In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: January 2010

Is Refusing Bed Rest a Crime?

I don’t believe it is, but then, I don’t believe pregnant woman are incubators for the state’s fetuses either. Others disagree, as evidenced in this case unfolding in the First District Court of Appeals in Tallahassee, Fla.

Samantha Burton was in her 25th week of pregnancy in March 2009 when she started showing signs of miscarrying. Her doctor advised her to go on bed rest, possibly for as long as 15 weeks, but she told him that she had two toddlers to care for and a job to keep. She planned on getting a second opinion, but the doctor alerted the state, which then asked the Circuit Court of Leon County to step in.

She was ordered to stay in bed at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and to undergo “any and all medical treatments” her doctor, acting in the interests of the fetus, decided were necessary. Burton asked to switch hospitals and the request was denied by the court, which said “such a change is not in the child’s best interest at this time.” After three days of hospitalization, she had to undergo an emergency C-section and the fetus was found dead.

To recap: A doctor made a recommendation to a pregnant patient, the patient told the doctor this recommendation was impossible for her and that she wanted a second opinion. The doctor said no and called the state which confined her to this doctor’s care in this doctor’s hospital against her will, where she was forced to have a c-section three days later and it was found she had already miscarried. Later, the patient brings a lawsuit and the court rules against her, saying the State of Florida was only trying to maintain the “status quo” of confining pregnant women against their wills to be cared for by antagonistic doctors, which is, of course, for the good of the fetus.

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How to Help Haiti

Thousands may be dead after massive earthquakes struck Haiti yesterday, and even more injured. The country is devastated. There are several organizations that are geared up to help. A few options:

-You can text ‘HAITI’ to ‘90999’ and a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts, charged to your cell phone bill (through the U.S. State Department).
-Give directly to the State Department.
-Donate at Wyclef Jean’s Yele, or text ‘YELE’ to ‘501501’ and a donation will be made and charged to your cell phone bill.
-Donate to any of the following organizations that have Haiti-specific pages on their websites:

CIDI.ORG
INTERACTION.ORG
GLOBALGIVING.ORG
PANAMERICANRELIEF.ORG
UNICEFUSA.ORG or call 800-4UNICEF
MERCYCORPS.ORG
REDCROSS.ORG
DOCTORSWITHOUTBORDERS.ORG
SAVETHECHILDREN.ORG
DIRECTRELIEF.ORG
OXFAMAMERICA.ORG
CRS.ORG
CHILDFUND.ORG
WORLDVISION.ORG
CARMAFOUNDATION.ORG

I do not have first-hand experience with most of the charities listed above, so I can’t vouch for all them. MSNBC lists even more.

If you have family members in Haiti and are trying to see if they are ok, call 1-888-407-4747.

If you can’t give money, do something else — spread the word, ask others to donate, keep Haiti on the tip of everyone’s tongues. Write. Talk. Pray if it’s your thing, or send good wishes. Any other suggestions or ideas?

Posted in Uncategorized

Roeder, voluntary manslaughter and the future of anti-abortion terrorism

I will write more about this later as time allows, but the judge in the Scott Roeder case — Roeder is the man who shot abortion provider George Tiller at Tiller’s church — has ruled that Roeder may present a case for voluntary manslaughter instead of murder. Voluntary manslaughter is a less serious crime than murder, and subject to softer penalties. This doesn’t mean that Roeder is only being charged with voluntary manslaughter; my best guess based on the judge’s comments here is that he doesn’t want this case to be overturned on appeal, and so he’s allowing the jury to consider voluntary manslaughter as a lesser-included offense. Which makes sense.

Except that there are, of course, bigger issues at play. The judge at least rejected Roeder’s proposed “necessity” defense, but a jury will still have the option of giving Roeder a lighter sentence if the defense makes the case that Roeder had an “unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force.” If the jury does buy that defense — and you can bet that Roeder’s team will make the trial about Dr. Tiller and abortion — it lessens the disincentives for other would-be terrorists to take out abortion providers. The promoters of anti-choice violence themselves admit as much:

A man who runs a Web site supporting violence against abortion providers said in the wake of the judge’s decision that he has changed his mind about attending Roeder’s trial.

The Rev. Don Spitz of Chesapeake, Va., said he and other activists from the Army of God plan to observe the court proceedings quietly next week.

“I am flabbergasted, but in a good way,” Spitz said of the judge’s decision.

Spitz acknowledged that the possibility of a voluntary manslaughter defense may influence some people who in the past wouldn’t kill abortion providers because of the prospect of a sentence of death or life imprisonment. “It may increase the number of people who may be willing to take that risk,” he said.

That isn’t to say that the judge’s reasoning isn’t legally sound; I haven’t read all the details, so I can’t really opine on that. But this is one of those situations where the law butts up against real-life dangers and, right or wrong, this defense may have dire consequences.

I hope the jury has the sense to convict Roeder for what he did: He killed Dr. Tiller in cold blood, after carefully planning the murder. I’m increasingly losing confidence in that outcome.

Palin and Disability Advocacy

The big news this week is that Sarah Palin is the latest contributor to Fox News. Christina Chew at Care2 asks what this means for people with disabilities — Palin promised in her campaign to be an advocate for special-needs children, but so far her “advocacy” hasn’t gone far beyond insisting that abortion is bad and special-needs children are blessings. While I’m always happy to see parents of children with disabilities speaking out about the fact that having a special-needs child is parenting all the same and that no child is perfect or easy, there is a major disconnect when “advocates” like Palin totally ignore the societal and structural impediments that make parenting more difficult when your child has disabilities, and that make life more difficult for individuals with disabilities. Chew writes:

Will Palin, who has spoken regularly about her “right to life” stance, make abortion and prenatal genetic testing of her Fox News commentary? (Currently some 90% of parents who find out that their fetus has Down Syndrome decide not to have the child.) Will Palin move beyond such politically charged and very hot topics to look at the real, day-to-day issues facing disabled individuals and their families and those who support them over their lifetimes? Issues like the need for appropriate schools and therapies that can range from speech therapy to medical concerns; like the urgent need for housing for adults with disabilities, not to mention jobs and job training, and—for those unable to work—ways to ensure that they live meaningful lives within the community?

As the mother of an adolescent son who is on the moderate to severe end of the autism spectrum, I am hopeful that Palin will use her new role on Fox News to bring national attention to these pressing issues. My son is growing up all too fast. While once people smiled and told me “he’s so cute” and that we were “blessed to have such a special child,” the world is not so kindly towards an older child who is so tall that he is regularly mistaken for an adult, who is minimally verbal, and who—due to his neurology—struggles with severe behavior problems. Group homes, job coaches, and disparities in access to health care for adults with disabilities are just some of the issues that other parents, my son’s teachers and therapists, and my husband and I think about all the time, however much others try to change the topic of conversation when we bring them up.

Improving on those issues would also make it easier for women to choose to continue pregnancies if their fetus is diagnosed with Down syndrome or other condition. As Dana Goldstein explores in the Daily Beast this week, new genetic testing could make it possible to more exactly identify fetuses with Down syndrome; since the vast majority of women terminate their pregnancies when they learn that the fetus has Down syndrome, the new tests could mean that even fewer babies with Down syndrome are ever born, unless women and families feel that having a special needs child is actually do-able.

I’m obviously very pro-choice, and support the right of any individual woman to terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason. I understand the feeling — or the knowledge — that you are not equipped to handle a child with special needs, or the fear that when you die you will be leaving behind a child with a disability in a society that offers little support. So I want to make it clear that I’m not casting judgment on any individual woman, or any family, who makes the best choices for themselves and terminates a pregnancy because the fetus has Down syndrome or other pre-natal diagnosis.

But. I do find it troubling, in the aggregate, that so many people believe that having a child with Down syndrome is so impossible, or so undesireable, that 90% of those pregnancies are terminated. Again, to clarify, it’s not the belief itself that troubles me — it’s the social reality underlying that belief. It’s the fact that “advocates” like Palin do little to actually advocate for what people with disabilities and their families actually need — holding up a cute baby and talking about how he’s a blessing is nice, but it doesn’t do much to help the parents who are worried about finding adequate schooling for their children, or the adults who need basic access to work or housing or medical care. It doesn’t do much for the women who receive a pre-natal diagnosis from a doctor who assumes that termination is the next step, in a society that seems to only offer two options for women who have to make this choice: Martyrdom or shame. It doesn’t do much for that cute baby when he or she grows up in a society that ostracizes and fears him, and offers no tangible support or assistance.

I hope Palin uses her position at Fox to give a platform to disability-rights advocates. I hope she does it in a meaningful way, that goes beyond, “Look, cute baby!” and actually addresses the structural impediments that oppress people with disabilities. But I’m not holding my breath.

Women Behind the Wheel

This shouldn’t be too surprising: Women are more likely to be passengers in vehicles than men are. That is, men are more likely to take the wheel and women are more likely to go along for the ride.

Also not surprising: The face/palm way that the Freakonomics guy addresses the issue:

Why do men dominate the wheel? In the past, physical factors were important. My grandmother learned to drive only after the introduction of automatic transmission and power steering, which made the task much less physically demanding. But driving today’s cars requires little strength. In addition, our roads are engineered to be quite forgiving, for example with very long reaction times permitted by the system.

What else might be responsible? Cultural factors? Social ones? Psychological differences? Logistics? Animal instinct? Historical inertia?

Furthermore, is this state of affairs due to men’s preferences, women’s, or both?

And should we care?

What in the world could be responsible for the fact that when men and women ride in cars together, men are more likely to drive? Hmm… mysterious.

Friday Random Ten – the This Is the Best Friday of My Life edition

No, really: I am spending it at home, on my couch, drinking wine and eating cheese. Sounds simple, but I have not had such a lovely Friday in a long while. So, you know the drill: Set your MP3 player to shuffle and post the first ten songs that come up. First, a nice feminist-ish Neko Case video:

My ten:

1. Lykke Li – My Love
2. Dawn Landres – Bodyguard
3. Tom Waits – Telephone Call from Istanbul
4. The Pogues- Fiesta
5. Passion Pit – Swimming in the Flood
6. Neutral Milk Hotel – Holland, 1945
7. The Mountain Goats – Palmcorder Yajna
8. War on Drugs – Needle in Your Eye
9. Ryan Adams – Come Pick Me Up
10. The Blow – Babay (Eat a Critter, Feel Its Wrath)

Welcome! To the Year 2010!

Greetings, Time Traveler! Have you recently emigrated to this, our Future World, from the early 1990s? Your appalling standard of dress informs me that this is so! I do hope your travels have not been overly taxing. Please, enjoy our fine restaurants, hotels, and venues of entertainment! Marvel at our strange customs of “texting” and utilizing “the Tumblr!” Behold the desperation on the faces of our many unemployed! Yes, our Future World is a bold and highly Futuristic place to be. At first, it may be disconcerting! But you will enjoy its novelty.

How may we entertain you, Citizen of the Early 1990s? Are you interested, perhaps, in… HUMOR? I have a delightful joke for you, in such a case! Allow me to relay it to you, now, on your arrival. It is this:

WHAAAAZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP.

Ha, ha ha! My tone of voice in pronouncing this word, you see, was akin to that of the actors in a commercial from your time period! Ah, wait: perhaps this commercial is too far in the Future for you. I apologize. The following joke, however, may be closer to your kind’s humor-standard:

Ha, ha ha, ho ho ho! Your President, you see, is rather promiscuous! Whereas your First Lady – will it interest you to know, Time Traveler, that she also is a politician of some note, in this dazzling Future Age? – is capable of de-shelling large nuts with the steel teeth located in her inner thighs! You may also choose to interpret this as evidence that she is a “ball buster,” or emasculating and unfeminine woman, capable of doing literal or figurative violence to the male genitalia with her refusal to accomodate them (again, literally or figuratively: it is a layered and sophisticated joke, this one) appropriately! Perhaps this is why her husband seeks solace in the affections of other women? Ho, ho ho! Such a joke is good for many a chortle, is it not?

Yes, research informs me that jokes along these lines were quite popular, in your era! Indeed, your kind is known to have repeated them several million times, particularly if you were the more obnoxious sort of Libertarian uncle, and had consumed a few beer units. But to you, I assume, it will still be fresh! It may interest you to know, Time Traveler, that this novelty joke-disposal unit was not even manufactured in your time. Ah, no! It is a new novelty joke-disposal unit, marketed and sold today, in 2010! We do these things, you see, to accomodate our booming Time Travel industry. It’s all just a part of the fun to be had, here in… THE FUTURE!

That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighborhood.

Oh NYU, I love you again:

Bikini Kill lead singer and noted feminist Kathleen Hanna has just made a sizable donation to the NYU library. The library is referring to the donation as The Kathleen Hanna Papers and will make them a part of their newly announced Riot Grrrrl Collection. The “papers” are believed to contain her many zines, much of her correspondences and plenty of material pertaining to her time in Bikini Kill, as well as various other writings. This is cool for a number of obvious reasons.

The fact that we live in a world where “The Kathleen Hanna Papers” exist as part of a “Riot Grrrl Collection” in a major research library makes me happy to be alive. [I’m a little unclear why “papers” is in scare-quotes in the article, but I will overlook it because this brings me great joy that I do not want tarnished].

Time to get my Bobst alumni membership card.