Category: reproductive rights

Rain without Thunder – HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Rain without Thunder (movie) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I just watched this!  And will watch it again, stopping to think at so many points!

Here’s the brief description:  It’s the year 2042 and the threat is real…women are going to prison for terminating their pregnancies. An investigating reporter is determined to reveal the truth behind the convictions.

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Sterilization: The Personal and the Political

Ever since I’ve been old enough to ask myself ‘Do I want children?’, my answer has been ‘No’ – a rather emphatic ‘No!’  I consider parenting to be a career, and a very demanding one at that: twenty-four hours a day for at least fourteen years, you are responsible for the physical, emotional, and intellectual …

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Permitting Abortion and Prohibiting Prenatal Harm

I think abortion should be allowed. And I think prenatal harm (especially that caused by ingesting various legal and illegal substances while pregnant) should not be allowed. Some accuse me of hypocrisy or, more accurately, maintaining a contradictory position: either women have the right to control what happens to their bodies or they don’t. No …

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The Pill for Men

‘Outrageous!’  That was the word used way back in ’85 in response to the expectation that men take a contraceptive that had a side-effect of reduced sex drive.  Hello.  Let me tell you about the contraceptive pill for women.  Side-effects include headaches, nausea, weight gain, mood changes, yeast infections, loss of vision, high blood pressure, …

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Making Kids with AIDS

[I wrote this piece a while ago, but have since then, seen the same sort of denial of male agency.  Apparently kids are found in pumpkin patches.  Yeah.  Or the stork brings them.  What are you, six?]

[Quite apart from the point about AIDS.]

What has been glaringly absent in …

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This is your brain. This is your brain on oxytocin: Mom.

I think many women realize that their children make them vulnerable; their love for them holds them hostage.  So many things they would do (leave?)—but for the children.  I wonder how many realize that their imprisonment is physiological.  And, in most cases, as voluntary as that first hit of heroin, cocaine, …

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Child Support Insurance – What an Intriguing Idea!!

“For guys who inexplicably want to do the thing that makes babies without wanting to support the inevitable babies, the obvious solution would be child support insurance — 0 to 18 plus college and professional school to say, age 30. They would have to sit down with their insurance agent and describe their sex lives …

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Freakonomics Indeed

I remember when I first read Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics, in which they present an astounding connection between access to abortion and crime: twenty years after Roe v. Wade, the U.S. crime rate dropped.

Astounding indeed. That men are so surprised by that! I mean, just how clueless are you guys? About the power, the …

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Population Growth (i.e., rape)

I am amazed at the number of population growth analyses that mention rape.  So far I’ve read, let me see…none.  And if they don’t even mention rape, they sure as hell can’t consider it a major causal factor.  Do people really believe that millions of women want to be pregnant for five to ten years?  …

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Surrogacy — Why Not?

Sure, women should be allowed to be surrogates.  We all do work with our bodies, some of us also include our minds in the deal (some of us are allowed to include our minds in the deal), so why not?  As long as they get paid for service rendered.

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