Roe v. Wade Turns 36

I'm not going to get into a long blog for choice because I'm busy today, but I will direct anyone who is interested in pondering this anniversary's meaning to check out the coverage at two of the places I proudly write for, RH Reality Check (here and here) and Women's eNews.

I'd also urge you to look up Reproductive Justice-- the increasingly-accepted framework for dealing with the (sadly) politicized issue of women's health. Reproductive Justice means we fight to open up choices for every woman, from the woman who wants to have a child but can't afford health insurance, to the teenager who needs birth control and sex ed, to the rape victim who asks for emergency contraception, to the woman making up her mind about an unintended pregnancy. It's the whole package.
This year begins with hope, for the first time in a long time: a pro-choice president and congress. So as I said earlier this week, let's roll up our sleeves and hold their feet to the fire. Because women cannot be equal unless we have the final say over our bodies.

Blog for Choice

and a review of Juno.

But first, why I'm voting pro-choice, since that's the theme of the day: I will, always, always, always vote proc-choicebecause the "movement" that seeks to restrict abortion has no real interest in preventing it, no real interest in promoting children's health care, no interest in comprehensive sex ed, or in low-cost birth control, or in anything any step of the way to preserve the autonomy and health of women. The pro-life movement is a sham front for an anti-women movement, and it's amazing how few people beyond the feminist blgosophere grasp to what extent that's true.

I've been thinking a lot about the whole semantics of choice issue recently what with my review of Choice in venus zine and my recent viewing of Juno on a screener at home--thanks hetero-life-partner!

The thing is, everyone here know how much I loathed Knocked Up and its treatment of abortion/smashmortion. But what I hated about it all the more was its gender dynamic: the fact that, to me, it was the stuff of male fantasy: in the guise of a thoughtful, grown-up flick, it presented women as one-dimensional harridans and men as overgrown funnyboys. And Allison's "Choice" was a mere tool, a device for Ben's maturity.

So it was hard not to be charmed by juno, a movie obviously written by a woman with women in mind. A funny, sassy, female character with conflicting impusles and genuine humanity who was more than central to the plot. I wanted to cheer at so many little moments of the movie when it was clear that "a woman wrote that!"

But still, the movie would have been a superior one if they had made Juno's "choice" a little less pat. In both Juno and Knocked Up, there seemed to be a desire on the part of the filmmakers to rush past the choice aspect and get on with the pregnancy because hey, the pregnancy is what the movie is about. My interpretation of Juno's choice was that more than the goth-girl at the desk in the abortion clinic, she was intimidated by her classmate, the girl picketing the clinic, who remembered Juno's earlier embarassing behavior (something about jumping into the mall fountain). But if this was the case--and maybe this is just wishful thinking-- why stack up all the stereotypes? Why leave so much about Juno's choice unexplained, as just another one of her quirks?

I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm tired of women's fertility being a plot hinge, being used as it were, to propel things forward. Because it's used all the time--used as propaganda to get conservatives to the polls, used to smear candidates, used as a moral lecture talking point by ourpoliticians and now supreme court justices. Ick. I guess I feel like it's too bad, because if there's an underlying "choice" message in Juno, a movie in which characters who make all kinds of decisions about their reproduction, it's this: this is personal, and it's nobody's business but mine.

Of Jane and Roe...

I'm intrigued by Alexandera Stanley's would-be-literary commentary on Saturday night's Jane Eyre. For one thing, she waxes on and on about how un-adaptable Jane Eyre is as a modern novel-- okay, it's never been "Clueless"ed, or "Bridget Jones"ed, 'tis true, but Rebecca is essentially a modern re-write, as is this year's best-seller The Thirteenth Tale. In fact, Stanley writes about Joan Fontaine as the original Jane without mentioning that she was also cast as "The Second Mrs. DeWinter" in Rebecca on purpose, by the studios, to emphasize the similarities. Stephen King references Eyre in the Shining and more. It's both the foremama of feminist lit and a certain genre of gothic lit (i.e. the Turn of the Screw, which also owes a direct debt to Jane that's unacknowledged by Stanley).

So yeah. Thats what I have to say about that. On another note entirely, the anniversary of Roe has gotten the internet poppin' with pro-choice vs. pro-life debaters. I find my blood boiling so wildly at the latter that I could almost turn into one of those ovresexed, baby-swallowing vampire-witches that the right wing already sees me as. I can't wait to "boo" my way through the State of the Union tonight.

Now, let's tie this all together by asking ourselves: would Charlotte and Emily Bronte have been pro-choice?
Hell to the yeah. Everything from Jane's inheritance to Rochester's blindness says yes, self-determination is high on their Yorkshire-bred agenda... and let's not forget that Bertha Mason is Jane's alter-ego, in the eyes of feminist critics (ditto with Heathcliff and Cathy, btw)--the outgrowth of the wild child trapped in the Red Room. In other words, every woman has an oversexed, baby-swallowing vampire-witch in her (or in Emily's world, a brooding Gypsy-man who represents the unchecked feminine) because the partriarchy makes it so when it violently leaves her in two by subjugating her to a life of parlor and child-bearing. So there.
If they just stopped oppressing us, we wouldn't have to burn castles, rip veils, dash our heads against a tree shouting "Cathy", or marry poor Isabella Linton. Or haunt our ancestral homes, for that matter. And wouldn't that be nice?

Why I'm Pro-Choice

Today is blog for choice day. It may be late in the day, but how could I not participate? It sickens me that Bush is calling it "sanctity of life" day, and it sickens me that the shit the far right is pulling is so ugly, so anti-woman, and anti-dialogue.

So here's why I'm pro-choice, and this is just the tip of the iceberg:

*because Eve is a myth.
*because until men have to deal with their own cramps, hot flashes, morning sickness, midol, and epidurals, they have no right to get all up in my womb.
*because the mainstream media manipulates us by marketing food as porn and diets as salvation, sexuality as necessary and intelligence as ugly-- we have to claim our bodies as our own.
*because war is not pro-life.
*because every child should be a wanted child.
*because birth control is one of the best advances made this century.
*because abstinence-only doesn't work.
*because being "pro-life" in actuality means forcing women to remain pregnant or deliver children under the threat of incarceration. creepily dystopian, eh? (think Orwell or Atwood)
*because we as a society are more interested in chastizing rape victims than in telling men to wear condoms and take responsibility for their actions.
*because being afraid of female sexuality is so retro.
*because thousands of Irish women fly to England every year for silent journeys to abortion clinics.
*because Phyllis Schlafly is a venomous hell-bat.
*because war is not pro-life.
*because we don't want to go back to alleys and hangers.
*because if we repeal Roe, rich women will jet off to Sweden while poor women will suffer from botched abortions.
*because EC has brought the number of abortions down in Europe (that hotbed of hedonism).
*because war is not pro-life.
*because back in third grade, I saw my mother board a bus for a pro-choice rally in Washington armed with signs and buttons, and I knew that to leave home for that long, she must really believe in something, and she's the woman I admire most in the world.