Human rights

Inspired by The Heretik, who noted privatly "the burn in Blogylvania" is bringing on oy-ish feelings, I begin a personal meme: The Thursday Burn - Oy!. This idea may need some refinement, so if anyone takes this on, feel free to sample it, hack it, sweeten it, make it yours. But for now it's just a flat out expression of what's burning you this week in the blogozoid, with the "oy!" factor.

What really burns me this week is how all the shit is coming down about Roe, and nobody seems to notice. Sure, there's a lot of sensible concern on Booman, but not in the mainstream media, and not from many of the SCLB.

Perhaps most disappointing was the commentary this week from Hendrik Hertzberg writing in The New Yorker:

Many of the Democrats’ “powerful special interest allies,� notably in the abortion-rights movement, are raising alarms about Roe v. Wade. The core of the abortion ruling is not in immediate danger; even if O’Connor’s support becomes Roberts’s opposition, Roe will still command a majority of one. The truth, though, is that the next few years will be hard ones for reproductive freedom, especially among the red-state poor and young. Roe or no Roe, Roberts or no Roberts, a woman with money will be able to get a safe and legal abortion, even if she has to travel to another state to get one. But any Bush-appointed Justice, whatever his or her stand on Roe, is likely to endorse ever more restrictive state laws calculated to intimidate, inconvenience, or otherwise prevent young women who want or need abortions from getting them. If, after another couple of Bush appointments, the Court does strike down Roe, the result would, of course, be worse—abortion would be banned outright in a score of states—but the political energy in this seemingly endless national struggle would quickly pass from the pro-life to the pro-choice side. The more immediate dangers, from the moderate-to-liberal point of view, are in areas where O’Connor provided the fifth vote. If Roberts turns out to be as conservative as Bush’s rightmost supporters hope, then affirmative action, secularism, patients’ rights, and all manner of federal regulation from campaign-finance controls to environmental protection will be in serious trouble.

"More immediate dangers," Hendrik?! Oy vey!

In OurWord.org, Pseudo-Adrienne reports:

For seven years, the National Organization for Women has had a court-ordered injunction that protected patients and staff of women's clinics from anti-choice protestor violence--because I suppose violence, assault, hurling hateful slurs, bombings, shootings, stalking, threats, and vandalism are all apart of the misogynist "pro-life" dogma. This injunction was known as NOW v. Scheidler, and recently the Supreme Court agreed to review the case. And what is at stake is the safety and even the very lives of those who enter, exit, and work at women's clinics all across the country.

This seems to be getting pretty "immediate" to me. Oy vey, Hendrik! What are you thinking?!

So I've been slacking with this blogging thing, and there's really no way I could possibly make up for a week's lost news/blogging opportunities, so I'm just going to pick up and go.

In my daily (compulsive) perusing of feministing's latest posts, I came across this post by Hannah, discussing the stance of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' wife as ex-board member of Feminists for Life, and broaches the difficult concept of pro-lifers and their inclusion/exclusion in the feminist movement.

This is something that's been bothering me since my good friend's assertion in my History of American Feminism class last fall ('04) that she could very much be a feminist and pro-life. I respect this woman immensely, so I didn't argue with that assumption, and it was also obvious that she'd been hurt in the past by people denouncing her claim to feminism because of her pro-life stance, and I didn't want to be another one of those people. So I remained silent. But I've been turning it over and over in my head ever since.

When my mother went to law school, she was one of only a few. She graduated near the top of her class (forgive me but I've never been able to remember the Latin descriptive) and got some pretty high-powered interviews. One was with Major, National, Firm & How. She was told that if they hired her, "the secretaries would get angry." Yes, that's right. This was some 20 years after Sandra Day O'Connor graduated Stanford Law. Sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Today apparently a majority of law students are women. I hold out hope in this. For one thing, this might make issues that women find important part of the "important shit."

On the bawdy boys' site (now with a neo-military look), Armando stands up as one who "gets it":

From the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. 5-4. O'Connor in the majority upholding Roe. That's why this is hugely important.

That's why the Supreme Court of the United States is Extraordinary.

Of course, he felt compelled to add that there are other things that are important, too (because we don't want women thinking that their shit is part of the "important shit," now do we?), but he stood up and made his point. At least he had front-page privileges, because the rest of the posts seemed to be well-intentioned, but perhaps a bit blind to the dire circumstances that women are facing with an anti-Roe court. For example, DavidNYC offers call-to-action links that conspicuously omit any reproductive rights sites, or even NOW. Helpful, but perhaps missing the heart of the matter.

Then of course, there were the distractions like Kos' being praised by the MSM (and we needed a plug for that) or Maryscott O'Connor's joke post that for a while was the hottest thread, mostly with joke comments ... and joke diaries. (What a day for joking! But then we feminists aren't supposed to have a sense of humor, are we?)

I don't mean to pick on the DailyKos crowd, but given the recent "huff" he and his defenders got into over women having opinions of which he did not approve, they've almost become the epitome of the barriers women face in the progressive and liberal ranks of the political landscape.

Echidne says it best:

Without birth control and the right to abortion there can be no real gender equality. It's as simple as that. If our fertility is controlled by the government we will ultimately bear children when that government wishes and we will not bear children when that government wishes. Having children changes our lives, more for women than for men, perhaps, but our lives are changed nevertheless, and sometimes these changes are damaging and physically and mentally costly. There can be no real freedom for women to walk down the road at dusk if such a walk could result in a rape which cannot be proven to the satisfaction of the government and if the rape then results in a pregnancy. Giving birth to a child can be dangerous. Bringing up a child in this world is demanding. To have someone else decide when and if you do these things is devastating.

The pro-life answer to these worries consists of abstinence. Women can always say no, we can always cross our legs. But this ultimately means saying no to walks at dusk, perhaps saying no to the new job, interesting but too demanding, or having someone else say no to that job for you because women will just have babies and thus cannot be trusted. And note how the idea of women saying no is one-sided, how the responsibility for abstinence is put on the shoulders of women alone. As if women today were scouring the streets in the search for reluctant men to have sex with. And it doesn't solve the rape dilemma: what if I am raped, get pregnant, and can't prove the rape? What if I'm not raped but had sex because, well, because human beings do want to have sex, and I get pregnant but already have six children and can't feed them? What if I have psychological problems and being pregnant makes me see razor blades for my wrists everywhere?

Abstinence doesn't work. Sex is like food, and people will have sex whatever the punishments we pile on such behavior. The pro-lifers want the punishment to be giving birth or dying from a botched up abortion. This is what sometimes goes for pro-life.

A world without reproductive choice is not a good one for women. Be careful, be more careful than ever, and yet your uterus might be used against your own wishes. Your life doesn't belong to you, never mind about your body. Your fertility belongs to the politicians who decide if you should breed (yes, if you are white, perhaps no, if you are not).

A world without reproductive choice is not a good one for men, either. However careful you are, you might become a father or at least someone who pays child maintenance for the next two decades. And you will have to worry about your daughters, your sisters, your wife, your girlfriend.

No, there can be no real equality without reproductive choice. It's as simple as that for me.

That is why this is not negotiable. That is why reproductive rights are an essential part of a just society, and claims that it's merely a matter of "privacy" and not part of the "important shit" are made of the stuff to which they supposedly aspire ... total and utter crap.

Fortunately there are people like Booman, who reassure me that we are not lost in the frame of the self-important patriarchy:

Women have only recently escaped from the arranged marriage, they have only recently gained the right to refuse sexual relations with their husbands. It is only in the last few decades that we have lived in a society where we could even begin to hold a woman responsible for getting pregnant. And, unfortunately, there are still a lot of situations where women get pregnant through no fault of their own.

Every day, girls are raped or molested by their fathers, their uncles, their brothers, their priests, their teachers, and so on.

Every day, women discover that something is terribly wrong with their pregnancy, and their baby is going to be born with a variety of difficulties.

For me, the bottom line is that women can only be equal citizens when they have power over their reproduction. That means that women must be free to marry whom they want, at an age they want, and they must be allowed to use contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and they must be allowed to terminate a pregnancy that is problematic, or unwanted.

It's ridiculous to think that every pregnancy is a conscious and willing choice. I think it is wrong to use abortion as a form of contraception, provided there are other forms of contraception available. But the real issue is: who the hell is the government to interject themselves into the personal, and often excruciatingly painful, matter of woman's reproductive rights?

If the government is going to overreach it's constitutional mandate, it should stick to doing it to protect people's civil rights, not to trample them.

Ultimately this issue is not about abortion, it's about the government's power to control our bodies. And that, like it or not, is all wrapped up in gender. Call it "women's issues," call it "abortion rights," but one thing that reproductive rights are at the core of, and that's women's equality.

Either we believe in it, or we don't. Yes, some things are that simple.

Most Americans support equal rights for women, even when it comes to reproductive rights and the right to have an abortion:

The CNN-USA Today Gallup poll asked the public, do you want a new Supreme Court justice to be someone who would vote to uphold Roe v. Wade -- the decision that legalized abortion -- or someone who would vote to overturn it?

By better than two to one, Americans prefer a Supreme Court nominee who would vote to uphold Roe v. Wade -- and continue to give constitutional protection to abortion rights.

Even Republicans are divided on the issue. Nearly half want a justice who would uphold abortion rights.

At Ms. Magazine, Celinda Lakes looks at how the American people feel on the issues:

A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 56 percent of respondents nationwide favored keeping abortion legal in all or most cases. The survey of 1,082 adults, conducted in April 2005, showed that only 14 percent of those surveyed wanted to keep abortion illegal in all cases, with another 27 percent wanting most cases to be illegal.

Voters don’t want the government and politicians involved in their choice about abortion. In a recent survey by The Mellman Group, 62 percent of respondents felt the government should not interfere with a woman’s access to abortion. Only 33 percent believe the government should restrict access.

But what about the Supreme Court specifically, and its stance on Roe v. Wade?

Nearly 60 percent of Americans say that, if presented with an opportunity to appoint one or more new justices to the Supreme Court, President Bush should pick individuals who would uphold Roe.

The Associated Press/Ipsos-Public Affairs Poll, which surveyed a national sample of 1,000 adults last November, found that only three in 10 respondents (31 percent) favored nominating justices who would overturn Roe.

It's a fairly sure bet that the wingnuts won't like that. But reality never stopped them before. They're certain to start whining again about a potential filibuster. The only problem is that the people want a robust confirmation process:

Three-quarters of the respondents in a poll of 1,000 likely voters said that the Senate should examine each of the president’s nominees carefully and make its own independent judgment. Only 24 percent thought that the Senate should just confirm whomever Bush puts forward.

In fact, maybe this is a good time to note that most people are against the radical conservatives' efforts to take away birth control from women:

When the debate expands beyond abortion, voters show overwhelming support for a number of issues impacting women’s reproductive rights, family planning and prevention of unintended pregnancies. Voters recently surveyed by Planned Parenthood Federation of America overwhelmingly (78 percent) favor requirements that schools teach sex education, and 79 percent favor access to emergency contraception (EC) for rape and incest victims.

A large majority (65 percent) favors EC for all women, and 66 percent said that health-insurance policies should cover contraceptives. Respondents further showed strong support (67 percent) for a law making it clear that contraception does not constitute abortion and should not be regulated by abortion legislation. Furthermore, in the recent debate over pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions, only 40 percent of those surveyed agreed that pharmacists should be allowed to do so.

Now a lot of radical agitators will try to claim that the Republicans won the last election, and that means the people support their extremely radical views to take away women's control over their own bodies. But in fact, this past November people were not voting on the abortion issue:

In the months since November 2004, a host of commentators insisted that abortion had a negative impact on the election; some even blamed Democratic candidate John Kerry’s loss on his support for abortion rights.

However, data collected by Lake Snell Perry & Associates for the nonpartisan network Votes for Women 2004 shows that the election issues about which voters most cared were the economy (23 percent), national security and terrorism (19 percent), and the war in Iraq (13 percent).

When voters were asked what made them decide their presidential choice, only 2 percent volunteered the issue of abortion. Among Kerry voters, less than 1 percent offered this as an issue. Among Bush voters, only 2 percent said abortion determined their vote for president.

The radical conservatives like to bellow and crow about "the will of the people," but here it's quite obvious that they are out of step with the American people. Will they listen? Undoubtedly, the Republicans will do all they can to appease the radical pseudo-Christian special interests who ultimately want a Christian theocracy (like Iran, only without the Koran).

So what next? Contact your Senators and let them know how the people stand on the issues.

Some things that caught my eye:

• In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision on Monday, Time Magazine is going to hand over its notes regarding the Plame case:
  

  In a statement, Time said it believes ``the Supreme Court has limited press freedom in ways that will have a chilling effect on our work and that may damage the free flow of information that is so necessary in a democratic society.'' '

  But it also said that despite its concerns, it will turn over the records to the special counsel investigating the leak.

• Anthony Lewis has a fascinating article on the history of the First Amendment and how it's been interpreted over the life of our Republic, published in The New York Review of Books:
  

  A wonderful example of the interpretative process is what has been made, over the years, of the free expression guarantees of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Today those clauses, enforced by the courts, protect journalists and artists and political speakers of all stripes. But for more than a century they gave no effective protection to anyone.

  In 1798, just seven years after the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights were added to the Constitution, a Federalist Congress passed —and a Federalist president, John Adams, signed into law—a Sedition Act that made it a crime to publish false criticism of the president. The statute was never considered by the Supreme Court before it expired in 1801. But members of that court, sitting on circuit as trial judges, enforced the act, presiding at trials of editors under it and sentencing them to fines and imprisonment.

  There's much more there -- a must-read.

• CNN reports that insurgent attacks have killed more than 8,000 people in the past 6 months, which on the surface does not seem like an effective way to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis.
  

  Unofficial estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths during the Iraq war range from about 22,000 -- according to the Web site iraqbodycount.net -- to about 100,000 -- from an independent survey reported in The Washington Post. The Pentagon does not give numbers for civilian deaths in Iraq.

  What's not discussed is how many of those deaths were caused by American actions.

• David Remnick offers a Talk of the Town piece in The New Yorker on Klein's book of lesbian obsession and Hilary Clinton. Whose lesbian obsession is the question.
  

  Throughout, Klein’s obsession with the girl-on-girl theme is equal to anything in “The Well of Loneliness� or on “The Howard Stern Show.� Take a passage in which Hillary, while still a student at Wellesley, is dating a young man named David Rupert. “Their testy discussions about skiing--which might have been a substitute for an honest discussion about Hillary’s sexual frigidity--often ended with Hillary retreating into an icy silence.� Hillary, if you follow, was not much for skiing. “Skiing.� “Frigidity.� “Icy.� Say no more.

  After the Swift Boat Veterans proved that lies have the currency of truth if people want to believe them, I think we can anticipate the kinds of attacks Senator Clinton can expect should she run for president. Homophobia sells.