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October 26, 2016

Age, Agility and National Stamina

by Fran Johns

It is a little known but verifiable fact that this writer is a graduate of Circus 101. Well, I completed the course, that is, some five or six decadespast my turning-cartwheels-in-the-backyard days.

This comes to mind because of all the recent stamina talk. At the time of my circus experience I was several years younger than the current candidates for president of the United States. I am still the age of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and frankly, Justice Ginsberg and I (I am not officially authorized to speak for my 1933-babe sister) resent the stamina talk. She, of course, is making her debut (speaking only, opening night) with the Washington National Opera this year; I’m afraid opera performance is not on my bucket list. But still.

Stamina-wise there is at least the circus thing. As I recall, my late-life circus experience began with an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a class offered by the San Francisco School of Circus Arts (now Circus Center) titled Circus 101. It sounded interesting, and at least worth undertaking for a good story. So I called the Circus School.

“Could a reasonably flexible 60-something woman be eligible to take your Circus 101 class,” I asked the nice lady at the other end of the line? She replied, essentially, if you’ve got the money we can work you in. “You can set your own limits,” she said.

So I showed up for the first class, raising the median age by two or three decades, and quickly learned my limits: upside-down is not for 60-somethings. Oh, I could still do upside-down, headstands with my feet on the wall or the occasional cartwheel; but then I tended to get dizzy and throw up, which is not in the curriculum. I found I was very good, though, at balancing the peacock feather on my chin and at being part of the human pyramid; I always got to be the top of the pyramid because nobody wanted to step on the little old lady. I was also quite good at the Ooze – a sort of backward roll-over with a collapse at the end.

In my class was a lovely Chinese-American girl named Yvonne, who measured approximately 24-18-24 and could juggle three balls before we even started. By the second class her husband Ken had been talked into joining. Ken and Kit, another husky young man who showed up at the same time, could perform great feats of strength and skill, but because they had all those muscles getting in the way I could beat them at grabbing my ankles and doing bend-overs and such that they couldn’t even approximate – which made me feel initially quite superior.

All feelings of superiority quickly disappeared. We learned the egg roll, the diablo and the rola-bola, that last being a balancing act on a board set on a large pipe, which when circus people do it looks easy as pie. It is not. (Nor is juggling four balls.)

I did discover that I really shone at the human caterpillar. This begins with a base person on all fours (hands and feet, not knees.) The next person rests on top of the base person, feet crossed, hands on the floor, and additional caterpillar people are similarly arranged. The rear legs and all hands move in unison, theoretically, until somebody giggles.

Is any of this relevant to today’s world, nearly two decades later? Well, it provides food for thought and some great metaphors.

One can only hope that everyone on the political spectrum will have the stamina – not to mention agility – required for running the country at all levels and branches of government. And that our collective community can master the rola-bola without turning into one great Ooze.

General interest/journalism/Media/Politics & Causes/San Francisco/USA/World Affairs

October 13, 2016October 13, 2016

Nuclear-free World? Possibly. Some Day

by Fran Johns

Aaron Lobel (r) and Philip Yun at Ploughshares event

Ploughshares Fund supporters – Americans committed to reducing nuclear stockpiles, preventing new nuclear states, and increasing global security – recently got some encouraging words from a few of those on the front lines. Not that the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world is near, but that it’s a lot closer than 35 years ago.

It was 35 years ago that Ploughshares founder Sally Lilienthal, a 62-year-old sculptor, human rights activist, mother and wife, gathered a few friends in her San Francisco living room to discuss what could be done to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons here and abroad. This was the year (1981) when Ronal Reagan unveiled a “strategic modernization program” which called for – among other things nuclear – thousands of additional warheads, a significant increase in bomber forces, including 100 B-lBs and the development of stealth bombers, a new land-based 10-warhead strategic missile (the MX), and new intermediate-range missile deployments in Europe. In addition, he proposed deploying more than 3,000 air-launched cruise missiles on bombers.

There may not be a lot of peace on earth today, but there are far fewer nuclear threats to that eventual possibility and Ploughshares Fund is one key reason why.

A group of longtime Ploughshares supporters gathered recently in San Francisco to hear about ongoing work in South Asia, where India and Pakistan have a combined total of 250 nuclear weapons at the ready – enough to create a catastrophe in the area and long-term distress across the planet if that conflict were to escalate. America Abroad Media, a Ploughshares grantee, is working to prevent such a catastrophe.

AAM founder and president Aaron Lobel was interviewed by Ploughshares Executive Director and COO Philip Yun on how media fits into the complex efforts to reduce global conflict, specifically in South Asia. “You can go back to the origins of Pakistan as a Muslim state,” Lobel says, “and the question of whether India even recognizes Pakistan’s legitimacy” to get a picture of the enormity of the problem. But media in the area gets large audiences and builds human bonds. AAM works through public radio, international town halls, documentary and news programming and other avenues to build a civil society.

“We continue to believe that a civil society ultimately makes a difference,” Lobel says; “media is just one part of it.” And can such a society exist, and make a difference, in areas like South Asia today? “Absolutely yes,” says Lobel. “The lawyers’ movement in Pakistan did make a difference; and there are people in the civil society (there) involved in moving the ball forward.”

Lobel spoke at length of AAM’s work in Afghanistan, where its media following included the president of the country for at least one program. “If the president watched,” one questioner asked, “how many others actually saw the program?” “A lot,” says Lobel. “People gather around a satellite TV in the villages – this is not like having dozens of channels and TV sets in every home.” world-peace

Ploughshares president Joseph Cirincione addressed the gathering on the broader issues, and the global outlook today. “In order for these guys (countries with smaller nuclear stockpiles) to give up nuclear weapons” Cirincione says, “they’re going to have to see the big guys doing it – and that’s not happening. We have to address the underlying issues (such as) water issues and religious issues. We also have to address the fundamental distrust. It’s important to recognize the power of media in addressing these issues to create a more peaceful world.” (“We fund the smartest people,” Yun adds, “with the best ideas.”)

Despite the discouraging prospects for global peace just now, Cirincione had a few nuggets of good news for the Ploughshares supporters:

“There were 70,000 nuclear weapons when we started,” he said; “there are 15,000 now. I believe the Iran nuclear deal has prevented war there for a generation. We can continue to work to make things better.”

End-of-Life/General interest/Lifestyle/Media/San Francisco/seniors/Sports/USA

October 11, 2016October 7, 2021

Vin Scully Leaves Us With a Smile

by Fran Johns

What’s not to love about Vin Scully?

Born and raised in the Bronx, where he delivered beer and mail, pushed garment racks, and cleaned silver in the basement of the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York City. Lost his first wife – of 15 years – to an accidental medical overdose. A year or so later, married Sandra, to whom he remains married 40+ years later. At the age of 8 – this would’ve been in 1935 – he decided he wanted to be a sports broadcaster. And in 67 seasons of broadcasting Dodgers baseball games he has accumulated a long list of awards – without ever being profane, boorish, self-serving or fodder for the scandal mills.

This writer cannot claim to be any reputable sort of baseball fan. But admirable public figures are in short enough supply that one has to be grateful for Vin Scully.

Giants fans loved having Scully wind up his illustrious career in San Francisco recently, in a stadium with more “Thank You Vin!” signs than orange rally flags. Several signs in the stands read “This Once We’ll Be Blue” – in honor of Scully’s beloved Dodgers. (The Giants went on to win the game.) But it was up to the New York Times to publish the entire transcript of his narration of the top of the ninth inning – his final words to the listening baseball public, headlined Vin Scully’s Final Call: I Have Said Enough for a Lifetime. Enough to include a few nuggets in between the calls (“And the strike . . .”)

“There was another great line that a great sportswriter wrote, oh, way back in the twenties,” Scully ruminated on air. “A. J. Liebling. And it said, ‘The world isn’t going backward, if you can just stay young enough to remember what it was like when you were really young.’ How about that one?

“Ground ball foul. 0 and 2 the count to Yasiel Puig . . .” And later –

“That was awfully nice. The umpire just stood up and said goodbye, as I am saying goodbye. Seven runs, sixteen hits for the winning Giants, 1-4-1 for the Dodgers. …I have said enough for a lifetime, and for the last time, I wish you all a very pleasant good afternoon.”

It was an elegant departure for a good man, ending a long and distinguished career. But this writer’s favorite snippet, among all the short tales and one-liners that wound through the reportage, was this:

“I’ve always thought it was attributed to Dr. Seuss, but apparently not. It’s still a good line, and it’s one certainly I’ve been holding onto for, oh, I think most of the year. … ‘Don’t be sad that it’s over. Smile because it happened.’”

What a treat to have something – someone – to smile about on the national stage today.

caregiving/Death and Dying/End-of-Life/General interest/Health/Healthcare/Medicine/San Francisco/seniors

September 14, 2016October 7, 2021

Caregiving and the fight-flight-freeze response

by Fran Johns

Fight, flight or freeze. Those are the three traditional options we humans have when confronted with dangerous or overwhelming situations. Judy Long suggests a fourth: challenge. For caregivers whose stress levels often keep them on a high-fight-or-flight alert, this new option can come as good news.

Long spoke recently on Caregiver Resilience and Well-Being: Sustainable Caregiving at a meeting in San Francisco. “The ‘challenge’ response,” she told members of the San Francisco Bay Area Network for End of Life Care, “can actually have biological benefits. When you can look at (your stress) as excitement you can actually perform better.”

Judy Long, who is currently Palliative Care Chaplain in the Department of Neuropathy at the University of California San Francisco, has an extensive list of credentials in things like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Mindful Self-Compassion – the academics underlying today’s insights into the caregiving business. And for those in the trenches of caregiving, small suggestions can offer big help.

“Sustainable caregiving,” Long says, involves “all of the things we do for ourselves when we’re involved with caregiving. I know how exhausting it can be. But we can all be doing things that have great meaning, that are nurturing and nourishing for ourselves.”

Long tells of completing her chaplaincy training, which included a year of training at the University of California San Francisco. One year later, she says, she was asked to take on a six-month chaplaincy at UCSF – assigned to the neonatal intensive care unit, commonly referred to as NICU. “I wondered how to keep myself centered in all that terrible suffering.” The patients in NICU are mostly premature or very sick hands-with-hearts infants, lying in “isolettes.” While extraordinary progress has been made, and continues to be made, with successful treatments, having a newborn in NICU is stressful for parents, and many infants die. It falls to the chaplain, much of the time, to tell a parent his or her baby will not survive, or will have permanent damage. “I found out I was okay with that,” Long says, partly for having had some time in between training and actual chaplaincy work in a difficult setting.

“I’m a pragmatist,” Long says; “I always ask what works.” She was determined not to fall into the trap of many caregivers: “overwhelm, shutting myself off from caring by building an armor. Caregiving also points back to ourselves.”

Long credits one of her teachers and mentors, Roshi Joan Halifax of the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, NM, with offering guidelines she uses to guard against the common pitfalls of isolation – “there are a lot of opportunities to be isolated while trying to do good” – and the sense of helplessness. “I call them my three points: purpose, connection and control.”

Long’s audience at the recent meeting included many who have chosen, as Long herself has, a career path in the caregiving field. It also included three older women, among whom is this writer, who are fulltime caregivers for their husbands: one with peripheral neuropathy, one with both cancer and progressive memory loss and one with Parkinson’s disease. For the family caregiver, purpose and connection are clear. But control? An elusive element at best.

Which brings us back to the fight-flight-freeze business. Challenge may still be an option.

California/Celebrities/Entertainment/General interest/San Francisco

August 31, 2016September 2, 2016

Music as – – – the better alternative

by Fran Johns

The author with the Lewis' - father & daughter — The author with the Lewis’ – father & daughter

If music is balm for the soul, what else might it be?

A lot, according to Peter Lewis – musician, composer, songwriter and founding member of the 1960s rock band Moby Grape. Lewis and his daughter Arwen Lewis – also musician, composer, songwriter, and someone who holds down a day job as a waitress – explored this question at a recent event at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club.

The event was officially billed as a discussion (with live music!) of Music as an Alternative to Adversity. It evolved into a rambling discourse on good love and bad, on the sixties, spirituality and freedom, and how music winds through it all. The elder Lewis did the lion’s share of talking, with daughter Arwen benevolently looking on. But Arwen, an accomplished musician who bears a resemblance to her glamorous paternal grandmother Loretta Young, repeatedly brought her father back to the song they were about to sing.

It was an hour of memorable music and musical food for thought:

Peter Lewis on music overcoming adversity: “When you get born you cry until you’re fed; later you’re singing for your supper. It’s spiritual. Spirits move through us, and through each other – but there are all kinds of different songs.”

On “Sailing,” the first song played by the duo: “I wrote this with Skip Spence of Moby Grape; its first recording will be released in February. It’s about longing. Songs are not written in a vacuum; you feel something – and the song is born.” Spence, who suffered from addiction, bad drugs and schizophrenia, died in 1999 at the age of 53.

On loneliness and the blues: Arwen – “I live with my parents near Santa Barbara and drive 65 miles a day to work as a waitress. I wrote ‘The Lompoc Blues’ when I was having a bad day.” Peter: “We live in a nice community near the Air Force base and the penitentiary. But you can go all day and never see anybody smiling.”

On being the son (and granddaughter) of a famous movie star – Peter: “I asked my mom what it was like . . . She was brought to Hollywood by her mom, who ran a boardinghouse. I went to Purdue, in the pilots program; it was my mom’s boyfriend who got me in. I wasn’t one of the seven best pilots in America. But it was a scary deal, the draft. I’m in this line, and you don’t go home from the induction center; I was crying like a baby.” (According to his Wikipedia page, Lewis served in the Air Force, and afterwards worked as a commercial pilot.) “My mom said, ‘Either cut your hair or get out of my house.’” Loretta Young, whose two sisters also began acting as children, died in 2000 after retiring from a noted career in film and television. Arwen: “She used acting as an alternative to adversity.”

On bad love – Arwen: “I sing lead in this, which is more sing-song-y. It’s about the sixties, when there was a lot of loneliness . . .” Peter: “Love’s a two-way street. We were all trying to be characters in a Jack Kerouac novel – so you write some facetious tunes. The sixties were not so much about rebellion as about freedom.” The duo then launched into a song that included the lines, “If you can’t learn from my mistakes, honey I can’t learn from yours;” and eventually, “If you can’t pay for my mistakes, honey I can’t pay for yours.”

Nearing the end of their time, Arwen reminded her talkative father that they still had several songs to go. Only one could be squeezed in: a closing number with an almost Latin/blues rhythm, “You must believe in love.”

Good love won.

Family and Friends/General interest/San Francisco/Travel/USA

August 13, 2016

Surviving Times of Chaos

by Fran Johns

Plane & streak

Face it, recent days were not a good time to be flying Delta Airlines. Bless its corporate heart, Delta was not really at fault when lightning struck the mothership computer – or whatever the heck happened that grounded flights all over the globe August 8^th. But those of us hoping to get from Point A to Point B in the ensuing days had an adventuresome time of it.

It was an adventure of spontaneity and low expectations. That is, if you can live in the moment, and not expect too much of it, the next moment might see you advancing toward the goal. Sort of like trying to go from Mediterranean Avenue to Boardwalk with a couple of wild rolls of the dice, but without a Get Out of Jail Free card.

In my case, the goal was San Francisco, and I was rolling the dice in Atlanta. Initially, all seemed well. Repeated assurances that my 10:44 AM flight would be leaving on time plus receipt of my Confirmation Number and boarding pass led me to pack my bag and go to sleep with a happy heart. At 2:59 AM though – I learned a little later; I was not watching my phone for text messages at 2:59 AM – the digital gremlins who ruled the world for a while there decided to cancel my nonstop flight and re-book me on a 7:30 PM flight to Detroit with an eventual connection that would get me home to San Francisco around, oh, 3 AM with any luck. Not really great news. Airport crowd 8.10.16

Unlike the probable majority of discombobulated Delta passengers, I had an ace in the hole: an American Airlines pilot son. In the midst of the Delta chaos, this was better than two hotels on Boardwalk. Although he was somewhere between Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico on another plane himself, he was able to get me onto a flight to Dallas and subsequently thence to San Francisco in time for dinner.

The stories swirling around all those terminals, in all those airports throughout all that time could fill a bunch of books.

There was the woman in a tan polka-dot dress who spoke an unrecognizable language – something not quite Spanish – and no English. In the time she and I shared a waiting area at Gate A-17 at least three different passengers responded to her bewilderment in mysterious tongues, in attempts to help or understand. Yours truly tried pointing to our respective boarding passes (for cancelled flights) but was of zero help. An agent, one hopes and believes, eventually materialized and got her onto a plane flying in the right direction.

There was a mother with two small children and a baby in an over-the-shoulder baby-carrier who said, into her phone, “I couldn’t have left it at the hotel! It has to be in the car!” Oh please, I thought, let it be in the car where presumably her husband can find it and all will be well.

And there were more than a few snippets of conversation, as I was passing by: “yesterday… I know, but I couldn’t get there…” or “we need to postpone it to tomorrow, or Friday…” Postponement was the order of the day.

What was missing, in the stories of frustration and anxiety I overheard, was this: anger. Anger was probably very much present in the first chaotic day or two. But as the global chaos settled down I was reminded of another time of airport chaos.

Home sweet home from the plane's window — Home sweet home from the plane’s window

It was a flight from San Francisco to Portland on September 14, 2001, on either the first or second day that commercial flights were back in the air after 9/11. Lines waiting to go through security stretched the length of the terminal, and moved at a snail’s pace. But the mood was all kindness and tolerance. We shared stories about friends lost or stranded, or about our own fortunes. We held places in line for people who needed a bathroom break, we brought each other lattes.

Delta’s momentary blip is in no way comparable to the tragedy of 9/11, and this writer saw only a tiny blip of the aftermath. But it is somehow reassuring to believe that the human spirit can survive small inconvenience as well as major chaos – with a little patience, grace and kindness. Considering the major chaos of these days, especially between now and election day, we’re going to need a lot of all three.

crime/General interest/Lifestyle/Optimism Collection/Politics & Causes/Religion/San Francisco/USA/World Affairs

July 11, 2016October 20, 2021

Sewing Seeds of Peace & Justice

by Fran Johns

I have always drawn the line at public demonstrations. Writing letters to editors or legislators, signing petitions, calling representatives, even publishing blogs & the occasional tweet – those reasonable, genteel efforts in behalf of justice – have satisfied my self-righteousness self-image just fine. Marching, picketing, that sort of in-your-face activity I have happily left to other more courageous friends.

But now? Mass shootings, killings of seemingly innocent African Americans by police, sniper killings of police “in retaliation”? A dangerously polarized country facing a presidential choice between the two most unpopular candidates in history – one a widely mistrusted history-making woman and the other a scary narcissist egomaniac (IMHO)? No peace, little justice.

What can you do?

When a couple of guys who have become unlikely close friends decide to put together a rally on the steps of City Hall, you show up. One leads a mostly white, fairly traditional Presbyterian church in an upscale neighborhood, the other leads an African American Pentecostal congregation in a depressed area across town. Within a few days, at the end of a week that saw the shooting of an African American man in Minnesota and the killing of five policemen in Dallas, the two friends arranged an event to argue for sanity:

FAITH COMMUNITIES UNITED FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE. Nothing big, nothing political, nothing advertised as changing the world. A chance, though, for people from across the spectrums of race, politics and religion to show up and share their hope for a better world. For this writer, and strangers of assorted skin colors and garb (yarmulkes, hoodies, religious robes, flip flops) it was a chance to stand shoulder to shoulder, sign to sign, and catch one’s breath after recent weeks of tragedy and horror.

One of the ministers in attendance, who happens also to be a professionally trained singer, warmed up the crowd (which grew incrementally as the hour progressed) with a group sing-along to an old spiritual: I feel like going on. Though trials mount on every hand, I feel like going on.

An Asian American legislator told the crowd he had brought along his 4-month-old son. He and his wife have just bought a home in the depressed area. “so that my son can grow up,” he said, “with Black and Latino friends. I hope they will all be judged by their character.”

An interfaith leader quoted Martin Luther King, Jr’s phrase, “Returning violence for violence multiples violence.” He argued for turning this trend around – and drew applause when he said, “We need to support gun laws.”

A tall, young African American man holding an orange sign that read “LOVE & PEACE” spoke of his own father being shot by a policeman when the son was 16.

A public official told of an incident several days earlier in which an armed man had been talked down from a threatening situation, “and no one was injured or killed.”

A rabbi quoted a Jewish prayer from Deuteronomy, “Justice, justice shall you pursue . . .”

One of the leaders of a Muslim organization that promotes interfaith cooperation and understanding spoke of the message of peace which is central to Islam.

Signs were waved – they carried words and phrases like: Walk Humbly. All Lives Matter. Light Overcomes Darkness. – and – Imagine all the people living life in peace.

When the crowd disbursed, stepping out of the shadow of the City Hall steps and back into the summer sunshine, there was a demonstrable sense of light overcoming darkness. The word is that rallies and demonstrations for peace were taking place across the country on the same day. Out of them all, perhaps, will emerge a few seeds of justice and compassion to push back against the anger and hostility that has claimed every news cycle of recent months.

Because, as another widely quoted saying also heard from the rally lectern goes, You have to give them something to hope for.

Abortion/contraception/Feminist Collection/General interest/Health/Healthcare/Medicine/physicians/Reproductive rights/San Francisco/Supreme Court/Women

June 29, 2016October 8, 2021

Willie Parker vs Reproductive Oppression

by Fran Johns

“The Racialization of Abortion,” Willie Parker titled his talk; “A Dirty Jedi Mind Trick.” He then spent about 45 lively, provocative minutes elaborating on the theme.

The occasion was a recent Grand Rounds presentation at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, where he addressed a standing-room-only crowd of (mostly) young interns for an event that more commonly draws a smattering of attendees. But when Willie Parker comes to town, it’s a good idea to bring in extra chairs. Parker is an African American physician, a provider of abortion and reproductive health services to women who would otherwise be denied them, current board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Health, a ferocious defender of women’s rights and fearless citizen. He is also this writer’s personal hero.

Parker explained in his opening remarks that his “is heart work and head work. Dr. Martin Luther King said the heart can’t be right if the head is wrong. (King) also said we have guided missiles and misguided people.” On the podium, delivering a rapid-fire lecture in behalf of reproductive justice, Parker is akin to a guided missile consisting of equal parts passion, outrage and statistics. The youngest of six children whose mother sent them to church three times a week, he speaks with the cadence and conviction born of those roots.

“There are over six million pregnancies per year in the U.S.,” he says. “Half of them are unintended. Of the unintended pregnancies, half end in births; half in abortions. One in three women under 45 will have an abortion. While unintended pregnancies have fallen among the upper classes, they have increased 29% among the poor. Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately likely to have unintended pregnancies…”

And it is at this point that Parker’s inner preacher takes over. “People,” he says, “we’re gonna get ugly for Jesus.” It is his challenge to those who attack him, most often fundamentalist Christians, for protecting the reproductive rights of his mostly young, Black clients. Often they also accuse him of participating in “Black genocide.” It is this myth — that abortion is a government plot to eradicate the Black race – that leads to the Dirty Jedi Mind Trick theme.

“It is epidemiological mischief,” he explains. “They take data, put a spin on it that is not intended, and then start a ‘call-and-response’: You have white people saying abortion is racist, getting Black people to say Amen. They can put a cultural war in your framework. It’s important that we recognize the significance of this message, and debunk it.”

In addition to the epidemiological mischief there are outright lies. Former presidential candidate Herman Cain, an African American Tea Party Republican, said in one speech that 75% of abortion clinics were in Black neighborhoods, to encourage African American women not to have children. Parker says the correct figure, according to the Guttmacher Institute, is 9%.

“At its core,” Parker says of these efforts, “it is patriarchal and insulting. They assume a woman is not capable of making her own decisions about her own body.”

What’s needed now, to combat all this, Parker says, “is a new framework, to define this community problem as Reproductive Oppressionon. Reproductive oppression is the control and exploitation of women and girls and individuals through our bodies.” Parker cites the long history of reproductive oppression that includes “forced breeding during slavery, sterilizations, and human experimentation on Puerto Rican women for the contraceptive pill.

“Current examples of reproductive oppression,” he says, “include limiting access to reproductive healthcare, family caps in welfare, and federal and state laws restricting access to abortion.”

But there is hope. Parker cites Atlanta-based SisterSong and its formidable co-founder Loretta Ross as embodying the principals of reproductive justice. Parker lists these as:

1 – Every woman has the right to decide when to have children.

2 – Every woman has the right to decide if she will not have a child.

3 – Women and families (deserve) the resources to parent the children they already have.

4 – Every human being has the right to primary sexual pleasure.

Anti-abortion forces would certainly argue against at least the first two. Parker’s message to the young interns was that it’s not just argument, but twisted myths and dirty tricks that are being used to deny those rights. He maintains it’s the responsibility of the medical community, among others, to stand up for women who are suffering from being denied, to fight against reproductive oppression.

In all likelihood, Willie Parker will keep right on leading that battle.

* * * *

(Read Dr. Parker’s statement on the recent Supreme Court ruling against restrictive Texas abortion laws: http://prh.org/)