Dan Savage examines the new statistics from Guttmacher Institute showing that banning abortion doesn't reduce the number of abortions, and draws several inescapable conclusions: Banning abortion kills women. Making contraceptives readily available reduces abortions and saves the lives of women. He concludes that banning abortions, then, is an attempt to punish women for having sex.
Have you ever wondered why so many Americans wear clothing when it's warm outside? Are they really covering up for sexual propriety—because of shame? Or could it be that they are wearing clothes to cover up their animal-ness-- their mortality? I'm intrigued by this issue, as you can tell from my previous writings, including my posts about "terror management theory," and nipples. This issue came to mind again recently when I found a website that allows you to completely undress people. The site has nothing to do with sex, I can assure you, but it has a powerful set of images that raise interesting questions about human nakedness. To get the full experience, go to the website and select an image of a fully clothed person. These are absolutely ordinary looking people, as you will see. Then click on the images of any of these men or women and watch their clothes disappear. If you are like me, when their clothing disappears, this will not cause you to any think sexual thoughts. If you are like me, you will find yourself thinking that these people looked more "attractive" with their clothes on. For me, the effect is dramatic and immediate, and it reminded me of a comment by Sigmund Freud (I wasn't able to dig out the quote), something to the effect that we are constantly and intensely attracted to the idea of sex (duh!), but that sex organs themselves often look rather strange to our eyes--sex organs are not necessarily sexy. I think the same thing can be said for our entire bodies. Nakedness isn’t the same thing as sexuality or else nudist colonies would tend to be orgies (which, from what I’ve read, they are not). Rather, sexual feelings are triggered by the way we use our bodies. We do many things that are sexual, and most of these things take some effort. Simply being naked is not an effective way to be sexy. In America, people constantly confound nudity with sexuality. I admit that the media presents us with many ravishing image of sexy naked people, but the sexiness of such images is not due to the mere nakedness. There’s always a lot more going on than mere nakedness. Consider also, that when people actually mate, they often bring the lights down low, further hiding their bodies. Then why do Westerners cover up with clothing to be "proper"? I suspect that anxiety about death (not so much anxiety about sex) contributes to our widespread practice of hiding those naturally furry parts of our bodies—those parts associated with critically "animal" functions relating to reproduction and excretion of body wastes. [More . . .]
I've been mulling an idea for an amendment to the U.S. constitution that probably won't have as much a chance as the failed Equal Rights Amendment, in which persons of the female persuasion would have been defined explicitly as full fledged people with the same rights as the white male landholders for which the constitution was originally penned. How's this?
"Government shall pass no law abridging the right of any person to decide whether an organism living within his or her own body is a harmful parasite or a welcome guest, and to respond accordingly."
A lawyer could probably tighten up the wording, but I think the gist is there. This amendment might save oodles of money on government health care in ways such as:This article at Salon.com asks many good questions about abortions. For instance, for those of us who are "pro-choice," is it really OK for a woman to have complete discretion to have an abortion? What about after she has 12 abortions? What if she aborts because the child would have been a girl and she wants a boy? What if she aborts because the fetus has a deformed arm? This article also provides some stats about the terms during which abortion doctors are willing to perform abortions:
Of the only 1,787 doctors who perform abortions at all, 67 percent perform procedures only in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Another 13 percent perform procedures between 12 and 20 weeks. The remaining 20 percent of doctors report performing some abortions up to 23 weeks, but once you hit that 24-week limit only 8 percent will perform an abortion. And we know there are now only two doctors who will perform abortions after 24 weeks.
Comedian Janeane Garofalo, who sums up religion as the fear of vaginas, offers a new solution to the abortion dispute. It begins at about the 4 minute mark, and she calls it "the buddy system."I found this an interesting response to George Tiller's murder. Frank Schaeffer, a reformed evangelical, argues that the hate speech continually spewed by the religious right regarding abortion set the stage for George Tiller's murder, and other abortionists before him. He still expresses disgust at late-term abortion, and while I am more likely to agree with that, I do believe there are situations in which that choice is the only one that makes sense. Painful, horribly so, but sometimes the only choice is.