“The traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids.”

Seems to me that perhaps the only better use for a condom (than protecting from AIDS) would be to put one over the Catholic Church to keep all that unseemly religious goo from destroying the hopes and futures of an entire continent.

Stupid. Religious. Insanity.

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

Germany: The Melander family of BargteheideFood expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07

United States: The Revis family of North CarolinaFood expenditure for one week $341.98

Italy: The Manzo family of Sicily Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11

Mexico: The Casales family of Cuernavaca Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09

Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27

Egypt: The Ahmed family of CairoFood expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53

Ecuador: The Ayme family of TingoFood expenditure for one week: $31.55

Bhutan: The Namgay family of Shingkhey VillageFood expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03

Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing CampFood expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23

You may have noticed that all of these families have a healthy portion of fresh fruits and vegetables, except for two-the American family and the family from Chad. The family from Chad lives in an extremely impoverished nation and spends the least amount on food of all the examples, so we can give them a pass, if you will, for not having a more balanced diet. The American family has no excuse, unless you are willing to lay blame for their less-than-healthy diet on the over-commercialized, fast-paced, brain dead culture that we inhabit.

How does your family stack up?

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

Across the country, food pantries are running out of stock. Donations are dwindling, in part because families can’t afford to donate as much or as often, but also because manufacturers have focused on better, cost-cutting production methods, leaving less overstock for donations. And the third factor at play is the federal government, whose practice of buying food from farmers (read subsidies here) to stabilize prices has decreased over the last few years as farm prices have stayed stable. Less government buying means less goverment donations. USDA donations to food pantries has declined 70% over the last three years.

Just as the lack of water in the southwest is a harbinger of tough times ahead, so too is the decrease in available food for the needy at a time when the number of needy is on the rise. In years past, my family has always participated in food drives from the post office. We’ve donated money to local food banks around the holidays. We’ve tried to do our small part. This year though, we’re going to have to cut back on our giving. We’ll still be giving, but not as much and not as often. We’re not going hungry, but we need to tighten our belts like everyone else. And I suspect that this scenario is being repeated in millions of homes across the country. People who used to give a lot are cutting back. People who used to give a little aren’t giving at all. People who couldn’t afford to give before may now be the people standing in line.

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, remember to actually be thankful if you have enough to eat. Fact is, most American families are just one major medical problem away from standing in line at the food pantry. Fact is that many American families are now cutting food budgets to pay for gas so they can get to and from work, and the grocery store. As fuel and food prices continue to increase, many more may join the line.

And yet in Bizarroland, aka Bush’s America, the president today praised the economy as he pardoned two turkeys in the Rose garden. Here are a few of his comments:

“This Thanksgiving, we are grateful for a harvest big enough to feed us all
— and millions more.”

“We’re grateful for working Americans who have given us the longest
period of uninterrupted job creation on record and a prosperity that lifts our
citizens. “

These comments, sprinkled into a speech about pardoning turkeys, show America just how out of touch their president really is. Bush may have spared the lives of two turkeys today, but he obviously doesn’t have a clue about the lives of actual people, and I don’t think he really cares.

Tobacco taxation, in its msot current incarnation, is touted as a way to reduce the smoking of tobacco by increasing the price of the product. The theory (and it has been proven to a small extent among some smoking populations) is that if the price of tobacco increases fewer people will smoke, or at least those who smoke will smoke less. In this case, tobacco taxation is being used as a tool to change behavior. But you should ask yourself if the government really wants to have fewer smokers around. I submit that they do not, and the constant attempts to increase tobacco taxes to pay for any myriad of government projects should bear out my stance.

For instance, in the case of SCHIP, the federal government decides that in order to fund the program they need to increase tobacco taxes. Yet, under the behavioral modification theory, the fact that they plan to increase taxes on tobacco should lead to fewer packs of cigarettes being sold, meaning that there would be less tax money to fund SCHIP. In that case, where does the remainder come from? In fact, the government hopes that raising tobacco taxes will not affect most smokers, who are in fact addicted to the substance, and they will just keep smoking and paying the taxes. They know this is what will happen, and they count on smokers keeping right on smoking. They WANT smokers to keep smoking.

But SCHIP isn’t the only thing dependent on tobacco taxation. Aside from health related programs (that are dependent primarily, if not solely, on tobacco taxes) governments use tobacco taxes to swell their general funds accounts, thereby using tobacco money for projects unrelated to health care. When the states sued the tobacco companies and settled for multiple billions of dolalrs, they said that those funds were to be dedicated to health care costs for smoking related diseases. But state governments have repeatedly raided those “windfall funds” and used them for anything from roads to environmenta l impact studies to school building projects and so on. And they rely on smokers to keep those dollars rolling in.

It’s bad enough that tobacco taxation is a regressive tax policy, that is, one that targets those with less overall income disproportio nately. But what makes tobacco taxation policies worse, to me, is the fact that it is a hypocritical policy based on saying one thing while depending on the other. Governments claim to want less smoking, but then they turn around and base programs and policies on a dependence to tobacco taxes.

How does this even make sense? It doesn’t, and everyone knows it doesn’t.

And when you consider the fact that government rules and regulations are constantly limiting the places where people can smoke, you have to wonder where all these smokers are going to go to continue to light up so that the governments can continue to collect the taxes that they rely on.

Smoking is a bad health choice. That much has been proven pretty conclusively . But instead of trying to ban smoking (as the government does with much less harmful drugs like marijuana) the government takes a two-faced approach- don’t smoke, but if you do, smoke over there in the street; and please smoke because we want your money to pay for these programs.

One wonders if the government really even cares about the programs they seek to fund with tobacco taxes. If they were indeed intent on taxing tobacco out of existence, they’d surely not tie that revenue to programs that enjoy wide support, like children’s health insurance. Unless they want the program to die a slow, smoker-like death.

How can anyone support the current dichotomy of tobacco taxation? It is a policy riddled with contradictio n and hypocrisy. I think legislators simply have too much smoke in their eyes to see the absurdity of their actions. Maybe we should apply a tax to bad governance instead.

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

No ‘Plan B’ For Iraq If Surge Fails

In what has become typical Team Bush fashion, it turns out that there is no Plan B for Iraq if the president’s troop surge fails to deliver the results he seems to think they will. No matter that most of the rest of the world doesn’t think the surge has a snowballs chance in hell of changing conditions in Iraq, Bush and his jolly band of chickenhawks are so confident in Plan A (the Surge) that when asked by a group of governors last week during a meeting at the White House what the back-up plan was they were told by Marine General Peter Pace, “I’m a Marine and Marines don’t talk about failure. They talk about victory. Plan B is to make Plan A work.”

Plan B is to make Plan A work? Well, that’s sure comforting isn’t it? Does this mean that if the first surge of 21,000 combat troops doesn’t quell the violence that we’ll just send in another 21,000 ad infinitum until either all the Iraqi’s are dead or the US Treasury is bankrupted?

Not only did this administration never have a plan for Iraq in the first place, they still can’t seem to move their vision beyond Send in More Troops, despite the fact that sending in more troops hasn’t exactly turned hearts and minds towards American imposed democracy.

Mr. Bush- Plan A should have been to end the American presence in what is now an Iraqi Civil War. Plan B should be to help Iraq reconstruct once they have quelled their own violent tendencies and established a workable solution to what is now their own sectarian problem.
But it’s clear that the president has no desire to end the war in Iraq. While he’s busy recategorizing who belongs to his Axis of Evil club he has to keep up his ‘tough guy’ appearances somewhere.

As bad as the recent revelations are regarding what the Bush government means when it talks about supporting the troops, with Plan B for Iraq amounting to more of Plan A (i.e. keep on surging on), we can only expect things to worsen both for our troops abroad and for wounded vets who return home.

And sadly, the new Democratically controlled Congress is pussy-footing around the whole issue when they could take real steps to bring the troops home, restructure the real war against terrorism, and bring an end to the worst administration America has ever had to deal with.

Bush “Justice” Purge- Replace Crookbusters With Crooks

The ‘internets’ are all abuzz over the revelations coming out of the Congressional probe of the Bush DOJ firings of several US Attorneys. It seems that congresspersons, journalists, and citizens alike are shocked-just shocked, I tell you– to learn that the firings may indeed have been politically motivated to expel from the ranks of the DOJ those attorneys who actually decided that prosecuting corrupt public officials was a pretty good thing to do, even if those politicians were Republicans.

Excuse me for a minute while I roll my eyes. The shock of the revelations should be no such thing. This is how Team Bush runs ‘Merika, you know? In fact, when I first touched on this issue back in January, I said (about the firing of US Attorney Carol Lam of San Diego), “Perhaps the real reason Lam has been swept aside has more to do with the very public Cunningham prosecution that began to shine a light on who the Republican Party really is.” So the facts coming out that seem to support a political purge are no shock to me.

But this particular bit of news was, even though it probably shouldn’t have been either, knowing too well how Team Bush operates.

Apparently tossing crookbusters out of the DOJ ranks just isn’t pushing the purge far enough for the president. Now it seems that the old method of stocking federal agencies and departments with cronies has been elevated to a new level. In short, replace the crookbusters with crooks. That way, there is less chance that your own Justice Department will turn on one of your own. And with that handy little insertion into the Patriot Act that allows the AG to appoint “permanent-interim” attorneys without the need for congressional approval, putting crooked cronies into positions of power just got a whole lot easier.

Enter Timothy Griffen, top pick for the newly vacated US Attorney position for Eastern Arkansas. Griffen, an assistant to Karl Rove, was the major player in a scheme to defraud up to 70,000 voters of their voting rights during the 2004 election.

From the article:

Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Key voters on Griffin’s hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. Nice guy, eh? Naughty or nice, however, is not the issue. Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

 

In his article, Palast goes on to explain:

The Griffin scheme was sickly brilliant. We learned that the RNC sent first-class letters to new voters in minority precincts marked, “Do not forward.” Several sheets contained nothing but soldiers, other sheets, homeless shelters. Targets included the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and that city’s State Street Rescue Mission. Another target, Edward Waters College, a school for African-Americans.

If these voters were not currently at their home voting address, they were tagged as “suspect” and their registration wiped out or their ballot challenged and not counted. Of course, these ‘cages’ captured thousands of students, the homeless and those in the military though they are legitimate voters.We telephoned those on the hit list, including one Randall Prausa. His wife admitted he wasn’t living at his voting address: Randall was a soldier shipped overseas.
Randall and other soldiers like him who sent in absentee ballots, when challenged, would lose their vote. And they wouldn’t even know it.

And by the way, it’s not illegal for soldiers to vote from overseas — even if they’re Black.
But it is illegal to challenge voters en masse where race is an element in the targeting.

 

Department of Justice? I don’t think so.

I seem to remember from my history classes that there were other governments who engaged in political purges….we have a name for those kinds of governments don’t we?

As Troops Languish At Walter Reed, Bush Decides To Send USS Comfort On PR Mission

It turns out that President Bush really does approve of free health care, so long as you live in Central or South America and are not a wounded US combat veteran. Prefacing his upcoming visit to Latin America (where he plans on winning all the hearts and minds away from his third highest ranking arch-nemesis Hugo Chavez) with a speech on Monday, the Decider-in-Chief promised to send the USS Comfort down the coast this summer to deliver treatment to 85,000 people in 12 countries.
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With wounded soldiers living in mold infested barracks and enduring 7AM inspections, all while trying to put together the pieces of their shattered bodies and minds and navigate the obstructionist bureaucracy that has become the military medical system, you’d think that maybe, just maybe, there might be another good use for a US Military hospital ship. Something a little better than heading south for a PR mission perhaps?

The USS Comfort has as it’s primary mission “to provide a mobile, flexible, and rapidly responsive afloat medical capability for acute medical and surgical care in support of amphibious task forces, Marine Corps, Army and Air Force elements, forward deployed Navy elements of the fleet and fleet activities located in areas where hostilities may be imminent.” Seems like Bush’s little escapade in Iraq fits into that criteria pretty well. And since we know the president isn’t planning any troop pull-out by June, perhaps we should send the ship there (or keep it there, whatever the case may be.)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for humanitarian missions. But folks…there’s a time and a place for everything. And when your stateside military hospitals are a shambles, understaffed, and expecting a continued flow of wounded patients, it makes sense to keep your resources at home. Not only that, we have a solemn duty to our fallen men and women to care for them to our best ability. It is only too clear that this administration has failed badly thus far. So why is the president making a bad problem worse by diverting more medical resources away from our troops? Is this what “support the troops” really means?

And don’t even get me started on the ‘free health care’ about face the president is pulling here. Why is it that free health care to foreign nations is a great idea for a PR junket but a lousy idea to even discuss here in America? If this isn’t a case of total cognitive dissonance then I don’t know what is.

Bush seems to be getting out of town at a good time- for him at least. With scandals breaking all around him, with the thin veneer of ‘compassionate conservatism’ wearing away to expose the rotten ideology for what it is, and with an American public (and even some –gasp-elected officials) increasingly calling for his impeachment, the president needs to get out of the harsh light of reality for a little while. That, and maybe he needs to clear some brush at Rancho Nuevo Bush in Paraguay.

The shame, it seems, never ends.

(articles originally posted at Bring It On!)

We saw it from FEMA when Katrina hit. We see it in Iraq daily. Corporations securing no-bid contracts to provide services or support and then fleecing the payments while leaving the job undone or done so poorly a first grader would question the results.

So I guess it’s no surprise to find that outsourcing may well be behind the meltdown at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In a recent article at Army Times, it turns out that an internal memo from late 2006 described in detail how the Army’s decision to “privatize support services at Walter Reed could put patient services at risk of mission failure.” In fact, the Army has been aggressively outsourcing all sorts of work, and specifically at Walter Reed since the year 2000. And the reason for that aggressive outsourcing is given as President Bush’s ‘competitive outsourcing’ initiative.

And guess who has the deal to ‘handle’ Walter Reed? A little company called IAP Worldwide Services, run by former senior Halliburton official Al Neffgen. They scooped up a five-year contract that started in january 2006. Since then, they’ve managed to cut the ranks of federal employees at WRAMC from around 300 to only 60 by early February 2007. Since then, those 60 federal employees have been replaced by 50 IAP workers. And it seems as though they weren’t even the lowest bidder initially. An initial employee bid came in $7 million less than IAP, so the bidding process was recalculated to favor IAP.

Tell me again about how you support the troops Mr. President?

By the way- remember the whole Katrina debacle? IAP is the same company that couldn’t figure out how to deliver ice to the Gulf Coast after the hurricane did it’s damage. Clearly with a proven track record like that, they should be top of the list for any government contracts, especially one so important as caring for wounded veterans.

It’s not about the soldiers people. It’s not about democracy or rule of law. It’s not even about compassion. It’s just about the money- getting it from all of us and giving it to a few of the boys from Club Bush.

We may have to redefine what “Bush League Politics” really means.

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

Sound impossible? Hardly. According to an investigation by the Institute of Medicine, such a scenario happens about once every minute in the U.S., and while not every case ends up with a dead patient in the back of an ambulance, the statistics are a sobering wake-up call concerning the state of our hospitals, health care, and ability to react to disaster situations.

This is just another piece in the mounting pile of evidence that America’s health care system is not the finest in the world, at least not in terms of accessibility or preparedness. The report makes some fine recommendations, but unless lawmakers hear from the citizenry, the issue of national health care is going to keep getting pushed to the back burner.

What matters more to your life? Burning flags or closed hospital doors? Same sex marriage or dying in the back of an ambulance? To me it’s an easy choice. Time to put some pressure of politicians to work on something that really matters to all of us, our quality of life, and yes, our national security.

(originally posted at Bring It On! )

According to an article in The Tennessean, Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R) engineered a backroom legislative maneuver to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits.

In language tucked into a Defense Department appropriations bill, AT THE LAST MINUTE and WITHOUT APPROVAL OF A HOUSE-SENATE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE, Frist and Hastert proposed giving immunity to companies that develop vaccines in the event there is a declared public health emergency. Basically, what they are asking is that their big pharmaceutical donors be immune from any repercussions arising from their producing, marketing, and dispensing vaccines or other health “countermeasures” that result in serious harm or death to users of said product.

Aside from the obvious pandering to high money donors at the expense of the ‘real American’ citizens, there is another issue at stake here, namely the fashion in which this language was slipped into the bill itself.

From the article: “some say going around the longstanding practice of bipartisan House-Senate conference committees’ working out compromises on legislation is a dangerous power grab by Republican congressional leaders that subverts democracy.”

While apparently not illegal, it is highly unusual for tactics such as these to be used as they ameliorate the entire reason for compromise committees to meet in the first place.

And the text of the inserted bill was reportedly written by representatives for the pharmaceutical industry and given to the lawmakers for insertion. It is somewhat germane to remind readers that Frist has received over $270,000 in campaign donations from the pharmaceutical industry since 1989.

Several problems are presented here: (a) lawmakers apparently are not writing laws themselves, but letting donors and staffers do this work, a total shirk of their actual job. They seem to have come to the conclusion that we vote them into office to collect donations that will keep them there instead of working out legislation that protects and promotes the average American’s concerns; (b) lawmakers are routinely tricked by their own leadership when it comes to working out legislation. According to the report, members of the bi-cameral committee were told that this bit of legislation was NOT in the final bill. They left the meeting only to return to the floor to vote on the bill that then included the language in question; (c) large corporations are buying off elected officials to create situations for themselves that no average citizen could get away with, such as blanket immunity for creating faulty products or services; (d) omnibus bills that contain legislation that is not even remotely related to the main thrust of the bills are common place these days and dilute the oversight power of individual members or watchdog groups until it is too late to change things.

This law was signed by the president on December 30th, 2005. So if by chance you get a bad batch of vaccine for any reason, too bad for you. You have no recourse against the makers of the vaccine for your or your loved ones ill effects.

And all this in the name of protecting America and of government for the people.

Oh yes…this piece of information came to light because of complaints by a Republican staffer, so sorry GOPers, can’t blame this on the ‘liberal media bias.”

(cross posted at Bring It On)

Purely by accident, I was born in the good old U.S. of A. From my first breath, I already held an advantage over two thirds of the planets human population. I did nothing to deserve this; my eventual skills played no part in my good fortune. It just was.

But rather than assume that the advantage of birth is a foregone conclusion, entitling me to all the good things in life just because, I came to realize that success, whether individual or larger scale, is built on the backs of those who came before us. I was lucky to be born in a country that was technologically advanced, democratically governed, and financially affluent. All of these things contribute to my present condition, and they were fought for and won by those who came before me. So despite my own hard work to prop myself up, others paved the way, created an environment for me to excel, and defended the rights of the common man as described in our Constitution.

Yet with so much in my favor, with so much good fortune on my side, why is it that I am so angry at what our country is becoming; at what it has become? This is a question posed often in various ways by conservative commenters and writers who fail to see not only what is changing in America, but also how it is that we got to be so advantaged in the first place.

“What are you whining about?” they say snidely. Or, “Why should I care about that?” in response to some social or foreign policy issue. For someone with limited ability to see beyond one’s own good fortune or pleasant circumstances, the question may seem valid. And try though I might to illuminate my displeasures, the moat of selfishness is often too large to breach. Yet for the sake of trying, I will make another attempt, in statement and response form.

“Why do you always blame everything on Bush?”The president is a categorical liar, beginning with his self-description of “compassionate conservative” to his rationale about Iraq through to his false refutations regarding foreknowledge of the potential damage from Katrina. And these are just the big ones. He has a proven record as a failed businessman, a proven record of unbridled cronyism, and an unhealthy love affair with corporations. He distorts spirituality and cheapens religious beliefs by using them as cynical political ploys. And, he and his administration are responsible for the policies and actions that have gutted decades of environmental and social progression, lowered our reputation among the nations of the world, and squandered our tax revenue and our soldiers in pursuit of folly and a misguided sense of destiny.

“The economy is doing just fine. People who don’t make it are just lazy and expect handouts.”The economy may be okay in my house and in your house, but that could change in a heart attack. Even with my own great medical plan, one major situation and I’m in the hole. But I understand that my own good job is dependent on so many others. With increased outsourcing, there are fewer good paying jobs around. That means less money to spend or circulate, lower tax revenue, fewer public works and support, and on and on. The net effect of other people losing their jobs is felt by us all, and that concerns me, both on a personal level and from an empathetic point of view. Because I don’t just worry about myself. I care about other people too.

“There is no right to health care in the constitution.”There is no right to corporate subsidies either. To paraphrase an original American patriot, give me equity or give me nothing. The Declaration of Independence proclaims the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution declares government to provide for the general welfare of the people. I can’t seem to find the words corporation or lobbyist anywhere in these documents. I can more readily parse “good, affordable health care” from those documents than I can for corporate welfare.Yet aside from the human element, even corporations would benefit from a release of financial obligations for employee health care. It can be done and it should be done.

“Nobody cares about the wiretapping.”Aside from being patently false, the number of people who care is not the relevant issue at hand in the illegal wiretapping scheme carried out by this president. It was, and still remains, an illegal practice as performed at the direction of the president. He is not above the law. No amount of spin can change the facts. Most people don’t care about a hold-up at an obscure 24-hour mini-mart either, but we don’t stop arresting armed robbers. The issue here is not only did the president break the law, but we have men and women dying today fighting to preserve and spread our democratic belief in the rule of law. We’ve had men and women dying for generations to preserve the ideal. It is both a stain on their sacrifice and a spit on their memory to allow any public official, but especially a president, to get away with that kind of arrogance.

“Criticism only emboldens the terrorists. I guess you love al-Qaeda.”And I guess you are a complete idiot. Anyone not thoroughly brainwashed by neo-con, ultra-evangelical ideology can see that it is my deep love of the good fortune I now have that causes me distress over the course this country is on. I see an unsustainable federal spending spree forcing generations to pay for today’s errors, ultimately driving down our country’s economic stability and superiority. I see social programs, designed to uplift those among us who haven’t the money to become educated or get a doctor check-up or eat three squares a day, being systematically cut down or farmed out to religious indoctrinators. I see a hyped up “War on Terror” that expects no civilian sacrifice or participation other than to keep spending those dollars while the tax revenue gets funneled to corporations who don’t even perform the work they were hired for. My criticism is not given blithely. It has been well earned by this administration. And were I not to criticize, were I to remain silent and mute my free speech, only then would I be emboldening the terrorists. For it is that kind of society, one where self-censorship predominates all public discourse, that they embrace and thrive in.

“Why do you hate America?”Why haven’t you been listening? Really listening. Just as no one is perfect, neither is America. Yet in normal times, it is her imperfection that gives her charm and strength. But in times of duress, which is what we entered when planes were used as cruise missles and our government decided to go all squishy while the POTUS had one to many Napoleonic dreams, we can not simply sit back and marvel at our own good fortune. For as government becomes more and more separated from the people, our individual good fortunes will eventually falter. Our collective good times will end if this path is not altered. If you really love America, you wouldn’t sit by and idly accept every lame excuse from the mouths of liars. You wouldn’t profess admiration or fealty to men and women who discard our most important secular documents of all. If you really love America you
’d be right here beside me too.

So as I wrap up another day in my fortunate life, as I get ready to crawl into a warm bed, I realize that for too many in America the good times aren’t real. The struggle is constant. The relief is fading. And I know that if I do not speak, if I do not empathize, I am no better than those who actively fuel their downfall. Out of honor for those who have come before me I will speak for those who fall beside me. Out of respect for the sacrifices of our forbearers, I will fight to preserve the freedom they died to give me. And so long as I have the ability to vote, I will insist that those who speak for me really speak for me.

Through my own comments to their posts, and in essays of my own, I have stood firmly behind these women and their right to have dominion over their own bodies. I have done so because I believe firmly in their freedom as much as I value my own. But in all honesty, there is more to it than that. Abortion, as a medical procedure will never affect me as a man. But it has played a role in my own life, and were it not for the availability of legal abortions, my life would not be as it is today.

She was my first real love, and we’d been going out together for over a year. The relationship was the kind that every first young love is, full of passion and entanglement and silly arguments that grew into volcanoes. It was a time of infatuation with each other, of learning how to be more than just a date, but a partner with another person in ways that went beyond a quick hop in the sack. But of course, there was plenty of that too.

Like many teen lovers, sex was an exciting part of our relationship. With the abandon known only to young lovers, we would find time for sex several times a week. But though we were young and horny and full of passion, we were also intelligent kids who knew all about the dangers of sexual intercourse. We knew about disease, but that was not an issue as we both had had only one other sexual encounter before. Pregnancy was the thing to avoid, and we took the precautions available to us. First, she tried the pill, but as is the case for many women, especially younger women, the pill made her feel sick and why take something that makes you feel sick? Next option, condoms. Easy to use, no side effects, everyone’s happy. So that’s what we went with, and we were smart enough to always have one handy. Well, always except that one time. And it really was only that one time.

It is ironic that two people can take precautions against pregnancy every time they have sexual relations, but on the single occasion that they do not, they wind up with a pregnancy anyhow. This is an even more cruel twist of fate when even on that one time, best efforts were made to prevent a commingling of sperm and ova by using the time honored ‘early withdrawal’ method. But there it was. Strike one, you’re out. And there we were, two kids, aged 16 and 17, faced with a life altering decision.
Instinctually, I knew that my opinion would carry some weight, but that ultimately, the decision about what to do about this pregnancy would not be mine. I have never been the type of man who needed to dominate his female companions, to force my will to become theirs. Whether that is an unusual trait or not is of no relevance to me, it is who I am. I had no familial religious followings to guide me in my actions. I had no other person’s morality floating through my head. My concerns were focused on my girlfriend first, our own futures second, and the possible future of the baby, if it were to become one, third. No doubt these were the same thoughts as hers, albeit from a completely different perspective.

So we talked. And I told her that the most important thing for her to know was that I would stand by any decision she wanted to make. I would support her and the baby to the best of my ability if she wanted to continue the pregnancy and try to make a go of things. I would support her if she chose to carry the baby to term and then place it for adoption. I would support her if she chose to end the pregnancy with an abortion. I would not judge her decision or try to make her change her mind. Whatever she chose would be the way it would be.

Neither of us wanted to be parents. We had neither the experience nor the financial ability to offer a child a decent life. Hell, we still hadn’t finished high school. We talked about how choosing to keep the baby would not only put severe restrictions on the future life of a child, it would effectively end our own growth and progress towards adulthood before it had even begun. Instead of creating a new life, we would be destroying three.

At the same point, my girlfriend was terrified of the prospect of being a 16 year old pregnant schoolgirl. Not just because of the social stigma she would be branded with, or because of the eventual ire of her parents, but because she knew that her own body was not ready for the kind of havoc pregnancy and delivery brings to woman’s body. She was still growing and maturing and not ready for this kind of thing either physically or mentally. In realizing this, she knew that she could not carry the baby to term and then give it up for adoption.

That left us with the final choice. In our small town, there were no abortion clinics, but there was a very good, very discreet, women’s health clinic. My girlfriend went there for advice. We were directed to a clinic in the large city, some 2 ½ hours away. I had a job and could afford the costs. I had a car and could get us there. We could handle this on our own. She made the appointment, we made our necessary alibis without giving away our real plan, and we waited for the day to arrive.

The sun was shining, the summer was coming, and we were making the first real adult decision of our lives. It was a terrible day, all the way around. A small amount of melancholy cheer arrived in the form of her sister and one of my good friends, who happened to be dating her at the time. My girlfriend had told her sister, who was my age; she needed someone else to talk to. They were going to meet us up in the city before the abortion, and stay with us until the end. It was what we both needed, because even though I was there for her, and she knew it, I wouldn’t be able to go in the clinic with her. Her sister could, and we were happy she would not be alone. As a consequence, now neither would I, although even with my friend outside to keep my company, I felt as if I was in another world, such was my concern for my girlfriend. I knew she would be uncomfortable, scared, and alone with strangers when the time came.

In the end, as we drove back home alone that evening, we spoke few words. Each of us was thinking our own thoughts about the events of the day, and how we handled them. We knew that the right choice had been made. For her, for us, for the baby whose time had not come. I can’t tell you how she ultimately felt that night, but I don’t think it was good. I know it wasn’t for me. She had just gone through something no one wishes on another person, no one wants to have happen to them. But I think she also felt a great sense of relief in knowing that she had been able to have the chance to make that decision, the best decision in a bad situation.

We went on to enjoy another wonderful year and a half together after that night, but as things tend to go, we eventually broke up and moved on. Teen love seldom lasts a lifetime, although it is often one of the strongest kind of love we know. We went through our own individual ups and downs through our 20’s keeping in contact and staying friends, though rarely ‘hanging out.’ Ev
entually, we didn’t even live in the same town anymore. Today, we are both married and living life on our own terms. Had she made a different choice all those years ago, we would be in a very different place.

Men talk about not having a choice when it comes to abortion, that a woman has all the power and why can’t men have their say in the matter. Well brothers, that isn’t true. You do have a choice. Your choice is to stand behind your woman no matter what she decides. You can choose to be a man or to be a tyrant, forcing your will, your needs on her. You can choose to recognize that your role beyond being a sperm donor is limited to that of support staff until or if a baby is actually born. You can choose to honor the rights you demand for yourself when your woman asserts them for herself. You have a choice. And that choice is important. Your can choose to support her. But brothers, you do not have a right to a woman’s body. You do not have a right to her mind. And you do not have a right to a mass of cells, growing in her body, using her nutrients, and changing her life.

I said earlier that I stand behind a woman’s right to choose. Behind, instead of beside, because they have the uterus and the matter affects them directly and not me. Behind so that I can beat back those who break through the front line, who manage to tear a hole in the wall that women have created to protect their rights. Behind, because that is where support is needed.

Every tale about abortion is personal, and I have never really talked about this part of my life in this detail. I don’t really think about it often, although the recent furor over abortion has forced this back to my mind, especially the current discussion here at this site. But when I do think about what happened all those years ago, I know that the choice we made, that she made, was the best choice at that time. Instead of ending one life, she saved three. And she was able to do so because the law said she could. It is a law to preserve the life of the living. It touches the foundations of freedom. And men, we should all fall in line behind our women and fight to make sure it remains that way.

(Cross posted at Bring It On)