You Don't Own Me

Yes.  Sing it, women!

Funny.  I was thinking of this very song recently.  

Lesley Gore.  One of the original Riot Grrrlz in music.

And. Also this, too. via Sherry's tweet.


from Pat's tweet, merci!

Men who defund Planned Parenthood in the US ...

will go without.




Lysistrata and her consoeurs live on in the principled views of the broads/ladies/women of Second City.

And also. Posting this brilliant YouTube gives us an opportunity to use once more the tag "sexually inadequate Republican men". Over-compensating for your pathologies by attacking Planned Parenthood, fellows?

More about the important services PPA provides to women and families in that country.


Bravo!

Choice: the gift of life and love.

Blob Blogging Wingnut probably believes Kristine Casey's gift was an abomination - SHE has produced shrieeeking diatribes about assisted reproduction in the past, so it's unlikely that HER so-called *pro-life* ideology includes Casey's choice.

Kristine Casey accepted to become impregnated with, and carry her daughter's fetus to term.

From here:

Almost 39 weeks ago, Kristine Casey set out on an unusual journey to help her daughter and answer a spiritual calling. Her goal was achieved late Wednesday when she gave birth to her own grandson at age 61.

Casey, possibly the oldest woman to give birth in Illinois, served as a surrogate for her daughter, Sara Connell, who had been trying for years to have a baby. Connell and her husband, Bill, are the biological parents of the child Casey carried, which grew from an embryo created from the Chicago couple's egg and sperm. [...]

The Connells decided in 2004 to try to have a baby, but Sara, now 35, soon discovered she wasn't ovulating. After undergoing infertility treatment at the Reproductive Medicine Institute in Evanston, she got pregnant but delivered stillborn twins, and later she suffered a miscarriage.

Kristine Casey chose to provide the physical, emotional and spiritual environment that her daughter and son-in-law's fetus needed to develop to term, and to give life to her grandchild. Modern medical science can be astounding - but not as amazing as a gestating woman extending the range of her procreative power.

Unfortunately, this event occurred in a country that may give religious zealots permission to murder doctors who provide medical care for women who need to terminate a pregnancy.

Truthiness and outright lies (with updates)

Ayatollah Ouellet was a speaker at this event, and while in the presence of flaming homophobes, he drew quite a bit of attention for his screed against women who have abortions. From here:

He called abortion a "moral crime" as serious as murder. Ouellet said he understands how a sexually assaulted woman has been traumatized and must be helped and that her attacker must be held accountable. "But there is already a victim," he said. "Must there be another one?"

Former MP and Catholic priest Raymond Gravel observed that this was the same-old same-old discourse of blaming and shaming women. He opposes the criminalization of abortion.

The Fetus©™ fetishist deputy Paul Szabo, à propos of the auditor general reviewing the books of the Board of Internal Economy which is the secretive House of Commons’ committee that administers MPs' allocated budgets, said: "... all of a sudden people would jump to conclusions without having all the facts".

That encapsulates the MASSIVE abortion-criminalizing and propaganda war being waged by the Zygote Zealots. Marie-Claude Lortie simply and eloquently demonstrates how pro-choice advocates are the sane, reasonable and humane thinkers in this confrontation. She would like a public discussion that would allow an authentic expression of concerns about abortion, without all the shrieeeking, the gynophobia, the hypocrisy and the tactical lies exploited by anti-abortionists.

At DJ!, we call them the Vulture Culture, since The Fetus©™ fetishists are willing to sacrifice women's lives in order to establish their theocratic dominion.

Why aren't Catholics like this one receiving the media attention they deserve, instead of gynophobes like Ayatollah Ouellet?

Consecrated women cannot remain silent in light of the sex scandals destroying the moral credibility of the Church, says Ursuline Sister Teresita Kambeitz.

"Who is going to speak out if we as consecrated women don't speak out?" Kambeitz asked. "Who is going to speak on behalf of the children? Who is going to encourage the good and faithful priests? Who is going to call the bishops to account?"

Kambeitz, a professor at St. Thomas More College in Saskatoon and a former professor at Newman Theological College, gave a series of talks on Hope-Filled Discipleship at the annual assembly of the Council of Consecrated Women (CCW) April 23-24.

Interestingly enough, she doesn't believe women should STFU. But of course, fundamentalist zealots like SUZANNE and Paycheck would likely call Sister Kambeitz a deluded and 'useful idiot'.

The Catholic Magisterium has established an ideological religious scheme founded on the premise that women are inherently evil, and that men are absolved from responsibility - because they only ever rape or engage in pedophilia when it's a woman's fault - that's the belief The Fetus©™ fetishists MASSIVELY support.

Update: From Slap Upside The Head: Pope: Gay Marriage “Insidious And Dangerous”

And also: Pure Hypocrisy - France Bédard, who was raped and repeatedly sexually abused by a priest when she was 17 and forced to work for the parish, was told by the vicar Armand Therrien to get an abortion and leave him the hell in peace, when she told him of her pregnancy. Criminal charges fell when Therrien died 2 weeks before the start of his trial for the years of abuse to which he had subjected her. After speaking to Ayatollah Ouellet about these events, Bédard was told that the Church could not help her, since the priest would not take responsibility for his actions. BTW, Bédard chose to carry the pregnancy to term, gave her son up for adoption and, decades later, was able to re-connect with him.

Sweet tap-dancing Baby Jay-Zeus: On Radio-Canada, Isabelle Bégin-O'Connor has just declared, presumably as some form of religious truthiness, that women who are raped almost never become pregnant because of the high stress level they endure. That must be so comforting to the hundreds of thousands of devout Catholic women who endured coercive marital sex for decades and yet became pregnant, to know that they are exceptional.

Gynophobic notions about 'maternal instinct'.

Starting Monday May 3rd, a blue and white door located near the ER entrance at a Vancouver’s downtown hospital will open to a shelf with a bassinette where a woman can leave a newborn.

They were once called baby hatches or foundling wheels, places where troubled mothers could abandon their babies anonymously but with some assurance that the infant would be cared for. They’ve existed for as long as there have been mothers who don’t think they can care for an infant. In medieval Europe, they were usually run by convents and churches. [...]

Angel’s Cradle will be the only one of its kind in the country, the hospital said. [...] If used, the drop-off will be equipped with a 30-second timer. After that, an alarm will sound, alerting hospital staff to the baby’s presence. The hospital will post signs alerting the mother to other options besides abandonment, as well as telephone numbers to a crisis line.

The facts above were taken from this Globe & Mail article. I excised the virtual hand-wringing, righteous observations attributed to one Dr Cundiff, head of obstetrics and gynecology for Providence Health Care.

Dr. Cundiff stressed that abandoning an infant is not the preferred option for either mother or baby. It presents a raft of problems for social services agencies who must find care for an infant without knowing its medical history or where it came from.

Women who are determined to abandon their infants are often desperate, he said. “If they’ve already made the decision to abandon their baby, we should at least give them a way to do it safely for the baby. You have to think about the other person involved, and that is the little baby who is in an unsafe situation, and we have to think about their overall health and well-being.”

If that holier-than-thou and deeply gynophobic attitude doesn't make you wonder how the hell Dr Cundiff got named to the top position of a department that specializes in women's reproductive health, then ....

Oh. Wait. It must be the Peter Principle. Someone in the administration of the hospital recognized Dr Cundiff's contempt for the women in his care and got him kicked upstairs, where presumably he can't do direct harm to anyone.

Let me repeat the key piece of information in that news article: Women who are determined to abandon their infants are often desperate. “If they’ve already made the decision to abandon their baby, we should at least give them a way to do it safely for the baby.”

How do women get to that point of desperation? Shall I list the ways?

1. Toxic family environment. Girls parented by incompetent - if not downright negligent and abusive - adults may become pregnant, deliberately or involuntarily. Faced with their own imminent motherhood and recognizing their own child might be subjected to the same forms of violence they experienced, they panic. They would rather anonymously abandon their baby than have individuals from their own or the biological father's family claim the infant.


2. Mental health or addiction issues. Girls and women suffering from a number of complex, connected ailments such as schizophrenia may let an unwanted pregnancy progress to the point where a medical intervention would be unavailable or life-threatening. They may be only dimly aware of their condition and though the decision to abandon their newborns may not have been rigorously thought through, the option provides their infants with a future - one that they're ill-equiped to shape or share.


3. Conflicts with legal or government officials. There are girls and women whose life history is marked by events that have marginalized them. Their survival skills are feral and sharp; if confronted with an unplanned pregnancy which they choose not to terminate, they can securely dispose of their newborns in a manner that limits their contacts with official figures that have betrayed or previously violated them.

If this all sounds terribly Dickensian and quaint, you must be living in a privileged bubble. There are wounded and traumatized girls and women living in the streets in most Canadian cities, transitioning in and out of institutionalized care, and barely capable of supporting themselves.

Several states in the U.S. have safe-haven laws, which decriminalized child abandonment as long as the children were left at safe places. St. Paul’s said Vancouver Police have agreed not to charge a mother who leaves an infant at Angel’s cradle.

If a baby is left there, the infant will be treated and handed to provincial social services. If the mother changes her mind, she can contact a social worker to discuss options, according to a hospital briefing memo.

Dr. Cundiff said he’s not happy that there is a need in Canada for a baby dropoff. “The sad truth,” he said, “is there are people in the world who don’t avail themselves of the resources out there.”

Isn't that special? Dr Cundiff must inhabit his own bubble, unable to recognize the social safety net - "the resources out there" - is an illusion that rightwing politicians and their governments claim exists though in actuality they have shredded it to bits, such as Mike Harris did in Ontario.

And of course, there are men who share the Dr's odious opinions about women; they've left comments.

AP1 said:

Baby dumps also and again deny fathers rights, and also deny the right of the baby - which is who this is supposed to be about, the right to their other relatives too. It is a convenient way for baby brokers to farm infants and it is despicable, but then again adopter/brokers are generally despicable as decent people do not sell children for a living and they do not buy them either. Also allowing baby dumps where these babies have no health history is also dangerous - but the parasites that are doing this don't care, and they allege to be medical professionals. The greed in the adoption industry gets worse every year.

Mike, abandoning a baby should never be an option. And barren couples that buy children overseas are also barren of morals. It is child trafficking, both should be illegal. There are other ways to help people without encouraging baby dumps.

Mike_Z said:

I think this is a great idea for a world where some people have to make awful decisions, and some people are simply awful people.I say the government and the public should endorse options that make the best of a bad situation. If the mother / parent does not want to care for the child, this is a far better option than simple abandonment or neglect.I should say both pro-choicers and pro-lifers should support this idea. Pro-choicer's actually (I suspect) are FORCED to like this option, since it gives women (and parents) more CHOICE. Pro-lifers should like this because it is one more option to consider instead of abortion.

Isn't it fascinating how those men who would vociferously fight and resist any institution which would FORCE them to take financial, material and emotional responsibility for babies they have spawned, are so quick and categorical in their judgements towards women who behave no worse than they do?

Silent and Deadly.

What do these women have in common? 

Dianne Heatherington. Rosalind Franklin. Gilda Radner. Laura Nyro. Coretta Scott King. Marcheline Bertrand. Jessica Tandy.  My sister, two weeks before her 41^st birthday.

Yes, they all died from ovarian cancer.

September is Ovarian Cancer awareness month.

In a marketing and publicity world that is obsessed with the artifacts of female beauty and tactics to leverage the charms of female celebrities to sell their products, it’s not surprising that Breast Cancer has been branded as the sexy affliction while ovarian cancer is just another dirty little secret, a disease that affects women “down there”.

Perhaps it’s a small blessing that conservative bible-thumpers and the “All your wombs R ours” zygote zealots have not claimed this bandwagon.  Shrieeeking is not a savvy public relations instrument.

Ovarian cancer is a pernicious and quiet killer of women.  When it starts manifesting itself, its symptoms are often confused with the innocuous signs of peri-menopause.

Some physicians are not inclined to explore the complaints that women bring to their attention.  Yet this form of cancer when caught early on can be successfully contained and eradicated.  Hopefully more women will become aware of the warning signs of this disease as well as more knowledgeable about the ways that cancer-fighting foods and exercise can help prevent it.

Cancer-fighting foods. 

Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. 

19th verse same as the first.

From JJ at unrepentant old hippie we learn that the Duggar quiver is full. Again.

When we posted this last year, it was pretty obvious to anyone, even half-brained, that there were no plans to vasectomize Mr Duggar.

And yet. "We are so thrilled," says Michelle, 42. "We just couldn't believe it is happening."

Um, yeah. It's not as though the whole world watching your tv show on TLC doesn't know you belong to a religious sect that believes your gawd put you on earth to breed. And breed. And breed.

So, finding out you're pregnant is a big surprise?

It does bring this other DAMMIT JANET! blogpost to mind.

Compare and contrast.

The voice of reason and sanity. The shrieeeking of lies and zealotry.

First, André Picard offers these observations about the face-off in Québec regarding access to abortion with physicians and women on one side, the Health Minister on the other.

The new law dramatically expands the number and type of surgical procedures that can be contracted out from hospitals to centres médicaux spécialisés (specialized clinics) – to 56 from three. In addition to hip and knee replacements and cataracts, private clinics will be able to do a wide range of procedures, including mastectomies, hysterectomies and bariatric surgery.

There are, quite appropriately, new oversight measures that will be implemented to ensure these operations are done safely. These include having sterile operating rooms.

There were 96,815 abortions performed in Canada in 2005, the last year for which data are available from Statistics Canada. Abortions are not done in hospital-like operating rooms. The instruments used are sterile, but the procedure, as with other minor surgery, can be done in a physician's office. Even when abortions are performed in hospitals, they are not done in the operating room; they are done in what is essentially an exam room. ...

The good news is that Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc, after initially defending the rules, now appears ready to back down, creating an exemption for abortion clinics so that the status quo remains.

Picard reviews the facts and highlights this specific issue against the ongoing discussion/exploration of how public health care can meet the needs of patients by allowing regulated private clinics to provide specialized and professional medical interventions safely and promptly.

Lifeshite suggests that the clinics providing IVG (interruption volontaire de grossesse) are doing so in contaminated, dodgy surroundings. Oh, and it opines that premier Charest should not claim that the province welcomes families if abortions are allowed. (Never mind that Québec provides the most generous of child and daycare support to parents. That's irrelevant as far as Lifeshite is concerned.)

Did I forget to mention that Picard's article in the Globe and Mail is followed by comments served up in all the flavours of zygote zealotry? Save The Fetus©™ is shrieeeked, howled and expressed in a MASSIVE number of lunatic overstatements.

A deliberate political tactic to restrict abortion?

Is this merely a public pissing contest between two big swinging dicks, Dr Yves Lamontagne, president of the Québec College of Physicians, and Dr Yves Bolduc, Québec Health Minister?

When DJ! first blogged about this 'imbroglio' (Minister Bolduc's word) it appeared it was an oversight or perhaps the insidious work of a zygote zealot at the ministry. But now some claim that the situation was deliberately engineered.

From here:

The threat of closing is not coming from anti-choice protesters who have targeted the clinic for 30 years, but from a new provincial health department law that will govern how special medical clinics provide services.

"It's terribly sad. We still have to fight," physician Francine Léger, the clinic's interim director, said Monday.

Bill 34, which was adopted by the national assembly in the spring, says that abortion clinics must adhere to the same guidelines as specialized medical clinics which provide such procedures as cataract and knee surgeries. That means they have to set up separate sterile operating rooms as opposed to simply sterilizing surgical equipment.

Dr Léger, who also practises at the teaching hospital connected to the Université de Montréal, observes that institutions are not required to conform to the new regulations. In fact, the staff of women's clinics who provide abortion, called IVG (interruption volontaire de grossesse) in Québec, were only informed in mid-June by the Ministry that their medical services were included in the provisions of the law and that they would have to enforce the regulations or close.

According to Dr Gaétan Barrette there is documentation - letters from his organization to the Ministry - that proves that Bolduc knew well in advance that Bill 34 would affect independent abortion clinics. He maintains that this political tactic is an under-handed way to restrict the provision of IVGs to hospitals (overwhelmed by demands for other outpatient medical services) and thus limit access.

The other red meat.

The DAMMIT JANET! gals do like a good guffaw. Nothing better and healthier to shake off the toxic miasma that rises from the loathsome and malevolent posts found at Blob Blogging Wingnut and SoWrongOrNuts.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a blogpost at Birth Pangs about the placenta, a ... um, what the hell is it? ... Okay, I have just received irrefutable confirmation that the placenta is indeed an organ. (Thank gawd my daughter's number is on speed-dial. Family connections are better than the internet for many things including obscure medical information.)

The subtext of that tongue-in-cheek blogpost addressed a serious issue: the never-ending obsession that pro-lies fundamentalist religious abortion-criminalizers have for The Fetus©™.

Imagine my surprise (as well as my unbridled giggles) when I found this essay at Time. Joel Stein is a true mensch.

There is so much you can't know about your spouse when you get married, like that one day she will want to eat her placenta. But there are two things you don't argue about with a pregnant woman: what she eats and that being full of life indeed looks sexy. So when Cassandra told me that for $275, a woman would come to our house, cook Cassandra's placenta, freeze-dry it and turn it into capsules to help ward off postpartum depression and increase milk supply, I said, "$275 is a bargain compared with the $20,000 I'll have to spend to tear out our kitchen immediately afterward." ...

When the placenta did come out, Cassandra, dazed from 21 hours of labor, somehow made sure the nurses delivered it to us in a flat plastic container, which I put into an ice-filled Monsters vs Aliens cooler I brought. When I asked if I could keep the placenta overnight in the refrigerator out in the hall, the nurses looked at me like I was crazy. When you gross out people who work at a hospital, you have accomplished something.

In a fog, I drove the placenta home, where I wrapped the container in a bag and wrapped that bag in a bag and wrapped that bag in every remaining bag we had in the house.

Read the whole thing. There's an astonishing (and some would say, disturbing) video, too!

Thanks, JJ - you gave me a title for this post.

Acid Test

According to a news report that tweaked our radar on such matters, violence against women in Pakistan has increased this year.

More than 220 women were burned in the period from April to June this year, resulting in the death of 40 women in Punjab, according to a report issued by the AGHS Legal Cell. The report is based on data collected from four hospitals. ...

"Violence against women in Pakistan is endemic," Nisha Varia, deputy director of women's rights division at Human Rights Watch told The Media Line. "Although there are never reliable numbers about violent incidents, we know that in every study carried out, there are very high rates of domestic violence and incidents like acid attacks." The numbers documented by AGHS mark a staggering increase in such attacks, given that 68 women reported to have sustained burns in the first quarter of the year. ...

Hundreds of cases of burn attacks on women are reported in Pakistan every year. Many cases are not reported to the police so the actual numbers are estimated to be much higher than those documented by various organizations.
Acid attacks, where acid is thrown onto the face and other parts of the body causing severe pain, bodily harm and mutilation, is common practice is other South Asian countries such as Bangladesh and India.

These outbreaks of violence against women are but one form of the gynophobia that also manifests itself in the callous indifference many governments have towards maternal reproductive health. Antonia Zerbisias blogs about the "Every Mother Matters" campaign currently targeting G8 leaders because of the upcoming meeting in Europe.

... an incredible ad today in The Globe and Mail, which I cannot find online anywhere. Too bad. It's a montage of photos of G8 leaders as children with their mothers. At the bottom, the text says:

Your mother taught you how to write your name, now she'd expect you to sign it.

Every single minute a mother dies in pregnancy or childbirth. 80% of those deaths are preventable.

At this week's G8 Summit in Italy, you are the 8 people who can prevent them -- it's as simple as that. Reduce maternal mortality and make every mother proud of you.

Mothers everywhere are watching and hoping.

Go read her.

Like a broken clock, Blob Blogging Wingnut is sometimes correct.

SUZANNE SAID: "The vast majority of feminists do not care what happens to the fetus."

Shorter Blob Blogging Wingnut: How do you like MY anti-feminist generalization? I got a MILLION of them!

SHE is right. Abortion-criminalizing, zygote zealots are the ones who obsess about "the fetus" - and nothing but "the fetus".

While feminists care about women.

There's a lot of posturing and blathering in rightwing neocon and in anti-feminist fundamentalist religious groups about individuals taking responsibility for their own actions, and how the government interferes too much with the lives of private citizens. So let women be responsible for decisions regarding their own fetus.

Feminists care when women become pregnant - with or without intent - we care whether they have access to the medical care they need. If women choose to give life, to carry their pregnancies to term and to give birth, feminists care that they're able to do so in the best conditions possible.

Feminist advocacy for women's reproductive health includes all aspects from menarche to menopause. And health care providers need to get it.

One of the themes of the annual meeting of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada is to consider how inducting labour rather than letting it proceed as it does normally has negative outcomes.

For most expectant mothers, labour begins spontaneously, at about 40 weeks into the pregnancy.Induction of labour occurs when medications such as prostaglandin and oxytocin are used when a woman is past her due date to ripen the cervix and get the uterus contracting.

Says Dr. Andre Lalonde, “The message to doctors, nurses and midwives is, be patient and do not consider inductions before the end of the 41st week,” said Lalonde. “If you wait that extra week to 10 days, you will find that most women — a large percentage — will go into spontaneous labour.” He says “the number one risk” of induction is that it leads to earlier decisions about a C-section, which now stand at an all-time high in Canada. Nearly 28 per cent of babies were born surgically in Canada in 2007-08, according to a national report released last week. That’s up from five per cent in 1969.

Induction can lead to longer, more painful labour and continuous electronic monitoring of the baby’s heart rate, which itself increases the risk of C-sections, because it generates “a lot of information. In fact, too much information,” says Dr. William Ehman, a family doctor in Nanaimo, B.C. who will be leading a session on normal birth at this week’s meeting of pregnancy doctors and gynecologists. “So you are trying to sort out the important things versus what’s not important.”

Research shows that, in healthy pregnancies, checking the baby’s heart rate after contractions by listening, or using a hand-held device, reduces the risk of interventions.

Healthy pregnancies for women. Because pregnancies have consequences.

The photo was taken from Birthing without fear.

Spain slowly moves away from medieval age.

Although some countries remain resolute in maintaining laws that endanger women's reproductive health and deny their rights and choices, the Spanish government has advanced a plan to decriminalize abortion, facilitating pregnancy terminations in the first trimester.

The new proposal, which would allow women to seek a termination within the first 14 weeks of pregnancy without having to give a reason, has set the Socialist government on a collision course with Spain's Catholic Church. The bill, which needs ratifying by parliament, eases strict abortion laws that have been in place since 1985 and is the latest in a series of social reforms by the Spanish prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero. The proposal tackles one of the traditionally Roman Catholic nation's final taboos and will bring the abortion law in line with most other European countries.

Under the current law abortions are only offered under restricted circumstances and rarely in a public hospital. Terminations are only allowed until the 12th week of pregnancy in cases of rape or until the 22nd week in cases of severe fetal
malformation.

Women who get an abortion outside the terms set by the legislation are committing a crime, at least on paper, although arrests are extremely rare. The new law would erase abortion from the penal code altogether.

The zygote zealots are already spinning the usual disinformation and prevarications.

The Catholic Church has launched a massive [there's that favourite qualifier again] campaign against the plan and the Bishops' Conference said unborn children already have their rights protected less than law pertaining to flowers and trees.

Mmm. Is that all they can use as examples? Our own religious fanatics are so much more imaginative, comparing the loss of an embryo to the theft of a parrot in a cage or a wide-screen TV.

Of mothers' milk and women's voices.

Earlier this month, we blogged about a nitwit who was stopped by traffic cops while driving under the influence of stupidity.

This week, a well-researched article by Hanna Rosin challenged the notion that all mothers must breast-feed or else. It seems that hot-button topic keeps buzzing.

I dutifully breast-fed each of my first two children for the full year that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends. I have experienced ... breast-feeding-induced “maternal nirvana.” This time around, nirvana did not describe my state of mind; I was launching a new Web site and I had two other children to care for, and a husband I would occasionally like to talk to. Being stuck at home breast-feeding as he walked out the door for work just made me unreasonably furious, at him and everyone else.

In Betty Friedan’s day, feminists felt shackled to domesticity by the unreasonably high bar for housework, the endless dusting and shopping and pushing the Hoover around—a vacuum cleaner being the obligatory prop for the “happy housewife heroine,” as Friedan sardonically called her. When I looked at the picture on the cover of Sears’s Breastfeeding Book—a lady lying down, gently smiling at her baby and still in her robe, although the sun is well up—the scales fell from my eyes: it was not the vacuum that was keeping me and my 21st-century sisters down, but another sucking sound.

Still, despite my stint as the postpartum playground crank, I could not bring myself to stop breast-feeding—too many years of Sears’s conditioning, too many playground spies. So I was left feeling trapped, like many women before me, in the middle-class mother’s prison of vague discontent: surly but too privileged for pity, breast-feeding with one hand while answering the cell phone with the other, and barking at my older kids to get their own organic, 100 percent juice—the modern, multitasking mother’s version of Friedan’s “problem that has no name.”

Rosin is a terrific writer. From the origins of the La Leche League, to the publication of Our Bodies, Ourselves, from the insidious rigour of bossy pediatricians to the magical thinking that positions mothers' milk as "liquid vaccine" she unravels the complex discourse on breast-feeding with great skill and humour.

On the same subject, but a less fun read, the federal government released yesterday What Mother's Say: The Canadian Maternity Experiences Survey:

The MES population consisted of birth mothers 15 years of age and older who had a singleton live birth in Canada during a three-month period preceding the 2006 Canadian Census of Population and who lived with their infant at the time of data collection. Using the 2006 Canadian Census, a stratified random sample of 8,244 women estimated to be eligible was identified. Of these women, 6,421 (78%) completed a 45-minute interview at five to 14 months after the birth of their baby, conducted primarily by telephone.

Some of the highlights of this survey - pregnant Canadian women are on average subjected to 3 prenatal ultrasounds (the World Health Organization recommends ultrasound on indication only, or one at about 18 weeks), 26.3 per cent of women had caesarean births and many reported suffering birthing practices such as shaving, enemas and stirrups that are no longer supported by clinical evidence.

In January, a joint statement was released by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, the Canadian Association of Midwives, the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses of Canada, the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada that deplored the increasing use of caesarian deliveries and induction of labour before 41 weeks of gestation, in the case of low-risk pregnancies that did not require such aggressive medical interventions.

Virgin Eggs Over Easy, Hold The Sperm

Scientists say they have created embryonic stem cells by stimulating unfertilized ova. This could be the first step toward producing transplant tissue that’s genetically matched to the women who donated the eggs. The current debate around the use of stem cells from viable embryo has become legally, ethically and politically contentious.

Stem cell research could spare the lives of people suffering from ghastly degenerative and progressive diseases. Experiments would be conducted on human ova cells that have been started on their replication process, although lacking DNA and chromosomes from sperm. The mass of replicating embryonic cells is not the product of conventional or artificial conception, yet the Rev. Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia says:

“My view is that if these grow as organized embryos for the first few days and then arrest, they may just be very short-lived human beings,” he said. “One is very possibly dealing with a defective human being. And at a minimum, the benefit of the doubt should be given here, and these embryos should not be created for the purposes of destroying them.”

Doesn’t the above sound like a knee-jerk reaction, scientifically ill-informed at best, theocratic and doctrinaire at worst? “Very short-lived human beings“? What part of ‘no sperm used’ did he miss in the original research paper? His reasoning does not even follow the fallacious premise that the fetus-fetishizers promote in their abortion-criminalizing campaigns. Or perhaps his objection has more to do with the religious imperative that needs to control women’s reproductive organs and ensure that they are exclusively used for breeding?

But on another level, the Church Fathers may simply be cheesed off at the multitudes of life-creating and life-saving possibilities that ova promise. Especially since theological constraints ensure that clerics, from the Pope on down, must only shoot duds.

Source

Originally posted at Birth Pangs