Tuesday Tunes: the Verve Pipe

All right, call me silly, but I've got a question for you. Do you remember "The Freshmen"? Cast your mind back to middle school -- no, farther back than Linkin Park. If you hit Alanis or the Spice Girls you've probably gone too far. I'm talking about the Verve Pipe: those soulful modern rockers with just the right dose of world-weary angst to them. Maybe you knew some high school freshmen who thought their hit single "The Freshmen" would make an excellent theme song for the end-of-year class slideshow.

No? OK, maybe just me.

Anyway. I remember we sat around not just once but several times trying to decide what it could mean, that song, with its cryptic words about baby's breath and a shoe-ful of rice and Valium and sleeping. Well, obviously (says I), it was about a girl who committed suicide after the loss of an intense relationship expected to lead to marriage. There were plenty of other theories, too, some based on misheard lyrics and others not.

Turns out it was (of course!) a song about abortion. Years later the lead singer said he wrote it about a friend who had an abortion in their youth, and he took the creative liberty of having the fictional version of the woman commit suicide in her grief (in real life she didn't). So tell me: is it really that obvious?



I still think the lyrics were vague enough that I could be forgiven for missing the abortiony implications. But on the other hand, thinking back, there's probably a ton of abortion allusions in pop culture that went right over my head when I was a kid. Because it's just not something you have clear information about when you're young. Which is maybe why it's easy to get to your teenage years or beyond with all sorts of confused/confusing ideas...like the young pregnant caller who asked one of us, "How do they put the baby back in you afterward? Do they have to do that part?"

Be my little baby

There are a handful of movies that I'll watch anytime they come on TV, no matter how many times I've seen them before or how far in the movie is. I'll drop everything for the following (in no particular order):

Titanic
Any Brat Pack teen flick
Jurassic Park
Dirty Dancing

Especially that last one. Since I was first introduced to the magical coupling that is Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, I have been a faithful fan of this silly film. I like watching it again and again, because I always discover something new.

At age 12 I discovered that Johnny was checking Baby out in the rear view when she was changing in the backseat.
At age 17 I discovered that Boyz II Men did a delightful cover of "In the Still of the Night", which was playing in the background the morning after their epic lovemaking.
At age 21 I discovered that this movie is about abortion.

It took me so long to catch on not because I'm an idiot, but because I obsess over movies about dancing and I spent most of the time wishing I were one of the background dirty dancers. So I kind of bleeped out the subplots about lies and betrayal and CLANDESTINE ABORTION.


Penny gets pregnant after sleeping with some twerp who works at the resort. He wants nothing to do with it, prompting Baby to borrow the money from her father for some secret yet noble purpose. As I recall it's something like $500. This is 1960-something! That's a lot of scratch! Of course Penny gets a raging infection, almost dies, and Baby's disappointed father has to save her life with his black medical bag of tricks (that he carries around on vacation, apparently). Baby teaches her dad that even dance instructors deserve a fair shake in life, and he becomes so liberated that he allows her to canoodle on the dance floor with a man twice her age.

I think it's pretty easy to gloss over all the adult material there, because the movie ends so happily and is so seductive for nerdy, frizzy-haired girls like myself. But there's a lot of macabre stuff going on. Struggling runaway trying to start a new life. A shithead "man involved" who has tons of money but won't spare a cent for an abortion (legality aside). A traveling quack who nearly kills a young woman with a rusty spoon in her cervix. It ain't pretty. And in fact, Dirty Dancing only gives a PG-13 account. What if Penny had died? What if Baby didn't find the money? What if her father refused to treat Penny's infection? Things could get even yuckier, and I'm glad they didn't because I still want to be able to enjoy my guilty pleasure movies.

At the end of the day, I am grateful for the courage of the screenwriters and directors to portray abortion in a reasonably fair light. I understand why the issue wasn't more prominent (this is a love story!), but for 1987 I think they made some seriously progressive choices.

Yay abortion in movies! What are your favorite movies about abortion?

"Stop the hate"

PETA activists throw paint. Anti-choice protesters throw weird little plastic fetuses. Gay-rights advocates throw...glitter bombs.

I really tried to resist the urge to add my commentary that if Newt is all about "liv[ing] in a free country," it's interesting that he's not in favor of the freedom to love and marry nor the freedom of choice. But ANYWAY.

One of my mentors told me about this video last night as we also talked about fear. Antis fear strong women and autonomy and a complex right to choice and reproductive justice that they don't fully understand. Abortioneers don't fear antis as much as we fear the loss of our rights and our beliefs and options.

I don't think that much about bombs when I go to work, but recently, I made a dark joke to a loved one and she responded, "Oh my God, I never considered that danger for you. Be careful!" It's simultaneously encouraging and horrifying that I can joke about something like that, and it's sobering to be reminded that it's a reality.

Last night, my mentor mused, "You should just throw a glitter bomb at the protesters," and I like her style. Shouldn't we all subvert what bombs are and how fear is expressed, keep it light as we deal with the heavy, and "feel the rainbow"?

**Today Only!**

I interrupt my regularly-scheduled blog post to bring you this news:

Today, March 18, 2011, you can view free of charge "Silent Choices", a documentary elucidating the struggles of black women and the black community in talking about abortion.

This is a very important topic to me, because a) it's largely ignored by the media, even when abortion itself is a topic, and b) I've witnessed the phenomena of the silent abortion and the coerced motherhood in my own community. It's increasingly relevant, too, as black communities are coming under attack by anti-choice groups (remember Sparky's post?), but community members themselves are unheard thanks to internalized disenfranchisement promulgated by evangelicals and holier-than-thous.

No more! I've only watched 10 minutes of this so far, but I am glued to the screen. All women should watch this, and learn to appreciate the sociocultural barriers that black women face when dealing with reproductive health issues. It will help you become better case managers, better clinic directors, better doctors, better counselors, better people!

"Silent Choices" normally costs $4.99, but today only you can view it for free. Please do!

"I understand the sentiment behind it, the idea that abortion has been a central focus of white women's organizing for reproductive freedom, and black women and other women of color have fought for a broader understanding of reproductive freedom. But abortion is part of a broad complex of issues and needs and services that are required for all women to have complete control over their reproductive decision-making and for there to be complete reproductive justice in this country." - Dorothy Roberts, Northwestern University School of Law.

(Special thanks to Vegan Vagina, for bringing this to the Abortioneers' attention!)

Awesome Guttmacher Video

Recently, Guttmacher put out a pretty great video that is a general overview of abortion in the United States. It addresses a lot of key points (most women seeking abortion already have kids, are religious, etc) that most people seem to miss in the abortion debate.

It's a great piece to share with friends, pro-choice and anti-choice alike, and it is also very aesthetically pleasing as well.

Hope you enjoy!

Herstory, circa 1730: She was probably pregnant

Placenta Sandwich is such a smartypants. She shared this: Poor Jane's Almanac

PS. Thanks for rising from the dead with sheer beauty, humor, and grace. I love the heart of every single Abortioneer. Here's an Easter video about resurrection:

UNBORN IN THE USA: Inside the War on Abortion

Land of the free: until you're faced with an unwanted pregnancy...

Lately I have found myself fascinated with people who are against abortion, particularly those people who are anti-abortion activists. My fascination grew as I began to collect the brochures discarded in our waiting room by women who were there to have an abortion. The pamphlets are handed out by anti-choice street "counselors." These pamphlets are an extreme embellishment of possible complications involved in abortion procedures and include dramatic photos of mothers and children, images of fetuses throughout pregnancy, and describe the procedure using words that create images of dismembered babies and knife like objects inserted into a woman's vagina. They are such an embellishment on the truth that I think it's safe to say these kind of pamphlets are lies!

I recently stumbled upon a documentary called UNBORN IN THE USA: Inside the War on Abortion. This documentary included interviews with dozens of pro-life activists and sheds light on the anti-abortion movement throughout the country. The documentary explored training institutes for college-aged students such as the Focus Institute where young people receive intensive instruction on how to "minister" to pro-choice people and women to encourage them to join anti-abortion forces. The students at this institute practice role playing in order to gain skills about how to approach pro-choice people. The tactics are pretty sick, including giant gruesome pictures of dismembered fetuses as a conversation starter. I have said it before and I will say it again we need a training institute for pro-choice, pro-women, pro-family warriors! The longer I work in this field the more I think we need practical training for doctors, medical assistants, nurses, ultrasound technicians, and counselors. Thankfully there are organizations like Medical Students For Choice. We need pro-choice people trained to provide the services necessary in abortion provision.

One of the most sickening things said in the whole documentary was during one of these training sessions. The facilitator addresses how to deal with the "concern" of rape. One of the questions the students are encouraged to ask women who have been raped is if the child should pay for the crimes of their father. As someone who has been raped before and who has helped many women who were pregnant as a result of rape seek abortions I cannot even comprehend how this seems plausible to anyone, anti-abortion or not. No person's experience of rape can be minimized to a "concern," and surely most sane people would not agree with the notion that a woman should carry a pregnancy that is a result of rape so that the "child" does not pay for its father's crimes.

Another key tool developed by the anti-abortion right are Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC). Staff from a CPC located next door to Dr. Tiller's clinic was interviewed. This clinic offered multi-dimensional ultrasounds and was identified by the staff as a tool to help women choose motherhood. A Time Article from August 2010 estimates that there are over 4,000 CPCs in the U.S. and nearly five times as many CPC's as there are abortion clinics. These clinics purposefully choose location close enough to abortion clinics that they can easily be confused for the abortion clinic. I have spoken to dozens of women who have stumbled into these kind of centers. They are a waste of time, money, and energy. Maybe we could turn these centers into day care centers where women can bring there children during the multiple appointments that are often required to obtain an abortion.

Overall I found this documentary extremely informative; it shed light on the weapons used to fight against abortion. I hope to see the day that pro-choice people are fighting back even harder. The documentary is definitely worth checking out -- know thy enemy!

Book Review

During Superbowl Sunday I was discussing abortion with a relatively pro-choice individual, and the question of the sexual health utopia arose.

Her version: all women would have unfettered access to contraception and would all use it scrupulously.

My version: all women would have unfettered access to abortion and would use it as needed with no fear of stigma or retaliation.

Now, I totally understand her side. A few years ago I was on that side too. But nowadays I understand that a) if abortion access is unfettered than contraceptive access has probably been unfettered for centuries, and b) some women, all types of women, simply don't want to use contraception. And as hard as that is for lots of folks to understand, it's true. And I'm not even talking unfortunate, hopelessly unaware women. I'm talking about fully aware, competent women who make the choice not to use a method. Maybe they don't like the way condoms feel, or they don't like the effects of hormonals on the body, or don't like OB/GYNs telling them what's best. Whatever the case, I'm finding more and more women out there who don't think twice about a) carrying as many pregnancies as they will because they don't practice contraception, or b) having as many abortions as they will because of the same.

And yet, and understandably so, my counterpart was horrified. Why would anyone do that? After the third abortion a woman must just be lazy or plain stupid. She even challenged my assertion that there was no limit to the number of abortions one could have before crossing an ethical line with all the disbelief of Fabio in an "I Can't Believe it's not Butter" commercial. And as strange as these things sounded to my reformed ears, I know that they are common sentiments. Any woman who has that many abortions on purpose must be crazy!

Now, it's not the road that I've chosen. I've never had an abortion or needed one, and I quite enjoy the daily hormones that have saved me over $100 in tampons over the last couple years. But when is it ever my place to tell Sue how many abortions she can have before I stop being her friend? I couldn't, wouldn't do it! The logical flaw is that I don't have an ethical dilemma with abortion, therefore the number of times a non-unethical act is committed makes no difference to me.

Man, that was a tough conversation to get through. Anyway, I relayed this incident with a friend of mine, who recommended to me the following book: [/rant] [actual blog topic]

I'm not really familiar with the author (Cristina Page, anyone?), but she's great because she says everything I already know to be true but in a way that makes you actually want to listen and not cringe at my boisterousness. And her basic premise is something we all know to be true, but don't articulate quite enough: Antis are not simply anti-abortion, or even anti-contraceptive. They are anti-sex!

This is true enough, and I enjoy that Page makes a series of logical steps to prove this beyond the shadow of a doubt. Most importantly, by pointing out how antis refuse to accept any scientific evidence you provide, make up their own to counter it, and reject the most sensible compromises that will ensure that abortion rates plummet.

Wanna hear some funny things about antis? (As if you haven't heard enough by now.) On the prolife.com website, masturbation is identified as a "homosexual" behavior, that is, "sex with a person of the same sex, namely, yourself." Ah, if only I'd had a nickel for every time an anti whacked off. But you can find this and other philosophical gems in the book. Very excited to finish it and report back to you all the musings of dumb-dumbs and do-dos.

Ta!

Need for the Women's Movement?

So, I'm slightly obsessed about Lauren Zuniga now. I'm not ashamed. She's fucking amazing. And if you haven't watched her yet, then watch her. Now. Yes. Now. Take a minute. Sit down. Turn up the volume. Consider it a reminder of what our worth is. Our worth as women.



If you want more, check her out on YouTube or re-watch my previous post here.