Because America Has Suffered Enough...

To spare us the misery of watching Republican candidates all day today, Barack Obama gives a press conference. He's so considerate.



On Iran:

My policy is not containment, my policy is to prevent them getting a nuclear weapon.

That's my track record. Now, what's said on the campaign trail? You know, those folks don't have a lot of responsibilities. They're not Commander in Chief. And when I see the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war, I am reminded of the costs involved in war. I'm reminded of the decision that I have to make in terms of sending our young men and women into battle. And the impact it has on their lives, the impact it has on national security. The impact it has on our economy. This is not a game. There's nothing casual about it. And when I see some of these folks who have a lto of bluster and a lot of big talk. But when you actually ask them specifically what they would do, it turns out they repeat a lot of the things that we've been doing over the last three years.

It indicates to me that that’s more about politics than trying to solve a problem. Now one thing we have not done is we haven’t launched a war. If some of these folks think it’s time to launch a war then they should say so and explain to the American people exactly why they would do that and what the consequences would be. Everything else is just talk.

Take that, warmongers!

On Rush Limbaugh and the Sandra Fluke Controversy:

I don’t know what’s in Rush Limbaugh’s heart, so I’m not going to comment on the sincerity of his apology. What I can comment on is the fact that all decent folks can agree that the remarks that were made don’t have any place in the public discourse. And the reason I called Ms. Flute is because I thought about Malia and Sasha and one of the things I want them to do as they get older is to engage in issues they care about. Even ones I may not agree with them on. I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way. And I don’t want them attacked or called horrible names because they’re being good citizens. And I wanted Sandra to know that I thought her parents should be proud of her.

And that we want to send a message to all our young people that being part of a democracy involves arguments and disagreements and debate. And we want you to be engaged. And there’s a way to do it that doesn’t involve you being demeaned and insulted, particularly when you’re a private citizen.

On whether Republicans are waging a "war on women":

Women are going to make up their own mind in this election about who is advancing the issues that they care most deeply about. One of the things I’ve learned being married to Michelle, is I don’t need to tell her what it is that she thinks is important. And there are millions of strong women around the country who are going to make their own determination about a whole range of issue.

It’s not going to be narrowly focused just on contraception. It’s not going to be driven by one statement by one radio announcer. It is going to be driven by their view of what’s most likely to make sure they can help support their families, make their mortgage payments, who’s got a plan to ensure that middle class families are secure over the long term, what’s most likely to result in their kids being able to get the education they need to compete.

And I believe that Democrats have a better story to tell to women about how we’re going to solidify the middle class and grow this economy, make sure everybody has a fair shot, everybody’s doing their fair share, and we got a fair set of rules of the road that everybody has to follow. 

On immigration reform:

Well, first of all just substantively, every American should want immigration reform. We’ve got a system that’s broken. We’ve got a system in which you have millions of families here in this country who are living in the shadows, worried about deportation. You’ve got American workers that are being undercut because those undocumented workers can be hired and the minimum wage laws may not be observed; overtime laws may not be observed.

You’ve got incredibly talented people who want to start businesses in this country or to work in this country. And we should want those folks here in the United States, but right now the legal immigration system is so tangled up that it becomes very difficult for them to put down roots here. So we can be a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. And it is not just a Hispanic issue. This is an issue for everybody. This is an American issue that we need to fix.

Now, when I came into office, I said, “I am going to push to get this done.” We didn’t get it done. And the reason we haven’t gotten it done is because what used to be a bipartisan agreement that we should fix this ended up becoming a partisan issue. I give a lot of credit to my predecessor, George Bush, and his political advisers who said, you know, “This should not be just something the Democrats support; the Republican Party is invested in this as well.”

Unfortunately, too often Republicans seemt o only be invested in exploiting immigration fears to fire up their base. That's why  polls today show that Latino voters are currently supporting President Obama by an astonishing margin of 70% compared to 13% (!) support for the GOP.

You know, it's refreshing amidst the Republican hullaballoo to take some time and watch a President who is smart, thoughtful, and humane.

Also, I love this:

The Attempt to Terrorise Sandra Fluke - and All Women

If you've been following US news, you will be aware that yesterday President Obama placed a call to offer his support to Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University law student who testified last week about access to birth control for women. We'll talk in a moment about the horrific things that were said about Sandra that appalled so many of us, including the President. But before we do I want to give Fluke's original testimony the prominence that it deserves. Please watch:


For those of you who can't watch videos, or who would rather scan text - the full transcript of what she had to say is below:

“My name is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third-year student at Georgetown Law School. I’m also a past-president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. And I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them so much for being here today.

 (Applause)

 “We, as Georgetown LSRJ, are here today because we’re so grateful that this regulation implements the non-partisan medical advice of the Institute of Medicine.

 “I attend a Jesuit law school that does not provide contraceptive coverage in its student health plan. And just as we students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens as a result, employees at religiously-affiliated hospitals and institutions and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens.

 “We are all grateful for the new regulation that will meet the critical health care needs of so many women.

 “Simultaneously, the recently announced adjustment addresses any potential conflict with the religious identity of Catholic or Jesuit institutions.

 “When I look around my campus, I see the faces of the women affected by this lack of contraceptive coverage.

 “And especially in the last week, I have heard more and more of their stories. On a daily basis, I hear yet from another woman from Georgetown or from another school or who works for a religiously-affiliated employer, and they tell me that they have suffered financially and emotionally and medically because of this lack of coverage.

 “And so, I’m here today to share their voices, and I want to thank you for allowing them – not me – to be heard.

 “Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. 40% of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggle financially as a result of this policy.

“One told us about how embarrassed and just powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter and learned for the first time that contraception was not covered on her insurance and she had to turn and walk away because she couldn’t afford that prescription. Women like her have no choice but to go without contraception.

 “Just last week, a married female student told me that she had to stop using contraception because she and her husband just couldn’t fit it into their budget anymore. Women employed in low-wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice.

 “And some might respond that contraception is accessible in lots of other ways. Unfortunately, that’s just not true.

 “Women’s health clinic provide a vital medical service, but as the Guttmacher Institute has definitely documented, these clinics are unable to meet the crushing demand for these services. Clinics are closing, and women are being forced to go without the medical care they need.

 “How can Congress consider the [Rep. Jeff] Fortenberry (R-Neb.), [Sen. Marco] Rubio (R-Fla.) and [Sen. Roy] Blunt (R-Mo.) legislation to allow even more employers and institutions to refuse contraception coverage and then respond that the non-profit clinics should step up to take care of the resulting medical crisis, particularly when so many legislators are attempting to de-fund those very same clinics?

 “These denial of contraceptive coverage impact real people.

 “In the worst cases, women who need these medications for other medical conditions suffer very dire consequences.

 “A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome, and she has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown’s insurance because it’s not intended to prevent pregnancy.

 “Unfortunately, under many religious institutions and insurance plans, it wouldn’t be. There would be no exception for other medical needs. And under Sen. Blunt’s amendment, Sen. Rubio’s bill or Rep. Fortenberry’s bill there’s no requirement that such an exception be made for these medical needs.

 “When this exception does exist, these exceptions don’t accomplish their well-intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers rather than women and their doctors dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, women’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.

 “In 65% of the cases at our school, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed prescription and whether they were lying about their symptoms.

 “For my friend and 20% of the women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription. Despite verifications of her illness from her doctor, her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay. So clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her.

 “After months paying over $100 out-of-pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore, and she had to stop taking it.

 “I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of the night in her final exam period she’d been in the emergency room. She’d been there all night in just terrible, excruciating pain. She wrote to me, ‘It was so painful I woke up thinking I’ve been shot.’

 “Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary as a result.

 “On the morning I was originally scheduled to give this testimony, she was sitting in a doctor’s office, trying to cope with the consequences of this medical catastrophe.

 “Since last year’s surgery, she’s been experiencing night sweats and weight gain and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of the removal of her ovary. She’s 32-years-old.

 “As she put it, ‘If my body indeed does enter early menopause, no fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own children. I will have no choice at giving my mother her desperately desired grandbabies simply because the insurance policy that I paid for, totally unsubsidized by my school, wouldn’t cover my prescription for birth control when I needed it.’

 “Now, in addition to potentially facing the health complications that come with having menopause at such an early age – increased risk of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis – she may never be able to conceive a child.

“Some may say that my friend’s tragic story is rare. It’s not. I wish it were

 “One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but that can’t be proven without surgery. So the insurance has not been willing to cover her medication – the contraception she needs to treat her endometriosis.

 “Recently, another woman told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she’s struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified to not have access to it.

“Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medications since last August.

 “I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously.

 “Because this is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends: A woman’s reproductive health care isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority.

 “One woman told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered on the insurance and she assumed that that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handle all of women’s reproductive and sexual health care. So when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor, even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections, because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that – something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health.

 “As one other student put it: ‘This policy communicates to female students that our school doesn’t understand our needs.’

 “These are not feelings that male fellow student experience and they’re not burdens that male students must shoulder.

 “In the media lately, some conservative Catholic organizations have been asking what did we expect when we enroll in a Catholic school?

 “We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success.

 “We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of ‘cura personalis‘ – to care for the whole person – by meeting all of our medical needs.

 “We expected that when we told our universities of the problem this policy created for us as students, they would help us.

 “We expected that when 94% of students oppose the policy the university would respect our choices regarding insurance students pay for – completely unsubsidized by the university.

“We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that we should have gone to school elsewhere.

 "And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health. And we resent that in the 21st century, anyone think it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.

 “Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared today are Catholic women. So ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for the access to the health care we need.

 “The President of the Association of Jesuit Colleges has shared that Jesuit colleges and the universities appreciate the modifications to the rule announced recently. Religious concerns are addressed and women get the health care they need. And I sincerely hope that that is something we can all agree upon.

 “Thank you very much.”

 Ok.

Now, the sad duty before me is to report what has been said about Sandra by right wing extremist radio host Rush Limbaugh. The below is pretty explicit and offensive, so stop reading now if your stomach turns easily.

"A Georgetown co-ed told Rep. Nancy Pelosi's hearing that the women in her law school program are having so much sex that they're going broke, so you and I should pay for their birth control. Speaking at a hearing held by Pelosi to tout Pres. Obama's mandate that virtually every health insurance plan cover the full cost of contraception and abortion-inducing products, Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke said that it's too expensive to have sex in law school without mandated insurance coverage. Apparently, four out of every ten co-eds are having so much sex that it's hard to make ends meet if they have to pay for their own contraception, Fluke's research shows."

Can you imagine if you're her parents how proud of Sandra Fluke you would be? Your daughter goes up to a congressional hearing conducted by the Botox-filled Nancy Pelosi and testifies she's having so much sex she can't afford her own birth control pills and she agrees that Obama should provide them, or the Pope. "'Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy (Georgetown student insurance not covering contraception), Fluke reported. It costs a female student $3,000 to have protected sex over the course of her three-year stint in law school, according to her calculations.

"'Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school,' Fluke told the hearing. $3,000 for birth control in three years? That's a thousand dollars a year of sex -- and, she wants us to pay for it." ...

What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps. (interruption) The johns? We would be the johns? No! We're not the johns. (interruption) Yeah, that's right. Pimp's not the right word. Okay, so she's not a slut. She's "round heeled." I take it back.

And despite the furore over his remarks, Limbaugh continued his attacks on Fluke in the following day's program:

This is about expanding the reach and power of government into your womb, if you're a woman. This is about the Democrat Party wanting more and more control over you. What was early feminism all about? Emancipation, individuality, freedom, liberation, all of these things. Now here comes Danica Patrick out and she says, "I'm perfectly comfortable letting the government make my health decisions for me." Well, folks, I'm gonna tell you: Right there, that's the death and the end of feminism.

When Danica Patrick can come out and say (paraphrased), "Oh, I'm perfectly fine with the government making these health care decisions for me," and that's feminism? I don't want to make these decisions! Nobody is denying Ms. Fluke her birth control pills. Ms. Fluke is approaching everybody and asking us to pay for them.

 Argh. Excuse me while I go wash my hands now. I feel dirty after quoting that.

OK. So, there are a number of things going on here, most of which are obvious, but just in case anyone is missing them, let me spell out clearly the many ways in which not only Rush, but the many other right wing commentators who have discussed this issue have gotten falt out wrong. (Leaving aside the gratuitous cruelty.)

1) This is not about sexual promiscuity. As Fluke's testimony makes clear, many women take birth control on the advice of their doctors for reasons other than contraception. And even for those who are using birth control primarily to prevent pregnancy (not that there's a damn thing wrong with that, by the way!) the overwhelming majority are married or in permanent exclusive relationships and are seeking to plan when of if they have their children.

2) Birth control costs are unrelated to sexual promiscuity. Rush seems to misunderstand this basic fact, but for the record: the cost of the pill is the same each month whether you're having sex multiple times a day, rarely, or not at all. In fact, because women't bodies take some time to adjust to the hormonal balance women are generally advised to stay on the pill consistently even if they go through a period in which they do not expect to be having sex

3) Sandra Fluke's sex life is not up for discussion here. You will notice that at no point in her testimony did she refer to her own sex life or relationship status. She spoke as a representative of other women and on behalf of an organisation, Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice. We don't even know from this testimony whether Fluke herself uses birth control, is in a relationship, or is sexually active. She testified about a medical issue, siting the xperiences of other people who have been affected by it. And for her trouble she was called "slut" and "prostitute".

4) This testimony could have been given by a man. The great irony here is that when Fluke was originally denied the right to speak at the Republican-led hearing on this issue, the headlines at the time referred to the fact that this meant no women were testifying about this issue of women's health. I agree it's profoundly important to hear the voices of women about the issues that affect women. But in Fluke's case, almost nothing she said could not equally have been given as testimony by a man. But had the person testifying been male, no one could have called him slutty or suggested that his parents should be ashamed of him.

5) No-one is asking you or the government to pay for my birth control. Limbaugh's basic premise is that the free birth control provision amounts  to some sort of new welfare entitelement for women. But it's important to stress that President Obama's birth control mandate will not cost one additional dime of the taxpayers money or any additional contribution from health insurers. Offering complimentary birth control to all reduces the overal costs for insurers - thus they actually save money by providing this service. Just as other preventative health care measures (stop smoking programs, pap smears etc.) save insurers money. And they do so not only by reducing unwanted pregancies, but also by preventing medical ailments such as the one suffered by Fluke's friend. In fact, that story makes very clear how this circumstance works - free birth control pills could have prevented the formation of the cyst which eventually caused an expensive surgery followed by lifelong treatment.

So, Rush Limbaugh has literally got every single relevant fact in this situation dead wrong.

But there's something else going on here, that we need to all be aware of. Rush will pay the price for his out of order comments - already, 5 advertisers have announced that they are withdrawing their sponsorship from the show. Republican candidates have started to play the awkward Dance of Disassociation (Rick Santorum, weakly, says that what Rush said was "Ridiculous." But, ya know, he's an "entertainer" so he gets to say these things. Because gratuitous, content free personal insults are a LAUGH RIOT!) and the right wing effort in Congress to overturn the President's good work on contraceptive cover has failed.

So, no harm no foul, right? Wrong. Because, as with terrorist suicide bombings the success is not judged by the damage done to the perpetrator but by the terror imposed on the population.

Speaking up for access to birth control, or women't reproductive freedom in general, is often difficult. Like many women, I believe that my decisions about family planning and my health are private and personal, and I prefer not to discuss them publically. I have had problems in the past (in fact, I still have problems) with access to family planning services being severely constrained. And I feel a certain sense of guilt about this - that I ought to be speaking up more about this, confronting the local Catholic doctor who refuses to allow any of the 25+ doctors in his practice to prescribe birth control, complaining to the Local Council about the overcrowded, understaffed birth control clinic 2 miles away from me that is the only access women in my neighborhood have to family planning services. People are shocked by this. But BY GOD I don't want to be the public face of birth control advocacy. What happened to Sandra Fluke is exactly what in my worst nightmares I imagine might happen to me.

It takes bravery to speak up about this. Rush's attack was designed to quash that bravery in millions of women. He may well succeed. This is terrorism, pure and simple.

Cheer for Your Rapist: The case for empathy on the courts

In one of the most horrific stories of the justice system that I have ever encountered, a Texas teeneage who was kicked of the cheerleading team after refusing to chant the name of her rapist was ordered to pay $45,000 in legal fees to the school as punishment for the "frivolity" of her suit to have this decision overturned.

This week, the Supreme Court announced that they would not hear the case, so the judgement will stand.

Let's all pause a moment to say: WTF?!

Here are the fuller details:

According to court documents, H.S. was 16 when she was raped at a house party by one of her school’s star athletes, Rakheem Bolton. Bolton was arrested, but by pleading guilty to misdemeanor assault, he received a reduced sentence of probation and community service. Bolton was allowed to return to school and resume his place on the basketball team. Four months later, H.S. was cheering with her squad at a game when Bolton lined up to take a free throw. The squad wanted to do a cheer that included his name, but H.S. refused, choosing instead to stand silently with her arms folded.

“I didn’t want to have to say his name and I didn’t want to cheer for him,” she later told reporters. “I just didn’t want to encourage anything he was doing.”

Several school officials of the “sports obsessed” small town took issue with H.S.’s silence, and ordered her to cheer for Bolton. When H.S. refused again, she was expelled from the cheerleading squad. Her family decided to sue school officials and the district. Their lawyer argued that H.S.’s right to exercise free expression had been violated and that students shouldn’t be punished for not complying with “insensitive and unreasonable directions.”

Now there a bunch of things that I want to say about this - including why on earth the school district chose to pursue this throught he courts rather than just letting her back on the team. My preferred solution would have been that the rapist himself be expelled or at least forced to transfer schools or at VERY least kicked off the basketball team. Because, um, hello, he RAPED A CHEERLEADER. Maybe he doesn't so much deserved to get cheered for by... anyone at all?

But I'd actually like to take a step back and use this incident to revisit the conversation about the role of empahty in the Court system. If you remember way back in August of 2009, when the Senate was preparing to vote on the nomination of now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, there was something of a mini-kerfuffle in which the right stirred up a storm of protest over President Obama's declared preference for a Justice who would have empathy and life experience to round out the Court. Commentators chose to huff and puff about  this as if it were somehow a bizarre notion that judges are influenced by their experience. In point of fact, I anyone who pauses for a moment to reflect should realise that there is always a role for discreition in the application of the law - and even more so in the application of justice.

And this case is a classic example of what this means. Any application of the law has to take into account what is reasonable, proportional and fair. The freedom of speech that this student is asking for is so incredibly small - remember, she doesn't want the right to refuse to cheer for the team, or to boo her assailant as he struts up to the free throw line, just to stand silently and not chant his name while he shoots.

And her reasons for wanting that are so manifestly fair and reasonable, so big in relation to the smallness of her personal response - just to not cheer for a few seconds - that the application of the law in this way seems to most of us gratuitiously cruel.
But is the Appeals court wrong, on a hard reading of the law. Well, probably not in fact. If you extrapolate from this case - imagine a student landing the lead in the school play but refusing to speak any of her lines because she's offended by the play. Well, the school would have the right to replace her. It is true that sometimes when a student speaks in a school setting, as when an employee speaks in a work setting she is representing the school not herself.

But the law shouldn't be applied like a blunt instrument. Judges should have some ability to understand that there are many sides to every case that comes before them, and unless they can put themselves in the shoes of both parties to a dispute their judgements, however technically accurate will always be wrong in any meaningful sense. There will always be a disappointed party in any dispute, and often the disappointed party will have good reasoning on their side and will have been hard done by themselves. Only through leavening our justice with some sensitivity do we stand any hope of being fair to everyone concerned. My personal belief is that in free speech cases, we should err on the side of upholding the rights of the individual to speak wherever reasonable as preferred over the right of an institution (such as a school) to... ummm... force students to publicly celebrate violent sexual criminals. (Sorry, still having trouble getting my head around this one... Failure of empathy on my part for the rapist duly noted - I'll work on that. Well, not much, really. But I'm not a judge to it's OK.)

In this case, I think the Court's decision to uphold the school's decision was wrong on it's face - though arguable under the law. But calling her suite frivolous and demanding her family pay $45,000 in legal costs is a spectacular failure of judgement.

When I first started writing this post, I didn't know the gender breakdown of the 5th circuit court, which made this ruling. Having looked it up now, the 3 judges in question were Emilio Garza, Edith Clement and Priscilla Owen. Two women and one man. The first two were shortlisted by George W. Bush for Supreme Court seats.

Appalling from start to finish.

And finally, can I just say that I would never allow a daughter of mine to attend that Texas High School. Shouldn't other parents express some outrage here?

I am woman. Hear me scream.

Today is International Women's Day, and in honor of the more than half the population who still don't earn equal pay, who often don't feel safe in the simple act of walking down the street at night, who face stigma and blame for every sexual decision they make from saying no to saying yes, from wanting a child when their boss wishes they wouldn't to not wanting one when politicians think they should: This post is just about outright feminist anger.

Because most of the time, I'm not really motivated by anger. Mostly, I feel lucky. As recently as my mother's generation, my choices would have either been much more constrained or I would have had to fight for them tooth and nail. Sexism is real, and present, but I don't experience it as a constraining factor in my day to day life in meaningful ways.

But that sense - that perceived experience - is wrong. We still live in a world where our leaders can think it might be a smart political strategy at the earliest opportunity to:

• Redefine rape to exclude the kind that isn't, ya know, REALLY rape. (charming)
• Strip all funding from Planned Parenthood, to ensure women don't get access to frivolous luxuries like cancer screaning, birth control, STD treatment and pregnancy tests
• Listen to the "testimony" of foetuses, but NOT of women on the issue of abortion rights
• And, of course, ensure that women who have been systematically discriminated against don't get any uppity notions about acheiving justice.

Equality is still something we have to fight for, and even us raging feminists are sometimes guilty of unwittingly perpetuating the assumptions that make us unequal.

So, today I'd like to raise a glass to the heroic women of the past and of the here and now who have been willing to face being laughed at, yelled at, abused, insulted and injured just because they aren't willing to lie back and take it.

And speaking of not taking things lying down - here's a video, shared widely and mentioned with approval by lots of folks who work with me in the world of social media. They think it's fabulous.



I hated it. Why? Simple:

I like beer. I like hugs. I like Facebook. Indeed, most Facebook users and huggers are female, and I suspect a pretty hefty constituency of the beer drinkers are too. But we are not being thanked here. Are all of Heineken's 1 million Facebook fans male?

I realise this is petty. But I decided to grant myself permission to be petty today. Don't worry, tomorrow will be one of the 363 International Days of Men, so we can go back to complacently accepting that physical contact with attractive women is the currency with which brands bribe men to drink beer, but for today, let me be the humourless shrew who points out that sexism is so ingrained that on most days, in most circumstance... most people don't see it.

Deep thought

These guys don't seem real respectful of the members of the Women's Caucus.

Weird.



On a totally unrelated point, they had a lot of fun on the same day denying abortion rigths to an awful lot of women.

Coincidence, I'm sure, and not at all reflective of any innate misogyny. These guys are famous for their sensitivity to women, after all.

The Abortion Compromise

When I was at college in Washington, DC one of the biggest moments there happened in late January each year. That was the annual anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe Versus Wade decision, and for a few days my city would be overtaken by tens of thousands of Right to Life protestors.

My friends and I would always avoid the National Mall during these days – the posters of aborted foetuses were annoying, but even more so the confused mobs of Midwesterners in their matching t-shirts who would block the escalators with their out-of-towner refusals to “stand right, walk left.”

But I DID go every year to the local Women’s Health Clinic on the day before the march, to link arms with fellow students from our local Students for Choice chapter and form a human barrier as pro-lifers made a concerted effort to enter and shut down the building.

It was ritualistic rather than violent, and fortunately our organisers were experienced and professional – they knew how to keep temperatures cool even in a pretty heated environment, and they made sure all stayed focussed on our core mission: keep the clinic open.

The Women’s Health Clinic was not an abortion factory – the vast majority of their services were related to birth control, STD testing and prenatal care. In reality, the clinic would routinely encourage patients not to make appointments on the protest days – it was traumatic enough for women who were dealing with a pregnancy (wanted or unwanted) without having to wade past an angry army calling them murderers. So the very few patients who did come in on the day were typically drop-ins – women who had not phoned ahead, but made a spur of the moment decision to get tested or seek family planning. But keeping the clinic open was a point of principle and pride for us.

The pro-life people I faced off with, even when they were doing their best to push through our linked arms, didn’t strike me as bad people. They were Christians mostly, and when not shouting names at me, they seemed pleasant enough to each other. I watched them serving each other coffee from thermoses, sharing a joke. Once an older woman fell ill and her friend politely chastised her for not taking her pills. Then the both lay down on the pavement until the police arrested them and carried them away.

But there were one or two unpleasant incidents. One time, a middle aged woman who had been face to face with me on the line for some time, started shouting, “Are you Jewish? Are you Jewish?” right in my face. We’d been instructed not to engage with the protesters, but in this case I was shocked into a response. “No, actually. I’m Episcopalian.”
“Because the Jewish faith permits the murder of babies!” she shouted, apparently unwilling to let go of her script. Or perhaps she just felt strongly that the situation could be improved with some arbitrary, out of context anti-Semitism.

Whatever.

Why Am I Telling You All of This?

This is all by way of somewhat proving my pro-choice bona fides. Because the pro-choice movement just faced in some its biggest setback for decades. And it’s something I’m going to reluctantly support.

I am referring, of course, to the compromise that was agreed in the House’s Health Insurance Reform bill. Faced with a rebellion from pro-life Democrats in her own caucus, Nancy Pelosi agreed to allow an amendment to the bill that would ban abortion provision under the publicly managed health care plan. So far this was pretty much what I was expecting, and an agreement that for political expediency (the ugliest but most unavoidable of excuses) I was prepared to live with.

What came as a shock to me – and apparently also to a large number people in the pro-choice part of Pelosi’s caucus – was the additional provision that would also forbid those who receive health care subsidies from purchasing any plan that also covers abortion.

This is worse than it sounds. Of course, the intention here is to avoid using government money in any way to directly pay for abortion services. I fundamentally disagree with this judgement (if a woman needs a medical service, she needs it regardless of who pays) but I CAN understand the logic of it, and on a subject where so many people so passionately disagree – where they not only disagree but think those who think otherwise are condoning murder – it’s not insane to say that there’s something inappropriate about asking those folks to spend their tax dollars on a service the consider morally abhorrent.

(As an aside, I can’t help but wish these people had been equally respectful of my pretty similar beliefs about the Iraq war – but... well...)

However, the compromise agreed doesn’t just affect the specific use of federal tax dollars – the ban on use of Abortion-inclusive services for all plans made available to women who receive subsidies is likely to have the obvious consequence that most private sector plans will stop including the service altogether. After all, the insurance companies – for all their kicking and screaming – are perfectly aware that this bill represents a significant new customer base for them. If the government says they need to cut abortion from their plans to get these new customers, I’m sure they’ll be happy to oblige – and it’s easiest just to trim it from all the basic packages.

So why am I still supporting the bill even after choking down this bitter pill?

Simple – women’s health includes more than the rare and declining cases where she might need an abortion.

I am lucky enough never to have had an unwanted pregnancy. But I sure do need a regular cervical exam, I’ll be needing breast cancer screenings pretty soon, I’ve got chronic trouble with my lower back (much better at the moment, thanks for asking) and if I break a leg tomorrow I sure don’t want to worry whether my insurance will cover me. Fortunately, I live in England. But somehow I don’t think that’s going to be a workable solution for the 40 odd million uninsured right now.
Most women will never need an abortion in their lifetimes. With good family planning services we can bring down this number even further – and we should. But every woman needs, and deserves quality, affordable health care.

If necessary I will stand with linked arms one more time to stop the right from shutting us down.

Presidential Basketball

Personally I don't care a fig whether or not women are to be found on the President's basketball court.

Well, actually - I do a little bit. President Obama is, by all accounts, a really good basketball player. As a non-sporty person myself, I would hate to see, for example, Christina Romer taking time out from her important work saving the US economy to learn how to serve as Presidential point guard. Or, do we imagine that the country might be better off in some inexplicable way if the President would recruit in some WNBA stars to play with?

Obama has signed legislation to guarantee women the right to sue for equal pay. He has doubled the number of women on the Supreme Court (by adding 1. Sigh). He has appointed a strong female Secretary of State. And he is agressively pursuing health care reform that would hugely benefit woman and families. The female Speaker of the House is one of his closest Congressional allies, and he happens to be married to a whip-smart, successful woman and to be raising two confident girls.

Let the guy play b-ball with some friends, for heaven sake. Watching Melody Barnes panting for breath as she darts around after an orange rubber ball wouldn't really seem like much a victory for feminism, to me.

Not So Dumb

On the one hand, you have a group of people who are arguing in favor of supporting a candidate for the Supreme Court. They point out that this candidate graduated Summa Cum Laude from Princeton University (accompanied by an undergraduate award for outstanding academic merit). They mention that the candidate went on to Yale Law School where she became editor of the Yale Law Journal and earned a Juris Doctorate degree. Further, they add, after graduation the candidate worked for five years as a Prosecutor, taking on challenging cases including many murders. Her advocates remind you that after leaving the prosecutors' office the candidate took a partnership in a lucrative private practice, specialising in intellectual property law. The candidate has been an appeals court judge for 12 years, where her notable cases included a dramatic intervention to end an ongoing baseball strike, and was a federal judge for 6 years before that.

She was also, as her supporters have not yet gotten around to mentioning, an adjunct professor of law for both New York University and Columbia Law Schools. She is a trustee of Princeton University. Her supporters point out that in addition to all of these CLEARLY relevant displays of intellect and experience, the candidate also happens to be the child of a widowed mother raised in modest circumstances whose achievements are all the more impressive for not having been backed by familial wealth or priviledge. In summary, her supporters conclude, the candidate has met or surpassed every conceivable qualification for the Supreme Court posting for which she is being nominated - in terms of proven academic merit, in terms of depth and breadth of legal experience, in terms of applied legal reasoning, and finally in terms of her ability to provide a valuable new perspective based on her unusual-for-the-Court but not unusual-for-America background.

On the other hand, those who oppose her suggest that might be kind of dumb.

I'm working REALLY hard to find any way of thinking about that particular argument that doesn't rely upon Sotomayor's opponents being blatantly sexist and/or racist. The only thing I can come up with so far is that maybe they were just totally misinformed about her actual credentials. But that seems unlikely since she's been talked about as a likely pick for quite some time.

And so, I am at a loss. I have no desire to "play the race card" still less "the gender card" (although I would gently suggest that there's something unseemly about talking of females as if they represent a small minority before whom the Democrats quaver when in fact we're a slight statistical MAJORITY...) since someone somewhere decided that even raising the possibility of sexism or racism automatically invalidates any other arguments you may make... So I'm not sure where to go here.

Perhaps I could just politely suggest that those who suggest she is somehow an intellectual lightweight could point to specific opinions or writings that they consider in some way deficient?

Miss California - Here's What's Truly Offensive

In case you haven't been following this story, recently Miss California - AKA Carrie Prejean - caused a bit of a ruckus with a confused but ultimately disapproving answer on the question of Gay Marriage during the Miss America pageant.

Thence followed ongoing argumentation, in which gay blogger Perez Hilton (who asked the question in the first place) seemed to go to war with the anti-Marriage community (confusingly named the National Organization for Marriage - but... they want to stop people from getting married. Does not compute) - and there was much hullabaloo.

Prejean has now agreed to appear in an anti-gay marriage commercial for the NOM folks, despite the fact that, as best I can figure, the women doesn't actually have an opinion on gay marriage. I mean, she'd like people to have rights like hospital visitation and stuff, and she thinks it's great that we live in a country where people can have a choice and all between regular marriage and "opposite marriage"(umm... we do?) and she really couldn't say whether or not she supports civil unions because, "I don't have the answers to everything, you know, in the world out there."

This woman doesn't have offensive opinions about marriage - she doesn't HAVE an opinion. So there's not a great deal of point in discussing her lack of any informed view, really is there? I mean this sort of thing isn't really her area of expertise is it?

But why not spend just a little bit of time - maybe a fraction of the time spend obesesing over her non-opinion on the marriage issue - and talk for just a second about something that very muchIS this woman's field of endeavor: the pageant itself.

Here's the thing: I'm not offended by the idea of beauty contests - that would be silly. I mean, what's the point of pretending that we aren't being judged all the time on our looks. Young women get ahead all the time because they happen to be pretty or - worse - fail to get ahead because they happen not to be. So if they want to put that on my TV screen, fine; it's just another thing for me to not watch. In the age of The Batchelor, it's by no means the most sickening display of shamelessness on our screens.

But the thing that DOES offend me about beauty pageants is precisely the thing that everyone always points to as evidence for their social value - the scholarships. Winners of these pageants aren't given a hefty lump sum of cash that they can blow on fast cars and cosmetic surgery. They're given the money in the form of scholarships to attend university.

What on earth is the crying social need to make sure that by all means really pretty girls don't have to pay their own way through school? Don't you think maybe there's a stringy haired, glassy-eyed budding scientist out there who hasn't been spending her time perfecting The Look because she's been huddled over a bunsen burner that might deserve a scholarship slightly more on the merits? You want to reward young women for being pretty - fine. And I'm sure many if not all of the young women who win these competitions are lovely and hard working people who will succeed academically. But the ability to walk in a swimsuit and heels, while an impressive talent that I do not myself posess, is not per se evidence of academic merit.

But, you know - I'm glad I come from a country where you can chose to participate in degrading social rituals if you want to. But - no offense to anyone - I don't think you deserve an academic leg up because of them. That's just the way I was raised.

Rejoice: Birth Control Funding is Back

Turns out, when I speculated that the funding for state provided birth control that was cut from the stimulus package over Republican objections wouldn't be dropped for good, I was right.

Three cheers for rational policy making!

Lily Ledbetter Act, Continued...

As usual, Barack has put it best:

But equal pay is by no means just a women’s issue – it’s a family issue. It’s about parents who find themselves with less money for tuition or child care; couples who wind up with less to retire on; households where, when one breadwinner is paid less than she deserves, that’s the difference between affording the mortgage – or not; between keeping the heat on, or paying the doctor’s bills – or not. And in this economy, when so many folks are already working harder for less and struggling to get by, the last thing they can afford is losing part of each month’s paycheck to simple discrimination.

So in signing this bill today, I intend to send a clear message: That making our economy work means making sure it works for everyone. That there are no second class citizens in our workplaces, and that it’s not just unfair and illegal – but bad for business – to pay someone less because of their gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion or disability. And that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory, or footnote in a casebook – it’s about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives: their ability to make a living and care for their families and achieve their goals.

Ultimately, though, equal pay isn’t just an economic issue for millions of Americans and their families, it’s a question of who we are – and whether we’re truly living up to our fundamental ideals. Whether we’ll do our part, as generations before us, to ensure those words put to paper more than 200 years ago really mean something – to breathe new life into them with the more enlightened understandings of our time.

Lily Ledbetter Act to be Signed Today

This is a great day to be a woman in America. Hmm.

Actually, this will be the first day for a couple of years in which your employee cannot systematically pay you less than a male colleague for no good reason whatsoever, without fear of consequences. So maybe my threshold for "great" is a little low. Still, tomorrow will suck less than today for women and employees across the USA, and that's a pretty good day in the White House.

John McCain REALLY Doesn't Want to Talk About His Position on Birth Control

This excruciating (but short) video of John McCain desperately not wanting to talk about his position on the sensible notion that medicare should pay for birth control:



This makes for a useful opportunity to remind you all: John McCain has voted multiple times in the Senate to oppose the inclusion of birth control on publically paid health care plans. As his own campaign surrogate, Carly Fiorina, pointed out the other day - it is plainly obscene that these plans will pay for Viagra but not for birth control. Women everywhere should be deeply offended by this - I sure am.

But it's of a piece with McCain's overall anti-woman agenda. Remember, he wants to overturn Roe Versus Wade, jsut for starters.

And apparently his own advisors aren't even aware how retrograde his positions are.

And BOY does he not want to remind them.

Policy Focus: Women's Issues

As I have tried to show in previous messages, there is simply no comparision on women's issues between Barack Obama - who has fought his entire life to protect the reproductive, employment and civil rights of women - and John McCain who has been actively hostile to our rights.

But women do not really need to be told this. Women are smarter than that. Women are the heroines of our democracy. In every election they vote in larger numbers than men, and in every election they are more likely to vote Democratic. That's not because politics has been especially welcoming to women - it hasn't. And it's not because the Democratic party has always lived up to its own ideals on women's issues - it hasn't.

Women vote, and vote Democrat because they care. They care about a whole range of issues from the quality of education to services for the poor. They care about ending this war and they care about preventing future wars. They care about keeping this nation safe - and they care about the safety of our troops who are doing this work for us.

On these issues and on so many more, there is simply no comparison. John McCain has literally NO PLAN on education. He believes in endless war followed by endless occupation. He proposes a tax plan that would provide huge benefits to the most wealthy and leave the poorest out in the cold.

These are all women's issues. So unquestionably, Barack Obama is the women's candidate even though he is not a woman candidate.

This Frank Rich article is well worth a read in full.

You’d never guess that Mr. McCain is a fierce foe of abortion rights or that he voted to terminate the federal family-planning program that provides breast-cancer screenings. You’d never know that his new campaign blogger, recruited from The Weekly Standard, had shown his genuine affection for Mrs. Clinton earlier this year by portraying her as a liar and whiner and by piling on with a locker-room jeer after she’d been called a monster. “Tell us something we don’t know,” he wrote.

But while the McCain campaign apparently believes that women are easy marks for its latent feminist cross-dressing, a reality check suggests that most women can instantly identify any man who’s hitting on them for selfish ends. New polls show Mr. Obama opening up a huge lead among female voters — beating Mr. McCain by 13 percentage points in the Gallup and Rasmussen polls and by 19 points in the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News survey.

How huge is a 13- to 19-percentage-point lead? John Kerry won women by only
3 points, Al Gore by 11.

Policy Focus: Women's Issues

Continuing on with our look at Obama and his policies towards women, I just want to have a quick look at his record in this area.

Women for Obama has a good rundown of his many efforts on behalfo fo women's issues, and it is well worth reading their entire page. But let me flag up a few highlights in particular about the issue of violence against women - because this is an area that doesn't get nearly the amount of national attention it deserves.



Victims Economic Security and Safety Act: In Chicago, Obama served as the main sponsor of this bill, which was passed into law in 2002. The law ensures that anyone who is a victim of a domestic or sexual violence is given the right to take a leave from their employment to get necessary legal or medical assistance. Obama decided to introduce this legislation after meeting with advocacy groups for battered women. "They came to me and indicated how difficult it is for victims of physical and sexual abuse to deal with the repercussions of an assault and then try to balance it with work and everything else."

Obama Was a Co-Sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act of 2005, which would have authorised significant allocation of funds to combat violent crimes against women, prohibited law enforcement officers, prosecutors, or other government officials from requiring sex offense victims to submit to a polygraph examination as a condition for proceeding with an investigation or prosecution of a sex offense, established a sexual assault services program among other things.

On several occassions, Obama has voted for, co sponsored or introduced legislation in the Illinois Sentate to increase penalties for repeated perpetrators of domestic violence, provide women greater protection through strengthened court orders, and calling for higher standards in the medical treatment of domestic violence victims.

And what of the competition? Well, John McCain is more famed for his military advocacy than his support for victims of domestic violence. However, he did at least have the good grace to fire his New Hampshire Press Secretary after he allegedly punched his girlfriend so hard he broke her ribs. So that's something, I guess.

Don't Miss...

My thanks to Senator Clinton on the ocassion of her gracious concession.

In honor of the Senator, I will be conducting a week long spotlight on women's issues here on the blog - do write in on the comments if there's a particular area you'd like me to write about.

Policy Focus: Women's Issues

After this long primary season, we may all feel like we know everything there is to know about the Democratic candidate, but in reality Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton shared so many policy views in common that there was no in depth analysis of the his proposals. Now that we are entering the general election, the situation could not possibly be more different - there is an enormous difference between John McCain's positions and Barack Obama's.


Each week of the campaign, I'd like to highlight a different area of Barack Obama's policies. This week, in tribute to Hillary Clinton's record breaking campaign, I would like to focus on women's issues.

From the first moment a woman dared to speak that hope - dared to believe that the American Dream was meant for her too - ordinary women have taken on extraordinary odds to give their daughters the chance for something else; for a life more equal, more free, and filled with more opportunity than they ever had. In so many ways we have succeeded, but in so many areas we have much work left to do. ~ Barack Obama, Speech in Washington, DC, 11/10/05

Firstly, Barack Obama is a a strong advocate for a woman's right to choose.

At this link you can see him addressing Planned Parenthood last year:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid900837095/bclid900609698/bctid1119234071

In the video he gives a detailed critique of recent supreme court decisions that have failed to properly consider the scientific evidence in favor of women's right to choose, and that he sees as condecending - he points out that Justice Kennedy simply assumes a woman will regret her decision without supplying any evidence in support of this.

Towards the end, he starts to speak about broader women's issues as well, saying:

But most of all I'm here as a candidate because there are these two little girls that I try to tuck in every night - and it's harder during the campaign season - whose futures depend upon us creating a more equal society. I want my daughters to grow up in a country where they have the exact same opportunities as Americas sons. I want Sasha and Malia to dream without limit.

You can read more about Barack's policies towards women's issues on this page:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/womenissues

I will be highlighting different aspects of his policies towards women in the coming days.

But I also want to say a words about John McCain and his policies towards women.

John McCain does not have a section on his website focussed on women. He does, however, have a page labelled "Human Dignity and the Sanctity of Life". The first paragraph on THAT page is the following statement:

John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench.

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/95b18512-d5b6-456e-90a2-12028d71df58.htm