Regardless of which side one falls on the abortion debate, can we at least all recognize the hypocrisy behind killing someone to protest alleged “murder”? He has admitted to killing the doctor, but said he was “protecting the unborn” which makes it okay. He expressed no remorse. I pity the judge who has to deal with this case, and I fear it will re-open the already volatile abortion debate.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33802796/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
I heard about this apartment complex on the radio. Apparently in New York City there are apartments available for women only. Women students who live in the apartments pay around $250 per week which includes maid service, breakfast and dinner. Working women pay around $300 a week, with the same benefits. This apartment complex is where Sylvia Path stayed when gaining her experience for her book “The Bell Jar” as well as many other famous women. While this seems like a great deal, there is one catch. While the website says that the apartments are only women. The radio program I listened to said that men were not allowed to stay the night, had a curfew for how late they could be in the rooms, and could not be in the elevators without a staff member present. The staff are also women. Would you stay here??
| “I direct that the said apartments shall not be conducted for profit but solely for the purpose of providing unmarried working women with homes and wholesome food at a small cost to them”. Charles B. Webster, April 5, 1916. |
Michael Laws, an outspoken politician in Australia, has proposed an idea where the government would pay people who are potentially unfit parents to be sterilized. “If we gave $10,000 to certain people and said ‘we’ll voluntarily sterilise you’ then all of society would be better off,” he said.
This story reminded me of our unit on reproductive rights and sterilization. I think the issue of sterilization is much more present in our society than we notice. For example, when we say something like “That couple shouldn’t have children!” aren’t we basically advocating their sterilization? Society probably would be better off if certain people did not reproduce, but the issue gets tricky when governments try to decide how – or if – they can implement a sterilization law.
This is an interesting article that plays on pop culture and the new realm of communication strategies out in the world today. Pepsi had a new app for a smart phone out there to advertise its new product Pepsi AMP. The application, entitled “AMP UP before you score” allowed men to look up different ‘types’ of women which would then give them certain lines or ‘information’ about that type of women. It really caused a big stir with groups calling it sexist or crossing the line in the sex-sells strategies – eventually Pepsi took it off the web. Below are a few links to some blogs about the app.
This relates to class since it discusses the popular culture’s view of women and how corporate America can further that view. The question becomes, whose responsibility is it to mediate issues? Should men be responsible for not objectifying women? Should women cry ‘sexist’ to Pepsi and make an example out of their misuse of women? Or should Pepsi censor themselves in the process of marketing their product to their target audience?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/10/pepsi-amp-iphone-app.html
I found this opinion piece on The Onion. I had whisperings of this website, but had never checked it out for myself. I found this article and saw the picture of the author and had no clue what would follow. I had assumed based on what I’ve heard about The Onion that it would be a pro-choice piece. However, the article was more of a tongue-in-cheek soliloquy. At first I couldn’t image someone saying these things to someone who had an abortion. But then I considered a woman who has the best of intentions but says all the wrong things. Kind of like some older woman who notices you have lost weight, and instead of positively congratulating you tells you how awful you looked before. This clearly relates to Sex Power and Politics as we discussed abortion for numerous weeks.
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/a_little_birdie_told_me_you_had
Proposition 1, much like Prop 8 in California, passed yesterday banning gay marriage in Maine. “Maine became the 31st state to block same-sex marriage through a public referendum.” According to Jennifer C. Pizer, “Our founders did not intend to allow a majority to take basic rights from a minority.” Which echoes nicely what Martin said yesterday about the tyrranny of the majority.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/us/05marriage.html?_r=1&hp
http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/69055047.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU
Dan Savage on Halloween as the new Heterosexual Pride Parade:
I’m often asked—confronted—about gay pride parades when I speak at colleges and universities. Usually it’s a conservative student, typically someone who isn’t happy about my being invited to campus in the first place. We gay people like to pretend that we’re all about love and marriage, the conservative student will insist, but look at your pride parades! Look at those guys in assless chaps and all those bare-chested lesbians dancing! Just look! The exchange almost always ends with this:Conservative student: “Straight people don’t flaunt our sexuality like that. We don’t have straight ‘pride’ parades.”
Me: “You should.”
And it seems clearer with every passing Halloween that straight people do.
…
We don’t resent you for taking Halloween as your own. We know what it’s like to keep your sexuality under wraps, to keep it concealed, to be on your guard and under control at all times. While you don’t suffer anywhere near the kind of repression we did (and in many times and places still do), straight people are sexually repressed, too. … It makes you long for moments when you can let it all hang out, when you can violate the social taboos you honor most of the rest of time, when you can be the piece of meat you are and treat other people like the pieces of meat they are.
…
Right now things are a little unfair—a little—on the gender front. Straight girls are expected to show flesh on Halloween; straight boys aren’t. Sadly, I don’t foresee that changing anytime soon…It’s a shame, of course, because there are a lot of straight guys out there who have amazing bodies, and they should be encouraged to show off on Halloween, to celebrate their erotic power and do like the gay boys do: objectify and be objectified at the same time. That would make the straight pride parades, aka Halloween, feel as egalitarian as the gay pride parades on which they were unconsciously modeled.
“Many people claim that it makes no importance difference what the sex of their children is. Some disagree, as witnessed by the efforts they are prepared to go through to select the sex of their child” (McCarthy; 303). I will explain about those people who disagree, what choices they have to select the sex of their child, why they would want to choose their child’s sex, and why it should be ok and legal for them to do it.
I will begin by talking about the different ways one could select their infant’s sex. There are three ways that I will talk about. One way is to terminate the pregnancy if the fetus is not the desired sex. The other two are the preconceptual method of separating X and Y sperm, and the postconceptual method of in vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic diagnosis.
The technique of preconceptual method of separating X and Y sperm “increases the chances of a couple getting a girl if that is the sex they are trying to get from about 50% to 85%, and increases the chances of their getting a boy if that is the sex they are trying to get from about 50% to 65%.” The postconceptual method of in vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic diagnosis “is the only method which offers a good chance of a pregnancy with a fetus of the chosen sex and a near zero chance of a pregnancy with a fetus of the non-chosen sex” (McCarthy; 302). Even though they all are a way to select an infant’s sex, the last two are better because “they do not require aborting a fetus of the ‘wrong’ sex” (Darnovsky; 1).
One of the main reasons why a couple would want to choose to select their infant’s sex is to have a balanced family. “For example, they have had two boys, and want to have only one more child, but believe that their family life would be richer and better balanced if the third child they have is a girl” (McCarthy; 303). As Wilkinson says, “who would like to belong to an ‘unbalanced family’?” (Wilkinson; 2). I know many families, mine included where there was one child singled out because they were the only child of that sex. In my family it was me and my two brothers. When we were home, my two brothers could do stuff together and they would leave me to find stuff to do on my own.
Another reason why a couple would want to choose to select their infant’s sex is because some people are hoping for a certain sex in their child. “Compare the fact that many people who reproduce normally hope to have a child of a particular sex, and are disappointed to get a child of the opposite sex” (McCarthy; 303). Darnovsky talks about a woman, who “wanted to have someone to play Barbies with and to go shopping with; [she] wanted the little girl with long hair and pink fingernails” (Darnovsky; 6). There are those people who really want a daughter or really want a son. They “want to recreate their relationships with their own mothers [or] do better by their daughters than their mothers did by them. They want their sons to have sisters, so they learn to respect women” (Darnovsky; 6).
One last reason why a couple would choose to select their infant’s sex is in countries like China it is better to have a by than a girl, and selecting your infant’s sex is almost a sure thing they will get that sex they selected. In China and other countries like it, people want to get a boy so bad that they’ll either keep trying so that they’ll have many children before they finally get a boy, r they’ll e extremely disappointed if they only planned on having a few kids. “In a family that expects to have seven children, the birth of a girl is a disappointment; in a family that anticipates only two or three children, it is a tragedy (Rosenberg; 2). In the countries where people desperately try to have a boy, if they have a girl, they may end up killing her or abandoning her somewhere. If people are able to select their infant’s gender, no young children will be killed, and families won’t be forced to have many children before they finally get a boy.
Why it should be legal for people to select their infant’s sex all come down to freedom of thought and expression. “[T]he liberty to make one’s own reproductive choices is no different from the liberties associated with freedom of thought or freedom of expression” (McCarthy; 303). Just like freedom of speech and freedom of expression protects someone when they speak their mind about something or do another legal, but morally objectionable thing, that is the same with selecting their infant’s sex.
In conclusion, the choice to select your child’s sex should be legal because of some people who want a certain sex, and are hoping for it. It could also be a way to bring down population, especially in China and other places who hope for boys and have kids until they get one. And, anyways, you can already choose to have your child have certain other traits like eye or hair color, so why not sex?
Darnovsky, M.R. (n.d.). Revisiting sex selection. Retrieved from http://www.gene-watch/genewatch/articles/17-1darnovsky.html
McCarthy, D. (2001). Why Sex selection should be legal. Journal of Medical Ethic, 27, 302-307.
Rosenburg, Tina. ”The Daughter Deficit.” The New York Times 23 August 2009.
Wilkinson, S. (2008). Sexism, sex selection and ‘family balancing’. Medical Law Review, 16(369),
I found this add on cnn.com, it talks about a few artists who are taking songs that we’re familiar with in the US by U2 and some other bands and they are reconfiguring them to give them more of a politcal meaning. This pertains to our class because their purpose for performing the music that they are performing is to challenge the ways that the government rule and to raise awareness about issues. Our class has pretty well established that in order to make a change people need to be aware of what is going on. So many times people aren’t fully aware of the ways they are being governed. Their songs also talk about HIV/AIDS and convey through lyrics that people should be wearing condoms when having sex because this particular Std is so much more prevalent in African countries than anywhere else in the world. Anyway, I thought it was pretty interesting so I thought I’d post about it. Enjoy!
Apropos of our conversation in class on Tuesday, this post from RH Reality Check:
Here’s the beginning…
Earlier this month I attended a historic medical conference with over 8000 ob-gyns from around the world, gathered together in Cape Town, South Africa, for the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) conference. Many FIGO participants are physicians living in developing countries where access to comprehensive health care may pose a challenge for women. But for those living in countries with restrictive abortion laws, a large part of their practice is to care for women suffering from the complications of unsafe abortion. Attending sessions and meeting with my colleagues from around the world, it was clear what a rare opportunity it was to meet other doctors facing the same challenge.
FIGO had never been held before in Africa, and having the conference in Cape Town enabled many more participants from the region to attend this tri-annual conference than normally do. This is important because the vast majority women living in Africa live with restrictive abortion laws. As we know, this does not reduce the incidence of abortion, but it does make it particularly dangerous: according to a recent study from the Guttmacher Institute, although only 13 percent of all the world’s abortions occur in Africa, more than half of all abortion-related deaths take place there.
And this is perhaps what was most inspiring to me, coming from the United States: in this country, doctors may be afraid to discuss abortion in public, much less provide it in their practices. FIGO participants really get the importance of safe abortion care, in a way that many U.S. audiences just do not. For them abortion is not a political issue; for them and their patients, it’s an issue of life or death. And the conference provided a safe place for them to discuss abortion openly and forthrightly.
More here…