Father Sells Daughter for Cash, Beer and Meat

Father Sells Daughter for Cash, Beer and Meat

What I want to know is, what the hell are they thinking sending this girl back to her abusive family????

The breast feeding pics that Facebook banned.

Can't remember how I found this collection of breast feeding photos that were removed from Facebook, but it's enlightening. A couple of the more pertinent (not to mention old) points that were made were:

Men's nipples can be photographed and those photos published without comment but a woman's areola is obscene. One of many examples of double standards within our nice western patriarchy and...Facebook.

Photos of topless women holding babies are pornographic according to Facebook - you can bet they haven't removed any photos of topless men holding their tots.

The funniest photo is captioned: "If breast feeding on facebook disturbs you, please feel free to put a blanket over your head." Any woman who has fed a baby under a blanket so as not to frighten the general public with the sight of a baby having lunch will know precisely why this is hilarious.

In my opinion, if photos of breasts doing what they are supposed to do appears to be pornographic to the viewer, then the viewer might want to ask themselves some pertinent questions with regard to what turns them on. Breast worshipping, (or viewing bare breasts as obscene which equates to a hatred of breasts), is a cultural phenomenon. For some reason our culture seems to be afraid of breasts, as though the sight of a nipple might drive men mad and contaminate the minds of little children. Fear of exposed body parts is one of the more ridiculous social norms I grew up with, and one of the hardest for me to overcome (if you think I exaggerate consider that I feel naked just showing my ankles), yet I can still see past my inhibitions to the logic of the situation.

The logic is this: Breasts are milk making machines, it's a biologically hardwired thing humans have going on. Even men's breasts, usually considered redundant, can be made to produce milk. What breasts cannot do is possess magical power over the minds of others. Breasts cannot make a man have an erection or desire sexual intercourse, nor can they make little children into sexual deviants. Amazing though they are, breasts simply do not have those powers. Despite all appearances to the contrary, those extraordinary powers lie elsewhere, in the context. Our poor beleaguered breasts exist within a society that indoctrinates us with a sexual view of our milk making machines. And SEX, oh my goodness, SEX is BAD. Soaked in our deeply Christian culture is a morbid fear of SEX. We do not talk about the SEX, we hint at it, we suggest that there may be the merest possibility that it may be going on. We protect our children from the SEX while allowing them to see footage of people shooting each other. I fear I may have digressed...

The upshot is this: breasts have no special powers other than making milk and providing a soft place for children to rest their heads. All the other powers attributed to them are actually sourced in our craniums. It is the mind that makes the breast a sexual object. It is definitely the mind that makes a picture of a breast feeding baby pornographic. Facebook needs its head read.

Some Reactionary Commentary on the film Orgasmic Birth by someone who read the pamphlet and checked out the website.

I must be feeling a bit better because these (very similar) articles in The Age by an Avril Moore made me a tiny bit angry. Just a little bit. A twinge.

Maybe, because I've seen the film and helped host the Melbourne screening I'm taking the whole thing a little personally.

Or maybe I'm just cross because she spouted her drivel having not seen the film.

Nope, it's neither of those things, it's this: This Avril chic is using her painful births to trump all the women who report a painless or ecstatic birth. She has blithely silenced the voices of women who report beautiful birthing experiences, dismissing their accounts and replacing them with her own. Isn't that one of the things the patriarchy is supposed to be good at? Disregarding the reported experiences of women? Telling us what it is we are supposed to be experiencing? particularly when it comes to childbirth? Tisk tisk Avril, BAD feminist, naughty!

Avril called the "natural birth community" backward when she accuses them of deferring to men. Avril complains that, "this 'woman-centred' approach to birth, all dressed up to empower labouring mothers, remains unapologetic in its deference to men" simply because one woman reported a reduction in pain when she smiled at her husband.

Wow.

Some readers may remember that I happen to know quite a bit about pain, and I'm pretty sure that what Avril knows could be stamped on a paracetamol capsule: Times New Roman, size 10 font - "Birth, it hurt when I did it!". It is not unreasonable to suppose that smiling at someone you love during labour could reduce pain. Distraction is an age-old technique for reducing pain, meditation forms part of the armoury against chronic pain and there is plenty of other evidence much of it published in reputable journals, that focussing on pleasurable things works wonders for pain. In infants, physical pain response is reduced when they are given sucrose to suck on, distraction with something nice is a time tested pain reliever for young children. If smiling at your husband distracts you and gets some happy chemicals pumping in your brain then wonderful! It's hardly what I would call deference.

She cites other examples of deference too. Ina May Gaskin dares to dedicate her first book to her husband and apparently two homebirth doctors in the 1970s were OMG! blokes! Avril, in the 1970s most doctors were blokes, you played the odds and won there, and my honours thesis would have been dedicated to my husband (if it had been dedicated to anyone) that doesn't mean he told me what to put in it.

Avril's contempt for Ina May Gaskin beggars belief given her credentials. Avril has experienced three births, Ina May has been present at over 1200 and pioneered an extremely effective low intervention solution for shoulder dystocia. Avril, 3, Ina May, 1200. I think Ms Gaskin is winning in the experience stakes. Also, as a writer, Avril should know that a book like Spiritual Midwifery doesn't run to four editions if it's full of hippie clap-trap.

If Avril had seen the film, she would have known that the women in it are a far cry from shutting up and smiling submissively at their husbands. They are not only very much in charge they are very noisy indeed, it's just not the kind of noise that we expect to hear having been fed hysterically screaming women by mainstream media. It's animal, it's beautiful, and if you heard only the sound track you might think you were listening to quality porn - for real.

I gather, Avril, you were more of a screamer? REALLY focussed in on that pain, did you? Good on you! Whatever works dear.

Target women - Birth Control

I'm a bit of a latecomer to Sarah Haskins, but just in case there are other ignoramuses like me out there I'm sharing the love. Those using readers might need to visit the blog to watch the videos.

I like:


and:



...and there's so much more for those who Google.

Dear diary, What's Wrong With Me?

I've written three hundred blog posts in my head I'm sure. If not three hundred, at least 30 and none of them are making it to the ether. This could be because I'm time poor and trying to get to sleep early. But I think it's rather a depressing lack of motivation caused by the roller coaster I've been on for the past couple of months. I think if I have to do one more extreme high (e.g. relief of Mum dying, 11yo with his A average) followed by an extreme low (e.g. Mum dying, missing out on scholarship) I might just risk life and limb and jump off the ride.

I do have time to write. I'm going to bed at 2200 and finding that I'm still wide awake at 0100 and wondering why didn't do something useful rather than stew fretfully in bed listening to the walrus choking on a fish next to me.

Activities that normally entertain me have lost their appeal. The thought of trolling pro-life websites and picking holes in their logic, usually fun, just fills me with a tiredness bordering on despair. Because study next year is still up in the air I can't pick up any philosophy or psycho-neurology without feeling depressed and pointless. Much of my feminist rants were anger driven and the anger just isn't there at the moment.

I can't get pissed off, I can't get motivated, and with the aid of Travis I seem to have cried myself out over my mother. All the cleaning an tidying has left me with a still overflowing in-tray and a house that is only half orderly so the thought of doing more to no avail makes me miserable.

Coffee with friends always helps, as do lists that I can tick so I can see that I've accomplished something for the day. Charming, cheeky 11yo boys always bring sunshine into the house. But right now... right now I just might break out the new toy...

Apparently I'm a high level nerd, which is totally cool.

My husband is a nerd GOD though. It's like I'm a nurse and I married a doctor!




...and yet...

Carolina Chocolate Drops - how awesome is she?

Thanks to Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony for this one. For some reason Google Reader won't subscribe to it so I never visit as often as I'd like...

Wohoo! There's hope for energy from hot rocks...

...and Australia has absolutely loads of them.

Although this article is a bit presumptuous in saying that they'll have their power plant operational by March when they haven't got their proof of concept plant working, it's still very exiting. If all goes well it'll be good for the planet and the riskier portion of my share portfolio.

Prostitution - some things to disagree with the radical feminists about.

I read with interest the article on the global sex industry in The Age today, mainly because of the title "The Vagina Dialogues" which I mistook for "The Vagina Monologues" and I was kind of hoping they'd come to Melbourne so that I could see them (finally). Anyway, not monologues, not even dialogues really, just a catchy headline - The Age has outdone itself today in that respect, but I might post about that later...

British feminist Sheila Jeffreys claims that us "neo-liberalists" view prostitution as simply a form of work (that'll be me), and that we should be more outraged at the buying and selling of women's bodies. I'm not sure that I'm happy with that as a blanket statement. Sure, when I hear about sex slavery I get as angry and unhappy as the next person. But I think it is a grave error to confuse sex slavery with prostitution. Also, to be blindly outraged at the buying and selling of women's bodies is dismissive of all the work done by sex workers campaigning to be recognised as a legitimate profession. Of course, in my ideal world, prostitutes are all doing the work by choice, they are well educated regarding their sexual health and how to maintain it and they work in nice places with lots of security guards and the means to summon them if they get a dud client. I know this is the reality for the minority of sex workers, but I also know that the other realities have other complications, drug addiction being a classic. If you're so drug fucked you can't hold down a job, you're desperate for more, and someone will pay you for the use of the one possession you can't lose... well....

I agree with Jeffreys that more of the money being made by the sex trade could go to the women themselves, but I feel that way about factory workers too. Big business is bad in itself, to label prostitution bad because of an association with big business is another error.

Perhaps I should reveal why I'm such a big fan of prostitution in my idealised form:

1 - Prostitution allows all kinds of people to have access to sex who otherwise couldn't or wouldn't get it.

It's obvious really, but some people need you to point out the obvious. I'm talking about people who are shunned by their partners, the disabled, the super busy or the just plain ugly. Who am I to say that these people should never have sexual intercourse simply because they cannot find a bedmate? If a person cannot walk, we find ways to help them get around, if they can't talk we find ways to get them communicating, we don't turn our backs on them reasoning that it's their tough luck and they'll just have to suffer without things the able bodied among us take for granted. Why should access to sex be any different? Are we so prudish that we cannot suffer the thought that the unfortunate might have sexual needs? In my opinion it is better that they safely pay to have those need fulfilled as the alternatives to not bear thinking about. Of course, this solution makes sex the privilege of the wealthier portion of the sexually frustrated population but that is a whole other can of worms I do not have time to address here!

2 - Prostitution keeps families intact.

Oh yes indeedy. Bear with me on this one. In this scenario, the frustrated marriage partner is not only paying a prostitute for sex, they are paying their sexual partner to go away afterward. I argue that prostitution, as long as it does not become an addiction, is a far more family friendly way of fulfilling frustrated sexual needs than cheating on your partner with someone else. This is because of the drain the cheatee can have on the family. There is the time drain where the cheater is off with the cheatee, there has to be courting and bonding before the actual sex and all of this takes time. Prostitutes take far less time by comparison. There is the emotional drain on the family where the cheater becomes emotionally distracted and distant, if one assumes there is no emotional attachment to the prostitute there is nothing to distract the cheater from the family. There is also the financial drain caused by maintaining a cheatee. Prostitutes cost money, for sure, but do they cost as much as the gifts and food, and places to sleep often entailed by an affair? Unless the cheater is a complete miser or having an affair with a rich single person the answer is probably not. And finally, lets not forget the emotional trauma often suffered by the cheatee at the hands of a cheater who refuses to leave the family. The pain of being the "secret other" is not to be underestimated. Going to a professional third party for sex may not solve the initial problem that lead the cheater to seek out extra sex in the first place, but at least it's less likely to cause any further problems.

I'm more than happy to hear from people who disagree with me. However, I will maintain that prostitution is actually a vital part of a healthy society. Particularly if that society is going to glorify unnatural modes of existence, I'm thinking here of the ideal that one partner can satisfy your every sexual need for your entire monogamous life. Sex is one of the few arenas where seeking out satisfaction outside the partnership is frowned upon in our culture. If you need other things such as books, company for exercise, conversations about antique cars or the occasional back massage it is considered ok to get them outside the relationship, but sex? Oh no, if you're not getting what you want in that area tough luck buddy, you chose your sex life when you chose your partner. This seems to me to be ridiculously exclusive and based on an ancient tradition whereby women were only allowed to have sex with their husbands so that the husbands could be sure of the paternity of their children.

Logically, if we can satisfy needs for anything other than sex outside of marriage, then we should all be signing up for life with the partner who was best in the sack. However, hardly anyone does. I didn't, and for a plethora of excellent reasons, one of which is that I'm just not that sexually driven. But if extra sex ever became a priority, you can guarantee I'll be seeking out that extra sex from a paid professional rather than going through the ugly emotional messiness of an affair. Radical feminists are wrong to tar all forms of prostitution with the same brush. Lets hope they see the light.

Bill Bailey for... something good...

I pinched this pic from Hoyden About Town. Awesome. I want one of those T-shirts.

Wow, someone has really done their homework on the Tell The Truth Coalition!

For those of you still interested in the Tell The Truth Coalition, this makes extremely interesting reading. Someone called Brian from unbelief.org has done some homework on the members including our favourite ol' Ron van Wegen.

When it comes to birth, men can be fragile creatures.

This piece in The New York Times spoke volumes to me. It's an ordinary bloke's account of his failure to cope with his daughter's early arrival on the bathroom floor.

I don't like a great deal of the sentiment, such as his expectation of how the birth would proceed:

I had been expecting the birth to occur in an orderly fashion at the hospital: the midwife and nurses in scrubs, regular reports on how many centimeters her cervix had dilated, an opportunity to hold Leslie’s hand and wipe her brow. I had wanted to be the useful partner — and the witness. When the baby arrived, I would accept her from the nurse before placing her on Leslie’s chest, basking in the tableau of mother with newborn child.

Could his vision be any more polluted by the patriarchal myth that women need to be flat on their backs surrounded by a team of experts in order to do what most of them have been doing either alone or in the company of family members ever since we became bipedal? Does he have any idea of the history behind his desire to be the first to hold the baby? (In ancient Rome the father would be given the baby in order to see if it met his approval, if it did not it was exposed or sold into slavery.) Does he have any idea how useless (and annoying) brow mopping is? (If I had a dollar for the number of times I've seen women giggle over their husband's earnest brow mopping on Mummy Bulletin Boards... If my husband had tried that he'd have been flung across the room and possibly banished.) My guess is that our author is oblivious to both the implications behind his desire to be passed the baby and his misguided utility. I can't really blame him. He's a product of western culture, particularly American culture. So, when his wife yelled that she was having the baby in the bathroom, he did what he'd been taught to do - panic and call an ambulance. The birth of his daughter without him brought home a stark reality: he wasn't needed at all, it was quite possible he'd made things worse.

I think that unless we are careful, instead of being a participant in something wonderful, men like this one can be made to feel like irrelevant spectators. For the raw truth is, they are not needed at the birth. Natural and water birth pioneer Michael Odent goes so far as to say that male partners should not be allowed at births, that they only get in the way. I half agree.

I definitely wanted my husband there for the birth of my second, but I didn't take it for granted that my partner would be there the way I did with my first. He was very deliberately included in a team of half a dozen people and prepared appropriately for the event. The poor man, who comes from a very patriarchal home, was lectured to, shown videos, read to from books, made to be my advocate when I needed one, and given very strict instructions as to the boundaries of his role. Just like most other Australian blokes, his experience of birth was limited to movie portrayals and anecdotes from older relatives so he needed an entire re-education: history, medicine, male power and the myth of control. The man stepped up to the plate like an absolute hero and ended up catching his daughter (I was on my hands and knees for that one). He'll never forget it and neither will I.

My husband was the antithesis of the helpless, panic stricken ambulance caller. He knew what he could do, what I only I could do and exactly how he could facilitate it without getting in the way. He was amazing.

However, had he displayed a reluctance to be swayed from the patriarchal medical model he'd have been excluded. It would have been horrible and heart-breaking but I would have done it. The birth was both something I had to do, yet was also something that was happening to me - it was a tug-of-war between me, my body and a baby clamouring to get out into the world. I would never risk having someone present who might disrupt the delicate relationship I needed to establish with my body to achieve a good outcome. Husbands who panic, or who encourage their wives to accept interventions to satisfy their need to feel like "something is being done", are not capable of acting in the best interest of their wives. They'd be better off in the waiting room nursing their cigars.

To summarise, any man who believes that birth should be orderly and furthermore, CONTROLLED should definitely be banned from attending births. Most of them love their wives and want to be supportve, but their panic in the face of their helplessness is not, well, helpful.

India: Abortion without the husband's knowledge is mental cruelty and grounds for divorce *sigh*

According to India's national newspaper The Hindu, having an abortion without your husband's knowledge is an act of mental cruelty toward the husband and grounds for divorce. The logic employed here is so alarming my neocortex was clamoring for a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down.

How could he be affected by abortions of which he had no knowledge????

I'm trying to think of other acts that could be performed without the spouse's knowledge that could also be construed as mental cruelty. This in itself is tricky as I've always thought of mental cruelty as something that is DONE to another person. It is an act that requires two parties, a perpetrator and a victim.

Perhaps my confusion stems from their use of the word cruelty? Good philosophers always check for a terminalogical dispute, so, from my Apple Dictionary:

"cruelty |ˈkroōəltē|
noun ( pl. -ties)
callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain and suffering : he has treated her with extreme cruelty.
• behavior that causes pain or suffering to a person or animal : we can't stand cruelty to animals | the cruelties of forced assimilation and genocide.
• Law behavior that causes physical or mental harm to another, esp. a spouse, whether intentionally or not.
ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French crualte, based on Latin crudelitas, from crudelis (see cruel)."

OK, if they are using the legal term (and I assume by the nature of the article that they are) then the act must only harm the spouse, and does not necessarily have to be directed at the spouse. For example, gambling away the couple's life savings and house might be considered an act of cruelty though the act is not directed at the spouse at all. My gambling example could also serve as an instance of the act occurring without the knowledge of the spouse - at least initially.

So in this case, the husband obviously wanted children and upon learning that his wife had terminated three pregnancies suffered mental anguish (or more likely anger at being gipped) and sued for divorce. Fair enough? Maybe, until we check out the flip side of this scenario.

The players are the same, we have a husband who wants children and a wife who does not. The wife becomes pregnant and due to a slight alteration in her situation cannot secretly terminate the pregnancy but must carry, bear and rear a child or children she does not want. Will she be able to sue for divorce due to mental cruelty? NO. Colour me surprised at the inequity.

Oh no! Don't be friends wiv da boyz!

This is primary school-yard logic from a journalist who I assume is at least old enough to vote.

Articles like this are only going to be taken seriously by the most vacant of women, and will barely blip on the radar of men who think of women as people rather than potential bedmates. Crushes can be dealt with and most of them pass, leaving rock solid friendships. The kind of emotional immaturity that results in a person only having close friendships with their own sex is unfortunate and curable. Articles like this do not help.

Expectations for GREAT Maternity Services Reform - National Day of Action - November 16th

Great Expectations- National Day of Action


The recent review of Maternity Services in Australia is an historical event. Not only is it numerically significant it heralds the presence of what is most important actual Government support for much needed maternity service reform.

The Rudd government has been forthcoming in their promise to review maternity services and to improve upon them. Health Minister Roxon has publicly challenged the current medically dominated system and highlighted the need and the opportunity for enhanced midwifery care.


The timing is such that a visible presence is now required to make a really powerful impression that reform is necessary, wanted and indeed expected from the Australian public.


We have chosen the 16th of November to be a National Day of Action to support and make known our Expectations for GREAT Maternity Services Reform.


Please consider gathering in your local community or in a central capital city location to cement the support that we the women, men and families of Australia give to reform of Maternity Care provision in Australia. A picnic, candlelit vigil, or walk for reform are some ideas for gatherings that could be utilised to draw media attention, educate, show support and celebrate the pending report and recommendations.



The winds of change are blowing and this presents an incredibly exciting and celebratory chapter for all who have worked at one time or another for reform.



For further information about events …


Please call Janie Nottingham 0359 748364 or Mobile 04206 20808

Email Janie.nottingham@gmail.com

Prostitution and Proposition K in San Fransisco

Legalising prostitution seems to be a no-brainer to me. Mainly because it increases the safety of the people who work in the industry. However, I'm painfully aware that I have not been exposed to all the arguments on the issue so I check stuff out when it crosses my path. I came across this on the University of California Feminist Legal Theory blog. It's interesting, as are the links out.

For those who care - my PhD research proposal.

It is my intention to further pursue issues arising from my honours thesis. I intend to investigate causal properties of qualia and their involvement in our ability to direct attention and explore the possibility that an iterated attention mechanism is a causal feature in the capacity for self awareness as experienced by human beings.

For my honours thesis I proposed a possible evolutionary trajectory for qualia that illustrated the importance of causal phenomenal qualia to the function of complex brains. I argued that qualia, via our senses, provide important information about our environment that are conducive to survival within it. To bolster the claim that qualia have causal properties, I used pain dissociation syndromes to illustrate that qualia we experience as one sensation are in fact made up of several modalities functioning in unison. This has implications for the view that some qualia are epiphenomenal and also the view that epiphenomenal qualia supervene upon brain function.

Possible avenues of further exploration include an assessment of Prinz’s latest work on attention and his defense of proxytype theory. I am certain that a study of Prinz, who recommends that: “We should seriously investigate the possibility that our cognitive resources are couched in codes that originated in the service of perception.” Will be vital to any further development of my thoughts on this matter. Also, recent studies of animal consciousness, such as those by Donald R Griffin, will aid the delineation of conscious and cognitive capacities, and hopefully point the way to a reduction to the capacity to pay attention.

Competing theories of perception will need to be given serious consideration as will the work of Chalmers, Michael Tye, Kim, Levine, Robinson, Strawson, Horgan and Tienson and others all of whom have something to say about the causal features of perceptual phenomena. Human medical examples that will aid the exploration include asognosias, attention deficits, and pathologies of perception particularly those resulting from stroke or other brain injury. I believe we learn most from brains that malfunction and new technologies such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) offer unprecedented insight into these pathologies.

My approach is both physicalist and empiricist. My scientific background in biochemistry makes me ideally placed to take advantage of any opportunities for cross-disciplinary investigation that may arise during my thesis.

*sigh* It's never, ever good enough.

The cure to sentimentality when it comes to killing rats.

Today was looking to be gloriously productive. Toddler napping, 11yo about to go to his friend's for a swim, me about to sit down and fill out my PhD application in the peace and quiet.

Only, when I reached up to the tippety-top of our one cupboard to retrieve the swimming gear that had been lying dormant since last season I was treated to an avalanche of something I thought were little black beads. In my face, in my hair, down my shirt. I vaguely wondered why I'd stored craft stuff up there instead of with the crafty stuff and took a closer look. Rat droppings. There must have been thousands. There are no words for how ill I felt. I'd literally been dumped on. 11yo thought it was hilarious of course. As usual Mummy is glad to be of comic service - not. *grump*

I've known that we've had vermin for a while. They sneak into the kitchen and eat left over dog food, provide snuffly chasey entertainment for the dog at night and we hear them chasing each other in the roof and walls. But since they were not actually interfering with anything of ours, e.g. food. I have left them alone. (My husband sees this as 100% my problem just in case any of you were wondering...) But now that they are nesting in the linen cupboard and have chosen the crib cover I made for 2yo for a nest, chewing up the cot sheet that both 11yo and 2yo used as babies to line said nest, they have got to go. Nice Mummy has just been replaced by a rattucidal killing machine. Only...

I have a problem with killing rats. Not mice, or cockroaches, or venomous spiders, just rats. When we had our mouse invasion during the drought and they were eating anything not sealed in metal or glass I was happy to kill the little fuckers. It was a them or us thing. They contaminated our food supply, catching and relocating was not an option, therefore they had to die. It was during my mouse killing spree I found that poison was not a viable solution for us as they crawl away to die where you can't find them, produce unsavoury smells, and breed flies. So, I used traps, and when the traps didn't kill them I drowned them.

The trouble with using this method for rats, is that traps don't always kill them first go and then you are responsible for hours of suffering until you come along and finish the job. And rats, in the degrees of sentience scale, are way more sentient than mice. Rats can count to five, they are social creatures who pass on knowledge inter-generationally. They have been known to demonstrate emotional attachment. Leaving a creature like that in a trap for hours might just be beyond me :-(

(Oh, and for the anti-choice trolls who lurk and occasionally post here: Yes, I do think a rat has a stronger claim to sentience than a a 24 week old human foetus. Please go find yourselves a fetid dingo's kidney and choke on it. I'm not in the mood for you.)

But then again, maybe I should just remember how it felt to be dumped on by several generations of ratties before I get too sentimental. That and the fact that I now have to wash the entire contents of my linen cupboard and line the thing with steel wool wherever they are getting in.

So much for PhD application! Grrrr! Ah! Now I've found the anger. Off to Traps-R-Us for a little retail therapy....

40 days for Life and the consequences of Abortion Free States

This blogger, who wrote an article on the success or otherwise of the 40 Days for Life campaign, forgets a few key points.

The first is that abortion clinics have not been closing their doors due to lack of business, they have been closing their doors due to government legislation created by anti-choice pollies "for the health and safety of women" making it impossible for them to operate legally. Abortion clinics in the US have closed because they could not afford to widen their doors by the extra 2 inches required by the new laws. Hmmm. Abortion providers are dripping with money from their ill gotten gains, yet cannot afford a few renovations to keep their goose laying its golden eggs? Give me a break. Anyway, closures had less to do with lack of demand from women and more to do with impossible government demands. 40 days for life is giving itself a tad more credit than is due.

I wonder what will happen to the maternal death rates if the anti-choice dream of having abortion free states is realised? Middle class whiteys will be fine, they'll pay some obgyn to do it in secret. Its the poor women with nowhere to go that I worry about.

I want this book.

I know, I'm a bad blogger. I'm having a rest now that the decriminalisation legislation has been passed. It left me feeling both elated and deflated if that's possible.

But this issue will not go away. The religious right component of the anti-choice movement believe that they only lose if they give up. So they will not give up. We will be hearing from them again.

What can we do in the meantime? Reducing the stigma associated with abortion would be a start. Apparently this book is an excellent start. I want. I really like the picture on the cover. The emphasis is on the women and the choice. We remain women, people, dignified autonomous agents, no matter what we decide to do with our wombs.