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Prosecuting “Bad” Mothers

A must-read in this week’s New York Times Sunday Magazine about over-zealous Alabama prosecutors bringing charges against drug-addicted mothers. It’s a troubling and complex issue. Obviously no one thinks that using drugs during pregnancy is a good idea. Obviously it is a tragedy when a baby is stillborn, or born with drugs in its system. But many of these cases involve stillbirths which cannot be clearly tied to drug use — all the prosecutors know is that the pregnant woman used drugs (even one time) and the baby was stillborn, and so they assume (and argue, with little to no evidence) causation. And because most folks don’t understand just how complicated pregnancy actually is — and after the 80s “crack baby” hysteria, don’t understand that drug use during pregnancy actually doesn’t usually cause long-term problems in the child — people hear “drug-using mom” and “stillborn baby” and it’s easy to conclude that A led to B, even though that’s not actually how it works.

Filming Against Odds: Undocumented Youth “Come Out” With Their Dreams

By Anne Galisky, cross-posted at On The Issues Magazine.

“Papers”is the story of undocumented youth and the challenges they face as they turn 18 without legal status. More than two million undocumented children live in the U.S. today, most with no path to obtain citizenship. These are youth who were born outside the U.S. and yet know only the U.S. as home. The film highlights five undocumented youth who are “American” in every sense but their legal paperwork.

Because the poor really do have it too easy these days

In a conservative intolerance one-two punch, Rick Santorum gives it to the poor and the obese in a single tweetable comment. The comment came at an Iowa town hall where he explained his plans to cut the federal food stamp program, should (God forbid) he be elected president.

“If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who say we have a hunger problem?” Santorum asked.

I am so totally fucking serious, y’all. He said that. Where people could hear. The government obviously needs to cut food-stamp funding, because the fatties haven’t yet starved down to a Santorum-approved weight. Seriously.

It’s a spectacular show of ignorance from a man who obviously understands neither poverty nor nutrition, and it’s an example of the classic conservative thinking that unless you’re sitting in a cold, dark one-room apartment and scrounging in dumpsters for food, you’re not actually poor. It’s also an example of classic thinking–not exclusive to the conservative end of the spectrum–that obese people are obese simply because of an overabundance of food.

A man who’s likely never wanted for a meal in his life, Santorum lacks both the frame of reference and the basic empathy to understand the concepts he nonetheless continues to speak about. He isn’t inclined to understand that even if obesity were caused by excessive eating–which it isn’t–and if it really were a “crisis” in and of itself–which it isn’t–it wouldn’t be solved by giving people less money to eat with.

Affordable health care would help people stay healthy. Urban areas where people feel safe leaving their houses, public transportation, and well-maintained sidewalks would help people stay healthy. Making healthy food readily available in low-income areas, rather than continuing to subsidize corn and other nutritionally bankrupt crops, would help people stay healthy. Castigating people for their weight as if it’s a inerrant indicator of physical health doesn’t help people stay healthy. And literally expecting people to go hungry, because obviously obesity arises from untold riches and abundant food, is not just ineffective but full-on beastly cruel.

Poor people are poor because they’re lazy and unworthy. Fat people are fat because they’re lazy pigs. Starve them and deprive them of any form of physical comfort, and they’ll learn the errors of their ways and bootstrap themselves into health and wealth. Once we’re a nation of Oliver Twists, our economy will flourish and peace will reign across the land.

Dr. Erik Fleischman and Involuntary Sterilization

Via Femonomics, we find a really disturbing post from Dr. Erik Fleischman, an American doctor practicing in Tanzania who brags about participating in an involuntary sterilization, calling the doctor who performed the procedure a “hero.” After a pregnant patient’s heart stops beating on the operating table during a C-section (because they screwed up the epidural and then didn’t monitor her vital signs), Dr. Erik performs rib-cracking CPR, and his partner doctor ties the patient’s tubes:

“Daktari, the epidural injection must have gone too high and paralyzed all her nerve function,” I said as I started doing chest compression over her sternum.. I heard a rib crack with a loud POP under my hand and I winced.
“Yes Daktari. I believe that is correct,” said Dr. M. She is a young woman and this is her fifth baby. She has a good heart.”
Fifth baby, I thought. Holy shit. All I could think of was five orphans.
“C’mon, cmon,” I said to no one in particular, “this cannot go down like this.”
As I pumped on her chest I saw Dr. M working inside her belly with his one good hand. With her body heaving back and forth from the chest compressions it must have been like trying to do a tattoo in a car on a bumpy road.
“How’s she doing down there, Daktari?” I asked.
“Fine. I am tying her tubes. I think she does not need another baby after this.” Dr. M was a cool character. I was wondering if she was going to survive the next five minutes and he was already doing family planning.
“Cmon, cmonnnnnnnnnnn…………..”

Suddenly her eyes opened up and she gasped loudly like someone inhaling a first breath after nearly drowning. I felt her heart. It was beating again. I”m a Buddhhist, but I reflexively said: Jesus.

“Daktari, she’s back,” I said, “She’s back.”
“Excellent work, Daktari. It is good that you were here tonight. It is good that I hurt my wrist.” His version of Tanzanian karma, I suppose. “Daktari, I think we should finish quickly.”

I quickly washed my hands again and we finished up. I even closed the incision on her skin with a neat plastic surgery closure. This point of finesse would ultimately never be noticed through the stretchmarks and redundant skin of five babies, but it was the right thing to do. The patient didn’t remember anything that had happened. It was like she went away and then came back. We told her she had a baby boy. She asked why her chest was hurting. Dr. M told her not to worry about it. She was wheeled into the recovery room. Dr. M. told me to go home. He would handle it from here.

The post has been taken down, but it’s cached here if you want to read it.

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7 Billion

Today, the world’s population hits 7 billion (well, not exactly today, but that’s as good an estimate as any). PSI, a leading global health organization, has extensive coverage of this milestone in their latest magazine. On their blog, you can read posts about the population boom by Feministing’s Lori Adelman, global health advocate and blogger Alanna Shaikh, and yours truly.

It’s a fantastic site that contains a wealth of information. Read, comment and enjoy.

You can just. . .

Via Karnythia’s tumblr, I found this post that summarizes Chef Karl Wilder’s attempts to feed his family for two months on the allotment a family gets on food stamps. Wilder, who did this as part of an awareness campaign for the San Francisco Food Bank, documented his and his family’s experience on his blog.

Now before I go on to the meat of this post, I’ll point out a couple of things–he found it very difficult to feed his family on the amount equivalent to a food stamp allotment, found the foods that fit into the budget boring, and while he lost weight, found that his actual physical health had gotten worse. As in: higher levels of cholesterol, body fat, blood sugar, and triglycerides.

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Go see The Interrupters

I caught this new documentary by Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Stevie) & Alex Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here) during its sold-out run at the Siskel Center last week.

Trailer: The Interrupters

Imagine walking down a street where everyone is armed – with guns, rocks, knives – and a fight is breaking out. Imagine walking into the middle of that fight armed with nothing but your own love, your own courage, about 40 hours of conflict and anger management training, and the lessons of your own violent past. Imagine pulling the participants apart, listening to their grievances, and talking them into being a little bit better than they think they can be, and if you do your work right – if you can listen hard enough and love hard enough – maybe no one dies today. That’s what the Violence Interrupters of CeaseFire do. They are former violent criminals who are trained to defuse violent situations in their communities. Their criminal pasts lend them insight, wisdom, and instant respect and credibility in the communities they work in. It helps that the three Interrupters the filmmakers follow closely (Ameena Matthews, Cobe Williams, and Eddie Bocanegra) are also people of great personal charisma and honesty.

If you want a traditional, official film review, check out the AV Club review and Roger Ebert’s Sun Times review.

If you want a messy personal story with some flailing about and crying, keep on reading.

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An appetite for moral panics

Anthony Bourdain has had freakouts over Rachel Ray, Sandra Lee, Alice Waters, Guy Fieri, and now Paula Deen. The most recent pissiness–the carping on Deen–was because (he said) she is beholden to corporate interests and she features foods (southern foods, by the way) on her show that are “fucking bad for you” (both true, by the way).

Now, I don’t give a shit about Bourdain per se, he’s known for talking smack about everyone (especially Food Network stars–dude, seriously, find another hobby) and I mean really, Deen’s grown and can take care of herself. But this does point to a particular strain of upper-class righteousness. Frank Bruni pointed out the hypocrisy of food personalities (I hesitate to call any of them chefs) who sniff in disdain at the likes of Deen using butter or cream but salivate over duck confit or pork rinds in the latest hot chef’s dish.

However, unlike Bruni, I call bullshit on all these jokers.

First, it’s nothing more that a bunch of wealthy, well-known White people getting into more dramz while the actual people they claim to champion (oh, please) are still coping with the grocery gap, working longer hours for less pay, or chronic unemployment. Organic, farm fresh food is not easily obtainable for many people, and getting the time (or the money–butter is really expensive) to make Paula Deen’s dishes is no cakewalk either. This is nothing more than two sets of elites with different audiences and PR strategies duking it out.

Second, people on both sides are engaging in the moral deathfat panic, and it’s not helping anyone. Foodies, the frugal, lefties and right-wingers all seem to agree that being fat is horrible and a shameful thing, indicative of self-indulgence and a lack of discipline, and then all sides engage in shaming people who point out that it’s not just a matter of making the correct and moral choices. They also seem to miss the point that if the only marker of health you use is thinness, people will do some really hazardous stuff to get thin, and they will be assumed to be healthy. Look–I was very underweight up until about 12 years ago when I finally hit a normal weight. I can guarantee you that when I was underweight, I snarfed down junk food and fried crap, eschewed vegetables, drank entirely too much caffiene (still do, actually) and never worked out. But no one gave me crap because hey! I was thin, therefore I was healthy.

Third, people on “both” sides of this argument suddenly discover the magic of the bootstrap and self-discipline-to the point where you wonder how they’re on different sides. They sure aren’t on my side, or the side of my neighbors, no matter what they may claim. You could eat better if you just tried! You’re choosing to not eat beans and rice (forget being underhoused or not being able to afford a freezer to store all those extra helpings of chili and lentil stew you could make). You’re making bad choices–just don’t listen to that elitist liberal on the Travel Channel/that elitist conservative on the Food Network! Parents today whine and make excuses instead of making fresh, healthy meals for their children. And I call BS on that garbage as well. I am single, I don’t have children, and after my commute home (which is long, by the way), I am often too tired to cook. Or I am so hungry that my hands are shaking and so I go for whatever I can make in under five minutes. I’m not sure how lecturing and shaming people about how You’re Doing it Wrong is actually going to get us anywhere, and I’ve seen that on all sides of this.

If I find this cumbersome at times (and I love to cook, and am often gratified when I can take the time to do so properly, and have been grateful to be able to do more of that this summer), how do you think other people find it? The working poor and the destitute? Overworked parents? People on food stamps? People with no easy access to grocery stores, let alone farmers markets (which are often really expensive)? People who don’t have sunny yars or balconies, who don’t have a plot in a community garden (unlike me) who don’t have the transportation to get to a grocery store?

So you know, this concern over elitism and health and corporate interests rings hollow when it comes from these folks. Access and money (yeah, I said it, call me a socialist, I don’t care) would go a long way to solve the problem of the food crisis. But you can’t solve the food crisis or the health crisis (no, I’m not going to call it the obesity crisis, FFS) without solving the poverty crisis and the unemployment crisis and the overwork crisis and the lack of access crisis. It isn’t always about making good choices when the choices you’ve got in front of you are crappy either way. And it isn’t about talking smack about a Food Network personality or a Travel Channel personality.