Half Changed World

litmus tests

Becca at Not Quite Sure poses an interesting pair of questions:

"Here's a political litmus test: What are you most upset about today, Dr. Tiller or GM? Here's an...intellectual? ideological? oh, let's just call it another litmus test: What are you blogging about today?"

I have no doubt that 40 years from now, when my hypothetical grandchildren learn about this period in history, the collapse of the US auto industry will feature prominently.  And my guess is that Dr. Tiller won't be mentioned, although the culture wars more broadly will.

That said, I'm not really upset about GM going into bankruptcy.  A bit sad, but not really upset.  Both because it's been coming for so long that it's not shocking, and because the good union jobs in the auto industry were going away whether or not GM managed to avoid bankruptcy.  And I'm going to blog about Tiller, not GM, because I don't have anything particularly original to say about GM.  (If you want to read about GM, go re-read Gladwell's article about why GM should be understood as a health insurance company that finances itself by selling cars.)

So, back to Tiller.  With Obama nominating Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, and presumably getting make at least one more and possibly several nominations, I think abortion is likely to remain legal for the foreseeable future.  But Tiller's murder drives home the degree to which the question of whether abortion is legal has become almost completely separate from the question of whether women who want an abortion can get one.  According to Planned Parenthood, more than 85 percent of counties in the US do not have a single abortion provider.  Tiller was one of only a few doctors in the whole country who do late-term abortions.

I can't blame doctors who decide that they're not up to facing the screaming protestors, the constant threats on their lives and their families.  And there's a selection issue -- because so many doctors don't do abortions at all, it's easy for a doctor who is willing to serve women in this way to find that they're spending most of their time doing abortions.  But it's pretty hollow to have a legal right to an abortion if you can't actually find someone to do it.  Wealthy women will always be able to travel to providers (at least, if they don't need the abortion because of an immediate crisis) but poor women won't.

Choice

I have to admit, I sort of rolled my eyes when I read the plea in my inbox today from NOW with the claim that "Roe is still under attack."  Obama is expected to repeal the global gag rule although apparently not today.  And at the inauguration, we joked that after Justice Stevens swore Biden in, he was saying "thank god, I can finally retire."

But then I read Cecily's posts today.  First, she reminded me of the problem of the lack of availability of doctors who will perform abortions.  And then she notified me that Virginia is once again considering making it a crime to fail to report a miscarriage to the police.

We've defeated this bullshit before.  Let's do it again.  If you live in Virginia, here's the link for finding out who your state senator is.

Update: For the record, here is Senator Obenshain's response to comments, where he acknowledges that the bill is far too broadly drafted for his intent, which he claims was to eliminate the "it was born dead" defense for infanticide.  However, given the history of a very similar bill four years ago, either Obenshain is lying or he didn't even bother to do cursory research before introducing the bill.

Fimian and abortion

I went to the homeowner's association meeting tonight and, as is their custom, a number of politicians and their representatives were invited to speak.  Connolly and Fimian were both at a previously scheduled event, but they both sent people to speak on their behalf.  Connolly's representative did a generally solid job, though he went on for too long.  Fimian's representative was a young man, perhaps 20 years old, who began his speech by admitting that he usually spoke to groups of high school student and this was a step up for him.  It was pretty painful listening to him, as basically the entire pitch was that Fimian's not a Washington insider and he knows what it's like to be us.  Since we had just recognized Tom Davis for his years of service to the district, this was perhaps not the best note to hit.

At the question and answer period, one of my neighbors tossed him a bit of a softball, asking about the mailings that she'd been getting about Fimian, and weren't they just accusing him of being Catholic?  (Note that Connally is also Catholic.)  He responded with a long answer about how they were making these accusations based on links on the Legatus website, even though the webpage includes a disclaimer that they didn't constitute an endorsement.

Well, this ticked me off, because it sounded to me like Fimian was trying to hide his strong social conservative positions.  So I asked him about the info from Left of the Hill, that Fimian's company amended its health insurance plan to exclude coverage of abortion, even in cases where the health or life of the mother was at risk.  (I found this via Anonymous is a Woman.)  The speaker had no idea, and so we moved on, but I found myself arguing with my neighbor about how common this is.

When I got home, I started googling, and I found this 2003 Kaiser Family Foundation survey that found that 46 percent of firms that provided health insurance included abortion coverage.  (I checked, and while KFF conducts this survey every year, they seem to have dropped the question about abortion coverage.)  Large employers were far more likely to provide abortion coverage than small ones.  Interestingly, 26% percent of employers did not know whether their insurance plan covered abortion, which makes me think that this is usually a cost-cutting provision rather than an ideological one.

What I can't tell from this is whether plans that don't cover abortion generally have life and health of the mother exceptions.  I can't find this online -- anyone have a source?  Or, if your plan doesn't cover abortion, can you look it up in your benefits handbook?

Hyde: 30 years is enough

In honor of the Roe v. Wade anniversary, I'm highlighting the Hyde- 30 Years is Enough campaign to lift the restrictions on Federal funding of abortion services to poor women who receive health insurance through Medicaid.  Here are some of the reasons I oppose the Hyde amendment restrictions:

• I believe that the ability to control one's reproduction should not be limited on the basis of income.  NNAF says it better than I can:

"We call for full public funding of abortion as a part of comprehensive health care for all, and support for low-income women to care for their children with dignity.  We stand for reproductive justice, a world in which all women have the power and resources necessary to make healthy decisions about their bodies and their families."

• One of the main effects of the Hyde restrictions is to push abortions from the first trimester into the second.  This increases the health risks to the woman, raises the cost of the procedure, and pushes closer to the viability line.

• The logic of the Hyde amendment -- and the related laws that prohibit coverage of abortion for federal employers, military personnel, and their dependents -- is fundamentally flawed.  Supporters argue that even though abortion is legal, people should be able to avoid having their tax dollars support something that they consider immoral.  Well, I can think of a number of things that my tax dollars support that I consider immoral, and I don't get to opt out. 

If you're not poor, a federal employee, or a member of the armed services, these bans don't affect you.  Now.  But if you hope to someday be covered by a public health insurance system, you should be paying attention.

TBR: Waiting for Daisy

As I explained in the first ever post on this blog, the name "Half Changed World" comes from the subtitle of Peggy Orenstein's book, Flux.  Before I started the blog, I googled Orenstein's email address, and wrote her to ask if she minded my using the name.  She responded with a very gracious note, pointing out that you can't copyright a title, but  wishing me well.  Thus, when I received an email a few weeks ago from Orenstein announcing the publications of her new book, Waiting for Daisy, and offering me a review copy, I was happy to take her up on the offer. 

In Flux, Orenstein examined the changing expectations and experiences of women in their 20s, 30s and 40s, especially focusing on their choices whether to have children and whether to work for pay.  The not very hidden subtext of the book was her own attempt to decide whether to have a child, what it would do to her career, and whether she would regret it down the road if she didn't.  Waiting for Daisy is explicitly about Orenstein and her husband's decision to have a child, and how almost everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong (cancer, a molar pregnancy, miscarriages, failed IVF, a failed donor egg cycle) and the ultimate improbable conception of their daughter Daisy.  Or, as the subtitle puts it "A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night, and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother."

I have been fortunate enough not to have personal experience with the world of fertility treatment.  But I've read enough fertility blogs that little in Waiting for Daisy was a surprise to me, not the callousness of the doctors, not the way that the couple was sucked into more and more involved procedures, in spite of their initial ambivalence.  If anything, it seems like Orenstein may have had the ironic blessing of responding sufficiently poorly to medication that she and her husband weren't tempted into cycle after cycle of trying.

The part of the book that moved me most is probably the description of Orenstein's encounter with the Japanese ritual for mourning miscarried or aborted fetuses.  (This is a revised version of an article that appeared in the NYTimes Magazine several years ago.)  I also really liked the way that Orenstein writes about her anger at Sylvia Ann Hewlett's "chicken little natalism" even as she feels herself turning into the "poster child" for Hewlett's thesis.  She's clear-headed enough to see both the big picture and her individual reality at the same time, and neither to believe that her life is prototypical nor to deny her own reality because it's inconsistent with her story about the world.  So, yes, she did ultimately get pregnant with her daughter without medical intervention, but no, that doesn't mean that infertile women will conceive if they "just relax."

This is a quick read -- I read it over the course of a weekend.  While she covers some serious topics, Orenstein writes about them lightly.  I enjoyed the time in her company.

Contraception still legal in Virginia

I'm happy to report that contraception is still legal in the commonwealth of Virginia, in spite of Bob Marshall's efforts to the contrary.

• Planned Parenthood of Virginia explains the issue.

• And Not Larry Sabato discusses the political ramifications of the Democrats' move to force a roll call vote on the bill.

Given how close this bill came to passing, sorry Bitch, but I'm not laughing.

Elsewhere

I'm not in the mood to write tonight, so I'll just share some links:

1) I really liked Rowan Crisp's comment on the sHillary post at Pandagon:

"I was told recently that “as a feminist” I had a duty to vote for her. I stopped laughing long enough to ask if I had to vote for Condi Rice if she ran, too. Funnily enough, I never got an answer on that one.

"I want someone who will fight for national healthcare. I want someone who will stop wrapping themselves in the flag and the bible to justify horrors. I want someone who will obliterate the movement towards a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. I want someone who will ridicule DOMA for what it is: a limitation on the right of legal, consenting adults to contract freely.

"I’d also like a pony. :( "

Hillary isn't my first choice for the Democratic nominee.  She's not even my second.  But I feel like there's a level of vitriol against her on the left that is totally out of proportion to the compromises that she's actually made. 

2)  Blogging for Choice posts from Cecily and Bitch, PhD.  And Wealhtheow writes about Virginia's "controversial" bill to ensure that anti-abortion laws don't ban contraception as well.

3)  And via Funds for Writers: Small Markets, I thought some of my readers might be interested in this call for submissions of speculative fiction about futuristic motherhood. 

What do you imagine the function of motherhood to be? How do you think the image of motherhood will change? How do you think the image of motherhood will stay the same? What possible customs, norms or laws will be in place in the future that would have an impact on changing or affecting mothers? How will science and technology affect pregnancy, birth, and child rearing? How might full social equality affect childcare in the home and workplace? How does a lack of social equality in a highly technological society affect pregnancy, birth, and childcare? How about in a future culture with a highly evolved social order but low technology?

A parenting spectrum

The Washington Post ran a bunch of articles yesterday about different kinds of parent-child relationships in this era of assisted reproduction:

• Liza Mundy, who is apparently writing a book about assisted reproduction, writes an overview article, with the obligatory Mary Cheney references.
• Katrina Clark writes about having been conceived by anonymous sperm donation.  She also answered questions on line today.  She writes with passion and pain about having been stripped of the "right" to know who her father is.
• Mike Livingston writes about being a known sperm donor, or maybe occasional father to the child of a lesbian couple.

And, in a completely unrelated article, part of their Being a Black Man series, Neely Tucker writes about Tim Wagoner and how he is navigating what it means to be a father when he's not married to the child's mother.

It's an interesting, provocative set of articles.  One of the points that Mundy makes is that until recently, sperm donation was mostly the province of married couples, as it was essentially the only option that doctors could offer to "treat" male-factor infertility.  Such donation was societally invisible and, in many cases, hidden even from the children.  These children may have been denied access to their genetic heritage, but had social fathers, so face different issues than Clark.

My one complaint is with Mundy's blithe statement "There aren't enough adoptable children in the United States to meet people's desire for kids and family life."  Setting aside the blithe labelling of over 100,000 kids as "unadoptable," I think it's wrong to suggest that the majority of people using reproductive technologies would choose to adopt if there were suddenly a huge number of healthy infants available for adoption.  What makes the use of donor eggs and sperm so fascinating is that some of the people who go that route are largely doing so because they want a genetic connection to at least one of the social parents, even as they minimize the social connection to one of the genetic parents.

Update:

1)  The comments made me realize that I hadn't included enough modifiers in the last sentence -- so I added the "some of" and took out the "largely."   I apologize if I offended with my carelessness.

2) Family Scholars blog is doing a round up of blog-reactions to the Clark essay, and included a link to this post.  Can anyone point me to something I wrote that makes Elizabeth Marquardt think that I'm a "donor insemination mom"?  The link may be getting a different assortment of commenters than usual.  It's worth restating my policy that I don't censor comments for opinions that I disagree with, but I reserve the right to delete comments that I think cross the line into personal attacks. 

Today's Doonesbury

Today's Doonesbury made me laugh out loud.

The scary thing is that it's a real study, by Philip Longman. I wonder if New America will put up a link to the Doonesbury.

Prevention first (but not last)

Today is NARAL's Prevention First action day.  Click here to take action.  It's easy to get so focused on what's going on in South Dakota that we forget that basic access to birth control is under attack as well, with the FDA still delaying on approving emergency contraception, pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions, and the NIH apparently sharing inaccurate medical information.

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about the ways in which society hasn't changed as much as I think it should.  But it's important to also remember how much it has changed.  And while I reject the claim that second wave feminism was simply a by-product of the pill, I'm not sure it's possible to overstate the impact of reliable birth control on women's lives.  Today, when childbearing is often postponed until the 20s or 30s (or foregone entirely), and when women can expect to live for decades past menopause, it's hard for me to imagine what it must have been like to spend essentially your entire adult life either pregnant or breastfeeding.

Here we go again

As some of you may recall, last year a Virginia delegate introduced a really stupid bill that would have required women to report all miscarriages to the police within 12 hours.  Largely due to a bunch of really ticked off infertility and parenting bloggers, the sponsor was flooded with outraged emails and calls, and soon withdrew the bill.

Do you think we can do it again?

The new legislative season is about to begin in Virginia, so it's time for more idiocies.  As Julie reports at a little pregnant, Delegate Bob Marshall has introduced a bill that would ban doctors and nurses (anyone "licensed by a health regulatory board") from performing or assisting an unmarried woman in any form of assisted reproduction "that completely or partially replaces sexual intercourse as the means of conception."

I feel compelled to point out that Marshall is the author of Virginia's stringent anti-gay marriage law, which prohibits "other arrangement between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage."  So, lesbians are out of luck, unless they can find a man willing to enter into a sham marriage with them, in which case everything is fine and dandy according to Mr. Marshall.

But it's not just lesbians who are affected, or single women who want to have babies without finding someone to hook up with for a night.  As Maura pointed out at Julie's site, Marshall has links to the American Life League, which believes that all reproductive assistance is an affront to human dignity.  Fine, he's entitled to believe that.  Even to do his best to convince others that it's true.  But he's not entitled to make it the law of the land.

Via Landismom, I read Trey's post last week about gay and lesbian families moving away from hostile states, like Virginia.  I certainly can't blame anyone for making that choice.  But I do believe that those of us who aren't directly threatened by bills like this (as a married, fertile woman, I'm not) have an obligation to fight against them as hard as we would if we were personally affected.

I'm confident that my delegate will be as opposed to this bill as I am, but I'll drop him a note anyway.  If you live in Virginia, please contact your delegate.  And all of us can give Mr. Marshall a piece of our mind.

Emergency Contraception Rally

I think the FDA's non-decision on Emergency Contraception (EC, the morning-after pill) is bullshit.  All of their scientific advisory panels have recommended approving it.  They're full of it for saying that an age-based decision is unenforceable; as Fred at Stone Court points out, if that were the case, tobacco shouldn't be available.  This is a purely political decision.

So why wasn't I more enthusiastic when got the following email from NOW and the FMF?

Dear DC Activist,

We wanted to make you aware of an important National Day of Action and rally for Emergency Contraception (EC). We hope to see you there!

WHO: National Organization for Women, along with other women's rights organizations and activists WHAT: National Day of Action on Emergency Contraception WHERE: Outside U.S. Department of Health and Human Service 200 Independence Avenue, S.W. · Washington , D.C. 20201 WHEN: Tuesday, August 30 @ 12:00 pm. Come during your lunch break! WHY : To demand that emergency contraception (EC) be made available to all women, over the counter and without a prescription NOW! After more than two years of foot-dragging, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has failed women once again! In a report issued today, the FDA demanded more time before announcing a decision to broadening access to "the morning after pill". NOW activists and others who support the health and safety of girls and women will hold a rally outside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service office to insist that the FDA allow the sale of Emergency Contraception without a prescription. Please come during your lunch break and bring signs!

Well, for one thing, I work at 200 Independence Avenue.  There's something incongruous of walking out at my lunch hour to protest in front of my own building, then returning to my desk to put in an afternoon's work.  But more generally, this seems like an incredibly ineffectual action.  The FDA isn't even based downtown -- all its staff are out in Rockville.    And I'm sure the scientists who work at FDA are even more pissed off about this than I am.  Waving signs in front of the HHS office building may make you feel like you're doing something but is highly unlikely to change anything.

[Updated] So, if you're angry about the EC decision, the first thing to do is to send in your opinion using the official comment form.

Then, if you're up to it, write letters to:

1. Lester Crawford, FDA Commissioner
2. Mike Leavitt, HHS Secretary
3. Your Representative and Senator. 

Make a stink about politics affecting decisions that should be made based on science.

While you're at it, if you're female, the next time you're at your OB/GYN, ask for a prescription for EC.  It's a useful thing to have around the house, and the request also helps draw medical attention to the issue.

And if you need EC now, try your local Planned Parenthood, or getthepill.com or call 1-888-NOT-2-LATE.  (Thanks to Mary for the last.)  You may also be able to use a high dose of regular birth control pills for EC, if you happen to have access to a pack.

Further update:  Susan Wood, Assistant Commissioner for Women's Health at the FDA, has resigned in protest.  Read her resignation letter here.

Susan Anne Catherine Torres

This week, Susan Anne Catherine Torres was born.  Her birth has gotten a lot of attention because her mother died several months ago, of bleeding due to a previously undiagnosed brain tumor.  Her body has been kept on life support since, in order to give the fetus a chance to develop.  However, the cancer was spreading, so they were out of time.  The baby was born at a gestational age of 27 weeks, tiny, but with a good chance of survival.

Several feminist bloggers have been highly critical of this choice, while others have focused their ire on the tone of the media coverage.  I agree that the press has been a bit overwraught, but it's probably asking to much to expect them to resist the combination of tear-jerker and science fiction.  And the Torres family sought publicity, in order to raise the funds needed for the medical bills. 

I basically see this choice as comparable to organ donation, or embryionic stem cell research.  Susan Torres was gone in May; I see only an affirmation of hope and life in the family's choice to use her body in this way.  It's just that we're not used to having dead bodies be warm and with beating hearts. 

To the extent that I have any reservations about this story, it's my usual issue that there's something strange about spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep one baby alive, when thousands of children are dying, in Niger and elsewhere, for lack of food, clean water, basic vitamins, and vaccines that cost pennies.  But that utilitarian framework is unrelenting and impossible to live up to.  Pretty much everything anyone in the US spends money on -- from bottled water to luxury SUVs, from this Typepad account to my son's asthma medication -- is immoral if you weigh it in such a calculus. 

For what it's worth, I basically agree with "Mrs. Coulter" that, under comparable circumstances, I'd probably want the same.  In fact, my living will includes the following statement:

"In spite of the above, I am willing to receive treatment under the following conditions:

• If I am pregnant and life-prolonging procedures will result in a reasonable probability of the child being delivered viably and having an acceptable quality of life.
• If keeping my body functioning is necessary to allow my organs to be transplanted. I do not wish to receive treatment for more than one week on this basis."

That's not to say that I think this is the only reasonable choice.  Especially given how early in Torres' pregnancy she collapsed, I could well imagine her husband making the decision that, under the circumstances, his living child (they have a 2-year-old as well) needed his full attention and emotional energy.

My thoughts and prayers are with the Torres family tonight.

Child support enforcement

Just in time for Father's Day, the Washington Post today has a story on a study that found that states with more successful child support enforcement programs had lower overall rates of out-of-wedlock births.

This is interesting, because theory doesn't predict which direction child support laws should affect non-marital births.  Strong child support enforcement should make it less desirable for men to father children whom they will be forced to support, regardless of their relationship with the child's mother, but at the same time should make it more desirable for unmarried women to have children, because they're less likely to bear all the cost themselves.  If I remember correctly, Charles Murray attacked child support laws in Losing Ground, because he thought they overall promoted nonmarital childbearing.

I haven't read anything more about this study than what was in the newspaper, but the researchers are fairly well-respected types.  If the finding hold up, this suggests, first, that the negative incentives for men are greater than the positive incentives for women and second, that the men have a significant degree of influence on the decision.  The latter implication surprises me.

TBR: Moral Politics

Today's book is Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, by George Lakoff, better known these days for his slim spin-off volume, Don't Think of an Elephant.  In this book, Lakoff attempts to answer the question that I was left with after reading What's The Matter with Kansas?, namely why are Christian conservatives willing to mobilize to lower taxes?

Lakoff is a linguist, specifically a "cognitive linguist." This means that he studies how the language that we use to discuss things, and the implicit metaphors behind our choice of language, are shaped by -- and in turn shape -- how we think about the world.  His core argument is that the real difference between conservatives and liberals in contemporary American politics is that they use different models of the family as their central metaphor for thinking about society.  Conservatives use a "Strict Father" model, a metaphor that supports belief in authority, self-discipline and self-reliance, reward and punishment; liberals use a "Nuturant Parent" metaphor, a metaphor that supports belief in empathy, openness, cultivation of interests, promotion of opportunity, and second chances.  Lakoff argues that moderates (and swing voters) are those who apply both models at different times, depending on the specific issue at hand.

Lakoff acknowledges that there's no real way to prove the accuracy of a cognitive model.  Instead, he suggests that readers evaluate his hypothesis by examining whether the model is a convincing explanation for the world we see around us.  I found Lakoff's argument a plausible explanation for many aspects of American politics, including many conservative positions that I fundamentally find incomprehensible.  (For example, why do many conservatives feel that same-sex marriage is a "threat" to "traditional marriage"?   Lakoff argues "Metaphorically, someone who deviates from a tried and true path is creating a new path that others will feel safe to travel on.  Hence, those who transgress boundaries or deviate from a prescribed path may 'lead others astray' by going off in a new direction and creating a new path.")  I'd be very interested in knowing whether conservatives feel that Lakoff's description is generally accurate.

The public debate regarding which Lakoff's analysis seems least illuminating is that about abortion.  Lakoff accurately states that pro-life advocates view the fetus as a human life, and abortion as the destruction of that life, while pro-choice advocates view abortion as a simple medical procedure.  But his attempt to tie these positions back to the Strict Father v. Nuturant Parent models seems both weak, and deeply cycnical: he implies that adherents to the Strict Father model want to punish women for the lack of self-discipline and morality shown by having sex when they're not prepared to parent, and therefore decide that the fetus is a baby, while Nuturant Parent supporters decide that the fetus is just cells because they believe in sex out of marriage, second chances, and heavy investments in all children.  This doesn't ring true to me, and certainly doesn't explain pro-choice Catholics like Frances Kissling or pro-life feminists like Hugo Schwyzer.

As someone who spends my professional life helping improve the research basis for social policy, I found Lakoff's dismissal of the role of evidence in affecting policy choices both disheartening and plausible.  He argues that there is a small subset of both conservatives and liberals who are pragmatic enough to be moved by evidence, but that most people are too wedded to their cognitive models to listen to any evidence against the policies they support.  Much to my chagrin, I think that's probably right.  Conservatives like full-family sanctions even thought there's no evidence that they are more effective than partial sanctions, but because they seem morally right.  Liberals hate marriage promotion programs because they think it's an illegitimate use of government power, even though the evidence that kids do better in married-parent families is fairly strong.

I want to talk a bit about Elephant, and the political implications of Lakoff's arguments, as well as of the significance of the two models of families for parenting, but I think I'm going to save both topics for another day.

Child well-being and unwed parenthood

Someone emailed me after reading yesterday's post and asked me about the statement that children born to unmarried parents do worse than their peers on a range of measures.  The measures include things from physical health, to how well the children do at school, to drug use, to how early they start having sex and becoming parents themselves.  Here's a link to a set of charts from the conservative Heritage Foundation, and here's a summary of the literature by MDRC, a moderately liberal research organization.

There are two important caveats to keep in mind as you look at these studies.  First, all of the studies are looking at group averages.  So they don't tell you anything about any given individual who is a member of a group.  There are millions of children of single parents who are healthy, do well in school, have healthy relationships, don't get involved in any sort of criminal activity, etc. 

Second, there is a huge correlation between single parenthood and low incomes.  This is both because single parents typically only have access to one person's earnings and because people with lower earnings are more likely to have children while not married.  And so, when you just look at the simple average differences between children of single parents and children of married parents (as Heritage does in the link above), most of the gap is probably driven by differences in income.  However, more sophisticated studies do suggest that marital status matters, even after controlling for income.  (One particularly interesting study supporting this comes from Sweden, which has a much more generous economic safety net for single parents than the US.)

Maybe I've been working for the Bush Adminstration too long, but I don't think their Healthy Marriage Initatiive is an inherently evil notion, as most mainstream feminist organizations do, although I do think it is overly narrowly focused.   Instead, I support the Marriage-Plus proposals, which combine support for marriage and stable relationships with job training and other economic supports as well as programs to combat teen pregnancy.  (Heritage and its ilk consider Marriage-Plus to be heresy.)  During the CLASP audioconference last week, Kathy Edin mentioned a "service-learning" program that had suprisingly good results at reducing teen pregnancy; she suggested that it was because it gave the participants a sense that they could contribute to society in a way other than parenting.  That seems like a worthy goal.

Thoughtful discussion of abortion

Via and I wasted all that birth control, I found this truly thoughtful discussion at Arwen/Elizabeth's site about a key question behind the abortion debate, namely when does a fetus become a human being with rights of its own. I'm not sure anyone's opinion was changed, but people were listening, not shouting past each other.  (And Cecily is one of the world's classiest people.)

I was particularly intrigued by the comments that some people made about how their positions on this issue were affected by their experiences of pregnancy.  I found that having my children made both the reality of the potential life growing within and the horror of forcing a woman to continue an unwanted pregnancy more vivid to me.  It didn't change my position on what I think the laws should be, however.

The NYTimes today has an article on how pro-life counseling centers are buying ultrasound machines to use to convince women not to have abortions.  I know such centers sometimes (often?) get women in under false pretenses and put a lot of pressure on them.  But, if you're going to trust women to make these decisions, I don't think it's right to protect them from reminders of the potential for life.  (Although personally, I couldn't see a thing on any of my sonograms; the simple heartbeat was much more impressive to me.)

Hugo Schwyzer has an interesting post this week on what it means to be male, pro-feminist, and pro-life.  He concludes that his most important work is in the area of changing men's attitudes and of supporting male responsibility. 

The Nation had a powerful piece a couple of weeks ago on how Mississippi laws have made abortion "out of reach, buried under state laws that make the process unnecessarily difficult, discouraged by a sense of shame enforced by practically every public authority, and inaccessible for many who lack money to pay for it."  This is clearly the strategy being used in Virginia as well.   Unfortunately, this approach makes the sort of honest back and forth discussed above almost impossible.

****

Rad Geek People's Daily is promoting a bit of googlebombing to ensure that searches for Roe v. Wade get you to the text of the decision rather than to an advocacy site. 

Empathy, and its limits

In her essay on being pro-choice and still valuing the fetus as a potential human life (Is There Life After Roe: How to Think About the Fetus), Frances Kissling suggests that people who wore Planned Parenthood's "I had an abortion" t-shirt were bragging.  While I think a lot of what she wrote makes sense, I think she's missed the point on this one.  The t-shirt campaign was designed to make women who have abortions less a faceless anonymous other, and instead remind people it might be the proverbial girl next door.  As all good lobbyists know, putting a specific human face and voice behind a problem is often more effective than all the fancy statistically valid studies you could possibly put together. 

But right now I'm thinking about the limits of empathy.  Because the people who commented on Wednesday's post have convinced me that we're only guessing when we try to imagine how we'd feel in someone else's situation.  And because I think that control over our own reproductive choices are too fundamental to depend on something as random as whether or not someone finds our story sympathetic.  I fear a world in which someone gets to decide that Ayelet's abortion is allowed because she was appropriately agonized about it but Amy's is not because she was too casual in talking about it.

What depresses me (Virginia politics part 3)

Ema at the Well-Timed Period writes:

"The saga of HB 1677 has made me realize that the lives and health of tens of millions of women are literally at the mercy of legislators of Del. Cosgrove's caliber. This realization is enough to subdue even the most optimistic person.  [By all means, if you were already aware of the existence of legislators like the Delegate, please, carry on with the celebration.]"

I knew that there were legislators like Cosgrove, here in Virginia and even in more "enlightened" states.  That doesn't even depress me all that much; while they can introduce bills like this, they're unlikely to get them passed.

What depresses me is that Tim Kaine, who is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Virginia (we have odd year elections) argues that the "partial-birth" (e.g. dilation and extraction) abortion ban should have an exception for the life and health of the mother -- but only because the Supreme Court has ruled that such laws are unconstitutional without them.  Reading his letter to the editor, I'm left with the impression that he would have opposed such an exception if it weren't for that meddling federal court.

Chap Petersen, who is one of the leading contenders for the Lieutenant Governor position, also has taken some positions that I'm pretty horrified by.  In addition to supporting the ban on dilation and extraction (without an exception for the life and health of the mother), he also opposed the recommendation that the feticide bill be amended to clarify that it should not be construed as limiting the right to an abortion.  And he voted for HB751, the anti-civil-union bill that became law last year. (To be fair, he did introduce a bill today, HB2940, that would amend that law to say that it "shall not abridge the right of any person to enter into a lawful contract that pertains to the ownership or devising of joint property, the maintenance of personal health, or the protection of private assets. ")

If that's what the Democratic candidates look like, I'm more than depressed; I'm scared.

(Most of these legislative links are thanks to Maura's posting on Daily Kos.  Thanks.)

Awards and a land mine (updated)

1)  At 9:52 pm, I got my 10,000 hit on this blog.  I know, lots of sites get more than that in a day.  But I'm excited.  Thanks for reading.

2) I've been nominated for Best New Blog in the Koufax awards.  It's an honor just to be mentioned, and I know I have absolutely no chance of winning, but it would be nice to get a vote or two.

3) With this post, I'm nominating myself for the "Land Mine" award (part of Feministe's Anti-Awards, Part Deux)

I want to make a confession: even after having read a bunch of the fabulous infertility and assisted reproduction blogs out there, like Chez Miscarriage, and I wasted all that birth control, and a little pregnant, I don't get it.  I still don't get why people put themselves through such emotional, physical, and financial torture to conceive and bear a child.  I adore my sons, and am very grateful that they're in my life, but if I hadn't been able to get pregnant, I wouldn't have made the sacrifices these women (and many others) have made.  That sort of baby-hunger is as alien to me as James Boylan's conviction that he was a woman. 

As an outsider to this world, someone who has never had to deal with infertility, I can't help but wondering whether assisted reproduction has increased or decreased the net amount of happiness in the world.  On the one side are those people who've successfully had children with the help of modern medical miracles.  But on the other side are the people whose heartache has been drawn out for months or years as they ride the reproductive rollercoaster, and those who must endlessly second-guess themselves, wondering whether things would have been different if they tried just one more time.

I'm calling this a land mine because, as Jen at Buddha Mama and I have discussed, it's hard to talk about the choices that we make without it seeming like we're implicitly criticizing those who have made other choices.  And that's truly not my desire.  I've actually started to post about this before, and then stopped, for fear of giving pain to people who are already dealing with more than their share of grief.  But I think it's worth talking about, to open a dialogue, as well as to paint a fuller picture of the diversity of parenting experiences.  I want to tell people that you can be a good mother even if you don't have that sort of passionate need to be one, even if you could imagine having a happy and full life without children.

****

I'm updating this to try to respond to some of the comments I've been getting from some of the visitors I've received via Uterine Wars.  Let me start by thanking you for taking the time to comment, for being willing to engage in dialogue.  I appreciate it; I know it's not your job in life to educate me.

A few of the commenters have written that you didn't imagine or couldn't have imagined making the choices you've made, until you were actually in the situation.  That's a powerful (and slightly frightening) statement about the limits of our ability to put ourselves in a different situation.  I hear you, and I'll be more careful in the future about saying what I would or wouldn't do -- I can only say what my best guess is, from the perspective of who I am now.

But some of the commenters implied that I'd definitely make the same choices they are making if I were in their situation.   I still reject this statement; there are many other women who are in their situation who make different choices.  Heck, there are many woman who make a deliberate choice not to have children, regardless of their fertility status.  That's part of what makes life fascinating; we are all different people and make different choices.

***

One more thought.  I am truly sorry to have caused pain, and I can tell, from both the comments and the referring posts, that I have.  I started this post saying I was making a confession, because I believe that my inability to "get it" is a failure of empathy on my part -- although some of you are telling me that no fertile woman will ever "get it."  Saying I "don't get" your choices is different than saying I think you're making a bad choice.

Yes, I live in Virginia.

Although sometimes I wonder what I'm doing here.

As reported by Maura at Democracy for Virginia (duplicated here if the first link is down) and updated here, Delegate Cosgrove is introducing a bill, HB1677, that would make it a class 1 misdemeanor for a woman to fail to report to law enforcement within 12 hours a fetal death that occurs without medical attendance.  And because another Virginia law defines a fetal death as one that occurs regardless of the duration of the pregnancy, this would affect everyone who miscarried or even had a slightly delayed pregnancy.  I'm not going to try to describe just how stupid and callous this proposal is; instead, read the posting and discussion at Chez Miscarriage for much more eloquence than I could achieve.

Cosgrove is supposedly concerned about the stories you occasionally hear about women giving birth and leaving the bodies in dumpsters.  If it can't be proven that the baby was born alive, the only crime the woman can be charged with is improper disposal of human remains.  But the proposed response is totally disproportionate to the goal.

It appears that Cosgrove introduced a similar bill in 2003, which died in committee.  (Oddly enough, the 2003 bill was explicitly limited to women who miscarry more than 24 weeks after their last period.)  My guess is that even in the crazy-house that is the Virginia House of Delegates, this bill doesn't have much of a chance of going anywhere. 

But don't leave it to chance.  Write or call Cosgrove and tell him what you think of this bill.  If you live in Virginia contact your legislators, and let them know what you think too.  Contact the members of the Committee for Courts of Justice and ask them not to let the bill get out of committee.

And pay attention to what else is happening in your statehouses.  It doesn't get the attention of what's happening in DC, but it can make just as much, or more, difference in your life.

The politics of the paradox of choice

Yesterday, I wrote about Barry Schwartz's book The Paradox of Choice.  In looking for further discussion of this book on the internet, I found a PSB Newshour interview with Schwartz from last year, in which discusses some of the political implications of his argument.

The interviewer explains "Now, politically Barry Schwartz is a liberal who finds himself running against what seems to be the tide these days, more choice for every citizen: The private Social Security accounts that President George W. Bush has pushed, for example, where we would decide how to invest our own money."  In fact, the Bush Administration supports increased consumer choice as the solution to everything from health insurance to primary education, to social security, to job training (they've proposed giving unemployed workers vouchers that could be used for job training -- or taken as cash if they get jobs quickly).

And then Schwartz says:

"People don't have the resources, the intellectual resources, the time to learn enough in all of these different areas of life to make wise decisions. The point of public policy, seems to me, is to improve welfare.

"But who decides what's in someone's best interest? And the answer that we have collectively embraced, driven, I think, largely by economists is maximizing choice is the way to promote public welfare."

I have very mixed reactions to this statement.  When I think about health insurance, and social security, I tend to agree with Schwartz.  I think about how much trouble I have figuring out what is the best health insurance option for my family -- as a person with access to all sorts of information, and the time to sort it out, and a graduate degree in public policy -- and I find it hard to believe that there are a lot of people who are going to find it much easier, while I'm quite sure that there are people who will find it much harder. 

But I'm also vehemently pro-choice.  And, as my father asked (rhetorically, of course) this evening, how come Democrats are only pro-choice when it comes to abortion and not when it comes to anything else?  And he's right, there's something fundamentally inconsistent about saying that we trust women -- all women -- to make the best decisions for themselves and their families regarding abortion, but not regarding where to send their kids to school.  Or how to save for their retirement.

(Note that rejecting Schwartz' argument doesn't mean that you have to support these proposals; there's a separate problem that most of these proposals deliberately eliminate the risk pooling that is inherent in the current systems.)

Is parenting a right?

I've been struggling with this topic for a few days, since I read the interview with Rickie Solinger on the Mothers Movement Online website. I'm going to touch on some issues that are highly sensitive, and I know there's a risk of hurting or angering people, but I think the question is too important to ignore in the interest of politeness.

Solinger is the author of a book called Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States. In her interview, she makes a convincing argument that the rhetoric of "choice" gives little protection to poor women, who are often criticized for their choice to have children when they do not have the financial resources to support them. Thus:

"Making “good choices” about whether or when to become a mother— a concept, Solinger notes, that “evokes women shoppers selecting among options in the marketplace”— is an opportunity reserved for women with the right combination of social and economic resources. Women without some or all of these assets— a degree of maturity, a good education and/or marketable job skills, work that pays a living wage, a husband or another dependable source of supplemental income— can only make “bad” choices by expressing their sexuality and fertility."

Moreover, the focus on choice provides an argument against public intervention in everything from child care, to college costs, to supporting part-time employment; if everyone is entitled to make their own choices, why should society rescue some people from the consequences of those choices?

Solinger therefore argues that "women must have the right to reproduce in order to be full persons accorded full rights of self-determination." Recognizing such a right would have lots of repercussions. Solinger argues that it would encompass "the right to raise one’s child with access to the basic elements of a dignified life, such as decent food, shelter, physical safety, health care, and education." It would also presumably guarantee access to fertility treatments.

I just don't think I'm willing to go that far. I have two main objections to the idea of an inherent right to parent:

First, I think Solinger comes dangerously close to suggesting that those who are physically unable to reproduce, or who choose not to, are less than full persons.

Second, and more importantly, I think viewing parenting as a right has the effect of treating children as a means to an end. I reject the notion that people who aren't willing or able to care for their children have a "right" to have them anyway. And I'm very uncomfortable with some of the surrogacy and donated-egg arrangements that people are using to have children these days, because it seems like the parents are putting their own desire to have some biological relationship with their child ahead of the child's best interest. And as Being Daddy wrote in his wonderful Unhip Parent's Manifesto: "Having a baby is not about you. Get over it."

(I recognize that it's easy for me to say this, not having had any fertility issues. I'm willing to listen to your counterarguments. And I'm not arguing that my queasiness is a basis for making public policy.)