Pro-life = Anti-woman/Anti-sex

Today I renewed my drivers license and while I was standing in line I was reading some interesting information. Did you know...

-- Every 13 minutes someone's name is added to the list of people who need an organ donation

-- 80,000 men, women and children are waiting for organs

-- Donating your organs can save the lives of 8 people and enhance the lives of 40 others.

So here's my question. In our "culture of life" why isn't organ donation mandatory? I mean, 18 people die every day waiting for transplants. (http://www.organdonor.gov/)

The pro-life movement practically foams at the mouth when talking about saving innocent lives. They are willing to take over a woman's body and strip her of her rights as a moral authority to make her own decisions. Pro-life advocates want to force women to carry a pregnancy to term under the guise that they care so much about life. How about the innocent men and women and children who die because people refuse to donate their organs? It's hard to understand why people are going into graves with perfectly healthy organs meanwhile someone somewhere is dying of kidney failure. That "life" is going to waste.

Organ donation happens after you die! You won't feel pain of surgery or suffer complications; absolutely nothing physically is going to happen to affect your health. Yet, women who are ALIVE are supposed to carry unwanted or unsafe pregnancies to term. And pregnancy affects a woman for 9 months-- 9 months that carry immense health risks and challenges, physically and mentally. For some it is a painful reminder of a violent attack. Others are reminded of a mistake that her community and family will always judge her for. Some women see a pregnancy as a serious, constant anxiety. They think, "How will I pay for another child?"

It isn't as if women can carry a pregnancy to term and be done. Then she has a child!!! Yet pro-lifers conveniently overlook this. Correction- they conveniently overlook the woman. This is all about a fetus. An unborn with a POTENTIAL for life that is being valued over the life of a female ALREADY BORN. Yet, when it comes to organ donation we tell people, "It's your choice, it's your body. You should be able to decide what happens to it." And this a decision that won't affect you physically. After all, you're dead, you don't need a kidney.

If pro-life zealots were really about "saving life," organ donation would also be a huge concern. So would ending war, and ending poverty that leads to malnourished children... Come on. This isn't about life; it's about punishing women and not giving them rights to their procreative power.

My ode to Buffy

Taking a break from the more serious posts, I thought I'd reflect on one of the series that I enjoy.

Some TV shows fight back and I think Buffy is one of them. The show is campy and certainly relies on most of the female leads being sexually attractive. But underneath blonde hair and short skirts, Buffy advances Feminism.

If you are discouraged by Hollywood images that seem to reinforce the 'female equals victim' mantra, 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' is a great anecdote At first glance, it's the usual fare…petite, perfect bone structure, blonde, young and very skimpy clothes. And it is all that, but so much more.

Buffy began airing on the WB in 1997 and continued its run to 2003. In those 7 years, it took a classic horror movie cliché (beautiful blonde girl foolishly goes into dark alley and is killed by scary monster) and turned it on its head… Beautiful blonde girl marches bravely into dark alley and kicks monster's ass.

I became a devoted fan of the series because of the humor, drama and also the message about the strength of women. The show teaches empowering lessons but is saved from being preachy. Buffy is a hero, but she's also three-dimensional. Creator Joss Whedon, does not set her up on a pedestal. She has weakness. For example, a disastrous taste in men (two out of three major relationships have been with vampires). And at times her powers make her arrogant and distant. All characters on the show are three-dimensional. They force us to face stereotypes society tries to force on both women and men. In the Buffy universe, not even demons are black and white.

Violence aside, the show taught me great lessons regarding not only feminism, but also friends, great loves, and conflict. The "demons" in Buffy aren't just scary looking, they represent our deepest fears. In season seven, Buffy fights "The First," the oldest evil of the world. It isn't a demon, but a ghostly apparition. It uses demons to attack Buffy and her friends, and appears under various guises to characters in the show, exposing their deepest fears and taunting them. For Buffy's younger sister, Dawn, it appears in the form of her dead mother, saying, "When it gets bad, Buffy will abandon you."

The First represents a society that wields power in the form of fear. It's the voice in Buffy's head, telling her she will fail and die because one girl isn't powerful enough to take on the world. When Buffy discovers that the First has no real weapons, just fear, she begins to regain control.

Buffy defeats the First in a powerful episode called "Chosen." Through a spell, she can finally share her mythical power as a slayer with the rest of the world. Every woman with the potential to fight is granted power. After seven seasons, the viewer sees Buffy transformed into a woman because she learned to believe and trust herself. And because of this transformation, she could teach others to do the same. By sharing power she became stronger and, finally, no longer alone.

Sometimes facing outer demons is easier than facing our own fears. This can be a great message for sexual assault survivors, domestic abuse survivors and women in general. Buffy never accepted that she was "just a girl," and neither should we. Even though we lack mythical super powers, it isn't really the physical strength that wins the battle in the end. It's strength of self, the will to go on and survive in the face of fear and overwhelming evil. The real heroes are those who are unwilling to back down to anyone who tells them they will fail.

Something else to watch

Here's a great story to check out about the trend of anti-war songs. You can hear part of Pink's song "Dear Mr. President" that I wrote about earlier.

Pro-Life Nation

An aboslute must read From the April 9th New York Times. (click and sign up for free registration and you can see the article)

This article is 14 pages long but will blow your mind. Here's a synopsis for those who don't have time to read it...

Author Jack Hitt takes an in-depth look at the abortion laws in El Salvador. Previously this country had laws similar to our own in America, where abortion could be used in severe circumstances or if early enough. Now abortion is a serious felony in El Salvador. Prison sentences can be as long as 30 years... not just for the doctor... FOR THE WOMAN.

The restrictions on abortion in El Salvador are simple. No abortion. PERIOD. Not in the case of rape, incest, fetal malformation, or life of the mother. This means when an ectopic pregnancy is discovered NOTHING CAN BE DONE!!--- (where a microscopic fertilized egg moves down the fallopian tube - which is no bigger around than a pencil- and gets stuck there or stuck in the abdomen). Take a moment and stop and think of what this means...

A microscopic fertilized egg that is caught in a fallopian tube can mean serious medical complications for a women, often it means death. As the egg grows and runs out of room, the tube ruptures, internal bleeding occurs. Operation is necessary to save a mother's life but in El Salvador the doctor must wait to operate until the egg shows signs of rupturing. So when a woman comes into the office with an ectopic pregnancy she is kept in the hospital where she will receive daily ultrasounds to check for rupturing. Once it starts rupturing-- THEN the operation can take place. But rupturing causes severe pain and can result in death.... SOMEONE EXPLAIN THE LOGIC?? Oh wait, there is none.

In El Salvador, they are serious about their ridiculous laws. They have whole teams of people to enforce them. Police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor’s office charged with capturing, trying and incarcerating women and the doctors or back-alley people who operate.

When El Salvador's law changed it was backed by strong grass-roots campaigning from conservatives and the church. Even Pope John Paul II visited Mexico City in 1999 urging "The church must proclaim the Gospel of life and speak out with prophetic force against the culture of death." I'm sorry but I consider keeping women in a hospital waiting for the fallopian tubes to rupture a WAY BIGGER culture of death.

This is serious business. I mean ARTICLE #1 of the constitution in El Salvador declares that the prime directive of government is to protect life from the "very moment of conception."

"The penal code detailing the Crimes Against the Life of Human Beings in the First Stages of Development provides stiff penalties: the abortion provider, whether a medical doctor or a back-alley practitioner, faces 6 to 12 years in prison. The woman herself can get 2 to 8 years. Anyone who helps her can get 2 to 5 years. Additionally, judges have ruled that if the fetus was viable, a charge of aggravated homicide can be brought, and the penalty for the woman can be 30 to 50 years in prison."

In case you are wondering, the judicial system in El Salvador determines that viability is when a fetus weighs more than a pound. A pound of fetus = way more important than a woman who may have been raped, or abused in incest, or afraid of a deformed or sick child....

Women in El Salvador have turned to clothes hangers, iron bars, high doses of contraceptives, fertilizers, gastritis remedies, soapy water and battery acid or ulcer pills to induce abortions. If these result in severe complications, women often die rather than visit a hospital.

But can you blame them?

If a woman goes to a hospital and it's suspected she's had an abortion, the investigation begins immediately. Women are handcuffed to hospital beds while their vagina is "searched as the scene of a crime" for evidence. If a botched abortion results in a hysterectomy, the uterus is saved as "evidence" for a criminal trial. A women's own uterus is used against her.

Police also interrogate relatives and neighbors of the woman. They visit the woman's place of business (if she has any, studies show many of these women are homemakers or very young) and ask co-workers and supervisors if they knew whether the woman was pregnant and whether she'd had an abortion. The law mandates that if a doctor finds signs of an abortion, they are required to turn the woman in -- confidentiality be damned.

There's so much more I could go on about. Obviously, this law affects primarily the poor women. Rich women in El Salvador still fly to Miami to get their abortions, or pay off trustworthy doctors for safe operations.

The scary thing is-- there are some in this country who wouldn't mind seeing this happen in the USA! Thomas J. Euteneuer, the head of Human Life International, based in Virginia said, "El Salvador is an inspiration, an important victory in the counterrevolution of conscience."

We can also fear this attitude in our own politicians. During an October 2004 show of "Meet the Press," host Tim Russert asked Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican representative to explain his position in favor of a total ban on all abortion procedures. DeMint said he thought Congress should outlaw all abortions first and worry about the fallout later. "We've got to make laws first that protect life," he said. "How those laws are shaped are going to be a long debate."

The fallout?? Like my life and the life and health of women everywhere? Where we have to die in a wave of blood at home because going to a hospital means being chained to the bed and examined and having our own uterus as evidence against us??

Don't be fooled! The religious right are not about protecting women or saving life. They are about trampling women's rights. Be very, very afraid.

I remember...

I wanted to make a short entry today to remember a fellow University student Dru Sjodin

April 17 is the day Dru came home after being found in a Minnesota ravine.

We must never forget Dru and the violence women suffer. I remind everyone that the National Coalition of Victims in Action (NCVIA) is urgently calling upon the United States Senate to pass S.1086, also known as the “Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act,” into law. This Act will allow states to maintain searchable, up-to-date sex offender website registries. It will also make the failure of released sex offenders to cooperate with registration and tracking of their whereabouts a felony.

Dru was a part of my school community. I grieve at the senseless loss of such a beautiful life when it could have been prevented.

Lost but not gone. We remember Dru.

A great CD

Just bought Pink's new CD I'm Not Dead

So far it's awesome. The song "Stupid Girls" has got a fair amount of airplay is a great feminist anthem.

But my new fave is Track 5 "Dear Mr. President" (click for GREAT lyrics)

Another funny/female rock anthem Track 9 "U + Ur Hand"
Great anthem for those guys at bars who think they're God's gift only to discover that -- tough luck, just cause they buy us a beer doesn't mean we have to take 'em home. Such a great song.
More coming soon.

Personally love Track 8 "Leave me Alone (I'm Lonely)"
I get it so much... how many times have I told my boyfriend to just go away all ready and then the minute he does, "Wait come back!"

All in all, Pink is a rockin' female vocalist and she has real guts behind some of these lyrics!

More coming soon...I have comments to publish etc but just got back from vacation.

Further proof

Why it's hard to prosecute rape

click for video