Thursday, February 27, 2014
If you have a birth defect of some sort, you're not a person
As LGF goes a bit off the deep end:
Enforced emotional torture / blackmailing of women by requiring doctors to inform them that fetuses with fatal abnormalities can be admitted into special hospice centers.Yes, what a horrible thing to do, tell people that their children who will have short lives, once born, can be cared for by the state. It's torture I tell you. Plus, since they will have but short lives, they're not people, but "it"s. Terrifying.
Now, all these are pretty standard cult-written anti-women attempts at religious control, we've seen them in plenty of other states (although the "yeah, your kid will be born without a brain but we have a hospice center you can put it in until it eventually dies" thing is particularly horrific and new to me), but McClurkin, the "voice votes with gawd" lady, her reasonings are... scary. Even for an anti-women cultist:
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Science and the "Contraception Cases"
They're worried about abortions, not contraception, it seems, and if we can invoke the mysteries of life to justify abortion, why can't I say the same thing to not pay for them?
The government and its amici have at times tried to blur the distinct line of when a human organism begins with semantics about when “pregnancy” begins. Relying on a definition of pregnancy that begins at “implantation,” the government and its amici argue that “emergency contraceptives” are not “abortifacients.”
However, such semantics arguments miss the mark and skirt the scientific facts. When “pregnancy” begins is not the scientific benchmark here; the relevant scientific benchmark is when the life of a human organism begins – and that is undisputedly at fertilization. “Emergency contraceptives” might not end a “pregnancy” under the government’s definition, but they can end the life of a unique human being. What the family businesses conscientiously oppose is not simply the ending of a “pregnancy,” but the ending of a human life itself.
Uganda criminalizes homosexuality, and that's not good
Some good UN related links in there. On a side note, I don't know why everyone keeps talking about the Indian court decision, their ruling seems quite correct as a matter of Indian law, regardless of whether it's a good idea or not.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Sweetening the Pill
Book Review: Sweeteningthe Pill by Holly Grigg-Spall
Or How We Got Hooked
on Hormonal Birth Control
The
medicalization of women’s bodies has a dark and bloody history. Throughout
history, but perhaps most prominently from the Victorian era onward, women have
been subjected to all sorts of poisons and ills to “treat” those processes which indicate good health. Why is it that the very things that make us women, (menstruation,
gestation, ovulation, lactation, birthing, and menopause) have so often been
treated by the medical field as problems to be dealt with? Perhaps because the
medical field has been dominated by men for the past several thousand years, with
the exception of midwifery and “witchcraft,” which in some cultures may have
simply been female herbalists who used spirituality and natural treatments for
common ailments. But most of what we think of in the past two thousand years as
“medicine” has been a male-dominated field. Are hormonal birth control pills a
conspiracy of the patriarchy to oppress women? To reduce and regulate those frightening menstruations, to render women infertile, to blunt the effects of testosterone and
other “raging” hormones, and make women more available sexually? Maybe. Is it a conspiracy of capitalism to make women
buy a drug that they need to take every day, even when they are perfectly
healthy? Just as women need to buy tampons and pads, shavers and creams, moisturizers,
make-up, deodorants, and a hundred other products, just to function daily as a
woman? Maybe that is also true.
These
aren’t my ideas; I came across them in reading Holly Grigg-Spall’s wonderful
work, Sweetening the Pill. Grigg-Spall
is a feminist and writes from a non-religious perspective on the dangers of
hormonal birth control and lauds fertility awareness methods and other non-hormonal
forms of birth control. I found reading this book refreshing and empowering. It
has been sometime since I read truly feminist literature, and I felt as though
reading this helped put me in touch with the broader struggle women face today.
Grigg-Spall
posits that ditching the pill can be an act of rebellion against the
patriarchy, and encourages women to reclaim their bodies and their biology. She
discusses feminist groups in California who meet in circles and use speculums
to observe the changes to their cervixes and mucus throughout their cycles, and
also learn first-hand the many variations of the female body. It is a radical
act of taking gynecological knowledge into their own hands. Most women have never
seen their cervix, or even looked properly at their own genitalia, and this
allows women to familiarize themselves with their own bodies. I loved this
example, although just one of many instances in which Grigg-Spall describes
women reclaiming their biology through self-knowledge and awareness. I love it
because it is a metaphor for NFP or fertility awareness methods of birth
control. These methods are first and foremost about KNOWLEDGE of a woman’s own
body. So many women don’t understand why at certain times of the month they
find a lot of fluid and mucus, and may even think this is abnormal, such as an
infection, and don’t realize it is a sign of healthy fertility! So many PMS symptoms,
risks of miscarriage, hormonal imbalances, PCOS, and other health problems can
be detected from charting a woman’s cycle. Grigg-Spall argues these health problems can be
treated best, not with the magical cure-all pill, but with synthetic hormones
that very closely mimic the ones in our own bodies, which is not the same thing
as what is in most hormonal birth control products.
Right
as I was finishing this book, I attended a talk by Dr. Nolte of the Gianna Center in New York
City. Her talk was on infertility, the bioethical problems of IVF, and the
alternative of NaPro Technology. It
is funny how Dr. Nolte, a conservative Catholic, and Ms. Grigg-Spall, a secular
feminist, agreed on so many things. For one, they both agreed on the use of
synthetic hormones that more closely match real estrogen and progesterone to
treat hormonal problems in women. Too often the pill is used to “treat” these
conditions, when in fact it does nothing to treat the underlying cause of the
hormonal imbalance. Dr. Nolte says she does a full hormonal profile, which
means drawing blood every few days from the woman for a cycle, to see exactly
which hormones are out of balance and in which part of the cycle. Then she will
use the closest thing to the actual hormone that is available, and only administer it during the part of
the cycle it is needed. For example, if a woman is not making enough
progesterone, she will take progesterone supplements, but only AFTER ovulation,
which is when that hormone naturally spikes. To take it over her entire cycle
would actually shut down the cycle and suppress ovulation (which is what some birth
control pills do.) Dr. Nolte has found that women who have undergone this
particular therapy who previously had a very high incidence of miscarriage,
have been able to successfully maintain pregnancy to term, and have even had
their cycles begin self-regulating, increasing natural progesterone and
dispensing with the need to medicate.
Grigg-Spall and Nolte both would agree
that hormonal contraceptive is grossly overprescribed and that most women are
lacking a basic understanding of their own biology. For example most women don’t
know that they are in fact only fertile for 12 to 24 hours a month, with sperm
able to survive for a few hours to 5 days. The length of sperm survival
actually depends on the woman and HER mucus. If she has fertile cervical mucus
that nourish the sperm and allow them to enter the cervix, they can live for
days. But if there is no cervical mucus, the sperm die in a matter of hours in
the acidic vagina. Most people don’t know this! Why isn’t this basic biology
knowledge taught in high school? (Well, I am teaching it in my classroom, but I
can’t vouch for other biology teachers.)
Or
course Dr. Nolte and Ms. Grigg-Spall would have their differences. Grigg-Spall
is still pro-abortion and pro-condom, and favors a form of fertility awareness
that is not kosher in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Ms. Grigg-Spall did not
say much if anything regarding IVF in her book, but one of the downsides to hormonal
contraceptives she did highlight, was the sometimes months or even years it can
take for a woman’s natural cycle to return fully after quitting hormonal contraceptives. Dr. Nolte pointed out that
many women are on hormonal contraceptives for most of their fertile years, and
then when they want to conceive, have difficulty doing so. Part of the problem
though, is lack of patience. A couple may feel their biological clock ticking,
and rather than waiting and taking the time to chart cycles and detect the underlying problem, will go to an infertility specialist, and if they have
the money, they are inevitably offered IVF. One of the main bioethical problems
of IVF, from a Catholic perspective of course, is the creation of extra embryos,
and the subsequent freezing of them. There are millions of embryos in frozen
storage from IVF, and this in the eyes of the Church, is the same as creating
human beings, with souls, and freezing them indefinitely. Big problem.
Moreover, there is low success rate with IVF (around 30%) and this number doesn’t
even account for the women who drop out due to complications before
the IVF process is complete. It is very expensive, and has a high risk of multiple
births. Often if a woman becomes pregnant with more than twins in IVF, she will
be counseled by her doctors to “reduce” the pregnancy, by selecting one of the
fetuses to be terminated for the sake of the other two. So now, after the
heart-break of years of infertility and desperation for pregnancy, the woman is
put through the painful decision of deciding which of her children to
terminate. Dr. Nolte has had a very high success rate with her use of NaPro
Technology, and boasts much higher success rates than IVF, although granted her
process takes longer. She also has very rarely had twins, although it has
happened. In the spirit of honesty, I should note that Dr. Nolte is my OB/GYN,
although I have only just been recently seeing her. So far I have been
extremely happy with her and the Gianna Center clinic. The level of care and
concern was phenomenal. She didn’t just treat my reproductive system, but takes
into account the whole individual. It was the first time I had an OB/GYN ask me
about my diet, exercise, vitamins, etc. It was the first time I had an OB/GYN
screen me for PMS and other hormonal problems. These are the things you would
expect from your gynecologist, but usually all they are checking for is STDs and cancer and then they ask
you what method of birth control you are using.
But I digress. Even though Dr.
Nolte and Ms. Grigg-Spall may not see eye to eye on the sanctity of the embryo,
I think they have a surprising amount of common ground and if women came
together over fertility awareness, instead of arguing over our differences,
much good could be accomplished. For example, I think both women would agree
that fertility awareness could be taught in a high school biology curriculum.
They might disagree on some of the details, but the basics of biology, the
hormonal, mucus, temperature, and cervical shifts over a woman’s cycle, should
and can be taught to young women (and men.) They both agree that hormonal
contraceptives are over-prescribed and often have undesirable side effects such
as depression and loss of libido.
My only major critique of Sweetening the Pill is a lack of
citation for her scientific facts. Most of her science, to the best of my
understanding and from what I have read in other sources, seems accurate. But
it would strengthen her arguments if she bothered to properly footnote her
statistics and facts with references to peer reviewed science journal articles,
or at least something. She does reference many other books, most by fellow
feminist authors, and she gives those books proper credit. She also has a list
of recommended reading and resources in the back. Still, there is nothing like
a good-old footnote to support your point if someone calls into question the
integrity of this or that fact. Furthermore, I think she could have discussed
IVF and infertility treatment and the modern process of birthing as yet other
ways women’s bodies have been medicalized. But in her defense, the thrust of
this book is the use of hormonal contraceptives and the effect on the bodies of
women, and some topics she touches upon, such as menstruation, she does not
have time to delve into in this slim book.
As for my own personal experiences,
like Ms. Grigg-Spall and millions of women, I went on hormonal contraceptives at
a young age. I was 17. Unlike Ms. Grigg-Spall who was put on the pill by her
mother, almost as a rite of passage into womanhood, I chose the pill for
myself, against my parents’ wishes. I was on it for nearly four years. During
that time I experienced weight-gain and depression. I don’t personally
attribute my depression to the pill, as I was going through many life-crises at
that time, but Grigg-Spall recalls many anecdotal cases, particularly with
Yasmin/Yaz, of women suffering from depression and lack of energy while on
hormonal contraceptives. She claims that doctors and the medical industry don’t
take these complaints seriously, but dismiss them, putting the blame on the
women, not on the drug. There must be something else wrong with them, it can’t
be the drug they are on, even though so many report mood changes when going on
the pill, and then that fog lifts once they go off. But no, it couldn’t be
the pill! Grigg-Spall seems to indicate that this dismissal of women’s reports
of emotional side-effects, is yet another way the medical industry is silencing
women and delegitimizing their experiences. It was Grigg-Spall’s own struggles with
depression on Yasmin/Yaz and her subsequent recovery after eliminating hormonal
birth control that prompted her to write this book. How many of my friends have suffered
similarly? I don’t know. Although almost all my female friends have been on
hormonal contraceptives at some point in their life, it is something we sadly
don’t talk about. I do know that I had one friend become hospitalized from a
blood clot that was partly a complication from her birth control pill. I also
had a friend who always had very regular periods her entire life, experience
loss of her menstrual cycle after using the morning-after pill. Her entire
cycle shut-down and she went months without a period. Her doctor finaly had to
put her on hormonal contraceptives just to restore her cycle. It was never the
same after she used the morning-after pill.
Maybe what we need is some sort of Wikipedia
space for women to report out about these side effects and document them
publicly. There are many online forums where women gripe about this or that
hormonal contraceptive and the side-effects they are experiencing. We need to
make our voices form a collective and get these numbers to the FDA. Too many women bear
their suffering in silence and alone, thinking it is just them, it must be a
problem with their body, not the drug.
As an exciting development, just as
I was writing this, several friends shared with me
that Ricki Lake is teaming up with Abby Epstein to make a film documentary
based on Sweetening the Pill. Awesome! I think a documentary by
Ricki Lake will reach a wider audience than Grigg-Spall’s book alone. Women
need to not be afraid to take on Big Pharma, and challenge what the ads claim
is “natural, safe, and effective.” That fine print, those warning labels, need
to be given a face and voice. Even if the percentage of women experiencing
these side-effects is small (which it probably isn’t) with over 80% of women
taking birth control pill at some point in their lifetime, we need to take
these side-effects very seriously, and ask ourselves, is it worth it? Is this
truly the best and healthiest way for women to prevent pregnancy? I hope Ms.
Lake’s documentary will include alternatives, such as fertility awareness methods.
Labels: book, contraception, feminism, NFP, prolife
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Sinner's Guide to Natural Family Planning
Book Review: TheSinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning by Simcha Fisher
I was
feeling blue about NFP when I picked up Fisher’s Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning. Everything I read
previously, and the testimonies from couples I had heard on my Engaged
Encounter retreat, sang nothing but high praises about how using NFP drew them
closer together as a couple and fostered marital bliss. But I had difficulty
charting using the Creighton method my first month of marriage and felt
frustrated at the number of days of abstinence, and even had an argument with
my husband over our choice of NFP. I needed advice from someone in the
trenches, from a married woman who had been there, and tried NFP for many
years, and knew that it can be difficult. I needed reassurance that I wasn’t a
failure for having problems in the first month or two of trying it and
encourage me to continue with practical advice. Sadly, I have few married
Catholic friends who could speak to me from this perspective, so Simcha Fisher
became my stand-in for a friend in this book.
The
book reads like a casual but intimate conversation with a dear friend, who isn’t
afraid to bare all and tell you about her own struggles with NFP, while
consoling you with very useful and heart-warming advice. She does so in a way that
is non-condescending or judgmental, but she meets you where you are with
kindness, a smile, and gentle jokes to make you laugh at yourself and realize
you aren’t alone.
The
slim book (124 pages) is broken into three parts. I read it in one sitting, as
I was so desperately needing the help. The parts are: “NFP and Your Spiritual
Life,” “NFP and the Rest of the World,” and “NFP in the Trenches.” Although the
first part is titled “NFP and Your Spiritual Life,” for me, the real gems of
spiritual advice came in Part III. Because in this part Fisher spoke concretely
of how this spirituality plays out in your relationship with your spouse.
Fisher ties in practicing NFP to love and Love, the Love we encounter from God
who is Love. She makes a witty comment that NFP is called “natural” because it
reveals to us our human nature, which is fallen. When practicing NFP we may see
our weaknesses, and if we don’t practice NFP with love and cooperate with God’s
grace, we can use this system to even hurt our spouses. If women berate their
husbands for getting frisky in the bedroom when it is the wrong time of the
month, and do not acknowledge that their husbands are simply in love, attracted
to their wives, and have a need for affection, it can result in a hurtful
comment, or pushing away an opportunity for expressed love. If husbands leave
the full burden of charting NFP to the wives, and do little to understand or
take part in sharing the responsibility, the woman may become bitter and
resentful, losing motivation to chart and communicate about it. These things
have been known to happen. Fisher, in both serious and light-hearted ways,
always draws the reader back to foundation of love that is really the basis for
the whole system, no matter what method of NFP you chose. If it is not done in
love, no matter how scientifically accurate your method is, you may wind up
damaging your relationship through this type of family planning.
Sometimes
we have very practical questions about NFP that the Church does not answer for
us. Just as unmarried couples practicing chastity may as, “How far is too far?”
and there is not a completely black and white answer, married couples may
wonder, “Just what can we do on fertile days, if trying to avoid pregnancy?” “Is
this or that act okay?” Fisher deals with these and other gray areas well, she
counsels us that we are adults, and the Church left this undefined for a
reason. Because what is considered loving expression of affection, and what
each couple can handle within the boundaries of chastity will vary from couple
to couple. Some couples may choose to sleep together naked during periods of
abstinence to still feel bonded sexually, but that may simply be too
uncomfortable or inviting trouble for another couple. Fisher emphasizes
communication between spouses and a strong prayer life as the solution to
possible moral quandaries that may arise. From the big questions of, is now a
good time to get pregnant? To how to please your spouse and make him or her
happy in bed, to whether or not your are comfortable with certain actions, all
can be brought before the Lord in prayer, and discussed with your spouse in
loving conversations of mutual respect, and this will be the foundation for
your answers.
Perhaps
what was most refreshing for me about the book was simply the fact that it is for Sinners. There is an acknowledgment
that we aren’t perfect, we may not like or even hate NFP at times, and we may
not always adhere to it perfectly, and we may not have holy sex lives (just
that phrase makes me laugh a little), but it is okay to laugh at ourselves
sometimes and pick ourselves up and try again. Confession, conversation,
openness in communication and revisiting questions with our spouses, and a
prayer, will give us the graces necessary to find the moral compass to guide us
in our sex lives and family planning.
Thank
you Simcha Fisher for the kind advice and picking me up during a low point and
giving me the courage to confront my sins and keep trying to do the right
thing, knowing that I am not alone in this journey. Thank you for the reminder
to do all things in love, most especially that which we call “love-making” and
all the complicated conversations and decisions that act entails!
Mrs. Fisher asks if you're using the right method of NFP
My current method of birth control, wearing a hideously ugly scarf, is working pretty well for me right now, so I'm not going to change that up.
Labels: NFP
Friday, February 14, 2014
A three part series on a philosopher's conversion to Catholicism
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Is being Catholic illegal?
For example, the committee stated that the prohibition of abortion “places obvious risks on the life and health of pregnant girls”and urged the Vatican to amend canon law to “identify circumstances under which access to abortion services can be permitted.” It expressed “serious concern” about the Vatican’s policy of “denying adolescents access to contraception.” The Vatican must put “adolescents’ best interests” ahead of other concerns, the committee said. And the committee expressed concern that the Holy See’s disapproval of homosexuality may lead to discrimination against LGBT children and the children of LGBT parents. It recommended that the Holy See amend canon law to recognize diverse family arrangements.Sounds like they need to take it up with God, not the Pope.
Labels: catholic, politics, prolife
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Sanctity is about love for others, not just rules
In Maria Goretti’s case, she was focused on her rapist — and I am sure it was her love for him, and not her blindingly pure devotion to chastity, that converted him and brought him to repentance before she died. That is how conversions happen. That is how people are saved: when other people show love for them. It’s about other people. It’s always about our love for other people. That’s why, before someone is declared a saint, they have to perform two miracles for people still on earth. Even after death, it’s not about the cause or the system or the virtue in the abstract. It’s always about our love for other people.As read in SF's excellent article.
Friday, February 07, 2014
Miscontraception
Cassie Wilson gets funding from Kickstarter to create a documentary about women's fertility and charting. I'm excited to see this!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1893202271/miscontraception
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1893202271/miscontraception
Labels: NFP
Giving Up Creighton
I plan to write more on my NFP experiences, when I have had more of them. I still new to this, and for me, the jury is still out.
Yesterday I decided to stop using the Creighton Model of natural family planning. I grew frustrated with the tedium of it. There were so many directions you had to follow and understand. It puts a burden on the woman to check for mucus by folding toilet paper into several layers of flat squares and wiping before and after every urination, bowel movement, shower, swimming, etc. You have to "bear down" and do a series of Kegel exercises to eliminate seminal fluid after-sex, and you are also supposed to do this at the end of the day before bed. Yeah sure, all this is less onerous than getting pregnant, and so far, I have not gotten pregnant. But I also had trouble reading mucus some days and misinterpreted possibly some non-fertile days for fertile.
The problem with the Creighton Model, is that it relies on only one sign, although it is perhaps the best sign, for fertility. But if you miss and forget to wipe and register the three observations (sensation, color, consistency/finger-check) EVERY time, my instructor said it invalidates the process, because sometimes the fertile mucus only appears once a day, so if you missed it, you could risk confusing fertile and nonfertile days. I found this discouraging, because sometimes, well, you just really have to go, especially if you are teacher and had to hold it for two 80 minute blocks of teaching. Sometimes you are just two damn tired at night.
But more significantly, I had trouble interpreting the mucus, despite three classes and being a biology teacher. My confusion led to my getting blood tested three times last cycle for progesterone levels. I was very upset at having to take time out of my busy schedule to go get blood drawn, when I am a healthy individual.
Finally, maybe I am not good at following simple directions, but I kept messing up the chart. I put the letters before the number, not after, causing my instructor to cross them out and rewrite everything. I put "D" for dry, instead of "0", again causing her to correct my chart. I forgot to record sensation, most days, when I felt it wasn't necessary. I used the wrong color stickers multiple times.
I guess I make a pretty bad student. But after my class yesterday my teacher asked in frustration "Are you taking this seriously?" It was then I decided to give up. If I can't learn it after three classes, then it is not for me. I went to a class last week on the sympto-thermal method offered by the New York Archdiocese and the Couple-to-Couple league. I think taking my temperature at the same time each morning is easier than this militant attention to mucus. STM still relies on mucus observations, but it is more casual, something you just make a mental note of as you go about your day. There was no strictness about how often you wipe. I know STM isn't for everyone. Some people don't have regular sleep patterns that allow them to take their temp at the same time everyday. Some people don't have regular temperature patterns for some reason. But I am hoping it works for me. I did track for one cycle before marriage, and I saw the typical rise in temperature one would expect. So I hope this method works for me, because I won't use contraception, and the only other alternatives are to look into the Marquette Method or 2-day Method, or some other form of tracking.
Yesterday I decided to stop using the Creighton Model of natural family planning. I grew frustrated with the tedium of it. There were so many directions you had to follow and understand. It puts a burden on the woman to check for mucus by folding toilet paper into several layers of flat squares and wiping before and after every urination, bowel movement, shower, swimming, etc. You have to "bear down" and do a series of Kegel exercises to eliminate seminal fluid after-sex, and you are also supposed to do this at the end of the day before bed. Yeah sure, all this is less onerous than getting pregnant, and so far, I have not gotten pregnant. But I also had trouble reading mucus some days and misinterpreted possibly some non-fertile days for fertile.
The problem with the Creighton Model, is that it relies on only one sign, although it is perhaps the best sign, for fertility. But if you miss and forget to wipe and register the three observations (sensation, color, consistency/finger-check) EVERY time, my instructor said it invalidates the process, because sometimes the fertile mucus only appears once a day, so if you missed it, you could risk confusing fertile and nonfertile days. I found this discouraging, because sometimes, well, you just really have to go, especially if you are teacher and had to hold it for two 80 minute blocks of teaching. Sometimes you are just two damn tired at night.
But more significantly, I had trouble interpreting the mucus, despite three classes and being a biology teacher. My confusion led to my getting blood tested three times last cycle for progesterone levels. I was very upset at having to take time out of my busy schedule to go get blood drawn, when I am a healthy individual.
Finally, maybe I am not good at following simple directions, but I kept messing up the chart. I put the letters before the number, not after, causing my instructor to cross them out and rewrite everything. I put "D" for dry, instead of "0", again causing her to correct my chart. I forgot to record sensation, most days, when I felt it wasn't necessary. I used the wrong color stickers multiple times.
I guess I make a pretty bad student. But after my class yesterday my teacher asked in frustration "Are you taking this seriously?" It was then I decided to give up. If I can't learn it after three classes, then it is not for me. I went to a class last week on the sympto-thermal method offered by the New York Archdiocese and the Couple-to-Couple league. I think taking my temperature at the same time each morning is easier than this militant attention to mucus. STM still relies on mucus observations, but it is more casual, something you just make a mental note of as you go about your day. There was no strictness about how often you wipe. I know STM isn't for everyone. Some people don't have regular sleep patterns that allow them to take their temp at the same time everyday. Some people don't have regular temperature patterns for some reason. But I am hoping it works for me. I did track for one cycle before marriage, and I saw the typical rise in temperature one would expect. So I hope this method works for me, because I won't use contraception, and the only other alternatives are to look into the Marquette Method or 2-day Method, or some other form of tracking.
Labels: NFP
Thursday, February 06, 2014
I Am Second
A most touching story. And a reminder not to treat people who do bad things as bad people.
Labels: prolife
Wednesday, February 05, 2014
Unplanned
This week I finished reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, which I started around Christmas. Given that it was over 700 pages, this may be the longest book I read, and in one of the shortest periods of time. I don't mean that to brag, but usually I find myself too busy to commit to lengthy works, because it takes me so long that sometimes I forget what happened earlier in the novel. Buy Ayn Rand doesn't read like War and Peace or Middlemarch, and honestly, if you did put it down for a while and came back, you could still know what is going on. But you won't put it down, because the story is so gripping. I turned back to the novel every chance I got.
After finishing The Fountainhead, I picked up a vastly different book, Abby Johnson's Unplanned. It is a short, easy to read, autobiographical work about a woman who volunteered and worked with Planned Parenthood for 8 years, before reaching a dramatic turn in which she changed her views from prochoice to prolife after witnessing an ultrasound-guided abortion. Ayn Rand and Abby Johnson are about as diametrically opposed as you can get philosophically. Rand has strong views against service and government overreach in people's lives, and Johnson has a heart made for service. She discovered Planned Parenthood at a volunteer fair, and her whole life was oriented towards social services and helping others in need. It is the kind of career that would make Rand shudder, not because of abortion, but because of the premise of sacrificing oneself and one's life to help women in crisis.
And that's what Johnson was doing. What was so beautiful and compelling about Johnson's story, is that is shows the clinical workers at Planned Parenthood, and how so many of them are women with large hearts in the right place of doing good for others. But when Johnson became director of the clinic and learned about the finances of Planned Parenthood, her superiors began to pressure her to have a better fiscal bottom line, and that meant more abortions. Family planning and contraception were not money-makers; abortion was. So she was pressured to expand abortion at her clinic by offering more "medical" abortions (Ru-486, as opposed to surgical procedures) which clashed with her conscience as Johnson had had her own awful experience with the drug and was very careful about administering it. She also celebrated adoption and was happy when women made courageous decisions to parent or give up their child for adoption. But Planned Parenthood wasn't happy with those outcomes, because they didn't help the bottom line. This put Johnson at odds with Planned Parenthood, even though she still supported a woman's right to chose.
The literal and symbolic fence which separated prolife and prochoice people in Bryan, Texas where Johnson worked became a theme throughout the book. Johnson's story is compelling because she has been whole-heartedly on both sides of the fence, and the conversion from one side to the other is a beautiful testimony to the Holy Spirit tugging at someone's heart and answering the prayers of many around her. It struck a chord with me, because I had my own dramatic conversion around prolife issues, and working through the darkness of one of the worst moments of my life, was the groaning of the Holy Spirit, pushing me to reach out to the Father who forgives all things, and makes all things new, and brings life out of death. I never worked for Planned Parenthood, but I was an activist with them, taking the bus to DC to march for a woman's right, and marching across the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. I was on an email list and contacted my representatives and wrote letters in support of prochoice causes. I believed so strongly in these issues, that when the "scales fell off my eyes" and I began to see the truth about IVF, abortion, and the morning-after pill, it was a dramatic turn for me, costing me friendships and causing me to radically reorient myself in life. But like Johnson, in the end I was richer for it, I developed new and deeper friendships, and found a life-giving path that opened up so many wonderful opportunities. It was not an easy, nor sudden transition, and I did not had a single pivotal moment as Johnson did, but rather a series of small but powerful moments and conversations that gradually tipped the scales for me. God has been very good to me since I heeded the call from the Spirit to return. I think there may be a book in me as well. I have attempted to write snippets of my conversion story, but it is difficult to structure a narrative as it was very complex. Johnson's story is actually pretty straightforward and simple, so it makes a good quick read. My own story has a lot of layers of complexity, that I have trouble weaving into a single narrative. I look back and try to rationalize what happened and put a cohesive story to it. I want to be able to say, "This is what happened, for these reasons," but every time I do, I feel it is still not the whole picture.
At any rate, I recommend both The Fountainhead and Unplanned for entirely different reasons. The Fountainhead is incredibly well written, and raises many fascinating philosophically interesting points that are intriguing to think about and discuss, preferably with a good friend who has also read the book. The characters are fascinating studies in themselves.
Unplanned is not the most sophisticated or well written of books, but the story, which is true, is so compelling, that I couldn't put it down. Perhaps because it was so personally relevant to me. But I read it within a few days. It's a story that anyone who has dealt with Planned Parenthood, or cares deeply about abortion one way or another, needs to read.
After finishing The Fountainhead, I picked up a vastly different book, Abby Johnson's Unplanned. It is a short, easy to read, autobiographical work about a woman who volunteered and worked with Planned Parenthood for 8 years, before reaching a dramatic turn in which she changed her views from prochoice to prolife after witnessing an ultrasound-guided abortion. Ayn Rand and Abby Johnson are about as diametrically opposed as you can get philosophically. Rand has strong views against service and government overreach in people's lives, and Johnson has a heart made for service. She discovered Planned Parenthood at a volunteer fair, and her whole life was oriented towards social services and helping others in need. It is the kind of career that would make Rand shudder, not because of abortion, but because of the premise of sacrificing oneself and one's life to help women in crisis.
And that's what Johnson was doing. What was so beautiful and compelling about Johnson's story, is that is shows the clinical workers at Planned Parenthood, and how so many of them are women with large hearts in the right place of doing good for others. But when Johnson became director of the clinic and learned about the finances of Planned Parenthood, her superiors began to pressure her to have a better fiscal bottom line, and that meant more abortions. Family planning and contraception were not money-makers; abortion was. So she was pressured to expand abortion at her clinic by offering more "medical" abortions (Ru-486, as opposed to surgical procedures) which clashed with her conscience as Johnson had had her own awful experience with the drug and was very careful about administering it. She also celebrated adoption and was happy when women made courageous decisions to parent or give up their child for adoption. But Planned Parenthood wasn't happy with those outcomes, because they didn't help the bottom line. This put Johnson at odds with Planned Parenthood, even though she still supported a woman's right to chose.
The literal and symbolic fence which separated prolife and prochoice people in Bryan, Texas where Johnson worked became a theme throughout the book. Johnson's story is compelling because she has been whole-heartedly on both sides of the fence, and the conversion from one side to the other is a beautiful testimony to the Holy Spirit tugging at someone's heart and answering the prayers of many around her. It struck a chord with me, because I had my own dramatic conversion around prolife issues, and working through the darkness of one of the worst moments of my life, was the groaning of the Holy Spirit, pushing me to reach out to the Father who forgives all things, and makes all things new, and brings life out of death. I never worked for Planned Parenthood, but I was an activist with them, taking the bus to DC to march for a woman's right, and marching across the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. I was on an email list and contacted my representatives and wrote letters in support of prochoice causes. I believed so strongly in these issues, that when the "scales fell off my eyes" and I began to see the truth about IVF, abortion, and the morning-after pill, it was a dramatic turn for me, costing me friendships and causing me to radically reorient myself in life. But like Johnson, in the end I was richer for it, I developed new and deeper friendships, and found a life-giving path that opened up so many wonderful opportunities. It was not an easy, nor sudden transition, and I did not had a single pivotal moment as Johnson did, but rather a series of small but powerful moments and conversations that gradually tipped the scales for me. God has been very good to me since I heeded the call from the Spirit to return. I think there may be a book in me as well. I have attempted to write snippets of my conversion story, but it is difficult to structure a narrative as it was very complex. Johnson's story is actually pretty straightforward and simple, so it makes a good quick read. My own story has a lot of layers of complexity, that I have trouble weaving into a single narrative. I look back and try to rationalize what happened and put a cohesive story to it. I want to be able to say, "This is what happened, for these reasons," but every time I do, I feel it is still not the whole picture.
At any rate, I recommend both The Fountainhead and Unplanned for entirely different reasons. The Fountainhead is incredibly well written, and raises many fascinating philosophically interesting points that are intriguing to think about and discuss, preferably with a good friend who has also read the book. The characters are fascinating studies in themselves.
Unplanned is not the most sophisticated or well written of books, but the story, which is true, is so compelling, that I couldn't put it down. Perhaps because it was so personally relevant to me. But I read it within a few days. It's a story that anyone who has dealt with Planned Parenthood, or cares deeply about abortion one way or another, needs to read.
The advantages of failing
I made it to the bottom of the ski hill shaken and wanting to go home. On the previous run I had fallen and it had shaken my confidence. I was afraid of getting injured. My thoughts had a field day as they worked overtime to develop highly specific versions of ridiculous skiing accidents that would injure me indefinitely. I remembered watching the P&G olympics commercial that featured little kids, unfazed by repeated failure, continuously getting up and trying again. Along with the gentle encouragement of their parents, they were inspired by their belief that eventually (no matter how many times they fell) they would succeed. When I watched this commercial with my boyfriend, I started to cry. “I’ve never even given myself the opportunity to fall.”Take a chance.
Labels: a full life
Saturday, February 01, 2014
Teaching Fertility Awareness in High School
Learning about fertility awareness has convinced me that this needs to be taught in high school. For one thing, I believe it would reduce the number of abortions. I teach the basics of the menstrual cycle in the high school where I work, even though it is NOT part of the curriculum, because I believe women (and men) should know more about what is going on in their bodies. Most of them understand the basics, but when I start showing them charts of hormones and mention the role of the pituitary and corpus luteum, I can tell that they have no idea what I am talking about and they are hearing this information for the first time. The class suddenly gets very quiet and pays close attention, because they care about this topic. Many of them are probably sexually active, or will be before they graduate high school. As much as I would rather they wait until marriage, I would also rather that they are more informed about their risk-taking behavior. If a teenage girl knows that it is her "fertile" time, or around ovulation, because she has been taught to notice certain changes in her body, there is a good chance she will be less likely to have sex, and certainly unprotected sex, during that time.
I haven't forgotten my promise from November to cover natural family planning in more detail. I hope to cover this topic a bit more in the coming month. I was a bit busy with entering the institution of marriage in December.
I haven't forgotten my promise from November to cover natural family planning in more detail. I hope to cover this topic a bit more in the coming month. I was a bit busy with entering the institution of marriage in December.
Labels: education, NFP, prolife
