie all these various things together under the title I have given this post because I think it goes to the heart of understanding a rarely articulated aspect of what is at stake in the anti-choice position, whether it is articulated in explicitly religious terms or not, and because, under the general strategy of “know thine enemy,” I think this is an important understanding to reach. It’s going to take a while, and I’m going to have to make a number of leaps, to get where I want to go in this, so I hope you will bear with me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Edited to add: Author’s Preface: I see each post in this series as one section of a single piece of writing, not as a discrete essay unto itself. As a result, while each section may contain its own argument, it is not really possible to know whether an issue that you feel is important will or will not be left out of the argument made by the entire piece if you’ve only read a part of the series. I certainly do not mean this caveat to be, in any way, an inoculation against critique, but given the modular nature of posting to blogs and of how blogs are read, it is a caveat I’d like you to keep in mind if you find yourself wondering, and commenting on, why I have not addressed something you feel needs to be addressed. Thanks.

///

To protect the privacy of the individuals involved, some names have been changed and some identifying details have been fictionalized.

Where I lived in the early 1970s, sixth grade was when boys got to see the movie–or maybe it was a narrated film strip with line drawings–about erections, nocturnal emissions, menstrual periods and such (girls got to see it in fifth grade). Seventh grade, if I remember correctly, was when they started teaching about sex itself, which I assume would have included a discussion of birth control, though I am not sure, since a paperwork mix-up placed me in the health class that did not include sex education. So I know I did not learn about birth control there; nor, I am equally sure, did I learn about it in the yeshiva I started attending when I was in eighth grade, where the only classroom-based “sex education” I remember receiving was in Rabbi W’s all-boy gemara class. He would preach at us week after week about the evils of co-ed dancing–it was the season of sweet 16 parties for the girls–and explain how it inevitably lead to unwanted teenage pregnancy. (The boys and girls watch each other dancing, you see, and then they want to slow dance, and so they are touching each other, and then one thing leads to another and, sooner or later they find someplace dark, and before you know it, her belly is big and both their lives are ruined.) My classmates and I talked about sex, of course, but since none of us were even thinking about actually having it, what we talked about tended to be theoretical and had little do with practicalities like preventing an unwanted pregnancy. Three incidents of such talking stand out in my memory, from 8th, 9th and 10th grades respectively.

I first learned about the baseball-diamond-as-metaphor-for-sex in 8th grade, because the big question was whether or not, at someone’s bar mitzvah to which I had not been invited, Robert “got to second” with Sharon over or under the shirt. “Over or under,” of course, was a huge question, one that my classmates pondered at great length, wondering why she would let him get that far, how cool it was that he could get her to let him get that far; or maybe he didn’t have to do all that much persuading, maybe underneath the “good girl” image that Sharon so carefully cultivated was a whole other person that those of us who knew her only in school had never met; and did this make her a “slut,” and how, precisely, did getting that far, did her letting him get that far, obligate him to her in terms of commitment; and what the hell–some people were smart enough to ask–did commitment mean in ninth grade anyway?

I could not imagine why what Robert and Sharon did or did not do with each other was anyone else’s business, nor did I think that the question of when a girl stepped over the line and became a “slut” was anything other than stupid, but I was new to the school, though, which meant no one thought my opinion mattered very much, and so I was almost never included in these conversations. Still, I do remember one time that I spoke up, asking–in response to I don’t remember what–some far-less-articulate version of the following questions: The whole point of touching a girl’s breasts is to bring her pleasure, right? What is wrong with Sharon wanting that pleasure or with Robert wanting to give it to her? And why are we talking about it like Robert was running bases and Sharon was playing (ineffective) defense? You make it sound like sex is a competition that the girl has to pretend to lose, just a little bit at a time, in order for both people to get what they want.

I was not naive. I knew that boys did in fact put “notches on their bedposts” depending on how far they got with any particular girl, and I understood that girls who went too far put that hard-to-pin-down thing called their reputation at great risk. I knew these things, however, as facts, and while I accepted them as information I needed to know about how the world worked, I did not really understand them, and, more to the point, I did not like them. Anyway, no one said anything when I was finished talking. All I have is a picture of my classmates’ faces turned towards me in a momentary, non-comprehending stare, and then they turned back towards each other and continued talking in the terms that were relevant to them.

The second talking-about-sex moment that I remember from yeshiva happened when I was in 9th. The boys in my class were scheduled to take a trip to the very famous Lakewood Yeshiva in New Jersey. I don’t remember why I didn’t go, but I was the only boy in my grade in school that day, and so, since our religious classes were all canceled–it would not have occurred to the administration to send me to class with the girls–I spent the morning shooting hoops in the gym. (The day was split: religious classes in the morning, secular classes in the afternoon.) After lunch, the girls and I decided we would cut classes for the rest of the day. After all, how much teaching would go on with more than half the class missing? So we went out to the back of the school, where one of the girls pulled out a copy of the Ann Landers sex test that had recently been published in one of the local newspapers. (What looks like the version of the test that the girls and I were talking about, can, if you’re willing to wade through some religious self-righteousness, be found here.)

We cut our first period class, which might have been math, talking and laughing about what was, for most of us at the time, the entirely theoretical nature of the items on the test; and we were doing absolutely nothing that would have been considered inappropriate anywhere other than an orthodox yeshiva, where the simple fact of our being alone together was cause for concern. Because of what could happen–remember Rabbi W’s worries over co-ed dancing–if we lost control of ourselves. Because of how, even though we were doing nothing but talking, it would look to an outsider that we are alone together in the first place. Then, just as second period English was about to begin, one of the girls who had gone inside to use the bathroom came running out to tell us that the boys were had returned. Apparently, they had stopped to get a blessing from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the most important rabbis of the 20th century. He gave them the blessing, they got back in their bus to go to Lakewood, and the bus broke down, forcing them to return to school. We ran into the building, rushed upstairs and, remarkably, made it to second period English on time, though it was only a few minutes into Mrs. Lynch’s lesson before Rabbi S burst into the classroom, pointed one by one to each of the girls and said, “You! Out!”

When he did not point to me, I thought perhaps I had escaped detection, but he came back a few minutes later, flung the door open with the same law-enforcement air about him, pointed to me and said, “You too!”

We were suspended, the girls and I, not only for cutting class, and not only because the idea of one boy and twelve girls hanging out alone in the back of the school was unseemly, but also, and to some administrators most importantly, because we had been talking about sex. When we were told that, before we’d be allowed back into class, our parents would have to come in to speak personally with Rabbi S, who was only available in the afternoons, I had to ask if my mother, since she worked, could come in the morning to speak with Rabbi F, the dean of the school. You would have thought that speaking to the Dean would be more serious than speaking to the principal of secular studies, but when my mother came in, all Rabbi F said was, “Mrs. Louras [her name from her second marriage], Richard is a real mensch, a wonderful boy. He made a terrible mistake, but we’re sure he’ll never do it again.” That was it. He and my mother exchanged some pleasantries, told me to go back to my class, and wished her a good rest of the day. My mother, who couldn’t imagine why they were making such a big deal out of the whole situation, collapsed laughing against the wall just outside the school entrance. “Remind me,” she said, “Why were you suspended again?” (To be fair, it’s not that my mother did not think I should be punished for cutting class, but she could not imagine that I was being suspended for a first offense or that the “real” problem, as it had been explained to her, was that I’d been alone with the girls and that we were talking about sex.)

I find it hard to believe that Rabbi F did not say more because he did not know why I had been suspended; nor do I think he did not consider my “offense” a very serious one. Most likely, he was just uncomfortable talking about such things with a woman, especially a woman like my mother, who in her jeans and one-button-too-many-undone button down shirt, her long denim frock coat and her afro, did not at all fit the image of the nice, middle-class Jewish mother with whom he was used to dealing. He never said anything else about the incident to me, either, but an incident that sticks in my head as somehow connected this episode took place later that year. Rabbi F pulled me aside one day while my class was in the library and, speaking very softly, indicated with this chin a new girl in the class whose boyfriend everyone knew was not Jewish. (Indeed, it had been the boyfriend who encouraged her to go to yeshiva so she could learn about her heritage.) He said something about her being a very nice girl, and attractive, and how it was a shame that she was dating a non-Jewish boy. Maybe–and I wish I could remember the exact words he used, because I remember thinking even at the time how absolutely precious his phrasing was–I could get friendly with her, not too friendly, mind you, but friendly enough that she would see just how much Jewish boys had to offer her. I refused, of course, and I think this may be the first time I am telling this story to anyone.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author’s Preface: I see each post in this series as one section of a single piece of writing, not as a discrete essay unto itself. As a result, while each section may contain its own argument, it is not really possible to know whether an issue that you feel is important will or will not be left out of the argument made by the entire piece if you’ve only read a part of the series. I certainly do not mean this caveat to be, in any way, an inoculation against critique, but given the modular nature of posting to blogs and of how blogs are read, it is a caveat I’d like you to keep in mind if you find yourself wondering, and commenting on, why I have not addressed something you feel needs to be addressed. Thanks.

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To protect the privacy of the individuals involved, some names have been changed and some identifying details have been fictionalized.

Recent events in my life have started me thinking deeply, for the first time in many years, about condoms and what it means to use them. Not that I have failed to take condoms seriously. I have worn them when I needed to, refused to have intercourse when they were not available, and I have a ten-year-old son who knows what condoms are and why, all else being equal, everyone who has sex should use them. I am, though, also old enough to remember (and boy does it feel strange to use that expression) when safe sex was pretty much exclusively about birth control. I might have learned that using condoms would help keep me from catching or transmitting gonorrhea or syphilis, the only two STDs I knew about at the time, but I’m not sure. Instead, the focus in my sexual education when I reached puberty was on the need for a young couple planning to have non-procreational sex to do everything they could to prevent the woman from becoming pregnant, and that meant, for men, being willing to wear a condom unless the woman was on the pill, using a diaphragm or had an IUD.

It did not occur to me that there might be more to pre-AIDS male heterosexual responsibility than simply keeping a barrier between my semen and the body of the woman in whom I would otherwise have left it until I was having sex regularly with a woman I thought I was falling in love with–we were each in our early 20s and using only condoms–and I realized I did not know what she would do, or even what she thought she would do, if she became pregnant. Condoms, after all, do fail. I was as certain as I could be that I did not want to become a father, but I was also certain that the ultimate choice of what to do if she did become pregnant was hers. So, if a condom did fail, it suddenly occurred to me, and she decided not to have an abortion, I would be a father whether I wanted to or not. I knew I’d do my best to live up to the responsibilities that fatherhood would bring with it, but I did not think my relationship with that woman would survive. Not only would I have resented her for having made the decision that made me a father, but I did not yet know if the love I was beginning to feel for her was, as they say, a love that would last, and having to be parents to a child–forget whether or not we would have, or could have, gotten married–was not the circumstance under which I wanted to find out.

I will not retell here the story of what happened when I tried to talk to my girlfriend about my concerns, except to say that I was completely unprepared for her to tell me she had no idea what she would do if she got pregnant. It wasn’t that I expected her to know with 100% certainty what action she would take, or that I was looking for some kind of contractual agreement that would insulate me if she at first said she would have an abortion and then changed her mind; nor was I thinking that the only answer acceptable to me was the one I hoped she would give, i.e., that she would have an abortion. What I wanted, first and foremost, was that we should talk, openly and honestly, and then, once each of us knew where the other stood, we could make a decision about what we should do in response. It had never entered my mind, though, that the person who would be pregnant if pregnancy happened would even think about starting to have sex without some sense of what she would do.

Given that my girlfriend had not thought about this, or at the very least was unwilling to tell me what she thought about this, I did not see how we could continue having sex, or, to be more precise, how I could continue having sex, knowing first that our fucking put me at risk of becoming an unwilling father and, second, that if I did become an unwilling father, it would probably mean the end of our relationship. I’d been very happy with the sex we were having before we started fucking; I assumed my girlfriend felt the same way; and I saw nothing wrong with rolling things back to our pre-intercourse days until we were able to talk about this. I wanted to be with her, plain and simple, and that desire far outweighed for me the pleasures of putting my latex-covered penis in her vagina. So, more or less–at my insistence, not hers–we stopped fucking.

That “more or less,” of course, is important. Sometimes I was the one who initiated the sex we had, and sometimes she was; and I honestly don’t remember how many times “sometimes” actually means, but I am sure it was not a lot, at least not relative to how often we’d been fucking before we had this conversation. I also remember nothing of what we said to each other after these instances of “falling off the wagon,” though I am pretty sure that neither of us reproached the other. I do remember, though, that after each of those times I would tell myself it was the last one, and that I was disappointed in myself when that proved not to be the case.

Eventually–I don’t remember how much time passed exactly–my girlfriend told me she’d decided that if she got pregnant she would have an abortion, and we started having intercourse regularly again. Years later, however, in the fourth or fifth year of our relationship, in one of those let’s-talk-about-our-history-together conversations, she told me that she’d lied to me, that she’d always known she would not have an abortion if she got pregnant, and that she’d thought my plan had been to withhold intercourse as a way of pressuring her into having sex with no strings attached. She’d only said she would have an abortion, she explained, because she’d been convinced I was going to leave her if she did not eventually give me what she thought I wanted. She then went on to tell me that she’d realized a while back that she’d been wrong, that I had in fact been sincere in everything I told her, even if I had not always practiced what I’d been preaching. Indeed, given my behavior (I was not then, and I am not now, particularly proud of the “more or less” at the end of the paragraph before last) it’s hard to blame her for thinking the way she did. It didn’t, and doesn’t matter that I was not the only one who initiated the fucking we did when we were supposed to be abstaining. Every time I allowed it to happen, I was acting like the manipulative hypocrite she initially thought I was.

My girlfriend was right about one thing, though. I really wanted to mean what I said when I told her that it was more important to me not to put our relationship unnecessarily at risk than it was for me to have intercourse with her, and I really wanted to mean it when I said that stepping back from the fucking we were doing would not diminish either the pleasure or the meaningfulness of the sex we had. I was not a man who saw fucking as a way of accumulating notches on my belt; I did not, or at least I thought I did not, feel the connection between fucking and manhood that so many of my friends seemed to feel, whether they were out getting laid as often as they could or involved in a serious relationship. Sex, I thought I believed, was simply sex, a way of touching, of giving and taking pleasure in my own body and the body of my lover; and while genital fucking might be one aspect of that pleasure, it certainly wasn’t the only, or even the main way in which that pleasure could be shared. This, at least, was what I wanted my perspective on sex to be. Yet it very clearly was not, for I had been perfectly willing to put at risk a relationship I thought might develop into a real future so that I could fuck the woman I was in that relationship with. It didn’t matter who initiated it or that it was always consensual. It didn’t matter that when we did fuck it was a very rare exception to the rule of abstinence I had wanted us to follow; and , perhaps most important, in these terms, it didn’t matter that I wore a condom each and every time we did it.

Cross-posted on It’s All Connected.

From the AP wire:

LOS ANGELES – Police said Thursday they will investigate death threats against octuplet mom Nadya Suleman and advise her publicist on how to handle a torrent of other nasty messages that have flooded his office.

Word that the 33-year-old single, unemployed mother is receiving public assistance to care for the 14 children she conceived through in vitro fertilization has stoked furor among many people.

Police Lt. John Romero said officers were meeting with Suleman’s publicist Mike Furtney about the flood of angry phone calls and e-mail messages against Suleman, her children and Furtney.

“We are aware of the media accounts of the threats, and that they are being sent to the West Los Angeles detectives for appropriate action,” Romero said.

Furtney said 500 new e-mails were received early Thursday.

The logic here is impeccable. I don’t like the fact that I will have to indirectly help pay to take care of this woman’s children. Therefore, I will kill her, necessitating several foster parents, and thus HEIGHTEN the cost to the state, which I will still have to help pay.

Kugelmass has it right: this actually has very little to do with who has to pay what and how many kids an unemployed single mother should or shouldn’t have. You don’t get this type of widespread, hyper-violent reaction from a question of economics - not even, I would argue, from people disgusted with the Wall Street bailouts. No, this is about “the worship of motherhood and the hatred of mothers.” And I don’t think you can have one without the other.

(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot.)

I note with interest recent discussions to this paper about the recent failed coup and a Cylon-Human alliance.

I believe that these authors are asking the wrong questions, as if our only choice is an unelected president and military dictatorship, or a once elected vice-president and military dictatorship. The problems in our society run much deeper than that.

There are those who argue ‘not now’ and that the survival of humanity must trump any concerns of justice, equality and self-determination. Those who make these arguments are trying to cement their own power. Our responsibility is not just to survive, but to build a society that is worth saving.

I look at the few children within the fleet and despair for the world they are growing into.

Pilots who are in danger get all the resources of the fleet looking for them. Aboard the Tillium ship workers’ deaths are treated as inevitable, and speed ups continue despite the risk.

Women are using scarce resources and risking their lives to get illegal abortions. But if they do what the state supposedly prefers and continue their pregnancy, they get no support. Women suffering post-natal depression are just given more shifts and more drugs.

The power and the resources of the fleet are being used to maintain Caprican dominance. The military murder of Sagitarron citizens, is not just the result of one evil individual, but the reflection structural racism which the fleet is based on.

The ruling class have used the near extermination of humanity to cement their own power, and increase their control over anyone who challenges them. Neither a military alliance with some cylons, or a coup would change that. Zarek and Gaetna were no better than Adama and Roslyn. They were using the power of the military to attempt to make a few minor changes in policy.

Real change, the sort that builds a society that is worth saving, comes not from above but from below. Let the government make military alliances with the cylons, or not. Those of us who are fighting for another society that is indeed possible need to build relationships of solidarity with the cylons who are interested.

Chief Tyrall is a union man - Cylon or no. He has made clear, time and again, that he is fighting for something more than the unjust unequal society today. Colonel Tigh has made his position equally clear, he is for dictatorial power, and military control.

It is not enough to put up with intolerable inequality now, for the hope that things will change when we reach our mythic destination. Who believes that when we get to Earth those in charge will meekly give up the extra power that they have seized during this crisis? We must be organizing now among all who are willing to dream of a better society than this one.

[Illustration by Ratscape.]

Matt Drudge, in his job as ruler of the em-ess-em’s world, is pushing this statement by Nancy Pelosi as if it’s supposed to be embarrassing:

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly defended a move to add birth control funding to the new economic “stimulus” package, claiming “contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”

Pelosi, the mother of 5 children and 6 grandchildren, who once said, “Nothing in my life will ever, ever compare to being a mom,” seemed to imply babies are somehow a burden on the treasury.

The revelation came during an exchange Sunday morning on ABC’s THIS WEEK.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

This, of course, is one of the least controversial things Nancy Pelosi has ever said. Children cost money? You don’t say! And it’s cheaper for the government to give poor people who don’t want children birth control than for the government to give poor parents who don’t want their children aid to care for the kids they can’t afford? Shocking!

I particularly love the gratuitous shot at Pelosi for daring to have had a number of children and still believe that people should have the right to chart their own reproductive destinies. Because evidently, if you have more than 1.5 children, you’re not allowed to support other people in making the choice to, say, wait a few years to have a kid until they’re more stable. That’s unpossible!

Seriously, I know there are people out there who believe that birth control is tantamount to the Killing Fields, but for the rest of us, what Pelosi said is simply a basic level of sanity: helping people not have children when they don’t want to helps them financially. If you’re struggling, having a child can push you under completely. Children are wonderful, and I’m grateful to my daughter. But that doesn’t mean they’re cheap.

Back in March, I wrote that I’d vote for either Clinton or Obama, because I was confident that either one of them would restore US funding to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA for short, odd as that may seem). It’s an obscure issue — but the funds will save tens of thousands of lives, as well as helping thousands of women recover from fistula. There is simply no organization providing this kind of essential medical care to women in as many countries as the UNFPA does.¹

So I’ve got reason to be happy today:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has signed an executive order ending the ban on federal funds for international groups that perform abortions or provide information on the option.

Liberal groups welcomed the decision while abortion rights foes criticized the president. Known as the “Mexico City policy,” the ban has been reinstated and then reversed by Republican and Democratic presidents since GOP President Ronald Reagan established it in 1984. Democrat Bill Clinton ended the ban in 1993, but Republican George W. Bush re-instituted it in 2001 as one of his first acts in office.

Obama signed it quietly, without coverage by the media, late on Friday afternoon, a contrast to the midday signings with fanfare of executive orders on other subjects earlier in the week. [...]

In a move related to the lifting of the abortion rule, Obama also is expected to restore funding to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), probably in the next budget. Both he and Clinton had pledged to reverse a Bush administration determination that assistance to the organization violated U.S. law.

The Bush administration had barred U.S. money from the fund, contending that its work in China supported a Chinese family planning policy of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization. UNFPA has vehemently denied that it does.

I’m unhappy Obama did this so quietly, but I’d rather have substance than a press conference. No matter how much I end up hating Obama in a few years time, this one act makes him enormously better than any Republican would have been. Tens of thousands of lives better, in fact.

P.S. I didn’t really talk about the Global Gag (aka Mexico City) Rule, but overturning that is sensational as well. For bloggers talking about the Global Gag Rule today, see: Feministe, The Kitchen Table, Shakesville, and Democracy Arsenal.

1. You can get a background on the UNFPA issue from this post. (back)

Today is Blog for Choice Day, and the topic de l’année is pretty straightforward: What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?

My hope has already come true, in the form of Barack Obama’s proclamation issued on the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Because my hope was that Congress and the President would place Roe in its proper context. And at least so far, they have:

On the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are reminded that this decision not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters. I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose.

While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue, no matter what our views, we are united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion, and support women and families in the choices they make. To accomplish these goals, we must work to find common ground to expand access to affordable contraception, accurate health information, and preventative services.

On this anniversary, we must also recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights and opportunities as our sons: the chance to attain a world-class education; to have fulfilling careers in any industry; to be treated fairly and paid equally for their work; and to have no limits on their dreams. That is what I want for women everywhere.

And that is exactly right. The fact is that Roe is not just about the right of women to control their reproductive destinies — though that certainly is a vitally important part of it. It is about the right of women to control their destinies, full stop. That is not just about abortion. It’s about so much more than that. And I am so grateful that the President recognizes that. Hopefully, he will take those words and put them into action over the next eight years.