Roe v Wade Archives - Page 3 of 5

August 5, 2013

Sonia Sotomayor gets my vote

I am definitely voting for Sotomayor. Oh, wait, she’s not running for anything. That’s a pity.

A little late — since it’s already got 931 reader reviews on Amazon — I just got around to reading My Beloved World. it is a tale told incredibly well, with kindness, humor and self-analysis so clear and so unpretentious it must fill every one of her Jesuit instructors with pride and joy. It certainly fills the reader with joy. Sotomayor makes you proud to be on the same planet.

With almost everyone and every institution in Washington too painful to watch these days, at least the justices of the Supreme Court (with the notable exception of Clarence Thomas) seem to be working. Unfortunately, half of them are working in directions — think Citizens United — that are downright scary, but we have to hope that justice will prevail among the justices.

Anti-choice forces are racking up laws so blatantly unconstitutional there’s no doubt where they want to wind up: back before the Supreme Court in hopes of overturning Roe v Wade. And THAT’s scary. Because they clearly expect to win, and to send American women straight back to the dark ages.

I have a sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach about that prospect. I have no idea how any of the justices would vote. But because she radiates warmth and compassion and the brilliance of a gentle intellect, my vote would go to Sotomayor.

Do yourself a favor: pick up a copy of My Beloved World.

General interest

June 28, 2013

Hearing Wendy’s voice – & others

by Fran Johns

Mandatory pre-abortion waiting period laws in ... — Mandatory pre-abortion waiting period laws in the United States of America. Mainland U.S. edited from a 600px map by Jared Benedict at Libre Map Project and non-continental states from http://www.uscourts.gov/images/CircuitMapoutlined.eps by the United States Department of Justice. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gail Collins, in her traditionally precise prose, wound up a recent column on Wendy Davis‘ now historic filibuster in the Texas legislature thusly:

“A few years back, Davis told me about an incident during a debate when she had asked a veteran Republican a question about a pending bill. Dodging her query, he said: “I have trouble hearing women’s voices.”

“I guess they can hear her now.”

Amen.

There’s something about hearing women’s voices that can make men, especially men who would like to tell women what they can or cannot do with their own bodies, too uncomfortable to listen.

In one poignant story included in my new book Perilous Times: An inside look at abortion before – and after – Roe v Wade (plug intended) Karen Mulhauser tells of the time when she testified before a congressional committee about being brutally raped in her home. She was trying to make the point that had a pregnancy resulted she would not have wanted it to continue. But Congressman Ed Patten (who died at 89 in 1994, after serving 17 years in Congress) “appeared to be asleep.” Representative Silvio Conte (1921-1991; then a Republican from Massachusetts) turned his swivel chair away from her to face the wall. Mulhauser, former head of NARAL Pro-Choice and current chair of Women’s Information Network, was angered — but not silenced.

Some voices, those of women without resources who are facing unwanted pregnancies in states where safe abortion is de facto impossible, are going unheard. And those women are doing desperate things.

But it is for them that Wendy Davis, and Karen Mulhauser, and every woman and man who believes in a woman’s right to choose, is raising her own voice of encouragement and support. And those voices will be heard.

General interest

June 13, 2013

Rape doesn’t cause pregnancy? Excuse me?

by Fran Johns

Well, according to Rep. Trent Franks, the incidence of pregnancy resulting from rape is negligible, so probably we don’t need to consider allowing abortion when rape or incest is involved. Franks is not big on considering women at all, or the issues women face.

Franks would have us consider only the fetus. His Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, currently being discussed by himself and a lot of mostly men in Washington, would ban abortion after 22 weeks.

Franks was himself unborn when I became pregnant after an incidence of workplace rape. Such occurrences are probably less common today, progress having been made in workplace protection since 1958. But I would be willing to bet they still happen. I wonder if Franks cares. I wonder if he has heard about sexual abuses in the military? Or unreported date rape? They happen; unintended pregnancies happen. I wonder if Franks is able to get his mind around the fact that there is a woman before there is a zygote?

I appreciate Franks’ concern with the unborn; I just want him to consider the already-born. They are real, live women facing difficult, complex issues that no one — NO ONE — could possibly understand but they themselves.

Abortion is a difficult and complex issue. I personally wish it would never be necessary. But for Franks and his fellow ideologues to inch it back toward criminalization, as they would like, is a violation of the basic rights of the women whose existence they prefer to ignore.

General interest

June 5, 2013

Sad (abortion) stories; happy endings

by Fran Johns

“Beatriz,” as the 22-year-old pregnant woman in El Salvador was known, has now been delivered of a fetus that could not have lived. Beatriz is fine. She could have lost her life had the pregnancy continued. In another story out of El Salvador, the physician attending another Salvadoran woman named Melanie speaks of having performed an abortion to end Melanie’s 8+-week ectopic pregnancy, and Melanie says she was never worried about losing her life.

But the reality is that politics and religion control the issue of abortion in El Salvador; the woman and her physician are shuttled pretty far aside. (Melanie’s physician describes herself as “deeply religious.” She apparently has some coincidental belief that allows her to perform abortions when necessary.) Down near the end of these stories are statistics about the number of women and physicians who have been convicted of the crime of abortion. There are not a lot of them; but if you were one of them it can’t be good news.

The U.S. is happily not El Salvador. But there are certainly plenty of politicians, and not a few religiously motivated others, who seek to criminalize abortion. It is, in their view, morally wrong under any circumstance.

My question is: Who knew best what should be done in the above cases? The El Salvadoran government? The Catholic church? Or perhaps Beatriz, Melanie and their physicians? Who knows better than the woman and her physician in the U.S.?

Sometimes, only personal stories tell truth.

(Unpaid plug: there are a lot of personal stories in my new book, Perilous Times: An inside look at abortion before – and after – Roe v Wade. You’re invited to consider them and I welcome your thoughts.)

General interest

April 13, 2013

Re-emerging into the cyberforest

by Fran Johns

If a blog tree falls in the forest of cyberspace, does it make a noise? Probably not. Cyberspace may not even notice – which is a good thing.

A few months ago this blogger fell into the depths of downsizing purgatory: clearing out, packing up, moving house, selling house, the whole catastrophe. The goal was to move myself and mobility-limited husband out of the four-story Edwardian house he bought in 1973 and into a 1600-square-foot condo. This might have been easier if the good husband had ever disposed of ANYthing in those 40 years. Or if he had not celebrated the move by falling and winding up wheelchair bound two days post move, but here we are. Felled, like a couple of Monterey pines.

That’s the end of my tale of woe, until I start a new book on downsizing. (PS, the actual new book: Perilous Times: An inside look at abortion before – and after – Roe v Wade will be out, from YBK Publishers, on May 20!)

It seems that cyberspace got along just fine without a word from this corner. For all I can tell, even Facebook and Twitter got along without me, a downed blogger not even posting or liking or tweeting into the void.

But back in the more or less real world now there is plenty to be blogging or posting or kvetching about: serious stuff like small victories in end-of-life rights or egregious losses in reproductive rights; ridiculous stuff like women having foot surgery so they can wear fashionable shoes; and utterly incomprehensible stuff like the Winklevoss twins and their bitcoins . Since every one of these is of concern to boomers and beyonders, this blogger now looks forward to resuming occasional comments, a sort of one-tree revival in the cyberforest. Tree-huggers will always be welcome.

General interest

October 23, 2012

Justice O’Connor still has opinions

by Fran Johns

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, speaking at a sold-out event in San Francisco October 22, aimed the bulk of her remarks at the school children and law students in the balconies: study hard, keep your eyes and ears open, and spend a lot of time at iCivics.

Founded by O’Connor in 2009, iCivics is designed “to reverse Americans’ declining civic knowledge and participation” and keep democracy secure by educating and enlightening the next generation, and the groundbreaking justice means to get this done.

In addition to plugging what is clearly her primary passion, O’Connor got around to a few other issues dear to her heart, such as states that elect their judges to federal courts. “Which means they have to campaign,” she noted. “Campaigns cost money. Guess who contributes campaign money? The lawyers who will appear before those judges.” Bad idea. Admitting that California is one of those states, moderator Mary Bitterman said, “I guess we should look into that.” “Yes, you should,” O’Connor shot back.

Dozens of audience questions concerned the Supreme Court, past (Citizens United,) present and future. Could she envision an all-female court some day? “Certainly.” But for the most part she declined to comment on decisions, or speculate on the future as it relates to details like the Republican commitment to overturning Roe v Wade.

So this report can only direct readers to iCivics, a fine spot indeed. Games will teach you about juries, voting, balance of power — citizenship. It’s designed for students of all ages, with special pages for teachers, and it’s perfectly OK for adults, O’Connor remarked, “if you’re a dum dum.” Whereupon I visited the site, played a couple of games, learned a little more about democracy.

Retired, perhaps, but Justice O’Connor is in no way retiring. May she live long and prosper.

General interest

October 10, 2012

Mothers, daughters & Gloria Steinem

by Fran Johns

The big guns, gender-neutrally speaking, were all out at the recent DCCC Women’s Power Lunch in San Francisco: former (and this crowd hopes future) Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, an assortment of other House members including Congresswomen Barbara Lee and Jackie Speier, honoree Nan Tucker McEvoy and most of everyone who is anyone progressive in Northern California. But MC Gloria Steinem, 78 and proud of it (and looking pretty darned good to this 79-year-old) was still the star.

Steinem spoke with characteristic vigor about women’s rights currently very much in jeopardy, suggesting that many of the country’s economic issues could be solved simply by raising women’s pay to the level of men’s, and that fixing other inequities wouldn’t be a bad idea either. She also homed in on the Republican pledge to overturn both Obamacare and Roe v Wade. If a constitutional amendment were passed declaring the fertilized egg a “person” with full rights, Steinem said, women would not only lose their own rights but face serious endangerment. Such as: a pregnant woman thought to be inclined toward trying to abort could be physically restrained through the remainder of her pregnancy.

In a few poignant moments Steinem spoke to the largely female audience of the special relationships among women — mothers and daughters, sisters, grandchildren. “We are living the lives our mothers coul

d not,” she said, and working to protect the lives of our daughters and granddaughters.

I feel certain that my gentle, righteous mother would not have supported for a moment my being forced to continue an unplanned pregnancy and bring an unwanted child into the world. I hope, partly through my support for women’s rights, my granddaughters will have the right to make their own safe choices.

General interest

August 31, 2012

Immortality in the ethernet

by Fran Johns

Is it possible ever to die in cyberspace?

I was recently urged by Facebook to do something obtuse because my friend Josephine (pseudonymed for very good reason here) is doing it and knows I will love it. Hmm. There’s just one small problem here: Josephine has been dead for well over a year. You’d think Facebook might have noticed.

Yet, there she is, smiling her gentle smile, alive and welcoming to the Facebook friends who surely wish it were so. What to do? Ask her daughters to wipe their mom off the pages of the Facebook planet? Bookmark the page for the cheer it brings? Or try to ignore it lest it become spooky like those answering machine voices out of the past? I’m still pondering.

On the other hand, I more or less died to the cyberworld myself about six weeks ago. This was not an intentional — or even dignified — death. As a matter of fact, I had contracted not that long ago with my very alive, cyber-efficient friend Ryan to help me close my Blogspot page, fancy up this one, figure out all these widgety details and generally add interest and gravitas to my presence in cyberspace. For a while, progress was made toward all that. But life, and a manuscript, intervened.

Having promised the manuscript of my one-day book Perilous Times: An inside look at abortion before — and after Roe v Wade to the nice folks at YBK Publshing by September 1, I suddenly, seriously needed to finish the thing. And the only way I could figure out how to accomplish such a feat — we’re talking 1,500 words a day with a few last-minute interviews tossed in — was just to drop out of cyberspace and into computerland until it was done. So my long-dormant Blogspot blog, some day destined to die, and the fits & starts of this WordPress incarnation of Boomers & Beyond have been hanging out, forlorn and ignored, lo these many weeks.

This sorry state of affairs is at least not quite as bad as the state of my late lamented paid gig with True/Slant.com. My True/Slant page has been hanging, frozen, in space ever since Forbes bought the site & I declined to write for Forbes (full disclosure: they weren’t begging me anyway) more than two years ago. It’s confounding at best to try to do anything (“Follow me” indeed) or go anywhere else on True/Slant; that page is dying an undignified death indeed. Not to mention the fact that anyone stumbling across it could reasonably think, “Poor dear, she hasn’t had a new thought in 782 days”…. since the only thing moving on the page is the tabulator that says how many days it’s been since this post.

The manuscript is done. The book will happen. Life has resumed. And this page will now get back to the business of offering thoughts about life, health and the pursuit of justice of interest to boomers, post-boomers and perhaps miscellaneous others. Thanks for dropping by.