On Being 11

Brianna is 11 years old.  You probably know that.

 

A happy little girl, small for her age.

 

It's a terrible thing to even contemplate, but if she lived in Georgia and were to be raped and become pregnant, the government would make her bear the child and give birth to it.

 

The newly signed bill, which goes into effect in 2020, forbids all abortion past the time of heartbeat, a time when most women don't even realize they are pregnant.  There are no exceptions for rape or incest.  If she were to go to another state for an abortion, that is also illegal.

If Laurel were to become pregnant again in Georgia or Alabama, and should she miscarry, she could be forced to undergo questioning to prove she did nothing to abort the baby.  Miscarriage is painful enough but to have to go through an interrogation to prove that you did nothing yourself to cause the loss of the pregnancy is rubbing salt in an already raw wound.

Abortion is always going to be a controversial, emotional issue.  Since Roe v. Wade (which I heard this morning is now in jeopardy, as some legal eagles are saying that there are issues which can be challenged to revoke it), the number of women killed trying to get a illegal abortion has declined significantly.  Since Roe v. Wade, women have had a say over what happens to their own bodies, and the government is trying to take back that choice.  Death rates will rise again.

There has even been talk (by our great and glorious leader) that there must be punishment for a woman who has an abortion -- 99 years in prison has been suggested -- though nobody seems to want to bring punishment to any of the men who father these unwanted babies.  Punish the men?  Pfft.  Surely you jest.

I worked for 12 years in an ob/gyn office where abortions were performed on Tuesday nights.  It was not strictly an "abortion clinic" because it also did women's health and obstetrical care.

I started as a part time transcriptionist and when I was offered to become full time, I had to do a lot of soul searching.  Until then I would not work on Tuesdays and considered that I was "wishy washy" on abortion.  If I was going to work full time, I had to come to peace with whatever my opinion was.  I finally decided, along with the Supreme Court, that the decision to abort or not should be between the woman and her doctor.  That if it was OK to end the pregnancy for a little girl who had been raped, could we say that her next door neighbor with six children who couldn't handle another one, but whose religion forbad the use of contraception, could not choose to end the pregnancy?

I finally decided that I was pro-choice.

I did not always agree with the choice that some women made.  I always think of  the woman who had an abortion because she didn't want to be pregnant in the summertime, who returned a year later for help in getting pregnant because she was ready and was having difficulty.

I hated the high school kids who showed up with their friends for their pre-abortion appointments in the morning as if they were going to a social event.

But I also saw so many women for whom abortion was a serious decision, who had good reasons.  The doctors and staff were never judgmental, unlike the protesters outside the office who would beg me not to kill my baby (I guess because I was fat they assumed I was going into the office for an abortion, not to type).

It always amazes me how uninformed the men (and yeah, there are some women, but mostly men...middle aged to older men) are who makes the decisions about women's bodies.  Does Trump really think that doctors will deliver a baby, then wrap it up and, with the mother, decide whether to kill it or not?  He has described that gruesome scene many times.  Does that idiotic senator really think that you can just remove an ectopic pregnancy and move it from wherever it has imbedded into the uterus?  Even if you could (and nobody has ever done it) it would be major surgery, and life-threatening for the woman.

There is no good answer to abortion, but given the choice between back alley abortions that often kill women, and abortions done by trained doctors in sterile environments I go for legalizing it and letting women decide what works for them.  If our legislators put half as much work into taking care of the children of the world now, homeless, suffering starvation, rejected by parents, as they do the life of a fetus, this would be a much better world

 

Vagina-gate

(Whatever would we have done in this country if the activities that set off the Nixon scandal had taken place at a Hilton or Holiday Inn?)

So.  Sigh.  Have y'all heard about the little dust-up in the House of Representatives in Michigan?  If you have, feel free to talk among yourselves while I bring the rest up to speed.

The House was discussing yet another abortion bill (I'm starting to think that the only issue worthy of discussion in any state in this country, or in Washington, D.C. is abortion).  This bill would require, among other things, putting even stricter regulations on insurance.  It makes it illegal to force a woman to have an abortion, and requires that a funeral home be contacted and funeral arrangements be made for the fetus, it does not say at whose expense, but I'm sure that this cost, too, would be passed along to the woman.  

The photo may be difficult to look at, but this is the size fetus that would require contacting a funeral home and arrangements to be made for a funeral.

The legislation, which passed 70-39 has been described as the most hardline of the recent attempts at passing anti-abortion legislation in the United States.

Two women who spoke out against the bill have been punished for "violating the decorum of the House." 

Representative Lisa Brown said that she is Jewish and that abortion is not against her religion.  She said that she didn't understand why the House was forcing its religious beliefs on her.  But it was the manner in which she concluded her speech on Wednesday that infuriated Republicans.

"Mr Speaker, I'm flattered that you're all so interested in my vagina, but 'no' means 'no,'" she said.

Her use of the word "vagina" led the House Republican Speaker to prohibit her from later speaking on school employee retirement bill.

According to the Detroit News, the majority floor leader, Jim Stamas, ruled that Brown's comments had violated the decorum of the house.

Another Republican, Nashville, MI, representative Mike Callton, added: "What she said was offensive. It was so offensive I don't even want to say it in front of women. I would not say that in mixed company."

Really?  Vagina??  The anatomically correct name for the part of the female anatomy that the entire country wants to regulate and stick things into against the woman's will is offensive?

Does this guy know there is a whole play dedicated to the discussion of the vagina?  Part of The Vagina Monologues includes a very long list of euphemisms for this body part.  Maybe Representative Brown should have used my personal favorite (which I had not heard until I saw The Vagina Monologues for the first time) -- "cootchie-snorcher."

As for the other representative, Barb Byum, she attempted to introduce legislation which would ban a man from having a vasectomy unless the procedure was necessary to save his life.  "If we want to insure that babies are born, we should regulate vasectomies," she said.  She was ruled out of order.

Both women were banned from speaking in the House during its closing session because of their "offensive behavior" the day before.   "Their comments and actions," he said, had "failed to maintain the decorum of the house of representatives," said a spokesperson for the Speaker of the House, who said that Byum had run around the hall shrieking like a mad woman.  Byum has an injury to her leg and is not able to run and the video of her appearance in the hall shows that she was nothing but respectful.

When is this ridiculous war on women going to stop???  At the very least there needs to be shared responsibility for the conception of a child.  I have not heard of one. single. bill. anywhere in the United States which speaks even remotely to the responsibility of the man who created all of these babies everyone is so eager to save. The rapists, the family members who molest the girls in the family, the boyfriend who refuses to use a condom.  None of them is to be held accountable for the conception of a child, none of them is called a whore or slut for wanting to behave responsibly.  None shares the physical violation or the cost for unnecessary invasive and unwanted medical procedures...and if bills are introduced which attempt to hold men responsible, those who introduce the bills are gaveled down and refused the right to speak.

Look, I don't like the idea of abortion.  Nobody does, not even the doctors who perform them.  But do we want to force 11 year old girls to carry babies to term?  Are we to force a woman whose child has severe physical or mental problems (or who has no brain)? Should a woman whose life is in danger from a pregnancy be forced to face death in order to bring a pregnancy to its conclusion? Should a mother of 10 children, living in poverty, be forced to carry an 11th after her husband refuses to wear a condom?

 

Yeah, yeah, most of the abortions are not performed for such extreme reasons, but you just know that if Republican congresses are successful in banning abortions, the abortions won't stop.  Women will go back to those coathanger abortions that killed and injured so many of them before Roe v. Wade was enacted.

At the very least there should be legislation which puts penalties on the man as well, which makes him financially responsible, which makes Viagra more difficult (and waaay more expensive) to get.  Rohypnol should be an illegal drug.

This idea that women are totally responsible for every pregnancy is insane.  There hasn't been a child without a responsible man involved since Jesus was conceived.  

And, my God, to call the use of the medically appropriate word "vagina" offensive is just....stupid!

The World Gone Mad

I had one way this was going to go, but then I started doing some reading on the internet and it may be quite different. In either case it's kind of a "what in the world is happening to us?" kind of question.

Anybody watch The Today Show and see the "sell your house" lady, Barbara Corcoran being asked a question about what to do if you're trying to sell your house but you live next door to an eyesore, a guy who has junk cars all over his yard and a house in disrepair. I thought Al Roker would drop his teeth when she said 'Well, if it was me, I'd probably take a gun and shoot the guy." Roker went on at great length about how she was only kidding.

Apparently Corcoran didn't get the "ix-nay on the illing-kay" memo after the Arizona shootings.

I don't doubt that Corcoran wasn't really advocating going out and shooting a neighbor because you don't like how he keeps his property.

Sadly that is not what people are trying to make happen in the state of South Dakota.

I couldn't believe it when I read the article this morning.

South Dakota's HB1171, scheduled to be voted on in the House tomorrow, would expand the legal definition of justifiable homicide in the state. The measure legalizes the killing of abortion providers by saying a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" an unborn fetus. The bill has already passed committee, by a vote of 9-3 (9 Republicans and 3 Democrats of course).

As someone wrote today, "Apparently they believe that passing through the birth canal destroys all right to life."

In the meantime, those wacky Republicans (you know--the guys that were going to make jobs a priority) are trying to change the definition of rape and to exclude from any federal funding for abortion women whose pregancy occurs as a result of "forcible rape," a legal term that includes the following categories of rape: date rape, gang rape, marital rape or spousal rape, incestual rape, child sexual abuse, prison rape, acquaintance rape, war rape and statutory rape. Apparently to qualify for "forcible rape," there has to be a police report filed, so if you want to have an abortion and you would like the government to foot the bill then you need to provide proof that you were raped or be a minor in a situation where it might be dangerous for you to report the rape or your caregiver could hurt you further.

All potential rape victims, please be advised to know your legal rights and responsibillities before the rape occurs and try to keep your wits about you afterwards so that you cross all the Ts and dot all the Is so that if a child is conceived, you have a possibility of having government assistance, if needed, for an abortion. This is especially important for those under the age of 13.

But what is really bugging me today, given the Marriage Equality gathering I went to yesterday, is what's happening in Uganda. I have a special interest in Uganda, now that I sponsor a young girl there and it frustrates me, somewhat, to know that I can never discuss this with her, given that I sponsor her through a religious organization.

Because I have an interest in Uganda, I watched an hour long program about the anti-gay campaign going on in that country. I did a lot of reading after that, so I've lost the place where I read that the country had a more lenient view of homosexuality until American evangelicals visited the country and spoke at a conference called "Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual Agenda."

One of the ministers was Scott Lively, a pastor from Springfield, MA who believes that countries like Uganda can still protect themselves from the scourge of the gay agenda. (Gosh darn it...where is that document? I've been promoting gay rights for decades and I've still never seen the gay agenda.)

Lively told the conference's audience that "even though the majority of homosexuals are not oriented towards young people, there's a significant number who are. And when they see a child from a broken home, it's like they have a flashing neon sign over their head."

The message was embraced by Pastor Martin Ssempa, the "star" (for lack of a better word) of this report from Uganda.

"Anal licking!," he shouts, directing the crowd's attention to the images of hardcore gay pornography that he's projecting via his laptop. "That is what they are doing in the privacy of their bedrooms."

"Everything having to do with eating of the poo-poo…heterosexuals do not eat the poo-poo," Ssempa said. "And if they do, they are misguided, they are not real heterosexuals. We don't practice, that's an abomination. It's like sex with a dog, sex with a cow; it's evil."

The crowd gets worked up, more and more disgusted by the images they are seeing.

Pastor Ssempa's campaign resulted in the introduction of The Anti-Homosexual Bill of 2009. The bill creates a new category of crime called "Aggravated Homosexuality," which calls for death by hanging for gays or lesbians who have sex with anyone under 18 and for so-called "serial offenders."

The bill also calls for seven years in prison for "attempt to commit homosexuality," five years for landlords who knowingly house gays, three years for anyone, including parents, who fail to hand gay children over to the police within 24 hours and the extradition of gay Ugandans living abroad.

A man in the film said that if he learned that his daughter was lesbian, he would take a gun and kill her himself.

The anti-gay sentiment resulted in the death of gay rights activist David Kato, who was outed as gay by a local newspaper. (I'm not 100% certain, but I think Kato was the gay activist being interviewed in the film I saw...a lovely man, who knew that his life was in danger)

The editor of the newspaper who outed Mr. Kato made an incredible statement: "We want the government to hang people who promote homosexuality, not for the public to attack them."

All of these things have been done by God-fearing Christians and I sincerely hope that they do fear God because I don't imagine that He is going to be ecstatic about their un-Christian attitude towards their fellow human beings.

I don't know exactly what Jesus would do, but I am pretty sure he wouldn't be supporting any of these actions.

An Apology

I don't intend to turn this journal over to a place to publish other people's stuff, but, as someone who worked for twelve years in a medical office where abortions were performed and as someone who has seen the struggle of some friends over the issue of abortion, I feel strongly about the murder of Dr. Tiller but feel that I can't say it better than former pro-life leader Frank Schaeffer says in this article, talking about how the emotions of the far right are leading to an atmosphere of violence in this country.

No matter what your stance on abortion is, Dr. Tiller was performing a legal medical procedure, and he was gunned down in cold blood while he was worshipping in church. That is so very wrong. If you disapprove of the legal medical procedure, get the law changed, don't murder the doctors who are legally providing the service to women in need.

The following article appeared in the Huffington Post, and I hope that Arianna will forgive me for reprinting it here....

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My late father and I share the blame (with many others) for the murder of Dr. George Tiller the abortion doctor gunned down on Sunday. Until I got out of the religious right (in the mid-1980s) and repented of my former hate-filled rhetoric I was both a leader of the so-called pro-life movement and a part of a Republican Party hate machine masquerading as the moral conscience of America.

In the late 1970s my evangelical pro-life leader father Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop (who soon become Surgeon General in the Reagan administration) went on the road with me taking the documentary antiabortion film series I produced and directed ( Whatever Happened to the Human Race?) to the evangelical public. The series and companion book eventually brought millions of heretofore non-political evangelical Americans into the antiabortion crusade. We personally also got people like Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan and countless Republican leaders involved in the "issue."

In the early 80s my father followed up with a book that sold over a million copies called A Christian Manifesto. In certain passages he advocated force if all other methods for rolling back the abortion ruling of Roe v. Wade failed. He compared America and its legalized abortion to Hitler's Germany and said that whatever tactics would have been morally justified in removing Hitler would be justified in trying to stop abortion. I said the same thing in a book I wrote (A Time For Anger) that right wing evangelicals made into a best seller. For instance Dr. James Dobson (of the Focus On the Family radio show) gave away over 100,000 copies.

Like many writers of moral/political/religious theories my father and I would have been shocked that someone took us at our word, walked into a Lutheran Church and pulled the trigger on an abortionist. But even if the murderer never read Dad's or my words we helped create the climate that made this murder likely to happen.

In fact that very thing has happened before. In 1994, Dr. John Bayard Britton and one of his volunteer escorts were shot and killed outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Paul Hill, a former minister, was convicted of the killings and executed in 2003. Paul Hill was an avid follower of my father's.

Hyperbole from the pulpit from religious leaders, be it from my father or from President Obama's former pastor the Rev. Wright, is par for the course. But once in a while someone "does something" about it and then everyone says that they were only speaking metaphorically or "spiritually" when they called for violence or for the overthrow the state or when they said things like "God damn America!" or that "abortionists are murderers like Hitler!"

Angry speech has become the norm in American religion from both the right and the left. Words are spoken which -- when taken seriously -- lead directly to violence by the unhinged and/or the truly committed.

When evangelicals on the right call President Obama a socialist, a racist, anti-American, an abortionist, not a real American, and, echoing the former Vice President, someone who is weakening America's defenses and making us less safe, the logical conclusion is violence. If you take these words literally you might pull the trigger to "make America safe" and/or free us from communism or to even protect us from -- what some "Christian" leaders claim -- Obama as the Antichrist.

Contributing to an extreme and sometimes violent climate has not only been the fault of the antiabortion crusaders. The Roe v. Wade decision went too far, too fast and was too sweeping. I believe that abortion should be legal. But I also believe that it should be re-regulated according to fetal development. It's the late term abortions that horrify most people. And for the sake of keeping abortion legal adjustments need to be made. Roe is far too all or nothing (as I explain in my book Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All -- or Almost All -- of It Back). As I say in my book today I believe that abortion should be legal but more regulated than Roe allows. I also think that we should do what President Obama calls for: use sex education and contraceptive distribution and programs to help women and children in a way that results in less abortions.

But the reason this issue will never go away is that the Roe ruling was an over broad court decision that makes abortion legal even in the last weeks of pregnancy. Take away the pictures of all those dead late term fetuses and everything changes emotionally. Democracy and civil debate is messy but if abortion had been argued state-by-state abortion would be legal in almost all our states today and probably the laws would be written more like those of Europe, where late-term abortions (of the kind Dr. Tiller specialized in performing) are illegal and/or highly discouraged.

The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as "murderers." And today once again the "pro-life" leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I'd like to say on this day after a man was murdered in cold blood for performing abortions that I -- and the people I worked with in the religious right, the Republican Party, the pro-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church, all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.

I am very sorry.

Frank Schaeffer is a writer. He is author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and also author of the forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism)