Choice

Today is January 22nd, 2008 and women across the United States will observe it as the 35 anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. Many of them will even be blogging about how the right to choose is so important to them. Others will spend the day condemning it.

Which just brings me to the topic of birthing.

It seems like there is a baby boom in Hollywood. Everybody and their mother is pregnant. There is so much baby booming that it led Ricki Lake to make a documentary about the whole thing.

In The Business of Being Born, Lake goes on to document the way women in the United States go about birthing babies and reveal it for what it is, a business. As an advocate for midwifery and non-invasive birthing, Lake hopes "this film educates people and empowers them to really know their choices in childbirth."

"Can Parents Trust These Nice Conservative Brothers?"
Full post at Snook today -This is about a young couple who. . .make up a story to tell Susie's parents.

For their (shuddering as I notice this for the first time) millennium collection!

It's not just the internet tubes that make my life of the mind so rich. Without my radio, I wouldn't have nearly as much off-the-wall selective-perception stuff to think about . . .turn the radio on, turn the radio on now, no, that was the Chemical Brothers I think. .. but I digress, did you know that the dynastic Governing Brothers both have the exact same favorite song?? (WHAT ARE THE ODDS??)

Yes, it's a highly rated crowd pleaser of a song that has stood the test of time, its power of story about lying to parents and pleasing the country-western crowd, but they are so gosh-darn earnest and church-going and clean-cut about it . . .

So JEB (says my radio) has doffed his official state title and reclaimed his personal three letter nickname. Subliminally this is very presidential, like FDR, JFK, LBJ -- hmmm, are there any famous Republican prez initials, can't think of any known by three letters except Ike, which weren't his initials -- and like another music-message-muddled, big-and-tall candidate-man (Dem, and four-lettered when three would do, Gore) my ex-governor reportedly has slimmed down since leaving office. Getting into shape for the next run? Maybe he needs a musical makeover too . . .

Thing 1 spent all of last week at home, sick with the flu which got aggravated by his asthma. We spent most of last week as we did for years as homeschoolers : working on different things, watching videos, reading, doing arts & crafts projects, and getting into each others nerves.

I loved every minute of it.

I love being a mom. This is an admission that does not come easy to me. When I was in my 20s I fantasized of becoming a mother after 40. I thought that only after becoming successful as a writer and scholar, only after finding myself and who I really was supposed to be, that I would be ready to be a mother.

Then the condom broke. Twice.

I suspected I was pregnant with Thing 1 on a New Year's Eve because all the champagne I drank tasted funky and I had a hankering for olives. The funky champagne taste was new to me but not the hankering for olives. That had first happened 10 years prior when I first got pregnant.

I lived as fast and furious as any nerd with wild tendencies could. Yeah, I did my work at college but I also partied hard. This was the 1980s after all and sex, drugs and more sex were everywhere --notwithstanding the dawning of the AIDS era.

Planned Parenthood recently came up in discussions on this site. Well, here is their latest campaign to protect our family planning choices:

Planned Parenthood is launching one of the most important birth control campaigns in our 90-year history. Our target audience is small, but influential — the 100 members of the United States Senate. We're working to provide them with vitally important facts about health care and birth control.

If you believe in birth control, we need you to act now. Send critical information about birth control and the Prevention First Act to the Senators who represent you in Congress.

Alert Congress now. Send them our "Prevention First" petition.

Since George W. Bush made the indefensible decision to put anti-birth control, anti-sex ed Eric Keroack in charge of the nation's family planning program, Planned Parenthood has gathered more than 116,000 petitions protesting the appointment.

Unbelievably, the man now in charge of America's family planning program spent years as medical director of a group that thinks birth control is "demeaning to women." Now, we've got to make it clear that we won't let Keroack, Bush, or anyone else stand in the way of our efforts to safeguard and expand access to birth control and family planning.

On the first day of the new Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), along with Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), Barack Obama (D-IL), and others, introduced the vitally important Prevention First Act (S.21). Passing this legislation is a key part of Planned Parenthood's 2007 Prevention First agenda. We're pressing Congress to fully fund family planning services, increase access to services through Medicaid, and protect teens with real sex education.

promoted to front page by Lorraine
I hold the Democratic leadership's feet to the fire because I have loved this party for 40 years. I come from a time when liberal values and principles were the ripples on the river that ran over the basement of time, the bedrock principles that engendered pride when these words were spoke, I am a Democrat.

I come from a time when the very word liberal wasn't bracketed but was a driving force, I come from a time when women began to stand up and insist our voices were heard. When equality and justice were at the forefront of the national party, a time when we could hold in our hands the knowledge that we were the party, a time when the leadership fought for the Voter's Rights Act, a time when the leadership fought for the Equal Rights Amendment, when they fought for Roe v. Wade and said out loud and proudly that we were the party of choice.

Because much has changed over the past two decades and because the Democratic leadership was all that stood between this administration and us, the American people, when the leadership didn't do their job in protecting us, when the leadership concentrated more on being elected instead of enforcing our rights through denying the passage of such legislation as the Patriot Act and the Bankruptcy Bill, when the leadership consistently refused to say one word about the war against women, it was then that I started to look outside the party it has become to the party it can be, a more progressive party, a party that embraces its liberal base once again.

I think I have officially declared war on the Concerned Women for America. I think I have decided that if there is only one thing I can do that will make a difference, it is that I will, on a regular basis, expose the general fuckwaddery that comprises their site, their position papers, and the articles that they post. Rather than quietly stewing over something I've read there, I want to cast light on it, in hopes that, exposed to sunlight, they will shrivel and die.

The Strawberry Bitch, as I have been affectionately called, has spoken.

Let us begin.

Planned Parenthood is fighting the South Dakota ban on abortion and they are asking you to host or attend a potluck fundraiser for choice.

Potluck House Parties will be held across the country to raise money and build awareness for the campaign to defeat the abortion ban in South Dakota.

Sign up to host a Potluck for South Dakota with your friends and family!

Use their online tools to create, manage and promote your potluck.

The host whose potluck raises the most money will win a Newman’s Own gift basket and a trip to New York City to meet Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards!

Or you can find a potluck near you to attend.

An Open Letter to Dan Savage:

Dear Dan,

I have read "Savage Love" in the Village Voice for years, have also read the Seattle alternative weekly that you edit, The Stranger for a long time. I know you are an openly gay man, in a long-term relationship with Terry, and that the two of you are raising a child together.

You sex advice column has made me laugh, made me think, pissed me off (especially when you start going on about how you think cunnilingus is icky), but, in general, we've been on the same page about sex, reproductive rights, freedom for gays and lesbians to marry, and the whole "right to privacy" omnibus issue that is of utmost importance to me.

Which is why your column this week has left me flabbergasted.

You and your readers have contributed the term "santorum" to our lexicon, and I can no longer think about the senator who lives just to the south of my state as anything but the frothy mixture of fecal matter and lube that is sometimes the product of anal sex. Serves him right for being such a despicable human being. The Senate cannot get rid of Rick Santorum fast enough.