Category Archives: Feminism

Women’s Issues and Female Trouble

Posted on by ninjanurse

My state senator is Rhoda Perry. I first knew her as executive director of Thundermist Health Associates– the network of primary care clinics that was founded by volunteers operating out of a triple-decker in Woonsocket. I like her politics, she is a neighbor and an unpretentious, decent person.

I always vote for her, but I like to hear all sides, so in 2004 I attended the debate between Rhoda and her opponent, Barry Fain.

The candidates were cranking along, neither one charismatic enough to make me forget how uncomfortable it is to sit in a folding chair in a church basement. Then it happened.

Barry Fain– making a point that he was the more well-rounded candidate, said that Rhoda was alright on women’s issues, like birth control. He faltered as the audience gasped. I think he knew instantly that he had stepped in it. Rhoda won the election by a wide margin.

That Sunday I ran into Barry Fain when we were both buying newspapers from a guy who sold them out of the back of his car Elmgrove Avenue.

“I saw you and Rhoda” I said.

He shook his head, “That was a brutal debate.”

I laughed to myself. I admire Rhoda Perry, but a brutal debater she is not.

“Mr.Fain”, I said, “I’m not in any position to criticize someone for saying something they wish they hadn’t. I’ve said a lot of things I would say differently if I had a chance. But I am concerned about your plan to cut taxes.

I work, and pay property tax. It’s not my biggest concern. I earn decent money, I can go out to eat, I don’t worry about being able to pay my bills. We’re on Elmgrove Avenue. A few blocks over is Camp Street. People there are struggling. Are you going to cut the safety net give a little extra to the well-off?”

He was non-committal on that, I don’t think I was part of his base.

When he made that remark about birth control, for a moment I felt like I’d been slapped. Slapped back to the recent past when women had a place, and it wasn’t a place in our State House.

Birth control is being put back in its place of female troubles and ladies unmentionables–too indecent to include in wholesome health promotion. It’s a luxury, a vanity expense, a shameful indulgence.

I recall the women of my childhood, worn out from multiple pregnancies, wearing hand-me-downs. The harsh-tempered men, struggling to support their families. It’s not to say that there wasn’t love and happiness too, but few would choose that life given other options. Women and men alike sacrificed to raise their children. Family planning is not just a ‘women’s issue’.

How many children to have, whether to have children at all, when to have children– there aren’t many more important decisions we will make.

In other health decisions– controlling blood pressure, getting exercise, avoiding smoking– we do public education to engage the community in taking care of themselves.

It’s bizarre to single out one important aspect of health care for segregation and de-funding, when there is no public good in promoting unintended pregnancies. Why are we doing it?

Because it’s a women’s issue. Slightly shameful, a female trouble and serves her right. It’s a poor woman’s issue. We can’t be paying for birth control when taxes need to be cut. And those women aren’t the base, anyway.

We had a saying in the second wave of the Women’s Movement– ‘Sisterhood is Powerful’. And there is a vast potential energy in women and men crossing lines and finding common ground. It’s a short walk, after all, from Elmgrove to Camp.

The Religious Right and the conservative activists of the Catholic Church have taken their stand, to support an interpretation of religious liberty that lets religions take liberties with nonbelievers. This is not resistance to change. This is an expansion of organized religion as a political power. I think it’s an over-reach. But it’s discouraging to have to fight these battles again.

I’m Not a Doctor, But I Play One on TV

Posted on by ninjanurse

Via Democratic Underground, women tell their stories about times when birth control was not simple or cheap.

No one has spun the issue better than Georgia Representative Tom Price, who claimed that no woman has ever been denied access to birth control because she could not afford it. “Bring me one woman who has been left behind. Bring me one. There’s not one,” Price told ThinkProgress when it asked how low-income women could access contraception if it were not insured.

Bring you one woman? Let’s start with two. We are a couple of white, middle-class magazine editors. We have both had difficulty affording birth control at some point in our lives. And we’re not alone. Many women struggle with the cost of birth control—1 in 3 of us, according to a recent Hart survey. Among young women, more than half face prohibitive costs. We know for a fact that it’s not just the poorest Americans who are being left behind. The people affected by the high cost of birth control are poor, working class, and middle class. They are us, and they are our partners, too.

I gotta go to work, in health care, where even an aspirin a day has risks as well as benefits, and you expect the unexpected. It’s aggravating when acquaintances play wannabe doctor with unwanted advice. It’s scary when men with power go on record as ignorant, complacent and uncurious about how the other half lives.

Gain a Child, Lose a Tooth

Posted on by ninjanurse

Pregnancy and childbirth are profound events in the life of women and families, no less physically than spiritually.

‘Gain a child, lose a tooth’, even in 2007, the New York Times Science section concludes that there’s some truth to this old saying.

A recent poll shows that a majority of Catholics support including birth control in health insurance coverage.

I suspect that many Catholics have some firsthand knowledge of the toll repeated pregnancies can take on a woman who is beyond her best physical health or a family that is stretched beyond its means.

Do we really want to limit birth control? To put an extra financial burden on the poorest women? Would it be a better world if women had ‘as many children as God gives them’? Was it a better world for women and children when choices were few and contraception unreliable?

Some of us remember those days, exhausted mothers and families in constant crisis. Yes, it was common for women to lose their teeth to poverty and the strain of repeated, close together pregnancies.

All decisions have consequences. The decision to limit childbearing affects women, families and society. Can we trust those women and families to make that decision? If not, who should we trust?

Talking Dirty to Ron Paul

Posted on by ninjanurse

Remember Dan Quayle? He was the vice-president for George Bush I who was cruelly and sometimes unfairly mocked in the press for being really dumb.

He did say things that were ignorant, and callous, too. Here is what he had to say about abortion in the case of rape…

“My position is that I understand from a medical situation, immediately after a rape is reported, that a woman normally, in fact, can go to the hospital and have a D and C. At that time… that is before the forming of a life. That is not anything to do with abortion.”

Vice President Dan Quayle explaining that Dilatation and Curettage, a form of abortion which occurs after fertilization, is not really abortion.
Reported in the Washington post, 11/03/88

Medically this is insane. A woman who has suffered a rape, possibly an exposure to a disease, will not stroll into the hospital to have her womb scraped out–(presumably to remove all the microscopic sperm that are striving to create the miracle of life.) In 1988 that woman would be lucky if she were even able to get competent and compassionate medical care at any random ER. The practice of the forensic exam for rape and medical treatment of victims is a recent development in women’s care.

You might not expect a politician whose greatest talent was looking good in a suit to be well-informed about these things, or especially concerned for victims of crime. But it really is frightening that Quayle’s statement was in the context of stating his opposition to legal abortion in all cases, and knowing that he had considerable power to influence policy that affects women’s lives. And knowing that he was so callously disinterested in those women that he never even bothered to find out what happens to a rape victim who seeks emergency help.

Legal abortion remains controversial. There are a range of opinions on when, or whether, it might be necessary for a woman to terminate a pregnancy. Surely an obstetrician, a man who puts his experience as a doctor front and forward as a reason to trust his judgement on matters related to the practice of health care in America– surely that man should speak with knowledge and compassion. Surely his experience in caring for thousands of women would put a face on the reality of sexual assault. Sadly, this crime is so common that anyone who is dedicated to women’s health has heard survivor stories.

Instead, Dr. Ron Paul shows his disinterest in the reality of women’s lives, in current practice for care of crime victims, his judgementalness and lack of curiosity or willingness to look beyond the rigid thinking he has shown on this issue.

In an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan, Ron Paul echoes Dan Quayle.

He says that ‘if it’s honest rape’ a woman should go ‘immediately to the ER to get a shot of estrogen. An hour or a day after, you have no medical or legal problem.’ When Piers Morgan asks Ron Paul what happens if the victim is ashamed or unable to get help and shows up days or weeks later, Paul dodges the question and goes into a rant about women demanding abortions of late-term pregnancies.

I will post a transcript when one becomes available.

Just for the record, ‘a shot of estrogen’ is not the current standard of care for a rape victim. The infamous ‘morning after’ pill is what is given. The rape exam can be done up to 4 days after the assault, though the chance of getting DNA evidence decreases with time. Medical care for a woman who has been injured, fears a sexually transmitted disease, or an unwanted pregnancy can be done later.

Ron Paul seems to be saying that if you can’t prove sperm met egg, it’s okay. He also says, ‘if it’s honest rape’. Who will be the judge of that? Anyone who has worked with victims of crime– any crime, knows that the story can be confused, contradictory and sordid. Should the rape exam include an inquisition as to whether the victim has a right to treatment at all?

We’re almost thirty years on, and still a man presumes to make policy for women’s lives– displaying a mistrust of women’s honesty, and a disinterest in the dirty details of what happens in the real world.

Follow this link for the standard of care for sexual assault survivors.

Follow this link for information about Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) , a nursing specialty instituted because doctors were unable to provide the sensitive, meticulous and time-consuming care needed by victims who come to the ER.

Any time a rapist is brought to justice by DNA evidence we should thank the SANE nurses who give respectful care to all victims. We should thank the women, physicians and nurses, who created this nursing specialty to help women to find care and healing.

Phew — Now If We Can Get Komen to Focus on Prevention as well as Cure

Posted on by Kiersten Marek

The Susan G. Komen foundation just released a letter stating that they will continue to fund Planned Parenthood. Well, that’s a relief, but only a small one for me. The big thing I worry about in cancer activism is that the corporate influence is pushing us to look too much toward treatment and not enough at prevention. But that’s a story for another day. Today’s story is that the Sisterhood of American women and its supporters are still strong enough to carry the day and Planned Parenthood will continue to provide needed medical care for women.

Pink Politics and Planned Parenthood

Posted on by ninjanurse

Planned Parenthood, an organization that has faced decades of opposition ranging from incendiary language to incendiary bombs and bullets, has been disowned by one of its former allies in women’s health, the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Founder Nancy Brinker seems to think that it’s out of bounds to question the role of politics in this decision…

Planned Parenthood had received about $700,000 annually from Komen to provide poor women with breast cancer screening, education and access to affordable mammograms…

“The scurrilous accusations being hurled at this organization are profoundly hurtful to so many of us,” said Brinker, who founded the group following her sister’s death in 1980 of breast cancer. “More importantly, they are a dangerous distraction from the work that still remains to be done in ridding the world of breast cancer.”

But philanthropy experts said it will be difficult for Komen to convince people it wasn’t playing politics.

Wow. Try going to work with a police escort and a safety plan for bomb threats if you want hurtful. Try hearing in the press that your organization is dumped because of a trumped-up investigation if you want scurrilous. Komen’s bad publicity is self-inflicted. Planned Parenthood didn’t ask to be publicly disowned as untrustworthy by an organization that till now has been second only to ‘Jerry’s Kids’ in tugging America’s heartstrings.

A Mother Jones article lists the exceptions Susan G. Komen Foundation makes to its new rule against funding organizations under investigation. Apparently the Foundation is using selective enforcement.
Jen, a commenter on the article, posted this link to a blogger, dinoiafamily, who describes her own recent battle with breast cancer and the humiliation of being pink-washed…

I spent a good portion of the last year mortified about the type of cancer I had. I received a pink basket in the hospital (for my original surgery) filled with pink, plastic items that included a poem and a “tiddy” bear. I was supposed to be cheered up by the poem, as it was about another woman and how she received a fabulous new set of breasts. I was also supposed to be thrilled by the junk in the basket. Instead I was mortified. A gift basket of organic fruit would be one thing (and, yes, we did receive those and loved them), but this was just beyond painful. Rubbing the pink-washing in my face once again. The basket just reminded me that because I had this recent blip, I was supposed to become a member of another club. Well, no, thank you.

Please understand that not everything pink disturbs me and I know that many pink ribbons are truly meant as a sign of support. However, Komen is not supportive. Coloring buckets of fried chicken pink is not supportive. Putting pink ribbons on products that we don’t need or want is not supportive. In fact, for many of us, it’s a reminder of times we’d rather forget. If anything, Komen was extremely unsupportive when I was diagnosed.

Did they come to my house and cook me meals when I was sick? No, but my friends ensured we were had groceries and dinners for months. Did they visit me in the hospital or take care of my kids? No, but my friends and family made sure that happened. Well, what did they do?

They stepped up their efforts to get money from me. It was almost as if my name was on a new high priority list. As though because I had been diagnosed, I suddenly had the ability and desire to give to an organization that, in my opinion, has done little towards their supposed goal. It took three letters from me and three phone calls from Peter to have my name removed from their mailing list.

Dinoiafamily examines the marketing, message and high administrative costs that make Susan G. Komen a questionable cause to donate to. Read the rest of her excellent post here.

I’m not especially fond of pink anyway, and in years of nursing I’ve seen way too many slick campaigns for pharmaceutical companies and charities. If you had just arrived from Mars you would think that Cancer or AIDS or Diabetes makes people attractive and full of confidence, as they spend their days strolling beaches and frolicking with grandchildren. Guys, being sick sucks. Put that on a bumper sticker.

Planned Parenthood is accessible health care for young and uninsured women. They were my only health care when I was young, as for many of us. The young woman with a breast lump is a statistical outsider, but she is also the one whose life is saved by early detection. She is the woman who can find help at Planned Parenthood. When I needed birth control, Planned Parenthood was there, and they gave me screening, education and prevention information as well.

A few years ago I was invited to go on a Walk for the Cure. I will never forget the huge number of people who turned out. Some in teams. Some wearing shirts with a picture of a mother or a sister or a friend. I never had realized just how many people are affected by breast cancer. Now at an age where family and friends are survivors, I understand what it is to dread a disease.

Pink ribbons and a positive attitude won’t stop cancer. Detection, prevention and research will. I’m sorry that Susan G. Komen chose to put politics over women’s lives. Twenty percent of American women have visited a Planned Parenthood clinic at least once. That’s a constituency. Donations have been pouring in. It may be that the Komen Foundation has mis-judged the real situation of the women they exist to serve.

UPDATE: A third high-ranking member of the Komen Foundation is ready to resign over the decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood…

Dr. Kathy Plesser, a Manhattan radiologist on the medical advisory board of Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s New York chapter, said she plans to resign from her position unless Komen reverses its decision to pull grant money from Planned Parenthood.

“I’m a physician and my interest is women’s health, and I am disturbed by Komen’s decision because I am a very strong advocate for serving under-served women,” Plesser told The Huffington Post. “Eliminating this funding will mean there’s no place for these women to go. Where are these women to go to have a mammography? Do they not deserve to have mammography?”

With her decision, Plesser joins Komen’s top public health official, Mollie Williams, and the executive director of Komen’s Los Angeles County chapter, Deb Anthony, both of whom also resigned in protest.

MORE: Dave Von Ebbers links to this law journal article about how much donor money the Komen Foundation spends suing other breast cancer charities for using words like ‘for a cure’.

Over the past fifteen years, the Foundation has reviewed eighty-three different groups who have attempted to use the phrase “for the cure” or “for a cure” and pursued legal action against half. Anne Thompson, “Trademark protection by Susan G. Komen organization.” NBC Nightly News Transcripts, Jan. 24, 2011. For example, the Foundation contacted the organization entitled “Kites for a Cure,” which is a kite-flier group dedicated to raising money to cure lung-cancer. The group refused to bow-out quickly, upset over what it believed to be a misdirection of both organizations’ efforts against one another rather than on their common goal.

A PAINFUL BETRAYAL is the title of an editorial in the New York Times. There is definitely a good girl/bad girl dynamic here, and a class aspect as well. Rich girls don’t have to spend much time in clinics. There are times when our common humanity outweighs our differences, life-threatening illness is one of them. It is truly painful to see an organization that exists for women’s health undermine one of the major providers.

I’m Getting Too Old for This

Posted on by ninjanurse

Don't Do This

Katie Roiphe is a writer who made her reputation fresh out of college as a maverick with ‘The Morning After’, a book that argued that date-rape was a largely imagined problem. This put her on a fast track to success and won her praise from critics who saw her book as a repudiation of her mother, Ann Roiphe, a feminist.

Katie dredges up arguments I haven’t heard in ages in today’s New York Times op-ed ‘In Favor of Dirty Jokes and Risque Remarks’. Roiphe uses Herman Cain as a point of departure, but doesn’t let the facts slow down her rush to resume her rewarding career of telling women to stop whining and accept that you have to take some hits and pinches if you want to succeed in a man’s world.

‘After all these years we are again debating the definition of unwanted sexual advances and parsing the question of whether a dirty joke in the office is a crime.’

Sez who?

Roiphe may specialize in nostalgia for the MadMen era, but the allegations against Herman Cain are of a pattern of behavior resulting in payoffs and lost jobs. Sharon Bialek, one of five women alleging sexual harassment by Herman Cain, says that when they were alone in his car he grabbed her in a way that meets the legal definition of sexual assault, and when she objected, said, “You want a job, right?”

You can’t get a more clear example of sexual harassment– making sex a condition of employment, but Roiphe isn’t interested in looking at the actual news story. It doesn’t fit her well-worn riff that it’s all about dirty jokes at the office and women who have no sense of humor.

She calls American culture ‘Puritan’ and cites ‘Orwellian’ attempts to regulate behavior when she was at Princeton.

Well, okay. The most recent references to American Puritanism I’ve seen in the press were from French critics asking why it was possible that an important man could be arrested on the word of a mere maid, or why a very important film director has to languish in Europe. If I remember my Orwell correctly, abuse of power on a personal level was one of the most harrowing chapters of ’1984′, when Winston Smith is being tortured by interrogator O’Brien at the Ministry of Love. But then, I’ve actually read the book. I’ve read some history too.

‘We don’t legislate against meanness, or power struggles, or political maneuvering, or manipulation in offices, and how could we?’

This is an echo of that old line from the opponents of the Civil Rights movement, ‘you can’t legislate morality’. Actually, you can legislate morality. You can arrest people who steal things, you can name, shame and prosecute discrimination, call out workplace bullies and make it less safe to bait people over their race or religion. This very imperfect world is a little less hostile for many because of the much-despised, ‘political correctness’ that makes it risky to throw slurs at co-workers.

Roiphe suggests that it is a soft bigotry of low expectations to think that women might need protection from slurs and worse, ‘when women are yet more powerful and ascendent in the workplace.’

I don’t want to get all ‘class-warfare’, but I have to wonder how many workplaces Roiphe has ever seen. From Princeton to a successful writing career is a happy circumstance– and good for her, but maybe she missed some things along the way. Roiphe imagines that ordinary working women might need some horndog men to to bring sunshine to their empty, dreary little lives…

‘Is the anodyne drone typing away in her silent cubicle free from the risk of comment on her clothes, the terror of a joke, the unsettlement of an unwanted or even wanted sexual advance truly our ideal?’

Jeeze, Katie, thanks for looking out for us drones. ‘Our ideal’? You and who else. You don’t sound like you’ve worked in many offices, or talked to many women for that matter. And F.Y.I., most women don’t work in offices.

Herman Cain, if the allegations are true, demanded sex in exchange for a job. If the allegations are true, he caused two women to lose their jobs.

Imagine, in this terrible economy, getting a job you desperately want and need. Imagine discovering that the price of keeping that job is to placate a workplace bully or try to evade them, to appease them with sex or to make a complaint that will likely go nowhere and get you labelled a complainer. Being caught between dread of going to work and dread of losing your job sounds pretty Orwellian to me.

Laws that are intended to give workers some recourse when they are discriminated against or extorted for sex are partial and imperfect, but have given a little power to workers who have been wronged.

More often than not, workers get along by using some common sense about what their co-workers consider to be okay, and by respecting their feelings.

My first job as a nurse was in a public health clinic at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Candy dishes full of condoms sat on doctor’s desks. Some of the safe-sex literature had photos I wouldn’t show my mother. I did pre and post-test counseling for HIV with many people, in confidence, answering questions about relative risk of various acts. The clinic had a diverse staff and a high-pressure work environment where gallows-humor got us through.

Two of the doctors, one a Seventh Day Adventist, one a Hindu, did not like any kind of profane or risque humor. So we watched our mouths around them, because what’s funny to one person is offensive to another. If you have a grain of social sense, you consider who you’re talking to.

I wish Katie Roiphe and her editors at the New York Times had not rushed to replay that old line about how men can’t have any fun without being accused of sexual harassment. And worse, conflate overreaction to a ‘dirty joke’ with the claims against Herman Cain.

Herman Cain is accused of using his power in the National Restaurant Association to extort sex. If these allegations are true there’s a character flaw that would likely affect how he would use his power as president. A very big deal.

Workplace relations go much better if people remember to practice civility and respect. It’s better to save your wild side for when you’re among friends, not in a group of people who have to spend time with you because it’s their job. At least pick your times and save your jokes for people who think they’re funny, not people who are afraid not to go along. Why is it even necessary to keep on pointing out the obvious?

I’m getting too old for this.

AND ANOTHER THING: No More Mister Nice Blog has more.

FURTHERMORE: I have a long resume. I’ve cleaned toilets and counseled people through health decisions and retouched high school portraits. I’ve wiped up blood in the ER and hung wallpaper and visited the sick and supervised nurses aides and have been a nurses aide. Now for the first time in my life I’m working in a cubicle. Strangely enough I think the work I’m doing is useful and interesting. Some guy draping himself over my desk and breathing in my face would not improve my day. I like the guys I work with, but not in that way.

PART II: I’m waiting for Roiphe to follow up with an op ed about workplace Napoleons and how much fun they are– and why their unlucky targets should try to enjoy being picked on.
The movie, ‘Office Space’ has some wonderful send ups of petty office tyrants. Workplace bullies are disruptive–good managers should step on their heads when they start with that.

Tough Week for Women

Posted on by ninjanurse

Good thing my gyn gave me a reminder call for my yearly tuneup. I’d have hated to miss that, it takes months to reschedule and the doctor is very busy. I told her I was tired all the time, and she gave me a slip for some blood tests. Gyn is a form of primary care, for some women the only primary care they get.

This made me more sensitive to the situation of women in Indiana, who depend on Planned Parenthood for their health care. Planned Parenthood will no longer be reimbursed for Medicaid patients…

Medicaid patients are now paying for their own health services at Indiana’s Planned Parenthood clinics or looking for alternatives after the group ran out of private donations that had been paying those patients’ bills.

A state law that took effect in May denied Planned Parenthood Medicaid funds for general health services it provides to low-income women, including breast exams, birth control and Pap smears.

Over 90% of Planned Parenthood’s services are primary, preventive and educative.

Like all the young women I knew, I went there when I needed a prescription for birth control. I also got blood pressure checks, health advice and pap smears. I never got better care from private doctors than I got at Planned Parenthood.

I asked the secretary at my gyn whether they accept Medicaid patients. She looked at me sympathetically, and said that if I switched to Medicaid they could probably still see me. I said I was looking for gynecologists who accept Medicaid and she said they don’t take that insurance for new patients. She mentioned the Women’s Cancer Screening Program as a resource.

I used to refer women to them, and they do the best they can with a number of different providers. They save lives, they could do much more with more resources. Still, it’s not like having a clinic you can go to when you need a doctor.

Gyn, like dental, is one of those essential services that gets cut and cut again. I think about women in Indiana who will wait longer to see a doctor for cancer screening, for primary care, for birth control. They will search for a private doctor who accepts Medicaid, and maybe not find one.

This is not a good time for women who don’t have money or influence. Shutting down clinics is good politics, a few anonymous women giving up on cancer screening because no doctor will accept their insurance won’t get much attention because, frankly, we’re used to it.


The Federal Government has appealed, the judge will decide on July 1. This action by the Feds is an example of why it matters who we elect as president and why the two parties are not the same.

WOMEN’S CANCER SCREENING- Several years ago I referred a woman to the Women’s Cancer Screening Program. She was uninsured and had never been able to get follow-up care for an ominous lump she had discovered in her breast. She did get help through the program, though it took a while. She had her breast removed on Valentines Day, that always seems especially sad to me. I ran into her a couple of years later, she was well, happy to be alive. She was working in a low-wage job caring for the elderly. It’s not uncommon for those who give care to be uninsured. The Women’s Cancer Screening Program doesn’t have a central location where women can walk in for care, but has a list of providers who will give free care to qualified women. It’s a tough process, and the heart of the program are the dedicated outreach workers who go where the need is and talk to women one-on-one.

Seduce and Abandon

Posted on by ninjanurse

Failed Evangelism

Last week a Concerned Christian left this note on my car. They didn’t leave their name or phone number– just a tract with suggestions about how I can avoid burning in Hell for eternity. Somehow, you never get used to being called, ‘baby killer’. I guess my ‘Obama’ bumper sticker set the anonymous writer off.

Charles Blow, editorial writer for the New York Times takes on the politicians whose concern for children begins at conception and ends at birth…

Of the 33 countries that the International Monetary Fund describes as “advanced economies,” the United States now has the highest infant mortality rate according to data from the World Bank. It took us decades to arrive at this dubious distinction. In 1960, we were 15th. In 1980, we were 13th. And, in 2000, we were 2nd.

Part of the reason for our poor ranking is that declines in our rates stalled after premature births — a leading cause of infant mortality as well as long-term developmental disabilities — began to rise in the 1990s.

Charles Blow goes on to count the cost of disabilities that might be prevented by universal prenatal care and maternal and child health. This is the mission of the March of Dimes, a venerable organization that has advocated for these measures of common sense and common decency for generations.

Caring for the unborn requires caring for the women who will be mothers. It’s perverse and inexplicable that the same politicians who claim to revere unborn life are happy to cut services to pregnant women in order to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. They are even quicker to cut services to mothers, infants and children.

The whole thing reminds me of the guy who brags he has no children, ‘that he knows of’. It’s seduce and abandon.

I know a woman who lives her anti-abortion beliefs by giving substantial and generous help to women and children in need. There are few people ready and willing to do that.

We could, as a society, mandate that all women will have access to reproductive health. We could make maternal-child health a right, and recognize it as a common-sense investment in the future. Instead we are fighting state by state to preserve benefits that are barely adequate.

The common sense and moral appeal of care for mothers and babies is so strong it must be counter-acted by shouts of ‘baby killer’. Loving life is a nice stand to take, especially when you can sneak out the back door when the bills come in. The bills are coming in now, it takes action not words.

Pro woman, pro child, pro choice–it’s not easy, it’s being responsible.

Humiliation and Vengeance

Posted on by ninjanurse

No one is disputing that Jared Loughner is mentally ill. As more of his speech and writing emerge the picture comes into sharper focus. Some brain damage, possibly alcohol poisoning, drug abuse, symptoms of schizophrenia, behavior that frightened classmates and friends.

There’s little fear that he will get off on an insanity defense. Since John Hinkley’s attempted assassination of President Reagan, the bar has been raised. In any case, Loughner was not insane. He was not swallowing razor blades or slamming his head against a wall. He was able to carry out a plan.

What set him on this course? Why did his illness take this form? Why is the lone man who carries out a public mass murder a recurring pattern?
Loughner didn’t strike randomly. He had obsessed on Gabrielle Giffords.

[A friend of Jared Loughner, Bryce]Tierney tells Mother Jones in an exclusive interview that Loughner held a years-long grudge against Giffords and had repeatedly derided her as a “fake.” Loughner’s animus toward Giffords intensified after he attended one of her campaign events and she did not, in his view, sufficiently answer a question he had posed, Tierney says.

… “He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, ‘What is government if words have no meaning?’”
“He said, ‘Can you believe it, they wouldn’t answer my question.’ Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her.”

I can imagine a young man who is already becoming unmoored from reality– who is nursing grandiose visions and delusions of superiority. He approaches the Congresswoman to impress her with his insightful question, and is met by incomprehension. He feels this as a public humiliation. Who is she anyway? One word is telling…

Jared Lee Loughner, accused of shooting 20 people and trying to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, left a note in his safe that read, “Die bitch.”

‘Bitch’ is one of those words that’s harmless until it’s not. If you’ve ever heard it said in malice you know what I mean. Women in power are a conspicuous minority. Gabrielle Giffords, like every public servant, knew that she could draw hatred for her political decisions. As a woman, she modeled the role of women in power, a change we are still adjusting to.

Loughner left other writings that suggest he nursed resentment against female teachers and fellow students…

Loughner seemed at times to be reaching out for help from the online gaming community in his postings, which emphasized his inability to attract women or land a minimum-wage job.

It’s his recent posts that are the most disturbing. On April 24, in a thread titled “Would you hit a Handy Cap Child/ Adult?”, he wrote: “This is a very interesting question….There are mental retarded children. They’re possessing teachers that are typing for money. This will never stop….The drug addicts need to be weeded out to be more intelligent. The Principle of this is that them c— educators need to stop being pigs.”

Later that day, in an even more horrifying post titled “Why Rape?”, he claimed that college women liked being raped. He wrote, “there are Rape victims that are under the influence of a substance. The drinking is leading them to rape. The loneliness will bring you to depression. Being alone for a very long time will inevitably lead you to rape.”

One woman’s voice in Congress is silenced for the near future, and may not be heard again. Women, a minority in positions of power, have lost ground in representation this year…

Despite the fact that many women ran in the primaries for the 2010 midterm elections, when the 112th Congress is sworn in this January, there will be a decline in the number of female members in Congress.
Women in the next US Congress are project­ed to make up just 16 percent of the members, down from 17 percent in the previous Con­gress. Although the actual number of seats lost is not a huge number, the change is still signifi­cant because it is the first decrease that women in Congress have seen in 30 years.

Full equality for women is not a part of our culture, not yet.

Jared Loughner is a man who was going to do something to put himself into custody, probably sooner than later. He was certainly ill. And he was haunted by voices, the most toxic in our society. ‘That bitch needs to be taught a lesson’, ‘I’ll go out in a blaze of glory’, ‘They’ll be sorry.’ This might have been what the voices said.

There were voices outside too, raising the level of hostility around him. There were weapons of mass destruction, easily available even to a young man whose behavior struck everyone around him as bizarre.

The New York Times has more on his behavior to women…

At a small local branch of a major bank, for example, the tellers would have their fingers on the alarm button whenever they saw him approaching.

It was not just his appearance — the pale shaved head and eyebrows — that unnerved them. It was also the aggressive, often sexist things that he said, including asserting that women should not be allowed to hold positions of power or authority.

One individual with knowledge of the situation said Mr. Loughner once got into a dispute with a female branch employee after she told him that a request of his would violate bank policy. He brusquely challenged the woman, telling her that she should not have any power.

Misogyny is just one element in the poisonous mix that led to this tragedy, but it’s there. One woman’s voice in Congress that may not be heard again. We feel the loss.