(Interested readers can find out my views on abortion on this website by doing a simple search.)
The Media Research Center transcribed some of the celebrity speeches that took place on Sunday’s March for Women’s Lives:
Whoopi Goldberg: ?This is no joke. This is still America. This is not a fundamentalist country. The separation of church and state must be maintained. We need to help stop the attacks on women?s reproductive rights in the name of religion, not only here at home, but all over the world. Does anybody remember this [holds up wire coat hanger]? You remember what this was used for? There?s a whole generation out there standing with us who don?t know what this is for. A couple of people said to me, ‘Why are you carrying a hanger?? I said because this is what life was like before choice. This was the choice. This was it, and I?m here to tell you never again….
?They?re talking about the loss of Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court is split five to four on the issue. For now we?ve got five votes and the anti-choice people, they?ve got four. But we can all count one vote protecting the freedoms we?ve fought for [sic]. It?s not enough. We are one vote away from going back to this [holds up hanger again]. You understand? One vote away. It?s not even an option. We?re not going back. It?s not going to happen. The government continues to slash and destroy critical family planning — safe delivery, prenatal care, AIDS/HIV prevention funding. Here and around the world, we?ve seen critical life-saving dollars diverted so that abstinence-only programs can exist. Excuse me! Excuse me! That cannot be the only choice. Everybody makes a mistake….
?Women are dying around the world from illegal abortions. We stand here, we?re marching, but let me explain something to you. As we stand, one woman is dying every six minutes. Now let?s do the math. Since we left at 10 a.m., thereabouts, over 30 women have died needlessly. Today alone, thirty women are dead because they got pregnant in the wrong country. That?s why we?re here. The struggle has to go on until every woman in every country in the world has the right to control her life!”
It’s crude, but I doubt that Whoopi Goldberg has ever placed a wire hanger in her genitals in her life, and to claim solidarity with those who have by carrying one around is a bit like me affecting a limp to show that I belong in the same group as men who fought in Iraq. Why not? They’re men, right? I’m one. I support their cause.
Where’s the proof that the “government” is slashing “critical family planning?” I was under the impression that the Bush administration has already spent more taxpayer money on AIDS relief than any other in history. Ask Bob Geldof. “Everybody makes a mistake” isn’t, in my opinion, a good enough reason to continue funding programs that don’t work very effectively; it goes to the notion of government being the healer of all ills, righter of wrongs, and rectifier of all inequities.
I don’t know about the claim of one woman dying every six minutes “because they got pregnant in the wrong country.” That’s a lot of wire hangers, and if you go by the liberal gun control model, then all implements of vertical garment suspension should be outlawed. Why is it the responsibility of the U.S. if someone in, say, Antwerp kills herself with a wire hanger? I want the right to control my life, too, and part of that control is wrested from me every time I pay my taxes. I have the right to vote for who will spend that money in ways I think are more effective and ethical. Hence, I’ll continue voting in people who support abstinence over 8th-grade condom distribution.
Ashley Judd had something interesting to say, too:
?Keep your laws off my body! Can you hear me 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?! Say it with me so they can hear us. Keep your laws off my body! Say it to Congress. Keep your laws off my body! The average woman needs three decades of birth control or she will have 12 to 15 pregnancies in her lifetime. You don?t want us to have to abort those pregnancies? Have health insurance cover our birth control.?
That’s a lot of babies. It might not be a bad idea to send some of these extremely fertile women to, say, France, where the birth rate is in sharp decline. I don’t think it’s fair for the government to mandate that Joe Catholic must pay for Gertrude Protestant’s birth control pills, myself. I’d prefer it if you’d let the insurance companies set their own rules. Keep your laws out of my wallet! Can you hear me, Hollywood? Say it to Ashley.
Susan Sarandon (of course) was another speaker:
?And while this President claims to be concerned about the spread of AIDS globally, this rule also denies funding to AIDS organizations that share medical workers or clinical space with family planning non-profits, thus limiting the treatment and prevention of AIDS.
?We are here today with our daughters, with our mothers, with our husbands, with our boyfriends, with our sisters, with our lovers, and in solidarity with our sisters all over the world, to tell you to keep our hands off our bodies! We will not be gagged! We will not be silenced! And we will vote!…We will call, we will write letters. We reject, Mr. Bush, your hypocrisy, your greed, your disrespect for women?s bodies, for women everywhere!
I doubt somebody’s going to die of AIDS because he or she couldn’t go down the block to a different clinic, but I suppose that’s arguable. Why not have a courthouse inside a liquor store, then? Or put a methadone clinic in Children’s Hospital?
I’ve always found it fascinating that the liberal left screams louder than anyone else in human history about being “silenced” or “gagged.” They don’t seem to see the paradox inherent in the statement. If you did more critical thinking and less vocal complaining about being kept silent, you might get somewhere. I don’t know where she got the Bush disrespect for women’s bodies claim. Do pro-life women have disrespect for women’s bodies? I’ve seen a few with some pretty respectable bodies, myself.
And now we finally get to Camryn Manheim:
This is a historic day! Another in a noble list of historic days at this place, where the people of America stand up for their rights! We must continue to do so while we still can, at least until the Patriot Act is renewed! I hope John Ashcroft is listening — he?s just over there, you know — because we are a true threat to his vision of America!”
Liberal left scorecard: Silenced by the Patriot Act? Check. Evil Bully Ashcroft? Check. Ms. Manheim could’ve phoned that part in.
“We are one vote away on the Supreme Court from throwing women back to the 19th century, a world where after making the most difficult decision of a woman?s life, she and her doctor could be prosecuted for murder….We must make it clear that a hundred million women in this country will not have their rights rolled back by political extremists! The far right have already squandered your Social Security. They better put our uteruses in a lockbox and keep their hands off them!”
Well, there’s hyperbole, and there’s hyperbole. I’d like to think that having unprotected sex with someone with whom you don’t want to have children should be at least as difficult a decision as getting an abortion, but I’m a political extremist. Yes yes, everybody makes a mistake.
I’d sure like to see some of that Social Security money that was squandered, myself. Here I was, thinking that it all went to old people and social programs that don’t work. Wait a minute…is she sure it’s all the far right’s fault? When Ms. Manheim gets old enough, is she going to refuse her own Social Security?
I don’t want to touch the whole “uterus in a lockbox” thing. It’s icky.
okay, so i have read this at times before but never commented. While i definitely don’t agree with everything that was said in the various blurbs that you posted, you asked where is the evidence that funding is being cut for the programs Whoopi mentioned. Well, right now virtually every NIH funded grant that concerns sexuality in any form is under review threatening to be cut (including the one that i work for). These five (http://www.cossa.org/sexual%20research%20grants.htm – sorry it wouldn’t let me include the actual link) were the ones specifically targeted by a proposed amendment (which thankfully was defeated – narrowly), but the fallout would have resulted in a severe cutback of many of the projects currently under way.
Not only this, the way that they are going about the proposed cuts is to give more control to policy makers over what gets studied rather than to the people who are doing (and therefore know) the topics being studied.
i have opinions on the War in Iraq, but i leave the decisions to military strategists, i don’t really think that politicians have any clue what they are trying to get themselves into on this issue. and quite frankly think they are just plain wrong. So on this one, Ms. Goldberg was correct.
Well, jimi, I don’t know which one of the NIH studies you work for, so I hope you won’t feel too put out when I say that after following the link, I couldn’t find one of them worth a penny out of my checkbook. Let’s take a look at them:
1) National Institute of Child Health and Human Development/Mechanisms Influencing Sexual Risk-Taking: “Sexual risk-taking contributes directly to high rates of sexually transmitted disease and the continued spread of HIV infection. Despite many years of research, the mechanisms that lead to risk taking behavior are poorly understood. Specifically, prior research has largely assumed that sexual decision-making depends on rational thought processes, and has not adequately addressed the role that emotional state plays in influencing behavior.”
Not worth my money to investigate why other people engage in behavior that is, ultimately, self-destructive. The government’s job isn’t, in my opinion, to study whether Gay Tom or Frank Heroin Addict is angry, sad, or introspective when having unprotected sex in a bathhouse/shooting up.
2) National Institute of Child Health and Human Development/Spatial and Temporal Interrelationships between Human Population and the Environment: “This project examines interactions between human population and the environment in the Wolong Nature Reserve in China, the largest reserve for conserving endangered giant pandas.”
Come ON. First, it’s not even a particularly useful social experiment, and second, it’s in a country that would be better off getting money to properly feed its population. If it’s the pandas’ time, oh well.
3) National Institute of Child Health and Human Development/Longitudinal Trends In The Sexual Behavior Of Older Men: “In addition, sexual function can often be an important marker of an individual?s overall health and well-being, but without a better understanding of age-related changes in men?s sexual function, physicians may assume that declines in function are normal when they actually reflect early symptoms of diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.”
A simple blood test will diagnose diabetes, and I can’t imagine that a decline in sexual potency would be the only symptom of heart disease in the aging. Sorry. Got to go.
4) National Institute on Drug Abuse/HIV Risk Reduction Among Asian Women: “The proposed study will describe drug use and HIV-related behaviors among Asian female commercial sex workers at massage parlors (Asian masseuses) in San Francisco.”
First, see Number 1. Second, I can’t believe that anyone is seriously suggesting that American tax dollars should go to fund studies about Thai hookers. Guess what: as far as I know, the “happy ending” variety of massage parlors is illegal in San Francisco. Pay the cops more to close such places down.
5) National Institute of Mental Health/Health Survey of Two-Spirited Native Americans: “Native American (NA) gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) individuals (whom we will refer to as two-spirits) represent a population facing challenges from both within the NA and GLBT communities. They are a drastically understudied and underserved group, at risk for multiple psychological and health problems.”
Tell me a group that ISN’T at risk for “multiple psychological and health problems.” I find it interesting that the gay American Indians are referred to as “two-spirited.” I’d think that such euphemism would preclude one from engaging in serious scientific research. Sorry, but it’s tough to be gay anywhere, no matter what culture you’re from. ‘Tain’t easy being heterosexual, neither. No dice.
Also, one of the reasons why these types of projects have oversight from non-doctors is because nobody WANTS to vote himself or his colleagues out of a job. Same reason why authorization to use military force is under the purview of a civilian. There needs to be some level of objectivity here, I think.
Well, David, I agree with jimi. While I think it is a great idea for taxpayers to know where their tax dollars are going, it is unreasonable to assume that policy makers or tax payers have an informed opinion as to where each and every penny should go. The budget is too complex and there are experts in the field that can do a better job than we can in determining scientific worthiness.
jimi’s point is that the vast majority of the public, including you, me, and Toomey, do not have well informed opinions on which scientific research deserves funding. Your argument is based on your ideology, of course, but thankfully it is not mine, yours, or Toomey’s ideology that determines worthy studies. Experts in the field, e.g. the scientists at NIH and elsewhere who have spent their careers working with NIH related subjects and form the “peer review” process, are best qualified. You list your ideological reasoning on why we shouldn’t examine prostitution or interactions between humans and nonhuman animals, but no one would consider you an expert on why those studies are important, and why those studies fill in gaps in our scientific knowledge. I am not an expert either, but from what I know of the scientific process, filling in knowledge gaps is essential, and if the peer review process (e.g. the experts) deemed them worthy, I don’t see why you, me, or Toomey has an informed enough opinion to comment on whether these studies are worthy of tax payer dollars.
I have signed an on-line petition to halt ill-infomed policy makers like Toomey from putting their ideology before scientific progress. I encourage others to do the same.
I submit that if scientists, especially social scientists, were given free rein on taxpayers’ checkbooks, there would be no end to the amount of spending on gay Indians and Vietnamese blow-job artists. It frightens me every time I think about such decisions being made by individuals who, for example, have never left the academic world to fend for themselves in the job market that the majority of Americans wade through every day. As such, I have little faith in their judgment over financial matters. I didn’t elect ‘em. I didn’t choose ‘em. And neither did you or jimi or Toomey or Santorum or Specter or Rendell (to go through the short list of off-the-top-of-my-head Pennsylvanian politicians).
Ultimately, all tax collection is done at the point of a gun. If I’m going to be held up, I’d like the money to go to programs I feel are more worthy. That’s not unreasonable, and I hardly think I’m alone in that stance.
I take exception to the concept that the budget is too complex for lowly individuals like elected representatives to wade through. Why not make the job of professor or scientist a prerequisite of any elected official? Is everyone on the Senate Intelligence Committee an ex-spy? Certainly, knowledge of the subject matter is helpful, but is outweighed, in my opinion, by sound judgment and knowledge of taxpayer mores, ethics, and community standards. As such, the pandas don’t rate. Scientific worthiness, when it comes to publicly-funded projects, is not judged in a scientific vacuum.
Let the knowledge gap of whether HIV-infected intravenous drug users shoot up in a state of happiness or despair be filled by private money, not mine. Sign all the petitions you want, but my votes will go to decision-makers who share my (likely benighted) point of view.
“I submit that if scientists, especially social scientists, were given free rein on taxpayers’ checkbooks, there would be no end to the amount of spending on gay Indians and Vietnamese blow-job artists. It frightens me every time I think about such decisions being made by individuals who, for example, have never left the academic world to fend for themselves in the job market that the majority of Americans wade through every day.”
This statement shows a substantial amount of ignorance of what scientists, whether they are sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, biologists, physicists, etc., do for a living. This is the kind of thinking that makes me thankful that people like Toomey are not at the forefront of scientific discourse.
I guess that my ignorance (and Toomey’s and everyone who elected him and every other dumb fuck who shares my opinion) is going to be at least as heavy a cross to bear as my next house payment.
Now that the disagreement on this subject seems to have hit a level I was hoping it would avoid, I’ll have to bow out here and yield the floor.
Gentlemen, return to your neutral corners. But I do have to agree with David that there are some pretty useless studies being funded by yours truly. On the tax policy issue…I can assure you that if you took the time to read the Federal Tax Code, Case history, and Treasury Regulations you would never have trouble with insomnia again. Question, does anyone REALLY know what the economic impact is of being in the 28% bracket versus the 35% bracket? Take a guess.
uh… is the economic impact gonna be good?
Josh makes David’s point, unknowingly, by calling psychologists, sociologists, political science persons “scientists.” All of sociology and 99% of psychology and the vast majority of political science and even most of biology crumbles in the presence of genuine scientific method. The raison d’etre for most of those fields is the forwarding of unworkable social, economic and political philosophies. Whence comes much of the funding for the research and promulgation of these idiocies but from the very vested interests that unduly influence government itself. Sorry about your job with NIH, man, but it probably doesn’t deserve to exist.