On the previous thread, mundungus42 pointed me to this article about why women in Philadelphia and elsewhere might seek illegal and unsafe abortions from people like Barron Gosnell (he never used his first name that I knew of). It's worth reading, in part because there are measures enacted here that affect women in other countries that we might lobby against, and because legal abortion clinics are being closed down all over the country. How long will it be until one of us is driven to an illegal provider in desperation, all because primarily male officials legislated care for our bodies?

In another story mentioned by wild_patience, a Planned Parenthood in Delaware has been closed pending investigation for unsafe conditions during abortions, making Delaware the first state with no abortion providers. Stories are flying thick and fast, with the most credible reports of unclean conditions coming from two registered nurses who quit their jobs after reporting the conditions got no response.

And the enemies of abortion coverage are having a heyday. I had to sort through their commentary on Delaware to find one article from a news organization I could expect to pretend to be objective. What have these people claiming to be "pro-life" got against women, that they would rather see them driven to abort themselves or go to someone like Gosnell than have access to clean, safe, properly regulated abortions? And shame on you, Planned Parenthood, for not keeping a sharper eye on your clinics!

In 1974, when I was between my sophomore and junior years in college, I found myself needing a gynecologist. Student health at the university was closed; I was working a full-time job, so by a process I don't quite remember, I ended up at the Women's Medical Center on Walnut or Chestnut Street, I think it was. As much as anyone could fall in love with a gynecologist--and a man, too, not my first choice even in those days, when I was a milder feminist than I am now--I fell in love with this one, a tall, light-skinned black man with freckles and a beautiful, deep voice. He warmed the speculum in his hands. He had art work placed on the ceiling so you had something to look at while objects wiggled around your insides, a process I hate. He told jokes.

I kept going back. When I got medical assistance I started seeing him for everything, as he moved in an associate for non-gynecological problems. I developed pain in my arms and knees; they introduced me to acupuncture. With the many gynecological issues that can come up with someone on the Pill, with migraines, and an active sexual life, I saw my doctors a lot. I even introduced my other female housemate to the practice. Then I finished school, said my goodbyes, and moved away. Whenever I had a good gynecological experience, or a not-so-good one, I thought of my old Penn doctor.

His name is Kermit Barron Gosnell.

Do any of you recognize the name? Have you been following the case? I saw the name, thrown at this LJ during a discussion of abortion clinics last year by some conservative who said they were all like those run by Gosnell in Philadelphia. The name just isn't that common. I searched it. And there was my old friend's face. The charges and the information were sickening. The discovery that none of his staff were qualified to carry out their duties was horrifying. The scale--two clinics and years of operations--makes my head spin.

I thought we--the clinic, my feminist friend and I--were all on one side. I knew the clinic performed abortions; it's one of the reasons I chose it. (Hey--you never know.) I believe, I thought Gosnell believed, that women had a right to safe abortions performed by trained professionals in a clean setting. What I read made me sick. It should have made me sick. And now that the verdict is in, I know that it's true. A woman died of bad care. Viable babies were killed. Instruments and the setting were not clean; disposal was not respectful or sanitary; workers were not trained. It is our nightmare of pre-Roe v. Wade abortions, except this was supposed to have been legal. Gosnell had made enough from his operations, and his dealings in painkillers, to run two such clinics. This whole rats' nest was exposed by Feds tracking down the drug selling operation. They get their whack at him this fall--his time on trial isn't over.

I kept wanting to post about this here, but I couldn't think of what to say. I keep wondering if I ought to reach out to my old friends from that time and ask if they know and what they think, but I can't. That place, those people, were so good. I thought something positive was beginning there, not so much for university girls deprived of student health, but for the population of West Philadelphia. I had never had a comfortable relationship with doctors before. They were always hostile authority figures who despised my family because we were on welfare, even us kids. Gosnell and his people made medical care something relaxed.

Why didn't I see any potential for this? Why did I not guess or suspect anything? It could have begun long after the 70s. Maybe Gosnell scrambled one too many times for funds, when he knew there were easier ways to make serious money. I've run into real sociopaths before, and they can be so plausible. Gosnell's differences are scale and indifference to life, and the other sociopaths I've known never got the opportunity to gain by allowing a life to pass through their gloved and slippery hands. And there is one more thing, the thing I hate to think more than any other.

Gosnell's victims were all women of color. My roommate, and I? We're white. Is it possible Gosnell, a man of mixed race, felt less attention would be paid to the travails of women of color? Did he have issues there? I don't suppose we'll ever know. Probably it was just that we knew him before he thought of ways to get rich, and didn't really think all those wombs matters.

Others are culpable. The state and city inspectors have a lot to answer for, because they went for years, rubber-stamping their OK's on this outfit and its facilities without really inspecting. They owe something to the dead woman's family and to the other women who were damaged by Gosnell and the people who worked for him. I hope there is a big shakeup going on in those organizations, because they allowed this to continue. It doesn't take blame away from any of the people who worked for Gosnell or from Gosnell himself. It just means there's more blame that has to be cleaned up with the rest of the stinking, rotting mess.

edited to add:
I should have said, please don't feel sorry for me. My hurt is psychic only, and I can bear this one and work through it--I've had and will have worse. Our pity and heartbreak belongs to the women Gosnell and his cohorts abused for so many years. None of them sucked up the knowledge that they would go to jail and reported this. None of them. They let it go on for years. The victims are the ones who deserve our better feelings, and those who took part deserve whatever they get.

Programmer girl Jen Lamere comes up with a TV-spoiler-busting Twitter program, thereby winning her subcategory and the main prize in the TVnext Hack Event, the only girl to do so (the only girl competing, people say). 8-(

The program allows you to block potentially spoilery things about your favorite shows for a set period of time, after which the twitters about your shows are revealed in full again. Is this cool or what? (It isn't generally available yet, though).

Guess what Jen plans to go to college for? Go on. You don't even have to close your eyes to guess!

The amazing Maureen Johnson took on the gendering of book covers in the Huffington Post this week: the article is a cutting way to point out to the clueless how women's books are softened and made non-threatening and less important in publishing. Check it out, but have your favorite heartburn tablets on hand. Maureen is someone to follow, not just in her fiction: she is one of our best activists.

I also recommend this very thought-provoking article of hers, The Gender Cover-Up. What can I say, except "she's right." If you need confirmation, you only have to look at the 2012 "Best of" lists published by the prestige outfits like the New York Times, the LA Times, and the New York Review of Books, among others. The majority of writers on those lists is men (majority ... is, not are--yep, that's right). The same is true for the British lists, except for the one that is dedicated to women because the principal list continually chose only male writers.

Maureen is a delight to read. She is crystal clear in her thinking and prose, and she doesn't mess around. Check her out. Discuss freely. Enjoy!

Goddess and Green Man bless you all on this Bealtaine, and may any good crop you this summer return full bounty to you! It may be plants, it may be ideas, it may be work--summer is the time for growth and laying up good stuff against the winter months to come.

And in case you were thinking of laying up holiday and birthday gifts or giving yourself a little something, the lovely Adelheide has refurbished her own jewelry lines. You may recall she is VERY affordable, and she could use a little extra cash right now. Take a look--I have. (Actually, I'm doing more than looking!)

In all the madness and sadness of the week, it's easy to miss the passing of one of our greats: E. L. Konigsberg, author of the classics FROM THE CRAZY MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER, THE VIEW FROM SATURDAY, A PROUD TASTE FOR SCARLET AND MINIVER, THE OUTCASTS OF 19 SCHUYLER PLACE, and so many more. She published two books at the very start of her career, one of which was a Newbery Honor winner and one a Newbery Award winner. (I'm so glad I didn't find this out until yesterday, or I might never have had the courage to try the marketplace.)(Nah, I woulda gone for it anyway.)

She was an author-illustrator, a science teacher, a mother, a painter, and one of those long term facets of anyone who lived part of their lives in school libraries. She was 83 years old.

Ms. Konigsberg, I hope you and Eleanor of Aquitaine are finally getting to have a nice long chat.

I don't know if any of you have been paying any attention to the Koreas while we wait for the next chapter in the Steubenville story. I have, because I am used to thinking of North Korean military posturing as silly, my father was a veteran of what was called "a police action," in Korea, and what most people called the Korean War.

Things have been getting tense as North Korea shuts down ties to South Korea, our ally, and South Korea has made responses they hope will show that they are determined not to be pushed around.

Yesterday was a little different. North Korea claimed it had put a missile emplacement on its east coast that could fire a missile that would reach American territory. They claim, and American Defense Secretary Hagel seems to believe, that territory is our territory of Guam, with its bases there. Mr. Hagel is now sending advanced weaponry to Guam.

When I was a kid, we learned about this thing called "escalation," which was the name of the tune that everyone danced to during the Cold War. You move your big weapon into your ally's country, we move our bigger weapon into our ally's country. Or our country. Or you build bigger weapons in your country, and we move bigger countering weapons into our allies' countries, and everyone hopes and prays that nobody, NOBODY gets trigger happy.

Then the Berlin Wall came down and Soviet Russia went to pieces. Suddenly there was no more evil empire for us to play nuclear chess with. (If you want to know how bad it could get, look up the American War in Vietnam and/or the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were all such idiots.) Everyone decided to take our big missile bases down, and monitored the other guys as they did the same. We hoped the countries coming of technological age would learn from how close we came to blowing up everything.

And yet I sat at my screen, my belly and tripes all done up in knots, my memory in full Defcon 3. North Korea hasn't been funny for me for a month. And today's news? I've seen it before.

Pray, okay? I'm going to. Pray that it stops right here. Pray that the latest Kim says it was all a joke, and we're such silly Americans for taking a nuclear threat seriously. Because the only other direction from today's news is really, really bad.

edited to add after midnight on April 4th:

And since I'm not an expert in the region or in the thinking of North Korea's neighbor's, here's a well-thought-out, not-alarmist piece from today's L.A. Times which I think gives a pretty decent look at what's going on.

LUCY LAWLESS!

Thanks to liadan_m, I read this amazing post (TRIGGERs for rape and abuse) started and moderated by my friend, writer Elizabeth Bear. Just for the record, I already thought Bear is a goddess. Not only is she an amazing writer, but she is a warrior for Good on LGBTQ issues.

She has a thing to say about the Steubenville girl and others like her, that they are not "victims," but "survivors." She explains this. And others come in to share their own experiences, as she does. This is a hard post to read, but the writers know what they are talking about. They are survivors. What they have to say is worth reading and worth serious thought. If you already know what they are talking about, it may help to know you aren't alone.

Update, March 25, 2013:

Within two days of my posting this, the gang at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, despite Fox's salacious reportage, Senator Campfield's posturing, and the university's cowardice, Sex Week and its broad program of education on all different kinds of issues with sexual themes raised the same income that had been promised to them by the university in funds for the original Sex Week. Hurray and thank you to all those who realized that the cause is a good one, and that people who don't even understand what Sex Week is about shouldn't be allowed to end it! This is a win for the good folks!



Today I got the following e-mail from a fan that made my blood boil. I'm asking you to help if you can and definitely, definitely boost the signal so we can lobby the school and call the cowards out. (And yes, I have Kata's permission to quote her mail in full!) Remember, when it comes to donations, even $5.00 is $5.00 more than they had, and signatures and signal boosts are just as powerful. Thanks, folks.
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With all the news recently about the rapes in Steubenville, I’ve been thinking a lot about what we can do as a society to try to attempt to stop things like this from happening again. One thing that I feel is needed is sex education for all.

Unfortunately, something has happened recently that is preventing me and many of those around me from receiving this education. I am a freshman at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and until recently, we were planning a school-wide “Sex Week” funded by the University on a combination of money from tuition and state taxes. This week would be a week on campus dedicated to providing sex education of all types to the students on campus.

Topics for the week included virginity, sex and religion, homosexuality, safe sex, healthy relationships, and countless other topics that young people need to know about. Unfortunately, about a week ago, Fox News published a misleading article severely misconstruing what was planned for the week. This caused a major uproar on and off campus. On campus, students were criticizing the bigotry found in the article, and making well-formed arguments against this attack on an educational, university-approved activity. Off campus, however, Tennessee Senator Stacey Campfield decided to use this publicity to attempt to stop this event from happening by threatening the funding that was to be used to support Sex Week. (You may remember him as the man who caused an uproar with his attempts at “anti-gay” measures in schools)

Apparently his threats, even though the budget had already been approved, managed to cow the members of our administration, because Chancellor Jimmy Cheek announced today that all funding from state taxes was to be cut—$11,145 dollars, leaving the organizers of the program with just $6,700 where there used to be $17,845.

Sex Week will continue as planned, but a lot of funding will have to come from donations. I’m not here asking you to donate, but I was hoping that you could use your influence as a respected woman with strong personal beliefs to make more people aware of what is going on. This is something that is very important to me, and I hope that you find it to be important as well. Even sharing our story on Facebook would mean the world to me.

I also hoped to take this moment to thank you for being such a positive influence in my life. Your books, with their strong women and practical lessons, have shaped me into the person I am today. I know that without you, my life would be completely different. I would never have had the courage to get myself out of a situation where I was bullied, I would not be so confident in myself, and I would definitely not have had the courage to write this letter if not for you. So thank you.

Yours Sincerely,

Kata
Freshman

Aforementioned articles:

The Fox article that sparked this mess

Things Senator Stacey Campfield has done

Today’s disappointing announcement

Donation page for Sex Week UTK

Petition to Chancellor Jimmy Cheek asking to approve the funding again
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