a bird and a bottle

I know you’re all waiting with baited breath, but I still haven’t decided whom - if anyone - to “endorse” going into the Democratic primary. It’s still early. I might. But not yet.

That said, damn Obama’s rhetoric works for me.

Andrew Sullivan’s got the full text of Obama’s recent speech (which Sullivan somewhat derisively though perhaps somewhat accurately calls a sermon) at Hampton University. Obama used the story of the shooting of a pregnant woman (in white, natch) during which the bullet lodged in the arm of the woman’s fetus. The fetus survives but has scar as a reminder.

The story makes my skin crawl a little. But what he does with it is damn good. There’s this:

And so God is asking us today to remember that miracle of that baby. And He is asking us to take that bullet out once more.

If we have more black men in prison than are in our colleges and universities, then it’s time to take the bullet out. If we have millions of people going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma; it’s time to take the bullet out. If too many of our kids don’t have health insurance; it’s time to take the bullet out. If we keep sending our kids to dilapidated school buildings, if we keep fighting this war in Iraq, a war that never should have been authorized and waged, a war that’s costing us $275 million dollars a day and a war that is taking too many innocent lives — if we have all these challenges and nothing’s changing, then every minister in America needs to come together — form our own surgery teams — and take the bullets out.

And this:

If we want to stop the cycle of poverty, then we need to start with our families.

We need to start supporting parents with young children. There is a pioneering Nurse-Family Partnership program right now that offers home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income mothers and mothers-to-be. They learn how to care for themselves before the baby is born and what to do after. It’s common sense to reach out to a young mother. Teach her about changing the baby. Help her understand what all that crying means, and when to get vaccines and check-ups.

This program saves money. It raises healthy babies and creates better parents. It reduced childhood injuries and unintended pregnancies, increased father involvement and women’s employment, reduced use of welfare and food stamps, and increased children’s school readiness. And it produced more than $28,000 in net savings for every high-risk family enrolled in the program.

This works and I will expand the Nurse-Family Partnership to provide at-home nurse visits for up to 570,000 first-time mothers each year. We can do this. Our God is big enough for that.

So he hits my two pet issues in a single speech: first, the country’s unconscionable jailing of hundreds of thousands of mostly poor and mostly black men and women; and second, the empty rhetoric of the American “pro-life” movement and what an America that really supports families would look like. And he gets both issues right.

Sullivan calls Obama a compassionate conservative — made in the model that Bush supposedly was. I don’t buy that. It aggrandizes Bush and ties Obama to his sinking ship at the same time. It’s also patently false. Obama’s speech rings more of the Democratic Great Society era than of early 21st century compassionate conservatism.

At root, it doesn’t really matter how we label Obama’s speech. The bottom line is that he’s talking about important issues, connecting faith to progressivism, and doing what’s even more improbable — inspiring this cynical blogger.

Two unpleasant news items today: first, via Feministing, I learn that pregnancy discrimination is up. Then I head over to the NY Times and bump head-on into an article about the antis’ increasing reliance on the argument that abortion should be banned because it is bad for women.

And then it struck me: these two news developments are inextricably related.

Here’s what I mean: pregnancy discrimination is up because there is little government mandate not to discriminate against pregnant women. Sure, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act says that where Title VII applies (larger employers, usually), employers cannot discriminate on the basis of pregnancy, but that leaves a whole lot that’s not covered (smaller employers, cases where it’s not discrimination but requests for extra benefits related to pregnancy). The slight nod of acceptance regarding pregnancy discrimination — it’s still not considered unconstitutional to discriminate on the basis of pregnancy even if it is against federal law — links directly into the thinking underlying the Times article: women are not rational actors when their fertility is concerned, and pregnancy is the prime example of that.

In the case of the anti-abortion rhetoric, the thinking goes that women who are pregnant and who are considering abortions cannot fully understand the consequences of their actions for their own mental health or for their families (when the Supreme Court accepted this argument in its recent Gonzales v. Carhart decision, I threw up a little in my mouth). If the Supreme Court’s decision is any indication, that way of thinking, in all its condescending and backwards glory, seems to be gaining adherents. And it’s fed into by the pervasive notion in American culture that pregnant women are somehow less human…less intelligent, less able to make decisions. Why, if that’s the case, then it all but makes sense to discriminate against them at work!

See what I mean about those dots being connected?

(translation: (1) Bush, like the pope, is against abortion. (2) Yes, he prefers that they become adults and that they have the opportunity to die killing in Iraq).

Anyone in desperate need of some good news on the women’s health front? Yeah, me too.

Well, here it is: Mexico City today legalized abortion. And by a landslide — the vote in the city council was 49-16!

Here are the details, via the NY Times:

The new law will require city hospitals to provide the procedure in the first trimester and opens the way for private abortion clinics. Girls under 18 would have to get their parents’ consent.

The procedure will be almost free for poor or insured city residents, but is unlikely to attract patients from the United States, where later-term abortion is legal in many states. Under the Mexico City law, abortion after 12 weeks would be punished by three to six months in jail.

OK - so it’s not a perfect law (the parental consent provision is strict and 12 weeks is fairly early). But it’s pretty damn good, and the city should be commended not only for taking a stand in a country where abortion is generally proscribed, but also - and perhaps more importantly - making that stand more than symboling by requiring that the procedure be provided free to poor women. If the “pro-lifers” here were really concerned about life, and about respecting fetal life for that matter, they would take similar steps and push for both birth control and much greater access to abortion.

So, kudos to Mexico City. And thank you, Mexico City, for some badly needed good news.

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.

In addition to Lynn’s article, to which I linked below, I wanted to direct your attention to some other great commentaries about the abortion ban from around the blogosphere:

Law prof Jack Balkin makes it clear (as if it weren’t already) why this matters: It’s the informed consent, stupid.

Lynn Harris of Salon also thinks through the implications of the decision in her recap.

Terrance at The Republic of T (via Jill) talks about what it means to be able to choose whether or not to terminate a second trimester pregnancy, and reminds us about the ramifications when choices are taken away from women.

Feminist Law Prof David S. Cohen reminds us who really gets hurt in all this – poor women.

belledame’s got the newest Carnival of the Feminists in 3 parts, and of course pulls together many posts about yesterday’s decision.

[edited] former Planned Parenthood chief Gloria Feldt unleashes her wisdom at WIMN’s voices, explaining why Gonzales is a Partial Truth Decision.

More of my own analysis to come…when I finish my evidence outline.

The amazing Lynn Paltrow (a mentor and friend of mine), founder and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, has cranked out a strong rebuke to the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday. It’s up at The American Prospect. Here’s an except. But go read it all.

And yet the Bush administration is actively supporting policies to limit poor children’s access to state child health insurance programs. In short, the Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart — and Bush’s professed support for it — reinforces the sense, once again, that only the unborn deserve protection in this country. Not by ensuring universal health care, paid maternity leave, or an end to workplace pregnancy discrimination — only by restricting pregnant women’s access to health care.

One of the most common comments I’ve seen around the blogosphere (sometimes from trolls, sometimes not) since yesterday’s ruling is that the decision doesn’t matter — that it only affects one procedure which is performed very infrequently. As I noted in a post yesterday, the decision matters a lot. In large part, its impact will come from the fact that it sanctions abortion restrictions that don’t have an exception for women’s health.

Another big reason (or rather, several reasons) this case matters is (are) clear in today’s L.A. Times article, aptly titled “Anti-abortion activists Look to Build on Court Victory“. Based on an interview with Operation Rescue’s head (OR is Randall Terry’s baby), the article is a bullet-point list of the wingnut anti-choicers’ plans in the wake of Gonzales v. Carhart:

– Ban all abortion of viable fetuses, unless the mother’s life is endangered.

– Ban mid- and late-term abortion for fetal abnormality, such as Down syndrome or a malformed brain.

– Require doctors to tell patients in explicit detail what the abortion will involve, show them ultrasound images of the fetus and warn them that they might become suicidal after the procedure.

– Lengthen waiting periods so women must reflect on such counseling for several days before obtaining the abortion.

It is far from certain that the Supreme Court would uphold all these proposals. But anti-abortion activists clearly feel momentum is on their side.

In particular, they’re pleased that the court upheld an outright ban — with no exceptions — on a surgical procedure performed in the second trimester, when the fetus is too large to be evacuated through a suction tube.

Still think Gonzales was an unimportant blip?

(via Scott)

Texas State Rep. Warren Chisum is at it again. Yes, that Warren Chisum. The one who wanted to pass a law banning the teaching of evolution in Texas schools. The one lambasted by the late great Molly Ivins in her Dildo Diaries video.

This time, the man who wants to fight for a Christian Texas is doing it pretty overtly. The LA Times reported yesterday that he has proposed a bill that would require all public high schools to offer an elective course on the Bible. The course would teach the “history and literature of the Old and New Testaments eras.”

There’s so much wrong with this bill it’s hard to figure out where to start. Here’s the obvious. In many many (many) places in Texas, a class that teaches the Bible will not be teaching it as literature, but rather as a holy document and the word of God. Though Chisum says that won’t be so (he said the course would not treat the Bible as a “worship document” but would promote religious and cultural literacy by “educating our students academically and not devotionally.”), I’m not quite so sure.

Think about it. Especially given the funding structure of the bill. Who would be the teachers?

The bill, which says the class is to be taught in “an objective and nondevotional manner,” does not provide funding or training for school districts and teachers. [...]

“The fear is that teachers with limited training and no guidance will be called upon to teach a course for which their experience draws largely from Sunday school,” Miller said. “It would be difficult for them to keep their own religious perspective out of the classroom. You can almost hear the lawyers lining up.”

That fear is well-founded. There are already studies proving that religion has a tendency to creep in in situations like the one this bill would create:

A study conducted for her group by Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University, found that of Texas’ 25 public school districts with a Bible course, 22 districts’ offerings had a Christian slant.

“When teachers don’t have solid training in biblical studies and 1st Amendment issues, then they fall back on what they know from prior knowledge,” Chancey told state legislators last week. “Courses end up being sectarian, often despite their best intentions.”

He said one teacher showed students a PowerPoint presentation titled “God’s Road Map for Your Life.” Included was a slide called “Jesus Christ Is the One and Only Way.” Another teacher taught students that NASA had found a missing day and time that corresponded to a biblical story of the sun standing still. One school showed “VeggieTales” videos, which feature computer-animated Christian vegetables that talk.

That’s right, folks. Talking Christian vegetables. Of course, the bill also raises serious First Amendment concerns. While Chisum promises that it will not teach religious doctrine (and I am all for teaching the Bible as Literature), it’s hard to see how the bill would not require state funding for religious (as opposed to literary) education. Especially given the empirical studies quoted above.

And it’s not hard to see that that’s exactly the situation Chisum wants:

Chisum’s legislation says the Bible would be the primary textbook for the class. It allows but doesn’t require the classes to include secular books or those from other religions.

Seems to me that teaching the Bible as history and literature, you might want to bring in, oh, i don’t know, a history text. Or perhaps novels or memoirs that illustrate how authors have used or criticized the bible in their writing.

There are other problems with the bill, including the fact that in many Texas schools there isn’t even funding for music education or gym. Is Bible studies the thing that should get the precious few education dollars?

Warren Chisum would say yes. Because to him, religious ideology trumps all. As I said in my post the other day about states turning down abstinence-only funding, to guys like Chisum, school is for preaching, not for teaching.

(also at LG&M)

Turns out, it’s easy for states to just say no.

The L.A. Times reported Sunday on the rash of states that have refused to accept federal abstinence only funding. In a turn that makes me dance with joy, swing state Ohio was among the most recent:

In an emerging revolt against abstinence-only sex education, states are turning down millions of dollars in federal grants, unwilling to accept White House dictates that the money be used for classes focused almost exclusively on teaching chastity.

In Ohio, Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland said that regardless of the state’s sluggish economic picture, he didn’t see the point in taking part in the controversial State Abstinence Education Program anymore.

Five other states — Wisconsin, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Montana and New Jersey — have dropped out of that grant program or plan to do so by the end of this year. California has refused all along to participate in the program, which is managed by a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Strickland, like most of the other governors who are pulling the plug on the funding, said the program had too many rules to be practical. Among other things, the money cannot be used to promote condom or contraceptive use. Students are to be taught that bearing children outside wedlock is likely to harm society and that sexual activity outside marriage is “likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”

“Harmful physiological effects” gets it about right, though it’s a vast understatement and a sort of shameful glossing over of some important details. Like, say, the fact that abstinence only programs equate girls who have premarital sex (and girls ONLY) with dirty food or glasses of water full of classmates’ spit. As Jill has pointed out, the trope of the “used up girl” is a common theme in many abstinence only programs. How do you think that makes some sexually active 16-year-old feel when she’s sitting in the classroom? I’m going to go with not so good. Abstinence only “education” curricula promote sexism by teaching lies including this whopper: in relationships, women need financial support, strength and flattery. Men need emotional support and sex. I kid you not.

The programs also inculcate heteronormative beliefs; if the only sex that is normal or sanctioned is sex within marriage, what does that say to gay kids? And there’s more. Abstinence only programs receiving federal dollars are required to say things including that HIV can be transmitted through tears, skin-to-skin contact and sweat, and that abortion is wrong.

You would think that with such scare tactics, abstinence only programs would work wonders. But they don’t.

[A]ccording to the [Ohio] governor’s spokesman, Keith Dailey, [Gov.] Strickland sees little evidence that the program has been effective. “We’ve spent millions of dollars on such education since Ohio first started getting grant money in 1998,” Dailey said. “If the state is going to spend money on teaching and protecting kids, the governor believes it’s better to spend it in a smarter, more comprehensive approach.”

New Jersey was similarly galled:

Health and Human Services endured enormous criticism by governors last year after it issued a document underscoring and clarifying key rules for states that took federal abstinence grants. Among the points that unsettled some state officials: Applicants “must not” promote contraceptive or condom use, nor even “refer to abstinence as a form of contraception.”

In the months that followed, states started to turn away from the program. In October, New Jersey said it would do without the $800,000 it had been receiving. Wisconsin followed in March, when Democratic Gov. James Doyle said the state would no longer accept nearly $600,000.

“When we got that first memo, that did it for us,” said Stephanie Marquis, a spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Health and Family Services Department. “How can we do our best to teach the teens that are sexually active if our hands are tied?”

That’s exactly the point. Abstinence only is not about teaching teens. It’s about preaching to them.

(Via Kaiser Network)

There’s been a lot of news recently about the rising prices of the birth control pill on college campuses. Whereas students used to be able to get the pill at cut-rate prices, those days are gone. And birth control is now too expensive for many college women to afford. The Times has more in an Editorial today:

For almost 20 years, college health centers have been able to purchase contraceptives at nominal prices. This was not a tax-funded subsidy. It was a financial incentive that gave drug manufacturers an exemption from Medicaid pricing rules so they could sell contraceptives and other products to certain charitable groups, like the college clinics, at an extreme discount. In response to concerns that drug companies were abusing this privilege, language was sewn into legislation in 2005 to close a loophole. It also inadvertently slashed this important benefit for clinics and their patients.

On some college campuses, the price of brand-name contraceptives has risen from the neighborhood of $5 per month to $40 or even $50. Switching to a generic is an option in some cases, but it can still entail a 300 percent price increase. Generics often run at about $15 per month. Newer contraceptives, like the NuvaRing, which contains a very low hormone dose and does not require a daily action that is easily forgotten, are not yet available generically. Many students are priced out of the market.

So we now live in a society where young women are unable to purchase monthly birth control and unable to secure state funding for an abortion (in most states). Anyone see a pattern here? Feels to me like mounting pressure for a return to the glory days of women as babymakers. For a long time now, religious conservatives have quietly lobbied against birth control while shouting about abortion. More and more, they’re raising the volume.

Correlation instead of causation? Perhaps. But given the power wielded by the wingnuts, I’m suspicious. Whatever the cause, the new Democrat-controlled Congress has got to close this loophole, and fast.

I am religious. But I think that religion (all religions) should stay the hell away from my civil rights and liberties. And I think Passover/Easter weekend is the perfect time to remind myself, and everyone else, of that. Separation of Church & State is imperative to the retention and strengthening of our rights to free speech, to personal autonomy, to the ability to worship or not as we please…the list goes on. And many (many) people have offered similar lists.

So here’s my contribution to Blog Against Theocracy Weekend: someone else’s art. Here’s indexed’s Jessica Hagy’s take on religion in America.

Besides Keroack’s resignation (hooray!), there was other good reproductive justice news yesterday.

Mexico City is set to pass a law that would substantially liberalize abortion laws there. The city council will vote on April 19 and the Mayor has pledged to sign it. The law would be a beg step for any country, and an especially notable one in Latin America, where three countries completely ban abortion in all cases. And get this: the proposed law is even more liberal than the U.S.’s, and in all the right ways. The NY Times has the full story:

Dominated by liberals, Mexico City’s legislature is expected to legalize abortion in a few weeks. The bill would make this city one of the largest entities in Latin America to break with a long tradition of women resorting to illegal clinics and midwives to end unwanted pregnancies.

[...]

The Mexico City bill would make it legal to have an abortion during the first trimester for any reason. The procedure would be free at city health facilities. Private hospitals would be required to provide an abortion to any woman who asks for one, though doctors with religious or ethical objections would not be required to perform abortions.

You see that? Abortion would be FREE at all city facilities and hospitals would be required to provide the service to any woman who asks. Sure, specific doctors with objections can refuse to perform, but someone at the hospital has to do it if a woman wants it. We can’t even get such assurances for birth control.

And there’s none of the infantilizing waiting periods, which assume that women have to be forced to think through this decision, which any woman knows is and just another way to throw an obstacle in the paths of women seeking abortions. There’s no Hyde Amendment-type caveat; in Mexico City, all women rich and poor will have equal and real access to abortion services. There’s no informed consent provision which in the U.S. requires doctors to read a script engineered to discourage women from following through with their abortions and which restricts the free speech rights of doctors and the privacy rights of their patients. In short, it’s a great law.

Of course, it’s passage will not be without opponents:

“Women are dying, above all poor women, because of unsafe abortions,” said María Consuelo Mejía, the director of Catholics for the Right to Decide. “What we would like is that these women never have to confront the necessity of an abortion, but in this society it’s impossible right now. There is no access to information, to contraceptives. Nor do most women have the power to negotiate the use of contraceptives with their partners.”

Conservatives respond that abortion is tantamount to murder. “This law is a law that will cost many lives,” said Jorge Serrano Limón, the head of Provida, an anti-abortion group. “If it is signed, it will spill a lot of blood, the blood of babies just conceived in the maternal womb.”

Same old rhetoric. One side focuses on women and their rights, the other pretends women don’t exist except for as walking wombs. But here’s my favorite quote from someone opposing the law:

Mr. Serrano Limón [the head of Provida] and other opponents also dispute that the law will end illegal abortions. The procedure carries such a stigma here, they say, that whether legal or not, many women will seek out underground clinics to keep their condition secret from their friends and families anyway.

So, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that perhaps the reason that abortion is so stigmatized in Mexican society is because the repressive and restrictive laws have made it that way. The Church’s rhetoric hasn’t helped either, of course. Legalizing abortion will help destigmatize it by allowing women to come out from the shadows and to stop seeking out those back alley abortionists. See, Mr. Serrano Limón? It’s a simple game of cause and effect.

Speaking of cause and effect, this law will have a huge impact on women’s health, and particularly on the lives of poor women.

Many women here are watching the political battle with a mix of trepidation and hope. Like many laws in Mexico, the abortion law is honored as much in its breach as its observance.

Government officials estimate at least 110,000 women a year seek illegal abortions in Mexico, and many abortion rights groups say the number is much higher. At least 88 women died in 2006 from botched abortions, the Health Ministry says, though it is far from clear that all cases were reported.

For the well off, it is common knowledge that certain gynecologists perform illegal abortions in private hospitals, disguising the procedure as something else on documents.

For the poor, unwanted pregnancies often mean finding a midwife or an underground clinic, abortion rights advocates say. Some young women also resort to huge doses of drugs for arthritis and gastritis, available over the counter, that can cause miscarriages. Others use teas made from traditional herbs to cause miscarriages. All of these methods carry dangers.

Having read Rickie Solinger’s Beggars and Choosers (which I heartily recommend, btw), I’m wary of heaping blame on midwives and others who perform often safe and effective abortion services when the procedure is illegal, because it again imagines the world of abortion rights as a bunch of forces acting on women rather than a combination of many factors.

That said, there are clear risks to underground abortions, most of them created not by the procedure itself but by its illegality — in those rare instances when there is a problem, women cannot seek medical attention for fear of prosecution. And the ramifications for their lives, health, and fertility are great.

The story of one woman, Dolores, who did not want her full name used, is typical. When she was 18, she became pregnant after her first sexual encounter with a boyfriend she barely knew, mostly because she knew nothing about contraception or even the basics of sexuality.

“I was alone and had no help,” she said in an interview. “In fact, I thought about it a lot before I made the decision, but in the end there was no other way. I wasn’t in the economic position to face the situation.”

Panicked, she visited a midwife, who inserted a flexible tube into the womb to let air in and provoke a miscarriage. Dolores was told to wait three days before removing the tube.

She started bleeding within 15 minutes of leaving the midwife’s house. The bleeding continued unabated for a month. At last, she fainted in front of her parents from a loss of blood and they took her to a hospital, where she recovered slowly after a week of treatment. “I almost died,” she said.

Now 41, she has never carried a baby to term. Two of her pregnancies ended in premature births, and both infants died.

Pro-life? With stories like this pro-life has to be pro-abortion rights.

I’ve got my fingers crossed for April 19 (ironic, the religious undertones of that gesture). I’ve got hope (though it’s slim) that Mexico City can be a leader for a new era of abortion rights in Latin America (and maybe beyond?).

Here’s a quite from a recent profile of Republican 2008 candidate Sen Sam Brownback (KS):

“I believe the child in the womb should be protected, and that we should also protect the person that’s in poverty, and the child that’s in Darfur, and working with prisoners so they don’t have so much recidivism and always back in the system.”

This quote is disturbing for two reasons:

First, it seems like prisoners’ rights activism is becoming a Republican, nee, far right issue. While I’m glad to see that somebody is taking this on, I’m pissed off that it’s not the Dems. Maybe this is a real moment of possibility for bipartisanship activism. But that would require the democrats to get off their rears and actually take a real interest in prison reform.

Oh, and Second: missing form that list of lives that Brownback cares about? Women. If life is so important, how about protecting women’s health, and guaranteeing reproductive health care? To Brownback, women are important…but only as incubators for those fetuses he is so eager to protect.

via ATL.

Stephen Colbert has two amazing “the Word” segments up from this week - both touching on the issues I blog about. I can’t embed them because wordpess won’t let me (damn you wordpress!), but I’ve provided links. Click them.

The first is a really biting critique of South Carolina’s new plan to let incarcerated men and women out of prison earlier….if they donate their organs…while they’re alive. I’m serious. Apparently a kidney gets you 180 days fewer in prison. Here’s the video.

The second “Word” - which aired just last night - goes after Daddy Dobson et al., who are angry at the new leader of the organization of American Evangelical churches (that’s not the official title) because he cares about issues like global warming and poverty instead of just abortion and gay marriage. Doesn’t he know that global warming doesn’t get people scared and to the polls? Colbert exposes the ridiculousness of that stance here.

Hat tip to SF for the link.

Update: Mysticist, a reader and sibling of SF, has informed me that the hat-tip was misplaced. He has requested the following correction: “Hat tip to mysticist for the link. Huge wag of a huger finger to SF for, like a petty thief, stealing the fire from his brother.” Done. Hat-tipped, finger-wagged.