Real Time Blog

Scalia's Charm Offensive

Scott Swenson — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:07:03 +0000

Justice Antonin Scalia may have charmed the robes off his colleagues and 60 Minutes, but he was not truthful in explaining his position on abortion. He said,

You think there ought to be a right to abortion? No problem. The Constitution says nothing about it. Create it the way most rights are created in a democratic society. Pass a law.

In a freakishly identical sentence structure, in 2002 Scalia said this about individual freedom at the end-of-life,

"You want the right to die," Justice Scalia said, according to The Oregonian, the daily here. "The Constitution said nothing about it." When audience members pointed out that the voters had backed the law twice, he said: "That's right and that's fine. You don't hear me complaining about Oregon's law."

After saying those charming and ecouraging words, Scalia in 2006 was on the wrong side of a 6-3 decision when the Supreme Court upheld Oregon's Death with Dignity Law.

That undercuts his contention that his personal views have nothing to do with his rulings, thus making his claims of being an "originalist", of abhoring judicial activism, and his charm offensive, just plain offensive.

Jamie Lynn Spears Painful Truth

Amie Newman — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:32:18 +0000

The celebri-net is buzzing with the news that Jamie Lynn Spears is (no way!) “afraid” of giving birth. More specifically, she seems to be terrified of the pain associated with childbirth. Reactions run the gamut from this writer’s conclusion (after learning that the Spears matriarch reportedly had Jamie Lynn watch a video of women giving birth to show her daughter how beautiful and natural childbirth is):

In Jamie Lynn’s defense, Britney Spears scheduled c-sections for both Sean Preston and Jayden James, so this is likely the first she’s heard of this.

To this piece:

She’s 17 and didn’t know what happens during childbirth? Ugh.

The celeb reporters have it wrong. Of course she’s afraid of giving birth – most women have that fear because, well, childbirth is painful.

It’s not just painful, it’s other-wordly, it’s unimaginably difficult, unpredictable, uncontrollable, intense and mystical. This doesn’t make it terrible or something to be avoided. It doesn’t mean we should take all measures not to feel the pain or, in Jamie Lynn’s case, necessarily request to be “knocked out.” It means we, as a culture, have not instilled in women the confidence and support we need to take childbirth on with the strength one needs to bring another human into the world.

Sadly, I have no doubt that at 17 she may not know what happens during childbirth. Congress is finally taking on abstinence-only programs for the ineffective sham that they are but we do not yet live in a society that allows for women’s reproductive health experiences to be openly shared in such a way that young women understand that there is a legacy from which they can learn and for them to follow. Whether Jamie Lynn chooses pain medication or not to assist her through her birth process, it’s up to her. One would hope that she makes the decision based on the knowledge that there are many roads to travel for a healthy pregnant woman – home birth, midwifery, obstetricians, water birth, birthing centers, hospitals – and that birth is more than pain.

Childbirth is a journey for which all women deserve to be prepared.

Anti-Choicers Complain About Hyperbole?

Scott Swenson — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:24:20 +0000

I’m always amused when anti-choice bloggers scream about hyberbole and exaggeration, concepts they practically invented. Suzanne at Big Blue Wave doesn’t understand the nuance of Jill at Feministe and her comparison of anti-choice policies in the U.S. and China. Suzanne rails about liberal hyperbole and cites example after example of how pro-lifers have stood up against China’s one-child policy. That wasn’t the point, forced pregnancy is no different than limiting the number of children, both policies ignore the mother’s wishes, and both policies undermine democracy and pluralism. Sorry Suzanne, anti-choicers have more in common with China than you think.

CPC's Deception in Cyber Space

Emily Douglas — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:42:48 +0000

The deceptive practices crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) – those anti-choice, non-medical outfits that pose as reproductive health clinics – now extend to cyberspace. It's frightening enough when CPC's open up right across the street from abortion clinics. In Wausau, Wisconsin, a local CPC took the deception a step farther and began “cyber-squatting” at fhps.com, a URL that could easily be mistaken for fphs.org, the online home of Family Planning Health Services. Pat Peckham, a reporter for Wausau’s local City Pages, wrote that when users landed on the fake homepage, an audio file began playing: “Hey, wait. Don’t leave. I was going to go there, too, but then I found this place called Hope. I didn’t realize it, but it was exactly what I needed.” As a slide show rolled, the actress continued with message such as, “She didn’t judge me….” No link to the actual FPHS site was provided. There’s more at BelowTheWaist.org, FPHS’s site on reproductive health freedom.

The Far Right Preachers' Free Ride

Scott Swenson — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:01:27 +0000

With so much talk about how religious figures are impacting the election, one wonders where the media has been for the past 30 years? Obama denounces an ego-maniacal minister, the Texas polygamy scandal involving teen girls in a fringe LDS sect may impact Mitt Romney's slim chance at the GOP veep-stakes, with the Rev. Wright story getting nearly a month of non-stop coverage. Finally someone in mainstream media asked about the impact of far-right wing nuts like the Reverends Robertson, Falwell and Hagee. E.J. Dionne was polite in saying, "Now the question is whether we will be just as tough on false prophets who happen to be white and right-wing." Can you imagine the hue and cry from "oppressed fundamentalists" if the media focused on all the exclusionary, hate-filled, anti-democratic and un-Christian things these and other far-right preachers have said and done? With truly "fair and balanced" reporting, we might actually understand the wisdom of our founding documents and why separation of church and state is, and always should be, a cherished American value.

Decrease Funding, Increase Births

Emily Douglas — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:53:33 +0000

As funds for family planning decrease, high birth rates create poverty in the Philippines. When I was in DC to accept a Population Institute Global Media Award on behalf of the RH Reality Check team last December, I met a MelClaire Sy Delfin, a brave Filipina journalist who had won a GMA for best individual reporting on population issues. During a session with a Scott Radloff, a US AID staffer, MelClaire told him point-blank that the Philippines still desperately needs US family planning assistance. Radloff disagreed. MelClaire persisted. She never convinced him.

At the Population Action International blog, Tod Preston covers the frank reality of the situation: While the US is scaling down is FP support in the Philippines, birth rates in the country are keeping its citizens in poverty. Only one-third of married women in the Philippines use modern contraceptives.

In the Philippines, the numbers look like this:

In its budget request to Congress last year, the Bush Administration proposed spending only $5.2 million for FP/RH assistance in the Philippines -- less than 1/7 of what the U.S. spent in that country in 1995 ($37 million in inflation-adjusted dollars). That’s despite the fact that 25 percent of Filipinas ages 20-24 have an unmet need for family planning -- and these rates are even higher among uneducated women. So funding is going down and contraceptive shipments are ending while the need and demand remain high. And remember, the backdrop for all of this is a country in which more than 40 percent of its people live below the poverty line.

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that we don’t support family planning funding just because it’s an effective anti-poverty strategy. Our support for voluntary family planning begins with the belief that being able to control the number and spacing of one’s children is a basic right:

The great tragedy in all of this -- “outrage” might be a more accurate term -- is that the cuts in FP funding are depriving women and men, many of them impoverished, of something they fundamentally want: that most basic ability to choose how many children to have and when to have them.

Anti-Choice Dem Wins Special Election

Scott Swenson — Sun, 04 May 2008 12:14:52 +0000

Democrat Don Cazayoux beat the far-right Republican Woody Jenkins, 49-46 percent, in Saturday’s special election in a heavily GOP district in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. President Bush carried the district with 59 percent of the vote in 2004; the GOP held this seat for 34 years. Cazayoux is anti-choice, which he says is a matter of faith on his web site. While the victory might be seen as a wash by some in the pro-choice community, it is more evidence that even in the most conservative parts of the country, voters have grown weary of the far-right and their misinformation and manipulations. Cazayoux was painted as "liberal" and tied to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Presidential frontrunner Barack Obama in ads, but still picked up a GOP seat, the second gain in two open seat contests for Democrats this cycle. As Jonathan Singer at MyDD points out,

This race was very much put forward by the chattering class as a referendum on Obama's coattails (which proved to be strong in the very Republican-leaning Illinois 14th congressional district earlier this year), and Obama's coattails passed the challenge. Simply put, the Republicans may have thought they had found a silver bullet in Obama and Wright (and Pelosi, too, for that matter), but they didn't.

The Nation: Race to the Bottom

Emily Douglas — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:03:00 +0000

Betsy Reed's new Nation cover story, Race to the Bottom, is a blast of cold invigorating air in a campaign season that's gotten torpid. While Hillary Clinton's gender has been used against her in "deplorable" sexist attacks, Betsy reports, the race-based attacks on Barack Obama can be harder to recognize because they haven't always been overt. Rather, they cast doubt on Obama's patriotism, suggesting that he's too foreign, or too divided in his allegiances, to be President. And the Clinton campaign is to blame for stoking the fire.

[W]hat is most troubling--and what has the most serious implications for the feminist movement--is that the Clinton campaign has used her rival's race against him. In the name of demonstrating her superior "electability," she and her surrogates have invoked the racist and sexist playbook of the right--in which swaggering macho cowboys are entrusted to defend the country--seeking to define Obama as too black, too foreign, too different to be President at a moment of high anxiety about national security. This subtly but distinctly racialized political strategy did not create the media feeding frenzy around the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that is now weighing Obama down, but it has positioned Clinton to take advantage of the opportunities the controversy has presented. And the Clinton campaign's use of this strategy has many nonwhite and nonmainstream feminists crying foul.

Pro-(Controlling Your) Life

Amie Newman — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:06:00 +0000

In honor of Mother's Day, Revolution Health has developed this useful interactive map that gives all 50 states a "momScore" designed, according to the site to:

"...compare and evaluate maternal and early childhood health across the United States."

To determine the scores, researchers evaluated a variety of factors including: access to prenatal care, maternal mortality, availability of child care services, risk of pregnancy complications, affordability of children's health insurance and more.

And what did researchers uncover?

Well, you'll need to head over to the site to figure out how your state rates but one cat I can let out of the bag is this: states like Louisiana and Mississippi were at the bottom of the barrel. In essence, both states (among a handful of others) have utterly failed to adequately prioritize and care for their mothers and children. Why is that important?

Louisiana and Mississippi have received failing grades in another domain as well.

Both carry the weight of having some of the most restrictive, heinous anti-choice legislation on their books in the entire country. In Louisiana's case, the state legislature has deemed it a higher priority to spend their resources and energy on laws that: force women to get their husband's permission to have an abortion, ensure abortion is outlawed should Roe v. Wade be overturned, and force women to wait 24 hours and listen to a state-mandated speech by a physician after deciding to have an abortion rather than ensure that women receive high-quality pre-natal care or paid family leave.

Mississippi has an appalling record, according to momScore, when it comes to ensuring that babies who are actually born in the state remain alive, healthy and thriving. And if you're a mother in Mississippi? You're more likely to face the possibility of unconstitutional bans against your right not to have a child if you don't want to rather than ensuring that the children you do have are given access to health insurance, and quality early childcare.

It's no coincidence that those states which fail to prioritize the health and well-being of mothers and children are also those states with the most restrictions when it comes to allowing women control over their own reproduction and family planning.

Roundup: Courts, Contraception and Campaigns

Brady Swenson — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:31:55 +0000

In his latest attempt to shore up the conservative side of the Republican base John McCain said he would use Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito as "the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me." In the article AP reporter Libby Quaid notes that McCain has, despite a blip in 1999 when he stated publicly that Roe V. Wade should not be overturned, "an otherwise unbroken record of opposing abortion rights for women."

Jessica at Feministing has a good followup on Cristina Page's announcement that the American Life League will be launching a campaign against contraception called "The Pill Kills." Jessica writes that she is "actually kind of relieved by this campaign, because at least the anti-choice movement is showing its true colors."

Men's News Daily has a post up entitled "Obama Hitches Wagon to the Radical Feminist Agenda." Carey Roberts lumps Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers in with feminists calling all "flamethrowers who espouse radical causes." What have feminsts advocated to be labeled thus? Roberts goes on to list all the radical causes feminists work toward, and that Obama backs, including access to contraception, eliminating the gender wage gap and domestic violence and even (nooo!) women-owned businesses. I think could go on for quite a while but Jess McCabe at the f word has a great response that will more than suffice.