Vaginal Probes are not the Enemy

Since my post last Thursday a number of seemingly positive steps towards changing some of the bills restricting women's rights throughout this country. Virginia's transvaginal ultrasound bill has been scuppered and a near-identicle one in Alabama is becoming derailed as well. This reads as a clear example of over-reach. The Right clearly believed that the time was ripe for this regressive legislation and they pushed and pushed and pushed until they pushed just a little bit too far. The forced vaginal probing, which commentators in the media have been trying to get around saying for the better part of two weeks now, was just a step too far for the American populous and media to take. And we may have defeated them. It is highly likely that the next drafts of all of these bills will mandate the much less physically intrusive abdominal ultrasound rather than its vaginal cousin. And all across America, people are hailing this as a great victory.

It is not. The true problem with the original bills is not the type of probe, it is the idea of a government mandate for any kind of medically unnecessary procedure. Lets be very clear about this. All of these laws require, as part of any pre-op for an abortion, that the doctor is forced to perform an entirely separate procedure. This procedure is not medical but political. It is a government mandated shaming device. It is the probing and not the probe that is the problem. Whether the Right likes it or not, access to abortions is fully legal in our country. It is nothing short of revolting that these 'small government conservatives' are so willing to put aside their problems with government whenever it comes to cutting back the rights of women (or minorities, or the elderly, or the poor...really everybody apart from the rich).

And let's also not forget about the rights of the doctor here. After all, these bills all require the complete obedience not only of the pregnant women but of their doctors. After all, carrying out a procedure that is only designed to shame a patient seems to go against the oath to do no harm. Furthermore, the people who choose to become abortion providers, often risking their lives to do so, are being forced to act on the behalf not of their patients but on the behalf of the crazed protestors who throw things at their windows and threaten their lives. On the behalf regressive religious leaders who would condemn a twelve year old girl to bear her father's child. And on behalf of the handful of old white men writing these laws who view the people they are supposed to be representing as willful children, not Democratic citizens. They are the enemy. And we must not shy away from that declaration.

The problem with making birth control a 'women's' issue

So far, rhetoric from the Right in 2012 has been hearkening back to 1912 (or far earlier), particularly on the issues surrounding contraception, abortion, and women's rights. From forced vaginal ultrasounds to personhood amendments to attacks on contraception from the pill to condoms it seems as though Republicans are trying to shrink government to be smaller simply so that it can fit in the vaginas of America's women. This is not a question of religious rights. Its a question of human rights. It is unfathomable that the right to legal medical procedures and legal contraceptive devices should be taken away simply because of the outdated moral beliefs of your employer.

Much of the public outcry (which, by the way, has come from the Right, Left, and shadowy Center) has been very productive. Without any kind of election, public outcry has led to some positive changes in State and Federal Governments as well as in the private sector. The fight is certainly not won, but there have been many positive developments.

However, one particular piece of that outcry has worried me. All over the social media platforms I subscribe to are calls from women that men should stop talking about this issue, that men have no right to weigh in on this discussion, that unless you are shaped exactly like them, your voice is not welcome in the discussion. In one way, I understand these feelings. The fat old white men who rule our country have gone out of their way to make sure that women are not included in the conversation. The fact that Congress' most recent panel on birth control and contraception included no women is a travesty. Women should be playing as promenent a role in this discussion at the governmental level as they are on facebook or the twitterverse. Pregnancy, abortion, access to contraception... these are all incredibly important issues for women.

But that does not mean that men have no right to weigh in on these issues. On a personal level, these are male issues as well. I may not have to carry a baby inside of me but I certainly would prefer tools to help me decide when I want to be a father.

However, on a more general level, this is not simple an issue of women's rights. It is an issue of human rights. The idea of baring someone from the conversation simply because they supposedly cannot understand the issue because of their particular life experiences is a dangerous one. Turn it around and it is this kind of moral relativism that allows us to wash our hands of helping those who look or behave differently from us, those who live in different parts of the world, those who have led lives we can hardly imagine. I certainly hope I will never be able to truly relate to the life of say, a child soldier, but I feel perfectly justified in saying that what was done to him was wrong and that steps must be taken to try to ensure that nobody need suffer as he did.

The point of Democratic argument is to present differences of opinion and decide on the correct course of action. Many issues Progressives hold dear may not be able to garner the support of the majority of Americans quite yet... but I do not believe this is one of them. Trying to bar male voices from the argument will simply alienate friends and silence some fantastic advocates. This is a basic issue of human rights, and it is one that the bigots will find themselves on the wrong end of.

Syria

While its easy to get caught up in America's political circus, its important not to let this newest surge of Santorum to distract us from vitally important events going on world wide. The Syrian people are, right now, being ruthlessly murdered by their 'leader.' Just as Gaddafi decided that the best way to put down the Libyan Revolution would be to destroy the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, Assad has, over the past year, laid siege to over ten of his own cities to try to eliminate those opposed to his rule. Since this weekend he has turned his attention to Homs, a rebel-held city which has now been under attack from tanks, mortars, and snipers for six days. The BBC has been doing a phenomenal job covering events inside of Syria and I urge everybody to click around on their website. If you need a basic overview of what's going on in Syria, start here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13855203

There is no easy solution to this problem. Multinational organizations like the Arab League and the United Nations are both unable, because of their extremely limited mandates, and unwilling, because of the regressive views of many of their members to force the violence to stop. Individual members of the international community seems to lack the stomach for even Libyan-style military involvement. In Syria the only question that there really seems to be is whether the country is on the verge of civil war or genocide.

This is unacceptable. It seems like almost every year something like this happens, and basically every time the international response is too late, if it comes at all. And everybody wrings their hands, refusing to see one of the most inherent problems of the system: so long as the privacy of the nationstate trumps the protection of the people, genocide will continue to be viewed as one of the possible solutions to autocrat's problems. As long as the word of that autocrat is treated as law and the cries of citizens are treated as dirt people will continue to die.

Something has to change.

We need a Progressive Definition of Freedom.

As you probably gathered from the end of the previous post, I'm on a bit of an atheist-kick. That's partially because I'm reading what is shaping up to be a fantastic book, Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape, in which he argues that we can find a basic sense of human ethics through a clear understanding of science. So far, its great. I'll try and get through it quickly and write a little review that I can post here, but, so far, I highly recommend it to everybody. But here's my take on something that's been bothering me for quite some time now, the definition of freedom.

Freedom is a word heard from the cornfields of Ohio to the streets of Cairo. People all over the world talk of freedom, most everybody wants it, and hardly anybody thinks that have it.  But what is it?

There must be a progressive solution to this problem. Cultural conservatives have proclaimed a monopoly over defining freedom with very little trouble. Any theories of big government have successfully been propagandized into being the anathema of freedom. We are assailed both from the cultural conservatives and from the mealymouthed moral relativist Thoreauvian liberals on this point.  They state that a society with centralized and standardized state education or healthcare system will stifle difference and, in the end, create one single type of person, hardly better than a cyborg. For them, the only way big government ends up is with us all becoming the Borg. What they fail to grasp is that will only happen if the state behaves in a way that traditional conservative organizations would if given that kind of power. Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong places, but I don’t see a great deal of openness to individual exploration in traditional culture. It is conservative organizations do most of the  constraining. And that is because they are, at their root, philosophies not of consent and empowerment but of force  and submission-submission to authority, and even more than that, to a pursuit of an ideal created long before you even existed. Putting aside submission to God, even the most decentralized religions, particularly the monotheistic ones,  require a great deal of submission. Submission to your parents, of course, pledging to do nothing without their permission. Submission to the ‘elders’  of whatever brand of religion you ascribe to. And, of course, submission to  the heavily controlled information you create your worldview from. This is not simple respect. I have great respect for my parents, my teachers, my elders, and many the places I get my information from. But that is born of experience not instruction. It is conservative culture that attempts to force us to live our lives in a certain prescribed way.  When they speak of wanting freedom they are not talking about  freedom of personal choice. They are talking about freedom of collective control. They want the freedom to indoctrinate, abuse, and repress the next generation in the same way that they were.

Good public education, universal health care,  an interstate highway system, these do not stifle individuality. A higher standard of living allows all of us the ability to explore the realms of our consciousness. We are not average animals, living off of basic instinct. We are not machines, program to have one unaltered set of beliefs. We are not slaves, compelled to live our lives a particular way. We are humans, and we want the freedom to make up our own minds about what we believe.  This does not negate the value of learning or from the teachings of our elders. It empowers them! Unless of course, you don’t think your particular philosophy will last under scrutiny.

We declare this to be our definition of freedom not because it has been handed down from God, but from an understanding of the true realities facing people in the world today. This is not mean that accepting this definition of freedom is easy. We, as Progressives, must not shrink from the fact that our definition flies in the face of most traditional ideologies. But, given all that they stand for, shouldn’t it?

An Update

First of all, thanks for all of the support during January. It was by far the best month for the blog in terms of viewers and we had our first guest-written essay. I didn't quite hold up my half of the bargain in terms of number of essays, but I'm going to try to be better about that in the coming months. 




This has been an exciting month and the start of what promises to be an exciting year. There will be elections in Egypt, Russia, France, Palestine, Timor-Leste, Mexico, Venezuela, South Korea, and of course the United States among many others before the year is out.  As usual, the most dire situations will be in Dictatorships like Sudan, North Korea, and, most worryingly, Syria. But, with the Arab Spring still flowing and the 99% protests worldwide regaining speed as the weather warms, there should be plenty of hopeful news as well. There is only so much I can do and write here, so if there is something that anybody reading this wants to write about, please, please, please do so. I would love to post it here. 


In the mean time, keep informed, keep reading, and stay Progressive. 




And support this girl: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/us/rhode-island-city-enraged-over-school-prayer-lawsuit.html?_r=1