States barge in on private decisions

Last fall, Danielle and Robb Deaver of Grand Island, Neb., found that their state’s new law intruded in a wrenching personal decision. Ms. Deaver, 35, a registered nurse, was pregnant with a daughter in a wanted pregnancy, she said. She and her husband were devastated when her water broke at 22 weeks and her amniotic fluid did not rebuild.

Her doctors said that the lung and limb development of the fetus had stopped, that it had a remote chance of being born alive or able to breathe, and that she faced a chance of serious infection.

In what might have been a routine if painful choice in the past, Ms. Deaver and her husband decided to seek induced labor rather than wait for the fetus to die or emerge. But inducing labor, if it is not to save the life of the fetus, is legally defined as abortion, and doctors and hospital lawyers concluded that the procedure would be illegal under Nebraska’s new law.

After 10 days of frustration and anguish, Ms. Deaver went into labor naturally; the baby died within 15 minutes and Ms. Deaver had to be treated with intravenous antibiotics for an infection that developed.

Ms. Deaver said she got angry only after the grief had settled. “This should have been a private decision, made between me, my husband and my doctor,” she said in a telephone interview.

-from the New York Times’ article on states’ limiting abortions.

DON’T TREAD ON D.C. (please?)

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and 40 other individuals were arrested yesterday for blocking/demonstrating on Constitution Avenue. The protests were over Congress’ constant control of D.C.

Today, they protested again, this time outside of a local Planned Parenthood clinic, which is appropriate because Congress wants to control D.C.’s public funds for abortion. Those D.C. license plates that boast ‘taxation without representation’ are bound for an upgrade if this proposal moves forward.

Lady Responsibility #1: Make Babies

Listen up ladies.

It’s recently come to my attention, with all this choice, anti-choice fever going around, that you may not have read the list of Lady Responsibilities that we, as humans with vaginas, naturally have.

Responsibility # 1 — Make babies happen.

Responsibility  #2 – 12 — See Responsibility #1.

Before you break into an emotional tantrum (duh, that’s what ladies do), let me explain. As ladies, we (usually)  have vaginae/other baby-making equipment, therefore we must make babies. Always.  This is Perfect Logic. And I don’t want any excuses, even if you’re a lady who only loves ladies, or maybe you’re a lady who can’t support a baby because you aren’t healthy or don’t have any money, or maybe you’re a lady who will be ostracized by your family if you have a baby – this does not matter. You better be making some babies, or else.

I’ve got Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) backing me up on this. Last night she made a historical speech in Congress, in which she reminded us all that personal choice, personal situation, personal anything does. not. matter.

And it is the women who have the responsibility to make sure that that baby is born. Unfortunately, our courts — over 33 years ago — decided to change that and said that women had the right to end that life. But Mr. Speaker, we don’t have that right. It is our responsibility to bear those children.

So there you have it, folks. No rights, just responsibilities. That’s the lady way. Now, I’ve got a job to do….

This post is brought to you by Rachel (hat tip to Political Correction).

Suck it, Huckabee.

So, here’s the thing. Full disclosure. I was born out of wedlock. At the age of 17, my parents, both of whom were still in high school, had a newborn daughter to take care of. Plenty of people told my mother that she should have an abortion or give me up for adoption, but she didn’t. She had the support of my father (they married the following year and are still happily together) and her family, and here I am. Two more kids later and my family is incredibly close — I couldn’t be happier.

I realize that this isn’t always the case, and I’m sure we’ve beat a lot of statistics. But you know what?  Regardless of the numbers, my mother made a choice. Well, she made several. And so did my father. They chose to have unprotected sex, my mother chose to keep me, they chose to get married upon turning 18 because they were—and still are—madly in love.

But if anyone—man or woman, in love or not—wants to have sex before marriage, that’s their choice. Having a baby when you’re a teenager or a single parent might not be the most glamorous thing, but since when is life about glamour? Life is about the choices you make and doing what’s best for you. Marriage may still be something important in our society, but sex is a primal instinct & desire and there’s no way around it. It’s going to happen, so maybe we should be a little more open about it and teach the younger generation about it instead of bitching and shaming people who are just being human.

Yeah, I’m talking to you, Huckabee. You said this on Monday (thanks, WaPo):

“You know Michael, one of the things that’s troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, ‘Hey look, you know, we’re having children, we’re not married, but we’re having these children, and they’re doing just fine. But there aren’t really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie. And I think it gives a distorted image that yes, not everybody hires nannies, and caretakers, and nurses. Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock [sic].”

[Ed note: Many people like Mr. Huckabee love to shame women for having sex out of wedlock, but they don’t want them to have access to abortion, or access to health care, or access to food stamps, or access to anything, really, that they need to get by. So if you want to acknowledge, Mr. Huckabee, that single moms and their children need help, great. But have the morals to stand behind them and actually give them some goddamn help.]

Apparently, this was an interview with Michael Medved, who responded to Portman’s statement that her fiancé, Benjamin Millepied, gave her the most wonderful role in life by saying he “didn’t give her the most wonderful gift, which would be a wedding ring!” Yeah. Sure. Because a shiny piece of jewelry and marriage are all women have to look forward to in life. Gag me.

And now, the Huckster is backtracking. Oh, you didn’t mean to insult Natalie Portman and all of the single mothers out there? Well, you insulted a hell of a lot more people than that. Women who have sex before marriage run the risk of revealing their actions publicly if they happen to get pregnant. What about men? They show no outward signs that they’ve bumped uglies. And what, if a woman gets pregnant and wants to keep the baby (not that you think abortions should happen anyway), she should automatically marry the man?

I disagree. I don’t think that any of that bullshit is true, and I don’t think that Natalie Portman’s pregnancy is glorifying having children out of wedlock. I think that Natalie Portman’s pregnancy is inspiring as hell to a lot of people. Here’s this incredibly intelligent, talented, generous, and funny woman with an Ivy League education, an Oscar, an amazing career, who is engaged to the love of her life and about to become a mother. Hot damn, if that doesn’t encourage people to reach for their dreams and embrace their life choices, I don’t know what does.

My mother might not have an Oscar and she didn’t go to Harvard, but she made her own choices, dealt with her decisions, and took life as it came at her. She’s brave and strong and a hell of a woman. (Happy birthday, Mama! Thank you, for the choices you made.) I’m glad that she had the freedom to make those choices and my parents did what made them happiest, rather than simply getting married because I came along.

Not everyone has the resources and support that my mother had. As my smart and lovely friend Jeneice said, when sharing this story with me:

“Also, his stuff about most single moms being uneducated and poor isn’t…because of us glorifying wedlock. That’s a bigger problem rooted in so much more than women running around and having sex. Maybe we should look at why these populations are so uneducated and single. Maybe we should work to provide them with more education, more assistance, and/or something other than abstinence-only education instead of using them for your benefit when you want to shame others. But nooooooooooooooooo. Why don’t you work to fix the problem, Mr. Huckabee, instead of trying to shame a woman who can handle it because of her job and education? GAH. GAH. BRAIIIINNNNN. Ugh.”

Ugh, indeed.

P.S. Suck it, Huckabee.

This post brought to you by Dawn. (Editor’s note from Rachel)