a bird and a bottle

The fabulous Ms. Lindsay Beyerstein has taken a new job as a reporter for In These Times. Her first piece, up today, takes on the Democrats and their recent support for abstinence only funding. What do the Dems have to give up, she wonders, in order to secure the success of some of their other priorities? Here’s a snippet:

Even opponents of abstinence-only education might concede that a few extra million for abstinence education is a small price to pay for easing the passage of a very important domestic spending bill that contains a lot of spending that’s important to Democrats.

Yet, principle is at stake here. Few people realize that the CBAE program promulgates out-and-out quackery and barely disguised religious dogma. These programs don’t just encourage students to remain abstinent as teenagers. By law, they are required to teach “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of sexual activity,” among many other stipulations. In other words, the program must teach that all sexual activity outside of marriage, even between consenting adults, violates some nebulous “expected standard.”

Go check out the whole thing here.

(Guest post by SF; no connection to San Francisco)

As the NYTimes recently reported:

Gay and lesbian prisoners in California will be allowed overnight visits with their partners under a new prison policy, believed to be the first time a state has allowed same-sex conjugal stays.

The change arrived over two years after a 2003 California law provided equal rights for registered domestic partners in California, both same sex and non-married heterosexual couples. The delay, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, was due to considerations of whether allowing the visits would expose gay inmates to danger inside the prison, where they are sometimes singled out for attack. The policy shift - finally enacted under the threat of an ACLU lawsuit - is a double victory: for gay rights and prisoner rights. But the sum of the victories is greater than their individual parts.

As a rule, groups that are doubly (or triply) discriminated against (black poor women, for example) are redressed only in one capacity or, in the best case scenario, in each of their individual discriminated capacities. What remains unaddressed is the harm inflicted by multiple, simultaneous discriminations. The situation is even worse in the case of prisons. Scholars and activists like Angela Davis have convincingly demonstrated that racism lies at the heart of the American penitentiary system; in sum: if the people being locked up weren’t black, America would be much less willing to lock ‘em up under such harsh conditions and for so long. (Slavery’s long lasting legacy.) We lock up the Other much sooner that we’d lock up our Selves. Viewing the prisoner as Other allows us to deny their basic humanity.

Many states don’t even offer conjugal visits. The fact that California - which now spends more money on its notorious prisons than it does on its vaunted universities - allows conjugal visits in the first place is a recognition (small as it may be) of the humanity and basic human needs and desires of prisoners. That this recognition would be extended to a group whose basic human needs and desires have only rarely been recognized in America is all the more impressive.

It is sad, of course, that gay prisoners in California - deprived of so many freedoms taken for granted outside the prison walls - now have basic human needs and desires recognized in a manner that much of the rest of the country (the current Supreme Court included) likely would reject even for gay female and male American citizens walking freely.

The UVVA. Unborn Victims of Violence Act. Laci & Conner’s Law. Sounds nice enough, right? We want to be able to punish people who commit violence against pregnant women, because we are concerned both about the heightened risks of violence against pregnant women and about doing as much as we can to ensure a healthy birth outcome.

If only it were that simple…UVVA’s, as many of you probably know, were imagined and implemented with a much more political and much more suspect purpose — to establish fetal personhood and support anti repro justice crusaders.

Want more evidence? Well, around the country, prosecutors have attempted to rely on UVVA’s to prosecute pregnant women for not ensuring a perfect birth outcome.

Last week, RH Reality Check’s Amie Newman took on the issue, in the context of Kansas’s new UVVA, which was signed into law by the state’s “pro-choice” governor, Kathleen Sebelius. And what’s funny about Kansas, and what makes the UVVA’s political purposes so blindingly clear, is that the state already had a law protecting pregnant women. Newman has more:

In fact, in Kansas, this law repeals statutes already on the books that criminalize injury inflicted upon a pregnant woman. Twelve years ago, Kansas enacted “Motherhood Protection” laws (K.S.A. 21-3440 and K.S.A. 21-3441) that, according to the reproductive justice advocacy organization ProKanDo, “recognize the particularly heinous nature of crimes against pregnant women by providing separate criminal charges for those who interrupt a pregnancy in the commission of a crime.” These laws were put into place over a decade ago as the result of anti-choice advocates who, at the time, desperately wanted a UVVA in Kansas. What they got instead were laws that heightened the consequences of intentionally harming pregnant women, recognizing the atrocious nature of this type of crime, without defining fetuses as full people.

Fast forward to 2007 when anti-choice advocates in Kansas were finally able to pass the full UVVA that mirrored their ideology while serving their political purposes. Kansas’ law, according to Julie Burkhardt, executive director of ProKanDo, “contains extreme language when talking about life beginning at fertilization or conception — similar to about fifteen other states’ UVV laws.” So what reason can there be for repealing legislation already in place that ensures that perpetrators of violence against pregnant women will be prosecuted uniquely for their crimes? And why did the law pass now — with a pro-choice Governor and five failed attempts in previous years? There may be many reasons; though none have anything to do with justice, protection or concern for the victims of violent crimes.

Some evidence that the UVVA is neither meant to really address violence against women nor effective at preventing such violence: as Newman notes, in none of the 30 states that have state UVVA laws has violence against pregnant women declined. Not only do the laws not help women, but they put women’s reproductive lives in to jeopardy:

Perhaps what is most disturbing about the steady stream of laws like these around the country is their insidiousness. Julie [Burkhardt, director of ProKanDo, a pro-choice political action committee in Kansas] says, “With this type of bill, anti-choice advocates are hitting the spectrum of women’s reproduction.” While many reproductive justice advocates have wondered for years how anti-choice activists could scream so loudly for the punishment of abortion providers while somehow absolving women who access the abortions, it is no longer a puzzle.

“There is a real disconnect — when people think of reproductive health we think about abortion because that’s the hot button issue. It drives voters. But it’s also good for everybody to look at laws like Kansas’ law - it doesn’t just hurt women who need abortions but hurts women who want to continue their pregnancies and be mothers,” Julie says. Women who get abortions are women who chose to become or are already mothers at different points in their lives. Laws like these punish women across the entire reproductive continuum.

So what next? When supposedly pro-choice governors are signing UVVAs into effect, can we really have hope that we can stop their passage? Well, I don’t know. And I’m not particularly optomistic, particularly since these laws appear to protect both women and fetuses, at least on their face. What will it take to get the message across about the perils of the UVVA? How many women will have to end up in jail and how many others will have to end up injured or worse?

Actually, quite a lot.

N.Y. Governor Spitzer announced recently his proposal to greatly expand the use of DNA testing in the New York criminal justice system. Under the current system, DNA is collected from people convicted of only the most serious crimes — rape, murder, burglary. Spitzer’s proposal, which has been kicking around the state legislature for some time now, would require that DNA be collected from ALL people convicted of ANY crime, including misdemeanors. Get convicted of pot possession? The state’ll have your DNA. Get arrested and convicted for protesting against a political convention? Yep, your DNA gets sampled too. The plan would also require the collection of samples from everyone currently incarcerated, on probation, and on parole.

The upshot to Spitzer’s proposal, and what makes it different from the old proposals, is that criminal defendants would have access to the state DNA database too, and could use it to prove their innocence. It would also require that prosecutors notify the court if they find out that there might be DNA that would exonerate the accused.

The upshots sound pretty good. DNA evidence has been used to exonerate over 200 people who were wrongly convicted and who have spent up to 30 years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. DNA can be as powerful a tool for defendants as it is for prosecutors. But NY’s plan - for all the talk of equanimity - goes too far.

First of all, prosecutors are already under a duty to report evidence that exonerates the accused. The NY plan just codifies that. Second, DNA is not like fingerprints, which can only be used for a specific purpose. DNA evidence, once collected, provides a wealth of information to the government. Information that may have nothing to do with whether or not the person from whom the DNA is collected committed a specific crime. I don’t know about you, but I am not too keen on turning people’s most sensitive information over to the government at a time when it’s clear that the government does not respect its citizens’ privacy. Third, DNA evidence is not foolproof — but juries often think it is. The New York Civil Liberties Union, which opposed a similar program proposed by NYC Mayor Bloomberg last year, reports on the perils of relying too heavily on DNA:

In the past five years the use of DNA by law enforcement has come under increasing scrutiny by critics who have documented cases in which the use of DNA has been subject to gross negligence and intentional abuse. The Houston Police Department closed its DNA lab in 2003 after it released from prison two men who had been falsely incriminated by faulty lab work. In 2004, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer report documented 23 errors that the Washington State Patrol laboratory had made in the investigations of serious crimes.

So what are we to do? We want to protect people from wrongful convictions while also ensuring that convicted rapists can be easily caught should they rape again. I’m not saying DNA should never be collected. But there’s a balance that can be struck. The governor’s proposal ignores the possibility of a more evenhanded approach and puts a heavy hand on the justice scale.

I don’t often post on the Iraq war around these parts. Mostly, that’s because there are many many many other bloggers saying what I would say already. And also because those bloggers, on the whole, know much more than I do.

But I did think this was worth pointing out: via C&L, check out this slide show the Boston Globe put together. The question the show tries to answer is this: What does $456 billion buy? Why that number? Because that’s how much has been spent on the war in Iraq.

Here’s the part I found most moving/shocking/eye-opening:

According to World Bank estimates, $54 billion a year would eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally by 2015, while $30 billion would provide a year of primary education for every child on earth.

At the upper range of those estimates, the $456 billion cost of the war could have fed and educated the world’s poor for five and a half years.

Go see the rest.

So, A Bird and a Bottle is a feminist, progressive, foodie blog. At least nominally, though lately the food writing has been lacking. Part of that is due to the mass amounts of studying i have had to do, leaving little time for cooking or eating out (thank you, frozen lasagna). And part of that is due to the fact that there’s been so much action on the feminist and criminal justice fronts recently that the food blogging has fallen by the wayside.

But today, I get to take on food and feminism in a single post.

And here’s why: A few weeks ago, Frank Bruni, the NY Times’ chief restaurant critic, panned restauranteur Keith McNally’s new place in Manhattan, Morandi. The pan (1 star but the review sounded like no stars). McNally, who also owns Balthazar - a Spring Street haunt of the Soho elites - was understandably disappointed. His chef, rising star Jody Williams,must have shared his dismay. Though at that point, with the bad reviews piling up, they couldn’t have been surprised.

But yesterday, McNally bit back, accusing Frank Bruni not of poor taste, but of sexism. According to McNally’s research, Bruni has never given anything more than one star to a restaurant whose kitchen is headed by a woman chef, as Morandi is. In a letter planted with food blog eater, McNally wrote:

One can only wonder whether Bruni would still have his job at The Times if he himself was a woman. Based on the unremittingly sexist slant of his reviews one has to say no. The surprise is that The New York Times continues to condone it. But until it refuses to, its message, through Frank Bruni, is loud and clear: If you’re a woman and talented, the one place you’d better get out of - and fast - is the kitchen.

Ouch. And way to turn that old stereotype on its head, Keith.

NY Mag’s food blog, Grub Street, fought back, defending King Bruni:

The complaint goes on for a long time and seems unlike McNally, who has almost always stayed above the fray. What’s especially unseemly is the way the letter dwells on Bruni’s attitude toward gender (“…when the chef is a man Bruni often makes quite a song and dance about it.”). Given the amount of food-world speculation about Bruni’s sexual orientation, this seems like a low blow, especially since the Times’ review echoed a near-universal critical consensus about Morandi

I have to say, I’m not surprised at McNally’s complaint. This is not the first time Bruni has exhibited a sort of wink-wink-nudge-nudge boys club kind of attitude. What I am surprised about is NY Mag’s retort: He may be gay so he can’t be sexist?

I have no idea if Morandi deserves more than one star (though in fairness, McNally does not assert that it does). But I do have to say that it’d be interesting if McNally’s research is proven true. I’m willing to wager that it’s not that there aren’t any two or three or even four star female chefs in our fair city. Lord knows, it wouldn’t be the first time the NY Times’s sexist underbelly were exposed.

update: via Jill, here’s a woman’s story of abortion. It’s sad and moving and also joyful and energizing.

—

The Supreme Court’s shift in abortion jurisprudence with its decision a few weeks ago in Gonzales v. Carhart has gotten a lot of press both in traditional MSM and on blogs (including this one). That’s to be expected given the politically explosive nature of the abortion debate and the love of the media for all things inflammatory.

What’s interesting, though, is how many of the stories and posts to follow the decision have been about men’s experiences as fathers, fathers-to-be, and would-be dads.

Take, for example, today’s LA Times opinion piece by Dan Neil – a touching and, at this point, familiar story.

Neil writes about his and his wife’s desire to have children; she underwent IVF to conceive, and ended up with too many fetuses (four when they could only have or handle two). So they reduced her pregnancy — a euphemistic term for selective abortion when a woman carries too many fetuses as a result of IVF or other fertility treatments. Neil writes well - he’s totally unapologetic (rightly unapologetic) and is concerned about the world his two female daughters-to-be will face once they’re born in light of the Supreme Court’s rightward shift and the fact that 9 of the 10 GOP presidential candidates profess to want to see Roe overturned.

I read the story, and felt for Neil and his wife; both their sadness and their relief at reducing the pregnancy. But I couldn’t help but wonder if men are the new face of abortion rights. Is it men whom we must ask to defend abortion rights now against a court and a rightwing political movement led mostly by men?

And if so, isn’t it a sad state of affairs that there is such contempt for women in this society that we need men to be the public faces of the fight for our reproductive autonomy?

I’ve stayed silent so far on the 2008 presidential election — specifically, on which democratic candidate I will support in the primary. I still haven’t decided.

But I do have to say…it would be an easy choice for Kucinich if I felt he could win (and if he could promise support for abortion rights, which Alon points out has not been his strength).

Exhibit A (via Blue Gal):

Exhibit B:

He and Mike Gravel are the only of the Democrats to even mention the bad policy that is the War on Drugs on their websites.

So here’s the question: support the guy who can’t win the general but is the most inspiring in the primary? Or support the candidate who really has a chance to get a Dem back in the White House after 8 years of Bush disasters?

Courtesy of very talented cartoonist (and new commenter(!)) Mikhaela Reid, have a laugh at the expense of abstinence only “education” programs (click the image to see it full size):

William Saletan (who may or may not be known as Bill) is Slate’s grandaddy of abortion. He’s written a book on the topic, and it’s fair to say that he’s pretty knowledgable. But that doesn’t mean he always gets it right. And his column today is a bright flashing indicator of that.

Today Saletan takes on the ultrasound, and, more specifically, the rash of laws forcing abortion providers to offer women an ultrasound of their fetus prior to an abortion. These laws, which have no doubt been enabled by the recent Gonzales v. Carhart decision, are an extension of the “women are stupid” rhetoric that was on full display in Kennedy’s opinion in that case. Women are stupid and don’t think through decisions so we should take away a medical option. Women are stupid and don’t think through their decisions - even about abortion - and so we should shove an image of their fetus in their faces. That’s pretty much what these laws are saying.

And though Saletan acknowledges the coercive and condescending tone of such laws, he still can’t bring himself to fully condemn them. He writes:

Critics complain that these bills seek to “bias,” “coerce,” and “guilt-trip” women. Come on. Women aren’t too weak to face the truth. If you don’t want to look at the video, you don’t have to. But you should look at it, and so should the guy who got you pregnant, because the decision you’re about to make is as grave as it gets.

Ugh. He gives the head nod to women’s autonomy and strength but then tells women exactly what to do. A chauvinist wolf in sheep’s clothing if I ever saw one. Yes, he says, these ultrasounds are mostly desired as a tool to coerce, but they’re also informative! Yes, because when a woman is about to have an abortion - a moment often filled with high emotions and sometimes moral conflict -that’s just when she should be getting a biology lesson. And just because these ultrasounds are the lesser of many evils (the Fetal Pain Bill, for example), doesn’t mean they’re ok.

But Saletan thinks ultrasounds might be. And he says he’d support an ultrasound bill if it came with these requirements:

If I were a legislator, I’d offer four amendments to any ultrasound bill. First, the government should pick up the tab. Second, the woman should also be offered a six-hour videotape of a screaming 1-year-old. Third, any juror deliberating whether to issue a death sentence should be offered the chance to view an execution. Fourth, anyone buying meat should be offered the chance to watch video from a slaughterhouse. If my first amendment passed but the others failed, I’d still vote for the bill.

I’m with him on number 2 - as a balance to an ultrasound (though still, why even defend such a bill!?!?) But the rest, while defensible in other contexts, only serve to (1) distract attention from the real issues at stake here and (2) draw a stronger connection between a young, nonviable fetus and fully formed human life.

I have to say, this “I support abortion rights, but…” is starting to wear pretty thin.

Seems that last week’s report that abstinence only “education” programs are totally ineffective has emboldened some of ab-only’s opponents.

Earlier this week, Salon’s Broadsheet reported that the ACLU (full disclosure: where I will work this summer), Advocates for Youth, and SIECUS, hot on the heels of last week’s report, have sent a letter to the director of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), warning him that if HHS doesn’t comply with federal law (which the groups claim abstinence only programs violate), they’ll file a lawsuit challenging the Federal abstinence programs. Salon tells us that the case would be based on:

evidence that 1) many federally funded abstinence-only programs are filled with medically inaccurate information about condoms, HIV and other sexual health issues and 2) the programs have not proved to be effective in preventing teens from having sex.

But it’s not only the advocacy groups that are getting on the case now. Even the NYT is getting in on the action, though they did bury their editorial in the little-read Saturday paper. In their Editorial this morning, the paper writes:

Reliance on abstinence-only sex education as the primary tool to reduce teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases — as favored by the Bush administration and conservatives in Congress — looks increasingly foolish and indefensible.

I take issue with the fact that the Times is totally hedging here — these programs are not becoming “increasingly” foolish or indefensible. They always have been, but no one was willing to stick out their neck before this report came out and made support of abstinence only a losing game. I appreciate that the Times is helping make this an issue. But their “eh” language won’t help much.

The truth is, it’s on Congress now to defund these programs. Congress has been complicit in their expansion for too long (the Republican Congress, I might add). Now, led by Democrats and changing the priorities, this Congress needs to use the recent report as support for its decision to defund these programs and mandate real, comprehensive sex ed in all our schools.

One of the things I’ve found particularly striking in thinking about last week’s federal abortion ban decision was how stark the contrast has been between Chief Justice Roberts’s rhetoric during his confirmation hearings and his behavior on the bench.

During the confirmation hearings, Justice Roberts promised to respect precedent, to promote judicial restraint, and to build consensus. But a recent string of 5-4 opinions betrays this promise.

So what are we to do? For me, the abortion decision as well as the other close decisions have driven home the idea that confirmation hearings are, at this point, pretty worthless. The nominees don’t really reveal anything and the hypothetical “how would you have ruled” questions don’t push them to.

TAP’s Michael Tomasky suggests that the answer is harsher hearings, with real questions about ideology and beliefs. That’s what the President uses to decide whom to nominate, Tomasky reasons, so why shouldn’t the Senate consider these issues too. He writes:

So, next time, what should Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee do? They cannot ask the next Bush nominee, if there is one, how he or she would have decided on X. That’s a weak invitation to an easy side-step: I can’t say, didn’t read the briefs, et cetera.

What they need to do is ask such a nominee what he or she believes, using real-world examples. This fiction that judges have no beliefs and only interpret law this way or that way is transparent. Democrats need to say so and press hard for a nominee’s beliefs.

The Court is about to hear cases from Louisville and Seattle on school integration. A true conservative should support integration in this case, because in both localities the policy was set by legislatures (the direct representatives of the people) at the local (that is, non-federal) level. Democrats must ask a nominee, well, which are you more committed to? Local legislative decisions, or aversion to racial remedies of any sort

Such a move could be a double edged sword; it could be political suicide for the democrats but would help ensure that we’re not getting any rude surprises once people are appointed the Court. That said, Justice Stevens, now one of the most liberal justices on the Court (and god love him, the oldest), was appointed by a Republican as a conservative. So maybe surprises are just part of the game.

I’m curious — what do you all think?

Sometimes I’m shocked by what people do in the name of religion. Yes, yes, the violence, of course, is the first thing that comes to mind. But really, what surprises and appalls me are the more mundane things. The daily acts of supposed piety that require the denigration of someone else. I’m not knocking all religion (please, trolls, do not accuse me of that). What I am knocking is religion that requires one person to hurt another — physically or emotionally — as act of religious observance.

Not sure what I mean? Here’s an example. KMZ just sent me the video embedded below. It’s from the actor/monologist/author Mike Daisey’s Friday night performance of Invincible Summer, his monologue currently running at the American Repertory Theater here in NYC. On Friday, Daisey was performing one of his extemporaneous monologues to a sold-out crowd. Until, in the middle of a sentence, all of a sudden, eighty seven members of a Christian group got up en masse and walked out. In the middle of the show. One man stopped and poured water all over Daisey’s handwritten outline for the show, an original and irreplaceable document.

Daisey, understandably, was shaken and reeling. He wrote on his blog:

I’m still dealing with all the ramifications, but here’s what it felt like from my end: I am performing the show to a packed house, when suddenly the lights start coming up in the house as a flood of people start walking down the aisles–they looked like a flock of birds who’d been startled, the way they all moved so quickly, and at the same moment…it was shocking, to see them surging down the aisles. The show halted as they fled, and at this moment a member of their group strode up to the table, stood looking down on me and poured water all over the outline, drenching everything in a kind of anti-baptism.

I sat behind the table, looking up in his face with shock. My job onstage is to be as open as possible, to weave the show without a script as it comes, and this leaves me very emotionally available–and vulnerable, if an audience chooses to abuse that trust. I doubt I will ever forget the look in his face as he defaced the only original of the handwritten show outline–it was a look of hatred, and disgust, and utter and consuming pride.

It is a face I have seen in Riefenstahl’s work, and in my dreams, but never on another human face, never an arm’s length from me–never directed at me, hating me, hating my words and the story that I’ve chosen to tell. That face is not Christian, by any definition Christ would be proud to call his own–its naked righteousness and contempt have nothing to do with the godhead, and everything to do with pathetic human pride at its very worst.

And it wounded me in my heart, because I trusted these people. Scared parents and scared teachers running from a theater because words might hurt them, and so consumed by fear that they have to lash out at the work, literally break it apart, drown it.

[...]But they are not simply fools and idiots–I saw them. They are young and old, they are teachers and students, they are each and every one of us. We are the same family, even if it hurts. The hard truth is that you reap what you sow, and I will not sow hatred and discontent–I refuse. I will not forget what that man, older than I am today, did to my work. I will not forget the cowed silence of those who left. I will not forget their judgment and their arrogance–but I will not hate.

Daisey’s experience, and his reaction to it, included in the video below (which is 9 minutes, but well worth watching in full) is a reminder that religious extremism takes many forms, and is both big/political and small/personal.

Today’s hypocrites of the day are…right wing anti-choicers.

Why? Well, for many reasons, but for one central one today.

Which is this: the wingnuts — the same people who supposedly care oh so much about child health — actually don’t. They care about how good being pro-”life” and pro-child sounds, but not actually about children and families.

Case in point: Mississippi. In Mississippi, where there is 1 abortion clinic in the whole state, and where the governor rode to power on promises of cutting funding for medicaid, infant mortality is on the rise. As the NY Times reported today, the infant mortality rate in Mississippi in 2005 was 11.4 (per thousand births) as compared to a national average of 6.9 and the previous years 9.7. When separated by race, the numbers are even starker: 17 deaths per thousand among Mississippi’s Blacks; around 6 among Whites.

Certainly, many factors can be said to contribute to this rise: obesity and other health problems of the mother being the most obvious. But the most central reason that infant mortality is on the rise in Mississippi and around the south is because medicaid cuts have made it exceedingly difficult for poor women to secure prenatal care.

The Times explains:

[S]ocial workers say that the motivation of poor women is not so simply described, and it can be affected by cuts in social programs and a dearth of transportation as well as low self esteem.

“If you didn’t have a car and had to go 60 miles to see a doctor, would you go very often?” said Ramona Beardain, director of Delta Health Partners. The group runs a federally financed program, Healthy Start, that sends social workers and nurses to counsel pregnant teenagers and new mothers in seven counties of the Delta. “If they’re in school they miss the day; if they’re working they don’t get paid,” Ms. Beardain said.

It’s not only the issue of transportation; in the last few years, changes in Medicaid requirements have made it much more onerous to enroll (and stay enrolled) — a ploy to get people off the state rolls at the expense of their health and that of their children.

In 2004, Gov. Haley Barbour came to office promising not to raise taxes and to cut Medicaid. Face-to-face meetings were required for annual re-enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP, the children’s health insurance program; locations and hours for enrollment changed, and documentation requirements became more stringent.

As a result, the number of non-elderly people, mainly children, covered by the Medicaid and CHIP programs declined by 54,000 in the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years. According to the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program in Jackson, some eligible pregnant women were deterred by the new procedures from enrolling.

One former Medicaid official, Maria Morris, who resigned last year as head of an office that informed the public about eligibility, said that under the Barbour administration, her program was severely curtailed.

“The philosophy was to reduce the rolls and our activities were contrary to that policy,” she said.

The result? fewer women receiving medicaid, more dead babies. Many people — even those who accept the anti-reproductive justice rhetoric — can see that this is bad policy:

Oleta Fitzgerald, southern regional director for the Children’s Defense Fund, said: “When you see drops in the welfare rolls, when you see drops in Medicaid and children’s insurance, you see a recipe for disaster. Somebody’s not eating, somebody’s not going to the doctor and unborn children suffer.”

But not Governor Haley Barbour, who spearheaded these changes, and who had this to say about his stance on abortion:

[I support] Protecting the rights of the unborn. I am pro-life. I have been a national spokesman on this issue and will continue to be an advocate for policies which promote the sanctity of human life.

Yep, he supports policies that protect “the sanctity of human life” alright. But only, that is, until a child is born.

Constitutional scholar Cass Sunstein had a column in yesterday’s L.A. Times focusing on Justice Ginsburg’s dissent in Gonzales. The dissent, unlike the Court’s abortion jurisprudence, focused on the riht to abortion as necessary for women’s equality. As Sunstein notes, Ginsburg has argued for an equality approach to abortion rights since at least the 1980s (the Court continues to push its privacy/Due Process rationale).

Sunstein highlights the clear advantages of an equal protection claim:

For supporters of the right to choose, the sex equality argument has considerable advantages over the privacy argument. Much more than the right to privacy, the ban on sex discrimination is firmly entrenched in constitutional doctrines.

It defies social reality to approach the abortion issue as a mere matter of privacy, as if it could really be divorced from questions of sex equality. Some proposed restrictions on abortion, such as requiring the consent of the father of the fetus, are plainly an effort to revive discredited notions about women’s proper place, and they violate equality principles for that reason.

I agree with Justice Ginsburg (and Professor Sunstein) that there are significant advantages to an equality approach, not the least of which is that equality is explicit in the Constitution whereas privacy is not. But, as I have noted before, the Court’s pregnancy jurisprudence stands between us and an equality rationale for protecting abortion rights. The Court, in a now-infamous 1970s case, Geduldig v. Aiello, held that pregnancy discrimination is not sex discrimination because the comparison is not between men and women but between pregnant people and non pregnant people (a group that includes men and women). It’s a legal fiction and a farce of logic, but it stands. And stands in the way of forward movement on equality jurisprudence.

Still, Sunstein is optimistic:

But Ginsburg has now offered the most powerful understanding of the foundations of the right to choose — and it is important to remember that today’s dissenting opinion often becomes tomorrow’s majority. The equality argument has the support of four members of the court (Ginsburg and justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer). We should not be terribly surprised if, in the fullness of time, Ginsburg’s view attracts a decisive fifth.

Right now, facing decades more of a Roberts court, we can only hope that Sunstein’s crystal ball is as good as Reva Siegel’s.

(via Grace; also at LG&M)