NC-18

and this is very well written. thank you.

. . .to be in a grey state, since you ask. I have a teenaged daughter who helped me argue against Florida's law, to no avail. But we have sure analyzed and discussed it, most importantly with each other, and she with her friends. The worst part of the whole thing is realizing how unable people are to think through an argument as eloquent and true to the core as Lorraine makes here.

I made this comment in response to Lorraine's posting of the diary originally. It was in answer to the privacy young girls deserve to have, it dealt with parental notification laws and also the bill that was passed, with Majority Leader Harry Reid's affirmative vote, federal bill S403 which prevents young girls from crossing state lines into states that have parental notification laws. As is seen on the map Lorraine has posted, it's in more states than not by a wide margin.

This is my first comment on Culture Kitchen, I don't know how to do blockquotes or italicize yet so I ask your indulgence, here's the comment to Lorraine's diary on My Left Wing.

When S403, the bill that makes it illegal to help a young girl cross state lines to have an abortion, was being debated on the senate floor, Barbara Boxer spoke of what an egregious bill it is, she said it's really the worse piece of legislation she has seen in all her years of holding office, she said there are so many things in it that need to be fixed, she also said something that is heartbreaking, she said there will be many, many young girls who will choose to take their own lives because they don't feel they have any other choice.

The bill gives a rapist father full parental rights. The only thing Boxer was able to change in the bill, so far, is that the rapist father can no longer sue those who help his daughter in terminating the pregnancy that comes as a result of the incestuous act he forced upon her.

I hear the argument so often that some can't imagine a more vulnerable being than that of an unborn fetus. I have to disagree, I can't imagine a more vulnerable being that a young girl or a woman who finds herself pregnant when she doesn't have the means to support that child, either emotionally, financially or physically.

The bans on abortion, including parental notification, have to be considered. How vulnerable do some people think a young girl or woman is when they are told their very lives are at stake if they don't terminate their pregnancy? How vulnerable are young girls or women who have been raped and are forced to carry a pregnancy to term that is a consequence of that rape? How vulnerable are women who are the victims of unrelenting domestic abuse? How vulnerable are teenaged girls or preteens who live with fathers who rape them?

How vulnerable is a young girl who lives in extreme poverty? How vulnerable is she if there are no abortion clinics in her state? Isn't it bad enough that money, the funds needed to have an abortion, aren't readily available? What if that young girl isn't able to seek help? How does that cycle of deep poverty stop if these young girls have no access to terminate a pregnancy?

We are told we have a right to privacy but that is a lie if we don't have the freedom that comes with knowing we have control over what happens to our bodies, if we don't have the freedom to our design our own future what do we have?

I've been that teenaged girl without a choice. I know, in the deepest part of me, that terror and horror, I know what it's like to be driven to a place where life is the greatest obstacle imaginable, I know that place, that deep down dread, I can still hear my footsteps taking me to that drawer that held the knife I used to slit my wrist. I've been that teenaged girl who woke up in the hospital when the first thought was, why didn't I die?

It makes me weep for all those young girls who will, guaranteed WILL, feel all those things, all those girls who will bear the same scars as they're either lowered into the ground or as they live their lives, those scars will always be there as a reminder of what happens when we've lost our freedom to be who we were born to be.

I can hardly wait to start seeing your blog entries here. Cool!

When stories like Cali's can't move people (at least anyone who has the requisite yellow brick road equipment to work with) then obviously something is very wrong. I think "it's the script, stupid."

I mean the script that gets into a person's head when disbelief is willingly suspended and the embrace of identity begins to take over and feel really good.

If I ever make a movie, my shooting script will be about everything, maybe based on the elusive Theory of Everything?
But I'm a suspect freak.
Sooner or later most folks get one dominant script stuck in their heads (religion, politics or some combination) and willingly immerse themselves in that one story, start to feel like one of its established characters and then start acting from that script in real life, responding to behind-the-scenes directors and producers who will use them as instruments, to bring that script to public life.

Those Unmoved By Cali must think they're in a whole different movie, different script and different target audience, so their reality has no relationship to hers. She ceases to matter, no, can quite literally cease to exist in their script, as they hunker down in their own comfortable genre, run the soundtrack as loud as they please and orchestrate critic bombs to lob across the lobby at her faceless crowd.

Yep. Powerbrokers who exploit our kids, schools, system of justice and free-flowing capital for their own greedy deals are hidebound conservative traditionalists, no matter which party's values they've traditionally barricaded themselves behind, or give showy awards to, or whose home and family choices they claim to bleed (red or blue) for.

Rob Reiner, that goes for you and your Big Hollywood Big State Big School Big Money "Why? Because we LIKE you!" preschool powerbrokering, too.

Any blogger, boss, pol or lobbyist who fears and therefore actively opposes and/or manipulates real, rightful, self-empowering private choices (including the dozens of progressive experiments changing our education cultures to organically reflect what the people really want and are willing to pay for) are thinking just like the Big Hollywood moviemakers -- like hidebound traditionalists all. Nothing progressive about that.

You guys find it a good investment to play the part of championing family values, privacy and "choice" outside your chosen profit center whether studio, sanctuary, classroom or cloakroom. Just know that your increasingly savvy audiences will expect your denouement later in the story, when the script calls for you to relinquish control of our choices . . .

Just know that your increasingly savvy audiences will expect your denouement later in the story, when the script calls for you to relinquish control of our choices . . .

This sentence is so powerful and it's so very, very true. Thank you for your words, your blog is so pertinent, I look forward to catching up on more of your works.

Lorraine, so powerfully and well written, you are an inspiration.

This is a short story about a young girl who was afraid to tell her parents she was pregnant.

Becky Bell
August 24, 1971 - Sept. 16, 1988

At 17, Becky became a victim of an Indiana state law requiring parental consent for a minor to obtain an abortion. Unable to bring herself to disappoint her parents by telling them she was pregnant — or go before a judge to bypass the law — Becky sought an illegal abortion. When she became seriously ill, her parents rushed her to the hospital. In severe pain from a massive infection, Becky still could not tell them, and despite the efforts of the doctors, she died.

In Remembrancehttp://www.now.org/issues/abortion/120904women-who-died.htm

Stories like Becky's need to be told, so much of these laws pass with the support of the voters because there is no human face put on the bills that cause so much tragedy.

Thank you for posting this. I'm writing a diary that speaks to what this day means to so many women and young girls, and those who support us.

Could you help it to be frontpaged? Thanks in advance, my friend.

I quote myself: No man in a long black dress is going to tell me what I can do with my body.
Well, a little rash but I take potshots at those who pontificate from both the altar and the bench. If you are where you can see this movie I hope you write about it. I don't think there's any chance in my part of Tennessee. The article was in the book section on the 21st. I believe the movie is supposed to open this month.

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=358924

Movie Details
More On 'Lake of Fire'
Type: Documentary

Rating: NR
Running Time: 152 Minutes

Starring: , Norma McCorvey, Dallas Blanchard, Nat Hentoff, Alan Dershowitz, Noam Chomsky
Directed by: Tony Kaye
Lake of Fire
2006-USA-Religions & Belief Systems/Medicine/Politics & Government/Social Issues