Die Already!

A few days ago I was flipping channels and I came upon Joe Solmonese, head of the Human Rights Campaign, and Pat Robertston, Blowhard Extraordinaire, on Hardball. I don’t usually watch Hardball because Chris Matthews gives me a twitch in my right eye. Seriously.

Anyhoo, because it was Joe Solmonese, I stopped. Unfortunately, I had missed what Joe had to say and only caught Robertson waxing rhapsonic on the dangers of “Activist Judges.”

I want the activist judges meme to die. I want it to die a horrible, painful death. I want constitutional scholars to kill it dead.

I want the next person on Hardball with Pat Robertson to stop him when he starts talking about the activist judges and say the following:

“You know Pat, I’d like to clear something up for the viewers out there. When people talk about 'activist judges' not having the right to overturn legislation passed by either a legislature or by a majority of a state’s citizens, what they’re really doing is challenging the concept of judicial review. Let’s look at that for a minute.

Judicial review, the power of the courts to review legislation and determine its constitutionality, was established in 1803 by the US Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison. It has since been written into numerous state constitutions as not just a power of the court, but a constitutional mandate.

If you want to challenge judicial review, that’s fine. You can do that. But people need to recognize that 1) you are challenging 206 years of American jurisprudence and that includes cases that were decided in a way you like 2) the ability to challenge the constitutionality of judicial review is established by the same case you would be arguing was decided wrongly. How’s that workin’ out?”

Then I want every supposedly reputable talk-show host and moderator to accept the power of judicial review as a given. Whenever Pat Robertson or one of his ilk starts spouting off about activist judges, I want Chris Matthews to say “Pat, as you know judicial review has been the law of the land in this country for over 200 years and we’re not here to debate the relative merits of that. Please stay on topic.”

I want the standard for television news programs to be “If you don’t have any arguments other than ‘Activist Judges’ you’re not ready for prime time. Please come back when you can formulate an argument based on facts and current American jurisprudence.”

Here’s the thing. I detest just about every position held by Antonin Scalia. I think his interpretation of constitutional doctrine is completely backward. As far as I can tell, just about every decision he’s ever written as a Supreme Court justice has been flat out wrong. I think he’s out of touch with reality. I think his Catholicism influences his decisions more than he thinks it does. I think he’s mean-spirited.

But I would never in a million years suggest that he doesn’t have the power to make a decision just because I disagree with his stance. Because that’s not the way our Constitution is set up.

I want that meme dead.

It all starts at Toys R Us

The Husband and I were in our local Toys R Us about a week ago looking for kite string. Oh Joy.

I find shopping at Toys R Us to be a soul-crushing experience at the best of times. It's funny, I don't remember the store being so gendered when I was growing up. I remember the toys themselves being gendered--the picture on the front of the Battle Ship box showed the dad and the brother playing the game while mom and daughter were shown behind them in the kitchen washing dishes. But I remember Toys R Us having a "girl" section where all the Barbie and My Little Pony stuff lived, a "boy" section with the robots, cars, etc., and then all the games, sporting equipment and that kind of stuff had their own home.

Not anymore, at least not where I live. The games and sports equipment are all in the "boy" section. Except for these:

Yes, that really is a pink Monopoly game. They also have pink Scrabble and, my hand to God, a pink Ouija Board. All marketed on a pink, flowery endcap with signage about sleepover night fun.

Seeing these sent me over the edge and the Husband had to get me out of Toys R Us as quickly as was humanly possible. Pink Ouija Boards? Seriously? You know who uses Ouija Boards? Twelve-year-old girls at sleepovers. The same ones who freak themselves out trying to hypnotize each other and playing "Bloody Mary" and "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board." I swear to whatever deity is out there listening that the day twelve-year-old girls need their Ouija Boards to be pink is the day the world comes to an end.

Is there really an epidemic of girls not playing board games because they're not feminine enough? If so, I don't suppose it could possibly have anything to do with the fact that in the store, the regular board games are now surrounded by toys that are heavily gendered "male". This is where it starts, people--the social conditioning that hurts us all and makes us all incomplete. It starts with playhouses that teach kids that vacuuming and washing dishes are fun, but are pointedly marketed only at little girls by nature of their lovely pink plasticy goodness. It starts with Scrabble being buried between GI Joe and the Transformers on the opposite side of the store from Barbie. It starts with our children's entertainment.

It starts with Toys R Us.

ETA: I realize the pink games have been out for a while. But seeing them all together on an end cap next to the Barbies when the regular versions were all the way across the store with the Tonka Trucks was a huge slap in the face.

Jesus Wept

I have found myself distracted all week by this story out of Brazil. A nine-year-old girl was discovered to be pregnant with twins when she was taken to the hospital for severe stomach pains. The rapist who fathered those twins? The girls 23-year-old step-father who has been raping the child since she was six.

Her doctors determined that she was too small, and her uterus was too undeveloped for her to carry the fetuses to term without her dying in the process. Between that and the fact that she was raped by her step-father, she definitely fell into Brazil's narrow exceptions for legal abortion. So her mother and doctor arranged one.

The Roman Catholic Church, by way of Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, excommunicated the mother and doctor.

That is bad enough,but that's not what has gnawed at me for a week.

What haunts me is this quote:

"God's law is above any human law. So when a human law ... is contrary to God's law, this human law has no value," Cardoso said Thursday.

He also said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the Church.

Although the man allegedly committed "a heinous crime ... the abortion — the elimination of an innocent life — was more serious," he said.

Just chew on that for a second. I'll wait.

It gets even worse when you read what comes next in the article:

(Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for Bishops) agreed, saying, "Excommunication for those who carried out the abortion is just," as a pregnancy termination always meant ending an innocent life.

Need another minute to mull that one over? Go right ahead.

Yes, you read it right. Vatican officials came right out and said that while raping a six-year-old child for three years is bad, procuring a medical procedure that will preserve that child's life is worse. Not only worse, but, at least for the mother, potentially unforgiveable.

Procuring an abortion results in automatic excommunication. The excommunicated is usually able to return to a state of communion with the Church is he or she admits the action was wrong, undergoes appropriate penance and makes amends as far as is possible. In this case, the girl's mother would have to admit that saving her daughter's life was wrong.

Could you do that? Could you say "Father, I recognize now that by listening to my child's doctor and procuring a procedure that would save her life, I was wrong."

I couldn't. And I would question any parent who said they could, and mean it. The Church has essentially placed this woman in the untenable position of having to choose between saving her daughter and saving her soul.

There are actions that are unforgivable by human society. I acknowledge this. Hell, I even agree with it. And, since the Church is a human institution, however divinely inspired, I don't really even have a problem with some actions being unforgivable by the Church. But chew on this:

The Church claims that God is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. If this is true, how can He be bound by the rules of men? Is the Church's view of God really so small? Is it possible that an omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent being would, when faced with this mother, this girl, this doctor, say anything to them other than "You did the best you could under untenable circumstances. You are forgiven and beautiful to my sight"?

The Church's view of God is petty. They are more interested in maintaining their own power and privilege than they are in leading their flocks in compassion and grace. Their actions damage the Church and its unity by failing to take into consideration all we have learned about human nature since the Church's founding. They divide the faithful when they protect those who use place of position and power to hurt those they should cherish. By their own rules, every single official who was part of this travesty, or complicit in the covering up of the rapes of hundreds of children by priests, should be automatically excommunicated for causing unhealable breaches in the fabric of the Church.

And somewhere, Jesus is weeping.

A Life in Six Words

There is an event at Books, Inc. in San Francisco tonight that I would love to attend, but probably won't because I'm just too darned tired. Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, compilers and editors of the book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure and Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak: By Writers Famous and Obscure will be reading some selections from their books and encouraging audience members to share their own six-word memoirs.

In the spirit of participation, here is mine: There's always something to fight for.

Or possibly: I eat M&Ms in rainbow order.

Anyone out there should feel free to share theirs in comments.

Happy Friday.

Turnabout is Fair Play

So I've seen article after article analyzing the First Lady's choice of gown for the Inaugural balls. What I haven't seen is anyone write anything about the new President's choice of garb.

I have two words for you. Faux. Pas.

Now maybe I'm just old fashioned and out of it (always a possibility), and every god up there knows I'm no fashion plate, but last time I looked, white tie is as formal as evening dress gets. That means you wear it with tails. Period. If you are going with less formal evening dress, you wear black tie. There is no mixing. So will someone please tell why President Obama is wearing a dinner jacket with white tie?

See photo here.

Humph.

Things that make me happy

A Secretary of State who recognizes that the "Human" in human rights includes women and children:



Please do your best to ignore Chris Matthews, who is annoying, and Michelle Bernard who usually is annoying, but not as much here, although I'm not sure what the heck she's talking about when she mentions a shift in left-of-center feminism.

Blog for Choice: Happy Birthday to Me

Roe v. Wade and I are the same age. Seriously. As the U.S. Supreme Court was handing down the decision, my mother was giving birth to me at Columbia University Medical Center.

It’s interesting because my original due date was January 4, in a time before obstetricians decided that induced labor and caesarian sections were preferable to letting a pregnant woman’s body decide when the baby was done cooking. Were I a believer in signs, I might think it meant something that I, a feminist and activist at heart, entered the world 2 ½ weeks late on the same day as one of the most important and embattled reproductive rights cases in history.

I remember the moment I recognized the significance. I was a freshman in high school, and my public speaking class was working on debates of controversial topics. My topic was abortion. I don’t remember which side I was assigned. I don’t remember who my partner was, or even if that partner was a boy or a girl. I remember this: As we sat in the library doing research, my classmate said “Hey, you were born the same day Roe v. Wade came out. Lucky for you it didn’t come out any earlier.”

I don’t think my classmate meant to be cruel. I think he or she was simple a thoughtless 14 year-old making a bad joke. I also knew that I was a planned baby—my mother and I had talked about birth control and how she decided to have children after 10 years of marriage. But at that moment, all I could think was how horrible it would be to know you only exist because your mother was legally obligated to have you. I made my decision about abortion and where I stand in that instant.

My parents married when my mother was 20, under pressure from her mother. My grandmother discovered my mother was using birth control. To my grandmother, a Southern Baptist woman born in Arkansas in 1914, using birth control during pre-marital sex was worse than getting pregnant. Birth control meant you had planned to sin, after all. I suspect they would have married eventually, though probably not before my mother had finished college. Though they are still happily married 46 years later, I know the statistics. Had they had children when they first married, it is not unlikely that they would have divorced. That they have had a wonderful partnership for nearly half a century is thanks in part to my mother being able to control her fertility.

If I am a well adjusted adult who grew up secure in knowledge that I was loved and wanted, it is thanks in part to my mother having access to birth control and the training in how to use it.

More than 20 years after my abortion epiphany, my understanding of reproductive rights is more sophisticated than that of the girl I was then. Legal training has helped me realize that Roe v. Wade, while important, is also a deeply flawed decision, cobbled together from concurring opinions and overly reliant on outdated technology and medical knowledge. Awareness of reproductive rights issues has helped me recognize that a constitutional right to a medical procedure means nothing if one has no practical access to that procedure, and that prevention of a pregnancy is just as important as the ability to terminate one.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2005 there were only 1,787 abortion providers in the United States. To put that in perspective, a health insurance industry report estimates 50,059 active OB/GYNs in the U.S. Eighty-seven percent of U.S. counties do NOT have an abortion provider, and 35% of U.S. women live in those counties.

Thirty-five percent of public school sex education programs teach abstinence as the only form of pregnancy and disease prevention. Teachers are prohibited from discussing contraception, or may only discuss it in terms of ineffectiveness (Guttmacher)

I had the benefit of growing up the child of educated, well-off, forward thinking parents in an educated, well-off, forward thinking part of the country. I received complete, accurate information regarding contraception in school. My mother encouraged me to talk to my boyfriends about sex and birth control and to take control of my own medical care. As a result, I felt confident when the time came to make a decision regarding contraception.

Had I grown up in a different family, a different time, a different place, would I have been able to make those decisions? Would I be happily married to a wonderful partner? Would I have completed college and later law school? Would I have been able to follow the dreams I dreamed when I was 14?

If I am a successful, productive member of society, it is due undoubtedly in part to my ability to control my fertility.

If I am a happy, active participant in my life and the lives of those I love, it is surely because I have access to contraception and the training to use it.

Mr. President and Democratic members of Congress, the only gift I ask of you on this, my 36^th birthday, is that you take a stand for women. Most of you were elected as pro-choice candidates, and the time has come for you to prove it.

Make it clear to medical and pharmacy personnel that they either provide women with the legal contraception they require or find another line of work.

Get rid of abstinence-only education requirements and give girls (and boys!) complete and accurate information regarding their reproductive choices and health.

Provide incentives for doctors who learn to perform abortions and offer their services in counties that currently have no abortion provider.

Admit that thanks to Democrats inability or unwillingness to stand up to the forced-birth advocates on state and local fronts, Roe v. Wade is not the towering pinnacle of reproductive choice it once was and stop using it as a stick to beat women with at election time.

And while you're at it, you might look into providing the national healthcare and paid family leave that will bring us in line with the free world we're supposed to be leading and make keeping an unplanned baby a more viable option.

And most of all, trust that, given complete and accurate information, women will make the best decisions for themselves and their families that they can, regardless of whether you would make that same decision.

Trust women. That’s all I want.

Happy birthday to me.