Good Friday

The Democrats are making my week (and I can’t help but feel a little smug about it, given how many people I know who refused to vote for him because “what difference does it make who’s in the white house?”).

Not only has Obama signed executive orders banning torture, and closing Guantanomo and CIA detention centers abroad  [read Amnesty Intl's Perspective on this], he’s also moved to increase government transparency and ethics.

He is also expected to repeal the Global Gag Rule (a policy that has long crippled health providers across the world, by denying U.S. governemnt funding to NGOs that provide abortion services or counseling) TODAY!! [Take a look at the UN's perspective on my the Global Gag Rule must be repealed].

The Senate hasn’t failed us either, passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act by a landslide yesterday, 61-36. The bill restores women’s ability to challenge unequal pay. It’s worth noting that every single Republican woman on the Senate voted FOR the bill; just more proof that, regardless of political party, women usually do what’s best for men – and men, regardless of political party, shouldn’t be making decisions about women’s issues.

But my joy over the nation’s new leadership is, unfortunately, tempered by my disgust at Arizona’s [Oh AZ, when will you cease to disappoint?!]:

• Kyl and McCain, of course, voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
• Now that our beloved Janet Napolitano has left us for the Department of Homeland Security, Republican lawmakers are trying to roll back university funding provided by her while she was governor – meaning that, after the huge budget hit that ASU took a couple of months ago, we are looking at even larger one [read President Crow's statement] that will likely lay off thousands more employees (undoubtedly including myself), raise tuition and fees dramatically, and maybe even close one of our campuses. [More handiwork of Russell Pearce, mastermind behind last year's attempt to cripple public education in Arizona, Senate Bill 1108].

Two steps forward, one step back, huh?

People still don’t understand Roe v. Wade 34 years later

Published in the State Press on Tuesday, January 23, 2007

With yesterday marking the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the groundbreaking judicial opinion that changed the landscape of women’s reproductive rights in America, many popular areas of protest probably found their own landscape slightly changed: colored with pro-choicers loudly celebrating a landmark decision, and littered with equally idealistic pro-lifers hissing provocative words like “baby killer” in their confettied wake.

But amid all of this self-righteous clamor, one word in particular will repeatedly arise as the center of all our abortion debates this week: “personhood,” that favorite fallback of all pro-lifers, which will surely be squawked ad nauseam by either side — a cacophony as obnoxious, incessant and pointless as the fake bird sounds on Mill Avenue.

While religious ideology compels the pro-life crowd to argue that fetuses, as citizens, have a right to life, the pro-life crowd compels pro-choicers to argue that fetuses aren’t people.

This is followed by a volley of pseudo-scientific facts coupled with inane metaphors about life and freedom that is, at the very least, entertaining to the passers-by but, ultimately, a very poor use of Hayden Lawn.

It’s hard to believe that after 34 years, people are still hung up on an argument that the Supreme Court itself decided was irrelevant at the time of their landmark decision way back in 1973.

But as often as debaters talk about the case, whether touting or criticizing it, few seem to know very much about the particulars of the judicial decision.

The Supreme Court Justices didn’t overlook the issue of personhood when they made their decision. Among other things, they were concerned about when a life begins, and whether fetuses have, or should have rights.

But ultimately they decided that they “need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins” because they felt it wasn’t their place to speculate on something that doctors, philosophers and theologians couldn’t agree upon.

That’s right – the flustered folks facing off on Hayden Lawn aren’t the only ones who can’t agree on this issue – far more educated and intelligent people can’t either.

The justices eventually came to the conclusion that “the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the legal sense” and therefore, would not be considered as such just because legislators favoring a particular theory of life try to override a woman’s reproductive rights.

So why is there still so much focus on “personhood,” and not on the other countless (and more valid) points of disagreement regarding the abortion debate?

Because, despite the fact that everyone seems to have an opinion on abortion (formed carefully and thoughtfully, no doubt, through many years of study and deliberation), few know very much about it: its practice, its history, its consequences or its benefits, and especially its legislation.

Personhood is an easy argument for the ignorant to adopt because there is no answer to it. And, circular debates are a great way to avoid talking about more tangible issues, like the disastrous failure of abstinence-only programs in schools, the pro-life movement’s hostile war on sex (both safe and non), and the younger pro-choice generation’s failure to articulate its own stance.

Then again, it’s rarely ever been a match of wits as these two groups duke it out for possession of the American woman’s body — the pro-lifers resorting to ugly pictures of allegedly aborted fetuses and the pro-choicers sticking to the tried and true tradition of catchy picket-line chants, such as the ever clever “Keep your rosaries / off my ovaries!”

It would be refreshing if, after 34 years, both sides dropped the gimmicks and instead focused their creativity and passion into educating the public about the issue at hand — and, in doing so, actually learn a little something themselves about the issue that they spend so much time arguing about.