Safe, Legal, and Rare? I don't think so.

I’ve always had a problem with the formulation of legal, safe, and rare. Why should abortions be rare? No one insists that blood transfusions should be rare. No one insists that chemotherapy should be rare. No one insists that childhood vaccinations should be rare. Abortion is a medical procedure; full stop. It is part of panoply of treatments and procedures that are covered by Reproductive Health Care. No sane person would argue that epidurals should be rare; that other forms of pain management should be rare. That is decision best left to the woman and the doctor.

Far too many people are hung up on the supposed moral dimension of Abortion. The mushy middle still believes that Abortion is still “wrong” and shameful. What they do not get is that one third of US women will end a pregnancy via abortion in their lifetime. Many of these women are either already mothers or will be mothers in their lifetimes. They want children, but not right now. Abortion is a legitimate means of family planning, especially when done in the first trimester.

And turning to the real world, Abortion will always be with us; and it will never be rare. I once looked up abortion rates in the EU to see what the minimum set might look like in the US. Remember these are nations that are doing everything “right”: they have comprehensive sex education from grade school on up, they have free subsidized health care that includes free birth control, they have a much more mature attitude to sex. Yet even in the EU, nations like Germany are having abortion rates in the high hundreds of thousands. That is not even close to rare.

A more honest approach would be to say you want to make Abortion safe, legal, and accessible. I really do not see any point in arguing otherwise. A women’s right to agency trumps any “moral” concerns a uninvolved bystander may have. Keep your morals to yourself and have a nice day.

And since we are talking about morals, we can now talk about the oxymoronic Moral Majority.
Actually their name is doubly oxymoronic since they are neither moral nor a majority.  Their whole ideology is a perversion of Christianity. They take the message of Jesus and flip it around 180 degrees. From meekness and love they pull out hate and oppression.

The religious reactionaries of the Republican Party only really care about two things: sticking it to the poor (read the nig-CLANG) and sexual repression. Denying women the right to control their own bodies is all about patriarchy, and punishing the evil sluts for having (and enjoying) sex. That is why the Religious Reactionaries blew a gasket over Obama’s BC decision. Now all those evil no good sluts can have their wanton sex with no consequence; they will get off scot free! That is why it all of a sudden became vitally important that the RC church (and others) get some kind of religious exemption from the AHCA’s BC requirement; never mind Catholic Institutions were already providing health care with full reproductive health care benefits (read Birth Control for preventive health) before the Bishops went into high dungeon about the Obamacare rules.

Remember, for far too many of the Republican Party it is all about the sex, and punishing woman for enjoying sex by having it on her own terms.

The Limits Of Faith, Roman Catholic Edition.

I’m not Catholic. For me, the Roman Catholic Church is an interesting institution that has survived for over sixteen centuries with many ups and downs. As the last Mediaeval and absolute monarchy left standing, it is an always a fascinating, if frustrating, anachronism. Battered and bruised by modernity, diminished by secular society, it struggles to be relevant in a zeitgeist soaking in materialism. The Catholic Church has a few shreds of moral authority to wave about; but the authoritarian nature of the Papacy is its own worst enemy in keeping that moral authority relevant.

The church limps into the 21st Century as an institution diminished by the slings and arrows the 20th. The last part of the 20th Century was a really bad patch, as the church failed to meet the challenge of the Nazi terror, and then was called on the carpet for the failings of its Priests and charitable organizations in the last decade of the 20th.

With a new Millennium at hand, the Church that Peter and Paul built is a deep funk in the developed, post-industrial world. It keeps trying to play defense, but the social revolutions of the 20th Century, especially the sexual liberation of the 1960’s, have left its moral teaching in tatters. While increasingly authoritarian, the papacy has ever less authority among the laity.

This brings us, by an admitted long, circuitous route, to the Roman Catholic Church’s attempt to get a carve out an exemption for Reproductive health services for it’s hospitals and other institutions in the US. The Church’s insistence on following a deeply flawed teaching on birth control has once again brought in conflict with secular society. The church fathers are attempting to nullify the secular government’s prerogatives, and to carve out an illegitimate exception to the notion of the commons for themselves. This is ridiculous.

Let’s be clear, Catholic institutions that interface with the commons, Hospitals, Universities, Charitable organizations, etc. fall into the purview of governmental regulations. They are subject to Federal, State, and Local regulation just like any other institution. They are businesses, just like any other business. They are not special because their CEO hangs out in some very nice digs in Rome.

In the US, we live under the protections of a Constitution that separates church and state. The state in our nation is the final authority. Secular institutions have the final word about the most intimate details of family life. The state regulates marriage and family life; not the church. The church is allowed to participate in the institutions of marriage and family life, but the final answer, the rules for marriage, divorce, child rearing, are made and enforced by the secular state.

We live in a nation grounded in the notion of unalienable rights. These rights obtain by the very fact of our humanity. They are human rights, and to deny them is do violence to human beings. It is to do an act of evil.

But no right is absolute, they interact and are limited by other rights. Put simply, the right to swing your fist freely ends at someone else’s nose. What the Catholic Church is proposing is that it has the right to swing its fist into the noses of thousands of citizens who just happen to be women. The proposal is specious and wrong headed.

The church does not even have the right to impose it’s views on contraception by force on its own parishioners, never mind the general public. The insisting on the right to nullify the laws laid down by the Federal government is unacceptable. By offering its employees and others health services, by entering the commons, by serving the outside public, the Church has to accept the rules and regulation laid down by the state.

The church is not allowed to discriminate on account of sex. It can not create a second class, second tier cohort in its ranks. If a Catholic institution were to baring people of color from certain health benefits, the general public would demand immediate restitution from the government. Race bias is not allowed by the government in any institution that serves the public, neither should gender bias.

In one way the attempt by the Roman Catholic Church to get away with gender bias, its attempt to keep on wallowing in Patriarchy and Misogyny, is hardly surprising. The Catholic Church has become ever more reactionary, both politically and in matters of faith as the 20th Century wound down. The new century has not halted the retrograde activities of the church. If anything, the elevation of Benny the Rat-zinger has made the march rightward pick up speed.

What is surprising though is how the Church is getting away with this utter nonsense. The willingness of bobble head pundits to be spear carriers for the Roman Catholic hierarchy is mind bending. That an aid to the Speaker of the House does not get how the church is trying to do an end run around the constitutional protections of women is depressing. Is this a sign of creeping senility, or has Chris Mathews always been this dense?

This is all about equal protection under the law. You cannot have one level of care for the male of the species and then have a lower, more restrictive level of care for the female.That is flat out wrong, and no appeal to rosary-bead fiddling can ever change how wrong this kind of backwards thinking is.

The church has a right to teach on every subject under the sun. It has a right to expound on any weird notion that strikes its fancy. It can lock itself in any number of cloisters, and attempt to count the numbers of Angles sitting on a pin. It can continue its regard action against modern science. It can continue to rail against modernity in all its forms. It has that right. What it has no right to do, is shove its retrograde notions down the throats of millions of women in the US, and billions of women throughout the world.  The fundamental right of women to control their own bodies trumps Humanae Vitae.

In a world were the struggle against religious extremism is a a real concern, the only true bulwark against Theocratic rule is secularism.  The bar against the rule of zealots and fanatics of all stripes is a strict separation of church and state. If you wish to bar Sharia law from our governance, then you must also bar Roman Catholic Hierarchy from gaining a carve out on birth control. It is not the governments concern that the Bishops have issues with women’s sexual agency. The government is only concerned with bending the cost curve of health care via sound preventive medicine. The Catholic Church can either comply with the rules as written, or it can remove itself from the requirement by no longer participating in the public sector.

Final words. Every idiot pundit out there is indulging in heavy breathing about First Amendment protection for this outrageous move by the US Bishops. The First Amendment is not a get out of jail free card. The state would stop the Roman Catholic Church flat if the Holy Father attempted to restart the Auto Da Fe' of the Inquisition. The State these days has zero interest in persecuting Christian Heretics. This is because the state has made it clear it has no interest in establishing a religion. It is right there in the First Amendment : Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

We have no official Church in the US. Faith has its limits. In public governance, it is excluded. In the public sphere, the church is strictly regulated.  It has to follow the rules of any other employer. It has to answer to the state for any and all egregious malfeasance; which is why the Roman Catholic Church got clobbered in the tort courts when the hobbies of certain priests were revealed. The Roman Catholic Church is not a law to itself. It does not earn a carve out for birth control any more than it earns a carve out for child raping priests.

Komen, Or How To Napalm A Brand Name Without Really Trying

If you were out on errands, don’t follow the news, or spend most of your day hiding under a rock, you might have missed how the Susan B Komen Breast Cancer Foundation turned one of the great NGO brand names into ashes. It was “interesting” to watch. In one short week Komen went went from pretty in Pink, to black and blue without really trying.

The mess began on December when Komen’s board decided to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood because Congress was “investigating” the reproductive health organization. “Investigation” in this context meant a crank, misogynist, fetus-worshiping, Congressman from the toxic Republican swamps of Dixie bloviating on evil sluts and the abortions they have.

The sex-phobes of anti-abortion movement had managed to move some fifth columnists into Komen organization while others were not paying attention and managed to get the deed done.

The news managed to stay under wraps until the second of February when the PR storm came roaring through like F-5 tornado though a trailer park. To say that Komen had not considered the possible blow-back from their cave to the anti-abortion zealots is to understate the case. The fury unleashed at the Komen cave was immediate and white-hot. A day later Komen was furiously backpedaling.

But the damage was done. With feminist’s antenna furiously waving about for even the slightest possibility of subterfuge, Komen’s mealy-mouthed, we’re not nearly as contrite as we are pretending to be, missive transformed acute fire-breathing rage at the organization, to chronic cold fury.

Komen’s success was always problematic. That little pink ribbon got around a bit too much.  When your brand gets tangled in with fat-pill deluxe (and known carcinogenic agent) Kentucky Fried Chicken, it is time to reevaluate what you are doing. Too much of Komen was tossing its feel good vibes to brands that perhaps should have not been up for consideration. Too much of Komen was the Pink-washing of product. Seriously, what does noted tool watch maker Swiss Army Watch have to do with breast cancer? What does a rather plain, rather ordinary, rather unremarkable, rather blocky, quartz watch have to do with women’s health?

But Komen was a way for many products to link themselves up with women’s health, or to at least be seen as pro-women. Komen was a cheep way (when all things are considered) to pump a little estrogen into the corporate image. And it was this linking with the corporate big-whigs that undermined the organization.

This is not to say that Komen has not done yeoman work in destigmatizing breast cancer, it has. It is to say that by in this laser focus on just one body part, it forgot the person that part happened to be attached to. It forgot that women’s health and women’s bodies are still a battle ground.

That battle ground is fiercely joined below the area of Komen’s concern, below the belt as it were. Women’s control of their sexual agency always bleeds into discussions of women’s health. The minute sex enters the picture, a committed minority of bible-thumping, sex-hating, patriarchal, misogynist, prudes enters the picture; and they are always on the war path.

And because this contingent is always pushing their “no fun allowed” agenda, is always trying to outlaw sex for pleasure, is always looking for sluts to shame, it never stops in its attempts to return women to the state of chattel.  The cover argument is about abortion, that much is true, but don’t be fooled; it’s about sex.

That means that Komen’s attempt to compromise, to cave into anti-sex zealots was bound to fail. Politically it was bound to fail, even if the general public had bought their weasel-worded explanation about Planned Parenthood. The right-wing sex phobes would have demanded a further pound of flesh.

But the cave was transparent, it made zero sense to defund the right-wing’s favorite bug-a-boo, Planned Parenthood. If you want to reach working-class, and other low-income women, you have to go to Planned Parenthood, full stop. To cut out Planned Parenthood is to deny a cohort of women access to screening. It is to condemn them to a painful disfigurement and possible death. It is to violate your very raison d'etre as a women’s health organization. To reach certain women, it’s Planned Parenthood-- or nothing.

People outside Komen understood this. They understood the concession to right-wing zealotry that Komen made. They understood the moral cowardice of the move. They understood the organizational rot that underlaid the decision. They understood how Komen tried to hedge its bets after the push-back from feminists far and wide. The question is does Komen understand? Does it understand how it vaporized the only real thing that matters to an organization like itself--trust?

Without trust, with out the do-good halo, Komen is nothing. It has no value. It has no value as charity, as a way to find a cure for breast cancer. It has no value as a brand; no more pink-washing for you KFC. It has no trust as an organization doing due diligence. It has no trust in its leadership. It has no trust with the Christianist Crazies to stay bought out. No one trusts Komen; its reputation lies in ashes.

What caused this loss of trust is fairly easy to point out: it is the trap of false moderation. That trap is one built by the Neo-Liberals, but operated by the political right. It is the assumption that “truth always lies in the middle.” It is the foolish notion that you can always find a middle ground between self-defined “extremes.” It is the assumption that everything is negotiable, that men and women will always find the correct middle ground via an exchange of ideas. It is as much of an false ideology as the any other. It fails to understand that some things, like unalienable rights, are not up for negotiation. It fails to grasp the notion that once you surrender the right of half the population to control their own bodies; all other bets are off. To put it crassly, there is no way to separate baby making and boobies.

As a organization dedicated to women’s health, and to a specific cancer that ravages only women, Komen has an obligation not only to brutally push-back against anti-abortion zealotry, but also the concomitant Gardicil freak-out by the same people. Komen should also pin the anti-abortion folks to the wall for their outrageous lies about the connection between abortion and cancer. Komen is an education outfit--educate, put out the facts.

Whether Komen likes it not, there is no escaping politics in the highly partisan and politically charged landscape we live in. There is no neutral zone, no safe harbor, there is only the mission; there is only the women they serve.

In the end, to stand for any aspect of women’s health is to stand for women as people of value. It is to say, or at least imply, that women have a right to live happy, healthy lives; that they need not die because a disease afflicts some “shameful” part of their bodies. There are no shameful parts of the body. There is no disease that should be allowed to ravage any women’s body because you have a problem with her having sexual agency. Women’s health should not be held hostage by a small minority of religious fundamentalists, and their foolish obsessions. It’s the cancer stupid.

There is no Common Ground Mr. President

The genius of Barack Obama is that he was able almost intuitively to either find common ground or suggest that common ground may actually exist. He appealed to the nation’s exhaustion with the endless culture war that has been part and parcel of the Boomer generation.

Of the many prickly and contentious issues that Obama tries to smooth over fewer are more fraught than Abortion. As a good squishy Centrist Democrat Obama has taken the Clinton formula – Legal, Safe and Rare— and ran with it.

At first blush it seems to be an adequate compromise. Almost everyone feels a little uncomfortable with the subject and a plurality probably is very uncomfortable with the subject. They would be perfectly happy with Roe being the final definitive answer and for the whole subject to be dropped. The status quo that Roe vs. Wade represents leaves almost no one happy and thus qualifies as excellent public policy.

If Roe had been implemented by legislative means, it would possibly be more widely accepted. As Roe was delivered sui generis by five justices of the Supreme Court it always lacked a large portion of legitimacy. The opponents of Roe almost immediately began chipping away at the decision. They were able to do this because the “victors” of Roe became flaccid in the defense of the decision and because opponents were able to shift the make up of the Supreme Court. Roe still exists because judicial stasis is so hard to overcome; it is actually enshrined in the concept of Stari Decisis. Thus the right to choose has been attacked on the flanks not frontally.

Be under no illusions though, the ultimate goal of the “pro-life” movement is not only the repeal of Roe but the negation of contraception and the entire “sexual revolution.” As Amanda Marcotte points out it is not about being for life it is about “forced pregnancy.”

As a passionate blogger Ms. Marcotte has next to no sympathy for the “pro-life” movement. She rightly points out the underlying and fierce misogyny that informs the movement. She also is merciless in her deconstruction of religious underpinning of the anti-choice “wingnuts.” From Ms. Marcotte’s perspective it is all about punishing women for being sexually aware beings. Children are “punishment” for being a “slut.”

Ms. Marcotte has a point. Exactly how do we deal with sexuality as it really exists, how do we deal with the consequences of human passion? Also exactly what is the proper place of the female gender? Are women full and equal actors? Are they fully autonomous and independent actors or does their lack of certain anatomical artifacts leaves them somehow “defective.”

The whole premise of having to regulate Abortion presumes that a woman can not make rational decisions regarding the status of the fetus she is carrying. It presumes that a woman’s right to plan when and even if she should have children is beyond her mental capacity. It assumes that women will make these kinds of decisions illogically or even frivolously.

Take the furor over late-term abortions. Exactly why should the government intervene by either outlawing the procedure altogether or banning a specific procedure? What is the alleged reason? That some foolish woman will be “tricked” into ending her pregnancy by some money grubbing doctor? Remember the woman has carried the fetus for at least six month now. Remember she has felt the fetus shift and kick and otherwise show signs of life. All of a sudden she is going to terminate because why? She terminated because the clinic was offering a free toaster and an oil change with the procedure? She terminated because she was physically inconvenienced by the pregnancy? She terminated because she thought it would be fun to watch the fetus die after the doctor induced a false labor?

The reason for late term terminations is some kind of medical tragedy. The fetus has some kind of deformity that will render its life short, painful and pointless. The mother has a condition that threatens her life. She made a gut-wrenching decision because of the unfortunate facts. She wanted that child, she wanted motherhood, but because of the medical facts it was not an option. She definitely did not do it on a whim or because she was a silly slut. The procedure was chosen because it was the safest and most efficient available, not so the Doctor could get his jollies. One has to assume that the Hippocratic Oath is one big joke to the medical profession to legally limit or ban late term Abortions.

So the ban on late term abortions has little to do with medicine and everything to do with politics and a bit of common sense. Common sense does dictate that a fetus in the late stages of developing is different entity from a newly implanted blastisis. That is why in deciding Roe the Supremes reached all the way back to the common law precedent of “quickening.” It is a good a dividing line as any other, “if it kicks, you must protect.” Unfortunately the standard of “viability” was always a can of worms begging to be opened.

That can was gleefully released by the opponents of Roe. They were more that happy to conflate the status of a late-trimester fetus with the status of newly fertilized egg. Never mind that this equivalence was so much rubbish as far as the medical arts were concerned. Roe’s opponents were and are driven by religious considerations; by their Roman Catholic or Protestant Evangelical convictions. Life for these folks starts at conception full stop. Thus abortion was the killing of life and murder.

This is the nub of why common ground is a chimera. One side—the feminists—see that fertilized egg as a medical construct. It is an appendage to the woman who carries it. That appendage has no more “rights” than wart on a woman’s toe. For the feminist it is all about the woman’s right as an autonomous individual to control the functions of her own body as she sees fit.

The other side sees that fertilized egg as a full human being. More to the point they see it as a person with a soul. Not only does that person have rights that match the mothers, they supersede her rights. Once imbedded that “child” must be born regardless of either its or the mothers condition, full stop; the mother has no relevant wishes or desires, only the “child” matters.

It gets worse. Not only does a woman not have a right to terminate a pregnancy she does not have the right to prevent it in the first place. Abortion opponents are to a great extent foes of contraception. The Roman Catholic Church is clear on the matter: No abortions, no pill, no condoms, if you must use the rhythm method but the only real reason to have sex is procreation. Sex for fun, especially out of marriage, is sin and thus evil.

Does this sound like a position that can be compromised with? The central error of Obama’s ideology is that there is some kind of middle way. He cedes ground by accepting the talking point that Abortion is some how a bad thing, an evil thing. Abortion is just one part of the panoply of reproductive choice. Other than the expense and risks incurred it is not inferior to other methods of family planning. Even in Europe where contraception is easily acquired and there is no stigma attached to un-wed mothers and the social welfare system gives generous support abortion remains very prevalent. It is safe, it is legal, but it is not in any way shape or form rare. Obama is promising something that can not be delivered.

On the other side the anti-choicer are also promising something that can not be delivered. At best what they can deliver is the world we had prior to Roe. In that world the wealthy and the upper middle class always had a choice. Those women with money or connections will always be able to terminate their unwanted pregnancies. It will be lower-middle class and poor women who will be sacrificed to the demands of the religious fundamentalists. It will be them who will be crushed underfoot. It will be a return to unequal protection. It will be a return to back ally abortions and the pointless death and maiming of thousands of women. It will be a marked increase in the number of unwanted children and the ruination of hundreds of thousands of lives. All this so a militant minority can impose its version of morality on the rest of the Republic.

There is no common ground here; there is either the egalitarian impulse or the authoritarian will to power. Do women hold up half the sky? Are the full human beings with rights that must be respected? Are women equals to men in the use of their mental facilities, able to reach logical decision by the use of their fully developed reason? Or women the other, frilly, foolish, flighty things driven by out of control hormones? Are they less than full human beings? Are they in the end permanent children in constant need of direction of big daddy? Common ground? No Mr. President there is only a choice between the angels of our better nature and the troglodyte urge to oppress those who are classified as “other.”