There was an excellent editorial comment in the New York Times yesterday on the nature and the breathtaking scope of our looming crisis in the cost and delivery of health care.

We've forgotten the wisdom contained in aphorisms and nursery rhymes. Ever hear "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?" "A stitch in time saves nine?" Or of trying to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again? I shudder to think of the kind of world our children and grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren, are facing due to our, and our parents' and grandparents', and their parents' and grandparents', keeping our heads buried so deeply in the sands of denial of so many issues of cataclysmic proportion (medical care and its delivery and financing being only e pluribus unum) almost inconceivably monstrous in their ever faster-approaching impact.

"Safe, legal, and rare!" ("And I DO mean RARE!" as Hillary recently so emphatically proclaimed.)

Rare???

NO!!!

Sign me up for ENOUGH for ALL WOMEN EVERYWHERE RIGHT NOW. The controversy over how to address the issue of abortion rights politically concerns differing untested beliefs, unexamined assumptions, and being lost without an accurate map from here to there, and that's a crap shoot. Does the way we hold the dice and throw them predictably influence which numbers are on top when they come to rest? Are we more likely to throw winning numbers if we talk to the dice or kiss them? How about standing in a certain pose? Throwing them behind our backs? Warming them in our hands before throwing? Should we let our "gut feelings" tell us to bet our whole stash on one throw if our guts have guts or faint-heartedly withdraw from the game if not?

I wish I could know before throwing.

From a Christian "pro-life" site:

"When dealing with the likes of Beket, you really aren't even speaking with people. These guys have been completely taken over by demons. Not influenced (like many people who are pro-choice), but actually taken over...so when you are arguing with them, you are arguing with a preternatural being. Picture Screwtape. You're just a game to this guy. Just a demon passing time...and you are his little toy...they won't respond to logic, or conscience...what they need is an exorcism!

Or maybe stretched on the rack, bludgeoned and excoriated, then slowly burned alive at the stake in that historic Roman Catholic ritual?

The author of that prescription has the makings of an acclaimed and honored priest.

As of January 1, 2004, abortion care providers in Texas have been subjected to one of those ever more commonplace TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) law packages being crafted by state legislatures under the cynical lie of "protecting women," that in reality accomplish only the creation of greater barriers to the provision, availability, and access to safe, legal, professional abortion care - which, of course, is exactly the result desired by the supporters of such laws - not any improvement in the safety of abortion care, which was already so safe it could scarcely be improved upon (and certainly not by making it even less accessible and less affordable).

One of many requirements of the TRAP laws in Texas is that women seeking abortion care must be given, orally by phone or in person, a litany of state-mandated "information" about abortion, much of which is flagrantly false and misleading, at least 24 hours before she can obtain an abortion. It was the naïve hope of the drafters and supporters of this law that women would be scared out of having abortions by hearing how "dangerous" abortion is.

To avoid the logistical impossibilities (another whole diary on that) . . .

This letter grew out of my frustration, generally, as a supporter and provider of legal, professional abortion care, in countering the massive body of fraudulent claims about abortion care in wide popular circulation through the efforts of anti-abortion propagandists. It stems from my repulsion at the sorry spectacle of misinformed and prejudiced laypersons in Congress and in state legislatures and running for office endeavoring to micromanage a specialized field of medical practice about which they obviously know and understand little, neither of its medical nor of its sociological dimensions, and to force their narrow religious views upon everyone under the cynical lie of "protecting women." The morality of bearing true witness is of paramount importance to me. The essay that accompanies this letter, Abortion Rights 101, is a distillation of facts (and some well-founded opinion) concerning the most basic foundations of understanding the abortion controversy, thus its title. There is much more to it from all angles, but this "course 101" seems to me to be a good starting place. As a colleague of mine once said, "Everyone in America over the age of eleven has a great deal of information about abortion, and almost all of it is wrong."

"Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare."

When I hear that currently popular attempt to come up with a politically correct electioneering slogan, with the emphasis on "rare" as it invariably is, my heart sinks in recognition of the extreme degree of obfuscation and oversimplification of vital issues to which our candidates are convinced they must stoop to be electable. I wonder whether they are really right in believing they must appear to be so bashful about abortion rights. Do they really have much understanding of the profound importance of the right to safe, legal, professional abortion care? Don't they care?

Then I think of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and how Goldilocks judged the porridge set out for the three bears and chose the one that was "just right."

The implication of the word "rare" in this slogan is that there are now "too many" abortions. I have to wonder how many "too many" would be. How many would be "too few?" And . . .

In Political struggle intensifies in U.S. over campaign to reduce unintended pregnancies Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group, is quoted as saying,

"There's a utopian view that women ought to be able to have sex any time they want to without consequences. That's the bottom line of all these bills."

In a recent exchange of comments on a dKos diary concerning abortion rights, a participant claimed that he was "pro-life" while at the same time seeming to deny it. (Note: I never use the generally shallow, dishonest, and deliberately deceptive term "pro-life" outside of quotation marks.)

I asked him, "Why are you 'pro-life' when it results in such massive human suffering?" He replied, "Does it really? I wish we really could know. In the end, however, suffering is an inevitable part of everyone's life.  Killing need not be.  While it's right to reduce suffering, it's also right to avoid killing in order to reduce it. Where do we draw the line? That's harder to answer." I easily enough answered, "Yes, it obviously really does result in massive human suffering. It is not hard at all for me to answer that the line should be drawn by each individual woman, not by the tyranny of your traditionally misogynistic religious mythology striving to revive the Holy Inquisition." Not appreciative of that, he shot back with, "Holy inquisition??? Where's that coming from?  Stay on topic, please."

Yes, indeed, in my opinion, the "Holy Inquisition" lives. This is why it is very much on topic whenever abortion rights are considered. . .

As an abortion provider (MD) I performed an early first trimester abortion on a college senior some years ago. Prior to meeting me she had told a clinic counselor that she was the president of her campus "pro-life" organization. Think about that. That must mean that she was one of their most committed and hardest workers against legal and safe professional abortion care for several years, but when she got pregnant herself, she was in the clinic having an abortion within a week of her positive pregnancy test.

As I completed her abortion, I asked her what she was now going to do about her affiliation with that anti-choice club. Startled, she gasped, sat abruptly up on the operating table, and with horrified expression and gaping eyes blurted out in a tremulous, frightened voice, . . .

Same Shit, Different Acronyms

"Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.
     But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.
     It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.
     It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.
     It is dominion we are after.
     World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less...
     Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ."

Isn't it all just a remake of the tall tale of the talking snake seducing that originally sinful Eve into eating an apple off the tree of forbidden knowledge?

Americans are waking up! Bush's approval rating has dipped to 29%. But we remain as stuck as in a Roach Motel in this fascist Orwellian Republican nightmare which "they" think of as the Garden of Eden.

I recently read an interesting variation on a well-known theme of our politics.  The thesis was basically that it's not so much a matter of blue states vs. red states as it is urban vs. rural, cities vs. boondocks, the blue states blue because of large percentages of their voting populations being urban dwellers - and therefore generally better informed and more comfortable with cultural, racial, ethnic, and religious diversity, as well as more personally aware of the hardships faced by economically middle and lower class citizens. Etc.

I'm reminded of what my parents told me about their experience of the Great Depression (as lower middle-class citizens in a small Texas town). They said they were barely aware of it!  Can you believe that?