"This has nothing to do with access," he said. "This is having someone pay for it, pay for something that shouldn't even be in an insurance plan anyway because it is not, really an insurable item. This is something that is affordable, available. You don't need insurance for these types of relatively small expenditures. This is simply someone trying to impose their values on somebody else, with the arm of the government doing so. That should offend everybody, people of faith and no faith that the government could get on a roll that is that aggressive."
This is when a follow-up question would be nice. I hope someone asks Santorum what other "small" routine expenditures insurance companies shouldn't cover. Lipitor? Insulin? He's treating insurance like it's only there for catastrophes instead of to cover routine care.
With my co-pay, my pills are currently costing me $50 a month, which means $600 a year. An IUD can cost $1,000-$2,000 to put in. Depo-Provera is popular amongst uninsured low-income women because it costs $30-$75 a shot, which lasts three months, meaning about $300 a year. That may not seem like a lot of money to Santorum, but for people who don't make very much money or are unemployed, this is a pretty big cost. And it's one they can't skip, because getting pregnant costs even more. Unfortunately, that doesn't always work out for women. A significant portion of women skimp on contraception because they simply can't afford it. Many more use less effective methods because they're cheaper.
Of course, this is another opportunity to point out that Santorum doesn't understand birth control because he opposes it and has made noises in the direction of supporting bans on it, even as he admits that's unlikely to happen. Now if we could just get someone to ask Mitt Romney what he thinks about all this. The trap is ready and he's probably dumb enough to step in it.
The framing of this entire debate over the contraception mandate is so incredibly frustrating, because, as I explained at RH Reality Check, it profoundly misunderstands American Catholics, who are basically indistinguishable from the public at large both politically and culturally. Having grown up in a heavily Catholic part of the country and having gone to a Catholic university, I can assure you that the only way you can tell if someone's Catholic or not is that Catholics make even more fun of the stuffiness of the church. The polling data backs this up; Catholics and non-Catholics support requiring all employers to cover insurance in roughly equal numbers. In fact, Catholics are slightly more likely to do so than the general public, mainly because evangelical Christians are suppressing the overall support numbers; only 38% of them want the mandate. What we're seeing here is fundamentalist evangelicals and fundamentalist Catholics using ordinary Catholics as cover to push a misogynist agenda. I know, shocking, right?
But there's another aspect to this story I want to talk about. The polling data makes this clear that there's no conflict between Catholics and everyone else. But there are two groups that show huge divergences in the polling data on this: men and women.
However, women were significantly more likely to favor free contraception through employee healthcare plans at 62 percent versus 47 percent of men, while 54 percent of women agreed religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals should provide this coverage versus 43 percent of men.
The religious arguments have no real effect on men's support or non-support of it; they either think it's a benefit or they don't. And the majority don't. The spread between men and women on whether or not contraception should be a covered benefit is 15 points. The non-existent spread between Catholics and non is drawing a bunch of attention, but here is the real story. The only reason this is controversial is that a majority of men oppose it.
Blah, blah, disclaimer that I'm not saying that all men are sexist pigs. So quit your whining. 47% men support this, after all. So there you go. Nearly half of American men aren't repugnant sexists. That's genuine progress. Nor are all women angels on this. We have 38% of women not supporting this, putting them in the repugnant sexist category. That women can be repugnatn sexists shouldn't be news to readers. See the below post on Maggie Gallagher for evidence.
With the pandering to the easily butthurt and overly literal out of the way, it's time to make the real point. This isn't about religion but about gender. That really came out in the stories about the behind the scenes wrangling over this. The lines weren't drawn religiously, but by gender.
The White House has been skittish from the start about the new rule, which was announced last month only after internal debates at the White House that, to some extent, pitted women - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who is Catholic; Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president, and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the deputy chief of staff, on one side, arguing forcefully in favor of the rule, administration officials said.
On the other side, cautioning that the administration tread carefully and look for ways to minimize another major break with the church, they said, were several Catholic men who are close advisers to Mr. Obama: Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and William M. Daley, the chief of staff at the time. Also weighing in, administration officials said, was Denis R. McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, whose purview does not naturally extend to health issues, but who is a Catholic.
You'll notice that even though the Catholics were sprinkled on both sides of the divide, the framing that this is about religion isn't relinquished easily. But look past that and see what's really going on here. Female advisors to the President supported the mandate; many male ones didn't. Some men felt so strongly about depriving women of their contraception coverage that they weighed in even though this has nothing to do with their assigned job. All of these men should be ashamed of themselves. This is the height of mansplaining assholery, telling those with uteruses what they do and do not need, even though they've never had a uterus and probably have spent no more that a few minutes of their lives even wondering what it must be like. It's been 40 years since women started crashing government meetings regarding the potentlal liberalization of abortion laws and threw a huge fit because there wasn't a single woman invited to speak on the topic, much less one who had had an abortion. Why are we still fighting this fucking battle?
Part of the problem is that contraception is still framed in many ways in our culture as if it were a sex toy or aid, like dildos or porn. This is doubly true of the only contraception most men have direct experience with, i.e. condoms. And overall, I don't have a problem with that. I'm of the mindset that the sexier we make safe sex seem, the more likely it is that people will practice it. But it's also an important and necessary part of women's health care, at least if they're sexually active with someone who can get them pregnant. Which is still the vast majority of women at some point in their lives.
Breaking down the numbers: A big chunk of people, both men and women, who oppose this mandate are just anti-health care, anti-government nuts. That number probably lingers around 25% of the electorate, so about half the men who oppose this and 2/3 of the women. I think the rest of them have just bought into this framing of contraception as a toy, a sexual plaything, and therefore not properly the concern of insurance companies. You hear this kind of thinking a lot in right wing media in everything from "jokes" about how women could just keep their legs shut to Bill O'Reilly whining that if he has to pay for contraception he might as well pay for dinner first to roughly every comment ever from Dana Loesch about this. (Seriously, listening to her talk about sex is like listening to someone who has never seen "The Wire" try to bullshit their way through a conversation about it.) The way some people talk about contraception, you get the strong impression that they think you pick it up at Victoria's Secret.
I think this is where you get the 15 point spread between men and women. 15% more of men think of contraception as a sex toy. You can just hear the gears grinding in this 15%: "Why should I have to pay into insurance so she gets her contraception covered? It's not like I'm using it. Where's my fair share? When are they going to start paying for my porn? Pout. Whine. Boo hoo."
This came up a lot in my discussions with people on and offline about this; a lot of men oppose mandated contraception coverage because they don't think it's "fair" because they don't use it. Every man who says this needs to be asked if it's because he's gay or if it's because he's a lifelong celibate. Because if the answer is "neither", you are the biggest asshole on the planet, since you do, in fact, benefit from contraception. Like one woman on my Facebook said, "Yet a majority of men who did not favor contraception coverage still agreed that they liked putting their dicks in the women." Part of the problem is that our culture has made it socially acceptable---in fact, desireable, as a proof of one's manhood---to shun lady things and demand that women go out of their way to conceal the workings of vagina maintenance from you. Tampons are to be carefully concealed, and asking a man to buy them if he's at the grocery store is considered beyond the pale. I suspect that for a lot of people, this mentality extends to contraception. Birth control pills, doctor's visits, things like that; I suspect for a lot of couples, the woman simply does all these things and never shares the details with her man, for fear it's a turn-off. Many men may not even see women take their pills. There's a lot of pressure on women to present men with seamless, fantasy-level sexual experiences, to go through a lot of trouble to make sure that the nitty-gritty realities of biology never pop the fantasy bubble. I can easily see how contraception use, like leg-shaving and other forms of lady prep for sex, is hidden behind closed doors so he doesn't have to think about it. Thus, a 15 point spread in support for this mandate.
The good news is I suspect this is getting better. This "hide the contraception from your man whose sexual fantasies are delicate and need protection" mentality is less prevalent each generation. It's clear from all the clothes-rending from men in the punditocracy about this that it's older men who seem to think insurance coverage of contraception is like insurance opening up a credit line for women at Babeland. Just by dint of younger men being a lot more likely to have had it drilled into their head to use condoms, the idea that sex is pleasure and responsibility is shared by the genders more in younger generations. Of course, that makes all this wailing and moaning worse, because it's coming from a bunch of older men who are trying to roll back protections that the rest of us need and will need going forward. The whole situation is unbearably disgusting.
Komen has fallen to their knees and begged for mercy, and Planned Parenthood is doing a victory lap. So am I: I wrote a piece for The Guardian about what Planned Parenthood did right, and what it will take to replicate their success in the future. But not so fast!, say some on the left. If you read Komen's statement, it's clear that they're just retreating for now and will probably kill off the $700,000 in grants to Planned Parenthood in the near future, when they create a better excuse. This is true, and they should be called out for it. There's no reason to return to supporting Komen; they were already an iffy organization that crossed a line they can't uncross. It's clear their management is awash in anti-choice nuts who really do think there's something dirty about Planned Parenthood, and that this wasn't just a cave. No reason to support them.
But that doesn't mean those of us who are declaring victory and doing a victory lap are wrong. Even if the grants are eventually cut, we can safely say we won this one. Because this wasn't really about the money. Planned Parenthood is a billion dollar organization; cutting this extra service from some clinics, while horrible and regrettable, wasn't going to tank them. This was a proxy fight, and it was standing in for the larger fight over women's rights and women's health care. Shelby Knox had an awesome tweet explaining this:
This was a battle about values. Specifically, whether or not we value women as human beings or not. Anti-choicers are trying to marginalize comprehensive health care for women basically to put us in our place, to demote us from the status of people and return us to the status of objects. Saving breasts is all good and well---they are decorative, after all!---but health care for dirty sluts who go around having sex as if they have a right? I think, and said in my Alternet piece, that one reason this really hit home is anti-choice objectification of women had gotten to the point where they were pitting our own body parts against each other, creating a war between wholesome, all-American boobies and evil vaginas. A couple of astute writers put it really well.
In American politics, women’s bodies are not bodies, but parts. People like to talk about some parts more than others. Embryos and fetuses are the most charged subject in American political discourse. Saying the word “cervix” was the beginning of Rick Perry’s end. In politics, breasts are easier to talk about. I first understood this a few years ago, when I was offered, at an otherwise very ordinary restaurant, a cupcake frosted to look like a breast, with a nipple made of piped pink icing. It was called a “breast-cancer cupcake,” and proceeds went to the Race for the Cure.
I don't know if some people can understand how dehumanizing this is. Obviously, there are a fair number of both sexes who don't see it that way. But to me, this gets to the real gist of the issue, one I've only vaguely been able to grapple with by using hyperbolic phrases like "gestation vessel." But it's more than abortion or childbirth, although the desire to control that vital human function lies at the heart of this. It's about reducing women to their various body parts. "You get to control this bit, but we'll control that bit, and we like this part but don't want to talk about that part and ... are you complaining again?"
The obsession with fetuses and uteruses and birth control, the fetishization of breasts (in all ways, not just Komen's breast cancer branding) and the ongoing double standards in political and public spaces like this commonly forgets the human being who happens to own those body parts. I think that's what women commonly feel --- and one reason many of us are so adamant about this. It's not just about a discrete set of issues. It's about women being treated as fully human.
The debate over health care is basically about this ultimate fight over whether or not women are people. Conservatives see women as objects. Sex and reproduction the way the objects are used, and like with any other property, how and who uses it is the whole point. That's why abstinence-only classes compare sexually active women to lollipops that have been opened and licked, or toothbrushes that someone else has used. Taken to its extreme---and anti-choicers are nothing if not extreme---this view means that a woman who has sex before marriage is broken and useless, and providing her contraception and STD prevention/treatment is like putting a new paint job on a totaled car. But even for less extreme conservatives, they tend to see sexual health care as "condoning" sex, and just as you don't keep buying your kid a toy if he keeps breaking it, they think taking it away will cause women to stop "damaging" themselves by using those vaginas as we please instead of keeping them nicely wrapped for the true owner---a hypothetical future husband---to have. That married women also need these services is an inconvenient fact that tends to get brushed off. Some times, when you squeeze anti-choicers, they'll say that married women have no need for these services because as long as no one never has sex outside of marriage, STDs and unintended pregnancy just go away. Mostly, however, it's not a well-thought-out position, just a frantic panic attack at the idea that women---these objects---are making decisions for themselves like they're real people. More importantly, they're afraid that if this trend continues, it's going to occur to the public at large that women are people, and things will shift accordingly.
That's what this fight was about. By pressuring Komen, anti-choicers were basically trying to make "women are people" the pariah position, and trying to make anyone who holds the "women are people" position without apology seem like they were out of the mainstream. Having people scrambling to disassociate themselves from you is a really great way to discredit you and your ideas, and that's why so many people with what I consider poor morals really love a witchhunt. So the fight was over who basically owns the mainstream: anti-feminists or feminists, people who think of women as expensive sex toys/gestation machines or people who think of women as people? That's why everyone was so upset. And that's why the feminist win was so meaningful.
The reason that emotions were high around Komen is they position themselves as an organization that exists to save women's lives. Claiming to be pro-woman (or pro-black people or pro-poor people or even increasingly pro-gay people) while objectifying and dehumanizing women is a common tactic on the right. By making Komen squeal for mercy on this, we won a major moral victory. We said loud and clear that being pro-woman is about more than a bunch of empty homilies. You have to believe women are people, and like people, they have a right to have sex and have a right to full health care and a right to make their own damn choices. Anything less isn't pro-woman. It simply isn't.
We won a major public battle over values. We sent the message loud and clear that feminist values are mainstream values. We should be proud.
As I noted last night, I have a blog post up at Slate about Susan G. Komen---who purports to be a women's health charity---abandoning their alliance with Planned Parenthood, even though 17% of Planned Parenthood's services are cancer screening and prevention. They claim that it's because Planned Parenthood is under investigation, but it seems that excuse was ginned up because it was easy cover for caving into anti-choice nuts. The investigation has been launched as a nuisance investigation by an anti-choice congressman, and is not compelled by any sincere concern that Planned Parenthood is violating the law with its funds. It's completely obvious that they're caving into anti-choice activists, and specifically, as I noted at Slate, into the ridiculous idea that you can separate "good girl" health care from "bad girl" health care, the latter being everything from cervical cancer prevention and treatment to abortion. And yes, before we forget, it's all lumped together with the anti-choice movement now. That's how they made the HPV vaccine an issue in the Republican primary, because it's widely believed that preventing cervical cancer gives girls "license" to be sluts.
In other words, a supposedly anti-cancer charity just threw their lot in with people who believe that cancer shouldn't be prevented if it's linked to sexually transmitted diseases. Objectively pro-cancer, at least for women they deem slutty, i.e. about 95% of us.
Cynthia A. Pearson, executive director of the National Women’s Health Network, doesn’t buy the foundation’s explanation, either. “That’s specious,” she said. Instead, Pearson says, “Komen’s chicken. Komen’s caving to pressure.” This is what antiabortion activists do so well: “They will target the providers and the people who relate to the providers,” she says. That’s because “they can’t make Planned Parenthood stop providing abortions” and “they can’t find any evidence that Planned Parenthood is inappropriately using federal funds.”
That's when I realized that anti-choicers do this so well because the war on reproductive health care is basically a witchhunt, and the religious fundamentalists behind it are the modern day version of medieval paranoids of old who believed that women who didn't conform to their exacting standards were consorting with Satan. In fact, considering the span of time and cultural change, the fact that the argument hasn't changed at all---they really do believe pro-choice health care providers are consorting with Satan---is almost startling. It's like they lifted it directly from their medieval ancestors. Except, instead of condemning witches to the stake, they simply want to keep them from doing their jobs, and allowing the other witches, i.e. women whose sexual choices they disapprove of, suffer from various afflications ranging from forced childbirth to death from cervical cancer as a warning to others to stay away from the devil's playground of sexual pleasure. And like traditional witch hunters, they have lurid imaginations, and project all their strange fantasies onto their targets, which is why abortion providers or even just pro-choice clinics have been accused of everything from running sex trafficking rings to instigating genocide to putting fetuses in food. And that's on top of the lurid accusations flung at the kinds of women who might visit a Planned Parenthood, especially unmarried young women. Those women are accused of creating sex cults around Plan B, organizing orgies for the strange purpose of getting really colorful penises in the room, and of using abortion as "birth control", i.e. preferring the no-doubt unequalled pleasures of a good uterus scraping to boring old pill use. I've definitely seen some medieval-style flights of fancy aimed at me personally, including a blogger putitng up a picture of me in a red sweater to make insinuations about the kind of woman who wears red. No, I'm serious.
But the most salient feature of a witch hunt is that the witch hunters, in their paranoia, are always looking to expand the circle of "guilt". They imagine demons in every corner, and vast conspiracies promoting what they believe is evil that need to be rooted out. In medieval witch hunts, if someone who didn't like you remembered you buying a chicken from the accused witch, you better fall to your knees and start accusing the accused of putting a curse on your family, or you might be assumed to be guilty, too. That's basically what's going on here. Because of the witch hunt logic, it does seem to be that more and more of women's health care is being rolled up under the word "abortion", which is why anti-choicers blithely claims that's all Planned Parenthood does. You can point out repeatedly that 97% of its services are not abortion, but in their mind, that's like saying that the accused witch spent some of her time not doing witchcraft. In their minds, while she slept she was consorting with Satan, and time spent with her pet cat now is her consorting with a familiar. I can't tell you how many times I've been called a "baby killer". Even if you are stupid enough to believe that abortion is killing babies, that accusation doesn't make sense; I've never had nor performed an abortion. But that's the point. The word "abortion" for anti-choicers long ago ceased to mean "terminating a pregnancy". Now it's just a catch-all scare term to be flung around whenever you want to whip people into a frenzy of hatred over women's liberation, especially women's sexual liberation.
Anyone who thinks breast cancer can be neatly cordoned off from this growing circle of hate for all things women's health care is fooling themselves. That's not how witch hunts work. The fear here is not about fetuses or babies per se, but a deep-set fear of female sexuality. Already anti-choicers have scooped breast cancer under the umbrella "abortion", claiming that abortion causes breast cancer. (It doesn't.) Komen would rather side with people who see breast cancer as god's judgment on you for having an abortion rather than side with people support comprehensive health care for women. That tells you all you need to know about their organization. I'm all for picking up your sneakers and taking up running as a hobby, but recommend now you do it for you, and not for the ever-elusive cure for cancer.
At XX Factor yesterday, I joked that Gingrich and other anti-choice nuts are going to rethink their opposition to stem cell research in record time if, as hoped, a cure for a certain form of erectile dysfunction is created. Really, it was only half a joke. The ugly truth of the matter is right wingers' utterly different approach to women's reproductive health care and men's access to ED drugs demonstrates that contrary to their claims of simply acting on devotion to Jesus, these folks are using religion as a cover for a deep-set misogyny. From the Catholic Church to most info you can find on religious websites to the anti-choice members of Congress, when asked about Viagra, they are supportive. Republicans like John McCain have routinely voted against bills that would require insurance companies that cover Viagra to cover contraception. The reason for this is simple: plain misogyny. Anti-choicers tend to see contraception as a "party drug" that allows dirty sluts to go slut it up. But they see Viagra as allowing men their god-given erections. That this is a hypocrisy is glossed over with an argument I've seen all over religious websites, but is best voiced by Bill O'Reilly:
The argument is that erectile dysfunction is a condition that needs to be cured, but since pregnancy is "natural" (actually, so is erectile dysfunction, as it's often just part of aging), preventing it is dirty slutdom. It's the thinnest of excuses for naked misogyny, especially if you consider that the worst that will happen physically to a man who doesn't get an erection is that he doesn't get an erection, but a pregnant woman is going to suffer weight gain and severe pain no matter what, and some of the more serious side effects of pregnancy are diabetes, stroke, and even death.
Since anti-choicers by and large present themselves as devout Christians who are only doing god's will, however, that makes this misogynist bullshit even worse. Right now, the Catholic bishops are screeching because the HHS is going to require them to cover birth control prescriptions for organizations they control that hire from and serve the general public. What's nakedly sexist about this is the Biblical justifications for banning abortion and contraception are extremely thin, but the Biblical justification for denying access to Viagra is really sound. Anti-choicers have cast around wildly in the Bible looking for verses that mention abortion or contraception---which have been around in one form or another since roughly forever---and haven't found much. A little poetic language about the womb doesn't mean banning abortion, nor does a strange story about a man defying god's direct orders to impregnate his dead brother's wife say much about contraception so much as the importance of taking direct god-orders seriously.
But Paul's writings in the New Testament are pretty clear on this: he thinks while married sex is better than fornication, no sex at all is the best of all possible worlds. He reluctantly allows that married people, having already gone ahead and been dirty sex-havers, should continue to do that, but it's definitely less than ideal. With this worldview in mind, the Christian seems obligated not to see erectile dysfunction as a tragedy, but as god sending a hint to you that your days of being distracted from your worship by sexual concerns are being called to an end. Paul seems very clear on the point that people have sex for fun and not really for procreation, so the use of birth control strikes me as no more sinful by this measure than simply marrying in the first place. But trying to reverse god-given celibacy with modern medicine seems like directly defying god's obvious will when he struck you with ED. That is, if you read the Bible with an intention to actually doing what it says. Most Christians---even the good ones---come to the Bible with a predetermined belief in what's right and look for rationalizations in the verses. It's clear with anti-choicers that they just don't like women and seek verses that reinforce that, ignoring the fact that Paul is probably just as concerned with how filthy male sexuality is as female.
The good news is I'm not Christian, so I'm free to see all this hostility to sexuality as perverse, and believe instead that sex is up there with chocolate and warm days in reasons to be thankful to be alive, and that medical science should make it their business to make the enjoyment of life safer and less stressful. Thus, Viagra and birth control for all!
On that note, enjoy this story of a legislator in Virginia who has introduced a bill requiring that men who want Viagra undergo a rectal exam in order to do so. For their own health, you know. Just like those mandatory vaginal probes fro women seeking abortion.
Yesterday was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and while it's good news that you can still get an abortion in all 50 states in this country (sort of), the fact of the matter is that we've lost a lot of ground. Legally, for one thing, but psychologically as well. I examine the problem at RH Reality Check, talking about how people are growing more accustomed to the idea that female sexuality is male property. Depressing stuff, but it's important to realize that this battle is not and has never been just about abortion. It's about women's rights and women's roles, and whether we should be full citizens or be managed and controlled by fathers, husbands, ministers, etc. Which is why I loved the picture that the New York Times chose to illustrate this story about the growing acceptance of anti-contraception views amongst Protestants.
In a single image, we get what anti-choicers believe men have lost, and what they believe stripping reproductive rights will return to them: Woman as pet dog.
We don't even get the dignity that cats get, in their worldview. No wonder they don't care if Gingrich told his second wife she should just put up with the third one. Your dog doesn't get a vote when you get a new dog.
Some feminists tend to dismiss everything anti-choicers say out of hand, but what I think is interesting is that they're often quite right on the facts of what reproductive rights mean for women, but they're just wrong when it comes to their beliefs. For instance, this passage in the Times piece:
As Dr. Paris suggests, much of the new birth-control skepticism comes from the suspicion that contraception is allied with more nefarious practices. In the 1970s, abortion became a central issue for evangelicals; now some worry that the kind of woman who controls her fertility is the kind who would abort an unwanted fetus. Antifeminist Christians worry that secular culture both encourages women to take the pill and leads them into the work force.
There's something a little strange about the distancing language the writer, Mark Oppenheimer, uses here. I would say that it's encroaching on the status of "indisputable fact" that contraception makes it easier for women to enter the work force. I would also argue that they're not wrong to believe that that exceedingly rare women who "doesn't believe" in contraception is probably not going to have an abortion when she gets pregnant. The problem is that they extrapolate incorrectly from there, assuming that taking away women's contraception will somehow magically make them feel more passive and accepting of the idea of constant, forced childbirth. The data shows the opposite, that the more hostility there is to reproductive rights, the more abortions there are, because more women are facing unwanted pregnancies. Simply enshrining one set of values into law doesn't magically make the population agree. Anti-feminists know this very well, since they adamantly resist laws that reflect women's equality. The problem here is their woman-as-dog model doesn't allow for understanding that women have minds of their own, and so they tend to think that simply demanding it will get instant, dog-like compliance. You see this a lot with antis who wave off your questions about the inevitable black market that arises when abortion is illegal; they have convinced themselves women only seek abortion because women are dumbly following orders, and they'll change when they're given a different set of instructions.
What Oppenheimer doesn't talk about. but that picture illustrates so well, is what anti-feminists really feel is lost with what they call "contraceptive culture": men's god-given right to have a woman---perhaps several (though in a row, mostly)---who follow them around, worshipping their every move, submitting completely and joyfully. I suspect this fantasy never was a reality, but I suspect a lot of Christian fundamentalists have convinced themselves that giving women the power to say "no" to men is what made us so maddeningly unwilling to play the supplicant. No to sexual overtures, no to marriage, no to demands that we wait on you, and most importantly, no to letting your magical seed plant itself in our bodies whenever it wants. That's why I believe that modern conservative Christians don't worship Jesus so much as Sperm Magic. The last few paragraphs of this piece makes that clear:
It then occurred to me that a few decades ago, when evangelicals and Catholics were further apart on birth control, they were also pretty far apart on questions of salvation — evangelicals were quite clear that Catholics were going to hell.
So I asked Mr. Surratt if Mr. Santorum would have any trouble getting into heaven. His answer confirmed that for today’s conservative Christians, the differences between Protestant and Catholic have gotten narrow indeed.
“That’s a God deal,” the pastor told me. “That’s his deal to judge. I’m glad I don’t have his job.”
When the differences between fundamentalist Protestants and Catholics were about things like the worship of saints and transubstantiation, well, there were real differences there. Now they're coming together to worship their true god---Sperm Magic---in basically the same way---fighting against women's rights---and so there aren't any theological differences to fight over. The chumminess that follows is predictable enough.
This story is definitely flying around feminist circles. Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, two investigative reporters for the Boston Globe, have published an excerpt from their new book about Mitt Romney in Vanity Fair. In it, they tell the story of a woman who was in Romney's church and when she was pregnant with her second child---while single---Romney, acting as a bishop, paid her a visit. He then pressured her to give up her baby for adoption, which she most adamantly didn't want to do.
Hayes was deeply insulted. She told him she would never surrender her child. Sure, her life wasn't exactly the picture of Rockwellian harmony, but she felt she was on a path to stability. In that moment, she also felt intimidated. Here was Romney, who held great power as her church leader and was the head of a wealthy, prominent Belmont family, sitting in her gritty apartment making grave demands. "And then he says, 'Well, this is what the church wants you to do, and if you don't, then you could be excommunicated for failing to follow the leadership of the church,'" Hayes recalled. It was a serious threat. At that point Hayes still valued her place within the Mormon Church. "This is not playing around," she said. "This is not like 'You don't get to take Communion.' This is like 'You will not be saved. You will never see the face of God.'" Romney would later deny that he had threatened Hayes with excommunication, but Hayes said his message was crystal clear: "Give up your son or give up your God."
It's a believable story, even though the church denies that they prescribe excommunication for the "sin" of single motherhood. After all, it sounds like he didn't phrase it to her that way, more more as a matter of disobedience. More to the point, I can see Romney, who is an imperious fuckhead, getting rapidly frustrated that this woman didn't immediately give in to his demands, so he could wrap up his church duties and return to his beloved business of cannibalizing other businesses and putting people out of work. Or whatever it was he had to do that day. Either way, I don't imagine he thought much of some woman low on the totem pole talking back to him instead of just doing what she was told. In frustration, bringing up the possibility of excommunication to get his way? Totally plausible.
(It's worth noting at this point that Jezebel is right that his behavior, if true, is beyond the pale. But from what I understand, Mormons don't believe in hell, per se, so perhaps this threat isn't quite as dire as when it's made by Catholics using the threat of god's punishment to control women's reproductive choices. It's like only 99.9% evil instead of 100% evil. But any Mormons or former Mormons are free to 'splain in comments.)
What's interesting to me is that the Romney campaign is denying the story. This is interesting to me, because it suggests that even out-of-touch Mitt Romney realizes that pressuring a woman to put a baby up for adoption has become politically toxic. This is an interesting and positive development, if that is in fact his concern.
For as long as I remember, the anti-choice movement has heralded adoption as the "perfect" alternative to abortion, usually accompanies with platitudes like, "Abortion is never the answer." They implied that growing a baby for 9 months, giving birth, and then simply giving the baby to a "deserving" couple and walking away like it never happened was really not much harder than getting an abortion, and anyone who disputed that was just being selfish. The argument demonstrates the fundamental refusal of anti-choicers to see women---all women, even sexually active ones (aka, most women)---as full human beings. The value of women's labor, and the suffering that women reported was a common side effect of giving a baby away? Waved off, because they quite literally don't see it as mattering. Women are basically breeding animals in their view, and just like you don't ask your breeding dog if she wants pups when it's time to bring the stud around, you certainly do't worry if the women you see as stupid sluts get their hearts broken producing babies for "deserving" couples. You even take umbrage at the idea that women should be compensated for their labor with money.*
For whatever reason, however, the coldness of this point of view has suddenly become apparent, and anti-choicers are scrambling to seem a little less heartless. I mean, they aren't becoming less heartless---their view is still that women who have sex outside of marriage deserve no better than to be forced to bear children and then to have those children taken away from them---but they are beginning to realize that they should probably at least pretend to support other options besides shotgun marriages and giving the baby up for adoption, if they want to present the false image of caring about women. That's why they occasionally make a big fuss over a single mother like Bristol Palin (while of course mindlessly condemning most single mothers who aren't white, wealthy, and Christian-identified). It's about creating the image that they will take single motherhood as a lesser of two evils, because they know their absolutist view of "get married or give it away" isn't flying with the public as much anymore. This feigned support for women who choose single motherhood over abortion is all smoke and mirrors, of course, since the Christian right by and large still doesn't support any social programs that would make raising a child by yourself easier, but that they feel the need to pretend to support single mothers is an interesting development.
Romney's denial suggests that he gets that. The aggressive attacks on single mothers makes it incredibly clear that the opposition to abortion is not about "life", but about patriarchal power and controlling women's reproductive capacities.That anti-choicers have to tone down the sexist aggression, at least for P.R. reasons, is a victory for feminists. While it's frustrating that they pretend to uphold our belief that women are valuable while pushing legislation to relegate women to second class status, it's interesting that our values are so ascendent that they have no other choice. Which, of course, is all the more reason to keep these older stories of women being coerced and threatened into giving babies up for adoption in the public eye. Antis shouldn't be allowed to hide their point of view on this so very easily.
*Yes, yes, I get that there are women who give babies up and walk away and it's not a big deal for them. But that's surprisingly rare. The evidence for this contention is that after maternity homes, which were basically places where pregnant women and girls were made to believe they had no choice but to give up their babies, were shut down, the number of healthy, adoptable babies on the market plummeted. Meanwhile, there was a concurrent rise in the rate of single motherhood, which indicates that it's not legal abortion that really did the adoption market in, but women keeping their babies. In fact, the difficulties white Christian couples have in finding white, healthy babies to adopt is one of the reasons the anti-choice movement is so extreme: They want to restore the supply side, by force, if necessary. Which it appears to be.
PZ Myers has a really cool blog post up now about a new theory of menstruation put out in a paper by Emera, Romero, and Wagner, who appear to be actual biologists, instead of those psych profs and anthropology profs who get called "evolutionary biologists" every time they wank off in public with unevidenced theories about how we evolved to have 50s-era gender roles. It's one of those things I want to flag for feminists particularly, because I think really understanding the scientific discourse around human female biology can go a long way to chilling some of the uglier debates that go on about "nature" and things like reproduction, menstruation, etc. Basically, the problem for biologists regarding human menstruation is that it's surprisingly uncommon for mammals to have monthly menstruation. Not all mammals---as PZ says, other primates, bats, and elephant shrews menstruate---but by and large, most mammals only build up a uterine lining after an embryo implants and begins the pregnancy cycle. On paper, this seems like the smarter move, survival-wise. It uses fewer resources and avoid the health problems that can accompany menstruation if you're not lucky enough to live in a hygienic environment. (Or, as PZ puts it, "filling a delicate orifice with dying tissue seems like a bad idea.") I'll add that it's particularly confusing for it to happen in humans, who are social animals who tend to be private about our body functions. How much so changes across cultures, sure, but overall, we're private animals. Finding ways to conceal menstruation in order to participate in public life has been a hassle for women throughout history, and unfortunately for many, the answer today is still "avoid leaving the house until it's over". So, the question is why: why would we evolve a unique-ish trait that is a physical and social burden to an extent that it also impacts our ability to survive and optimally reproduce? There's a lot of theories, but this new one is pretty interesting:
The answer that Emera suggests is entirely evolutionary, and involves maternal-fetal conflict. The mother and fetus have an adversarial relationship: mom’s best interest is to survive pregnancy to bear children again, and so her body tries to conserve resources for the long haul. The fetus, on the other hand, benefits from wresting as much from mom as it can, sometimes to the mother’s detriment. The fetus, for instance, manipulates the mother’s hormones to weaken the insulin response, so less sugar is taken up by mom’s cells, making more available for the fetus.
Within the mammals, there is variation in how deeply the fetus sinks its placental teeth into the uterus. Some species are epithelochorial; the connection is entirely superficial. Others are endotheliochorial, in which the placenta pierces the uterine epithelium. And others, the most invasive, are hemochorial, and actually breach maternal blood vessels. Humans are hemochorial. All of the mammalian species that menstruate are also hemochorial.
That’s a hint. Menstruation is a consequence of self-defense. Females build up that thickened uterine lining to protect and insulate themselves from the greedy embryo and its selfish placenta. In species with especially invasive embryos, it’s too late to wait for the moment of implantation — instead, they build up the wall pre-emptively, before and in case of fertilization. Then, if fertilization doesn’t occur, the universal process of responding to declining progesterone levels by sloughing off the lining occurs.
Bonus! Another process that goes on is that the lining of the uterus is also a sensor for fetal quality, detecting chromosomal abnormalities and allowing them to be spontaneously aborted early. There is some evidence for this: women vary in their degree of decidualization, and women with reduced decidualization have been found to become pregnant more often, but also exhibit pregnancy failure more often. So having a prepared uterus not only helps to fend off overly-aggressive fetuses, it allows mom a greater ability to be selective in which fetuses she carries to term.
I don't know that I can make it even more clear that PZ, who is a gifted science educator. What I want to talk about is how critical theories like this, and understanding the science of human reproduction, are to really understanding why our social/political debates over female reproductive systems are completely bonkers. That's because those debates are often built on the debate over what's "natural". Obviously, the best answer to anyone who says that women can't or shouldn't do X (have an abortion, use contraception, use the pill for suppressing a period) because of nature should be dismissed out of hand as using the naturalistic fallacy. But when it comes to ladies and our leaky bodies (though, of course, men's are just as leaky---leaky is the sort of natural state of bodies), a lot of people insist stridently that the naturalistic fallacy should be put on hold. Here's the thing that understanding the science should really help you realize, however: Nature doesn't have a single, unchangeable "intent" for women and our bodies, nor are women's wills automatically in conflict with nature. I bracketed out some contentious areas for some thoughts on what PZ explains means for various debates on women's reproductive capacities and what's "natural".
1) Abortion. This one is a no-brainer. Anti-choicers claim abortion is unnatural, but as PZ's writing explains, it's actually perfectly natural. Women's bodies go through a lot of unconscious processes to determine if now is a good time to have a baby. Biologically speaking, the idealized reproductive strategy for a woman is to have babies when she's in the best possible state to raise them. The unconscious body does some of this work, but what makes human beings awesome is that we have these large brains that can supplement our natural processes and make them more efficient. "I'm not ready to have a baby" is an equally valid message coming from the brain as from inside the uterus. Unless, of course, you believe that women are inherently inferior creatures who should be constrained from self-care and family care in order to satisfy the desires of mostly strangers who have psychological issues around sex. To which I say, you have an entirely different argument to prove then.
2) Contraception. Anti-choicers like to portray menstruation as the product of some inherent female tendency to nurture at all costs. In fact, PZ caught David Barton before making facetious arguments about how all animals but humans will sacrifice the health and lives of mothers for the young, which is not only false but obviously false. (Death of mothers tends to equal death of young from lack of care.) The image that anti-choicers paint of the monthly uterine build-up is that it's like a baby nest that you're making, and efforts to keep "babies" from making their homes there are somehow unnatural. The reality is far more complex. It's not that uterine lining isn't about nurture, but it's about so much more. It seems it's also likely about protecting a woman's body from the parasitic (biologists' word, not mine!) qualities of the embryo and fetus. It's also about sorting the good from the bad. But most importantly, it's a system that's got wastefulness built into it. That women menstruate so much means that saying no to babies a lot more than saying yes is a built-in part of the system. Contraception, alongside abortion, is simply a logical extension of the pre-existing system.
3) Contraception, part two. Unfortunately, many feminists run with the naturalistic fallacy to bash hormonal contraception, saying that you shouldn't take it because it's not "natural". Again, neither are cars or clothes or condoms, for that matter, but for some reason, this argument has its hooks in many. A lot of people find it weird to stop the process of ovulating and then having a real period (as opposed to the fake one the pill creates, or suppressing your period altogether with continuous pill use) every month, which they assume must have some value in and of itself. But if you actually look at the science, the notion that we "should" be having a monthly cycle even while not trying to conceive doesn't really compute. Whether or not this particular theory is the truth, the reality is that constant ovulation and menstruation serves no purpose outside of being the best that evolution could come up with to reproduce. Humans have come up with better ways of handling these functions, so why not use them? An honest look at evolution shows that nature doesn't always know best, and some times it creates biological processes that look like what you rigged up as a home repair to avoid having the money to do it right. If evolution could have created a situation where women simply will their uterine lining to start building as they get closer to wanting to conceive, and then and only then ovulated, that would be in women's best biological interests. That technology goes ahead and does that for us is a blessing, it really is.
Now, if you can't take the pill or don't want to, that's great. Don't. Please. I'm serious. This is not a guilt trip. The point is that there's no reason to make broad arguments about how it's "unnatural" or that there's some great purpose to menstruation that we can't know and so shouldn't suppress it to be safe.*
So, in sum: PZ's post is about one of the many theories to explain why humans menstruate. It may or may not be the best theory, but what it shares in common with all other theories is a baseline understanding that the ovulation-menstruation cycle is, at best, inefficient and often dangerous. It's not necessarily bad, but it's certainly not good. And definitely not good enough to overrule women's express desires to abort any one pregnancy, prevent ovulation, or prevent menstruation.
*The other argument that I hear from feminists on why menstrual suppression is bad is that men benefit from women not bleeding on their dicks when they have sex. Okay, but I figure women also benefit. It's weird to cast men and women's interests as always opposed, when mostly they're in line. You know who really doesn't benefit from bleeding all over the place during sex? Sheets. If you have something against sheets, I suppose you can start from there, but be assured that most people are simply not going to get on the anti-sheets train. Especially women, who do most of the washing of sheets.
President Obama invoked the specter of 10- and 11-year-olds buying Plan B in order to justify keeping it out of the hands of the 15- and 16-year-olds currently banned from getting it without a prescription, and out of the hands of everyone 17 and older who has a broken condom but doesn't have an open pharmacy nearby. This, even though fewer than 1% of 11-year-olds are sexually active, and since the drug is taken after you have sperm inside you, withholding it can only be a punishment and not a preventive. Even if you believe that minor girls should be punished for sex, mandatory pregnancy strikes me as way too harsh. Anyway, one of the supposed justifications for this sort of thing is that it's not an undue burden on those with a legal right (those ages 17 and older---by the way, men can buy it, too), and that this is strictly about minors. Well, a recent study published in JAMA demonstrates that all this effort to keep this drug out of the hands of junior high school girls who aren't using it anyway (and who can use it safely, and certainly are better off not-pregnant than pregnant) is keeping it out of the hands of women who have a legal right to access this drug over-the-counter:
Female research assistants posing as 17-year-olds called every commercial pharmacy in Nashville, Tennessee; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Cleveland, Ohio; Austin, Texas; and Portland, Oregon. They found that 23.7 percent of pharmacies in low-income neighborhoods claimed that women could not obtain the morning-after pill under any circumstances regardless of age. This was only true of 14.6 percent of pharmacies in affluent neighborhoods.
Of the low-income pharmacies where the drug was not “hidden,” half gave the wrong age requirements for purchasing it, almost always indicating that callers would have to be older than legally necessary. In more affluent neighborhoods, pharmacies gave the correct age requirements 62.8 percent of the time.
To recap: One in five pharmacies overall basically said you couldn't get the drug from them over-the-counter, even if you were 17 or older. But even the ones who had it didn't necessarily realize that you could sell it to 17-year-olds. I can see people shrugging and saying, "What's the big deal? If a 16-year-old can't get it, then is it a big difference if a 17-year-old can't?" Actually, the answer to that question is yes, it is a big deal. Throughout adolescence, the percentage of teenagers that are sexually active rises rapidly each year of age, meaning you have a lot more 17-year-olds having sex than 16-year-olds. It's a huge gap. Only 13% of 15-year-olds are sexually active, but nearly half of 17-year-olds are. In fact, the average age for having first sexual intercourse in this country is 17, so by not respecting the rights of 17-year-olds, an enormous population of sexually active women are being cheated of their rights. Condoms are the favorite contraception of adolescents, and so Plan B is doubly necessary, because it's basically tailor-made as a back-up method to condoms. Errors in condom use are especially common with people who are just starting out, for the same reason that you make more mistakes the first few times you do anything. Access to EC couldn't be more critical for this group.
Additionally, the fact that one in five pharmacies simply refused to sell the drug means all women of all ages are seeing their access seriously constrained. Not everyone lives in an area where they have easy access to three or four pharmacies. I suspect that the widespread myth that EC is the same thing as abortion doesn't help things, either. I'd bet some of these drugstores had the drug, but either because the person who answered the phone was anti-choice or because they didn't understand that it's available over-the-counter with an ID, they weren't able to sell it. Simply putting Plan B behind the counter gives it an aura of danger that raises the chances of these things happening.
Ironically, these kinds of restrictions reward women for stockpiling this drug, which is what the opponents of it don't want, because that insinuates that you're---gasp!---planning to have sex. Just sayin'.
The good news is that the fight isn't over. The Center for Reproductive Rights is reopening their lawsuit against the feds for withholding emergency contraception access for political reasons, and now they're adding Kathleen Sebelius to the lawsuit, with the judge's blessing. What I ask of you guys out there as this goes forward is simple: please, please fight the misinformation about this drug. The main obstacle to getting it on pharmacy shelves is politicians correctly perceiving that the public thinks emergency contraception is an "abortion", which implies danger (even though actual abortion is relatively safe, especially compared to childbirth) and provokes hand-wringing. Talk to the people you know, and express these basic concepts:
2) Emergency contraception is safer and easier to use than Tylenol, which is sold over-the-counter without age restrictions. It is a single dose pill that costs $35-$50, making it impossible to "overdose", if that's a concern. If they bring up the "it's a higher dose version of the birth control pill, scary!" argument, repeat, it's a single dose pill. What makes the birth control pill dangerous enough for a prescription is that you use it every day and it changes your body. EC simply can't do that.
3) There has been no---I repeat no---research that indicates that the availability of emergency contraception encourages sexual activity.
Rinse, and repeat. 100% of arguments against this pill being sold over-the-counter without age restrictions can be refuted with these talking points. If the conversation about this doesn't change, the policies guiding it probably won't, sadly.
I have a post up at XX Factor laying out why this is just the stupidest decision possible from Sebelius, both in terms of the adolescents who are being kept from preventing pregnancy and in terms of adults who will continue to be forced to beg for emergency contraception from pharmacists. From every medical, humanitarian, and scientific viewpoint, Sebelius's unprecedented decision to overrule the FDA on this is the wrong decision. I think she knows that. I think Obama knows that, if he had a hand in this. They are not stupid people, and so they can't not know that.
So why on earth did this happen? Well, it has to be political, doesn't it? I think so, yes. The Obama administration has already caught a lot of flack for classifying contraception as "prevention", and making it free without a co-pay, and so they threw teenage girls and adult women seeking EC out as a sacrificial lamb to "pay" for that. That seems obvious enough to me and apparently to the entire world. But a lot of people seem to think that's a really stupid decision, assuming that the opposition to OTC Plan B is the same as the opposition to covering contraception fully, that is, a bunch of misogynist wingnuts that will never vote for Obama anyway, and no one else. And really, that was my first inclination, too. But then I started to check out some non-wingnut reactions, and now I'm not so sure anymore. Turns out a lot of people---especially men---who think of themselves as "reasonable" or moderate or even liberal, quickly glommed on to the argument that this ruling was addressing a parent's right to know. They falsely assumed that putting Plan B out of reach of teenagers will force teenagers to talk to their parents, and didn't consider that for many to most teenagers who were already not talking to parents, it will actually cause them to shut up about it and hope that they just don't get pregnant.
From a teenager's perspective, skipping Plan B and praying you don't get pregnant is the best choice. Here are the possibilities from the perspective of a teenager who is already not communicating about sex with her parents:
Option #1: Tell my parents and get Plan B.* Doing this means a 100% chance of your parents finding out that you're fucking. That is what is wished to be avoided. The teenager already not communicating with her parents knows that the consequences will be anything from a lecture that won't change her mind about fucking to, worst case scenario, a beating that won't change her mind about fucking. There is no value in this for the teenager. The parent will be upset, and she will be resolved in her decision to fuck. Remember being a teenager? Remember how much your parents disapproval of you growing up and trying new adult behaviors had no impact on your choices? Yeah, that hasn't changed.
Option #2: Don't tell my parents and take my chances with getting pregnant. This reduces the odds of eventually coming clean to your folks to about 1 in 4, maybe even lower. If you do get pregnant, then you're just in the same boat you were with Option #1, so nothing is lost. But if you don't get pregnant, you never have to deal with it. If you do get pregnant and want an abortion, parents who are going to block that would have blocked Plan B, too, so again, you are in the same position as if you hadn't waited.
Nothing to lose, and everything to gain, logically speaking, for a teenager who avoids asking for Plan B from a parent. So the "parent excuse" is illogical. Unfortuantely, a lot of people have completely forgotten about what it's like to be a teenager and are so self-absorbed, they can't get past thinking about how they don't want their own daughter to make a decision without asking for permission. And unfortunately, a lot of people in that position are likely Obama voters, so I can see how the administration decided not to cross them. It's still immoral and wrong to make such a political calculation, but in terms of a political calculatioon, it's not wrong. Sadly, many liberals and quite a few moderates believe teenage sexuality is immoral, even though they themselves were sexually active as teenagers.
So this is who I blame: all of us. Anti-choicers are going to be anti-choicers. They don't want anyone fucking, and they want those who do to pay for it dearly with the loss of their health, their freedom, and even their lives. We can't change that. What we can change is our reaction to it. And when it comes to teenage sexuality, liberals have unfortunately been unable to offer a strong defense of teenagers' rights and teenagers' desires, allowing anti-choice rhetoric to gain more of a hold than it should have.
The problem comes back to the phrase, "They're going to do it whether we like it or not."
This is a favorite phrase of liberals defending everything from sex education to condom access for teenagers. It buys into the assumption that teenage sexuality is automatically illicit, and that the ideal would be retaining your virgnity until some non-disclosed point in the future. It treats teenagers having sex with each other as an unavoidable tragedy, like a hurricane. We argue that sex education is a matter of harm reduction, instead of viewing it as a baseline for one of the best parts of life. It's in direct opposition to how we teach driving. We frame driving as an exciting new development that demonstrates that a teenager is getting closer to adulthood. Yes, it's about responsibility, but everyone involved is happy because we know that it's really cool getting to the point where you can start going where you what when you want, and the fun and freedom that affords you. On the contrary, most adults imagine the discovery that an adolescent is sexually active as a tragic event for the family that requires recriminations and possibly even punishment. In this environment, the idea that the government policy should be about forcing this discovery instead of protecting adolescent health makes all too much sense.
Some liberals offer support for this more progressive view of teenage sexuality, pointing out that we all were doing it as teenagers, and it turned out pretty well on the whole. And would have been even better if there hadn't been so much shame and fear. But mostly liberals buy the idea that teenage sexuality should be treated like a form of acting out and misbehaving, and that when you turn 18 or 21 or 25, you should be able to flip a switch that makes it about pleasure and bonding. Until liberals as a group are willing to be outspoken in our support of teenagers' right to grow into their sexuality at their own pace---and that we did so ourselves, and it was fine---we can expect Democrats to take a punitive approach to teenage sexuality instead of a sex-positive, health-centric view.
*Even for the minority of kids who take this road, it's still less ideal than letting them buy Plan B OTC, because going to a parent, going to a doctor, and going to the pharmacy takes up a lot of precious time. You want to take Plan B with speed, because it prevents ovulation and if you ovulate before you take it, you're shit out of luck. Speed is of essence.
Going into the polls yesterday, there was strong reason to worry that Misssippi voters would vote to amend their constitution to declare fertilized eggs to be "persons". After all, a slight majority of voters favored the ballot initiative going in. And the people who strongly favorited it, basically white Republicans, are the ones who are sadly more likely to vote, especially in an off-year election. Still, seeing that 11% of voters were undecided gave me reason to hope. On a lot of issues, undecideds can break even, but on reproductive rights, they tend to break pro-choice. By a lot.
It's not something I've ever seen an extensive study on, but the folk wisdom of pro-choice circles is "pro-life in the streets, pro-choice in the dark", as it were. In other words, there's an intense amount of pressure to identify as "pro-life" in conservative communities, even if you secretly disagree. To be vocally pro-choice is to be marked as a pervert and a feminist, and so it's avoided, to the point where some polling data suggests that half of people who identify as "pro-life" are actually pro-choice, at least to some extent. Certainly enough that they're not willing to see women thrown in jail for having miscarriages. Because of this intense social pressure, I suspect many people who side with pro-choicers on this law or that law won't say so to a pollster over the phone. Not only are you admitting out loud something that can get you marked as a "pervert" in your community, you may be doing so in front of friends, colleagues, or family members who overhear your conversation with the pollster. No wonder so many people say they're "undecided". But when you actually have your ballot in hand and you know that no one will ever find out how you voted, a solid percentage of voters go with common sense (and with sex!) instead of prevailing community pressures. Frankly, the way the poll numbers turned out, it appears many people who said they would vote yes on 26 instead voted no.
I'm not just talking out of my ass on this, either. This happened before in South Dakota, when they tried to ban abortion both in 2006 and 2008. In 2008, the polling numbers going into election day weren't looking good for pro-choicers: 44-44 with 12% undecided. Again, you have the same problem of better turnout for more anti-choice demographic groups, as well. But when the ballots were finally counted, the abortion ban saw a surprisingly heavy defeat, 55-45. Seems like a combination of all the undecideds breaking pro-choice and more than a few people lying abou their views to pollsters.
This trend reflects the larger situation with sex in the red states. In Bible Belt areas, the only thing more popular for teenagers than idealizing virginity is losing your virginity. Beyond that, you have the Saturday-night-is-for-drinking, Sunday-for-praying (yeah right) thing going on. I used to hang out at this honky-tonk-ish karaoke place outside of Austin, for instance, where more than a few people would get up and sing sentimental Jesus songs, then get liquored up and have a one night stand. You know, while no doubt fully believing that it's best to "wait for marriage". It's hard to explain, but they don't even seem to feel like there's a disconnect there, or not one that's much worth worrying about. Stringent sexual morality is put in the same bucket of ideals as going to church every Sunday, making your bed every day, and skipping dessert in order to go running: everyone knows that's what you "should" do, but no one is actually doing it. Openly rejected these prudish ideals is considered far more scandalous in many ways than simply not following them. Part of it is I think a lot of people think they'll eventually fall into a sexual relationship that fits within the narrow confines laid out by the religious right, so they're not ready for that big leap of questioning authority on this. It's very similar to people assuming they're going to get organized at some indeterminate date in the future, so they don't have to worry about it now.
But of course, passing a law that truly could fuck with your basic freedom to live how you actually live, and not how you imagine your more upright and normative self will be living 10 years hence is a different story. Thus the sudden shift to the left in people's ideals when they don't think anyone is looking or judging.
I'll add that the severity of the restrictions proposed in South Dakota and Mississippi didn't help the anti-choice cause. They do better when they aim for smaller restrictions that voters can convince themselves apply to other people, you know, sluts. That's why they were able to sell the defunding of Planned Parenthood to conservative voters, because it's easy for them to say, "Well, if you can't afford the pill, keep your legs shut." Anything where conservative-learning voters who fall short of fanaticism can feel they're sorting people into "good" and "bad" categories, and only depriving the latter of their rights, they'll support. It's why ultrasound laws pass easily; they invoke stereotypes of extremely stupid women who don't know that pregnancy means you're carrying a fetus. The non-fanatical supporter can imagine that should ever they need an abortion, that tactic won't apply in their case. Either they think they obvious superiority will get them an exception, or their obvious superiority will make it a less miserable thing to endure. Some may even like the idea of having to endure trials to prove you "deserve" the abortion.
But this law put all women of reproductive age into a criminal class, as I explain at Alternet. Even the unicorns---women who wait until marriage, only have sex with their husbands, have the means and desires to have 5 or 6 children, and attend church twice a week---are eligible for criminal investigation for miscarriages, employment restrictions, and contraception denial. The whole point of the wingnut fascination with with sin and punishment is that there should be an ideal to aspire to, but this law made that impossible. This can't be discounted as a reason this ballot initiative went down in defeat.
But sometimes a movement conducts itself in such a way that one wonders whether they truly grasp that most people simply do not agree with them, and are not likely to change their minds. Certainly this is not something that only conservatives (religious or otherwise) do. But those religious conservatives who argue against legal abortion, full stop; and who wish to see access to contraception curtailed… well, one begins to wonder: Do they get what a tiny minority they are?
No, they do not, because they wield so much social power in their communities. When they say things like, "the only way to prevent STDs is for two virgins to marry and stay faithful" or "contraception thwarts God's intentions for human sexuality", they face a chorus of amens from people who then often turn around and demonstrate, with their behavior, that they simply don't agree
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem. I wrote about this problem at RH Reality Check, but in the days since it’s only gotten worse. (By the way, Katha Pollitt and I communicated about my linking of her article, and we see eye-to-eye on this---she, as I suspected, was under a column length crunch and couldn’t address every nagging detail. So I want you to say I’m not criticizing her, but simply pointing out that there’s a, let’s call it a “plot hole” in the pro-choice narrative.) The problem is that, in addressing anti-choice narratives around the personhood amendment and in explaining why such a thing can and probably will be used to restrict the birth control pill, feminists are giving air to an anti-choice misinformation campaign to redefine the pill as “abortion”. I strongly suspect that personhood amendments aren’t even really intended to win so much as to give anti-choicers frequent opportunities to claim the pill works by killing fertilized eggs. The long game, I believe, is to get that false belief ingrained in conventional wisdom, and then use it to apply existing abortion restrictions to the birth control pill. I especially suspect that the intention is to make sure that the Hyde and Stupak amendments are expanded to include the bill, meaning that the only way women will be able to get it is through out-of-pocket funding.
I realize that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Even if you buy the scientific misinformation that the pill works by killing fertilized eggs, that still wouldn’t make taking it an “abortion”, because pregnancy begins at implantation, not conception. The problem with making that point, of course, is that activists, legislators, and the courts aren’t beholden to the medical definition of an abortion. They argue life begins at conception, and so from their point of view, anything that interferes with that is an “abortion”. More importantly, you could call it a “tiddlywinks”, and they wouldn’t care. We aren’t really arguing about terminology here. They’re trying to claim the pill kills fertilized eggs, which are granted greater status in our culture than non-fertilized eggs, and they hope by doing so they can stigmatize the pill enough to start legislating against it. They probably wouldn’t even need to call it an “abortion” if they’re able to get the false story of how the pill works to spread far and wide. Already many abortion restrictions avoid talking about pregnancy and talk instead of “life at conception”; they’re poised to do this. Now they just need to get people to believe something that just has no evidence for it, that the pill works by killing fertilized eggs.
Luckily for them, they have feminists doing that job.
First, the facts. The fact of the matter is that the pill works by preventing ovulation. The original formulation---and I think this is still true for most forms of it, if not all---was to put your hormone levels where they would be post-ovulation. The reason for this is that after you ovulate, your body suppresses another ovulation in order to prevent a second conception. Some medical scientists have theorized that there may be secondary actions in play for the pill that make it work better. One of these theories, which has no evidence for it that I could find (or that Lindsay Beyerstein could find---she’s been looking, too), is that the thinning of the uterine lining might make it harder for fertilized eggs to implant. Because of all sorts of regulations and practices in the pharmaceutical industry, these theories are included in the packaging for pills, in the same way they have to include potential side effects, even if the researchers are 95% sure the side effects weren’t actually caused by the medication. For instance, your pill package probably includes “weight gain” as a potential side effect of the pill. That’s because it was a potential, if basically untested side effect. But extensive research has demonstrated that the pill does not make you gain weight. As weird as it may seem to a layperson, that something is on your info packet when you get a medication doesn’t make it true. That info packet isn’t a scientific document; it’s a CYA maneuver.
Now for the facts.
Fact #1: Many eggs slough off on their own, so even if you manage to fertilize an egg and it dies while you’re on the pill, there’s no reason to think that the pill is the cause. That said, women on the pill don’t ovulate much! If you take it perfectly, probably never. Or even somewhat imperfectly. But even if you have a tendency to skip 4 or 5 days here or there, and you do ovulate, you’re still doing it less than someone who uses nothing at all. So you’re simply killing fewer fertilized eggs than the good Catholic who uses nothing and is constantly pregnant. Odds are high I’ve never had a fertilized egg die on me, but Rick Santorum’s wife has probably killed dozens, if not more.
Fact #2: No evidence that the pill works this way. Not only that, but it’s been known for awhile that we don’t have any reason to believe that this theory of the pill’s function is true. Writing for RH Reality Check, Cristina Page said:
Prompted, in part, by the growing efforts of anti-abortion groups to define birth control as abortion, the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1999 reviewed the available research on "the mechanism of action" of the contraceptive methods that so dismay pro-lifers……
The researchers consider the question and report , "No direct evidence exists showing that implantation is prevented by progestin-only methods" and "The evidence does not support the theory that the usual mechanism of action of IUDs is destruction of fertilized ova in the uterus," say the authors. After reviewing all the research available on the modes of action of all contraceptives in question the authors summarize their report by explaining that "Even though the precise mechanism of action of modern contraceptive is not yet fully known, scientific evidence suggests the main mechanisms of action for each method. Inhibition of ovulation and effects on the cervical mucus are the primary mechanisms of the contraceptive action of hormonal methods. Evidence indicates that the primary mechanism of action of IUDs is the prevention of fertilization."
It’s a widespread belief that emergency contraception works by killing a fertilized egg. Actually, it’s just high dose birth control pills that prevent ovulation. If anything, emergency contraception is less likely to have the uterine lining effect that anti-choicers claim.
It has been demonstrated that LNG-EC acts through an effect on follicular development to delay or inhibit ovulation but has no effect once luteinizing hormone has started to increase. Thereafter, LNG-EC cannot prevent ovulation and it does not prevent fertilization or affect the human fallopian tube. LNG-EC has no effect on endometrial development or function. In an in vitro model, it was demonstrated that LNG did not interfere with blastocyst function or implantation.
Over time, birth control pills thin the lining of the uterus. It has been hypothesized that a thinner endometrium is less receptive to fertilized eggs, but this conjecture has never been tested. This seems unlikely, given how easy it is for women to get pregnant by taking the birth control pill sporadically. Missing a couple of pills won't undo the chronic changes in the uterine lining, but skipping pills during the critical window can easily allow an egg to escape. If a thinner endometrium was such a barrier to pregnancy, we'd expect the pill to be even more reliable than it is.
I hope this has convinced you that we don’t need to repeat the claims that the pill kills fertilized eggs. There’s no scientific evidence for that claim, and there is scientific evidence against it. We should insist on sticking to the science instead of being dragged into the anti-choice “what if” game.
But not only have I seen feminists make the understandable mistake of accepting the fertilized egg theory as a third mechanism---the information that this is un-evidenced is very hard to get in a sea of anti-choice misinformation---I’m beginning to see inexcusable examples of feminists suggesting that “killing fertilized eggs” is how the pill works. Which is what anti-choicers want you to believe. A woman confronted Mitt Romney about his support of a personhood amendment, and her misinformation got wide hearing:
I don't know if you want to have some staff look into this, but hormonal forms of birth control work a little differently. They actually prevent implantation, not conception.
I saw this exchange posted everywhere with absolutely no correction of this blatant (if unintended) misinformation. Even Jezebel’s write-up unfortunately implied that killing fertilized eggs is an evidenced mechanism of the pill, and that it happens frequently, which it doesn’t. They made it worse by making fun of Mitt Romney for not knowing how the pill works. The problem with that is he actually showed a better understanding of it than either the woman asking him a question or the Jezebel writer. If you make fun of someone for being wrong, but they’re actually right, then you’re the one with egg on your face.
I get why feminists are allowing anti-choice misinformation to find home in our mouths. We want to tell people that personhood amendments are intended to ban the pill, because they are! The easiest way to say that is to accept the false premise that the pill kills fertilized eggs. And that will win us a short term victory, but lose us the long term war. Plus, bad science is bad science, and you shouldn’t give air to it.
There is a way to make it clear that the right is using this to ban the pill without giving credence to their misinformation. One way I’ve gone about doing this is to say, “Anti-choicers hope that misinformation about how the pill works can be used to ban it.” Irin Carmon did a great job of parsing the scientific misinformation and the legal issues in her Salon piece on Mississippi personhood.
If this initiative passes, and fertilized eggs on their own have full legal rights, anything that could potentially block that implantation – something a woman’s body does naturally all the time – could be considered murder. Scientists say hormonal birth-control pills and the morning-after pill work primarily by preventing fertilization in the first place, but the outside possibility, never documented, that an egg could be fertilized anyway and blocked is enough for some pro-lifers.
I would also add that right wingers get all sorts of misinformation into the law all the time, as anyone who follows the creationism wars will tell you. Because the “pill kills” thing is untrue doesn’t make it less of a threat. All you need is a few people with some letters after their name to present themselves falsely as experts to the court, a judge with a right wing agenda, and the law can be kept in place. If you want evidence of how this works, consider that Carhart v. Gonzalez was decided in part on a big, fat lie: that women who have abortions have “post-abortion” syndrome. This isn’t even playing loose with the facts. Anti-choicers just made that shit up, presented it as evidence, and the idea of it was all over Kennedy’s decision.
There’s also the understandable fear of conceding the argument that fertilized eggs are people. No need to do that, either. I think one thing pro-choicers need to highlight as much as the pill thing is fact that these laws will almost surely be used to prosecute miscarriages. If anything, they’re more likely to be used for that at first than to ban the pill, which will be a separate legal battle that will take years to fight. You can start prosecuting miscarriages right away; you can even do so while leaving abortion legal. Prosecuting miscarriages is an especially attractive fight for anti-choicers because you can target the most vulnerable women in our society for that abuse. We know this, because women are already being thrown in jail for stillbirth. They tend to be poorer women, women of color, and immigrants, exactly the sort of women that don’t get a lot of defenders, especially if they live less than perfect lives. Particularly in Mississippi, I expect that a personhood law would immediately result in miscarriage arrests and investigations. I’m guessing you will quickly see women who go to hospitals for miscarriages grilled about whether they’ve had a drink, worked at a job requiring physical labor, and tested for drug use---and if any of these things are true, out come the cuffs. Sure, there may not be any scientific information linking her miscarriage to these activities, but anti-choicers have never really been that enthusiastic about science in the first place. Additionally, expect it to become illegal for doctors to perform emergency D&Cs on women who are miscarrying, leaving those women to die, and doctors may also be required to let a woman’s fallopian tube burst rather than give her drugs to terminate ectopic pregnancies.
I'm sure you've seen this story that's been passed around about the supposed "health" editor at xoJane who uses Plan B as her primary form of contraception. (Seriously, how rarely are you getting laid that this even seems like a remotely feasible plan of action?) There was much fail in that piece, including her casual assumption that condoms are only there if you sleep with a subjectively-defined "many people", as if STDs are the result of cumulative stranger-seed instead of exposure to contagious germs. This sort of thing might make you wonder---I know it made me wonder---if younger people these days have been so poisoned by creeping prudery plus abstinence-only education that behavior like Cat's, which indicates a deep ambivalence about the morality of sexual pleasure, is common. I know it made me long for the days when Salt 'n' Pepa were talking about sex and TLC was flinging condoms around, and the pursuit of female sexual pleasure was taken as a right, instead of treated like some foul thing that requires self-punishment through repeated abortions. Or worse.
As part of its National Survey of Family Growth, the CDC discovered that eight in 10 teen boys ages 15 to 19 reported they had used condoms during their first sexual experience. That's 9 percent more teenagers than the last time the CDC checked in, back in 2002. High school kids are still boning at the same rate they were 11 years ago—a little more than 40 percent for both genders—but they're getting smarter about it. Besides the rise of rubbers and the decline of teen pregnancy, the study also found that 16 percent of teen males "double up"—that is, use a condom in combination with a female partner's hormonal method—up from 10 percent in 2002.
As Nona notes, this shows that fears that better access to contraception will lead to more sex are ungrounded. Of course, the idea that "more sex" is some sort of bad thing to be opposed at all costs is what we in the biz like to call a problematic assumption. More bad sex is a bad thing, sure. But just more sex? If it's good sex, opposing it is like being opposed to sunny days and laughing with puppies. But even if you have a fucked-up way of looking at things and think that people feeling good has to bad, take heart. People don't have more sex because they use more condoms. Generally with young people who are already ready for sex, having it is a matter of people-based opportunity more than any other factor. The main obstacle to the fucking in the streets that conservatives worry so much about is getting people to do it with you. Since there's not a massive surge in people's attraction to each other, there really shouldn't be a surge in the havings of the sex.
For those of us who actually like people and want them to be happy, this is just straight good news: Teenagers can be teenagers---that is, experiment and muddle their way towards adulthood---with a lower chance of getting sick from it.
SIGH: that is usually my reaction anymore to seeing yet another dude whip out the "I'm pro-choice but Roe was wrongly decided/decided too soon" argument. Scott Lemieux is the champion of shooting that one down, so I tend to leave it to him. But I have to respond to Garrett Epps of The American Prospect ruining what was otherwise an interesting article by arguing that Brown v. the Board of Education was correctly timed and Roe v. Wade was too soon, because the latter had such an appalling backlash. You hear variations of this argument a lot, and the sole evidence for them is that anti-choicers are such loud-mouthed assholes and they're willing to attack the decision directly, in a way that no one is willing to do with Brown. But that's extremely limited evidence for the assertion, especially since it focuses more on what people say than what they do. It's true that people are less likely to openly condemn desegregation than abortion rights, but does that mean the backlash to desegregation (and all it means) was less severe than the backlash to abortion rights (and all they mean)? I think this deserves a look, from a number of angles.
Structural differences in the decisions. If you want to compare Brown and Roe, you should make sure you're comparing apples to apples. Initially, it may seem that you are: both decisions granted rights to oppressed people that were expected to lead to their betterment and help them obtain political, social, and economic equality. Both had political movements behind them. That's where the similarities end, however. The big difference is that Brown addresses what is functionally a structural inequality---they forced schools who had previously closed their doors to non-white students to open them up. Roe, however, addresses an individual right. An individual now has a right to choose to abort or provide abortion. Abortion was a criminal matter, and segregation a matter of public accommodation. This difference structures the backlash to it. Opponents of Brown realized right away that they could re-establish desegregation by changing the systems so they seemed compliant, but with Roe, that's harder to do. When you're dealing with people making private choices, it's much harder to control without invoking law enforcement. In a sense, they don't have a choice but to oppose Roe directly, because without being able to use law enforcement, they're kind of fucked. They've finally figured out a way to get around Roe, but it really hasn't been easy. The fact that Brown openly invoked equal protection and Roe didn't also makes Roe easier to criticize without going on the record as being hostile to the abstract principle of equality.
The backlash to Brown has been more severe than the backlash to Roe in many ways. The National Guard wasn't called to let women get abortions. In fact, what was remarkable about Roe was that it was implemented with relatively little fuss. The violence agaisnt abortion providers didn't start up until the anti-choice movement had really developed into a hardline fundamentalist terrorist breeding camp. They have to work themselves into a frenzy to commit violence. For civil rights activists, violence was a constant problem from the get-go, and it was more frequent, and it was often less tied to organized hate groups. In fact, it still goes on. Not to downplay the ugliness against abortion providers in the slightest, but it's important to understand that both decisions and the movements around them have resulted in a terrorist response.
In addition, Roe was implemented without that much of a fuss in rapid order. Law enforcement immediately stopped throwing abortion providers in jail, and doctors started hanging out a shingle without much concern of running into the authorities. Brown was basically rejected in many communities, however. (My high school didn't desegregate until more than 20 years after the decision, if I recall correctly.) And when the authorities forced schools to segregate, local governments moved in rapid response by redrawing district lines, changing tax structures, and implementing policies that basically reinstituted segregation. Private schools shot up in rapid response to take the white kids that were being yanked from school. Busing was basically abandoned. White flight intensified. The result? American schools are more segregated now than they were in the late 60s. You know, when people were still openly flouting the decision. And Brown has had huge chunks of it functionally overturned in a way that is just as, if not more severe than the restrictions that have been placed on Roe.
Meanwhile, while it's been getting harder to get an abortion in this country than it used to be, women who want one are likelier than not to get it. It's not as good as it should be, but I think abortion rights are still doing better than desegregation of the schools.
The big picture. Brown and Roe cannot be assessed in a vacuum. Both were decisions that were made in response to activist lawsuits from people who had a bigger picture in mind. I'd say it was the same picture, in fact. Anti-racism and feminist activists wanted a world where the group they were advocating for were equal to white men in terms of education, career, personal freedom, personal stability, wealth, and access to those transcedent aspect of human life such as reputation, joy, creative freedom, role models for aspirational purposes, that sort of thing. You know, equality. Both decisions were seen as major moves in that direction. Brown addressed education inequalities that fed into economic and social inequalities. Roe addressed the way that pregnancy and childbirth are used to constrain women's economic and social opportunities.
Again, I have to look at the situation and think feminists have been allowed to go further in their goals. Women's status relative to men has improved more than black people's status relative to white people's. It's a complex question, of course---after all, half of black people are also women, and racism is different than sexism, so it's really hard to measure. One the measure of income, it's clear that race hurts more than gender: black people make 62% of what white people do, while women make 79% of what men do. I believe this is a sign that desegregation has faced more backlash than reproductive rights. Much of what made it hard for women in the past to get access to educational and employment opportunities was the assumption that they would get pregnant and be forced to drop out or downsize their careers in order to get married and have babies. That expectation has been curtailed greatly, especially for average Americans. Women can time their pregnancies and limit their family size, which gives them a great deal of control in the rest of their lives. But black Americans continue to be pushed out of educational and employment opportunities that would help make that income number more equitable.
It's true people are more willing to say grossly sexist things in public than grossly racist things (though the election of Obama has shifted that), but I think a larger look beyond what people say and what they do will indicate that the situation is more complicated than that.
What does this all mean? Well, it sure as hell doesn't mean that Brown was wrongly decided. What it does mean is that we can't judge a court decision granting human beings their full rights based on our fears of a backlash. Often, the only way to change the status quo is to force a confrontation, and courts granting rights are a good way to do that. Just quit pissing on Roe. It was a good decision and it came at a time that the country was actually supportive of abortion rights. The backlash against is shaped by the trajectory of women's gains differing from the tragectory of African-American gains, but reading the tea leaves of specific court decisions isn't really all that illuminating as to why.
I'm seeing this storylinked allover the place, and I want to hop in and offer some skepticism about the NY Times reporting on this. There's two things that go completely unmentioned in the original piece, and these are two details that I think are critical to understanding the situation. One, the story implies, I believe falsely, that the average sperm donor has dozens of children created using his sperm. I doubt that's true, for reasons that will become obvious in a moment. I suspect when sperm banks tell donors that it's a handful of children on average, they're telling the truth. For most donors, it will just be a few.
That said, there are a handful of donors who do end up having their sperm used to create dozens of children. The story implies that this is strictly for profit, and that no other motivations could be in play. But I've read a lot of literature from women who've gone the sperm bank route for child-bearing, and the story I get from these narratives is that the problem is way more complex than that. A lot of women---especially if they're a little older---struggle to conceive with donor sperm. They'll pick a guy out of the book, go a couple rounds, find they can't conceive, pick another guy out of the book, same story, rinse and repeat, and eventually the sperm bank will take pity on them and say, "Why don't you use this donor? He gets everyone pregnant."
See, not all sperm is created equal, especially when you put it through the storage process that sperm banks use on donor sperm. Some of it just works better---the sperm is stronger and the sperm count is higher---and it's more effective at impregnating women. Once banks realize this, they're going to make note of the donors with the most efficient pregnancy rates. Which inclines me to think that the accusations that this is all about profit are missing the point. A lot of banks could wring more profit out of women by letting them keep picking donors out of the book without giving them any information about the efficacy of the sperm, and that they don't do that suggests that problem is, at bare minimum, more complex than that. No one likes the idea of one guy making 200 kids with his sperm donations, but I suspect the desire to make the customers happy and actually get them pregnant is in play here.
Setting limits on how many babies can be conceived with one donor would probably go a long way towards preventing these "oh my god, he's got 150 biological offspring!" situations, but what the NY Times story fails to note is that it would do so by dramatically reducing the number of women who successfully get pregnant from sperm banks. This isn't a cost-free situation, in other words. It's easy for women whose kids are already born to focus on the only real concern to them, which is the number of kids that are biological half-siblings of theirs, but if they were in the shoes of the women who have failed to conceive with various donors and are being told, "Why not use this guy? He gets everyone pregnant." I think their calculations would be very different.
I don't really have a dog in this fight. On one hand, the pro-choice side of me wants to make a full-throated argument for women being able to use every tool possible to conceive, if that's what's important to them. On the flip side, I also tend to think our society puts too much emphasis on the idea that you're an incomplete woman if you don't have children, creating a cultural space where it's basically unacceptable to say that this particular thing isn't going to happen for some people, and it creates situations like this. Of course, we're not going to fix the "baby at any cost" mentality simply by restricting sperm banks, so that's a factor, as well. I just want to point out that there's a lot of ideologues putting their thumb on the scale of this one---people who object to single mothers and lesbians having children come to mind---and we should be incredibly cautious about calling for regulations without looking at the full picture. If you determine that substantially reducing the number of single women, women partnered with infertile men, and lesbiansn who are able to fulfill their goal of motherhood is an acceptable price to pay in order to limit the number of biological offspring a man has through a sperm bank, okay. But know that's the price that will likely be paid.
President Obama invoked the specter of 10- and 11-year-olds buying Plan B in order to justify keeping it out of the hands of the 15- and 16-year-olds currently banned from getting it without a prescription, and out of the hands of everyone 17 and older who has a broken condom but doesn't have an open pharmacy nearby. This, even though fewer than 1% of 11-year-olds are sexually active, and since the drug is taken after you have sperm inside you, withholding it can only be a punishment and not a preventive. Even if you believe that minor girls should be punished for sex, mandatory pregnancy strikes me as way too harsh. Anyway, one of the supposed justifications for this sort of thing is that it's not an undue burden on those with a legal right (those ages 17 and older---by the way, men can buy it, too), and that this is strictly about minors. Well, 
I have
Going into the polls yesterday, there was strong reason to worry that Misssippi voters would vote to amend their constitution to declare fertilized eggs to be "persons". After all, 
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem. 
I'm sure you've seen this story that's been passed around about the supposed "health" editor at xoJane 
SIGH: that is usually my reaction anymore to seeing yet another dude whip out the "I'm pro-choice but Roe was wrongly decided/decided too soon" argument. Scott Lemieux is the champion of shooting that one down, so I tend to leave it to him. But I have to respond to 